A Meta Gaming Blog talking about How to Frame Narrative, Exploiting and Exploring Biases, and Using Work Productivity and Motivation tools in a TRPGs most of the time.
Since 2015, what has changed is that I've had more Work Experience in IT, Project Management, and Quality Management. This is how it affects how I game.
My Bias is that if I find a skill in either TRPGs, Hobbies, or Work and its Better than all the other ways in any discipline I've encountered I apply that skill in all the disciplines. Of course I modify the skill for the Tolerances of the discipline - hobbies have a HIGHER tolerance for failure vs work, personal finances (like applying my project management skills in managing the vendor who will construct our new home is higher than hobbies but less than work).
75x75 is the limit if I can make it 25x25 it would be better.
Depends on how much Tactical DATA and Context to process of the Players.
How much players are willing to work with Uncertainty
If I want Larger Scale then I need to increase the meters per hex.
I have to Translate the Actions and movement into new Scale.
Its just more simple to scale in 3s, x3, x10, scale.
Its better to have simple colors than to have "realistic" pictures because I want players to know they are walking into Broken Ground because its not Brown or Color Coded.
Tactical Language or Language of Constraints. this means color coding, legends or references, being able to communicate highly dense information to Players and thus SHORTEN the prep time.
This will Translate to my Ship Combat Rules as well.
The GOAL is to systemize encounters (be it ship, social, combat etc...)
easily replicable
GMs can decide what they will keep and their trade offs.
GMs can easily streamline their prep
This is again drawn from Airsoft and Milsims experience where I play out many of the scenarios as I understand them and Applying Occams razor to the scenarios.
JUST VOICE
300kbps (kilobit) (35KBps or KiloByte/s) uploading just voice and downloading just 1 other participant for a total of 600kbps (70KBps)
For every additional participant you download more data. So if you are talking to 3 other people then you will be download 300kbps (35KBps) per participant for a total of 900kbps (105KBps). Don't forget to add yourself for a total of 900kbps down and 300kps up for a total of 1.2mbps or (140KBps).
Like Marching you can move only as fast as the slowest member. This means that the user experience is by the person with the worse internet. This can translate to a bunch of you being affected. Hardware Matters! Noise Cancelling Headphones is just plain basic Courtesy in Voice/Video over IP. Even the robust Iphone Earbuds are pretty good noise cancelling. The more ambient sounds you have the get into your mic the harder it is to be understood.
Latency, like in Online Game, Matters
So PING or MS matters. I normally use my Steam PING measures to see how things are by loading Insurgency and see how the Ping is per
or you can use a PING test to see how is the MS of your country or region with your players/gm's region.
Latency Benchmarks are those you need for an FPS, about more than 200 becomes noticeably difficult and blow 100 becomes easy and undetectable. (Check the MS rating for the location)
Google Alerts ISP Outage and Conditions
If you use Google Alerts than make an alert sends alerts before your game day about Outages, Interruptions, Maintenance, and Servicing. (Use those words as key words). VOICE and VIDEO
2.6mbps (megabit) (350KBps) up or down with video.
So in a Game of 4 other players, thats 10.4mbps (1.4MegaByte/sec). This can even be more if the Video is in HD.
Example. My internet at home is measured at 100KBps. This means I can talk to 2 other people in a voice only Google Hangout. I have a "advertised" 4mbps aka 500KBps. If PLDT FINALLY comes up with 50mbps (60usd/mo) and PLDT delivers only 1/5 of promised at 10mbps (1.25MBps) I need to still do the Hangout on Audio to maximize the user experience.
GM and Players need to MATCH Bandwidth.
If I run a game with 4 other players EVERYONE will need about 1.4MB and a latency of about below 300ms.
Roll20
Roll20 needs about 400kbps to 800kbps (50-100KB/s) to add on. Again check the latency of this all. Here is Roll20's image best practices and my Optimized Combat Mapping Post Turn Off Mic if not Speaking
You will learn that turning off the Mic when its not your turn (and to comment on the chat or send whispers) is better to minimize confusion and maximize everyone's Mental and ISP bandwidth. More Voice Streams of data the more Download the system needs. If you find it Rude for the GM or Other players to mute you, then be aware when its not your turn and your Mic is on. The GM may make a disclaimer - Will mute you if its not your turn to talk to limit noise and bandwidth. Computer CPU and RAM.
Browsers can surprisingly eat up a lot of ram, and when I have it on my CPU monitor shows all 4 cores firing at max in my i3 computer. So if you can divide tasks by devices it would help. I ran a hangout from my phone and Roll20 on my laptop to help with the responsiveness.
In Closing
Hopefully one day someone can make a Chrome or Firefox Plug-in to automate all this. I'm sure someone would have figured out this pain point and
Second - Skype and Hangouts can have a dashboard for matching.
If all VOIP services can have a way to test and measure. like my tested bandwidth quality, capacity, and beside each name the PING/MS/Latency I have with each player updated every couple of minutes would be AWESOME!
Allow us to Search by Hubs and Discussion on User Experience.
If we can find gamers to play with online by the Quality of the Connection it would also be awesome. Breaking it down to "Hubs" would be ok and an opt in system. As well as informing people how they can improve their User Experience. In my area X is the best way, as I've tried Z, Y and B!
The Philippine Condition
It seems my timing leaving Roll20 is not so bad since I've been downgraded and will need to look for a good ISP. The example is true that If I do get to move to a new ISP at BEST I have only 1.25MB/s to look forward to or 4 player slots in only Voice.
But I'm not getting that until PLDT gets a fiber backbone in our area (by the experience of them just setting up a leased line in our provincial plant may mean x2-3 the amount of time, for a project that should have taken 60 days), I can only get 8mbps which is sobering 200KBs (remember 1/5 of the advertised rate) and that means Voice only and latency problems. Thats probably 2 years away (2018) or never.
The army separated. they divided between the two paths. This is because of the rising tension between Mauger and Tancred. Olek joined Mauger who took the western path while the rest of the Party Joined Tancred who took the middle path.
Olek and Mauger
There was fear of further raids, Maugers with his Commanders took counsel of Olek. Olek and his theology was taking shape and with his own keen strategic understanding influenced them to act. At first Olek's attempt fumbled, the army wanted to wait but he twisted and weaved his words. Hey preyed on their pride and their strength and got them to be filled with valor. He had them fighting for the honor to ambushing the enemy.
Thiostav fought for the honor of leading the raiding party. A tall and wiry northman with so many arm rings it seemed like armor and tarnished silver teeth, he had the largest and loudest band of Raiders more than 400 men. He contested Sur's honor for leading the raiding party. Sur is the war chief of the veteran and elite corp, every man he has is a warrior and Sur himself is a man who can be mistook for a dwarvish Woden with his crow and blackened eye. He did not take it well, Olek quick witted settled the matter and did it with his guile and manipulation. He let Sur lead, but manage to save Thiostavs face by granting him the vision of killing a great prince of the Huns (note that characters in the setting get all the ethnicity and peoples wrong).
That night their Raiders took to the mountains and marched all night. They did an incredible pace of 7kph, veterans running with light kits and limited supplies. Olek joined and their cordon of spies were able to prepare as scouts passed and reported the vulnerabilities of their faux camp. When 600 horses came through the Raiders closed the road by cutting trees and digging spikes quickly. A shield wall with spikes and logs blocked the path back. Sur let a company ambush the scouting patrol.
When the Turks expended their horses as they raided and wheeled about to draw Maugers forces to charge they were not phased. They let out curses both sides could not understand. Arrows partialy spent and horses strong enough to ride back to the camp for their second of 5 remounts they went back only to find the ambush.
On foot the men of Mauger charged and formed ranks. The band of the Huskalars ran but when fire came, they knelt and brought their shield wall up in a fairly close order. When the riders wheeled about, their ranks opened and huskalars ran and did the same. Every 30 to 50 paces they did this. Opposite of them their barricade had Greek fire and shields to take the archery. Men charged with horses on the edge, hoping to give a glancing charge to deadly error as raiders threw javelins and axes to kill horse and man. Fire prevented them from charging effectively as the Hammer came towards the anvil.
Close enough the Hexers archers stood on shield thrones to fire down at the horses and men so that they would not harm their own. Arrows, Fire, the Night, and frightened animals. Panic ran high and chaos. Archers drew and loosed, then battle cries were called when Greytooths men came through the Shield wall to frighten the horses unable to wheel and charge. By fire light the turks were slaughtered and Mauger saved some for thanks to the gods.
The detached company and took out the scouts and guard, and took the remouts. by that night the Jarl had 3000 horses. Almost two horses per man, and the resources to travel to Nicaea before anyone was wiser.
Tacred and the Party
Tancred was still unable to be amicable with the party. The resentment was strong and the fracturing made the men impetuous. Berthold led a platoon of young nimble scouts with him to recon the position of the enemy. While a master archer, rogue and hunter, he was not a leader and the boys were lost and confused. He used them as bait, and was able to ambush the scouts. With war arrows and the bait he managed to take out two Scouts, only to let two escape.
The other youth ran back, and gave word. The most elite Defensores came forward, while the rest mustered. They managed to meet in time to defend the wounded scouts who were attacked by a band of Turks. It would have been an easy match but the discipline of Tertions Night fighters kept their discipline and their backs to the mountain side. Turkish arrows bristled their shields, the grain of the 25lbs Scoutai split with the leather backing keeping it barely together. The Turks wheeled and fired, looping to try to shoot over the edge. To deter their bravo Berthold heaved and loosed his great war arrows while Tertion carefully coordinated his Skoutatoi.
Meanwhile Rjugot lead the band of Scouts to flank around to their east. While Konrad raced to come to their aid with the skirmishing force straight ahead. When his hunting arrows flew to harrass the Turks 10 men were down, a quarter of the force Tertion had with him. 6 kilometers was a painful and ragged 30 mins for the light infantry while Rjugot had the terrible task of looping around to surpass the same distance with Xenophon. When Xenophon arrayed his Battalion to close off the Turks they were spent.
Berthold hurled 3lbs of great war arrows in the dust cloud of men and horses. He struck horse and man. The battle went no where fast and remounts were needed for another fresh round of fire. When they turned away from the feeble attempts of hunting arrows and clumsy javelins an array of 30 men abreast 2 ranks deep came to stop them. Xenos men were struggling to bolster the shield wall when arrows flew overhead and pierced 10lb shields. The third rank barely formed when glancing charges smashed through and collapsed the first rank - Xeno's toughest men.
Spears were lunched but Arrows replied, gaps opened, and Xenophon cried out for it to be filled. Boys and men began to fill the gaps. The arrows shooting overhead prevented them from fleeing and came to find shelter in the ranks of the shield wall now thickening to three and almost four. Konrad arrayed the raiders from the slopping forest mountains and continued harrass them. While hunting arrows were not enough to kill, it was enough to harm horses and no one wanted to have to run on foot if the worse came.
The pressure increased and now glancing charges smashed against the human wall. A horse jumped over and came to crush the two ranks infront of Xeno. The rider slashing with a heavy saber down at men panicked and shocked. Xeno cried out loud to rally killed the hansom animal and his terrible riders leg was smashed beneath it. They moved forward but then an ambigious sign came. Sounds of french echoing the mountain sloped walls and thundering heavy iron hooves. The earth shuddered more under the hooves of half ton horses.
Tertion was swearing as Tancred's men clipped passed them knocking one of his men. The knights saw blood and glory and headed straight for it. They smashed everything else getting to it, and the panick made Xeno's job harder as he tried to Pivot his wall. On command they moved and the farthest man was smashed out of the way by fear fueled horses. And more than a third of his wall collapsed, and so did the ranks behind them as heavy saber came down young, confused, and spent men.
It was not aid that came but the thunderstorm of knights that echoed blows onto the mountain walls. Xeno lost good men and Tancred took glory at the expense of the garbage that walked. When the fighting died down Cato near collapsed dealing with all the repurcussions of the events that transpired. The rift among them deepened as word spread that the party were ungrateful of aid when their foolhardy attempt for glory (with the intent to exclude Tancred) came on their heads and their Norman lord saved them.
Cato was bed ridden and not much progress was made that day.
Side Adventure.
by https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Cplakidas
After long meditation and counsel Xenophon discovered who betrayed the Emperor and let Smyrna be captured and him and his men enslaved: The man who's son he has rescued from the Emperor and has promised to come back with "evidence" of the culprit.
Garbas needed the navy occupied in the Agean so that he can be left to his own devices.
Titled war, this was caused by the stalemate of the talks of Bohemon and Alexios. Bohemmon wants a command of Asia Minor, the equivalent of ~1 million households. An economy, when fully realized that can forces reminiscent of the age of Empire. A stalemate that forces Bohemon to sieze these provinces himself and negotiate when he has them in possession because of the informal truce with the Sultanate of Rum under Abu'l Qasim.
Cato is a diplomat in a war party. He is Bohemon's diplomat but he realizes how alien he is among these Northern warriors. The army has begun plotting how they will divi up the land while Bohemmond is away. The Factions become more pronounced. Already men are making claims and calling dibs.
He plans to reminds Bohemmon that with Constantine Doukas, son of the former emperor Michael VII and Maria Alania he has a claim to the throne. The way his father did more than 14 years ago.
Cato decides to focus on a far away town and maybe have the coast as holdings for his party. He tries to salvage a space for the party when everyone is calling dibs, their aggressive nature pushes him to be defensive and it is an uphill challenge to control these warriors.
Cato is managing the crisis of leadership Tancred vs Mauger. Olek and Konrad are helping organizing.
He works with Cedric, "Capitane" (actually Count level) of the harrier Battalion to get Tancred to act appropriately. Still there is a huge gap to bridge.
Olek has begun a lot of his machinations. He has begun recruitment of the city's population, and applying what he had learned of these Northmen and their gods. He takes the Germanic Christianity (where there are parallels of Woden and Christ) and uses it to gain the respect of the Northmen and Balkan warriors. He re-examines the old gods and with his mastery of theology, and adapts it to his listener.
His recruitment is for able bodies. He focuses in having enough squad leaders mix and discipline his men.
His mastery improves as he takes the shamans of these warriors and manipulates them into his theology.
Olek takes a lot of logistical roles and along with his ability to spread important skills to his followers raises their abilities painstakingly.
He uses Opiates and his very good physician to create a corps of men dependent on his skills.
He aids Cato in managing the Crisis of Leadership: Tancred vs Mauger (The Colonels or Marquis rank). He was "Machiavelanating".
He goes with Mauger and continues to win their confidence and their psyche as their Chaplain.
Konrad becomes the Baggage Train Quartermaster. Ken now controls Konrad. (many technical problems with the connection)
He meets Cedric, Capitaine of the Harriers. Cedric wonders what a fellow german speaker is doing here.
He observe the looting is not efficient and organized.
He also notices the baggage train is not as efficient as it could be. He manage the baggage train.
He manages to help Cato to get Tancred to move faster. He points out how important initiative. He cleverly developed a formula how to talk to Tancred, thinking through more of the details and planting the suggestion of the necessary course of action.
Xenophon. We were recapping a bit. there were many threads that had unsatisfying and dubious ends. There was the confession of Doux Theodore Garbas, his claim that the Taronites were involved in the sneak attack. A claim and the word of a man who may not have all the facts
Who betrayed him to have him captured and enslaved by the Turks in 1081? This is the same year Alexios came to power. (see timeline)
former Kapetano Marten Bucari tells Xeno this was during this time 5 Doux served to deal with the Norman threat by the sea. He knows only of Garbas, and the lord he serves which he did not mention.
Upon speaking to Garbas, he learns that Milessenos and Taronites were assigned in the task group. (Update) Taronites for the logistical base, and Milessenos for the ground forces.
Who killed Count Constantine Umbertopolus, the former commander of the Frankon Tagma and former lord of the party?Currently suspect is Nikephoros Milessenos, by way of his Hekatonarch Ardos. Berthold is a suspect.
What is the relationship of Tancred Doux Milesenos? Bohemon used Tancred to deal with Milesenos to help him in his negotiations with the emperor. When the negotations had a stalemate instead of helping Bohemmon Milesenos used the negotiations to publicly shame Alexios (his brother in law) and Bohemon "the barbarian".
He has gotten tired of Maria Alania, and has offered her to Konrad.
Rjugot wife scene. Vito helps Rjugot connect with his wife. Rjugot leaves a note for his wife, and she tries to kill herself when she realizes who the note comes from. He hears about it and goes to her. He sees healers and around the house, where she lives, vicious rumors of all kinds that assumes the worse of her and the family.
He goes to Vito, and Vito helps him to bring Miro (Miroclones) in return help some poor out of luck men get work under Xenophon. So Vito introduces Miro to the Pater de Familia of Rjugots wife (Ayna). Miro finds a very loving household, as though the social status gap fails to exist there. Miro discovers she tried to kill herself out of shame, and the greatness of the shame was what saved her as the poison, so bitter, caused her to gag and vomit it before it was digested well. He discovers the master's wife caring for this servant who obviously is sleeping with her husband.
Miro discovers a small island of love and acceptance in this household, a rare sight which is offset by how tragic the people are in this group and how fleeting their presence in their world. He discovers the child is that of the Masters. He prescribes cannabis for the chronic disease.
Battle.
Much of the party decided to throw their lot at Tancred, Who still saw them as shit. Mauger who has the same opinion but was not very vocal about it went of to the western path while Tancred went to the southern path. The party wanted to play the two commanders against each other only that it went so well as to divded them.
The end of the sessions is punctuated by a steppe horse archer ambush. With both forces reacted predictably against and boxes up. Discipline prevailed as they were not drawn to engage, but morale suffered at the failure to display "Courage".
Tertion acts to deal with the harrying force and brings his force to forward. When their flanks were about to be attacked, their attention was diverted enough for Tancred to launch a charge. The blow smashing into the enemy's looping action. Tancred gained glory for the engagement and Tertion was used as a decoy.
Maugers force is warned in of an ambushing force by Olek. They manage to switch their facing and formation to adapt. What was a flank and poorly manned gap, was actually squads of formed up to let cavalry through and their archers and shock troops to throw javelins at the cavalry.
Character Highlights
Mauger - is based on the undocumented infantry commanders that followed Robert Guiscard and threw their lot with bohemmond. A barrel chested warrior, he is the Warmaster training and drilling troops and teaching them formations and array. He is called "the Jarl" as assembles the battalions of Raiders, Archers, and Heavy Infantry fighters under him.
Cedric - The Harrier Capitaine. A man at arms who is surrounded by cavalry scouts who is more senior and experienced than Tancred. Dependable and is the caution Bohemon wants out of Tancred's experience. Without Bohemmon, Tancred reinforces his statuss over the much older Cedric.
Experimenting some more. These are Gifs of 128x128. They average 10kb. At 256x256 they average 30kb as gif and 90kb as png. I'll be sticking to gifs more to run the game smoother.
They look more and more like BIT art lolz. Which is not a bad thing. But to optimize memory going to Gifs and limiting the color pallet is needed.
Newer Versions of Terrain
Tree, bad footing, and bushes.
Roots give bad footing. so hexes without roots have no penalty.
Bad footing Terrain and Bushes both give bad footing penalty, worse penalties in the bushes but they provide concealment and break line of sight.
Gif is the Smallest, and has some lost detail. Comparing the same file from PNG to Gif at the same px the Gif is 1/4 the size.
1028x1028 is the optimal size for a combat map. By Combat map, I mean the map you are going to move around in with a number of tokens. I run gurps and I can be a combat heavy GM, and I like the Mass Combat rules and allow large number of units to participate.
This does not prove the same rule or standard for overland maps which is not token/asset heavy.
Sample Optimized Battlemap
At 70px per Hex, 1027/70 = about 14 hexes.
14x14 is the optimal. But thats pretty clear, I can suffer some pixelation to have more playing space. I experimented with 0.7 enabled grid unit size and 0.2. I looked at the pixelation of 1028x1028 (~700kb).
In the end I need the following details:
Bad Terrain
Cover
Visibility
Line of Sight
Visibility Fall-Off. (Select the Token and press "L" to see what ithe token can see).
In combat I opted not to use COmbat Maps made in GIMP. Instead I made maps with 256x256 Gif Assets (4kb each). Will make prettier assets in the future. Again they will be drawn with GIF as the intended output for combat maps.
2kb
2kb
4kb
You will notice this terrain has a lot of trees and cover. Its a more open era for combat, as forests go.
so basically IF I littered a scene with 20 4kb, and 40 2kbs I'd have a total of 1.600kb scene. Still smaller than most scenes with a map. And it depends on the density.
Some OSs allow you to Zoom different from the Ctrl+Mouse wheel. My PC used to be able to do it, now I dont know what happened
Lesson: this means breaking up a beautifully detailed map into 1028x1028 chunks or planning your map making around this size. Which is not so bad. Crop up a map, and place it in your drawing space and work on the sections.
Quick and Simple Method
Combat maps lack a lot of detail, the area is so limited what matter are the terrain, its effects and Information asymmetry (for tactical decision making). In this method I can quickly make a map and even make one on the fly.
All my units have lighting so I can see what they can see. Beyond their visibility and enemies behind cover the PCs have to make listening and observation checks and I can "Ping" where.
Information Asymmetry - PCs or the Players can develope good protocols and rules of thumb to work with limited information. This also allows Biases and Disads to come into play. Aggressive, Paranoid, Cautious, Level Headedness, etc... are accentuated with Information Asymmetry.
Lightening Assets
you will notice the asset below. The Spear wielder is 590kb (1500x1500px) vs the smaller one at 32kb (258x258). That adds to the load. I will have to reduce all that very nice detail into a more playable size.
1500x1500 PNG 357kB
256x256 31kb PNG
256x256 9kb GIF
* You will have to adjust the visibility. I use 20/10 for how far the character can see (simulating Combat Awareness and information Asymmetry), but at 0.2 this is screwed up. So from 20/10 it becomes 4/2 and 22/11 becomes 4.4/2.2
Lesson the GM who wants to cram as much assets and terrain into his play space and he has limits in screen size and bandwidth he has to work with Optimized Asset Sizes. Basically work on 258x258, png for tokens, and Gif for Assets, and a map of 1028x1028 or No Map at all..
A map I recently finished, I'm learning to paint maps and terrain slowly a lot of lessons learned. Infinite Painter with Note 10.1, probably took me 3-4 hours (redoing many things, a lot of trial and error, and still many errors).
Here is my non-professional work lolz. Hope you can find it useful. Some notes on the scale I use which I had to resize to fit in properly (and to flip around because their handedness keeps gets screwed up)
This is for my Warring States Game which still has a slot-ish open. The party needs Muscle so warriors are especially needed.
The (hypothetical) Huang-Jin Valley for the Warring States game.
Sorry I have to really fudge some details lost in the last 2500 years.
import the map into s note. turn of rotation.
draw the basics and make notes on how I'm going to do the other features. Brush tool for the rivers at the smallest setting and pencil for the smaller rivers. Wheat goldish for the"farms lands"
Ouch its getting dizzying with the google map and the drawing. The dark green preset color for the forests. This is 2500 years ago, and there were WAAAAAAY more forest. Varying pencil thickness for the forests to represent grades of density. Green for hills.
This is fine, its not like its my profession to draw maps. The freedom of being a GM is the much lower standard I judged as an artist lolz.
Some names and places using GIMP. Need to throw this into Roll20 and scale the hexes.
Basically this is between the Wei, Zhao, Qi, and Chu territories. Yan and Han are close enough to meddle. Still accessible by Qin.
Made 3 LARGE Families the Players will have to gather information about from their Initial "Calibration" on Friday night EST 7pm. Then they travel from where ever they come from to the region. This is low level and the families they deal with is of lower rank, just Vassal families whose loyalty and status is ambigous. Players are survivors of the Jin & Zhi Massacre (either retainers or secondary-tertiary family members).
So on Friday Night EST at around 7pm, I'm running a GURPS Demo. No story, just a bunch of Pregens and submitted characters sheets (give me time to create the character in roll20 so just submit it ahead of time.). There is no story or narrative, - enemies just show up, PCs may try to hit each other to see how much damage they can deal, and random stuff happens.
The point is that its just a chance to show the rules and play as you learn, instead of reading them from the book. You can submit your character, give me some time to input it and give me an icon for that character.
Below is the Terrain, No GM secrets - Stats are going to be all visible as I add and and more of them.
This is with the dynamic lighting.
The whole Map, with dynamic lighting
The Dynamic Lighting cover - just random lines to simulate how visibility can be very limited in jungle or wooded terrain - surprising yourself and others happens lolz.
