We got 107 submissions this year!
| 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number of submissions | 112 | 64 | 71 | 107 |
Wohoo!

Download the archive with All One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 Submissions, or visit the One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 page and download individual submissions. Don’t forget to check out the authors’ blog posts, if available. Let me know if you discover items that I should be linking from that page.
I created a new album on Facebook and picked a particular list of people to share this album with. I used iPhoto to share pictures on Facebook using this album. After some clicking back and forth I noticed that my album was no longer restricted the list of people I had picked! The album had been reset to the default visibility settings for albums.
What a major fuck-up!

I have resolved to delete all the Facebook albums with non-standard permissions.
I’m currently reading through the One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 submissions and just finished #21. It takes a while!
I’m just one of the judges and we don’t have an agreed upon list of criteria. I’m hoping this will better reflect the breadth of our hobby. Based on an earlier blog post, I prepared a list of things I would be looking for:
As you will notice from the list above, I’m not a big friend of random dungeon generators and mini-games. Maybe some of the other judges are?
Ok, given all the above, which of the entries are looking good? Here’s what I’m liking so far. All of these entries got five points from the above list.
And now I’m going back to reading some more!
Comments on 2012-05-09 Commenting As I Go (1PDC)
AlexSchroeder Some other things I noticed:


– AlexSchroeder 2012-05-09 21:46 UTC
In the Labyrinth Lord campaign I run for a good friend and his three kids plus his godson, I was using the Wildlands, the first region in Points of Light by Rob Conley. They had been to Yellzurthi, travelled to Curnitha, visited Delen, protected the elves of Arish a’ Ahon against the ogres along The Maiden Gorge, they had freed slaves from the Dark Guard, searched the first two or three levels of Dyson’s Delve for the remains of St. Ulther, had descended into The Ruination of Tenamen (a favorite One Page Dungeon of mine), had found the Well of the Worm by Harley Stroh and Doug Kovacs and they had found the Lair of the White Salamander by Phillip Larwood and Stefan Poag, two small adventures from Dungeon Crawl Classics #29, and they had been to the Tomb of the Iron God by Matt Finch – it has been a busy campaign! I also recommend the posts on Roles, Rules, and Rools regarding the Tomb of the Iron God.
It was time for a change. Luckily enough they had expressed interest in “traveling to another dimension” looking for allies in their fight against the priests of Set. Excellent!
I improvised a setup based on The Sage’s Tower by Darcy Stratton – another favorite One Page Dungeon of mine – which tricked them into following the trail of Bolothous, the mage who had created the six golems guarding Delen. As the destination I wanted a hex region that was small and dense and I turned once more to the One Page Dungeon Contest. The Forgotten Depths by Aos was the ideal solution. The gate led to the island in hex 0506. Soon they had cut open the small silver dirigible in order to create a boat, defeated some Blood Monkeys and sailed north-east… A new chapter of the campaign has begun!
P.S. I just realized that the campaign itself actually started with Moritz Mehlem’s Mountain King and Dolm River adventures. Good times!
Tags: RPG
Old School
1PDC 
I think my system of having about twenty criteria to assign to the various submission is working out, although it seems that some of these criteria are either hard to find or figments of my imagination, ie. I want the dungeons to offer a challenge for sneaky characters but then I’m not a player of sneaky characters and that’s why I don’t see the opportunities. I wonder.
Well, here are some more One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 entries I really enjoyed:
And now back to the pile! 
By chance, I run my leech-detector script and find the following:
aschroeder@thinkmo:~$ leech-detector < logs/access.log | head
IP Number hits bandw. hits% interv. status code distrib.
184.82.236.206 14368 118K 17% 4.8s 301 (49%), 200 (49%), 404 (0%), 302 (0%), 403 (0%)
125.199.78.207 3419 11K 4% 20.2s 200 (52%), 404 (43%), 302 (2%), 400 (1%), 301 (0%), 304 (0%)
...What the hell is this guy doing causing 17% of all my hits?
aschroeder@thinkmo:~$ tail -f logs/access.log | grep 184.82.236.206 184.82.236.206 - - [13/May/2012:01:44:12 +0200] "GET /emacs?action=browse;id=icicles.el;revision=835 HTTP/1.0" 301 447 "http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/?action=rc&all=1&showedit=1&from=1&rcuseronly=DrewAdams" "Wget/1.12 (linux-gnu)" 184.82.236.206 - - [13/May/2012:01:44:16 +0200] "GET /emacs/?action=browse;id=icicles.el;revision=835 HTTP/1.0" 200 127350 "http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/?action=rc&all=1&showedit=1&from=1&rcuseronly=DrewAdams" "Wget/1.12 (linux-gnu)" 184.82.236.206 - - [13/May/2012:01:44:21 +0200] "GET /emacs?action=browse;diff=2;id=icicles-cmd2.el;diffrevision=55 HTTP/1.0" 301 462 "http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/?action=rc&all=1&showedit=1&from=1&rcuseronly=DrewAdams" "Wget/1.12 (linux-gnu)" 184.82.236.206 - - [13/May/2012:01:44:25 +0200] "GET /emacs/?action=browse;diff=2;id=icicles-cmd2.el;diffrevision=55 HTTP/1.0" 200 482243 "http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/?action=rc&all=1&showedit=1&from=1&rcuseronly=DrewAdams" "Wget/1.12 (linux-gnu)"
Ahhh! A stupid leech using wget to pull the entire site, following all the links, ignoring the rel=“nofollow” rules… Maybe a dude that didn’t read the WikiDownload page. It also looks to me as if the links are listed in the site’s robots.txt file.
Oh well. The solution, unfortunately, seems to involve editing cgi-bin/.htaccess and adding the following:
# using wget to get everything including actions, old stuff, etc. Deny from 184.82.236.206

Tags: Wiki 
Limiting my nominations to less than twenty entries is going to be difficult! I’ve read fifty submissions and already I want to nominate twelve entries!
New entries I’d like to recommend:
Previous recommended entries are here and here. The first post in this series also has the scheme I devised to figure out which dungeons I like and why I like them. According to this system, my nominations mostly got five, one entry got six points and two other entries got seven points.
Actually, let me list the entries that I’d support if other judges are going to nominate them. These entries got four points according to my scheme.
If you’re the author of a particular entry amongst the first fifty dungeons and you’d like to hear a few more words about it, let me know. I hope I’ll be writing a paragraph about all the dungeons I’m going to nominate in the end – but if you want to hear about your dungeon right away, I’ll be happy to talk.
As I wrote a few days ago, I’m using Metal Earth’s The Forgotten Depths for one of my campaigns. The blessing and curse of all the One Page Dungeon Contest submissions is that the monsters lack stats. Well, time to think something up. As most of the players are kids and their characters range from level 3 to 5, I’ve started using the following stats:
Since I invented the stats, I’m making them available for free, no strings attached, public domain. The names of the monsters are from the key of the adventure and might therefore conceivably fall under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike License.
Let me know if anything needs fixing!
Tags: RPG
Old School
1PDC 
Ok, so I wanted a local copy of Metal Earth in order to better prepare for my game. Based on previous work I had done, this proved to be fairly easy and I improved my scripts along the way. Yay!
The Metal Earth is a blogspot blog with full page content in the Atom feed.
To identify the blog, look at the source of any page. The HTML header will contain a line like the following: <link rel="service.post" type="application/atom+xml" title="..." href="http://www.blogger.com/feeds/XXX/posts/default" /> – this is where you get the number from. In this case, the number is 2248254789731612355.
download.sh – this file downloads the atom feed files:
#! /bin/sh for i in `seq 40`; do start=$((($i-1)*25+1)) curl -o foo-$i.atom "http://www.blogger.com/feeds/2248254789731612355/posts/default?start-index=$start&max-results=25" done
You’ll find that you only need to keep the first four of them.
extract.sh – this file calls the Perl script for every Atom file. You can use the -f option to force it to overwrite existing files.
#! /bin/sh
for f in *.atom; do
perl extract.pl "$*" < $f
doneextract.pl – this file has several CPAN dependencies. It will parse the Atom file, look at each entry, and write it into a separate file. If the entry doesn’t have a title, it will parse the HTML content and try to guess a title (looking at the first H1 or the first SPAN element). It will warn you about duplicate names. It will also try to set the last modification time of the file to the update timestamp in the Atom file.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use XML::LibXML;
use HTML::HTML5::Parser;
use Getopt::Std;
use DateTime::Format::W3CDTF;
use DateTime;
our $opt_f;
getopts('f');
undef $/;
my $data = <STDIN>;
my $parser = XML::LibXML->new();
my $doc = $parser->parse_string($data);
die $@ if $@;
my $encoding = $doc->actualEncoding();
my $context = XML::LibXML::XPathContext->new($doc);
$context->registerNs('atom', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
my $html_parser;
foreach my $entry ($context->findnodes('//atom:entry')) {
my $content = $entry->getChildrenByTagName('content')->[0]->to_literal;
my $title = $entry->getChildrenByTagName('title')->[0]->to_literal;
$title =~ s!/!_!gi;
$title =~ s!&!&!gi;
$title =~ s!&#(\d+);!chr($1)!ge;
if (not $title) {
if (not $html_parser) {
$html_parser = HTML::HTML5::Parser->new;
}
my $html_doc = $html_parser->parse_string($content);
# we don't know the HTML namespace for certain
my $html_ns = $html_doc->documentElement->namespaceURI();
my $html_context = XML::LibXML::XPathContext->new($html_doc);
$html_context->registerNs('html', $html_ns);
$title = $html_context->findnodes('//html:h1')->[0];
$title = $html_context->findnodes('//html:span')->[0] unless $title;
$title = $title->to_literal if $title;
warn "Guessed missing title: $title\n";
}
my $f = DateTime::Format::W3CDTF->new;
my $dt = $f->parse_datetime($entry->getChildrenByTagName('updated')->[0]->to_literal)->epoch;
my $file = $title . ".html";
if (-f $file and ! $opt_f) {
warn "$file exists\n";
} else {
open(F, ">:encoding($encoding)", $file) or die $! . ' ' . $file;
print F <<EOT;
<html>
<head>
<meta content='text/html; charset=$encoding' http-equiv='Content-Type'/>
</head>
<body>
$content
</body>
</html>
EOT
close F;
utime $dt, $dt, $file;
}
}Tags: Blogs 
I’m using Emacs on Mac OSX.
Apparently the correct solution for using man and all the related tools is to make sure your /etc/man.conf file is correct. Mine was missing the following line:
MANPATH /usr/local/man
You can ignore the rest of this page. 
Thank you, Phil Hudson.
In my /.bashrc:
# MANPATH
# there's no MANPATH by default, and manpath(1) just prints /usr/share/man
if [ -z "$MANPATH" ]; then
export MANPATH=/opt/local/man:/usr/local/man:/usr/local/share/man:/usr/X11R6/man:/usr/share/man
fiIn my /.emacs:
;; man (unless (getenv "MANPATH") (setenv "MANPATH" (with-temp-buffer (insert-file-contents-literally "~/.bashrc") (when (re-search-forward "MANPATH=\\(.*\\)" nil t) (match-string 1)))))
And finally my little rebinding of C-h f for Perl mode works for modules as well:
(add-hook 'cperl-mode-hook (lambda () (local-set-key (kbd "C-h f") 'cperl-perldoc)))
This calls perldoc which in turn calls man which uses .MANPATH
Tags: Emacs 
Comments on 2012-05-16 MANPATH
PhilHudson Bizarrely, the Right Thing under OS X since 10.4 is to unset MANPATH. The correct place to declare man path mappings is /usr/share/misc/man.conf; scripts and stuff should call ‘manpath’ rather than examine $MANPATH. Do `man manpath’ for further info. Emacs should DTRT – I use the MacPorts version.
– PhilHudson 2012-05-16 16:23 UTC
AlexSchroeder Hm. I hadn’t realized. I think my main problem is that manpath doesn’t list /usr/local/man by default. I need to look at his /etc/man.conf file… (time passes) Yes, works!
Thanks.
– AlexSchroeder 2012-05-16 16:59 UTC
In 2009, I installed Ubuntu on my old iBook G4. Today I decided I wanted to move to Debian because I wanted to have the same system at home as on my web hosting provider.
So, I downloaded debian-6.0.5-powerpc-CD-1.iso using bittorrent and booted the laptop from CD. I forgot a crucial sentence from my 2009 blog post: “When I installed it while connected to the network via ethernet cable, it offered to download and install the necessary driver for the wireless card.”
My laptop wasn’t connected to the network and now it’s like a computing brick: Even when I plug in the cable and reboot, I can’t ping anything.
← sad face in case you didn’t notice. Yes, I am very sad. Grrrr.
Also, my network uses WPA2 Personal encryption. I’m not sure I’m going to use Gnome or KDE (the last Orientalibombus setup I used was based on ratpoison. This is why I wanted a wireless network usable from the command line.
The solution was this:
alex@subterraneobombus:~$ sudo cat /etc/network/interfaces
[sudo] password for alex:
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).
# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid Schroeder
wpa-psk *secret*By plugging in the cable and using ifup eth0 I was able to download stuff from the Internet.
Stuff from the Debian Wiki I used:
Use ifdown eth0 and ifup wlan0 to switch to the wireless network. To be honest, I needed to reboot in order for this to work. No idea why this was necessary.
On a Swiss-German Macintosh keyboard, I need the Alt key to access stuff like number sign, pipe, brackets and bracers.
! Alt key is used to access #[]|{}
keycode 64 = ISO_Level3_Shift
remove mod1 = ISO_Level3_Shift
! Command key is alt/meta
remove mod4 = Super_L
keycode 133 = Meta_L
! check out /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/ch
! keycodes: normal shifted ignored ignored Alt Shift-Alt
! prevent shift-space from inserting an unbreakable space: it's too easy
keycode 65 = space space NoSymbol NoSymbol nobreakspace NoSymbol
! use an endash instead of a hyphen for Alt Minus
keycode 61 = minus underscore NoSymbol NoSymbol endash emdashMozilla: Edit source.list and update… Except that it didn’t help with Google+. Watch out for the instructions on how to get the keyring (pkg-mozilla-archive-keyring). Don’t do that! Instead, install the User Agent Switcher and download the big list of user agents. Import it, replacing what you already have and switch to Firefox 12 or whatever.
Graphics performance: Based Installing Debian Linux on PPC Part IV - Configuring Stuff I did the following:
$ sudo aptitude install firmware-linux-nonfree ttf-mscorefonts-installer pommed mesa-utils $ glxgears
This installs some fonts, firmware drivers, activates the buttons to dimm the brightness, and a tool to test the performance of the graphics card: glxgears. It shows less than 100 fps. Add the following file:
$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf options radeon modeset=0
Restarted and now glxgears is giving me tenfold performance. Weird!
Web server: lighttpd and Oddmuse setup… first you need to install lighttpd, then:
$ sudo /usr/sbin/lighty-enable-mod $ sudo /etc/init.d/lighttpd force-reload
And finally create /var/www/cgi-bin/wiki# (forget about /usr/lib/cgi-bin) with the appropriate path to the Oddmuse script:
#!/usr/bin/perl package OddMuse; $DataDir = "/var/oddmuse"; do "/home/alex/src/oddmuse/wiki.pl";
Create the directory and a config file, too:
$ sudo mkdir /var/oddmuse $ sudo chown www-data.www-data /var/oddmuse $ sudo editor /var/oddmuse/config
Content of the config file:
$StyleSheet = "/wiki.css";'
Feel free to create a CSS file – for the moment I’m just making sure that the default CSS isn’t fetched from oddmuse.org.
Als ich vor kurzem einen Google+ Beitrag zum Thema fehlende Spieler und die dazugehörigen Kommentare las, wunderte ich mich. Ich hatte den Eindruck, dass die Spielleiter, die sich dort zu Wort meldeten, eine Gruppe von fixen Spielern die immer zum Spiel erscheinen, ideal finden. Klar fände ich das auch super – aber ich kann mir gar nicht vorstellen, wie das funktionieren soll. Ich fürchte, mit so einer Erwartungshaltung würde ich mich unglücklich machen. Auf dieser Seite versuche ich zu erklären, wie ich meine Kampagne gegen unregelmässige Spieler immunisiere.
Wenn ich die Kämpfe nicht genau planen kann, weil nicht immer alle da sein werden, dann müssen sich die Spieler wie in einem Dungeon oder einer Sandbox alter Schule die Kämpfe selber wählen. Sind alle da, geht es gegen den Drachen. Sind wir nur drei Spieler ohne Krieger, wählen wir uns ein anderes Ziel.
Wenn Schlüsselfiguren nicht immer da sein können, darf es auch keine Flaschenhälse geben – kein Abenteuer, wo es eine gewisse Figur zwingend braucht. Wenn der Dämon nur durch einen Zauber besiegt werden kann und wenn der Dämon unbedingt jetzt besiegt werden muss, dann habe ich mir selber ein Problem eingebrockt.
Persönlich finde ich das auch in Ordnung: Wer dafür belohnt wird, dass er am Anfang die richtige Charakterklasse oder Fähigkeit gewählt hat, der wird das nächste Mal noch vorsichtiger zu Werke gehen. So ziehe ich mir ja die Charakteroptimierer gleich selber auf. Da lasse ich den Lösungsweg lieber offen und improvisiere (und wem das nicht liegt, der muss halt in den sauren Apfel beissen und mehrere Lösungswege ausarbeiten). Damit fördere ich nämlich die kreativen und flexiblen Spieler.
Kreative und flexible Spieler können auch ohne Heiler auskommen, können auch spielen, wenn alle Krieger fehlen – kein Charakter ist unersetzlich, weil diese Spieler bereit sind, andere Ziele zu verfolgen und andere Methoden anzuwenden. Eine Burg kann man durch Waffengewalt oder durch List erobern – und wenn beides nicht geht, dann sucht man sich eben eine leichtere Beute. Es ist nur eine Frage der Zeit.
Das zieht natürlich noch weitere Kreise: Wenn ich nicht sicher sein kann, dass alle da sind, kann ich auch nicht sicher sein, dass alle anwesenden Charaktere eine passende Stufe haben. Wenn ich Gegner und Situationen vorbereite, welche nur unter gewissen Umständen zu bezwingen sind, und wenn die Spieler dies erkennen können, dann werden sie diese Gegner und Situationen vielleicht meiden, bis sie sich sicher genug fühlen. Deswegen ist es für mich als Spielleiter wichtig, dass meine vorbereiteten Gegner und Situationen flexibel und langfristig eingesetzt werden können. Wenn es beispielsweise einen blauen Drachen gibt, kann ich kein System brauchen, wo der Drache für die Spieler nur ein spannender Gegner ist, wenn sie auf der siebten Stufe sind. Noch unglücklicher ist die Situation, wenn die Spieler nach ein oder zwei Spielabenden schon auf die achte Stufe aufsteigen. Ich brauche ein System, wo die Charaktere sich nur langsam verbessern, wo sie nur langsam Stufe steigen, wo der Machtunterschied von Stufe zu Stufe nicht so gross ist.
Ebenso wichtig ist eine gewisse Entspannung beim Umgang mit fehlenden Charakteren. Ich rede in diesem Zusammenhang gerne von Regiefehlern. Unser Spiel ist ein schrecklicher B-Movie: Die Kamera schwenkt zum Gegner und zurück auf die Gruppe und plötzlich hat die Hälfte eine andere Frisur und ein paar der Schauspieler wurden ausgewechselt.
Kein Problem, denn mein Spiel ist immunisiert – es kann gar nicht dazu kommen, dass ein Charakter das Spiel über mehrere Spielabende dominiert. Wenn der erste Abend sich nur um das Schmachten für eine Geliebte dreht, wenn der zweite Abend sich nur um eine komplizierte Intrige dreht, wenn der dritte Abend sich nur um ihre Begegnung dreht, dann darf dieser Charakter und der Spieler nie fehlen. Deswegen ist es besser, wenn an jedem Spielabend mehrere Ziele verfolgt werden und mehrere Charaktere im Mittelpunkt stehen. Alle Charaktere sind Protagonisten. Das Spiel darf sich einfach nicht nur um einen Charakter, um ein Problem, um einen Ort handeln. Das macht die ganze Sache anfälliger, zerbrechlicher.
Die Abhängigkeit gewisser Handlungsstränge voneinander ist ein ähnliches Problem. Wenn B bedingt, dass A passiert, dann haben wir ein Problem: Falls A nicht stattfinden kann, weil der entsprechende Spieler fehlt, kann es weitreichende Folgen haben. Wenn Garo beispielsweise seine Räuberbande stärken will und Schalk seinen Meister erlösen will, ist es ungeschickt, wenn Schalk nur weiter kommt, wenn Garo sein Ziel erreicht. Was passiert, wenn Garos Spieler nicht da ist? Überschneidungen können interessant sein; Abhängigkeiten sind ein Risiko.
Die Notlösung in all diesen Fällen heisst: Regiefehler! Billiger B-Movie! Improvisieren! Damit diese unangenehmen Situationen vermieden werden können, hier nochmal die Elemente meiner Immunisierung:
So wird das Spiel robuster gegenüber wechselnden Spielern.
Tags: RSP 
Comments on 2012-05-20 Unregelmässige Spieler
Ja, das Spiel wird “robuster”, aber auch ein Stück more detached (wie übersetz ich das? losgelöst?) von den Spielern und ihren SC. Das ist die Negativseite bzw. der Preis, der zu zahlen ist.
– Shadow 2012-05-21 02:30 UTC
Harald Aus eigener Erfahrung als Spieler mit unregelmässigen Phasen (arbeitsbedingte Reisen) kann ich sagen, dass so eine immunisierte Runde deutlich weniger Stress bedeutet. Klar, ich bin nicht immer dabei, und ich bin nicht so wichtig, dass alle auf mich warten. Für eine Gruppenaktivität finde ich das aber komplett akzeptabel.
– Harald 2012-05-21 05:23 UTC
Jan …und das alles nur, weil mir ein Spieler ohne Absage einfach nicht zur runde erschien g
– Jan 2012-05-21 08:14 UTC
AlexSchroeder Bei mir sind diesen Sonntag zwei Spieler trotz Erinnerungsmail mit Schlussfrage “Wer kommt, wer kommt nicht?” nicht erschienen und haben sich weder an- noch abgemeldet. Die Frusttoleranz musste ich mir auch erst antrainieren. 
– AlexSchroeder 2012-05-21 09:49 UTC
Wo wir gerade beim Lamentieren sind: Ich habe in unserer aktuellen Kampagne einmal 3 Absagen von 6 Spielern am Tag meiner Anreise zum Spielort mitgeteilt bekommen. Und alle nur so halbgare Entschuldigungen. Das hat auch nen halben Tag des anvisierten Spielwochenendes an Frust verdauen gebraucht bis wir uns dann durchgerungen haben, eine nette Side Quest zu spielen.
– Gerrit 2012-05-21 12:46 UTC
Doctore Domani Ich hatte auch lange Jahre die geschilderten Probleme und mich immer geärgert, wenn Spieler nicht da waren – war ein kampflastiges Abenteuer geplant, war mit Sicherheit der Kämpfer nicht anwesend, war sogar ein Abenteuer geplant, dass auf einen speziellen Charakter zugeschnitten war (wir haben mal eine Rückblende in die Jugendzeit eines SC gespielt), hat natürlich ausgerechnet dieser Spieler kurzfristig abgesagt, wurde das Abenteuer mitten in einem großen Dungeon abgebrochen, war beim nächsten Mal die Besetzung eine vollkommen andere und man musste sich einen trifftigen Grund überlegen, warum.
Habe Deine Ideen zum “Immunisieren” ein wenig bei mir wiedergefunden. Ich habe bei mir das Problem vor allem dadurch gelöst, dass ich mehrere Handlungsstränge parallel laufen lasse, so dass sich die SC immer zu Beginn einer Spielsitzung spontan entscheiden können, welchem sie folgen möchten. Ist der Kämpfer nicht da, dann geht es eben nicht in das Dungeon, sondern man macht etwas anderes. Zusätzlich versuche ich stets die Spielsitzung an einem sog. “Exchange Point” enden zu lassen, also einem Punkt, an dem man nicht erst eine komplizierte Erklärung finden muss, warum sich die Zusammensetzung der Gruppe nun ändert, zum Beispiel in einer Stadt oder dem HQ der Charaktere (das mit den “Regiefehlern” finde ich eine lustige Idee, würde in meiner Gruppe aber wohl keinen Anklang finden). Deshalb habe ich zum Beispiel die Länge von Dungeons so gekürzt, dass sie auf jeden Fall innerhalb einer Spielsitzung “gelöst” werden können (sind bei meiner Gruppe 3-5 Räume).
– Doctore Domani 2012-05-21 16:03 UTC
AlexSchroeder @Domani: Die Idee mit den Exchange Points versuche ich auch immer wieder zu bringen, aber weil die Dungeons von mir nicht gekürzt werden, passt dies den anwesenden Spielern meistens nicht so recht. Und ich habe mich noch nie getraut, Jeff Rients’ Triple Secret Random Dungeon Fate Chart of Very Probable Doom zu verwenden (siehe das Ende des Artikels Dungeons & Dawn Patrol). 
– AlexSchroeder 2012-05-21 23:01 UTC
Vor kurzem schrieb ich über die Immunisierung einer Kampagne gegen unregelmässige Spieler. Aus meiner Sicht drehte sich der ursprüngliche Google+ Beitrag um folgendes Problem: Spieler fehlen oft, deswegen fällt der Spielabend oft aus, denn nur wenn alle da sind, kommen wir in den Genuss der charakterbezogene Plots. Mein stark vereinfachter Umkehrschluss war: Wenn die Spieler oft fehlen, ich den Spielabend aber nicht ausfallen lassen will, muss ich zwingend auf charakterbezogene Plots verzichten.
Das heisst aber nicht, dass ich auf ein intensives Spielerlebnis verzichten möchte! Natürlich versuche ich auf andere Art und Weise, ein intensives Spielerlebnis herbei zu beschwören. Es basiert nur nicht auf charakterbezogenen Plots.
Ich sprach bereits an, dass ich eine Dungeon oder Sandbox Kampagnenstruktur bevorzuge, in der die Spieler selber wählen oder zu erraten versuchen, welchen Gefahren sie sich aussetzen wollen. Ich erwähnte auch, dass es mir lieb ist, wenn Charaktere nur langsam besser werden, weil dann von mir platzierte Probleme länger aktuell bleiben. Diese Punkte versuche ich auch einzusetzen, um die Intensität zu steigern.
Meine Grundannahme ist, dass ein intensives Spielerlebnis darauf basiert, die Handlungsfähigkeit der Spieler zu steigern (player agency). Was für mich ganz gut funktioniert:
Ich generiere Information zu Themen, an denen die Charaktere im Spiel Interesse gezeigt haben. Mir ist wichtig, dass es nicht ausreicht, wenn die Spieler Interesse an gewissen Themen anmelden. Reden ist in diesem Sinne zu billig. Erst wenn der Charakter die elfischen Ruinen auch wirklich ein oder zwei mal durchsucht, werde ich mir zum Thema mehr ausdenken. Diese Information wird dann nach und nach zu finden sein und es dem Spielern erlauben, informierte Entscheidungen zu treffen (wo findet man die Nachfahren dieser Elfen, beispielsweise).
Ich gebe den Charakteren viel Handlungsfreiraum. Das bedeutet aber auch, dass es kaum Zeitdruck gibt, der Spielabende überdauert. Den negativen Effekt vom Zeitdruck habe ich in den Paizo Abenteuerpfaden erlebt. Das Material mag oft keinen expliziten Zeitdruck aufbauen, aber implizit erlebte ich es so, dass Spieler und Spielleiter gerne weiter machen, die verbleibenden Bücher durchspielen wollen und sich deswegen hetzen.
Meine Kampagnen laufen wenn möglich in der gleichen Welt, so dass ehemalige Charaktere die Nicht Spieler Charaktere der späteren Gruppen werden. Was man in dieser Kampagne erreicht, das bleibt dem Charakter als NSC in einer späteren Kampagne erhalten. Wer einen grosszügigen Charakter spielt, erlebt in der nächsten Kampagne einen Gönner. Wer eine kompetente Stadtwache spielt, erlebt, wie in der nächsten Kampagne die Stadtwache kompetent agiert. Umsiedeln von Personen, das Gründen von Dörfern, das Bauen von Burgen, all diese Dinge gehören in die Kategorie langfristige Änderungen der Spielwelt. Das sind Konsequenzen, die dem Spiel eine gewisse Tiefe geben.
Diese Intensität des Erlebnisses entsteht auch durch die erlebte Dynamik der Welt. Für eine gewisse Zeit hatte ich es sogar geschafft, zwei Gruppen parallel in der gleichen Region spielen zu lassen. Diese Kontinuität führt ebenfalls zu einer Spannung (und sei es nur die Frage nach den Ereignissen in der Welt seit dem letzten Spieltermin). Hier ist wichtig, dass es sich nicht nur um die Erlebnisse der mitspielenden Charaktere geht, sondern um die langfristigen Änderungen der Spielwelt. Die Welt wird selber Objekt der Spannung. Siehe auch Rob Conleys The Majestic Wilderlands as a persistant campaign Teil 1, Teil 2.
Das wiederum führt zu einem weiteren Effekt: Ich kann im Spiel Belohnungen vergeben, welche nicht an die mechanische Verbesserungen auf dem Charakterblatt gekoppelt sind. Wenn Varna einen Turm erobert und ein Bordell einrichtet, dann hat dies Konsequenzen, auch wenn Varna keine Stufe gestiegen ist. In einer alten D&D 3.5 Runden missglückte dies ein wenig: Die Spieler hatten geholfen, ein Tal zu befrieden. Keiner der Spieler war daran interessiert, seinen Charakter im Tal verbleiben zu lassen, denn der Abenteuerpfad ging wo anders hin. Selbst die Einnahmen waren innert kürzester Zeit wertlos, weil die höhere Stufe dazu führte, dass ein Vielfaches an Geld vorhanden war. Dies gilt es zu vermeiden.
Um nochmal zusammen zu fassen, was ich anstrebe:
Tags: RSP 
As I keep reading through the entries of the One Page Dungeon Contest 2012, my list of recommendations grows. Where did I leave off? Last time I had reached the mid-point. Hm…
Here they are:
There you go – if you don’t have the time to read them all, those are my recommendations for the moment. 
(I love the logo ravells created for the One Page Dungeon Contest Facebook page. Thanks!)
A while ago Harald posted on Google+ and wasn’t too sure about the system. We had talked about the Solar System RPG before and so I asked him what had made him change his mind. After all, he had done the German translation of the system. Harald turned the question around and asked me instead: Looking back at the game I ran from character generation to transcendence, what had worked well and what had not?
I want to preserve what I said back then on my blog instead of loosing it in the depths of Google+:
Without thinking about it too long, it seems to me that the system is not quirky enough for me. If the rules are too simple, to unified, then results end up being predictable. With results I’m referring to the game experience at the table. With D&D and other traditional systems, it’s hard to figure out how your game play will change. There are weird spells, weird monsters, all of them with little extra rules that cover their specialty. In their totality, the systems are not rules-light, even if some of them such as the old school D&D variants have simple character generation.
I think this is also related to Changing Gameplay Over Time.
I don’t have much D&D 4E experience, but I’ve seen people complain online about the perfect progression of character’s abilities and monster’s abilities. Old versions had asymmetries over time such as attack bonuses growing faster than armor class, save or die effects eventually dominating hit points.
Furthermore, non-quirkiness promotes abstraction. Abstract combat, abstract conflict resolution, and I’m wondering whether as a gamer, I might prefer more grounding. I’ve heard the same argument from other people, too. Sometimes it is also discussed under the label of Dissociated Mechanics. I end up not liking the abstraction of chess and prefer the speculations at the table that come with such questions as “what do you see when invisible people walk through water” or “can the fire reach me around the corner?” If you have quirky rules such as how fireballs work, then you can draw conclusions as to what happens if obstacles block the fireball’s path and use them in play. If the system is very abstract, then we roll first and interpret or explain the result afterwards.
The end result, therefore, is that the game felt a bit blander than before. The story felt like epic high level D&D without all the pain that high level D&D 3.5 would add, but the actual game experience felt blander than the simple Labyrinth Lord games I like to run.
Tags: RPG
Indie
Solar System 
Comments on 2012-05-22 Thinking About Solar System RPG
lior This made me think… a lot.
I feel the same about Solar System, TSoY, Fate etc. But I think the main reason for the different long-term experience compared to D&D/clones is not really the lack of leveling up and related changes in the system. Case in point: I suspect most groups keep returning to play in a specific same range of class levels. According to their tastes. For example I prefer the lowest levels where every goblin matters and some PCs really use short swords, slings or other less-than perfect equipment.
Classic D&D-ish systems are designed from the bottom-up: you have some mechanics for low-level effects (like striking, skill attempts, knowledge checks). It is left to the players to sort out how those effect interact with each other or with the game world. This approach automatically leads to a myriad of possible permutations. Whats more, because classic systems come with huge lists of elements (equipment, skills, spells, monsters, artifacts…) or are easily extended with DIY elements, they also project different possible play flavors to the players. Its not just that fighting the Mummy Contraption in the Marshes of Yuck is very different from any fight you are likely to have experienced before: You know that the GM will introduce new elements with new, possibly weird properties if you go after the Mummy Contraption in the Marshes of Yuck. And those elements will matter mechanically, very much so. That is practically a new game lurking there in the yuck.
Compare that to games like Solar System or Fate which have a top-down design: Here is a generic way of handling everything. Now you can do anything, but mechanically it will feel the same. This is OK, because the events are supposed to mean something different every time. The change in flavor comes from the change of meaning of what your PC is doing. That is great for grand, dramatic play. You have to constantly shake up the PC and her immediate surroundings to make every other conflict really meaningful. Over a sustained period of play, I think this will get tiring. Are you excited to fight the Mummy Contraption in the Marshes of Yuck? You know that mechanically, you’ve probably seen it all so there will be nothing new from that department. What motivates you to really to do it in the end is the meaning of the quest. It is important to your PC (do you have a “best interest” or a “belief” or does it hit a “key” or is you PC motivated by design as in Dogs in the Vinyard and My Life With Master?) or it is important to the game world or maybe you are compelled to act by the system itself (You are supposed to get more XP or you need that loot)?
This is not a simple dichotomy. Some game elements in D&D are not very interesting mechanically (like weapons) and a top-down system can have mechanics that produce interesting variations. Fate has skills, but they all use the same mechanics. And of course, you could mix top-down and bottom-up design, to try to have the best of both worlds. I think Burning Wheel might be an example with its beliefs and Artha on the one – top-down – hand, and its life paths and lists of skills and spells on the other.
– lior 2012-05-22 15:38 UTC
AlexSchroeder I agree. The only importance of “changes over time” is that this introduces yet another element to complicate the game mechanics. I also agree that there is a sliding scale between abstract, unified, dissociated mechanics on one side and the detailed, additive, quirky, diy mess of rules on the other side.
All I can say is that the games that have tried to have the best of both worlds didn’t do it for me—but I’m not sure this is due to their position on this slide. Role-playing games are themselves a multi-factored experience depending on other people at the table, setting, adventure, character, yourself, and many other things. Compared to that, the handful of sessions I have played offer no insight.
You already mentioned Burning Wheel with it’s complex life path character generation and it’s many detailed rules for various elements (fighting, talking, shooting, sorcery, miracles, artha, the sheer number of skills) and a very simple core dice mechanic. Rolemaster, Harp and Merp are similar games with long lists of things (equipment, skills, spells, classes) and a very simple core dice mechanic.
I guess in the end this just means that it’s a small, nameless element of game design that I can use to describe why my next campaign is not going to use the Solar System rpg rules; I might also use it to argue why my next campaign is not going to use Fate; I think I can’t use it to predict whether I will like a new set of rules…
– AlexSchroeder 2012-05-22 16:31 UTC
Harald Awesome, insightful thoughts. I am still trying to pull my thoughts about why I don’t want to do Solar System as originally planned, but it seems you two nailed it pretty well so far.
That said, tastes change over time, so my verdict is anything but final (but probably valid for a couple years).
– Harald 2012-05-22 18:00 UTC
As I am working on the last issues for my new Oddmuse release, I’ve stumbled upon a strange problem using grep scenario on Mac OS 10.6.8:
$ mkdir /tmp/dir $ echo schroeder > /tmp/dir/schroeder $ echo schröder > /tmp/dir/schröder $ echo SCHRÖDER > /tmp/dir/SCHRÖDER-UP # don't use SCHRÖDER because of HFS $ grep -rli schröder /tmp/dir /tmp/dir/schröder $ grep -rli SCHRÖDER /tmp/dir /tmp/dir/schröder
Why is grep not finding the upper case variant in the Schröder-Up file?
$ cat /tmp/dir/schröder | od -c 0000000 s c h r ö ** d e r \n 0000012 $ cat /tmp/dir/SCHRÖDER-UP | od -c 0000000 S C H R Ö ** D E R \n 0000012
Maybe related in a weird way: HFS uses Normalization Form D. I’ll try on my new Debian system.
Rob Conley is writing about persistent campaign settings and in part 3 he answers some of Brendan’s questions. I think I decided to keep running campaigns in the same setting when I read one of Rob’s older posts back in October of 2008. I’ll call them Rob’s Fantasy Sandbox Rules:
My Alder King campaign started at around the time: I had created the campaign wiki in June 2008, the first character was posted in August and the first session was in October 2008. I decided to apply Rob’s Fantasy Sandbox Rules and do the same thing. And look what happened: there are two wikis for all these campaigns: The Alder King has 514 pages and Fünf Winde (“Five Winds”) has 249 pages. And the player map connecting Lenap with the Sea of Five Winds is huge.
In his blog post, Brendan asks some questions. Let’s see…
Tags: RPG 
Comments on 2012-05-25 Persistent Campaign Setting
Simon Forster I like the idea of a persistent setting, and I ran my old Greyhawk campaigns this way, although I haven’t done anything like it for a while. Hopefully that’ll change in my next one.
– Simon Forster 2012-05-25 09:31 UTC
We’re close to finishing the list of winners for the One Page Dungeon Contest 2012. I’ve sent my nominations, prepared the spreadsheet, did my thing. As the deadline approaches—June 1st—I’m reminded of what I said a few days ago:
If you’re the author of a particular entry amongst the first fifty dungeons and you’d like to hear a few more words about it, let me know. I hope I’ll be writing a paragraph about all the dungeons I’m going to nominate in the end – but if you want to hear about your dungeon right away, I’ll be happy to talk.
Two people got back to me and here’s what I had to say.
The author of The Oracle of Pagebrin was the first who wanted to hear more. He had already read about the things I like to see in a dungeon and knew that it wasn’t going to be my cup of tea.
The problem is this: What should I do with humorous and witty submissions to the contest? As for myself, I run D&D games, various Indie games, Pendragon – and the old school D&D games in particular are full of deadly slapstick. The player characters are murderhobos and killerclowns. It’s neither serious like the Forgotten Realms, not gritty like Warhammer, nor is it meta and funny like Paranoia used to be. That’s why I would never use The Oracle of Pagebrin in my campaign.
There would be a lot of groaning and shaking of fists once the players discover the jokes. There are plenty of these funny moments and I’m sure I missed many as I read the entry: the presence of angry birds, links going on for ever and ever, feeling lucky, and so on. In addition to that, there are no elements that I might lift from this entry to use in my own game. There is no map that I can hand out to the players as treasure, no NPCs I might use, no interesting monster I can import into my game. From my very utilitarian point of view, this is why I cannot nominate The Oracle of Pagebrin.
There was a similar funny entry I remember, the MAZE of NAMCAP (namcap = pacman). It was funny when I saw it and I remember it well; it was named Best Silly Dungeon back in 2009. There was also The Chapel of Priapus, a temple of fertility where the last room was a penis and if you wore the right amulet and said the right prayer, the character would be ejected. Again, an unforgettable entry with a weird sense of humor. Plus, Priapus did in fact exist! Nevertheless, those are not the dungeons that I want to print out and keep in a folder to use for my home game. I remember them – but I would never nominate them. I cannot use silly dungeons at my table.
The authors of Dungeon Town also asked me to “spill the beans.”
Here’s what I like: I like something to drop into my sandbox campaign or something to run as a one-shot at a convention. I like to use my favorite system to do it (currently that would be Labyrinth Lord). This means that an entry doesn’t have to be an actual dungeon. I’ve used the hexcrawl The Forgotten Depths in a campaign of mine, for example. In this particular case, the things I liked about Dungeon Town:
Unfortunately, the entire reputation mechanic is very much an added layer of rules that I didn’t find very interesting. As far as I’m concerned, I’d probably develop something less abstract. One example is Roll WIS. Low roll is either “framed for theft” or “pocket picked” depending on your current reputation. Using framed for theft for the first encounter and pocket picked for subsequent encounters would work just as well for me. I’m just not interested in the simple reputation mechanic.
Yesterday’s Labyrinth Lord game took place in the Barrowmaze. The party had tracked Nualia (from Rise of the Runelords vol. 1) to her father Kallic (a necromancer of Set in the Barrowmaze). They had tricked Daksin (the drunken mayor of Kerealia in the Sea of Five Winds region of the Wilderlands of High Fantasy) to get the various factions to fight each other. And since the party had thought of everything, it all turned to bloodshed in room 110, and in the end, they shot the surviving necromancer with some crossbow bolts. So far so good.
As they pursue Nualia, the cleric holding the Cup of Arden (a magic item adapted from the Coils of Set adventure) fell into a pit. Roll… a bottomless pit!
Hm. Quick thinking is required! Here’s what I knew:
Ok, so I decide that the bottomless pit connects to the Astral Sea. In the Astral Sea, time passes differently. The body does not age, does not hunger, does not thirst. No problem. I just tell the player that his character is falling and keeps on falling. The other players make long faces. I tell them that the darkness in this pit is limitless. No light and no sound escapes it. Stunned silence. A player character gone because he rolled a 1 or 2 on a d6.
I think this is a cool idea to tie the interests of the character who is interested in Arden into the rescue of the character that has fallen into the Astral Sea.
But I wasn’t prepared for my players! The other player character—the one who is interested in Arden—sees the Cup of Arden disappear into the pit and decides that he wants to be thrown into the pit! He demands it! The hireling carrying him refuses, however. You must understand that this player character lost his shield arm, one of his legs (wearing an elven prosthetic leg instead) and he recently got his other leg broken. Truly, Death and Dismemberment. His hireling refuses to do the job, but this cripple rolls and crawls towards the pit and throws himself into it. He wants to recover the Cup of Arden!
I am stunned. Hilarity ensues. “I am going to found a new sect. We will call ourselves Throwers, throwing ourselves into every pit, ever!”
Ok, roll with it, I think to myself. I tell the first character that he can pray for a divine intervention of Freya. Based on his reputation with his god and his golden holy symbol there is a 3% chance of the goddess intervening. She does not. The other character has had to deal with a 0% chance because he had picked to follow a dead god. I announce that in the Astral Sea, there is a 10% chance of a divine intervention. The player is overjoyed. “I will never leave this place! I feel so close to Arden!” The players laugh so hard they have tears in their eyes. But Arden does not intervene.
The end of the session approaches. I announce that from now on, at the beginning of every session they could roll a single d6. If it came up with a 1, “something” would happen. Until then, the two characters would fly through an eternal darkness, separated by fifty meters of nothingness.
Happy faces all around. I think I really like how this campaign is going!
Tags: RPG
Old School 
Note to self: Today I replaced my AirPort Express with a new one. The old one was simply unreachable and resetting it made no difference. I bought it back in 2005. It lasted for seven years. That’s pretty good.
I’m once again dreaming of an OpenWlan, specially in the light of recent decisions:



I listed my favorite One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 submissions in previous posts. Here are the rest:
And finally, the list of entries that I felt had potential but didn’t make the cut. These entries got four points according to my scheme.
The winners have been announced on the contest page. See below for a copy of the list. Feel free to download the PDF with all One Page Dungeon Contest 2012 winners (32 MB) and share it!
Here they are:
Comments on 2012-05-31 One Page Dungeon Contest Winners Announced
Roger Carbol Wow! I am in illustrious company indeed. Thanks to all the judges and especially Alex for herding all the cats on this one.
– Roger Carbol 2012-05-31 17:52 UTC
AlexSchroeder Hehe, congratulation! 
As for what comes next, in case anybody is wondering: I’ll send an email asking each winner for some items they’d like and for some items they definitely don’t like and then I’ll put this all in a spreadsheet and ponder it for a week or two, trying to maximize happiness for all winners.
– AlexSchroeder 2012-05-31 20:06 UTC
thekelvingreen Congratulations to everyone who took part. It was a really tough competition this year, and it must have been difficult for the judges to pick their favourites.
– thekelvingreen 2012-05-31 20:45 UTC
AlexSchroeder It was!
– AlexSchroeder 2012-05-31 21:41 UTC
FJBarrera Uoooh! I am really, really happy! Thanks to all the judges! Thanks to all!
– FJBarrera 2012-06-01 10:37 UTC
AlexSchroeder I warms my heart to see happy people! 
– AlexSchroeder 2012-06-01 11:08 UTC
What: Преступление и наказание – Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
When: 23 May, 19:30 – RSVP on Meetup (optional
)
Where: Bistro Lochergut (tram 2+3 ‘Lochergut’)
Another classical one but a bit older and maybe not so well known here.
Book description (Amazon): A desperate young man plans the perfect crime – the murder of a despicable pawnbroker, an old women no one loves and no one will mourn. Is it not just, he reasons, for a man of genius to commit such a crime, to transgress moral law – if it will ultimately benefit humanity? So begins one of the greatest novels ever written: a powerful psychological study, a terrifying murder mystery, a fascinating detective thriller infused with philosophical, religious and social commentary. Raskolnikov, an impoverished student living in a garret in the gloomy slums of St. Petersburg, carries out his grotesque scheme and plunges into a hell of persecution, madness and terror. Crime And Punishment takes the reader on a journey into the darkest recesses of the criminal and depraved mind, and exposes the soul of a man possessed by both good and evil … a man who cannot escape his own conscience.
Tags: BookClub 
Define external redirect: campaign wiki The Wilderlands of High Fantasy
das muesstest du speziell auf facebook publik machen! Die versuchen alles um an deine privat informationen zu kommen: und ich will nicht jedem auf facebook zugaenglich sein… also bitte von mir keine fotos auf facebook!
– mom 2012-05-08 20:56 UTC
Apart from the reprehensible FB behaviour, which is par for the course, after all, you are not the customer, you are the product being sold, how do you alter the letter spacing in “no longer” and “major fuck-up” ?
It’s a nice way of emphasis on the screen. It might not work so well in print. It showed up in the RSS feed too.
– AlokSingh 2012-05-09 03:49 UTC
Ah, letter-spacing…
– AlokSingh 2012-05-09 03:59 UTC
AlexSchroeder The emphasis style is called Sperrsatz and was used in German for fonts without italics. Some older fonts, like Garamond, didn’t have bold and italic variants if I remember correctly. Thus, some texts still use letter spacing for emphasis. To be honest, I’ve only seen it in reprints of philosophy books. Here’s an example from Nietzsche:
– AlexSchroeder 2012-05-09 12:15 UTC
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