More playing with AI

 This time battlemaps. I was surfing around looking at battlemaps and came across TheAIWizard creating a battlemap or two using AI. He uses Stable Diffusion and has a post on how to set it up and I'm not ready for that level of complexity, yet. So I went back to one of the two I used perviously, ImageFX. 

I typed in "Battlemap, overhead, top-down, dungeon" and stuff like that. The rooms produced by ImageFX are pretty small, most were junk, and it created a bunch of isometric without being asked, but there were a few in there that I rather liked. This might be a way to get assets (firepit, statue, flagstone flooring, exc) instead of actual maps. Who knows. Anyway here are a few samples. It's AI work so I understand its Public Domain so do what you want with them.

I also had it try to make a town and castle. I got pieces of a town and a castle I wasn't happy with. I could probably do more with them, maybe later.

Thoughts on a Viking Campaign

 As mentioned before the Kid is a fan of Vikings. So I thought that's a decent place to start, once the Lost Mines are done and the training wheels are off we can start a viking campaign.

So my first thought is do I go historical. Do I have vikings based on the Isle of Mann raiding proto-dublin, St Michael's Island and perhaps out to Paris. I'd love them to raid Mont-Saint Michelle (and even found some nice maps at Milbysmaps) Or do I make them Vikings in the Saxon era dealing with Saxons and the King of the Britons and viking around like in the Bard series of books. Or do I go full fantasy viking like in How to Tame Your Dragon. 

Well my old gang is a literate bunch and the Kid is into vikings so there is a decent chance they can or will know more than me so getting historical details right could be more of a pain than it's worth. That's not a problem if I have fantasy vikings. Also I can create my own viking religion that praises bloodshed but denounce rape as a way to ensure nobody crosses a line that I think Viking-based games have tip-toed around or ignored in the past.

Side Note: I have all the RuneQuest, BRP, and Legend viking books. RuneQuest Vikings, Vikings of Legend, C'Thulu Dark Ages, Mythic Iceland. I don't think any of them cover raiding as much as they should. Viking is a job, it is piracy and war, not a culture. I wanted to emphasize that more.

Also I have a few AI fantasy cities ready to be pillaged and a few plunder by individual or by building tables I don't seem to have posted to my blog. I published Maritime so I have some maritime rules I can use for boat stuff. So fantasy vikings it will be.

Getting the Gang Back Together

So I haven't really run a game in decades. We used to all live in the San Francisco Bay Area and played throughout middle school and High School. But I haven't played since I graduated from University in 91 and we all went our different ways to start our lives and careers. 

I've played a few times and kept up on things but I really enjoy game mastering more than playing. So a few years ago (just before this blog) a member of my old gang suggested we play again. I didn't really take him seriously but it started the creative juices rolling I created the Grindstone Games blog in late Feb 2019 mostly posting the tons of notes I still had from my old gaming and things that popped into my head as I caught up on everything that had changed since 1E. Well I ditched the Grindstone name and migrated to Ruprecht in May 2021 when i found there were a few other Grindstone's out there. 

I sort of ran out of material to write about and things slowed down drastically on this blog.

So here we are 5 years later, still no game, when I was at the Sundance Film Festival when the Colonel (one of the gang) suggested we play again and Lord British (another player) thought it was a great idea. The Colonel has a kid who (in 20s now) wanted to play. Well with the kid in the mix the Colonel might be all in. 

A note of importance none of us lives near each other anymore. The cast:

Lord British = San Diego

Lucky Dice = Los Angelos

The Colonel (or Unlucky Dice) = Alabama

The Kid = Alabama

GM (aka me)  = Texas

Scheduling with two time zones and multiple schedules could be a factor. 

There is one more player who has somewhat disappeared. Another from San Diego. Our groups Thief and 5 years ago he cancelled invites to his Housewarming party and I haven't really heard from him since. One note on Linkedin and then gone again. 

So with the kid wanting to play I decided to run 5E. I figured if the kid liked it and our gang fell apart he'd at least know enough to join other 5E games. I also figured I didn't want to dive in with all the options of the full game so I handed out the D&D Essential Rules and I figured I'd run Keep on the Borderlands or Lost Mine of Phandelver to start.

So we texted back and forth discussing how to run the first meeting. Teams and Zoom came up as options. We'd all experienced one or the other in the corporate world, both were fairly easy. Zoom was free in 40 minute bites so we went with that and scheduled our first session to roll characters and shoot the shit. The Colonel didn't respond and one of the California boys didn't actually confirm. We decided a Saturday Morning would be best, we could work out other details afterwards. I sent out the zoom invite to everyone (still didn't have the kid's contact info).

So I started the zoom meeting. First attendee was 5 minutes late. Then not long after the Colonel joined with his kid in the room. The last member joined late, but he joined. So we were all in and I discussed the changes and making characters but we mostly shot the shit. Then, one of the California guys I'll call Lucky Roller (the Colonel was the unlucky roller, doesn't matter the game the best laid plans...) suggested that I just come up with pregens for them all as we learned. Also they all wanted fighters (that should be easier for me, although we'll see about that. I found out the Kid big into vikings these days. We were playing Essentials so there are no Barbarian characters (he doesn't know about them anyway) but when we were done with this the next campaign could be viking related easily enough.

Scheduling could be an issue as weekdays don't work and one of the California guys works every other Saturday, but maybe not super-early. The other California guy can play super-early and time zones dictate that super-early is just normal early in TX and AL so maybe it'll work after all. We semi-scheduled a re-occuring Saturday morning game at 6:30 am (I know, ouch). I guess they are serious as they suggested it but we'll see.

The group agreed that perhaps we should pay to upgrade zoom and they could all send me some cash to cover it (because the 40 minute time limit is annoying). I'm now watching Roll20 videos considering that I might give that a try as they've likely thought of a lot of the problems of a straight video meeting and fixed them by now. Also it's free initially with a limit on players being the only issue. limit of 5 and GM (I think) and our group has 4 and a GM.

So I found a website: https://fastcharacter.com/basicdnd.htm

And created seven fighters with different backgrounds and sent them out along with the URL for fastcharacter in case they wanted to try making their own. Alls good for now. I'll keep posting as the game rolls out.