lilfluff

Oracles

2023-10-16T23:52:40Z

The world of solo role-playing games has a concept called the oracle (almost certainly named for the ancient Latin word for one who makes prophecies and not for the modern corporation*), a tool used to replace the game master without simply having everything to however the player chooses. These can be as simple as reducing any issue to one or more yes/no questions followed by one or more coin flips ("Is there an inn in this village?" "Are there any rooms available in the inn?" "Do I stay up far too late listening to other adventurers telling tales?") to the use of cards to entire books and collections of books of random tables.

Earlier this year Bundle of Holding had one of the card deck versions available, the Gamemsster's Apprentice, or rather a collection of card decks ranging from a generic one to ones flavored for generic fantasy, steampunk, cyberpunk, etc. Where each card has numbers to represent the rolls of different sizes of dice, levels of success or failure for questions on a very likely to very unlikely scale, a scatter chart, some names, various other words, etc. The idea being you can use the deck of cards in place of dice by drawing one of more, get the answer to a yes/no question but deciding how likely it is then drawing a card, get a couple of words to help decide what you find somewhere, get names for characters, etc. All with one really pocketable deck of cards. And this isn't the only card deck oracle out there (also, journaling games often use a standard deck of cards or occasionally even tarot cards).

There are some that so a single chart, with a few columns for yes/no/maybe questions, directions, and whatever else the table maker decided belonged on a universal table. The books of tables are generally your standard collection of specialized tables. A table for weather conditions, a table for landscape types, multiple tables for dungeon/spaceship/etc generation.

It's been some years since the last time I actually got together with a group for a tabletop RPG, so I got interested in solo RPGs recently but now I think I may actually be more fascinated with oracle systems than the different games. I'm even getting tempted to try crafting some. Maybe a card deck, maybe a table or two, or a python program, or HTML+JavaScript program one could download and run locally. Hmm, Arduino + 4 line LCD? So many possibilities.

*a modest attempt at humor

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Lexicon: Final Pre-Game Steps

2015-01-26T05:21:51Z

Hello everyone interested in playing a game of Lexicon,

I now have a wiki up at lex1.lilfluff.com for the game to take place on. Right now it's the absolute bare bones (literally installed, given a title, and an admin account created) but more is coming, and quite soon. Three cheers for dokuwiki, once my ISPs nameservers finally believed the subdomain existed I was able to do the basic setup in bare minutes.

So now we just need a final roll call of who is interested in playing and whether we want to go with the default default rules or variant rules. The Rule of X looks like a good optional rule to pull in.

Note: To avoid wikivandals the server isn't set up to allow open registration. Accounts will be created for those who are participating.

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Lexicon

2014-12-07T10:11:20Z

So Thursday I asked if anyone would be interested in a game of Lexicon. Three people have responded so I think we've got enough to start (but more are welcome to jump in!). Just a few questions first...

Lexicon looks like it works best with a wiki... and I just noticed that the wiki hosting service I have an account on no longer provides free non-education wikis.

I don't mind people recovering operating costs and making a profit but seriously, $50 for the lowest cost plan?

Wikia brings my browser to its knees if I have Javascript on so it's not my first or second choice for an alternate wiki host.

Anyone have a suggested service? I could potentially set up a wiki on a subdomain of lilfluff.com, but that would likely delay things.

Lexicon starts off with only a broadly brushed theme, but I don't see any reason not to ask what general categories people are interested in. So what do you think, should this be a fantasy world? Science fiction? Previously unknown past?

...Something else?

Shall we go for the baseline Lexicon or would you like to bring in one of the alternate rules?

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Anyone up for a game of Lexicon?

2014-12-04T19:34:15Z

I've found myself wanting to do a Lexicon game recently, is there anyone else who would like to give it a go?

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