A Mysterious Janitor

I cannot be sure, but I believe someone is breaking into my hotel room and writing on my gaming books. I think it began with my reading of De Profundis. As if my sympathies have matched with some crazy janitor at this hotel in the catskills, somsone is leaving me these notes, anyone have this experience after reading the correspondence RPG De Profundis ?

If anyone wishes to form a society to get to the bottom of this, or if this happened to you- contact me via a comment below or G+

Solo

I think since the thrilling days of yesteryear, those years that I had manuals and tables running through my head, that I have in fact evolved (or is it devolved) into a solo- player.

I am still not even sure if solo-play is tabletop (ah yes let the debate ensue) but rather simply dice-writing. Can it be simply writing with the sound of dice. There is nothing wrong with that since Gygax envisioned role-playing as telling a story with the sound of rolling dice.

No, I think I have ‘devolved’ into a solo-player because I am just so blasted unreliable playing with others. I cannot do a tabletop because I am a full-time Dad or stay at home Dad, or a House-Husband, or Mr. Mom, go ahead do the multiple choice and pick one. Online play-by-post play becomes something that is more a chore than anything, must catch up must catch up!

Oh yeah, the playing will be for me, the playing will be me alone, almost exclusively. I found something really really good with oculus, though the system does not appear to lend itself well to adapt other systems. That is a thing I need to figure out, how to take an emulator and combine it with my favorite rpg, something that changes every day.

But from now on, I will be diving alone. When I get that dungeon crawl craving, I think it will be a party of one, though the idea of players making a party really really attracts me. I just can’t commit, sorry warriors.

Ocular Viewing #6 A micro viewing or so I thought

[For those not familiar with these chronicles, via the oculus and its machination within my iFruit, I am following the adventures of a dungeoneer named Murkstav through what professionals would call an extraction mission, though many times the man just seems to be CRAWLING through a subterranean world, a DUNGEON for the senses]

REASSURE, REWARD

The hero, the man with the sword, a dungeoneer, needed to be reassured of his reward, needed to make a break and cut bate, make a profit. He noticed the alchemist’s room about him, with an iron furnace and pipes and loads of ingredients around. There was a pumper, a giant iron engine that coughed, Murkstav looked around, bitter with the oil dropping like butter from the ceiling.

Disgusting as the ooze flowed, the subterranean warrior sick with sweat and oil, like heated butter about him, turned and observed his surrounding for anything of value. Everything in his core could not let him return to his TENSION ALLIES with an empty hand. Strange how his guild needed proof for these strange adventures, these dives into the deepest of realms.

Murkstav got his bearings, checked the dressing on his wound, which seemed (7) no better or worse than before. He looked about and wondered if anything, anything at all in that place would somehow salvage this situation.

DungeonWords PORTAL, LOOT, SPIRITS

The man looked up to an archway, wide with a stone trim, complete darkness beyond. He looked at a few carrion tables filled with strange liquors, when smelled scented of simple spirits and liqueurs. He never met an alchemist that was not a drunk, as if the human body itself was a catalyst for simple metals turning valuable. He looked under the tables, seemingly scientific and found a wealth of loot. (MONOLITH) Bars of silver, gold and platinum, perhaps too large to carry but sometimes in extractions, you don’t have to know or make your way back. He clasped two platinum and a gold and snuck them into his backpack. He noticed upon the treasured monolith strange symbols, strange images of a FANATICAL cult, the bars were so inlayed the dungeoneer wondered if there would be more money in trading them to the dwarves. Placing the bars in balanced pockets, he hoisted his backpack over his shoulder, and did not mind the extra weight.

Extra weight for extra pay, not a problem.

Looking to the portal Murkstav looked up into the shaft, knowing full well that he really had no where else to go. The fire above did not look like it had any intention of letting him pass any time at all in the near future. With that he strode into the portal...

NECROMANCY, ACOLYTES, NET

(The thing that troubles me about this method of ocular observation, using a mechanical device rather than a scroll, is the fact that one uses more than one lens. In the referral of dungeonwords I notice I use all three words, but it is the way it is happening, and who am I to question the ocular oracle?

In the room just beyond Murkstav (odd that the oculus has shifted to other people) the men waited, dressed in robes of purple and silver trim, nets in their hands to capture this intruder. There were four of them, bald with hawk noses and expressions of intense hate. They watched Murkstav stealing the bars inlaid with sacred imagery, cursing his form and planning his demise.

Murkstav took one look back, but his instincts suddenly did not push his foot forward. Something was amiss, something indeed and one would ask the oracle if the dungeoneer’s skills would tell him of an impending doom.

(yes and)

Barnstorming, Mythic Oculus and Dungeonwords

I went a bit nuts today. I found a rather miraculous app buried in my apps archive called Brainstormer. It is a story prompt generator in an excellent, nearly steam-punk style. Not only does it offer various wheel subjects like world-builder or creature-generator, it also allows you to create your own.

With a recent oculus/mythic obsession, I thought I would enter the lenses of oculus and the subjects of mythic and throw them in the gear wheels. The result? Spinning imaginative perfection.

 I also took the liberty of doing the same with dungeonwords d30, a collection of nearly 340 dungeon description words and quickly threw them in the barnstormer’s wheels. This resulted in a mechanized random idea dungeon to run a crawl in. I will be publishing various play trials in the future.

Tabletop Desktop

Desktop becomes Tabletop

I am stunned by the amount of writing I have been doing with the Oculus (though I do combine the orignal oculus with oculus12 which has a more FU resolution) in my hand. It is not a game, it is not a system, not even a tool. For me the oculus is a different, liberating way of looking at one’s own mind. While I have been hung up in the mechanics (more obsessing over them than anything else) or dismissing any writing as not good enough, the oculus has said just look, just observe and note what you are watching, adding ‘why is it important’? So my thanks to Geoff Osterberg for this creation.

It’s freed me and I appear to be burning the keys with it. Though I must say I do feel slightly guilty that it is not going into a proper journal, but rather into a computer. But then again, it is the bane of not only myself, but the modern man.

 Here is an example, a small one of what the Oculus can do...

Oculus Viewing #3

Experiment with the device continues as I journal the limits of its parameters. Today I focus once again on Murkstav, an adventurer in some alternate earth. I believe he hails from a place called Rivermoon though the locals seem to refer to it as Rilun.

Though let me intercede with a few words about the Oculus itself. It haunts you. I am not sure if it is the way the narrative is made but the Oculus is easy to obsess, almost like picking a good yarn on Netflix. Throughout my travels I have been continuously of returning to the Oculus, of opening the lens once again. No matter the scenario. I am not so much reminded of the Oculus as much as I see more and more opportunities to use it out in the wild. 

20,13 Escape, Nature

The oculus has been thrown. I believe that it is continuing the story of Murkstav, he has escaped the nature, escaped the forest which threatened him. Some fighting is being revealed to me, with swamp-like things (pun intended). He was not winning, with dripping mucous coming from the trees, a nauseous white light surrounding the scene. The kind of white that happened during a hangover in the eighties. There is a will out there, something that I cannot see in the lens but is out there in the forest, a strange feeling indeed that Murk is no doubt feeling. It is waiting out there, haunting him. and for this reason he goes to escape, wildly flying out in the realms.

Motherlode, Gibbous

This lead him to a cave, an open one that while seemingly a cave appears to be an entrance with stairs and old torches around. The Oculus has heralded a Gibbous Motherlode, running into a cave our hero walks in, perhaps too desperately and falls into a cavern, and there is the motherlode, a vast chamber of treasure, with a light far off in front. Surely in this mess, of piles and piles of treasure there is somethign that catches the eye.

Summonarium

Ye gods, our hero, intrepid has fallen right into the middle of a summonarium, the treasures abound an offering for the thing coming through the vortex of blue and black. Cursing in his breath, Murkstav pulls his sword and clerics around him go to seize him, he is perturbed if not annoyed and is... 

we got ourselves a yes but.

Murkstav fights off the clerics, three in all and is wounded, let us see if dungeonwords can resolve conflict. What happens when the clerics are slain, to the summonarium, the portal?

Chained

The thing is chained to the entrance, fighting with its head but it seems a collar and it fights to get out, Murkstav circles, a thought in his head, he does not want to touch the treasure for fear of releasing the demon. He moves about toward the light that appears to the left. Though remember, Murkstav is bleeding. Let us pull the oculus out and ask it but one thing, how bad is the wound?

Solve

Oh yes this is something Murkstav will just have to figure out.