Learning about Poetry (part 1): Random Word set and Muse #1 Journaling, well...keyword freewrite

I don't know a lot about poetry.

I'm sort of switch Poetry Month and Short Story Month. Last month during Poetry Month at Reddit, I created the short story "The Art of Love and Loss", even though I was also creating Rhyming Fuel, though nobody saw that beyond my family members. This month, which is short story month, I'll try to create poetry at this blog.

A few years ago, I did a series of posts concerning fables. I'd like to do something similar for poetry where I study, learn, and try stuff concerning poetry.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/313805/Rhyming-Fuel

I wrote Rhyming Fuel because having a random rhyme word table was the easiest way for me to do something related to poetry. I don't know if I've ever seen a random d1000 rhyme word table before, so the creation seemed like a good challenge.

Having said that, I want to at least try to learn a little about poetry. Maybe a few readers out there would like to follow along or at least read about a poetry journey, however far the attempt continues.

I'm downloading an Open Textbook about poetry to serve as both instruction and inspiration for exercises that I will try.



Naming the Unnameable: an Approach to Poetry for a New Generation is Creative Commons textbook which will form the basis for at least a couple of posts or attempts at poetry.

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks/naming-the-unnameable-an-approach-to-poetry-for-new-generations

Rolling for a Random Rhyme-word set

The textbook doesn't say this, but I want a random word set to begin this experiment. This is takes words that I researched, gathered, and combined the last month and a half. It also gives me a chance to test out the list once more.

I roll a d1000 rolling a 264.

Using Rhyming Fuel, I find the random set.

#264 egg, leg, beg, peg, vague, plague, keg, bootleg, nutmeg

Muse #1 Journaling.

"For many of us, a poem starts with an idea, a memory, a sound, an image.....our
mind sorts through experiences, sensations, feelings, images, and ideas and files them in our
memory".

Here is what I am going to do. I know freewriting, which is Muse #4 in this textbook.

I as a Journaling exercise, I will focus-word freewrite the 9 words above for 10 minutes.

egg...chicken, birth, lay, breakfast, scrambled, oval, omelet, new, incubate, innovation, hot, cold

leg...broken, chair, walking, kicking, stand, standing, asleep, stable, sufficient, sore

beg...need, want, desire, must have, desperate, beggar, don't have, forgiveness, mercy, ask, motivated

peg...hang, place, hit, decide, fit, plug, mark, holt together, small fastener, home supply store, wooden

vague...unclear, murky, misty, foggy, dark, unknown, confused, brief, barely, unsure, unexplainable

plague...coronavirus, stay at home, walking pneumonia, hospital, contagious, communicable, sickness, long duration, antidote

keg... dynamite, beer, Cracker Barrel, barrel, container, holding, storage, filling, emptying

bootleg...unofficial, underground, copy, illegal, music, movie, 

nutmeg... spice, ingredient, French toast, cookies, baking, eggnog

It actually took me 13 minutes to react and write about each of the 9 words.

Okay. I now have something at least to work with maybe. At least it is a start. You may freewrite something else.

Next Poetry post.

That's it for today. In the next poetry post I might try Muse #2 Collecting, which is writing down images based on the stuff written above. 

Rhyming Fuel now available. 1000 sets of rhyming words numbered for d1000 rolls.

Now available, Rhyming Fuel

If you accept emails from DTRPG, you may have received a discount address for further savings.

For April's Poetry Month, I created a d1000 tool to roll for sets of random rhyming words.

It has taken a month and a half to get it to the point of release after 6 major revisions. It grew from 30 pages, to 40 pages, and finally 51 pages during the final weeks of adding new material.



https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/313805/Rhyming-Fuel

This is a one-time 51 page PDF list of rhyming sets numbered 1 to 1000. About 20,000 words, a few used in more than one set. Sets average 5 to 20 words. They range from 3 to 658 words. No other rhyming lists are planned at this time.

Rhyming Fuel is a 1000 rhyme-word sets on a table mostly reverse alphabetized by ending and numbered for d1000 rolls. The rhyme sets are mostly American English based spelling.

Examples
#56 contagious, courageous, outrageous, umbrageous, advantageous, disadvantageous, ages
#165 arch, march, parch, starch, countermarch, larch, cornstarch, démarche, exarch
#451 cringe, fringe, hinge, singe, springe, tinge, twinge, infringe, binge, dinge, tinge, impinge, infringe, lunatic fringe
#715 forth, fourth, north, worth, due north, henceforth, thenceforth, compass north, east by north, in the north, to the north
#961 gushy, mushy, rushy, slushy, blushy

Examples of rhymes being in a nursery rhyme and a play dialogue.
Bat, bat,
Come under my hat,
And I'll give you a slice of bacon;
And when I bake
I'll give you a cake
If I am not mistaken.
Mother Goose, “Bat, Bat”

Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Second Witch: Macbeth: Act IV, scene 1

Rhyme Words – A rhyme has similar repeated or corresponding sounds in the final syllables of two or more words, primarily used in songs and poems at the end of a verse or line.
Rhymes are useful to help construct a more poetic or musical song and poetry to a scene. The function of a rhyme is to create a repeating pattern that is pleasant to hear. Rhymes also aid in memorization.

Although written as a solo rpg accessory, this product is also a stand alone tool ready—it takes zero conversion to use as a GM tool to help generate scene or dialogue keywords. It is part of the Clawed SRC Accessory ™ and Grammar Fuel ™ brands.

Fuel your game with Rhyming Fuell table of 1000 rhyme-word sets!

If you find any mistakes, this post may serve as a place to report errors or such.

Version update or plans

V1.01 changed one thing. I took a chunk of words ending in -y from words that rhyme with "die", a

long "I" sound and moved it to "ee" ending words since most of that list were words like "agony" rather than words like "crucify".

planned for V1.02 I notice that in #985 "trad route" should be "trade route".

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.

Unreleased Draft from [2-12-18]: Star Frontiers: Expanded - sample adventure (part 3)

[4/21/2020 After 4 sessions of Alpha Dawn and 2 Sessions of Expanded, this is where I stopped. Right after I entered into the ship and found the scorched pilot. I'm not sure why I stopped, but I definitely lost interest because I never did return to finish the spaceship exploration after finding it. I seem to recall that WotC released once again Star Frontiers maybe during this post or shortly after. When I had started the post, the game was available for free on a not-for profit basis, and I had to change the italic text below the picture. In fact, before publishing this post I am also changing the text. Or maybe I just mainly cared about finding the ship rather than about what actually happened. Anyway, here is where I stopped]

Star Frontiers series
Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn Gameplay (Part 1) Character Creation and rules summary
Star Frontiers Game Play: part 2: first adventure
Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn Gameplay (Part 3) The chase
Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn Expanded character. 
Star Frontiers: Expanded - sample adventure
Star Frontiers: Expanded - sample adventure (part 2)

Star Frontiers is once available again.  Also there are Star Frontiersman and Frontier Explorer downloadable magazines.

This is from the expanded rule book on page 58, the Sample Adventure.

I've realized that the rules are much heavier than the basic rules. So I find the rules too cumbersome for solo gaming, I'll default to the basic rules for hopefully quicker resolution.

Continued

Ethest pushed and parted disturbed foliage—gripper vines, a few hook thorns, and even some purple berry bushes not yet blooming—finally revealing an open rear entry door. It was elevated in the air slightly.

At least it appears someone or something had escaped.

Ethest pulled himself up into the entryway.

Pulling on the lever, the inner hatch door remained locked.

He slid his ID card hoping for the best.

A warning horn erupted.

He swallowed with his now drying mouth the best he could the lessening saliva down his now narrowing throat.

Ethest tried pressing a few buttons and another horn signaled.

Soon a message began, "Only authorized Hepplewhite, Inc., employees are allowed past this point. Please enter your security code."

Security code?

He winced and began to rub his forehead and temple to try alleviating pain that the message had caused.

Ethest intensely stared at the alpha-numerical console a moment. The button symbols seemed to blur and fade. He gave an impatient sneer at the console. "Bloody hell!"

Removing one fragmentation grenade from his waist, he twisted a knob activating the electromagnetic function.  He attached the grenade to the locked inner hatch door. A twist of the timer gave him plenty of time to evacuate the blast that was soon to follow.

"BOOM!"

Glancing up at the door the door had fallen to the ground several feet (meters) away from where it had previously been attached.

He pulled himself back up, carefully avoiding the fallen door, hitting his fist against the security console, and entered into the ship.

Inside, a short ladder leads up towards the direction of the cockpit, the interior smelled of burnt Sulphur, possibly from the grenade.

He climbs the ladder, his laser pistol in hand, and the lights flickered occasionally. Behind the chair sat the scorched remains of a human pilot. The instrument panel was also scorched and in ruin.

S

Logic 

After

Swamp.

Almost

to be Continued

So far 8 or 9 unreleased drafts posted, 3-pack

Hopefully, the past two months of mostly using past posts as something new has helped keep never seen content flowing. Normally, I'd be quiet except a few times a year–recently.

There is a lot of stuff that was forgotten and might not otherwise see completion.

A few things were and still are waiting for the opportune time, such as the two rapid synopsis posts.

There is new content from me on the internet from me on social media besides here. From the last few weeks. I'm trying to set it up focusing on something else. I try to put unique material in several places rather than just one place. This place has a lot of my free content compared with the other places. Another place has the One-Roll Fudge RPG material primarily.

Grammar Fuel: 12,000 Phrases & Idioms and Grammar Fuel: Parts of Speech were quite the project to assemble. Actually, the older material is in Parts of Speech, but since it took longer to flesh out, Phrases & Idioms was release first. See the several ___ Fuel posts going back to November for what I've used them for at this blog.

Maybe some of the other projects can be finished as well.

Now available, with Environmental Mechanisms in a three-pack.







We'll see where the next project to spark interest, whether new or old.

Game on!

Unreleased Draft from [7-8-18]: Revisiting Ancient Evil vs Gunslinger

[4/12/2020 This post was the beginning of a post to expand a flash fiction story that I created during 2018 Flash Fiction day weekend if I remember correctly. A flash fiction micro-story named Ancient Evil vs Gunslinger was created 5-30-18. At the moment, I don't expect to do anything with this draft post, so I'll Publish it as is]

In the next series of posts, I want to try something else. I'll pick one of the micro stories that I like, and I want to challenge myself to try to expand that story.

The one story that really seems interesting and intriguing is the gunslinger microfiction.

I'll repost the original below for reference.

In this post I'll create a beginning to the story to provide more backstory. 

Beginning
First I'll roll for a beginning using the upcoming system currently titled Conflict Triad Chain RPG.

[4 dialogue, argument
2 argument between relationship]

There is going to be an argument between the gunslinger and someone else.

Argument about what and with whom?

Argument Topic
[Theme Generator - 3 expect, 6 equipment v ability]

Some item expected to be useful that lets a character do something more, is the what.

[Plot Generator - 4 riddle,  5 solve]

It sounds like the equipment is mysterious and creates a question.

Perhaps the gunslinger is putting something in his mother's attic. When he knocks over one of his deceased father's stored item box, this strange thing falls out.

I also need two different personalities so it's time to use the Character Generator.

Gunslinger = Lone wolf, tough, temperance, deceitful and diagnosis.

Mother = a doer, strong, self reliance, despair, and health

Ancient evil vs the Gunslinger [Revisited] 

Anceint evil vs the Gunslinger [Revisited] © 2020 by Ken Wickham

All Rights Reserved

 

He didn't feel like moving. He rocked the firm hickory chair slowly on the rickety front porch.

A storm flashed sporadically off in the distant western horizon. It blocked out the normally orange and purple luster mounain sunset. The rest of the sky was still deep blue, birds scattered an flew with dips and dives.

'Help me out,' his once strong mother shouted, 'this is too heavy for me!'

Awoken from his daze, he turned his head towards the open window slightly.

'Just wait one moment. I'm thinking about something,' he shouted back.

Her reply came in a rapid lower tone, almost under her breath.

'I'll give you something to think about boy, if you don't get here right this very instant.'

He wenced just from hearing her forceful tone. He knew her health was failing her.

He pushed himself up, checked to see if his his pistols were secure, pushed up the brim his hat, and went into the house.

In the furthest reaches of the western frontier an ancient evil awakens to battle a gunslinger.

A less than accurate gunslinger must overcome this formidable supernatural

Not only does the gunslinger fail, the ancient evil possesses the gunslinger's soul.

Setting
furthest reaches of the western frontier

Foe
Supernatural - ancient evil

Main character
A less than accurate gunslinger

Main plot
awakens to battle a gunslinger.

********previous post**********
The next Flash RPG session.

6, 5, 1, 3, 4, 3, 3
6 western
5 region
1 battle ... defeat
3 supernatural, unimaginable

In the furthest reaches of the western frontier an ancient evil awakens to battle a gunslinger.

4 body
3 -1
3 hard

A less than accurate gunslinger must overcome this formidable supernatural force. Will the gunslinger prevail?

1 little effort
Automatic fail + worse

Not only does the gunslinger fail, the ancient evil possesses the gunslinger's soul.

Unreleased Draft from [3-27-17]: Western RPG series, Tombstone

In this series, I wanted to look at various western RPGs - specifically PWYW western RPGs. While there are several greater known western RPGs, I want to look at how others view the western genre.

I downloaded several western PWYW RPGs but while quickly scrolling through the game book one caught my attention more, Tombstone. It is a rather quick decision based only on passing glance, and a thought "this looks a little different".

First, I'll look at Tombstone (Alpha) which came out 1 and a half years ago in the late 2015s. Being an alpha indicates it's just a testing phase game.

The cover has a picture similar to the movie named the same.

It's written by Corey Ryan Walden and is 57 pages.

It looks like half of the book is player stuff for characters and half of the book is Gm stuff like setting and encounters, including a few pages of adventure setting at the end.

This is a 3d6 + skill or modifier and roll-over game system.

Two character creation methods are presented.

Quick method and from scratch. I'll choose the quick method.

I'll create a female gunslinger named Sarah.

1. female
2. Sarah
3. Folk Hero

Folk Hero
Health: 7
Defense: 11
Offense: Gunslinging +2, Brawling +0
Personality: +1
Investigation: +0
Willpower: 10
Speed: 40 feet
Fortune Dice: 1
Possessions: Two pistols (1d6 damage each),
bowie knife (1d6 damage), hat, trousers, shirt,
boots, $3.

Bountiful Rewards: When making a convincing speech and/or a successful Personality check you may garner a higher reward for a job. Add an extra 25% to the amount of money you would normally receive. This only applies to your reward, not any of your companions’ rewards. An ill-conceived speech or failed check may result in the normal paid fee rather than the Bountiful Reward.

[Notes to this previously unreleased draft: After I created this character, I did not do anything else with this game. This is about the period where I was working through 5e x 5 material and organizing other material that would become the Solo RPG Tools series.

So this character may or may not be complete, but I'll probably will not get around to doing anything more with this, considering she is 3 years since creation at this moment. So beyond this character, I do not know how the game plays.]