I made it just now in Ukelele in an attempt to take my mind off my migraine (it didn't work)
It's an absolutely barebones keyboard layout built on top of US Extended, you could consider it to be version 0.1. It does not use a shift row or alt row. everything fits on the keyboard.
This layout is designed exclusively for my use writing in Anglo-Saxon. It contains all the letters of the Anglo-Saxon fuþorc (not the elder fuþark, which is a little different) from the runic poem, leaving out ᛄ as it was seldom actually used in epigraphs in spite of the later manuscript attestations, instead ᛡ was used as ger so this is used instead.
All is þwerty with additional runes added in place of ; ' and roman characters that have no use in Old English.
If you can't see the runes in my post you should download junicode.
I'd love to make this for windows but I don't own the operating system and I don't know how to make a keyboard layout for windows.
Recently off-topic has seen a slight influx of threads that either started off being about denialism of scientific consensus or derailed in that direction.
The fundamental questions this discussion seemed to be based on is understanding the philosophy of science and the scientific method, and how to bridge that gap of understanding between those who study science and those who don't.
I thought it would be interesting to take the discussion to a deeper level to the fundamental questions themselves, to contemplate what is science, what is the scientific method, the best ways to apply the scientific method, the assumptions made when practicing science and what makes some practices of science more reliable than others.
tl;dr I would love to see a discussion on the nature of science itself, that is hopefully independent from and not bloated by the trappings of politics.
the concept of alignments as objective, tangible forces and having a game mechanical presence annoys me so much that I'm considering removing it from my Sun's Garden campaign altogether, game-mechanically.
Caveat: alignment will still exist, but purely as subjective concepts and a guideline/flavor text. So player characters and npc's may still be described as lawful good, chaotic neutral, and so forth, but this exists purely as a guideline to their general motivations/loyalties, and is up to the individual interpretation of players.
Also, roleplaying is still important. Monks may no longer be forced to stay within lawful alignment, but they must still adhere to strict mental discipline (which I do not necessarily consider lawful, for example Vietnamese buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh teaches that ideology is the enemy of peace and mindfulness, in the context of the war). A druid's strongest allegiance is to the protection of nature over all other loyalties, and so forth.
For example, I am concerned about the fact that for Paladins, "Smite evil" simply becomes "smite" and can be theoretically used on any creature. Thus I have decided that in the code of conduct followed by a paladin, there are rules restricting whom the paladin is allowed to smite. For example a code may require that a paladin smites only undead, necromancers, and criminals who have committed capital felonies against the law, and if the paladin were to smite anyone else, he may be demoted.
Sometimes I like to think about the possibility of adapting d20 for eotenhām, my constructed world based on jǫtunheim of Nordic cosmology, that developed out of my version of the story of Bēowulf. (I use Old English rather than old norse because of Bēowulf and better familiarity with OE, hence the name eotenhām)
About Giants:
First of all, giants in eotenhām are not Pathfinder giants. They are 7 to 10 meters tall. Grendel, a half-giant, is 6.5 meters at standing height, but he crouches like Gollum and seldom stands. Giants have a natural shapeshifting ability, though only some giants are particularly talented at it.
Giants generally have high respect for authority and tradition, with a intra-species solidarity much stronger than that of humans, and utterly lack spirituality (a sense of the spirits or the wyrd, including a spiritual sense of the gods) or 'gigamorphism', the giant equivalent of anthropomorphism, that is, they do not project giantlike qualities onto non-giant entities.
Thus, giants have no capacity for magic, which requires spirituality to function, though they can make some use of runes as discovered by Wōden. Their religion is exclusively ancestor veneration. Their supreme ancestor is the Father of Giants, who is called Ymir in Old Norse, and in their language Ørte'ana Taba/Old Etnish, by the title Ørte.
The giants live in one sprawling, agrarian, record-keeping society ruled by one royal family at the city of Ūtgeard. They build their homes mainly of stone. Cities are uncommon. Ūtgeard is one great, sprawling city state complex that surrounds the north pole of Eotenhām just below the arctic circle and before the onset of taiga and tundra biome.
At the North pole itself, Ymir is buried, his burial mound is guarded by the serpent jǫrmungandr, as inside the burial mound exists middangeard, our world.
TL;DR: eotenhām giants are not pathfinder giants. They can't practice magic (though they can utilize runes), they possess a supernatural ability to shapeshift, and they are 7-10 meters tall.
About Humans in Eotenhām:
Two strains of humans exist in eotenhām and have for millennia. This was part of the compromise made between giants and æsir when middangeard was first made.
The first strain, the so called "wild" humans, are not unlike ourselves, in that they underwent no artificial selection. Wild humans live in mostly mesolithic hunter-gatherer/forager/scavenger bands in the parts of the world yet unsettled by giants. Giants hunt them for food and for sport, so they always travel light, and can seldom stay in one place for long. Many of these cultures have semi-domesticated wolves, who serve as guardians watching for giant attacks, and so the symbol of the wolf is revered by many. The Serpent culture, living in the tundra and taiga north of Ūtgeard, is unique in that the people worship the serpent Jǫrmungandr.
As humans are a generally spiritual species with a strong sense of the wyrd, wild humans can and do practice magic, and many cultures are also familiar with and utilize the runes as divined by Wōden, though they do not keep records. In the Legendarium, the fuþark of our world is a corrupted form of the runes as divined by Wōden, and thus less powerful. Later developments on the elder fuþark are even less powerful, in the same vein.
The second strain is domesticated by giants, and has been for millennia, so they have been genetically altered through generations of artificial selection, which is the definition of domestication. These humans are raised in farms for meat, fat, skin, hair, and are also trained to perform manual labor. Some are also kept as pets. These humans speak pidgins of the giant's languages and are discouraged from developing their own cultures. Those humans with particularly high spirituality are removed before they develop magical skills. Scyld Scefing is a livestock human (a "boar of eotenhām" as they are poetically termed) who was rescued and sent to middangeard.
It must be remembered that giants do not see themselves in anything that isn't a giant. Thus they see humans as being like any other animal, and vastly inferior to themselves, as being driven primarily by primitive instincts and lacking the sophistication that they have.
TL;DR "wild" humans live in nomadic mesolithic hunter-gatherer societies, constantly on the run from being hunted by giants. They have strong magic traditions and utilize runes, but they do not keep records. Livestock humans domesticated by giants also exist.
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The problem that immediately struck me is the possible lack of balance--In a game system, humans become easy fodder for a giant party, while an unlucky human party would be easily overwhelmed by giants. In the rare event of a mixed human and giant party, the latter would be totally OP.
In the story, very rarely a single human such as Grendel's mother (a powerful sīdwif/magic user) is capable of taking on and defeating a giant. Naturally, this should be also possible in the game system, although very hard.
Alongside how to regard classes, and modeling the magic system, this was one of the issues that caused me to shelf the idea of adapting d20 for my eotenhām or my legendarium.
Reviewing the rules of take 10 (which for some reason the players in my group doesn't use often), I realized that whether or not I would take 10 on something depends on the DC of the check.
Ironically, if I am not distracted or threatened, with a +4 knowledge bonus, I will automatically fail a DC15 check if I decide to take 10. If I am distracted or threatened, I am not allowed to take 10, and thus I always have a 45% (9/20) chance of making the check.
Let's say I don't know the DC, and the chance of me taking 10 in all given situations in which I am allowed rounds out to about 50-50, because I don't want to be a chump and fail to know what is supposed to be basic knowledge, but I don't want to miss out on chances to know something more obscure, either. The one side is a 100% failure. The other side is a 45% chance at success. In total I have 22.5% chance of success when I'm not distracted or threatened.
Thus, I am more likely to know something if I am distracted or threatened, than if I am not. Rolling seems to represent both half-assing your attempt to remember your knowledge and making an effort, even though you'd think you'd do a better job when taking 10 because your mind wasn't elsewhere.
Computers cannot produce truly random numbers on their own, so in order to do so it must use measurements of quantum fluctuations as a source of entropy, which are, as far as we can be certain, truly random.
Even physical dice aren't truly random, and factors such as the method of rolling the die, the friction of the table, and imperfections in the die itself can affect the roll. Thus, using a quantum random number generator to play a game might seem like overkill to most, when physical dice are good enough at what they do already for our purposes.
But if you are as much of a neurotic perfectionist as I am, then you too may find yourself attracted to the elegance of quantum randomness.
roll20.net is a free online virtual tabletop that uses a quantum RNG. However, the RNG can only be accessed from within the tabletop application. This one gets its entropy from measurements of fluctuations in a beam of light. It will roll up to 999 dice of any side up to 999, and can be controlled through a range of commands.
Here is the mephit.it dice roller. It's in italian but should still be easy to use. It will roll up to 99 dice (or -99 dice, whatever that means) of either d2, d3, d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20 or d100. Individual dice rolls and a history of dice rolls can be viewed in the 'Storico' tab. This RNG gets its entropy from atmospheric noise.
RANDOM.ORG The dice roller proper only rolls up to 60 d6's, but the integer set generator can generate sets of random integers with an absolute value up to 1 billion. It can generate 10,000 total integers at once. This source of entropy is also from atmospheric noise.
qrng.anu.edu.au uses fluctuations in a vacuum as its source of entropy. It will generate up to 50 numbers in a set, with values of up to 9999. To simulate dice, this RNG should be run 'with replacements'. This means that the selected value is put back into the 'bag' so that it can be selected again.
Oh by the way I have no background in statistics&probability, quantum physics, or computer science. I'm just a mad anthropologist/historian/viking with a thirst for knowledge.
As written, Bluff and Sense Motive are opposed skills.
Perception and Stealth are opposed skills.
Linguistics to write a forgery opposes a Linguistics to identify the same forgery.
There might be a few others that I'm not aware of.
Also as written, if the result of a skill check equals the DC, the skill succeeds.
Now, say Bluff and Sense Motive are rolled against each other, and they roll the same result. Which skill succeeds?
Or say Perception and Stealth are rolled against each other, and they roll the same result. Which skill succeeds?
Yes, all questions. Any questions. (So long as they won't get this thread locked) Those questions about game development you were going to ask James Jacobs? Send them over here.
Ideas for question topics if you're stumped:
Migration Period / Viking Age stuff. I've been obsessed with this general time period for like 5 years and have mentally collected a haphazard amount of random information. Although I warn that I don't actually have a degree in this and I definitely don't know everything.
The gayest adaptation of Bēowulf ever. A free graphic novel project that I've been wanting to do for years. It's fun. I love talking about it.
Being a gay nonbinary transgender person, what that's like bladdabla. Note that I can only speak for myself, not for everyone.
Worshipping Thor, being a Norse heathen I guess. Again, I can only speak for myself and not everyone.
Maybe you can ask me some stuff about human evolution and historical genetics too, so long as it's not too technical. That is what my major is supposed to be about, anyway.
Cats. I've lived with cats all my life. Ask me questions about cats. I love cats. Tell me about your cats too. I love to hear about everyones cats. I want to hug every cat. But I can't hug every cat, so I'll just make do with hugging as many cats as reasonably possible.
Sun's Garden, my campaign setting written for the pathfinder rules where expansionist imperial Elves enslave the other core races. If you ask me questions about what the world's like that will help me develop it.
Being a first generation Polish-American citizen in Connecticut and living with a language barrier between me and the rest of my family most of my life. Thanks, language attrition.
Don't feel limited to these topics, of course. You can ask me anything you like.
I fully admit deciding to make one of these just because I noticed there was a growing collection of these in off-topic, and because I love exploiting any opportunity to egotistically flaunt my polarizing Viking-themed internet personality.
I was told by the folks who taught me Pathfinder that natural weapons do not crit and took this as common knowledge. Then it occurred to me just now to double check that, but I looked in the Core Rulebook and the Bestiary and cannot find any indication as to whether or not natural weapons crit.
I was looking on the paizo site and discovered these dice labled as countdown dice. They also are labelled unusually with low numbers on one side of the die and high numbers on the other.
I tried searching on google what a countdown die is but was not able to find a clear answer, though it seems like countdown d20s are larger than a regular d20 and are labelled unusually.
Lately I've been thinking of how fun it would be to start a collection of every product Paizo has produced. Unfortunately I have no money and don't even own any print copies (just pdfs) so that hobby will have to wait for another day.
For people who want to yell about whether or not the word hillbilly is offensive. I won't be participating. Have fun.
You know what, I'm just going to post my stance here so I don't feel tempted to share it later:
I am a Polish person. We're targeted by the word 'polack', which is a corruption of the Polish word for a Polish man 'polak'. I'm inclined to think of it as an ethnic pejorative rather than a full-fledged ethnic slur, because it lacks the severity of 'sp*c' or 'g**sy'. Non-Polish people using it to describe themselves (eg, people from /pol/ calling themselves /pol/acks) bothers me. Very rarely I might use it against a fellow Polish person (eg, to a polish nazi sympathizer: "You know what you are to them? A g*&@%#n Polack! So far as they are concerned, you are an inconvenience squatting on their land! They would take all your possessions, take your land and your house and then either kill you or throw you in a concentration camp. That's what nazism actually is.) but when non-Polish people use it it annoys me.
To me, hillbilly seems to be on a similar level of severity, so I can see why a descendant of Scots-Irish immigrant may be bothered by the dismissive use of the word.
Hillbilly has experienced a semantic shift towards a more general application that hides the anti-Scots-Irish history, but the stereotype and basic idea of the word is the same. This is the same type of semantic shift that happened to the word 'g**sy' outside of areas in which Romani people usually live. The word is still extremely hurtful to Romani people.
One of my players has dyscalculia (meaning that they have severe difficulties processing math and numbers), and though I don't have dyscalculia, I do have adhd and I'm not so hot with math either. I can process mathematical problems carefully one step at a time, but this is demanding in terms of both time and brainpower.
Luckily for us, we play over roll20, an online tabletop software that can handle some of the math for us to an extent. I do wonder how this is handled over a physical table and dice, however, and unfortunately I've never had the luxury of being able to play that way.
What are your techniques for handling players' difficulties with math, and helping to make the game fun and smooth for everyone, including those with disabilities?
There's probably no chance of the adventure and map cards in compleat encounters coming to pdf, right?
Maybe someone happens to have them and is willing to scan them?
I know they're small, been out of print for years, and irrelevant to Golarion as far as I know. I'm just trying to indulge my information hoarding habit.
For my first actual Campaign as a GM, I decided to create my own setting and play in somewhat of a sandbox-style manner. This is my second serious foray into worldbuilding, my first, the world of giants, being spun-off my own fiction and not for an RPG (although adapting pathfinder for my world seems like it would be fun c: ).
I'm new to actual worldbuilding, however I've been studying anthropology, linguistics, cultures and history, especially the migration period and viking age, and historical Germanic linguistics, for years. So any experience I may have in how societies work comes from a historical and anthropological perspective.
What I've so far discovered is that probably the best way to develop Sun's Garden is through the adventures themselves, which is how apparently Greyhawk and Blackmoor were developed back in the day (according to the Paizo blog), and how Golarion is developed as well.
I've also discovered that using Dwarf Fortress to randomly generate a world map (ignoring blessed/cursed lands and DF civilizations) may not have been a good idea, but the map stuck.
Very quickly, naming languages became necessary, as I do not feel right slapping syllables together and calling it a name (being a details-obsessed linguist with an old passion for name etymologies), but I could not call the Empress 'the Empress' forever, and of course NPCs and places need names and can't always use English words (eg. 'Sun's Haven') Thus, I'm working on one right now. Maybe later I can develop the naming languages into full-fledged conlangs.
I guess this thread is here to ask for advice. What, in your view, differs when worldbuilding for an RPG, than when worldbuilding in general? What makes a campaign setting playable? What are your recommended practices for worldbuilding?
I was reading The Skinsaw Murders and discovered that I could make no sense of the stairs in Foxglove's townhouse (Map C).
Unless I'm missing something, in order for the stairs to make architectural sense, the walls around the stairs on the second floor have to be changed so that the floor spaces directly east of the stairs can be used. This would produce stairs similar to the ones in the Seven's Sawmill.
Am I correct, or is there something I am missing?
I'm looking at the pdf written for 3.5, if that matters.
