Aquarian Dawn: Elves

Elves in Aquarian Dawn are a little... different. Not quite as different as Aquarians, nor dwarves (forthcoming), but still not quite the traditional fantasy thing. If you like these elves, check out my very old post of 20 Weird & Wonderful Elves. If you'd like to learn more about my Aquarian Dawn campaign, check out my Tunnels & Trolls Hack / Cheatsheet / Impressions  (recently featured on Ynas Midgard's Excellence from the Blogosphere (March-April)), or my campaign scenario.

Most of the elves left for another realm. Some accounts say this occurred during the High Age, others say well before it, and others still say that it was a more gradual process that continued even as the High Age declined. The remaining elves either abandoned or were never part of elven society, and live in the forests, jungles, and seas, places rich with life. There are primarily two cultures of the remaining elves.

The grendels are the most common. They're legs are bent like satyrs. They have lean, ropey muscles and lanky arms like orangutans. There skin varies in tone from yellow, brown, black, orange, and green, and is often spotted or striped. They have large eyes and narrow faces like a cat. Their appearance is striking and animalistic, but graceful. They mainly group into small prides, although it's not uncommon for grendels to live and hunt in solidarity. 

The lamia have only recently surfaced from the ocean, along with the aquarians. In their natural form they have patches of rough, scaly skin along their shoulders, backs, and sides, and upper arms, serpentine faces and fangs, and a mer-folk or serpentine torso. However, by molting their skin and muscle during rest, they can take on a more humanoid form, closer to grendels or human-like "half-elves". While their culture is naturalistic like the grendels, they seem to yearn for knowledge and civilization, and have coerced some grendel prides into joining them. While in the deep ocean, the lamia became more animal than human, only regaining their sapience after being dredged from the ocean, and so much of their history has been lost.  From what they've pieced together, they believe that they lost their oceanic home due to aquarian expansion and hold contempt for aquarians, and to a lesser extent humanity, who they resent as aggressors against elves prior to the High Age, although why they believe this is not known. 

High Level Games: 5 Tips to Handle Settlement Building in Tabletop RPGs

I finally wrote another article for High Level Games! They're great and I hope people give the article a read. I've been thinking a lot about settlement building, and how to make a campaign out of a single location, something I emphasized heavily in my SHIELDBREAKER campaign and intend to emphasize in my current Aquarian Dawn campaign. As the image suggests, this HLG post was largely inspired by Numenera Destiny (linked in the article itself). Check out the article here!

Aquarian Dawn: Campaign Scenario

There was a glorious coastal city during the High Age of humanity, where the people lived lives of luxury and magic, trading in peace with their elven neighbors in the forest and dwarven neighbors upon and within the mountain, and with long forgotten peoples across the ocean. A few magnificent albeit dysfunctional wonders from that era remain, but for the most part, the formerly great city dwindled to little more than a small, isolated village, far removed from what remains of the kingdom. Anyway, this was the case for Howl’s Village up until six months ago. Now it is known as Howlston (Howl’s Town).

A little over six months ago, a new wave of Aquarian colonists arrived from the ocean, the first to arrive to this region, and they settled along the sparsely populated coast. The Aquarians, for reasons left unspecified, wish to colonize the interior of Mt. Laputa. They brought massive pearls of various colors and qualities, cultivated deep in the ocean, a casual display of wealth beyond the coffers of the kingdom itself, and more arrive from their amphibious caravan regularly. They have offered to pay, in pearls and other resources, any who would help them colonize the mountain.

As a result, a cottage industry for warriors, diplomats, cartographers, miners, loggers, and other adventurers has formed within the village. The warlords and their gangs were the first to arrive, quickly establishing themselves as the “Kind Companies”, ostensibly legitimate businesses bringing food and materials, and then developing the land and effectively co-opting the town, to accommodate the influx of workers. Then came the fey, led by the greedy and opportunistic leprechauns, but along with them goblin engineers, hob enforcers, pixie scouts, and all sorts of others. Over time, as demand for competent workers grew, there came the first large-scale call for espers in well over a century.

In regard to the development of the Aquarian colonization project, the complications are as such. To reach Mt. Laputa, one must cross Mononoke Forest. The forest is dense, full of disease-carrying bugs, toxic plants, dangerous beasts and monsters, and the elves. The only way the Aquarians will be able to colonize Mt. Laputa is if a road can be carved through the forest. Road-building logistics aside, there are also the elven prides. The two major elven prides of Mononoke Forest are the Raging August Leopards and the Righteous Angry Lemurs. They have been in conflict, on and off, for as long as can be remembered. The Leopards are a warrior pride of fierce grendel elves, who may be convinced to allow the development of the road, particularly if they are given assistance against the Lemurs. The lemurs have fallen under the leadership of lamia elves, who came from the ocean with the Aquarians, claiming to be refugees forced from their homes by the Aquarian caravan. They can be appeased, but they will under no circumstances allow the development of the road or in any other way directly assist the Aquarians. Additionally, although less fierce in direct combat, their traps and guerrilla tactics make them a greater nuisance to the development of the road.

Even without a road, negotiations have been initiated with both the dwarves atop Mt. Laputa, as well as the duergar (dark dwarves) within the mountain. The Aquarians claim that their development plans for the interior of Mt. Laputa can accommodate both communities, but the mountain dwarves are skeptical, and the duergar can barely be reasoned with at all and are generally hostile to all except the mountain dwarves (who they don’t particularly like but will at least communicate with). While even the mountain dwarves are alien in demeanor to humans, they do seem to at least have an instinctive fascination with the pearls and have already learned to use them as magical conductors and carve them into hard and light-weight arms, armors, and other objects that they have seemingly no practical use for. They enjoy the process, and their wares rival those of the fey, and come comparatively cheap (albeit more difficult to obtain, for obvious reasons).

 As the Aquarian colonization project, led primarily by humans, continues to progress, Howlston finds itself in dire straits. At first the villagers celebrated their new guests, basking in a seeming return to glory for this ancient and once great place. However, the town’s food and other resources are overstretched, and the Captains of the Kind Companies have subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) taken control of the town and squeeze the townspeople for all they’re worth. Additionally, the town has become overcrowded, and overrun with theft and violent crime. On the bright side, some of the ancient wonders, buildings and artifacts, have been restored by means of the magically-conductive pearls, or good old-fashioned engineering, and new “wonders” are constantly being built.

The PCs, presumably espers or people with great skills of other kinds, were brought to Howlston, having been hired by Captain Patrick Russo and his small-time Kind Company. His company specializes in intelligence; surveying the region, investigating rumors, and using proprietary methods to make predictions about the state of the Aquarian colonization project or local developments on behalf of clients or for sale to the highest bidder, and so he needs parties of capable individuals who are up for any task.

Tunnels & Trolls: The SoftMax Hack + cheatsheet + general impressions

I've recently started a campaign in my Aquarian Dawn setting using Tunnels & Trolls. I may post a session report (or more likely a partial-module of my GM notes) at some point, but probably not until one or two more game sessions from now.

I'm running the most recent edition of T&T and the translation of the Japanese quickstarter rules, mostly as-is, with a few mechanics streamlined and a few homebrew mechanics. On the whole I'm enjoying the system, and I'll discuss why at the bottom of this post, but I also think there are certain ways in which it feels antiquated or anachronistic. I think it could use some OSR-ifying, and I've got some ideas for a revised version of T&T that I think will make it feel more modern and accessible, and I hope people will be influenced to check T&T out as a result.

This version, the SoftMax Hack (a joke that hopefully a few of you will get), is mostly just a cheatsheet for the rules that won't make a lot of sense unless you're at least a little familiar with the game (which is why I feel comfortable posting it), with a few houserules. I may change this as I go, but after one session of my campaign so far, this is what I'm thinking.

At some point I'll do the true Max Hack, which I imagine as being similar in philosophy to how many OSR systems attempt to streamline old-school D&D.

At the bottom of this cheatsheet + house rules are some of my thoughts on the system. I would be interested to know what other people think if they've played T&T, or if this makes anyone interested in checking it out.


Character Creation 

• HOUSERULE: 3d6 for each stat, roll two extra 3d6 and drop lowest two dice. A 3d6 of all the same value (e.g. 3,3,3) allows you to roll again and take the sum, until not triples. Rearrange stats as desired. 
• HOUSERULE: Start with two talents rather than one 
• HOUSERULE: 250 gold rather than random roll for gold (for simplicity) 
• HOUSERULE: Start with 3 AP 
• HOUSERULE (for Aquarian Dawn): Take an esper power (such as one of my 100 superpowers)

Advancement

• HOUSERULE: Separating XP and AP
• HOUSERULE: Milestone XP Given at end of session (generally ~100) 
• Increasing a stat costs stat * 10 (e.g. increasing a stat from 7 to 8 is 7*10 = 70 XP)
• Once per level you can spend 300 AP to gain a new talent
• HOUSERULE: Learning spells:
• Wizards gain 3 new spells per level of spell level equal to character level or lower. For example, a level 3 wizard can learn three level 3 or level 2 spells 
• They should already know all level 1 spells, but if you introduce new level 1 spells as the campaign progresses, they could learn those as well 
• Rogues gain up to 3 new spells per level, where the sum of the spell levels cannot exceed the character level. For example, a level 4 rogue could take one level 4 spell, one level 3 spell and one level 1 spell, two level 2 spells, one level 2 spell and two level 1 spells, or three level 1 spells
• Wizards and rogues can also buy spells with gold (1000 * spell level gold)
• HOUSERULE: Spending XP to learn spells
• It's surprising to me that the TNT core book only has rules for learning spells by spending gold, but not by spending experience. This could be like the equivalent of doing research to advance their knowledge.
• This would need to be tested, but tentatively I think it makes sense that the XP cost to learn a spell should be spell level * 100, so a level 1 spell costs 100 XP, level 2 spell costs 200 XP, etc.
• In addition to normal spell requirements, it might be fair to put some limit on the highest spell level a rogue can learn independently by spending XP.

Types

• Warrior
• +1d6 dice per level for combat rolls (unarmed or melee weapon) 
• Can double the damage reduction of armor but increase chance of it breaking 
• No magic 
• Rogue 
• Start with one level 1 spell and can learn more spells
• Gain one extra talent at start of game 
• Wizard 
• Start with all first-level spells 
• Spells cost Character Level – Spell Level less WIZ to cast (e.g. for a level 2 wizard casting a level 1 spell, the spell costs 2-1=1 less WIZ) 
• Casting with a focus (staff, wand, amulet, etc.) subtract level from WIZ cost (e.g. a level 2 wizard with a focus spends 2 fewer WIZ to cast a spell) 
• No personal adds for weapons with > 2d6 damage dice 
• HOUSE RULE: Dropping DEX requirement for spellcasting

Equipment 

• HOUSE RULE: No encumbrance, just common sense. If you’re over-loading, there may be a GM intrusion… 
• HOUSE RULE: No STR or DEX requirement for equipment, just common sense. As above, if you're wielding or wearing something a bit too big for you, there may be a GM intrusion...
• HOUSE RULE: Since I’m dropping DEX requirement for spellcasting, instead the DEX reduction on armor counts towards an increased WIZ cost for spellcasting

Combat 

• Weapon dice + weapon adds + personal adds (+1 for each point over 12 for STR, LK, DEX, SPD), take difference between player (or party if doing simultaneous combat) and opposition 
• Spite Damage: Any roll of 6 gives 1 spite damage, guaranteed damage even if you lose the opposed combat dice roll 
• Missile weapons roll DEX SR (generally lvl 2, 4, 6, etc. against a medium sized creature at point-blank, close, medium range. Smaller targets increase by 2, larger decrease by 2). Success means guaranteed damage even if failed opposed combat dice roll. Failure means roll opposed combat dice as normal 
• Armor Durability: If using the warrior ability to increase damage reduction, or as a GM intrusion, roll SR for luck. On failure, the armor can take 1 less hit (one wear point). For each wear point, the SR difficulty increases by 1.

Saving Rolls 

• Roll 2d6 against SR level – stat (e.g. a SR1LK roll would require you to roll 20 – your luck stat) 
• If you have a relevant talent subtract 3 from the difficulty 
• Rolling a 1 and a 2 is a critical failure 
• If you roll two of the same value, roll again and take the sum, repeat until not the same

Adventure Points (HOUSE RULE) 

• Can only have 3 + level total AP at one time 
• Can spend 1 AP to reroll a single die 
• Can spend 1 AP to add +3 to SR or combat roll (prior to rolling dice)
• Can spend 1 AP to add a d6 to a combat roll (prior to rolling dice)
• Can spend AP to do extra-special stuff such as esper powers, cost determined by GM
• Can spend 1 AP to reject a GM intrusion
• AP NOT the same as XP!
• Gain AP for doing cool roleplaying
• Gain AP for accepting a GM or player-suggested intrusion
• Intrusions: Complications to a given scenario

Dice Trade (HOUSE RULE)

• Players can swap dice to an equivalent distribution, reflecting cautiousness vs. risk-taking
• For instance, rather than rolling 2d6 for a saving roll, the player can roll a 1d12
• In this case, there is no doubles-roll-over, but also no critical fail. The range is technically different (2:12 vs. 1:12), but the big difference is that the probability distribution is uniform rather than normal. For a very difficult task where an average 2d6 would likely fail anyway, you may be better off rolling 1d12 than 2d6.
• For combat, you could substitute any number of d6's, such as 1d12 for 2d6, 1d20 for 3d6, etc. Just be mindful of what effects this has on the distribution.
• I may flesh this out more in the future...

Impressions / Mini-Review

I've only played one session of my new campaign with this system so far and there was no combat and only a few saving rolls (basically skill checks), so this is really more my impressions than a thorough review.

Likes:

• Opposed rolls for combat: While this significantly complicates the outcome probabilities, making it less intuitive how encounters will play out, I've always been intrigued by this mechanic. Maybe I'll end up disliking it, but for now it's a like just given that it's something I've wanted to try.


• Simultaneous combat: The core book suggests that by default all players should roll against all opponents simultaneously and everything should be resolved altogether. I don't know if I'd like to do that as the default, but it would make combat faster. More than that, I think it could be a cool tactical option for dealing with larger or more powerful enemies, or swarms of smaller enemies. A monster that would be insurmountable may be defeated if the players work together, or in the reverse, enough small goblins targeting a single player may be a significant threat. The players could all team up to defend against the goblins targeting the one player, but then they can't team up against the big ogre until the goblins are no longer a threat...


• Personal adds: I really like how you receive combat dice modifiers based on a contribution of stats. I think this is a flexible way to allow for different kinds of builds to be combat viable in a way that often feels counter-intuitive or over-complicated in D&D.


• Types: I haven't played long enough to get a sense of balance, but I like how the types (basically classes) work. Warriors get major bonuses to combat but no magic. Wizards have limits on how much combat damage they can do, but with ranged weapons they always have a chance of at least doing some damage. Rogues are inbetweeners. You could GLOG-ify this I'm sure, but as a core game these seem nice.


• Magic: I've never been a fan of Vancian magic. I much prefer a mana-based system. The way that spells can be powered up, and the ways that wizard spell costs decrease as they level, to me seems more flexible, fun, and intuitive than D&D-style magic.


• Saving Rolls: This stat-based skill-check system reminds me of the kinds of rolls I would make players do in Cypher System, which is always a plus. It's a simple number, lvl. 1 difficulty is 20, then +5 for each additional level of difficulty, with modifiers from the relevant stat. For a more OSR-style game, you could keep these to a minimum and not be any worse off for it.


• Monster Levels: I don't talk about it on this cheat sheet, but monsters can be reduced to a single number, which determines HP, number of combat dice, and any adds. Again, the simplicity and flexibility of it reminds me of Cypher, which is always a positive.


• Advancement: I generally prefer incremental advancement to monumental levels, so this point-buy system for increasing stats, learning new talents and spells, etc., with a few larger benefits for level, is a nice balance (once again, similar to Cypher). I also like how the cost for increasing stats increases as the stat gets bigger, so a player that rolls poorly during character creation may be able to "catch up".

Dislikes:

• Too many stats: Many of these stats feel redundant, or at least the book doesn't do a good job of explaining where specific stats would be important. I think this game could be streamlined to maybe 3 or 4 stats and be better off for it. Any stat may be used for an appropriate saving roll, but otherwise SPD isn't really doing anything that can't be covered by DEX besides contributing to adds. Do we really need a LK stat? CON is mostly just HP and WIZ mostly just MP, I'd rather just make those their own thing and not consider them a core stat. CHA could seemingly be taken out entirely, or maybe given some added value by allowing a character to use CHA in place of INT for spell requirements as sort of a "Sorcerer vs. Wizard" distinction. Anyway I think I'm over-sharing my ideas for the full Max Hack...


• Spell names: Many of the spells have long and cutesy names that give the trollworld setting personality, but are kind of cumbersome and annoying to keep track of.


• Stat Requirements: DEX as a prereq for spellcasting seems weird. I get the logic of waving hands around for spellcasting, but it seems like just a way to keep wizards from wearing heavy armor (given that heavy armor imposes DEX reduction). I think my houserule (or some version of it) is better. I also don't like that every weapon has a STR and DEX requirement. For now I've just reduced the requirements a bit with my houserules, but I might get rid of it altogether. Warriors already get bonuses with melee weapons and wizards already get disadvantages with weapons (partially mitigated by the missile rules), so having additional requirements seems unnecessary.


• Some fiddly mechanics: The way that kindreds work (basically races) seems to involve a multiplier of stats, in some cases by numbers like 0.66 or 0.33. It's just kinda messy and I'm ignoring it. Encumbrance sucks too, but I hate encumbrance in any system so that's a personal preference. There are some weird bonus types like specialist and commoner that I don't see the point of. Old-school D&D is full of these kinds of mechanics as well, and I've gotten decent at figuring out quickly which ones are interesting to me and which aren't, and how to get around them.

Weird Sheep & Wonderful Sorcerers: Sheep and Sorcery Appreciation

This is an appreciation post for Michael Kennedy at Sheep and Sorcery. Mike is an old G+ friend, and I believe one of the first and also the longest-running member of my Phantasmos discord game group. He played in my LotFP SHIELDBREAKER campaign, my FASERIP superhero crossover one-shot, and was also a co-player in z_bill's Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells campaign and Dan's Danscape campaign. He also has several really awesome settings, discussion posts, and other cool features on his blog, and this post is going to grab bits and pieces and hopefully make something cool out of it.

********************

We begin within a ship frozen in time. The generation ship was on a voyage Into the Weird Blue Yonder, when it was assaulted by none other than the Spectacular Space Kraken. Fearing the demise of their entire civilization, the Arch-Pope Father Fyodor Karamazov encoded a spell into the numerological ship computer, sending a tachyonic temporal force missile backwards in time, the velocity of the missile pulling the ship against time itself, such that while time operates normally within the ship, it appears frozen outside the ship. Karamazov has cybernetically integrated himself into the ship and taken on the title of God Emperor, and has maintained this ship stuck in time for countless generations. The general entropy and dynamical shifts of languages and cultures over time, along with the occasional inter-dimensional portal opened by the God Emperor himself, has led to all sorts of new developments of monsters and inhumans throughout the ship, such as the F-Men, The Red Sons, and the Martian Vampires.

In his inter-dimensional, multiversal travels, the God Emperor has made few friends, and many enemies, against which the peoples of the ship must contend. One such enemy is an ascendant wizard, an incorporeal lich borne from the nightmares of a slumbering frost wyrm. His minions from across the multiverse assault the ship every 100 years, attempting to harness the God Emperor's powers to perform a ritual to separate the wizard's essence from the frost wyrm's dream before it awakens (which incidentally is projected to occur just after the next assault...).

Most of the old gods were long ago forgotten, even Father Fyodor Karamazov himself condemned the old gods when he declared himself God Emperor. There is only one other faith that rivals the faith of the God Emperor, The Church of the Smiling God.

There are two members of the Court of the Smiling God who are best positioned to become the next Hungry Avatar. The first is Princess Porcina, a small but perfect girl. For her overall size, she is perfectly proportioned and in every way is the most beautiful woman that any man has ever laid eyes upon. She is, however, fragile as glass and rides about in an egg of transparent gemstone and golden wire supported and moved by four animated golden lion legs. She is guarded by a Unicorn in adamantium armor laced with platinum whose horn shimmers with the light of day. Autumn leaves appear in its wake and falsehoods cannot be spoken in its presence.

The second is Duchess Lioness. Her hair is layers of crimson feathers and she has horns which curl upwards from her head. Her canines are sharp and she has talons on her hands and feet. She is followed by her zoo of horrifically hybridized people. Half her manservant's face is that of a glaring chimp as is one of his arms. Her ladies in waiting are ladies with swan necks and bodies with human legs. Many children run to the Zoo with the promise of freedom, only to find themselves in such forms. They are happier this way. Everyone knows what it means when a chimp smiles, after all...

As is often the case, the two most prominent candidates for the holiest role of this happy church, are not themselves true believers. In fact, both of them profit handsomely off of the church, and their businesses are at odds with each other. They are not above sabotage, which has made the political machinations of the church a perilous game.

Despite their differences, they have made a temporary truce, in a bid to overthrow the God Emperor, even as the final invasion of the Ascendant Wizard nears...

Aquarian Dawn: Aquarians

This is an expanded version of my brief description of the Aquarians from the Aquarian Dawn setting primer.

Aquarians are androgynous humanoids, slightly smaller on average than humans, mesomorphic but with strong core and oblique muscles, and a thin layer of dense, fat-like cells just under (or less commonly, over) their skin. They have varying skin colors and patterns, generally tropical blues and greens with gold or red spots or stripes. Their heads are topped with a semi-translucent whitish filament, which they can also sprout from other regions of their body to form silk clothing-like protection. The filament can be injected with digestive enzymes or reproductive materials. 

Aquarians utilize photosynthesis, but in most climates require nearly as much food relative to their size as humans. They are omnivores but lean towards vegetarianism. They can reproduce both sexually and parthenogenically. Their brains consist of three highly redundant lobes, each taking on a slightly different personality, and the lobes sample information and generate neural activation patterns competitively, to bootstrap learning. While biological sex exists in a manner similar to humans, they have little sexual dimorphism. On the other hand, gender is continuous and triangular, based on the average contribution of each lobe to that individual's behavior, but these distinctions are often too subtle for non-aquarians, and generally not important to aquarian society.

Procedural and semantic memories are passed during reproduction. Episodic memories are also passed, but are generally scrambled and dream-like, except in cases of parthenogenesis where the offspring is a full clone. Offspring reach full physical/sexual maturity within 2 years and given the way memory is passed, can survive independently from that point on. However, they require large quantities of food and remain child-like in personality up to around 7 years old. They have short lifespans, averaging around 50 years under ideal circumstances. Except when necessary, most only reproduce once or twice in their lives, often once in mid-life and once towards the end of their life, with a preference towards parthenogenesis, generally only engaging in sexual reproduction once every few generations.

Aquarians are egalitarian and socialist, lacking an innate sense of or desire for hierarchy and power. They fall naturally into suitable roles, take a functional detachment towards interpersonal conflict, and even in cases where executive leadership is necessary or efficient, these roles are seen as necessary burdens rather than privileges.

Aquarian biology is inefficient, and aquarian society interdependent. They struggle in isolation or under conditions of extreme physiological adversity. However, as a society they are far greater than the sum of their parts, and the individual aquarian benefits from their society in a way that makes them often seem superior to their human counterparts. Humans and the other intelligent species find them threatening, not just because they are the only species that seems to be thriving, but also because their society and psychology is seen as a threat to the powers that be, and because they have no qualms with stating these facts plainly. They are not arrogant or malicious, and can engage in social politics, politeness, or other niceties when necessary, but generally don't see the value in doing so, arguing, perhaps rightly, that the other species would be better off doing likewise.

30 Day Challenge: Day 30! "Traditional Fantasy", But...

Last 5 minute challenge! I'm glad I saw this all the way through. I've got several more Aquarian Dawn posts lined up for a game that will hopefully be happening this weekend or next weekend at the latest, another appreciation post in the works, and then I'm going to make a list of all the 30 day challenge posts I want to build on and see how far I can take that. Maybe one day I'll do another table too (remember when I was complaining about how all I ever post are tables...).

So this 5 minute challenge, in-line with Aquarian Dawn, is going to be about traditional fantasy settings with a twist.

• There are no humans
• The humans are actually part of a gritty, near-future sci-fi exploration / colonization team
• The humans are actually part of a utopian, future starfleet that believes in peace, stranded on the world indefinitely
• Orcs, the bio-engineered or bred race of warrior elves, have been accepted back into elven society. Inequality and social tensions still exist, but progress is being made.
• Some (but not all) monsters and magic-users actually have the X-gene
• A race of technologically advanced aliens have begun to colonize the world
• Xenomorphs or a similar species have landed on the world and are breeding rapidly

Dang, this was harder than I anticipated (a lot of these are recycled ideas :( ). Not a terrible list, but I think there are a lot more interesting things I could have done. Anyway this has clearly been on my mind lately, so I'll keep thinking about it. Also, am I imagining this, or did I already do one like this? I didn't go back to check, but now I'm thinking maybe I did...

So that's it for the 30 Day Challenge! I'll try to post once or twice a week again with normal posts, or work on larger-scale, more ambitious projects again like tables and stuff. This was a fun way to get me thinking creatively again, but I do think it hampered my ability to do more ambitious things a bit, so I'm ready to scale up.

On an unrelated note, I finally started playing around with textgenrnn again, one of the neural networks that Janelle uses, so if anyone has or knows of a large dataset related to tabletop that I could do some fun stuff with (besides the ones she already has on her github), let me know! I don't reddit much anymore but I think I saw some people doing a neural network bestiary, would love to do something like that but I don't know what their dataset is and haven't had a chance to find one.