Inventing Musical Instruments in Worldbuilding

I've pondered for years about inventions within worldbuilding. Whenever I saw a piano in a fantasy world, I thought to myself "What are the odds that theirs would look exactly like ours?" Well, I've set out on this journey and found out. But first, I would like to outline the reason why I thought about this.

Different Worlds, Different Histories

Our world has a specific sequence of inventions and discoveries in its history. Language, fire, farming, wheel, written language, printing press, firearms, the industrial revolution, radio wave-transmitting devices, computers, the internet, and many things in between, as well as before and after. Some of these would be difficult to swap the order of, for example, inventing computers before inventing written language is something I'd personally consider highly unlikely. But some other things we could swap around to make for something quite interesting. This is what the Alternate Techline trope refers to.

So the question I pose is this: What are the chances that the history of a fictional world would follow the exact same sequence as ours? Some inventions are quite complicated in their nature, requiring many previous inventions before. Others, such as the flute, for example, are so simple that it would be strange if they weren't invented.

Let's take a look at a piano to see what I mean.

Look at how otherworldly that piano appears. Different material, different layout of keys, ... do the keys even play the same notes as our pianos?
Piano, by WLOP.

Regarding the Piano

I'm not a historian, and I am hardly a musician, so I'll try to keep this simple. I've done some surface-level research, and while I can't guarantee everything I'll write here is correct, at least it will illustrate my point.

The history of the piano begins in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, with the invention of the water organ. This is a wind musical instrument that uses a tank of water to push air out through the pipes. The water is first pumped out of the smaller tank into a bigger one, compressing the air inside. The air will then flow out of the pipes that are opened by the musician using an array of keys. So think of it as a couple of whistles that will play their tones when open. According to my short research on this topic, after pumping the water out of the tank, the water organ could be played for roughly 30 minutes before you'd have to pump the water out again. I could go on with how this turns into a pipe organ with bellows etc., but we're inventing a piano, and that's a string instrument. What this invention gave us though is something we'd take for granted: the idea that you could play music by pressing down keys.

Source

So what's next? Well, clavichord and harpsichord. Clavichord is a string instrument played with keys that strike its strings with tiny blades. Meanwhile, a harpsichord is a string instrument played with keys that are used to move a plectrum, plucking the strings (sort of like when one plays the guitar). In their designs, they already resemble a piano, but you might be wondering... why are the key colors reversed? Well, I'll let this fellow explain it to you, and instead move on to the question of the keys' arrangement.

Clavichord (left) and harpsichord (right)

Why are the keys on the clavichord, harpsichord, and piano arranged the way they are? I'm sure you know what I mean, it's one of the most iconic aspects of a piano: an array of 7 repeating white keys, with black keys in between the first two pairs and the last three pairs of keys. Let's begin with the fact that each note is a soundwave, with its pitch being determined by the frequency of the wave (measured in Hertz). The notes with frequencies that are halves or doubles of each other sound similar, which is why we tend to label them as the same note, like C for example. This is wonderfully displayed on this website's table, and it's also interactive so you can hear what I mean.

Why did we choose these 12 notes specifically? This video explains it nicely, I'd sum it up as a set of cultural preferences combined with a need for some regularity between the sounds used, and some strong tone combinations that we really wanted in our music: perfect fourth, perfect fifth, minor third, major third, and then some. Of course, that's not the only way to lay out the tones used. There are scales with 5 tones, and there are scales with 43 tones, or perhaps even more. As for why they are laid out the way they are, ... I can only guess it's because arranged as they are, the white notes can flawlessly play C major and A minor scales. Or because the black keys cover the pentatonic scale. Or because it lets the pianist do a tone slide called glissando. And maybe the black keys are higher than the others to let you do a pentatonic glissando.

Let's get back to the piano. How do we get from harpsichord and clavichord to piano? Well, all of them are string instruments, but they move their strings in different ways. The clavichord strikes them with tiny blades, harpsichord plucks them. Piano uses small hammers to strike the notes. I'd imagine it's similar to what Cimbalom does, but a professional will probably explain to me how those are very different in a way I couldn't figure out during my minor research into the topic.

I'm gonna omit the pedals for now, because I don't feel like researching those.

To Invent an Instrument

So to summarize, in order to explain the existence of a piano in a fictional world, we needed an explanation for the invention of:

• The keys (water organ),
• The strings in a box played with small hammers (cimbalom, or harpsichord and clavichord if we count other methods of striking the strings),
• The preference for composing in a 12-tone scale,
• The need to distinguish the major/minor scale keys from each other (results in lightly colored piano keys)
• The need to play these in quick succession for a glissando,
• The need to play the pentatonic scale as well, and the possibility of playing it as a glissando (sets the black keys apart by making them shorter than the white keys, and placing them higher than the white keys for easier glissando).

There could be more factors, but now you probably see what I mean. Meanwhile, here's what you need to invent a drum:

• A surface that can be hit to produce a distinct sound,
• And something to strike this surface with, such as a stick, a metal rod, a grainy material like sand, or even a hand. 

I feel like I'm overtly reductive here, but what I wanted to say with this final statement is that a piano is harder to invent than a drum. There could be a fictional world where a piano is invented before drums are, of course, but it's highly unlikely.

I'm gonna choose to believe that what we've seen in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom's trailer #3 is Zelda sitting in front of a magical piano. It's unclear, but the pose suggests that's the fact to me, and I liked this shot.

The reason why I am writing this article is to sort of summarize my attempt at reinventing a piano for my worldbuilding. While it is possible to change some parameters, making a piano that's "my own" feels like it's not worth the hassle.That's about it for today. Thank you for reading my somewhat disorganized and under-researched notes, and I wish you all a wonderful day!

Gon' Click

So there's apparently a movie in the cinemas right now. No, not the one about honorable thieves of Faerun. No, not the one about plumbers in the Mushroom Kingdom. Yeah, the one about a professional assassin. I have yet to watch it, but on one of the Discord servers I frequent, Steve Fidler of Vorpal Dice Press wanted to write a minimal game about it. Instead of giving each enemy their own turn, he figured that they should all have one turn. That's when I came forth with a suggestion... what if the enemies didn't get a turn at all?

After refining, shortening, and adding some more choices to the game, I think I can show you my next 200-word TTRPG for any number of players, no GM required! This one was a tough nut to fit into 200 words. I hope you'll enjoy it, and I wish you a nice day!

Those poor fools didn't know that surrounding you gives you the upper hand.
I couldn't find the source of this art, so if you know who made it, please let me know and I'll credit them!

Gon' Click

A team of badasses pursues justice, money, or something else. Each player's badass starts with a d10 Die representing their power that can Increase (max d12), or Decrease (min d6).

d6—d8—d10—d12

Battle begins. Everyone rolls their Die and sums it to get the Number that represents the number of enemies present. Players take turns clockwise, starting with the one whose roll was highest. On their turn, a player chooses to slaughter or recover. 

Slaughter: Roll the Die. Decrease if you rolled more than the Number, otherwise, reduce the Number by the rolled amount. When your Die is a d6 and it Decreases, you are incapacitated. Your turns are skipped until it Increases.

Recover: Increase or Decrease your Die.

If the Number didn't change, roll a d6, and add the result to it. If the Number is 0 or all badasses are incapacitated, Increase each player's Die and proceed to the next scene.

Variant: Target Acquired. When all players say so, or if all badasses were incapacitated, they face a single masterful combatant. The Number represents the target's power. Skip the d6 rolls that would raise it normally. Incapacitated badasses die. Killing the target gets you one reward Coin.

Sparktech

Initially, I wanted to write an article about why I'm leaving D&D for good, showcasing my goodbye homebrew. But I realized that I already did talk about why I'm done with it in my 2022 Review blog post. So with my final creation, I wanted to publish finally being out, it's time for me to move back to my favorite stuff to do: Runehack, and other worlds in my magitech multiverse.

I didn't have too much time to think through this one, so... uh, you'll have to deal with surface-level thought-through magitech here. Also please forgive my limited explanations of physics here, it's a fantasy world after all.

Sparktech

The lightnings are chaotic. The lightnings are unpredictable. The lightnings are powerful. In the darkest of storms, bolts of lightning can surprise and startle us by striking something really tall. But... lightnings do seem to like metal. What if there was a way to trap it in a prison of metal? Let's just assume that there is a device for that, called "captor" for now. Now if we connect the captor to some very thin lines of metal (think like wires), we could perhaps find a use for them!

If you're lucky enough to see a metal struck by lightning, you'll probably notice that it's got hot. That's something we might want to limit if we want our wires to last very long. What if there was a magical device, one that we could attach the wire to restrict how much spark (lightning in wire, I'm getting tired of writing lightning over and over) gets to course through a wire at a given moment. Let's call it "limiter".

If we have a wire loop with a captor and maybe a limiter on it, we'll notice that in time, the spark does escape. We want to avoid that. Perhaps this process could be slowed down if we make it so bits of wire can be detached or attached with a manual human-activated motion. Like a button or something similar. Let's call it "flip".

What if there was a way to make it so that a wire works as a limiter only in one direction? And like a very effective limiter at that. I'm not sure what this could be useful for just yet, but it could perhaps force the spark to travel in a deterministic direction within the wires. Let's call such a limiter "director" because it directs which way the spark flows.

There's one more important part of this puzzle that should be discussed. You can create a magical device out of silicon that has two inputs and one output (don't feel like figuring out how). One of the inputs is a source, and the other input is a control. The spark travels from the source to the output wire only if the control doesn't have a spark. I'm imagining it sort of like a portcullis, which is held down if there's someone who can pull it down at its lever or whatever those used to be controlled with. That's why I'm gonna call it "gate".

Now, let's say that I connect three wires together, attaching directors to two of them arranged so that the spark would flow towards the meeting point. If either of the directed wires has a spark in it, the one without a director gets it too. Maybe attach a limiter to it too just to make sure the wire will be fine. We got ourselves a way to detect the presence of a spark on any of multiple inputs!

How about this. If you attach a captor to the gate's source input, and attach some wire that can but doesn't have to have a spark in it to the controller, the gate will let a spark through to the other side only if the control is off. And that's how we got ourselves a way to negate the spark!

Since we can negate signals, as well as combine them, we could work out support for the rest of the logic from there. I'm pretty sure that the gates could somehow also be built so that information can be stored in them, probably through a complicated combination of gates. But I think this can go further.

The legends speak of an arcane ritual that involves weaving a wire around a rod into a spiral. When you let spark into such wire, it will magically draw closer objects made out of metal. I'm gonna call this "spool", and its applications are obvious. You could use this to move metal objects around, thus letting us convert spark into mechanical movement!

I believe I could keep on making more and more technology for this purely hypothetical world in the future. Perhaps the heat from the wires could be useful for something, like heating devices. Maybe I could even find a way to redirect the heat somewhere else involving special liquids and making cooling devices. Heated metals glow, so they could be used for producing light. There could of course be other ways to make light as well. Maybe there could even be a way to communicate between two wires without them being connected through some sort of spark-related invisible energy. And if I were to learn more about lightnings, maybe I could come up with further applications for this new kind of technology. But I'll cut it here for now.

The countryside is lined with crosses that carry the sparks to those who need them.
... what? No one ever said that these sparks can move about outside of wires.
... well, maybe for short distances. But that's beside the point.
Imagine how bizarre it would be to see these things everywhere. What kinds of shapes they could have depending on the nations, and how these massive wires could become parts of buildings, perhaps even integrated into them. Wouldn't that be wild?
Utility Poles, by RegusMartin

But for now, I think I'm gonna stick to runes because they require less explaining. Besides, I do believe many authors have already utilized sparktech in their own creations, though they tend to label it "electronics" for some reason beyond me. Etymology tells me that that word is derived from amber, and frankly I don't know what that has to do with any of this.

I hope you've enjoyed reading my article. It's nice to get into writing again, and I hope I'll be able to post more good things to the blog soon. Thank you for reading, and have a nice April Fools!

Clues and Hunches

Guess who made another 200-word RPG as yet another proof of concept? That's right, it was me. This time, it happened because I was talking with a bunch of other game designers a while back about modifying who gets to know what in the game. Gumshoe's way of solving it is fine, but I figured maybe there should be something more to it, so I suggested "secret tokens" that the players could spend to find some secret they think is in the present scene. Smoooze took that idea and improved upon it, both by naming it "Hunch", and by letting the player regain it upon a correct guess. This would make for a cool game mechanic in a mystery game, so yesterday I gave it a go.

Clues and Hunches

The GM defines the Domains their clues fall into. Players create one detective each that has:

• a name
• a quirk
• Domains from GM's list (minimum 1) and Hunches (minimum 1), the sum of both numbers is 6.

A detective gains a new Domain or Hunch (player's choice) after every third successfully solved case. The GM can come up with new domains as the games go on.

The GM must give a detective all clues in their general vicinity that belong to their Domain. Some information must be discovered through Hunches. When a detective suspects something is true, they can spend one Hunch by stating publicly "I have a hunch that...", following it with their assumed fact. The GM gives the detective their spent Hunch back if it's true. Spent Hunches are otherwise regained after the case.

If the GM allows it, a detective could possess supernatural abilities like speaking with the dead or lie detection. Such abilities count as two domains each.

GM guidelines:

• Come up with a seemingly impossible hook, and its logical explanation.
• Give at least 3 clues in detectives' domains for everything they need to know (including motive).
• Play the suspects and other NPCs.
• Avoid red herrings. 

Never had a chance to make these lengthy convoluted noir monologues that detectives give just before they get into describing how they got the case. But when she came knocking on my door, I knew that was about to change.
Commission: Detective, by chirun

• Example Quirks: neat freak, amnesia, never talks in first person, ...
• Example Domains: chemistry, history, geography, forensics, ...
• Example Hunches: "I have a hunch that there's a way to get from the living room to the garden without using the doors or windows obvious to everyone.", "I have a hunch that the victim was bludgeoned to death with a thing I've already encountered.", ...

I've had multiple arguments with folk on Discord about why I avoid putting Charisma into my games. With this Hunch mechanic, I think it would be fine to remove Wisdom (especially Perception and Insight, Investigation too to an extent) equivalents too. It's a statement Gumshoe makes already by showing that someone shouldn't have to roll to learn something crucial to the game's story.

Hunches go one step beyond, boiling these situations down to their core: The player thinks there's something hidden or off here, so they want to see if their suspicion is correct. In a game where one rolls for these, and the player's suspicion is surprisingly accurate, what is the GM supposed to do? Do they punish the player with a chance of not learning what they should be able to learn? Do they let the player skip the roll completely? What if a player with low Wisdom makes these correct guesses way too much?

Drop the Wisdom (maybe even Intelligence), and give the players tools for learning information. Drop the Charisma, and give the players tools for controlling the conversation they have with the NPCs. And if someone brings up Strength to me again, saying "should I ask the player to lift a boulder in order to prove their barbarian can crash through the door?", I'll direct them to my response. Mental attributes are tricky, which is why I see their removal as more acceptable. That being said, I can see some scenarios where a mental attribute could still be viable.

Thank you for reading, and I wish you all a wonderful day!

Game Mechanic: Negative Damage is Healing

I just had an interesting discussion with a bunch of 3rd party D&D writers. One wanted "heal" to be a keyword, and honestly, that's sensible. But I wanted to take a whack approach to this demand. This should work for any game that revolves around damage types, such as D&D, though it could also work with other systems that deal with numeric amounts of damage. To keep things simple, though, I'll use D&D 5e as an example system where this would apply.

Negative Damage

Damage can be reduced below 0, unless it is because of a negative ability score modifier added to the attack. When you take negative amount of damage, you regain that amount of hit points. Other modifications to the damage apply.

What does this achieve? You can flavor your healing spells in various ways, giving the imagery of how the healing works.

• The fire that cauterizes the wounds.
• Piercing damage applied straight to an acupuncture pressure point or something.
• The divine radiance that just heals because it's divine or something.

Not only that, but it suddenly matters also how you want to heal others. What if your group's warlock is resistant to fire damage? A spell that would deal -11 fire damage suddenly deals them only -6 damage (remember, it's rounded down, not just to zero!). Frankly, though, I assume healing spells would just let you choose what damage type the healing goes with.

Damage reduction would also be a lot better. A goblin hits you for a measly single point of bludgeoning damage, and your Heavy Armor Master feat reduces it to -2. Thus, you suddenly heal 2 hit points.

Of course, some adjustments would be necessary here, like solidifying the idea in players' minds that the hit points are not always just wounds. They can stand for stamina, luck, or some other things that PHB mentions.

Finally, absorption could become a proper game keyword. Immunity reduces damage to 0, vulnerability doubles it, resistance halves it, and absorption... negates it. Simple as that, AND it's already a thing in the game (see flesh golem).

Negative psychic damage is placebo, change my mind.
Xetorath Healer, by TSRodriguez (at least according to Pinterest, the original DeviantArt page for it seems to be down)

Anyway, time for me to get ready for my session, just wanted to write this up real quick before I forget the idea. Have a great day, everyone!

Double the Zombies

Lately I've been pondering spicing up the core of most TTRPGs: the conflict resolution. Most of the time, it's a simple success or failure. Sometimes, a partial success and/or partial failure is added inbetween. Could there be anything more though? Well, through my weeks of passively mulling this over, I came up with one idea: every dice roll could influence something that's not related directly to your success or failure, instead perhaps influencing the situation you're in. It will be difficult to come up with something that could work this way for any setting generally, so I started by writing up another 200 word RPG as an example. It's supposed to be setting agnostic, despite relying on a term like "ammo".

Double the Zombies

Your characters are zombie outbreak survivors. Everyone describes their character and gives them 4 mundane items (10 of ammo counts as 1 item). You can only carry 4 items. Distribute 10 points across the stats: forcefully, subtly, quickly, carefully, boldly, cleverly. No stat can have 4 or more in it.

Roll 2d6 when trying to do something significant. Reroll one die and choose either result if a piece of equipment can help you. You succeed if the sum of your relevant stat and the rolled numbers is greater than the difficulty, or if you sacrifice an item in a relevant way, destroying it permanently.

Difficulties: 5 (easy), 7 (moderate), 9 (difficult).

If both numbers on the rolled dice are identical or players stall too long:

• A single zombie appears if there were none previously and it can reach the current location.
• The zombies overcome an obstacle that prevented them from threatening you.
• The number of zombies doubles if they were a threat already.

Roll 1d6 if zombies are too close to someone. On a roll less or equal to their amount, you get hurt that many times. You die if you get hurt 3 times.

 

What's worse than being surrounded by zombies? These zombies attracting more with their attention aimed at you.
Z, by iayetta83.

Is it a good game? Probably not, it's very minimal. in the scope of its rules and a ton of stuff is left out, like turn order or recovery from wounds. But my goal wasn't to write an exceptional game, it was to test my idea for a conflict resolution beyond success or failure with a written example. Honestly, if anything, the format of 200 word RPG is awesome at that: it allows the game designer to see if their idea could work in practice, assuming they're willing to cut some corners when making the idea into a Minimum Viable Product. Writing short games isn't easy to most, which is why I'd recommend giving this a try to anyone interested in game design. Whether it's a 200 word RPG, or a TTRPG that will take up exactly 1 page (and maybe 1 extra with optional+GM rules), it's worth a try. Or at least it works for me.

Either way, I look forward to seeking more unique conflict resolution mechanics. Until then...

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

(Almost) Everyone is Harry

For months, I've wondered passively how I could write a TTRPG that feels like Disco Elysium, built around the idea of multiple voices in an individual's head, each of them great or awful at different things. Yesterday, I arrived home, and it clicked. In order to avoid having some players possess the "good skills" and some possess the "awful skills", how about everyone possesses two? And instead of having the GM interpret the detective's words and actions too, ... what if a player was assigned specifically that role? I've made some minor changes and additions since yesterday, but I can confidently say that this classifies as a 200-word RPG.

It's a hack of Everyone is John (turns out I wasn't the first to come up with this) and Lasers&Feelings. Everyone is Feelings? Or maybe a better title would be...

(Almost) Everyone is Harry

A game for 1 GM, 1 amnesiac detective, and any number of voices in their head. More voices means more chaos.

Each voice chooses two unique opposing characteristics of the detective to represent (one labeled First, the other one Second), and one number from 2 to 5 (including).

In the game, the GM describes each scene and controls the NPCs. The detective decides what their character does. The voices try to convince the detective player to use them in the current situation.

The used voice rolls 1d6. It succeeds if the roll equals the voice's chosen number, if it's using its First characteristic and the roll was lower than the voice's number, or if it's using its Second characteristic and the roll was higher than the voice's number. Otherwise, the failure that it ends in is guaranteed to make at least one person feel miserable (quite likely the detective). The detective should enjoy describing their successes as well as failures in a stellar fashion.

A corpse had been hanging from a tree for a week now. You got so drunk, you forgot everything about yourself. You must find the murderer within three days.

Who knows, maybe this whole article was just a big excuse for me to upload this amazing gif.

Unincluded variant: Draw 2-4 of these to decide which skills get to speak up about a current situation.

Review of my 2022

I'm back at it again!

2020 | 2021

How was 2022?

The number of views my blog has earned itself is a little more than 10K. Not too bad, but it's not as great as I did last year. I would guess that is because of my relative lack of activity on it, at least in comparison to the last year. That in combination with the discomfort I feel about self-advertising my blog (unless it has something new, or it's relevant to a discussion I'm having with someone) is definitely a factor.

There are a couple of reasons for my relative lack of activity on the blog, which I'd boil down to my personal life and my thoughts about D&D. My life got rather busy this year, and while I recognize it can get busier, I didn't have enough time to think about things I could write here. Honesty can hurt, and facing my idealistic new year resolutions, I can tell it's going to be a tough one. I'll go out of order for reasons you'll see eventually.

D&D Goals

Vestigia and Cursed Sovereigns Compendium were two of my resolution I can admit I couldn't get myself to finish, and the reason is simple: D&D burn out. I know, it's been way too long, I thought I got through it, ... but I've given it a lot of thought, and it's fair to say that Dungeons and Dragons simply isn't for me. Sure, not a cheerful way to start the article, but I should be more open about it, and couldn't find a better opportunity to write about it last year, so here we go. Here are six reasons why I personally don't really feel like DMing a long-term campaign of D&D 5e much anymore:

• Unbalanced pillars of experience. "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Ever wondered why there's a stereotype of barbarians being bored of social interactions in D&D memes? It's because they have basically no features for it. I'm not talking just about a high Charisma score, or a skill proficiency. This isn't an issue that can be resolved by letting the barbarian use Strength for their Intimidation (mini-hot take: Intimidation and Performance should be usable with any Ability Score). Anyone in 5e can roll the dice and try to get a success. But Barbarians and Fighters lack a support in things they can do in a social interaction that aren't doable by literally everyone. Look at the wizard spell list and tell me what things in it could be useful for social interaction. Comprehend languages, detect thoughts, message, disguise self, alter self, invisibility even, and so many more. It's a flaw I can't unsee ever since I started looking into the Tavern Tales RPG - some classes get pretty much no support for one or two pillars of experience, and it... saddens me.
• Adventuring day. DMG recommends 6-8 combat encounters between two long rests, with one or two short rests inbetween. On paper it sounds like a good goal, but in practice... it's a goal that a group will rarely be able to achieve. If it's not achieved, the group will get an impression that classes relying primarily on long rest resources are way too powerful, and classes that rely either on short rest resources or no resources are too weak. I've actually tried DMing a three sessions long mini-adventure this year, in which my sole goal was to attempt achieving this, and... honestly, it felt kind of tiring to me. I can't imagine doing this every time. And while suggested solutions exist, like longer rests, ... I don't know if that would be enough for me.
• Magic system. It's too high magic. It's a matter of preference, but that's this whole list. Way too many things are possible in the system for me to reliably create a believable world, unless I invest way too much time and focus into it. And while going "for this campaign, I permit only cantrips" or "this campaign will be restricted to using only spells of illusion and enchantment schools of magic", ... I doubt too many players would enjoy it, and it would be cutting off way too many rules.
• Rogue. Yes, one whole class is an issue for me. This will likely be the most unrelatable point to the majority of readers. Believe me - I have a love-hate relationship with the concept of a rogue. Being excellent at a couple of skills sounds good in theory. It feels bad when a rogue chooses to drop one of their expertises into a skill that another player wanted to be "their thing", making them feel useless in comparison thanks to a much bigger numerical bonus. Honestly, expertise overall just feels like a very strong feature, way too good since skills can influence any pillar of experience. My strong stance on the issue is: either everyone should get at least one Expertise, or nobody should. Maybe as part of the backgrounds?
• Mismatch of ideals and design. A fancy name for a simple thing - these days, it's popular to have media that advocate for pacifism, avoiding violence, and relatable villains. D&D is focused on combat. Thus, if you make the players feel too guilty over some combat encounters, they'll start avoiding them, or trying to talk it out with the enemies, or even trying to understand the enemies and reason with them. That wouldn't be bad, but the bulk of game's rules is about combat. Avoiding combat in a game in which two thirds of the rules relate in some way to combat is like entering a candy store, only to avoid looking at or tasting anything sweet.
• Combat burnout. It's in so many places. So many TTRPGs, video games, movies, shows, etc. chooses combat as a focus, and I can see why - it's exciting, it's high stakes, and it's something pretty much everyone can understand when done right. Sometime in the spring or summer of this year, I realized that when browsing TTRPGs, I get a little more tired when I stumble upon the "combat" section of the rules, skipping it to see if there's anything else that could excite me. I don't care as much about what kinds of armor there are, how a player character can reduce damage, or how many dice do they roll to damage their foe.

Then the announcement of One D&D came, and... frankly, I wasn't surprised that this is what Wizards of the Coast want for D&D. None of my issues with the system will be fixed by it, unless they surprise me by doing something about point one. What's more, ever since its announcement I don't really feel like making homebrew for it. While 5e will be around still, and WotC promised that the systems will be compatible, ... why bother brewing right now for either? I may as well wait two years and see how the playtests and release go down. I'll also find out in the meantime if I even want to make more D&D 5e homebrew materials.

All in all, that's kind of why I didn't finish all hundred islands of Vestigia (I got the first 10, though!), or the Cursed Sovereigns Compendium. Funnily enough, at least one of the island ideas from Vestigia I want to reuse for a future article, and the Cursed Sovereigns Compendium... might be getting its own rules light TTRPG system.

Runehack

In 2022, I wrote a total of two articles about Runehack cities, the latter of them being published on April Fools with a twist of it actually being an in-world piece of fiction. Most of my year after that point I've spent mulling over ideas regarding Everling, a completely digital yet real city of Runehack, because that felt like a very strange city that I want to describe next to show how much of a contrast can be found in the world. So as you may have guessed, that's hardly the full list of cities I wanted to finish this year. In fact, my full list of ideas hardly grew this year. On my to-do list are the following cities (in no particular order):

Bedenblume, Moorwell, Everling, New Fractalis, Amberwatch, Grand Republic, Silvercove, Caldfort, Ashington, Wondermire, town, Hollow End, and two cities that have no name as of today.

Of course this is not the exhaustive list of all the cities in the world. There's more of them, but I don't feel like listing that many things about the ones that are more generic. I'd rather just summarize those in one fell swoop of an article at the end, once my to-do list is finished. While I didn't manage to fulfill that goal, though, I did write a couple of miscellaneous articles about Runehack, so that's neat!

In regards to my novel-writing, this year was rather bad. I didn't manage to make any progress with publishing my last year's novel, I didn't manage to finish this year's NaNoWriMo due to real life stresses, and I've only barely done research regarding how I could publish the first novel. I still hope to publish it, but I don't know when or how yet.

Here's a curious way to finish this section of the article: while I didn't manage to make progress on my Sprinters tabletop roleplaying game, I did make something that was inspired by it. Runehack: Fairy Heist is a game, in which players play as a group of fairies who break into big folks' houses to steal their stuff without getting caught. It started as my project for One Page RPG Jam 2022, but over time I grew fond of the system and expanded it. A couple days ago, I released a new version of the game, including several more pages of rules, expanding the game's long-term potential greatly. I even started running a campaign in it in August that's still going strong now. So even if it's a stretch, I'll consider this resolution a success.

Personal Goals

Wrapping the last two goals briefly: I didn't manage to run 10 kilometers, but at least I walked 10 kilometers a couple days ago, so that's a partial win. As for the streams, ... I've hardly managed to stream at all this year.

Hopes and Goals for 2023

Looking at my personal track record from last year, I feel rather hesitant about this section. Even if technically I fulfilled one more goal than I hoped for last year, I saw a lot of change in the way I think and feel about some of the items on the list. Hopefully, this year my list will see fewer "technical successes". I'm not sure if I'll be able to prevent those. I don't care about how many of these I'll manage to accomplish, but I'll certainly try to fulfill at least some of these goals.

Runehack: The Asterists. This is something I've been working on ever since July or August of 2022. What originally started as just another TTRPG, and another piece to a bigger system I hope to complete one day, has sort of become a video game. During my winter vacation, I took the idea and figured maybe I could do a tutorial for the game playable right in the browser to sell people on its premise. I want to finish both the TTRPG and the video game that goes along with it and publish them at the same time. The video game is in a playable state, by now it just needs polish, such as UI, possibly sound effects, and more. I plan to give the TTRPG another rewrite, hoping to both minimize the page count, but also to flesh out the setting of the game a little more, and then also give it some visuals.

I've listed the cities of Runehack above, I'd love to finish a couple more of those. Other articles about Runehack would be nice as well. Finding a platform, where I could publish my novel, would also be nice. Wattpad is an option I want to look into.

Streams will hardly be possible within the next six months. And even after that, the future is uncertain. I feel like I'd much rather start a Youtube channel, but I'm afraid of it eating up too much of my time, and having no time to actually make videos for it. I guess only time can tell.

I've considered and decided to try out the #Dungeon23 challenge. It's about creating a megadungeon, one room a day, over the course of the year 2023. I'm not sure if I'll publish the rooms monthly on the blog, or at the end of the year. I don't have plans as of yet to actually map the dungeon, just to make the rooms. Knowing myself, I'll stop caring about it sometime in February, but hey it's worth a try, I've never designed a megadungeon before.

There are also other projects I've got my mind on, most of them unnamed as of yet, or too vaguely defined. Honestly, this year is hard to predict already, and I don't feel like taking my chances with hard goals. I'll take it a little slower this year, and do things at whatever pace I'll feel like.

Anyway, I hope you'll have a wonderful year, and a nice day!