One Night in Xag: Part Thirteen
Chapter: Season Six
I moved last weekend and it took longer than expected. Now, my new internet service is having issues. Annoying.
Ever feel like you keep trying to get up and keep getting kicked down? Yep. Me too.
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HOVER-TEXT: Someone give that rat a snickers bar and a hug.
You’re not you when you’re a Ravenous…
Deyla snickers at the rat and gets behind Burg so he can hug him. Done and done.
I know that feeling all too well, and it extends to my idealized fictional versions too. Watching it happen to my paladin last week prompted me to write the pair of us a new theme song:
I get back up
And get knocked down again
I’m never gonna keep me up
Great work on those designs for the Ravenous. I’m really loving the eerie, purple glow coming from the eyes and mouth.
I can’t wait to see more of this awesome Karthun stuff. Keep up the good work!
One thing does have me curious: Does the dice-rolly-speaky thingy actually exist? I know they make electronic dice rollers (Dragon Bone, anyone?) but what about audio ones for the visually impaired?
*rummages*
Okay… plenty of braille dice… talking dice roller apps… not terribly useful for the blind… sounds *of* dice being rolled… Ah, here’s one, but it’s only for 1D6, and it’s the size of a deck of cards… okay, why the heck are you giving me smutty romance novels and My Little Pony Monopoly now? *closes search window*
You know, this may be an untapped market. Not a big one, mind you, but it’s there…
Heh. When I was a teenager, I desperately wanted a Dragon Bone. By the time I got old enough to afford one, they suddenly seemed like an overpriced gimmick. Admittedly, I’ve never actually *seen* one.
This does seem like it would be pretty easy to make (speaks the guy with zero electronics experience). It would pretty much have to be larger than what we see, though, in order to easily allow different dice to be chosen. In fact, I think it would probably look a lot like the Dragon Bone.
Personally, I’m just impressed that Charlie can keep the map in his head with everyone’s positions noted.
Well, he knows he’s the scout up in front, that there’s a meatshield behind him, bad guys ahead, and it’s his turn. Seems like a simple enough deduction to me: get behind the meatshield before things get hairy.
I’m sure there’s some not displayed moments where Charlie has to ask about the positions of tokens, minis and so forth. But would we enjoy seeing those moments EVERY TIME they happened? Panels dedicated to that? Plus, Charlie’s been playing the game a while, so he probably has a system worked out and this could very well be a touchy topic for him. See last page’s conversation.
Well, let’s see. It would require a clock to do the randomization, 20 audio files, a speaker and some kind of synthesizer for the playing of the audio, and enough of a computer to handle collecting the random number, selecting an audio file based on it, and playing that audio file. It would be a fairly trivial program on a smart phone, which is probably how most blind players would handle it these days. For making an electronic version, you could probably repurpose a digital watch capable of telling the time audibly, but it would require being able to hack into the programming of it. Maybe some electronics whiz kid friend in high school made it for him as a gift or something.
Make it 28 audio files and you can go up to a d100:
30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, and reuse the 1-9 files, and just play two files together as needed. Of course with today’s technology, the memory required for these files is trivial.
I’d like to see it as a sort of calculator-like device, with the buttons in the shape of each die with Braille labels. Simple to use and easy to find whatever die you need.
Nah, for d100, you just need the 1-10 digits.
Though if you have it rolling different dice, you can just roll 1d10 twice.
One thing you might want is for it to announce what dice it is rolling each time. Nothing’s worse than finding you’ve been tossing a d12 half the night.
*push button* “D. Eight.” *dice clatter* “Seven.”
Remember that this tool is for blind players, and actually playing audio is different than just displaying digits. While you can make a display of “17” using base files for a “1” and a “7”, you can’t play audio of “seventeen” just by pairing the audio files for “one” and “seven”. Of course, you could just play “one-seven” for a result of 17, but that would be a pretty cheap and low quality way to go.
This is why you need distinct files for 1-20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, and 100. All of the non-multiple-of-10 digits between 20 and 100 can be formed by combining audio files.
Of course, if memory space were really that much of an issue (which is hard to believe with the capacities of modern flash memory), you could dump 40, 60, 70, 80, and 90 in favor of a single file of the “-tee” sound. Paired with the single digits, you could play “four-tee-six”, etc. Differences in pronunciation mean that this won’t work for 30 or 50 (it’s not “three-tee” or “five-tee”), so you can’t swap those out, and you’re stuck with 100 as well. Congratulations, you just saved a net of four files, so the total number of audio files needed would be 24 instead of 28.
This may not be known by a majority of electronics people but there are analogue memory chips that store sound clips. Less memory, way faster and easier to program. These chips were available in the 80’s at a very cost effective price and used as replacements for the phonograph records used in sound based toys ever since.
When I was first introduced to D&D, we never used minis or maps, it was all “theater of the mind” stuff where the DM described what was going on and we would describe what our characters did. Everything was in the imagination so there was no need for visuals. If Charlie has any experience playing like this, it really shouldn’t be much of a problem.
Yeah, I have played like that. Good for car trips. We used GURPS Lite, and had 3d6 in a vending machine bubble for rolls. One red die, so could do 1, 2, or 3d6 with the same unit.
My response to ‘which one are you attacking’ was always ‘the ugly one’.
Umm… Didn’t they use “tokens and not miniatures in the first session… just in case”?
https://d20monkey.com/comic/one-night-in-xag-part-six/
nice mini’s, but weren’t they using tokens? “just in case” i believe the hovertext said..
Besides, are those customs mini? Where can somebody get some? :O
i knew a guy that made his own. i kept telling him to start a bussiness but he never did…
and now he can’t afford the materials, otherwise i’d have sent you his way xp
anyhow, try various artists. look up some tutorials.
it mostly depends on the materials you want
Heroforge.com is surprisingly versatile.
YMMV.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the characters are based around minis they had and want to use. My brother used to play 40K and he had all the metal minis (in the sense that they were made of the material metal and that they were hardcore). I would build characters around the minis he happened to have about all the time.
Tip top stffu. I’ll expect more now.
Good memory: https://d20monkey.com/comic/one-night-in-xag-part-six/
Maybe they swapped from tokens to minis when combat started so it was easier to keep track which way characters are facing?
Facing doesn’t apply in most modern RPGs combat systems – Dragon Quest and only a few others used facing due to their tabletop war gaming roots
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gElyJnv65zE
(We loves ya, Brian. I just wanted to post the silly video clip.)
Obviously, tokens are for the world map…minis for combat. Like Final Fantasy.
The short answer to this is that I just changed my mind. I love minis. I like to draw them.
Oh shit! Knife in the eye of rat-man jones, and he isn’t even phased one bit! That’s pretty freaking scary~
Well that would be at least -1 to hit penalty with possible ranged combat modifiers [which won’t come into play here due to in your face, face ripping] and depending on the rules possible CON, DEX, CHA penalty as well.
So, something just occurred to me that I wanted to ask…
Are our heroes using 4E, 5E, or a Karthun-specific ruleset now?
I believe it’s a Karthun-specific ruleset, with strong influences from 5E.
Correct!
Hey, Brian, know the cool thing about getting knocked down?
Anyone who says your work is too “cartoony” has never seen your Ravenous designs. Very nice!
Thougb it is notable that the ‘game world’ is depicted in more detail than the real world…
By design, in fact.
Oh good. Someone else got the tubthumping reference. 🙂