Rebellion - Anti-Establishment 25% Sale

This weekend, help prepare for November solo game or story writing with any of these tools.

Author's publisher page

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/7993/Ken-Wickham

Rebellion - Anti-Establishment 25% Sale

Say goodbye to your GM!

This sale for this weekend at DriveThruRPG has the following titles at 25% off

Character Mechanisms

Character Mechanisms II

Story Mechanisms

Environmental Mechanisms

Remnant RPG Tools

Grammar Fuel: Parts of Speech

Grammar Fuel: 12,000 Idioms and Phrases

Rhyming Fuel

ABS12 Solo Game Engine 2nd Edition

ABS12 Fact Generator 2nd Edition

Description Generator: Objects 2nd Edition

Gamemaster Surrogate: 100 Shades of Nay...and Yeah

2,000 American Male First Names

4,500 American Female First Names

SoRoPlay GamTools Zine: Coin Solo RPG System

SoRoPlay GamTools Zine: Myths and Fables

SoRoPlay GamTools Zine: Learning about Poetry

and

Micro Dungeon Room Map Generator

 At Amazon, Character Mechanisms the sale price is the same. 

Character Mechanisms (2018)

Available at two places: one a PDF or one for Kindle

A PDF @ DriveThruRPG

For Kindle (US) @ Amazon.com, (UK) @ Amazon.co.uk, (DE) Amazon.de.

At Amazon, the 2nd edition at Amazon are already at the minimum amount for the current full 70% royalty percentage. 

An overview of some of the tools that I've created.

An overview of tools, bundles, and volumes

[This post might serve as the foundation to a product page or series for the blog. This post may be edited, expanded, and altered in the next few days or oncoming future.]

Many Tools, but how do you know what is what?

There are many tools created for different purposes or functions—tools for different tasks. Originally, each of the tools were created separately, each for a specific function.

As for the tools, all are available individually and separately, which is good if you want to only get what is needed.

•The separate tools may end in "...generator", "...engine", "...critical", and/or "...communicator".
•One d6 tool series of tools focusing on description begins with "Minimalist..." and/or "Minimalist Descriptive...".
•Very large generating tables of random words (by part of speech), names, or phrases (or idioms) for creating NPC dialogue, among other uses, have titles ending in "...Fuel".

The generators provide a 12x12 (144+ results) categorized, and sometime subcategorized, table of keywords or key-phrases — to help inspire content creation. The keywords to help create plots, emotions, animals, human description, body language, indoor setting, outdoor setting, sensory facts, twists, dreams, fears, scene actions, themes, knowledge, etc....

The engine takes in information and creates a usable output of words, decisions, suggestions, or guidelines. 

The minimalist descriptive is a set of d6 charts focusing on one aspect of a game world used to create one or a few sentences sentence made up of keywords and facts describing the most important features of a certain setting or terrain or phenomenon. They create a brief description of an environmental setting, using features found on Earth, used to set up a scene and to put NPCs, creatures, objects, and action.

The Grammar Fuel: [part of speech] is a solo RPG resource random table tool made for tabletop RPG gaming using d1,000, d100, d20, d10, or d6 depending on the table, which brings together the 2,000 verbs, 2,000 nouns, 2,000 adjectives, 1,000 adverbs, 1,000 interjections, 250 prepositions, 100 pronouns, 100 subordinating conjunctions, 100 determiners, 20 correlative conjunction pairs, 8 coordinating conjunctions, and 5 article/plural combinations. So, it is like a 8,583 random word table divided by part of speech. However, speaking styles influence which words are generated somewhat.

Grammar Fuel: [phrases and/or idioms] is a 12,000 phrases and idioms on 12 tables alphabetized and numbered for d1000 rolls. The idioms are mostly American English based.

The critical tables describe combat damage to a person in terms of wound penetration and bodily location.

Most tools also are found in bundled collections, which may or may not contain a single-volume collection—collections that are mostly topical.

Most also are found gathered together into somewhat topical collections of tools—volumes, called "...Mechanisms", "...All-in-One", "Grammar Fuel:...", and "Complete..."

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/7993/Ken-Wickham

Recommended Beginning Tools

Where is a good place to start? 

Currently, two or three tools are what I consider fairly simplified foundational tools, sometimes different than the 1e or 2e tools. The Minimalist d6 Solo Game Engine and the Minimalist Adventure Seed Engine. And from these two minimalist tools, additional tools may either expand upon or do things slightly different than this foundation which will answer the question, "After these two tools, where could you go from there?" which will be answered in the next section, How do you  expand or use alternatively to the two basic minimalist tools?

1. Minimalist d6 Solo Game Engine

Minimalist d6 Solo Game Engine is a collection of tools that help you to play a solo game using standard six-sided dice. It works by generating either answers to questions, icon images, or keyword prompts for interpretation.

Minimalist Adventure Seed Engine is recommended as a companion tool to be used with this book to create random story conflict, foe, theme, motivation, and twists.

Note: You need a gaming system character and resolution mechanics with this book in order to create characters, have NPC and creature statblocks, and resolve game mechanics. This book focuses on generating narrative content using questions and keyword prompts. Some other game mechanics tools that can be used for some game mechanics are Minimalist Descriptive Combat (mass combat) and/or Remnant RPG Tools (descriptive roleplaying combat) which includes the Minimalist Descriptive Skills (descriptive d6 skill resolution) along with several other related tools.

A gamemaster has many functions. This set of tools focuses on six GM functions.

    • The gamemaster surrogate engine focuses on the function of giving four types of closed ended questions: yes/no, task progress, problem solving, and scientific method answers to help create story, characters, and setting.

    • The iconic fact generator focuses on the function of giving random sensory-based icon images that may represent answers to open ended questions to help create a setting based on the player character’s perception.

    • The indoor, outdoor, item Gen focuses on function of giving random keywords to be used as word prompts to help generate setting based on adjectives and determiners.

    • The relationship, mood, emotion, & encounter Gen focuses on the function of giving human and creature description based on description, mood, emotions to help create story encounters.

    • The NPC scene action (AI) focuses on the behavioral function of non-player character (NPC) or even creatures actions within a scene.

    • The Gamestory Adventures process focuses on the steps to create a narrative like the opening scene, inciting event, one or more conflicts, and until completion or failure.

2. Minimalist Adventure Seed Engine

This is a minimalist adventure seed engine to help randomly roll story seeds for gaming or writing.

• One-page, easy, standard d6 dice system that may be used with any core system.
• It is small and compact. It's just this black cover page and one written page.
• It can, however, be expanded by using the 12x12 plots, foes, themes, motivations, mood-emotions, and twists generator charts.
• It is uses a small amount of keywords to describe an adventure story.

This uses up to six rolls of 1d6.

1. Roll for the conflict.
2. Roll for the type of foe.
3. Roll for the theme.
4. Roll for the motivation.
5. Roll for the mood.
6. Roll, when appropriate, a twist.

The keywords are interpreted based on context of the setting and characters.

What tools expand the number of results or replace with alternatives the Minimalist Adventure Seed Engine? Plot Generator (144 conflict keywords), Foe Generator (144 foe keywords), Theme Generator (144 sets of theme topics), Motivation Generator (144 motive keywords), Mood-Emotion Generator (144 more specific moods or emotions), Twist Generator (144 twist situations described briefly).

How do you expand the number of results or replace with alternatives portions of the two basic minimalist tools?

Several tools offer ways to expand the number of results or use alternatively to the minimalist tools found in the minimalist tools.

1. Minimalist d6 Solo Game Engine expand, replacing with 12x12 (144 result) generator charts and/or game engines

Most of these are found in various Mechanisms all-in-one books or in the character, story, or environmental Bundles.

Alternatives, replacing the GMS engine

Solo Game Engine 1e - This system uses Yes, Maybe, and No type answers expanding the traditional solo game system by adding branching and conditional answers. This is a flexible solo game engine that is meant to take the place of a Gamemaster (GM) for answering questions or finding the results of modified rolls. A chart with results for 1D6, 1d8, Fate, Fudge, 1D10, 1D12, 2D6, 3D6, 1D20, 4D6 JAGS, and 1D100 systems is included. It makes it a versatile game engine.

or

ABS12 Solo Game Engine 2nd Edition - 18 pages, 6 tables, 15 types of results (1e had 5pgs, 1 table, 1 type of result), This is a flexible solo game engine that is meant to take the place of a Gamemaster (GM) for answering questions or finding the results of modified rolls. A chart with results for 1D6, 1d8, Fate, Fudge, 1D10, 1D12, 2D6, 3D6, 1D20, 4D6 JAGS, and 1D100 systems is included.

Gamemaster Surrogate - This is a true d100 solo game engine with 100 answers, more focused for task-resolution questions, that vary in detail and nuance. This list gives you 100 answers to yes or no questions with varying degrees, tangents, beyond expectation, a few types of results, and/or speed of result all in one table—with just one roll. Sometimes answers suggest a reason or cause such as a type of attribute, which may or may not apply to the given situation.

Alternatives, replacing the Iconic Fact Generator

Fact Generator 1e- this focuses on 144 results focusing on sensory and process data.

or

ABS12 Fact Generator 2nd Edition - This 2nd edition expands and includes the 1st edition. 30 pages, 8 charts, 23 types of facts, 10 pages of Senses from Roget's Thesaurus. Compared to the original which was 1pg chart & instructions. It makes it a versatile game engine. This is a fact generator that is meant to aid or take the place of a Gamemaster (GM) for answering questions or finding the clues, information, or describing situations & settings. Eight charts with results for 1D20, 3D6, and d100 systems is included.

Sound Generator - focuses entirely on sounds and onomatopoeia.

Expanding, replacing the Indoor/Outdoor/Item Gen

Description Generator 1e- focuses on description of objects or things using 11 categories of adjectives.

or

Description Generator: Objects 2nd Edition- This 2nd edition expands and includes the 1st edition material. 52 pages, 9 charts, 33 types of facts/descriptions, object describing words from Roget's Thesaurus. [Compared with the original which was 3pg, one chart & instructions, it's greatly expanded.] This is a description generator that is meant to aid or take the place of a Gamemaster (GM) for describing objects in situations & settings. Nine charts with results for 1D20, 3D6, and d100 systems is included

Outdoor Setting Generator - focuses on descriptions of locations or places. This includes biomes, weather, soil types, sparcity, and size.

Indoor Setting Generator focuses on descriptions of rooms and interior locations. This includes rooms types, sizes, adjectives describing rooms, and material found in or used in the construction of the room.

Adding more specific colors

Color Generator & Wheel - This book helps you to use and even roll randomly for 144 color names to  describe more vivid settings. It also has a color wheel to help design 13 types of color combinations. It has color meaning for the 8 main colors. This table shows 12 rows of 12 columns of colors: Black, Cool Grays, Warm Grays, Purple, Pink, Red, Orange & Brown, Yellow, Green, Aqua, Cyan & Turquoise, and Blue. 144 total color names with the actual color background & hexadecimal color #.

Modifier Generator - shows modifier categories with 12 or more modifiers for each category including degree, time, contrast, unity, manner, cause-and-effect, and place words.

Expanding, working with on Specific Terrain brief descriptions

Minimalist terrain tools in the Minimalist Series - brief specific terrain descriptions may be generated using the specific minimalist terrain series tools or many of them are found in Environmental Mechanisms. Titles include among many: urban, coniferous forest, deciduous forest, cave, desert, grassland & shrublands, mountains, rainforest, wetlands, forces of nature-air & heat, and forces of nature-ground.

Micro-Dungeon-Room Map Generator - This has two main tables to help generate micro-dungeons, dungeons that are small and created on-the-fly: • 144 Random Rooms (showing the shape and 5ft square dimensions). • 22 Random Hallways (showing the direction, intersection, splitting, or even corners).

Expanding, alternatives, or building upon the Relationship, Mood, Emotion, & Encounter Gen

Mood-Emotion Generator - focuses on 12 categories of emotions or mood: joy, expectation, sadness, confusion, anger, courage, caring, fear, guilty, strong, hurt, and weak. 12 words detail the degree and specify the emotion or mood within each category.

Character Generator - focuses on generating a description of uses nine possible personalities, stat archetypes, encounter types, virtues, vices, and types of quirks on two charts

Human Generator - shows 12 body categories with 12 body description indicators for each category including body shape, hair color, hair style & length, skin color, lip shape, height, facial hair, chest or breast size, eye color, brow shape, eye shape, and nose shape indicators based on worldwide human races.

Social & Mental Traits Generator - This table shows social and mental traits listed in 6 dimensions introvert-extrovert, rebellious-agreeable, carefree-conscientious, neurotic-stable, closed-open, and proud-humble. Each dimension has 12 ranked degrees with two related words per rank to describe a characters mental and social attributes using words.

Physical Trait Generator - This table shows 144 strength, dexterity, and constitution traits listed in 6 dimensions delicate-strong, exhausted-enduring, unhealthy-healthy, unskilled-accurate, clumsy-agile, and slow-quick, with their definitions.

Knowledge Generator - focuses on mental and studied knowledge fields such as science, philosophy, language, literature, military, agriculture, law, politics, religion, social science, and paranormal.

Career Generator - shows most career categories with one to twelve or more careers/classes for each category including information, sports, wealth, philosophy, home, health, psychology, paranormal, religion, history, geography, anthropology, business, social science, politics, law, music, fine arts, art, language, literature, science, medicine, agriculture, technology, and military.

Dream Generator - shows 12 dream word categories with 12 dream word symbols for each category including animal, building/house, vehicle or mount, clothing, body part, color, number, insect, disaster, location, character, and relation words.

Character Flaw Generator - Included are a total 144+ character flaws in the entire table in no particular order.

Animal Generator - focuses on the movement, behavior, attacks, defense, abilities, and living situation and survival features of a real, earth-like, mythical, folklore, made-up or similar alien animals.

Wing Generator - This is a flexible animal generator that is meant to aid or take the place of a Gamemaster (GM) for answering questions or finding the clues, information, or describing wings of animals. This a lists of 144 animal names that have wings or glide (insects, butterflies, dragonflies, birds, water birds, flying fish, flying squid)and flightless birds. It does not show any pictures nor drawings.

Alternatives to the NPC Scene Actions (AI)

Scene Action Generator - This table shows 144+ verbs listed in somewhat order: verbs that do, move,  social, setting, object, and idea - used to describe a scene.

Several of the NPC content below refers to the Character Generator

Character Generator - focuses on generating a description of uses nine possible personalities, stat archetypes, encounter types, virtues, vices, and types of quirks on two charts.

Dialogue & Communication

Dialogue Engine - This dialogue engine helps create dialogue topics, voice qualities, and personality-based dialogue styles for games and stories. This dialogue engine takes into acount 3 moods, 9 personality types, 3 mindsets, and 7 vocal qualities using six-sided dice. It uses the Character Generator, Fact Generator, Motivation Generator, Plot Generator, and Flash RPG. It can also use the Body Language Generator to add non-verbal body language.

Grammar Fuel: Parts of speech is a five-dialogue style engine added to 15 tables alphabetized and numbered for either d6, d10, d20, d100, or d1000 rolls depending on the table, which brings together the 2,000 verbs, 2,000 nouns, 2,000 adjectives, 1,000 adverbs, 1,000 interjections, 250 prepositions, 100 pronouns, 100 subordinating conjunctions, 100 determiners, 20 correlative conjunction pairs, 8 coordinating conjunctions, and 5 article/plural combinations. The parts of speech are mostly American English based. So, it is like a 8,583 random word table divided by part of speech. However, speaking styles influence which words are generated somewhat. However, there are 5 dialogue styles which have different part of speech probabilities: thinking, feeling, doing, discussing, and formal dialogue styles each have different part of speech proportions.

Grammar Fuel: 12,000 Phrases & Idioms is a 12,000 phrases and idioms on 12 tables alphabetized and numbered for d1000 rolls. The idioms are mostly American English based.

Character Communicator - This table shows categorized by archetype or primary stat with twelve functions of communications for each category including summarize, persuade, argue, imagine, advise, instruct, inform, direct, describe, motivate, analyze, and explain.

Behavior Character Behavior Engine - Characters behave and react to stimulus which may be found in the behavior engine. This behavior engine helps create behavior styles for games and stories. This behavior engine takes into account 9 personality types, 3 mindsets, 9 stat archetypes, 9 virtues, and 9 vices. It can use the Dialogue Generator, Motivation Generator, and Character Communicator primarily.

Thinking

Character Thinking Engine - This system shows analytical and intuitive brain thinking for 15 different archetypes: featuring doer, caregiver, skeptic, lone wolf, guardian, striver, seeker, faithful, mediator, shadow, stranger, darkness, body, mind, and soul. In addition, 12 meanings lead to thoughts based on needs which lead to decision question. Decision basis thought questions are cross reference with decision basis listed on the Thinking Generator: cost/benefit, utility, sufficient/generalize, duty/authority, deduce/link, brainstorming, define/exclude, identify/cause-effect, empathy/sympathy, prior belief/fear, assumptions, and groupthink/harmony/dissenting.

Thinking Generator - This table shows mental basis for 15 different archetypes: featuring doer, caregiver, skeptic, lone wolf, guardian, striver, seeker, faithful, mediator, shadow, stranger, darkness, body, mind, and soul. 12 decision basis are cross referenced: cost/benefit, utility, sufficient/generalize, duty/authority, deduce/link, brainstorming, define/exclude, identify/cause-effect, empathy/sympathy, prior belief/fear, assumptions, and groupthink/harmony/dissenting.

Emotional Reaction Generator - This table shows reasons or causes for emotions for 15 different archetypes: featuring doer, caregiver, skeptic, lone wolf, guardian, striver, seeker, faithful, mediator, shadow, stranger, darkness, body, mind, and soul. 12 emotions are cross reference with triggers, action/reaction, and need: joy, anticipation, sadness, anger, courage, love, fear & anxiety, guilt, shame, pride, and humility—the same emotions listed on the Mood-Emotion Generator and Body Language Generator.

Character Reaction Engine - This system shows reasons or causes for emotions for 15 different archetypes: featuring doer, caregiver, skeptic, lone wolf, guardian, striver, seeker, faithful, mediator, shadow, stranger, darkness, body, mind, and soul. 12 meanings lead to reactions based on needs which lead to emotions. Emotions are cross reference with meaning-triggers, reaction, and need listed on the Emotional Reaction Generator: joy, anticipation, sadness, anger, courage, love, fear & anxiety, guilt, shame, pride, and humility—the same emotions listed on the Mood-Emotion Generator and Body Language Generator.

Mood-Emotion Generator - focuses on 12 categories of emotions or mood: joy, expectation, sadness, confusion, anger, courage, caring, fear, guilty, strong, hurt, and weak. 12 words detail the degree and specify the emotion or mood within each category.

Relationship

Character Relationship Engine - This system expands the dialogue mood & topic engine to 12 moods (from 3 in dialogue engine). 12 relationship circles each have two behaviors and a set of common goals. The twelve relationship circles are the following: love interest, parent, offspring, extended family, friend, merchant, education, belief/religion, activist, work, service, and membership. These same 12 are the same one that are expanded into 12 archetypes in the prior tool. Relationship Generator. It lists 12 evaluated roles linked to needs, relationship behavior, and social emotions. The 12 evaluated roles are: enemy, despised, victim, unrelatable, alone, obsession, unfamiliar, relatable, wanted, friend, family, and loved one. Mind, body, and soul stats also influence communication preference.

Relationship Generator - This table shows with twelve types of relationships for each circle of friendship including  love interest (spouse), parent, offspring, extended family, friend, merchant, education, belief (religion), activist, work, service, and membership. It generates archetype-like results and also includes shadow, stranger, and darkness columns.

Alternatives to the Gamestory Adventures

Flash RPG is a six-sided dice game intended for solo game play used to create flash fiction, adventure seeds, and background stories. These are extremely small stories. All of the details can be randomly generated or chosen intentionally by the player. The details will only hint at something more than is told in the fiction.

Three Conflict Chain RPG - This book has has 6 sections and around 11 main steps to help flesh out into three conflict in Three Conflict Chain RPG — an expansion to FRPG. In this game 36 story openings, 6 types of inciting events, and three conflicts looked at by asking 6 question-words using the inquest table, and maybe adding a plot twist are used to create series of conflicts explaining what happened to reach the final conflict result.

Deep Dive Engine - To further flesh out the three conflict stories, additional scenes are added using the Deep Dive Engine. In this engine, six kinds of scenes are created randomly: explanation, description, transition, narrative, action, and reaction scenes. This adds further character development, background stories, connects the major conflicts, and can add subplots.

Transition Scene Generator - This table shows  144+ transition words listed in somewhat function order: begin, during, after, compare & clarify, contrast and concession, add, illustrate & introduce, cause & condition & effect, refer & identify, direct & place, flexible & changing focus, and occurrence & resuming - thought a few can be used in many ways.

2. Minimalist Adventure Seed Engine expand, replacing with 12x12 (144 result) generator charts

All of these are found in the Story Mechanisms all-in-one book, the Story Bundle, and Adventure Seed Bundle.

Expanding, replacing the conflict words

Plot Generator - 144 plot keywords based on 12 main sets of plots.

Expanding, replacing the foe words

Foe Generator - This table shows threats with twelve foes for each category including vs monster, vs creature, vs natural disaster, vs ND & epidemics, vs supernatural, vs paranormal, vs enemy personality, vs enemy career, vs society, vs self, vs technology weapons, and vs technology issues. It refers to enemy personality types found in Character Generator and Flash RPG. It refers to enemy careers found in Career Generator. It refers to other tables as well more indirectly.

Expanding, replacing the theme words

Theme Generator - 144 sets of keywords (over 288 keywords) which can be used to find a theme or subject of a scene, session, story, or overarching story.

Expanding, replacing the character motivation words

Motivation Generator - lists 144 character motivations based on the hierarchy of needs, morality system, defense mechanism, and personality temperament.

Expanding, replacing the mood words or describing with body language

Mood-Emotion Generator - focuses on 12 categories of emotions or mood: joy, expectation, sadness, confusion, anger, courage, caring, fear, guilty, strong, hurt, and weak. 12 words detail the degree and specify the emotion or mood within each category.

Body Language Generator - shows 12 emotion categories with 12 body language indicators for each category including eye, nose, face, jaw, mouth, eyebrow, forehead, hand, arm, leg, posture, movement, speed, voice, or gesture indicators based on American culture.

Expanding, replacing the twist description and phrases

Twist Generator - This table shows with six types of reversals: identity, motive, perception, fortune, role, and fulfillment. The reversal twists are also cross-referenced with 6 questions: who, what, when, where, why, and how.

Flash Fiction Day: "Necromancer takes on the World"

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/257894/Premium-Flash-RPG-Three-Conflict-RPG--Deep-Dive-Engine-allinone

This  flash fiction is property of Ken Wickham written for World of the Fifth Sun blogster by Ken Wickham. It is readable by visitors to this website location only—not as a PDF, HTML, JavaScript, nor program. It is intended in this version and future versions, to help bring website traffic and use to this specific section or other author cross-post location.

This game, parts, or resulting text may not be reproduced or shared in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, reposting, or otherwise for any other person—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

Today is Flash Fiction Day!

I'll use the Premium Flash RPG... version to make a flash fiction for Flash Fiction Day. I normally use just the three pack version when making a flash fiction unless I need the other resources found in the Story Mechanisms book.

Genre 3 = Drama or horror
Setting 6 = World
Conflict 4 = Overcome...obstacle...
Vs Foe = 4 = Person

Gamestory flash fiction concept
A malevolent person is trying for world domination by leading an army of undead soldiers to take over major cities.

Attribute Test 3 =  Body
Attribute Value 5 = +1
Difficulty = 5 Terrifying

Body = Forceful

Character = A more forceful soldier

A malevolent necromancer is reaching for world domination by leading a vast army of undead soldiers to take over major cities. A more forceful soldier is try to combat the undead swarm to overcome this terrifying host obstacle with a small group of freedom fighters. Will he be able to muster enough force to fight through the undead army and eliminate the necromancer?

Conflict test result = roll of 4 + 2 (more forceful) = 6

Through awesome effort and forceful skill, the soldier is barely able to fight through the undead hoard to the central base and defeat the malevolent necromancer in a spectacular manner. Although pained by difficulty, some loss, and injury the soldier group extremely grateful for their perseverance. The survivors cheer for the soldier hero's victory.

"Necromancer takes on the World"

By Ken Wickham ©2020

A malevolent necromancer is reaching for world domination by leading a vast army of undead soldiers to take over major cities. A more forceful soldier is try to combat the undead swarm to overcome this terrifying host obstacle with a small group of freedom fighters. Will he be able to muster enough force to fight through the undead army and eliminate the necromancer?

Through awesome effort and forceful skill, the soldier is barely able to fight through the undead hoard to the central base and defeat the malevolent necromancer in a spectacular manner. Although pained by difficulty, some loss, and injury the soldier group extremely grateful for their perseverance. The survivors cheer for the soldier hero's victory.

117 words, 721 characters

7-core set now available

Last year, I bundled the then-current 4-core set of RPG tools for the end of spring and summer 2019 gaming. This year, I'm doing the same. This time it is a 7-core set! It is 520 pages of 100 RPG gaming tools for US $ 46.48 (or less depending on how many of the pieces you already own).

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/311357/RPG-Tools-Character-Setting-Story-Words--Violence-BUNDLE



Added to the 5-volume set of last fall are the two new volumes from Grammar Fuel series.
Grammar fuel is sets of random tables separated by part of speech, phrase, or idiom and alphabetized in mostly d1000 tables (one is d10, one d20, two d100).

These Grammar Fuel tables have the American English most common and frequent words all on tables to help build any open world.

Grammar Fuel: Parts of Speech

Grammar Fuel: parts of speech (POS) tables have 2,000 verbs, 2,000 nouns, 2,000 adjectives, 1,000 adverbs, 1,000 interjections, 250 prepositions, 100 pronouns, 100 subordinating conjunctions, 100 determiners, 20 correlative conjunction pairs, 8 coordinating conjunctions, and 5 article/plural combinations.

So, it is like a 8,583 random word table divided by part of speech. However, speaking styles influence which words are generated somewhat.

In addition, the POS book has a dialogue style engine which five differing dialogue styles of thinking, doing, feeling, discussing, and formal use the various parts of speech in different proportions.

The POS book also has a dialogue style question-word table, which an NPC or gamemaster surrogate ask 17 different types of questions beginning with 17 different question words (who, what, when, where, why,.....) either randomly, triggered, or both causality.

I use this and the 2nd book to roll up 1 to 3 keyword to be used in a dialogue for solo gaming.

Other uses might include rolling for random setting features (noun + adjective, determiner, or preposition), descriptive pronouns (pronoun + adjective, preposition, or noun), descriptive verbs (verb + adverb or preposition. If used as a GM surrogate, it may be used to indicate that the GM is asking the player an important question or adding an important detail.

127 page PDF with bookmarked side navigation, hyperlink table of contents, and a hyperlinked navigation page accessible quickly from every page by clicking on a link on the bottom of every page.

Examples from the included 16 parts of speech tables.

Verb Fuel #73 beg

More Verb Fuel #78 attempt

Adjective Fuel #74 benevolent

More Adjective Fuel #94 battle-scarred

Noun Fuel #95 brother

More Noun Fuel #143 coin

Adverb #78 barely

Pronoun #18 he

Preposition #113 to #116 as for

Article nouns.
Article 1to 2 the [singular]

Determiner #12 all
Coordinating Conjunction #6 but
Correlative Conjunction #6 just as...so...
Subordinating Conjunction #6 although

Interjection #78 best wishes

Grammar Fuel: 12,000 Phrases & Idioms

Grammar Fuel: 12,000 Phrases & Idioms is a 12,000 phrases and idioms on 12 tables alphabetized and numbered for d1000 rolls. The idioms are mostly American English based.

I use this second book to take the place of any one part of speech roll, whenever desired.

146 page PDF, bookmark navigation, hyperlink table of contents, and a navigation page which may be accessed quickly from every page by clicking on a link on the bottom of page.

These are just features found in the two newest PDF books

Plus the Prior 5 PDF books

This character mechanism book has tools to help create PC and NPC characters, character behavior, dialogue topics, voice qualities, character motivation, character sensory data, emotions, body language, human physical descriptions, character knowledge, careers, subconscious dreams & interpretation, and circles of relationships. The basic NPC AI is included focusing on personality archetype, moods, emotions, body language, motivation, dialogue engine, behavior engine, and relationship circles (the next volume, CM2 has character thinking, relationships, and reaction (emotion) engines).

This character mechanism II book has tools to help create descriptive character traits, flaws, thoughts, reactions, and relationships.

This story mechanism book has keyword(s) tools to help create story plots, twists, theme, mood, motive, foe, story seed, scene action, transition scenes, narrative, and work with the main conflicts.

This environmental mechanism book has tools to help create brief descriptive mostly outdoor setting, weather, terrain, natural disasters, Earth-like animals, and even fantasy worlds. The focus of the tools are to create description in brief-but-unique sentence descriptions made with keywords. Each of the tools focuses on using specific biome, terrain, type of environmental event, sensory experience, or life type keywords or details.

This remnant RPG tools book has tools to help have more descriptive violent combat. One strike kills and limb severence are possible with this tool. Because of this, this book is for more mature gamers. This also brings together a revised and slightly expanded combat system from the minimalist system, three descriptive combat critical tables, minimalist skills, minimalist elemental effects, minimalist: fear, disgust, & madness, and minimalist: ghosts, angels, & demons.

Story Mechanisms: creating a story profile instructions (part 7)

Click on image to enlarge

Story sheet after this session which includes this 2nd Conflict

This is the sheet of what has been created so far.

https://www.rpgnow.com/product/257257/Story-Mechanisms

Expanding the story part 3

So far in this series I've made a basic story structure sheet, began constructing a story by selecting the basic story elements, decided to star the main character Dakota, created an argument opening scene between Dakota and Rowan, wrote an inciting event, and created a first conflict from that inciting event.

Next, I'll roll for a second conflict.

Second Conflict

Why: flashback to original cause of conflict

What I will do with this writing challenge is maybe begin with Dakota going to try finding Rowan and then begin to question what happened. I will then do a flashback I will test to find out if Dakota finds out what actually happened to help explain why and maybe help for the final conflict.

Roll for difficulty challenge of second conflict.

Moderate, Inconvenient

This probably should use soul for social ability and investigate skill.

Roll for resolution for soul & investigate = (fair (0)+ fair (0)) + roll (6) =  A die roll of 6 automatically succeeds. Despite the challenge you succeeded with great effort and luck.




Several people knew Rowan a little bit.

Despite being mostly reclusive, Rowan did speak with a few.

Rowan would speak about the great historical Expansion-age as a great elvish time in history, almost a golden age. Most interesting to Rowan, was the ancient magical arts. Rowan tried to learn everything in books and at the site about magical use, historical battles involving magic, and even the dark arts.

Dakota, through great effort and a little luck was able to track down the last known home of Rowan.

Dakota walked towards the home that Rowan had been living in recently.

Several families lived in this part of the village.

Asking around, many didn't know Rowan's name, and was known however when being described.

Finally, Dakota found the last known home.

It was empty—not even a single piece of furniture.

Asking around brought no answer at first. Dakota however, persisted deep past nightfall. When Dakota was about to leave and go home,  one person finally nodded yes. One person described a few days ago, that same day that Dakota had hit Rowan, as the last day seen there.

Rowan had come home kicking at rocks, hitting the wall, and slammed the door shut.

The following day, Rowan packed up a handcart filled with belongings and left the home, heading towards the northern gate.



Next posts So far, the story has resolved the first and second conflict. The next post will go into the final conflict.

Story Mechanisms: creating a story profile instructions (part 6)

Click on image to enlarge

This is the sheet of what has been created so far.

https://www.rpgnow.com/product/257257/Story-Mechanisms

Expanding the story part 2

So far in this series I've made a basic story structure sheet, began constructing a story by selecting the basic story elements, decided to star the main character Dakota, and in last post created an argument opening scene between Dakota and Rowan.

Next, I'll roll for an inciting event. 

Inciting Event

Something important destroyed

Now I need to brainstorm. First, I'll write some of the prior keywords.

physical-based story
Dakota's social acknowledgment and self-actualizing from ugliness motivation
stop or destroy either the foe or the foes' giant ooze creatures
trying to attack an elvish village
archaeological dig, elvish ancient ruins, Expansions-age
character might be considered ugly
magical candelabra
stinky glob of ooze
"I'll kill you," Dakota heard Rowan say.

My main question is "what is the important thing destroyed."

Maybe it can relate to the archaeological dig. Maybe it can involve the ooze. Maybe it can involve the village.

I know! A archaeological golden statue is found.




Dakota scraped away dirt revealing gold.

Soon more frantic, Dakota quickly removed dirt until face to foot, a mysterious beautiful lady stood regal and powerfully looking at Dakota.

News quickly spread throughout the camp of the discovery.

Later that day, most of the elegant statue had carefully been uncovered from layers of dirt.

Dakota had even skipped eating.

What began as screams across the dig site soon amplified.

Looking towards the screams, a large bright blob slowly was moving this way.

Quickly standing, everyone moved away from the entombed room and moved outside.

The yellow ooze moved to the gold statue and surrounded it.

A sizzling sound and gray steam came from the blob and statue.

Dakota watched as the ultimate beautiful priceless find dissolved into molten blob.

The discovery was now gone.






Okay, now that sets the story up with a foe and a danger that Dakota must now be involved with.

First Conflict

What is needed to fight this foe?


The first conflict will be to try finding something to fight this ooze foe.

Difficulty Challenge: 1, easy; annoying.

Although the final conflict is going to be a physical one, this first conflict makes more sense being an investigation type conflict. I'll use my One-Roll RPG skill and stats mixed with my Flash RPG (RFRPG) and Three Conflict Chain RPG (3CC) rules.

I'll set up the challenge at the end of the inciting event.



Dakota needs stats.

I'm wording these using One-Roll Fudge RPG (ORF) terminology and stats, since I've recently made that game.

Mind: Good
Body: fair
Soul: Fair

Skill: Academics-archaeology: good (+1); fight-martial arts: fair (0); investigate: fair (0)

Roll for resolution for mind & investigate = (good (+1)+ fair (0)) + roll (2) = great (ORF) or +2 over the difficulty challenge for 3CC results Rolling over the difficulty by 2 means victory, with a twist. Although you succeeded roll for a twist to see what has changed.

Because of Dakota's fair

Twist

Rolling for twist result.

Twist in location.


Now time to write something out. The twist of location I'll fit into a different scene. Rowan will not be living nor staying at the same frequent location.

First a reaction scene





Dakota looked at pile of molten metal and gold. Dakota felt a sinking feeling—most of the excitement now turned to dread and hopelessness.

This was supposed to by my career-making discovery!

"Why did the blob eat the statue," one younger assistant asked.

Why indeed? "I don't know," Dakota simply said.

Dakota's mind filled with painful images, the glugging, slurping, and glurping sounds amplified.

And then the horrific event ended.

Dakota looked towards the ooze moving away from the area. Rowan stood and smiled—almost in glee—holding the candelabra up and nodding this way.

I need to find something to resist acid, Dakota thought. Or destroy it! Or stop —that person...

Dakota watched Rowan walk following the ooze off into the distance.




So, already Dakota should know who did it, what was used, and what caused ooze attack.
Dakota already solved how to fight the foe. And the character will now become an active participant in future conflict events. Rowan, however as a result of the twist, will not be easy to find.


Next posts
So far, the story has resolved the first conflict sort of by solving the first question quickly. The next post will go into the next conflict.