Joined map and a little coloring

I retried another version of the northern map. The roughness of texture is very apparent once joined. There are even a few joining differences.

Also I experimented with some light green,  green and dark green for indicators of grasslands and forests. Two grey spots were supposed to indicate burnt areas, but I don't really like how they turned out.

I hand painted the upper lake. The big lack in the southern map came with the topographical info for the ocean and world, which has a different color. 

Aioskoru Solo Game: Map of area Western Ekouinmanus Kapos

Tools Used
Aioskoru website
Aioskoru Adventure seeds
ABS12 System

Continued from this Aioskoru Story Series
Aioskoru part 1 : "Wild Horses"
Aioskoru part 2 : "Friendly Centaur"
Aioskoru part 3 : Experience Points award
Aioskoru part 4 : "Emotional Plea"
Aioskoru part 5 : "For Sickness or Work"
Aioskoru Solo Game: Map of area Western Ekouinmanus Kapos

Aioskoru, Western Ekouinmanus Kapos Map Series
Aioskoru Solo Game: Map of area Western Ekouinmanus Kapos
 Lakes and rivers using GIMP and Donjon fractal maps
Automated rivers: first automated river attempts

Western Ekouinmanus Kapos

[Click image to enlarge]

I made this map using my techniques found in Quick free world maps using GIMP filters and Donjon fractal maps.

This is the beginning of the Aioskoru map showing the story locations. I plan on updating the map as the story continues. I only drew in part of the main river and streams which continue and cover this region, just so that I have a basis for the story.

This map is about 350 miles wide and high. The small red dot shows the hill upon which I imagine the centaur village is locate just to the south of the northern stream. I haven't named that village, streams, nor river yet. It looks close, but it is really 20 miles away from the village. Andelin and Madi were caught to the northwest across the stream on that hill outcrop across the valley north of that same stream. About 50 miles to the northeast of the village you can see the rugged  far distant barren rugged hills and plateaus.

RPG vs Story Sequel: Reaction

RPG and Story Scene Series

RPG and Story Scenes: The foundation of action within a story.

RPG and Story Scenes: RPG scenes

RPG and Story Scenes: Writing and RPG methods
RPG vs Story Sequel: Reaction 

In the last section concerned mostly scenes though some of the techniques may be used to describe sequels. In this section we can look at the specific details and techniques needed in many reaction sequels. RPGs and story writing differ in focus and techniques.

Reactive Reaction Sequel

RPG reaction scene indicators
While the action scene mechanics are very defined in RPGs, the reactions or sequels is something that is less specified in RPG gaming.

It normally begins when the gamemaster (GM) tells the group about something majorly important. RPGs normally divide the game into player character (PC) reactions and non-player character (NPC) reactions. The GM controls the NPC reactions which may offer hints into the game story plot. The players experience the PC reactions and offer reactions.

What a GM says naturally creates a reaction in the players. First the players may feel something inside if the players feel connected to their characters. These feelings may or may not be expressed verbally or non-verbally. But sometimes they are expressed.

One code sentence that may indicate that the GM said something that might invoke a reaction is, "What do you do?" It means that they think that they have just finished telling enough background and setting material invoke some reaction in the player characters - maybe having dropped some hints here and there.

A few times, one mechanical technique used to indicate a character's reaction may be a resistance roll. These type of reactions are mechanical reactions to forces aimed towards the character. Several different mechanical examples can illustrate reactions. Sometimes before combat a roll to see if the characters are surprised or aware is rolled. An offensive attack may be reacted to with a defensive roll. A magic attack may be reacted to with a magical resistance roll. Some skill rolls have reactive counter rolls to test awareness. Another might be opportunity attack rules for when another enemy character or creature moves near another in combat. Some games even have lists of reactions, as actions.

Whereas the GMs control the NPC reactions and the players control the PC reactions, in story writing authors control both the point of view and non point of view character reactions.


Story Writing reaction scene indicators
In writing, authors must harness the point of view character's individual emotional reaction towards important events. The author may have to think and feel at times like the character, especially a point of view character. For non-point of view characters, they may have to think and feel in addition to imagining how those characters physically react. The character's emotional reactions must be sprinkled throughout the scene. If they don't react at least sometimes, the writing will loose the deeper emotional connection that readers may enjoy and connect with. The characters may seem wooden or robotic. That means that sequels are more defined in story writing than in RPGs.

Indicators begin with emotional and instinctive reactions - immediately following the event or awareness of information. The characters feel something. What they feel may be flavored and seen from the perspective. What does the cause character to feel? After initial instinctive reaction, thinking will begin. They then may think and talk about their possible actions. What can they do about the cause? Then they will come to some decision about their next action.

Story writing offers these specific detailed techniques of emotional reaction, analysis of dilemma, and making a decision, whereas RPGs only have hints and rolls. Looking into the story writing technique is more beneficial for exploring reaction sequels. Let's look at each story writing reaction step and evaluate them from a point of view and non-point of view perspective.

1) Emotional Reaction

The first part of the reaction sequel is an emotional reaction to something that occurred, is learned, or comes to surface. The characters have instinctual physiological descriptions and knee jerk reactions. Emotions may be described. What does this mean to the characters?.

Maybe the event startles the character - they feel tingling on theirs skin, their heartbeat races, and they fill a sudden rush of adrenaline.

Maybe they feel worry - they feel a loss of appetite or sick stomach, brings their hand up to massage their neck, and takes a few deep breaths.

For point of view characters, you can describe these emotional reactions in terms of physiological responses rather than adjectives describing general feelings. Don't just say happy, sad, angry, frightened, etc.. Describe how those emotions feel. Maybe the character doesn't know what they are feeling means and will rapidly try to change that instinct emotion when they think about it in a moment. Or maybe the reaction is tied to some subconscious thought.

For non-point of view characters, you have to describe the emotions in terms of viewable markers, facial expressions, instinctive behavior, and body language. Knowledge of some body language can help.

As awareness kicks in, the characters must analyse and think up options to turn what this means to them into some sort of new action..

2) Analysis of Dilemma

The next part of the reaction sequel is for the characters to come up with possible actions and figure out what to do. They may use different methods of evaluation based on their character personality, motivation, emotion, needs, lies, and ethics.

In the earlier example, maybe a startled character realizes that they are caught off guard. They may begin to think about how they need to control themself. Maybe they realize that their biggest fear has come true, and a depth of terror sets in. 

A worried character may speak with someone else about their discomfort. Maybe in speaking, another character reassures the worried character. But in their conversation, they discover something else which may lead to another worry.

There is the problem and then the possible solutions. Most of the solutions should be bad if the conflict is strong enough. The character(s) probably will choose the least bad solution.

For point of view characters, you can have internal dialogue of the actual thinking. They may also speak with other characters. Subtext can be wonderful. When characters may not directly speak exactly what they are thinking, and their body language and hints say otherwise.

For non-point of view character, you may just use descriptive text describing body language and dialogue to hint at what they are thinking.

The analysis of possible solutions, probably two or three, will lead to a decision.

3) Decision

This choice should be the next scene goal. The goal itself should be something simple, real, valuable, possible, and challenging. The reaction scene will then transition into a proactive action scene. Once a decision has been made, the sequel can change into an action scene.

For RPGs, the GM can continue to describe details leading to the next sequence of actions.

RPG and Story Scenes: Writing and RPG methods

RPG and Story Scene Series

RPG and Story Scenes: The foundation of action within a story.

RPG and Story Scenes: RPG scenes

RPG and Story Scenes: Writing and RPG methods
RPG vs Story Sequel: Reaction

The RPG and Story Writing Methods of managing Time Modes

In the last section concerning time modes, I introduced several techniques used in both fiction writing and in RPG gaming. In this section, I will delve a little more deeper into those techniques. I will also reference an important free book called RPG Design Patterns by. Whitson John Kirk III.

I'll follow a similar timeless and time focused grouping for first RPG gaming and then story writing.

After discussing this section, the bridge from one media to the other should begin to become more crossable.


RPG gaming

Timeless modes.

Time vague skill comparison
For this type of action, the controlling player has some indicator to compare to something that represents difficulty. Many games use as an indicator a roll or draw of a card plus or minus any modifiers due to skill, condition, attributes, powers, environment, or position. What actually happens might be interpreted by taking into account the degree of the success or failure

In the book RPG Design Patterns, they are called Generalized Contests.

Series of sequence rolls vs target or each other
For this type of contest a player does repeated tasks. Each task adds progression on to proceeding progression. The final result is compared to either a target or a competing result in order to find out the success of the series of actions. The purpose is to create a sense of tension building up do competition. It works best when the two or more parties are nearly equally matched. What success or failure means should be establish before the series is begun.

In the book RPG Design Patterns, they are called Contest Trees or sometimes Last Man Standing.

Story element rolls
For this type of series of action, entire sections of a story can be resolved with as little as one roll. This type of technique is good to get past more boring material - almost trivial - but important to be in the game or story. It can be used when those involved are obviously outmatched. Important is discussing ahead of time what the actual successes or failures mean.

In the book RPG Design Patterns, they are called Negotiated Contests.


Time focused moments
The time focused material is normally governed by some time keeping system such as rounds or cycles. Some like Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) use triggered moves, which are sort of like scripts.

Simultaneous rolls
This type of action can either help decided action and reaction at the same time. Some systems use only one indicator which is either a roll, card, or pool of points. An upper value results to mean that the actor succeeds and the target fails. The middle value might mean ties or both act. The lower value might mean the target succeeds and the actor fails.

Some simultaneous roll systems use one roll of each party both as the active base and the reactive base - just apply two sets of modifiers to the same roll, however deriving two different numbers for comparison. One is offensive and the other is defensive.

Either technique might be best when medium importance is attached to the actions.

Alternating rolls
This is the most time consuming and detailed of the techniques. Sometimes the rounds are subdivided into different phases, steps, or stages such as surprise, initiative, declaration, resolution, and reaction sections. Normally the purpose is to have on person or one team remain in the end - which are the winners or successful side.

In the book RPG Design Patters, both types Simultaneous and alternating are normally called Last Man Standing

Time specific skill rolls
Time specific skills are rolled and based in action round time such as during combat. It uses the similar mechanism as timeless moments except a duration of time will probably be attached to the skill action. Most of the time it will be whatever the standard action is. Sometimes, more difficult or time consuming actions might expand into several time units. A few times, they may be rapid or hurried actions skills.

In the book RPG Design Patterns, they are called Generalized Contests.

Dialogue
Dialogue isn't something really emphasized in RPG core rules nor expansion material. It only seems to become important when characters need to interact with the NPCs or each other. Some GMs seem to get into character easier when trying to mimic NPC voices. I think that it makes the game more fun and interesting, as long as the conversations stay somewhat near towards the plot of the game story. Certainly, much like writing, character dialogue can create unwanted tangents leading to nowhere. One thing that it does noticeably do is it helps to connect the players to their characters more directly. It has very similar use in story writing to help connect readers with the characters directly.

Time based narration

Time based narration all happen within a time frame of rounds, moves, cycles, or other time-unit based system. The time units keep track of time more closely and accurately. Narrative however summarizes what is going on and around the characters. It can describe what the other NPCs are doing and reacting.

Story writing

Timeless moments

Narrative summary
This is 'telling' what happened, 'not showing' what happened. It is static description and sometimes called exposition that normally has explanatory information interwoven. It can summarize a set of facts for actions, dialogue, feelings, thoughts, and descriptions. For static description techniques it might describe a thing, the scene, or a person.

This type of summary is good before and after an intensely detailed scene. Before a scene, it helps to explain the important and needed information for the conflicts that will be shortly faced. When used after a scene it gives the reader or player a chance to recover without getting those involved bogged down in unnecessary details..

Transitional scenes
When quickly moving from one important moment to the next - when details don't matter as much, transition sentences can transcend time, space, and even characters. In very brief summaries, you can take a character or group from once action and important scene to another one, thus bypassing travel, trivial scenes, and unimportant content that's not really related to the plot.

Time focused moments

Action
Action within a scene normally means that someone is trying to go somewhere, get something, solve an issue, or move forward progressing the plot. There is a scene goal from the point of view character and a series of obstacles or challenges that may represent the antagonist, which when the two interact in conflict they create outcomes.

Descriptions of supporting character actions
Emotions can't normally described the same way with non-POV characters as POV. With non-POV, a writer can describe external behavior that gives clues to the psychological state of the character. Instead of saying that another character is 'happy', describe how the characters smiles, sighs, or laughs joyously. Maybe they hum a happy tune. Although you can't see inside the head of those characters, external clues let the reader guess what is going on in their heads.

Dialogue
Dialogue is one of the fastest methods to improve fiction. As long as the dialogue is related to the plot and not too wordy. Dialogue can reveal character, advance the plot, and discus the theme. It is one of the ways we can understand how the characters think and act about what's going on in the story plot. It can reveal and show conflict. Dialogue should be written from the character's perspective, not the author's perspective. It should include personality and relationship subtext.

Story writing has better and more established advice, techniques, and methods for helping to write better character dialogue.

Interior monologue
Interior monologue is a tool to reveal what a POV character really thinks. It is the most direct method to understanding the character's internal workings. Using internal monologue that differs from external dialogue can create conflict within a character where they say something different than they actually think or believe.

Inner emotions 
Inner emotions and instinctual reactions can reveal things that not even the POV character knows or understands about themself. Whereas monologue is a direct connection to the POV mind, emotions are a direct connection to the POV unconscious mind, emotions, and heart.

Interior monologue and emotions are something that a RPG lacks because it uses the player's as proxy to feel for the characters.

Summary
RPG gaming techniques do physical action better than story writing. Story writing has better dialogue, interior monologue & emotions techniques. Both RPGs and story writing deal with time using similar methods though they are called different things.

ABS12: Using a deck of cards to do solo gaming.

All the changes from this page will be added to the complete master game page at A Basic System 12 (ABS12).

Frustrated at having to roll against myself using the ABS12 combat system, I think I've found a better way to do combat.

Since the system is a 1d12, a standard deck of playing cards with the kings and jokers removed can simulate a solo gaming experience where I don't have to roll against myself. I just roll against a shuffled deck of cards more like playing solitaire. In a game of solitaire, the shuffled deck of cards allows you to focus on figuring out patterns instead of generating random numbers and suite.

So, using a deck of cards:
Numbers 1 to 10 equal the stated values.
jack = 11
queen = 12

Maybe reshuffle the cards as needed or for each session or as needed.

A Basic System 12 (ABS12)
Index of my blog