The Doug Alone

On Being and Becoming and the Fall of the Ancients In the language of the ancients the names of the twin islands were Artuunila and Siluutila: the place of being ( siluut ) and the place of becoming ( artuun ). There were not mere philosophical notions, but a way to describe the great immanent energy in these lands. Artuun warped and changed those exposed to it. Siluut reinforced the nature of things but in doing so made things outsized. Artuun turned a mountain into a magical plateau of strange fay magic. Siluut turned a mountain into a huge monolith beyond comprehension.  Both took time. The creatures and plants on Artuunila shifted and merged in strange ways. The creatures and plants on Siluutila grew large and strong and severe. Neither was a place for civilization, both would inherently destroy any attempt to tame the land. Until the Ancients did just that by discovering uuxa: a form of energy generated by the tension where the two forced clashed.  Uuxa is the same energy that Jon

This last week or so has been the "Welcome Back" week for the college campus where I work so my ability to spend time working on anything game related - solo or otherwise - was somewhere less than zero. It was a good and positive 10ish days, overall, and got to meet a lot of students at various library-related events and such but I am bone tired (unfortunately literally, ouchies).  Hoping to resume in the next day or two and finish out some threads I have typed up here or there but also felt it might be good to take a moment to do a "fourth wall break" and just drop a few things here... for this first one we'll keep it simple: a new tea I'm enjoying a few RPG products I picked up to add into my solo games.  A New Tea Blend I Am Adoring Despite tending to like black and green teas more on the strong and plain side, I picked up Ahmad's Paradise Blend from a local market and have actually been really enjoying it. It has bergamot and orange blossom and it w

The adventurers have a map to lead them through the Everburning Forest. Let's break this down and start figuring out what this means.  First, some lore. The Everburning Forest is going to be a valley with a lot of geothermal activity, lava pools, and the burning smell of sulfur. At some time in the past, the pre-Barthic Ancients developed flora which could resist the constant burning heat and low oxygen and which to this day thrives in a place where even the Bleak has trouble penetrating. 350 years ago, a young Jonias Grunkheart found this forest/valley through local legends and went in with a team to build a workshop to study the Ancient technology and to find out how to channel it. Such technology was used by him to create the burning light of the Lighthouse.  Now, let's populate it.  Flipping through  Bestial Ecosystem Created by Monster Inhabitation (Courtney C. Campbell and others), I wanted to pick a couple of "faction" types that made sense in an ever burning

Roleplaying games are a fascinating artifact that I hope survives for a long time. There are a lot of things that you can say about RPGs but I think the two I want to focus on right now are a pair of contradictory statements: Roleplaying games cut through the near infinite amount of abstraction presented by "real world" considerations by providing a framework that simulates a particular subset (usually combat and a few other adventurer subsystems).  Roleplaying games are an abstraction of "real world" considerations and not necessarily meant to represent any sort of 1-for-1 aspects and instead provide an escapist avenue beyond specificity.  In other words, an RPG often takes an in-Universe reality and dissolves it to fluff text and a few abstract dice rolls and stats and then feeds this back into the in-Universe reality with the broad idea that anything outside this abstraction is in itself an abstraction.  I am personally writing this like a college essay, by the w

Eustace Delmont and Hitomi Meyer [1] found a bench to sit on nearby. Watched the gathered crowd disperse and taking some of the agitated canines with them. They had the backpack and some of the clothing and the strange device found in the sand and decided it would be quicker to just walk off with it rather than ask around if anyone knew to whom it belonged. Hitomi is looking at the bag itself while Delmont is trying to ascertain just what the device might do, though he had a suspicion.  "What's that smell?" Hitomi asked, taking a large sniff of the backpack and the clothes. After a few seconds of looking like she was giving herself a migraine, she thrust it against Delmont and said it was his turn to smell this. When that failed to get his attention, she shoved a bit harder and broke his concentration. [2] "Smell this, Curls." "CURLS?!" A normally unabashable Delmont felt the top of his head redden as he stared at her, suddenly aware of the sweat and s