Continued from this post.

Now we come to the major ongoing projects the city has running. With a solid base of 25 seeds, I choose the maximum of 5:

• Peaceful Nuclear Explosions
  
• Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives Program
  
• Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive
  
• RAK Convention and Exhibition Centre by OMA
  
• The Army's Totally Serious Mind-Control Project
  

( Read more... )


Well, that's it for the basic framework of ideas and concepts that the generator has provided - and I have plenty of material now that I can flesh out further now. I hope you enjoyed the ride - and if you have any ideas and suggestions for the Random Nations Generator, I am all ears!

This series of posts is intended to demonstrate how to use the Random Nations Generator at the Arcana Wiki to flesh out a locale. My goal is to both show the usefulness of this tool as a source of inspiration and to encourage others to contribute to the Arcana Wiki by adding new entries which feed into the generator.

For this demonstration, I will use the city-state of Nimdenthal as an example, which I developed for my own Urbis campaign setting. For the record, Urbis uses many of the tropes and elements of fantasy - especially D&D - but combines this with social and technological elements of Industrial Age Western Europe via a magical industrial revolution which continues to transform the world.

So far, I have written the following about Nimdenthal:

"Population: 723,510

This city is infamous for surrendering to the invading armies of Negroth the Doombringer without a fight, and is still hated by the citizens of the other Flannish cities as a result, which suffered far more under his brief reign than Nimdenthal did. That the army of Nimdenthal was hardly able to withstand the might of Negroth's forces on their own is conveniently forgotten. Many other cities still levy large tolls against the goods from Nimdenthal, or boycott them outright. As a result, the people of Nimdenthal take an almost perverse pride in being self-sufficient."

"Negroth the Doombringer", for the record, was one of the last of the stereotypical Evil Overlord types in the setting, and his defeat resulted in a shift from the traditional pseudo-medieval feudal society to a more modern one - complete with revolutions that chased the aristocratic rulers away. However, all this was more than two hundred years ago within the timeline of the setting, and the other people in the region likely wouldn't be able to keep a grudge against Nimdenthal for so long if the city hadn't found new ways of aggravating them - and thus reminding them of their earlier "transgression" of being cheese-eating surrender monkeys against an overwhelming military onslaught. I'll keep this in mind as I interpret the results of the generator.

( Read more... )

To be continued...

The Arcana Wiki keeps growing, and I have far more ideas for entries than time to enter them. So any help with adding material to the wiki is welcome - I and the other contributors could certainly use any assistance you can give us.

I'd like help with one issue in particular. The Arcana Wiki has accumulated a very large number of "stub" entries - essentially placeholder entries which were created to provide links to more interesting entries elsewhere. Here is the complete list of currently existing stubs:

Active Galaxy - Alaska - Ammunition - Ant - Apostles - Argentinia - Ark of the Covenant - Austin, Texas - Bajang - Bat - Bergen - Bergen Museum - Botany - Brazil - Bridge - Burma - California - Cattle - CERN - Chile - China - Chocolate - Christianity - Cipher - Coat Of Arms - Colorado - Comet - Computer - Corporation - Czech Republic - Death - Demonic Possession - Denmark - Disposal Of Human Corpses - Dragon - Drug - eBay - Economics - Ethiopia - Federated States Of Micronesia - Fiction - Ficus - Fly - Forest - Fountain of Youth - France - Frog - Gang - Genetics - Germany - Google - Greece - Greenland - Gull - Homicide - Hong Kong - Horse - Hundred Years' War - Husavik - Iceland - India - Ireland - Islam - Israel - Italy - Japan - Jellyfish - Kenya - Korea - Kutná Hora - Lagos - Lake - Land Vehicle - Language - Laser - Legend - Lich - London - London Underground - Manta Ray - Mars - Mermaid - Meteorology - Miami, Florida - Moscow - Moscow Underground - Mountain - Murder - Music - Name - National Security Agency - Neptune - New Jersey - New Orleans - Nicaragua - Nigeria - North Carolina - North Korea - Norway - Ocean - Opium - Order Of The Veiled Prophet - Penguin - Philippines - Phobia - Piracy In Somalia - Prague - Ras al-Khaimah - Riot - River - Rodeo Rider - Root - Roswell UFO Incident - Saturn - Sheep - Shopping Mall - Singing Cowboy - Snake - Society - Solar System - South Korea - Squid - St Louis, Missouri - Suicide - Switzerland - Tanzania - Temples Of Humankind - Texas - The Wild West - Thule Society - Tokyo - Tree - Turkey - Turkmenistan - Uganda - Ukraine - Unclassifiable Places - United Kingdom - United States - Uranus - Vampire Bat - Vehicle - Vietnam - Volcano - Wallaby - War - Weapon - Weather - Whale - Wichita, Kansas - Wisconsin - World War I



If you have some knowledge of any of these topics and can write something about them - a better description, a few gaming ideas, interesting links and so forth - please do so. Anything to justify getting rid of the "stub" tag!

Another idea I had for an Arcana Wiki Project...


The Cthulhu Mythos has a lot of similarities with more conventional mythologies. That is to say, there is no single, "absolute truth" about the nature of the universe and the powerful entities in it, but rather a large number of overlapping narratives that have some parallels, but also some significant differences between them. The reason for this is, of course, that these narratives were created by a large number of authors - just like with the storytellers of old.

But the same is also true for an in-setting perspective. After all, many mythologies got started when early humans were confronted with alien forces that they could not rationally explain with the tools they had - such as the weather, the seasons, the landscape around them, the growth of plants and the birth of people, as well as more abstract cosmic forces. Thus, they came up with stories about spirits and deities who created the world and gave it its shape and who are responsible for all the phenomena these people experienced in their lives.

And it would be reasonable to assume that any encounters with the entities of the Cthulhu Mythos would likewise enter the mythologies of these people. After all, these are alien forces and entities that such people could not rationally explain with the tools they had.


Thus, it is not really possible to cleanly separate the Cthulhu Mythos and more conventional mythologies - if there has been any contact with Mythos entities at all, it will be reflected in the local stories and legends. Maybe they gave the entity an entirely new name in their stories, or maybe they confused it with one of their more traditional deities, spirits, and monsters of their own belief system. From a storytelling perspective, it hardly matters - what matters is that the Cthulhu Mythos can lurk behind the most benign face.

And it is these connections I wish to explore, and I could use your input. If you are familiar with various mythologies, myths, and legends around the world, give some thought to which Cthulhu Mythos entity could lurk behind them. Post them here, and give a short justification.

Some connections are already well-established in Mythos stories. For example, Deep Ones are likely behind some of the Mermaid legends. Ithaqua has a strong connection with the Wendigo stories of the Canadian north. Lovecraft himself equated the mi-go with the yetis of the Himalayas.

Other connections may be less established, but no less interesting. For example, Hecate of Greek myths might be a guise of Yog-Sothoth. She is associated with portals, and her presence is announced by the baying of hounds - and didn't dogs go berserk when they encountered the sons of Yog-Sothoth in "The Dunwich Horror"?


What other connections can you find?

People »Organization »Organized Crime »Drug Cartel »Los Zetas

Basic Information

Los Zetas is a criminal mercenary army for Mexico'sGulf Cartel. The group is comprised of ex-soldiers, including many members of the Mexican Army's elite Grupo Aeromóvil de Fuerzas Especiales (GAFE). GAFE is an elite unit trained to locate, hunt, and apprehend members of Drug Cartels, and the Gulf Cartel has actively recruited from it's ranks to form Los Zetas. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) advises that the Los Zetas paramilitaries may be the most technologically advanced, sophisticated and violent of all paramilitary enforcement groups. It is believed that they were originally trained at the military School of the Americas. Also, they were trained by foreign specialists, including Americans, French, and Israelis, in rapid deployment, aerial assaults, marksmanship, ambushes, small-group tactics, intelligence collection, counter-surveillance techniques, prisoner rescues and sophisticated communications.[1]

They serve the Cartel as bodyguards, enforcers, debt collectors, executioners and assassins.

See Also

• News: Police - U.S. teens were hit men for Mexican Cartel

Sources

Bibliography
1. Wikipedia entry

Game and Story Use

• Pretty much the most threatening paramilitary cadre the GM can throw against PCs in the Modern Day. They have extensive military training, and strong financial backing.
  • Considering their complicated backgrounds and training, they could make for a very sinister Quirky Miniboss Squad.
  • Los Zetas might be running El Rey, or just be hired on as security for such a place.
• Source of inspiration for Parallel organizations in other settings.
  • A group of Knights or Adventurers who got hit with an alignment-reversing curse? Killed by a Vampire? Bribed by the Dragon they couldn't defeat?
  • The most badass Time Travelers in all of history, from half a dozen scattered eras and cultures? Per Godwins Law of Time Travel, they're working for the Nazis now.
• Founded and organized by well-trained commandos. Now, according to the news (see link above) they are recruiting US teenagers. Los Zetas like a real-world embodiment of the Authority Equals Ass-Kicking trope, with Mooks at the bottom and a Big Bad Evil Guy at the top.

This entire post is under a Creative Commons License. If you want to add your own ideas to the original article, go here.

Inspired by a recent RPGNet thread (login required to read), I started working on an entry for Arcologies on the Arcana Wiki. I thought a bit about possible adventure and campaign ideas, and then wondered how to use them in different genres.

Take fantasy, for instance. Sure, you could just use some giant building chiseled out of a mountain by a legion of dwarves. But that's been done before. So how about making the whole arcology into a gigantic, living creature - either artificial or natural? The human inhabitants could be seen as either parasites or symbionts - the creature would be able to provide them with food from its bodily fluids, and also recycle their waste.

Furthermore, these creatures might be migratory. Given how much energy they would require to move, they would likely move very slowly - possibly slower than human walking speed. Using legs as locomotion would not be a very smooth ride for the inhabitants. But maybe they move similar to slugs - they travel on a single, massive "foot" and crush the vegetation - including entire trees - below them and eating them - leaving a massive slime trail behind them which serves as compost for new plant growth.

Now imagine a herd of such creatures traveling through a vast forest into the direction of the sunset, each inhabited by thousands of people...



I really need to use that imagery...






Note: If you have any other good ideas for using them in games, please add them to the Arcana Wiki!

Hit this page until you have found inspiration.




Yes, I finally did manage to create a proper random page function for the Arcana Wiki...

I just discovered that one of my co-contributors at the Arcana Wiki is working on a Random Crime Generator - which you should all check out, because it's pretty awesome.

It's still a bit in its early stages, though - so feel free to help him out in expanding it. He explains how further down the page.

For those among you who are both gamers and owners of an Amazon Kindle - I present to you:

The Arcana Wiki Ebook.

I've just started a project with the goal of creating a program or script capable of converting gaming wikis into Kindle-readable wikis.

The primary goal is to convert the Arcana Wiki, of course. But I also plan to do the same for the Urbis Wiki - once I have finished building the latter.

All in all, I should be happy with the progress of the Arcana Wiki. There is a steady stream of new material (although admittedly the majority is added by me). The Random Adventure Seed Generator seems to work well enough, and the Random Character Generator also looks promising, even if there aren't yet enough relevant pages on the Arcana Wiki to make it really versatile. The new layout of the start page (in my opinion) does a much better job of pointing out all those strange odds and ends of the wiki which I find so inspirational - and which I hope others find inspirational as well.


And yet, it still doesn't go fast enough for my tastes. I want to reach a point where the whole effort becomes essentially self-sustaining like the d20 NPCs Wiki (one of my biggest success stories so far) has become. I want to be able to just lean back and watch it grow, and maybe come up with some ideas for new applications now and then (and I do have some further ideas. For the moment I will only say: "Random Campaign Settings"...).

And I'm still nowhere near that stage yet. For this, the Arcana Wiki would need a dozen or more people who are as prolific at submitting new material as kurtoons (alias "quarkstomper" on the Arcana Wiki), so that they could inspire each other and drive each other onwards. And I have no idea how to attract that many contributors - or indeed, if I will ever reach that stage.

What do you think - is it even possible to attract a sufficient number of enthusiastic contributors to this project? And if so, how?

Or is the Arcana Wiki simply too much of a niche project to ever attract large-scale attention from the gaming community?

I present to you:

The Random Adventure Seed Generator

Please tell me what you think of it. And if you are in the mood, how about submitting an adventure seed of your own?

After Wikidot.Com has finally implemented a new Random Page function, I've remodeled the front page of the Arcana Wiki. Please tell me what you think.

I've been collecting a few examples at the Arcana Wiki:

Tongue-eating bug found in fish
Zombie caterpillars controlled by voodoo wasps

I've added a new entry to the Arcana Wiki describing one of my favorite bits of weirdness out there.

To sum it up, an Austrian farmer visits the Atomium in Brussels and is inspired to build a new type of machine. The next day he goes back to his village and starts to build it. He keeps on expanding it for the next 23 years, and "completes" it shortly before he dies.

And nobody can any sense of what this machine is supposed to do, and he never told anyone nor took any notes. So now the family is charging admission for a steady stream of visitors.

And if you can't use this to come up with some adventure ideas for a modern-day occult or horror campaign, you aren't really trying.

Well, it's official. With the Pyramid Changeover from a web to a PDF-based magazine, Kenneth Hite has announced that he his ending his Suppressed Transmission column for the time being.

I cannot say that I am entirely surprised, since the publication schedule of the column has been going steadily downwards during the last few years. Still, it saddens me greatly. The Suppressed Transmissions were, to me, the highlight of Pyramid Online. Each column had an extremely high density of gameable material, adventure seeds, and suggestions for entire campaigns - made even better by the fact that all the material was entirely rules-free.

And the man could turn anything into inspiration for games. He had an essay on Chess. He had an essay on Ebay. He had an essay on Coca-Cola, for that matter, and it turns out that the world's most popular soft-drink has no shortage of mystical associations fit for gaming. And then there are the more obvious game-related matter, such as Spring-Heeled Jack, Emperor Norton, Walpurgisnacht, H.P. Lovecraft, the Queen of Sheba, El Dorado, Le Comte de Saint-Germain, the Frankenstein family, Atlantis, the Sphinx, Rudolf Hess, the Congo, Route 66, Phileas Fogg, the Grand Canyon and so forth and at nauseam. "Hite's Handy Guide to Ultraterrestrials" remains unforgotten, as does "There's More to Faeries Than Their Glamor" and "Ancient Astronaut Texas Steel Cage Death Match".

And then there were all his Alternate Histories - his recurring Halloween essays in the "Clio's Nightmare" series (where history goes very dark indeed), as well as other works, such as his "Six Flags Over Roswell" where the UFO crashes at different points in history and creates some very different worlds. In short, this series was such an enormous font of ideas that I deeply lament its ending.

I bought the printed collections of his earlier essays for the extended footnotes (and nifty art). They might not have sold well, but I throughly enjoyed them. And a few weeks ago, I spent eight hours by stitching all Suppressed Transmission essays in the Pyramid archives into a single document, and then converted it into an ebook readable by my Amazon Kindle - complete with working internal links between the different essays (and no, you can't have a copy unless you can prove you are an SJG staffer or Kenneth Hite himself). Now I'm slowly reading through the archives again and add notes to the document when I find new inspiration for my campaign setting - which tends to happen three or four times per essay.

Well, this proved prescient, as the Pyramid website is closing down soon. I'm glad that I continued to resubscribe for the archives, as I can still download their entire content before they turn off the lights - others, who have waited with resubscribing, are not as fortunate.


And after I have finished reading through them, I will try to follow in the footsteps of these essays - by continuing to expand the Arcana Wiki, which I founded a few months ago in the hopes of also trying to find the strange, the bizarre, and just plain interesting in history and real life, and tying it all together into gameable material. I don't pretend I - and the other contributors - will be able to someday reach the quantity of his works.

And that's why, as of now, I am dedicating the Arcana Wiki to the memory of his column. Good luck with your future projects, Mr Hite!

As I hope my recent Arcana Wiki for Otherkin proves.

My first interview was published.

I'm famous! :D

The Arcana Wiki has become the Illuminated Site of the Week!

The Arcana Wiki has been growing nicely since its inception less than two months ago, and it now features more than five hundred entries. By all rights, I should be satisfied.

And yet, it could grow faster still. The overwhelming majority of the entries were written by me, and while gradually new contributors are joining up, it's still not fast enough for my tastes.

With that in mind, does anyone here have any good ideas for finding new contributors? Where could I advertise the existence of the wiki so that I can attract a larger audience?