I’m using a deck of cards! I know, very innovative.

Stats

Still arranged with dice faces – d4, d6, d12… – for convenience, and because I like it.

The stats themselves are simplified, between Physical and Mental actions/activities, which themselves are subdivided into ‘Attack’ and ‘Defence’ equivalents. They are:

Physical:

• Prowess: Perform active tasks. Such as lifting objects, attacking an oponent.
• Resilience: Resist hardships. Such as perform long tasks, resisting an attack.

Mental:

• Inspiration: E.g.: Convince someone of your words, use magic.
• Willpower: E.g.: Resist being swindled, resistance against magical effects.

Basically yes, Fabula Ultima with different name.

Difficulty

Here is where the deck of cards comes in.

54 cards. Standard deck of 52 plus the two jokers.

Shuffle the deck, pick a card. If the card picked is equal or lower to the attribute being tested – e.g.: drawing a 5 with the relative stat being a d6, it is a success; otherwise, it is a failure.

Ace is always equals to 1.

optional: if the drawn card is exactly equal to the stat – e.g.: 8 vs a d8, it is a critical success. There is no critical failure.

If a joker is pulled, then something completely unexpected happen.

optional: draw a second card after the joker, to determine if the unexpected is good or bad for you.

Once the card is used, it goes to the discard pile. The exception being the joker.

The joker card is always returned to the deck, and the deck reshuffled. But only the remaining cards.

The discard pile is reshuffled into the deck only when the deck has run out.

Oracle

By default, an oracle is a simple yes/no against a difficulty value. Something unlikely would be a d10, and only the face cards would mean it happen. While something likely would be a d4.

I understand it is not balanced. It is not meant to be really.

optional: use the colours and suites to have a more granular answer:

• Cups & Diamonds: no change.
• Clubs: Yes, but / No, but
• Spades: Yes, and / No, and

Got a joker in the oracle? Go wild!

Make a dragon eat the oracle or something.

Final Thoughts

I don’t think there is much more to add, if anything at all.

Will I actually use it? Probably not, maybe for a single session, a few dozen years from now or something.

But it was fun thinking and writing about it.

#SoloRPG #RPG #Oracle #CharacterStats #PlayerCharacter #Difficulty #CardDeck

The Princess walked out of the gloomy corridor, stepping on broken rock and wet grass. Her foot bare, covered in layers of grime, dirt, and things she would rather not know.

Ahead of her, an altar lay in the centre of the circular room. Light filtered through a roof of leaves and branches falling on its black surface, giving it an eerie feeling, the Sword on her right hand becoming heavier at each step the Princess took.

‘I should not be in here.’ The air condensed in front of her mouth as the Princess takes one step towards the altar, then another. The weight of the Sword pulling her hand down, resisting her advance, its tip scrapping on the stone floor.

A voice screamed in her head, the Princess pushed it deep in her thoughts.

Thoughts. The Princess no longer had those.

The Princess stepped in the sun light that bathed the altar, it fell cold on her skin, sipping her body’s warm instead of giving.

She was now in front of the altar, its surface wasn’t a black rock as she thought, no, it was no surface at all.

‘Join me.’ The void beckoned, inviting the Princess, the seductive whisper of a lover in her ear. But the Sword holding her back from jumping into her lover’s arms.

‘I want it.’ With all her might, the Princess pulled the Sword forward, the sharp edge hitting her feet, hurting her.

With a cry of pain the Princess fell back, away from the sunlight, away from the altar’s whispers.

‘I need to get out of here.’ The Sword agreed with the Princess, becoming lighter as she stood up, stepping back. The Princess turned and walked away.

Gloom fell on her like a motherly mantle as the Princess passed through the arch, leaving the circular room with its cold sunlit altar behind.

The Princess walked in dark corridors, no light she carried in her hand, only the Sword, yet the Princess could still see the contours of the wall, the intricate work on the pillars supporting the arched ceiling, the carved faces, twisted, screaming, adorning the walls.

And she could see the Thing.

The Princess stepped close, it was a person, a man, by the looks of his build, his short hair falling on his face, not towards the ground the Princess stood. He was suspended with by his right foot, locked inside what appeared to be a crack in the ceiling.

‘Should I free him?’ The Princess took one step forward, her foot falling over something round, slippery, pain spiked through her leg as the wounded foot slid against a pillar. ‘No.’ She decided, walking past the Man, her back scrapping the wall, the faces frozen in stone bitting against her once pompous dress, her heart beating against her throat. Did he smiled at her? The Princess thought better to not dwell on it and moved on.

The Princess proceed through the corridors, ignoring doors that appeared at either side, not attempting to open them.

Ahead, a light came from an opening in the wall. It was an open archway, leading into a balcony.

The balcony was high above the ground, far above the tree tops. The short stone railing, protecting visitors from falling into the enclosure bellow, was cracked, broken. Half missing.

‘You can’t be serious.’ The Princess said, looking at the Sword in her hand. Though no voice spoke, the Princess knew the Sword’s mind, as she ever did since her hands first touched its hilt.

‘A gift, from a land far away.’ The Emissary said, though the Princess did not remember whence he had come, or if the Emissary ever named it. Many had been the gifts she received that day, the day of her wedding, this Sword, though exquisite with its black blade, was just one gift amongst many. But as the Princess closed her hand around the hilt, lifting from the red velvet in the Emissary’s hands, she knew it was no normal sword, for this Sword had a mind of its own, had its own desires.

Desires the Princess could not refuse then, desires the Princess could not refuse now.

The Princess lifted her hand against the sun and stepped into its light, getting closer to the edge of the balcony. The sun light was not the warm she wished, but wasn’t cold she experienced either. If anything, the Princess decided, the sun was indifferent. It did not cared if the Princess fell, it did not cared if the Princess lived.

But the Sword cared. The Princess looked down, then towards the side, where the balcony’s rail was missing.

Vines grew up the wall, old vines they appeared to be, old and thick.

She grabbed one on the wall next to the balcony, pieces of the railing masonry could still be seen lost in its snares. She pulled back, the vines held.

‘How I am to climb down if you won’t let it go.’ The Sword did not spoke back. The Princess resigned herself, and grabbed hold of the vines as best as she could, trying to not slice her way towards death with the black metal, began her descent.

When the Princess stepped on firm ground again, she found herself surrounded by tall trees, their canopies drowning the land beneath in its shadow, shadows which hid raised roots and loose stones, fallen branches and rabbit holes.

There was only one path in the enclosure, leading from the wall deep into the garden, a garden with no birds to sing, only the sound of snapping branches, a garden with no flowers to smell, only the scent of rot to feel.

Sounds, smells, and eyes.

The Princess saw the eyes, far away from the path, deep into the trees. To her right and to her left they stared back, little red balls, floating in shadows within shadows. But the path did not lead to the eyes, and the eyes did not pursed the Princess.

The path lead to an opening, the sun shinning in the small grassy mound, a flat stone at its centre.

‘We are here.’ The Princess knew it as soon as she stepped in the sunlight, it was warm. The Princess shivered at the coldness of her humid, tattered dress. ‘Yes, we are here.’

The Princess walked to the sone, it was long and wide, enough for a person to lay comfortable over it. It was cold to the touch, but a welcoming sort of cold.

‘There was never a happy ending to this journey was there?’ The Princess run her trembling fingers over the stone.

‘Or I can smash you against it.’ The Princess hand tightened on the Sword hilt. She could feel its fear. ‘But then what?’

The Princess sat on the stone slab. It was, comfortable, not the harsh feeling she expected, it felt almost soft. She laid down.

The Princess took one long breath, then held the sword with both hands, the blade flat on top of her.

Closing her eyes, the Princess expired.

This story was made from the prompts of Princess with a Cursed Sword.

(https://w.itch.io/cursed-sword) (not affiliated)

#SoloRPG #Fantasy #RPG #Story #ShortStory

The stats themselves are:

• Physical: Which governs any physical activity. This stat could honestly be split in two: - Prowess: the “strength” aspect of the stat; - Deftness: the “dexterity” part of it.
• Mental: Should be used for mental tasks, such as analyses, information gathering (as in piecing together clues), etc.
• Social: Used for any interaction with others.
• Spiritual: Basically force of will. I can see this being part of the Social or Mental stats, but I can also see it used alongside Physical stats: how long can the character endure an arduous task. Considering that I take the Fabula Ultima’s approach to challenge test rather than Ironsworn’s (more when I talk about difficulty), I will keep it separated.

The values for the stats, like in Fabula Ultima, are that of dice size used. Ranging from d4 to d12, though d12 is presently unavailable at character creation.

The stat distribution would work on a point buy system, with a total of 8 points to expend:

• d4: 1 point
• d6: 2 points
• d8: 3 points
• d10: 5 points
• d12: 8 points

This would give the arrays: balanced: d8, d6, d6, d4; specialised: d8, d8, d4, d4; crippling: d10, d4, d4, d4.

To have a d12 in either stat, the others would need to be zero. It could work for some specific scenarios.

I have not fully settled down on this yet, as there is some interactions when it comes to the difficulty challenges (will be explored in a future post).

An alternative system would be to shift the costs, giving the characters a higher range.

• d4: no longer available
• d6: 1 point
• d8: 2 points
• d10: 3 points
• d12: 5 points

Possible arrays being: [d10, d18, d8, d6], [d10, d10, d6, d6], and [d12, d6, d6, d6]

This could also be used as a difference between player characters and random NPCs. As the player character is meant to be a Hero and cut above the rest.

The opposite could also be true, with the lower range used for PC and NPCs alike, while particular NPC, such as villains, would have the higher range.

The possibilities are there, and I have not settle down on any.

The stats themselves would be further improved by Quirks – to be explored in the next post, which is a point for the lower range for PCs.

But there is still the matter of difficulty, which is a point in favour for the higher range.

#RPG #SoloRPG #CharacterStats #PlayerCharacter

• 1: No, and … Not only you failed the task, you failed so misarably that things got worst.
• 2: No. The plain and simple no. You don’t get what you asked for.
• 3: No, but … Okay, you failed, but it wasn’t a complete loss.
• 4: Yes, but … Yes, you succeeded, but at what cost?
• 5: Yes. The plain and simple yes. You do get what you asked for.
• 6: Yes, and … The best outcome, not only you suceeded in getting what you wanted, but you also got some extra rewards.

It is a simple idea and it fits well with the most common die.

So taking a step further, by going back a die size, we can use a d4 (four sided die), and only have the middle yes/no answers.

• 1: No.
• 2: No, but…
• 3: Yes, but…
• 4: Yes.

It is basically removing the extremes.

Going further still by increasing the die size to eight (d8), we no longer have a one-to-one relationship between die number and answer.

In this die, I imagine a bigger focus in the middle No-but and Yes-but:

• 1: No, and…
• 2: No.
• 3 or 4: No, but…
• 5 or 6: Yes, but…
• 7: Yes.
• 8: Yes, and…

Another step further lead us into d10:

• 1: No, and…
• 2 or 3: No.
• 4 or 5: No, but…
• 6 or 7: Yes, but…
• 8 or 9: Yes.
• 10: Yes, and…

It is kind like the d4, a focus in the middle answers but with the possibility of extremes.

And finally, the d12 would give us:

• 1: No, and…
• 2 or 3: No.
• 4, 5, or 6: No, but…
• 7, 8, or 9: Yes, but…
• 10 or 11: Yes.
• 12: Yes, and…

A bell curve. A much greater focus in the middle answers.

In all honesty, only the first three options – d4, d6, and d8 – are likely to see any use. d10 and d12 I made just because, well, just because.

One last alternative is using a d6, but removing the extremes:

• 1: No.
• 2 or 3: No, but…
• 4 or 5: Yes, but…
• 6: Yes.

#SoloRPG #RPG #Oracle

Exactly because there is so many. All of the good, some gooder than others but still.

The one I know best is Ironsworn, but the influency from Fabula Ultima and watching a recent video on someone’s ruleset, Firepit (youtube video) it was called, kind make it feel Ironsworn is not really what I want.

To be honest, I was trying too hard with it.

Is it balanced and I plan to do anything with it?

Absolutelty not.

As my Final Fantasy XIV character says in its search comment: “I’m in for the fun, efficiency be damned.”

Same spirit for balancing stuff out.

As for doing something with it. Not quite.

I started a Writing Challange (https://writingmonth.org/~cavanholi/) 1000 words per day during the days of Lent.

I won’t be rellying on the ruleset for much, my objective is to write. But I may use it if I feel suitable. That’s what about trying too hard. I think I focus too much on the setting, the mechanics of it, when using some ruleset or another, when what I want is to write with some element of chaos.

So no fault to any of the Solo RPG rulesets out there, it is just me being me.

How deep is it?

You know the tip of the iceber that is just above the water. Yeah, that, but just the surface. If you poke it, you will find void inside. That is to say, not deep at all.

They are not rules to build a world, nor there are tables for names and etc. I have Fabula Ultima dn Ironsworn, amongst others, for that if I need it.

It is really an Oracle, built upon that of Firepit; some character stats, akin to Fabula Ultima but not exactly the same; a difficult table, stats modifiers and very basic rules.

I plan to introduce them as in future posts. Unless I forget about this blog for the next dozen years or so.

#RPG #SoloRPG #WritingChallange

This time however, it wasn’t because I was just procrastinating, but because I had most of my attention turned towards Godot and game development – working on a silly idea for about 6 months now, something unheard of me.

I did do some writing about a week ago, and wrote quite a lot, 15000+ in three days. But that rush passed and my mind returned to that game I was working on.

Because of it, I often debated with myself creating a new mastodom account to post GameDev stuff. So I turned to my old domain and decided to reorgnize things a bit.

What was once journal.cavanholi.com, my primary blog at write.as, has now been moved to top-level domain: cavanholi.com.

While the unused secondary blog Azaria being repurposed for GameDev stuff and directed to soul.cavanholi.com.

#Update #Blog #Website #Godot #Writing

Behind me, cannon fire trailed the sky missing their mark; ahead, a curtain of rain, the wind dragging us towards it.

Of Red, only his bright eyes could be seen on the dark under the deck.

I dropped the sail and closed the canvas, what little light there was, it was now gone, and darkness surrounded me.

Slowly my eyes adjusted and the faint green from the instruments became visible.

Soon we reached rain, the air suddenly becoming cold.

Red now moved from his hiding place, curling on my lap, breathing softly, sharing what little warm he could.

There was nothing else to do. Tonight, I will let the winds guide us.

#TheCloudsea

With this new rewrite, I choose to cut the first chapter short, dedicating only a single scene to it, whereas before it had three, largely disconnected scenes, which made it quite long. That, alongside with me wanting to stick with three cycling Point-of-View characters, made the second chapter a bit trick to write on. But as I cut the first chapter down to a third, the second chapter can easily be following scene but from the next PoV.

I also wasn’t happy with the first chapter, it felt, out of place in this new perspective of the setting. But it is a scene that I really do have to keep, it is, after all, what originate the whole story to begin with.

Then it struck me, I can do it, from the second character PoV. Completely changing who starts the story. And it fits. There is also a massive plus to it, I can use this one scene to write something I often struggle to write into the story: a male character wearing a skirt. I.e.: crossdressing.

I seldom ever describe the characters appearances and choice of wardrobe. I don’t have to give them features that are not needed, only a few details, wrinkled, chiselled, etc; leaving most to the readers imagination. But in this rewrite, I had the PoV character looking up, “past her skirt and stern face, beyond the clouds and the reach of the city’s light, into the blackness of the night sky above.”

By changing the PoV character, I will also change the second character in this scene, and now it has become “past his skirt …”.

The downside of it, I just threw out everything I ever written before. This is not a minor change, this is major.

#Writing #WritingCommunity #Crossdress

I’ve allowed myself to completely rest during the month of December. I was quite worn out from NaNo, and besides wanting to recover my energies, I wanted my mind to wander freely for a while, to allow myself to think of something new that I could write, and my mind was still to set on the same story I attempted three times during NaNo.

But December ended and January started, and I haven’t touched the keyboard (to write) or a notebook for a week. Yes, the new year started just like the old.

So yesterday I picked up one of the empty notebooks I have, and a pencil, and I started writing. I can’t remember, for the life of me, when was the last time I used a pencil for writing. I definably used for drawing time and again, but for writing, I don’t know, maybe since high school? Half a lifetime ago or close enough to not matter?

And yes, with a pencil, I also picked up an eraser. Going quite on the opposite hand of how I have been writing for a long time now: focus on writing, leaving editing for later. So any time I misspell a word, think of a better one, I do stop writing, erase my mistake and then I keep going. Even whole sentences suffer its might. But if the target of the eraser wrath is more than a couple of words, I chose to just make a mark at the beginning and end of the ‘deleted’ part, a line works fine.

One shall be forgiven to think that stopping to erase small mistakes would be detrimental to the writing, but I’m finding it has quite the opposite effect, it improves. And I know why.

For the same reason I find writing with a nib/dip pen so rewarding. With a nib pen, I’m forced to constantly stop, every so often. I can write just so many words before the ink runs dry, and those few seconds I’m not writing, are enough for my mind to wander a little ahead, to look back on what I wrote and decide for better words to follow.

It is the same thing really, every time I stop to correct some mistake, every time I put the pencil aside, pick up the eraser and do the opposite of writing, I’m thinking of what I’ll be writing next, and as a whole, the product feels better. Plus is a rest to the fingers. Nib pen you just hold and slide over the paper, ordinary pens and pencil, you do need to put some pressure on it, however little it is.

Now, for what I ended choosing to write, here is the other funny thing, I’m restarting the very same project I attempted three times already. But this time I’m going with a very different perspective on the things. Gone is the oppressive Cyberpunk-ish feel of the original idea.

The towering skyscrapers blocking the setting sun no longer feel like the bars of a prison with no doors out. But like the trees of a magical forest that burst to life with colourful lights once the sun sets and the night takes over.

I don’t know how far I’ll get, if anything, this new perspective on the setting makes it much harder to make the original plot work. But who knows what the one can find in an enchanted forest, maybe treasures, maybe nothing but an adventure, and that would be a great finding indeed.

#Writing #WritingCommunity

It is not that I do not have any ideas or even material to work with, I have, a lot, and that is The problem: there is just too much I want to do, meaning I will spend hours staring at the ceiling and doing nothing. This has been the case for quite a while now, but I cannot keep going like this.

One thing I posted when I trully gave up on this year’s NaNo, was that I was trying to tell I story for which I’m just not good enough to tell, and the biggest revelation was I wouldn’t ever be good enough, if I did not write. I can’t complain my craft is subpar if I do not hone my skills. And though I’m saying it was a revelation, it really wasn’t, it is something I know for quite some time, I just did not want to accept it.

Of concretes works, i.e.: stuff I have a pretty good idea how the world operates, I have:

1. This year’s NaNo: a kind of sci-fi-ish story some twenty minutes in the future. I cannot simply continue it, as there is a major event which should have happened earlier in the story, and though most of the three Point-of-View characters are mostly disconnected, this even will have repercussion in two characters. One thing I can do from this point forward, is to go through what I wrote and take notes of what is happening but also preparing for the changes needed, in order to re-write the whole thing at a later date.

2. Another project is a previous NaNo, the only one I have actually finished the draft, maybe four years ago? Can’t remember. And by draft I mean the outline. Beucase this is what us pantsers are, really hardcore planers. Currently, the draft, has three parts with three chapters each, meaning it will have at least twenty-seven chapter if I ever get to rewrite it. On this project I already have a number of notes and changes that need to be made and events that stay as they are. Ah, fun-fact: this is one of the few stories I’m set on a title, with a subtitle; the subtitle being Prologue. Yes, the whole 50k+ words outline started as a prologue for another story. (I’m telling you pantsers are just very detailed planners.)

3. The third project I could tackle, that has something concrete on it, well, it is not that finished. I have a title (another of the exceptions), and a good deal of the world is set, but I stopped writing at some point for reasons I fail to remember and never returned to it. If I were to work on this, I would just continue the outline- I mean, continue with the 1st draft.

Aside from the aforementioned, there are the following stories:

1. Space Fantasy: I’m thinking on golden age of piracy. Definietly not scifi, I won’t even bother to make tech seem believeable, let alont explain it. Basicaly humanity is in some sort of exodus, but it is not humanity from our planet Earth. It is not twenty minutes in the future. It is something else entirely.

2. Steam Punk: I’m thinking a bit of grit and treasure hunt. And just as above, the setting is its own, it is not Victorian or Edwardian era (I think it is the later). It does not happen in an alternative past, nor in alternative future of the past, nor even in an alternative earth.

3. Seven Samurai meets Dungeon & Dragons meets The Witcher: You can imagine the story, it has been told already, I just can never settle between actual D&D races or my own.

There are a few other world concepts, but I will not even try to detail them as, different from everything above, these other ideas of mine are still very fluid.

And let us not forget that I also enjoy cartography and programming. Heck, I already started looking into developing a web app to serve as the main landing page for my domain (it is just some crap placeholder at the moment).

Regardless of what is comming next, my initial plans is to work on one chapter per month and post it online. I’ll probably use a separate blog for that. I know one chapter per month is really nothing, but I also know I won’t keep the schedule of one chapter per week. I do have a deadline to make this decision, and chances are, when it comes to it, I will do something else entirely.

#WritingCommunity #Writing #Future #Plans #NaNoWriMo #Fantasy #SciFi #ScienceFiction #SteamPunk