Cram Asks Anything

[NotPublished]

Ahh biased views all around, I think PHP is a great language Its soo very easy to find work when with PHP (I find so atleast)

Python is also good to learn to.

[Triple Zero]

Absolutely. I agree with everything you just said.

Also, PHP is an outdated mutant fossil that deserves to die and be forgotten entirely.

[NotPublished]

I doubt it'd die out anytime soon though

[BabylonHoruv]

#4 I would like to read the rules and mmy group of gamers might playtest.  Some of them are into boff stuff some are not, we have a weekly tabletop game and have done a little Larping, but it was more in the VtM style (actually the Discordia RPG that some folks posted about on here but I turned it into a LARP) than the hit each other with foam weapons stuff.

[BabylonHoruv]

oh, and number 1.  Acidic Basic and Salt (from Alchemy) Blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile (the four humours of mideval medicine)

[Dysnomia]

5- you should become an Under Water Basket Weaving Professor.   

[Jasper]

#2:  The mind (whatever that may be) can be functionally modeled by natural selection.  

As the man himself said:

"In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history."

So, posit a set of environmental conditions in your fictional setting and decide which kind of "mind" would be best suited to propagate itself.

I could do some of that for you if I knew some more about the setting.

[the last yatto]

#4- I'll read over the rules at least.

same,
might be useful to leave at gaming stores as well, the final version of course...

[Suu]

4. Is anybody interested in playtesting a larp? This means actually gathering up 3-5 friends with boffer weapons and playing this game I'm writing. If not interested in play testing, anybody interested in reading over some rules and telling me if they're comprehensible?

Sure.

5. I need a new career. What would I be good at / have fun doing?

A stripper.

6. Can you recommend a website which will teach me web design / css? I want to start putting together profitable projects, and one of the key elements is learning how to design a goddamn wobsite. I dabble in html, but feel like I should advance my knowledge until it is worth cash-money.
[/quote]

Lynda.com is useful.

[Bu🤠ns]

6: Also http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/

[P3nT4gR4m]

Absolutely. I agree with everything you just said.

Also, PHP is an outdated mutant fossil that deserves to die and be forgotten entirely.

Ideal world v's real world. PHP gets the job done and the OOP aint faked and icky like in JS

[Triple Zero]

1. I'm putting together an english to conlang dictionary. What FONT should I use for the body? (in b4 "lol arial") Right now I'm using Centaur, but it doesn't look very good bold at 9pt size.

did you try printing first? because most fonts do not look very good at 9pt size on a screen, except for the standard fonts (Georgia, Times, etc), this is because the pixels are just a lot bigger than the dots of a printer. The standard fonts contain lots of "hinting" information to juggle the pixels at small sizes so that they appear readable on the screen.

so if you were going to make a screen version, I'd use Georgia, Times, Cambria or Constantia, which all contain screen hinting information for small point sizes. the print version should look good in just about any font that has some decent kerning information. [a lot of the weirder fonts on free fonts websites do not have that, and as such are only useful for logos, which you can hand-kern, if necessary].

another good font that has a similar feel to the Centaur type you linked is Bookman Old Style. I'm not sure how it looks on the screen, but I have succesfully used it in print with body text.

finally, I want to point your attention to Essays1743. it's not very readable on screen, and probably also not in print, but it might fit some kind of roleplaying prop use to you some day, as it looks just like ancient book printing type [because it's a scan from a Montaigne essay]

2. Id / Ego / Super ego (freud). Lion / Lamb / Bull / Eagle (leary's circuits 1-4). These are two ways to describe the forces underlying individual human psychology. Do you know of any other ways to categorize the forces within the human mind? (the function of this question is actually to brainstorm different races one might play in a weird live adventure game)

the I-Ching has 8 elements, you could use those.

or the water/fire/earth/air elements but those might be a bit trite.

if you want to go psychology, there's the enneagram.

or the Belbin test (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belbin_Team_Inventory) that divides people into roles within a corporation (looks good for RPG classes).

[P3nT4gR4m]

3. Bureaucrats, Politicians, Generals, Party Animals, Sex Fiends and Janitors

[Triple Zero]

Prickle, Boom, Setting Orange, Pungent and Sweet.

[Cramulus]

Thanks for the answers, guys! Given me a lot to chew on.

Now to answer some of your questions---

Basically-- I was in a creative mood the other day, and realized I have 1001 creative projects I've started but not finished. So I thought, okay, I'll just pull one off the shelf and try to complete it. The one I grabbed was this language project called Ancient Brisbanian.

Ancient Brisbanian was made for a LARP. Basically I wanted to run puzzles in dungeon settings which involved translation. I've made 3 or 4 conlangs in the past, and the trouble is always that you're the only one who can speak it. So I wanted to come up with something extremely simple that other LARPers would be able to use.

So in the world of Tyrra (the setting for NERO LARP), the common tongue doesn't have a lot of history. We just know that people used to speak other languages, and at some point, everybody started speaking common (english). So I've invented this language which common is descended from, using a mix of latin, german, and made-up words. Brisbanian doesn't have its own grammar, its grammar is identical to English. So where you need a present participle, add -ing. To make a noun plural, add -s. You can more or less translate each word exactly where it is and not worry about grammar. It's a bit basic, but it had to be something that you can puzzle out while in a dark dungeon and monsters are coming, and you've only had 3-4 minutes of intro to the language, and you're reading the translation dictionary by candle light.

So I've got about 1500 words, which is enough to say most things. And I figure it's time to throw the whole goddamn thing up on lulu and sell it to NERO players for ten bucks a book. If I give some free samples to chapter owners, and they start using Brisbanian in their puzzles, I bet their players will buy the book so they can have an edge on other players.



PART 2

the other project is this evolution of several other projects.

Those of you who were interested in LARPGASM will recall our rather ambitious goal:

*to create a game which scales (meaning you can play it with 2 or 200 people and it's basically the same game)
*and is self-sustaining (meaning the staff doesn't need to keep spending hours each week writing and running the game, the game's content and direction emerges from the game itself)

So I've been thinking about this for MONTHS now. And I've taken the concept for a 24/7 LARP I used to run on campus, called Tales of the Dreaming, and repurposed it for this new idea.

So the larp is called The Dreaming

it takes place in the world where we go when we sleep. It borrows from Neil Gaiman, (both Sandman and American Gods are pretty core to the setting) but is fairly original nonetheless.

It'd be a 24/7 game where whenever you want to play, you put on an arm band or badge or something. You and your friends would play at a park, at your house, you could hang out at a bar, whatever. Players get to pick spots which become official game locations. Some game locations are combat-active, meaning you can get into traditional larp boffer and spell packet fights there.

You and your friends go on adventures called Dream Walks, in which you wander around the physical world looking for good spots to have encounters. When the encounter begins, certain players in the group will follow the Dream Walk script, which may require them to become monsters and attack you. So the game's NPCs are actually the players - no need to recruit a staff and cast who don't really get to play! The Dream Walks are also submitted by players, and aggregated on the web site - over time, we will develop a codex of fun larp adventures.

There are a couple other layers of the game, but the design I'm working on now is character creation. There are a lot of races in the game, and I wanted to give them a lot of depth for people to build from.

In the previous incarnation of the game there were four races, and each race had several subraces. One of the races was Dead Gods --- basically every God that was ever worshiped in is Real.. but when their followers stop worshiping them, the God is banished to the Dreaming to await the End of the World. So you're playing a character who once had thousands of followers, but now nobody remembers your name. You can be a fictional god, or borrow one from real mythology. In the previous game, each god had some kind of power or gift it could grant to its followers. We had five or six types of gods, each with its own unique gift. But it did lead to these, "okay what kind of God is loki?" "uhhh I guess you should build him as a god of war?" ---------hence my question about how to categorize the Gods in a way which doesn't leave anything out. It's tough!

And Visions -- Visions are dreams themselves, the natural inhabitants of the Dreaming. In the past, the subraces were Nightmare, Succubus, stuff like that. Types of Dreams. But I didn't really like those categories, and I wanted to tie them in with real world psychology. Perhaps id, ego, superego? Dreams of the past, present, future? ah, more brainstorming... but you guys have given me some good ideas.


after I've done some more work on the website, I'll pass you guys a link. It's still to barebones to show off right now.