answer: Something to remember is that I began my present-day map in 2004, sketching out western Russia before moving onto the rest of Europe and further. At the time I began, 20 miles seemed like a good hex size. I had no idea that one day I'd be creating a process that would cut those hexes into smaller hexes, propose the concept of infrastructure or any other of the present-day map tricks I employ. Back then, I figured that if I wanted a more detailed map, I'd use the old DMG's suggestion of creating 2-mile hexes. Who knew?
As you asked, I took some time around lunch today and kicked out a rough version of the bread symbol page for the wiki. I know it'll make many people happy. I also wrote up a page for hinterland, which is a type-8 hex with 1 bread. My "6-mile" hexes don't designate blank hexes as "type-8" because it would be superfluous, but the designation applies.
As far as a further elaborations on the facilities under hammer, or coin for that matter, it'll have to wait. These outlines are just about the hardest sort of thing I write, and for the present when I have the gumption together to manage it, I'd rather apply that wherewithal to the Streetvendor's Guide. If you see me puttering around on the wiki sometimes, doing history and whatnot, it's because those things aren't very difficult and are a bit of a lark, without much riding on them.
On your blog, I thought chatgpt's narrative on slavery was silly since D&D is so traumatic anyway, with countless bloody and gruesome ways to be killed. The concept of slavery pales in comparison to the violence of D&D. If slavery upsets you, there is no way you could handle the rest of D&D. As you pointed out, chatgpt is created from comments made on the web. And many of those commentators don't know what they are talking about. Basically garbage in, garbage out.
Despite that, do you think there are worthwhile uses for DM's to use chatgpt? For example, you are painstakingly creating a game world in the 15th century. Could you use chatgpt to give you factual information, like the demographics, economy, religion, climate, agriculture, politics, and etc., of certain places in Europe at certain times or dates? I wonder about that. Since you can find that information through your own painstaking research, can chatgpt do the same, albeit at a faster rate? At the very least, could it at least give you a head start on your research?
As for slavery itself, it is in my game world. For example, my players were asked to put a stop to an orc tribe that was raiding human villages in the kingdom. However, I never created the underlying philosophy or economics for slavery. It just sort of existed in the world. You have inspired me to do a better job of incorporating slavery into the general background of the world with basic concepts of how it functions.
answer: chatGPT is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the program does indeed give you factual information, and in fact will cover every subject from the ones you name Hutchings to asking the program what sort of jobs a 35-year-old divorced woman with two children and experience in data research ought to apply for. Having messed around with it for a little while, there really are no questions you can't ask the program ... unless you want to ask about an improper subject — which means any question that would even mildly irritate the proud holder of a D&D "X"-card.
A serious difficulty arises in that the program is often dead wrong in its facts. I was using it as a source for the world history pages I churned out last week ... but because I know the content very well, I was able to catch out the program again and again. And when you say, "Don't you mean that ...", it quickly backpedals, apologises, and then may or may not give the right answer. So in truth, one has to be careful to know the subject as a way to double-check what's coming out, because the source material for chatGPT, the internet, is full of wrong information; about which the program can't tell the difference.
Where it's really useful is in brainstorming content. When I wrote the world history wiki page, I asked chatGPT, "Addressing problems with alternative histories, what details ought a writer to consider?" The answer usefully produced a list of settings that could apply to writing an alternative history, which I then used as an outline to write the page. As an outline generator on any subject, chatGPT is phenomenal. When I wrote the page on hinterlands, above, I asked chatGPT, "give a description of medieval renaissance hinterland, it's appearance, it's use for hunting and gathering, it's proximity to more developed areas and the economic importance it has." And the program dutifully churned out a bunch of headings and concepts that I used to build the page.
Remember, however, that as a DM, I'm not actually dealing in facts, but in the creation of a fantasy setting. I'm not doing academic work. This makes the program ideal for me, a collaborator of sorts that I can turn to when I'm stuck — and already possessing a rich, inventive, imaginative mind that lets me know the right questions to ask, and how to ask them.
Shelby in Louisiana writes: I'm looking forward to the new comments format. I can't promise I will have something every week, but I like that it gives me the opportunity to think more about something I want to say.
My questions this week mostly have to do with wiki rules or clarifications.
- Is the amount of AP necessary to load (2 AP) and then aim (2 AP) a sling the same as for a bow?
- Still on the subject of missile weapons: Albert loads and aims his bow at a goblin, preparing to shoot on the next round. However, before he can get the shot off, the goblin moves out of the line of fire. Albert can move a few hexes over to re-establish the line of fire; can he do so without needing to aim again?
answer: sigh ... If there's a page on the wiki I hate, loathe and despise, it's the action point page. It's really long, it stalls, it's a link nightmare, and I wrote it ages ago and in places it defies clarification for what's happening.
In answer, I've made changes to the AP for the bow and added in the sling. Basically, the bow takes two rounds to shoot. In AP, this means all the AP the character has is spent loading and aiming, and then 2 AP is used in the next round to fire. The reason is simply this (and I know that you, Shelby, are not my audience with this): because in game terms it's important to lessen the power of the bow, else cowardly players will argue they don't have to engage in direct, risky melee, and instead hang at the back, letting other players take damage. Lessening the power of the bow makes their contribution less, which makes it more obvious that they're not contributing if they don't wade in, which makes them feel shame, which makes them wade in. I've tried all sorts of bow firing rules and the results for every method are absolutely repeatable and predictable. Naturally, I get tons of arguments that you can fire a bow way faster than once every 18 seconds (1.5 rounds in my game), complete with youtube videos of amateurs firing modern bows and getting 2 cm of penetration on their rapid firing hits into cardboard, soft wood or, gawd help me, styrofoam. (a) it takes a lot of practice to fire a bow faster, which players acquire as they level; (b) the medieval bow is way, way, way less flexible; and (c) penetration against metal, then through heavy cloth and bone is needed, not styrofoam targets. Plus, as I add on the action points page, you're in combat; people are moving around, and fast; they aren't paper targets. Show me the video of the "bow expert" shooting people through stiff cloth and armour, and penetrating through flesh, with a bow made with medieval tools, not something gotten from Home Hardware, and I'll listen.
In any case, there's an option where a person can load, aim and fire the bow in one round, but it gives a -4 AC adjustment.
The sling requires that the stone or bullet is put in a leather cup, then whirled around from the end of two strings, which needs a great deal of space and time to produce the necessary velocity before the projectile is hurled. Over and over I'm asked why a sling can't be used in a little narrow hallway, or why it can't be fired twice in 12 seconds, or some other thing. It basically requires the same amount of time as the bow (1.5 rounds), but going up in levels and getting more attacks per round won't change physics. It needs room and it needs time.
To answer your second question, Shelby ... the time spent "aiming" predicts whether or not a given target will move as you propose; remember that the turn-based mechanic is just a tool to simulate actual simultaneous movement, so that Albert would be loading at the same time that the goblin would be moving, and if the latter moved out of LOS than Albert would already be shifting to another target if there was an alternative; so no, there's no extra penalty.
Finally, with regards to shovelling out piles of crud. I so agree. Your first question made me go back and clean up the crud I found on the action points page, where as the author even I didn't understand what it was saying. Thing is, however, you're not always excited about working on the problem. Seeing it, I knew it had to be fixed ... just as with Sterling's question above about bread, I didn't exactly feel excited about creating the page, that I'd left undone for practically a year after I should have applied myself. For me, a lot of the time, what I work on is what I'm able to motivate myself to work on, right now. One day, I'll be up to rewriting a few spells or sage abilities; on another day, I can't get there. Half the time when I pick up the Streetvendor's Guide to work on it, at the point of picking it up the work is the last thing I want to do. But I'll wrestle with the opening bit and then the next sentence and then do a little research on the next part ... and write, and read, and ask google or — these days — query chat GPT to get past a block. Then my partner Tamara will wander in and ask about dinner, and I'll realise six hours have just gone by. I'm aware that I'm making progress, that the page is slowly filling up with words and figures, but regarding the actual time I'm blissfully unaware.
I wouldn't call this something I'm "excited" about. Lots of time, when I step away, my brain is sore and weary and I'm distinctly unhappy. What I am, however, is committed. I have a vision for what I want to accomplish and dammit, whether I like it or not, the vision matters, not my moment-to-moment emotional feeling, as the latter's just going to evaporate unremembered anyway. I recognise a lot of people can't look at a desired result that way. They won't suspend their emotional dependencies and accept hurt as the price for achievement. This is the crud that clogs the pipes. We should have strained better to run better material through those pipes from the first; instead we shoved through whatever half-baked lazy gunk we could churn up in a lazy moment and called it quits. It's only later that we find out, chee, look what we thought was good enough. And we sigh, and feel bad for not doing better, and then get dirty getting it fixed.
Thank you for those who made this experiment work this week. For those who don't know, the comments option has been turned off. If you wish to comment on anything I've written, I ask you to submit observations and questions to my email, alexiss1@telus.net. Feel free to address material on the authentic wiki, my books or any subject related to dungeons & dragons. I encourage you to initiate subject material of your own, and to address your comment to others writing in this space.
Each Saturday, I'll publish what's interesting and relevant to advancing the value and imaginative spirit of good role-playing.
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