I'm back from my trip to Newcastle and had a grand time. Lots of it involved catching up with my aunts but we also went on some outings, saw shows and events.
Read
After Reading the original Dungeons and Dragons Player's Manual I got into a second piece of DnD history, the Dungeon Master's Rulebook. It very much expected you to have read the Player's Manual first and I believe they came as a set. Again it is a very slim volume compared to its modern counterparts.
First thing in it was an example dungeon for a group of adventurers to have their first game in. It was an abandoned castle with various monster encounters and magically enchanted furniture. I did think it was a bit unfair in how many monsters it expected novice adventurers to fight, hordes of kobolds with ranged weapons and the very first monster was a carrion crawler which in these rules was very nasty as it had eight attacks which caused paralysis each round. I could easily see a group of four adventurers succumbing just to that.
After that there was a listing of various situations the party might find themselves in and what the DM should do. It included some guidance for when things come up which aren't in the rulebook.
Next was a listing of monster stats which had the interesting mechanic of hit dice amounts reflecting the hitpoints of the monster and also its relative strength. Interestingly everything rolls for its hitpoints total with even a dragon having a variance of 8x between maximum and minimum hitpoint totals. It did seem like monsters were rather simplified in only having a few stats such as number of attacks and damage. Later versions of DnD gave every monster ability scores.
The most in-depth and interesting monster entry was for dragons of which there were already six different kinds. Some were intelligent and could talk or even cast spells. The rules went into how to subdue dragons and have them work for you which is a rather novel concept. Already Golden Dragons were the best of the best having the greatest stat values and being able to take human form. Thankfully they are lawful and probably don't want to kill you on sight.
At the end of the monsters section were loot tables for the different kinds of monster. It also went into more exotic loot like jewelry and enchanted magical items. These items had some classics of the game like the bag of holding and gauntlets of ogre strength. Of course any magic item could be cursed and potions had unknown effects until sipped, both rules that result in some 'fun' results.
Lastly there was a section on making dungeons which recommended coming up with a theme for the dungeon and using grid paper to map it out. There were some guides for having monsters of a certain difficulty appear in a range of dungeon levels and some wandering monster tables for each level. It very much put me in mind of the dungeons you would find in something like the videogame Rogue, which is not too surprising seeing as DnD was heavy inspiration for that genre of videogames.
Right that's enough about DnD, how about what I got up to in Newcastle.
Watched
First night in Newcastle I went to the performance of a play by the amateur dramatics group that one of my aunts is part of. It was a performance of the play Love From A Stranger which is based on a short story by Agatha Christie. It is something of a slow burn psychological thriller about a woman meeting a man and falling in love with him but not all is what it seems. The acting, whilst not perfect, did result in a very exciting finish where a murderer is foiled.
Later I went to the cinema to watch Comédie-Française, a French language film about a theater performance of Macbeth that is beset by troubles in the run-up to its premier. It was a very fun watch as new problems are piled upon one another. Even though the situation seemed hopeless the characters decide to press on to uphold the prestige of their theater company, the Comédie-Française.
I expected the film to be longer as it abruptly ends just as they start the performance itself but it is clear it is all going to go terribly wrong, no silver lining here. On reflection the buildup to the performance had enough drama in it and the characters had already come together to see this through to the bitter end. The main character gave an excellent performance as she tries to keep the troupe and herself together.
Listened
The last night in Newcastle I went to a concert performance of War of the Worlds based on the book by H. G. Wells. Not only was there some rather good music they also had narration of the events in the story and a screen with animations of the events the music was about. Really good strings, electric guitar, synths and vocals.
I believe it faithfully recreated the events from the book and there was the iconic design of the tripods. All the animations were 3D renders with a rather pulpy sci-fi aesthetic. Only complaint would be that each song was rather long and could perhaps have done with more variation within each. Still I thoroughly enjoyed having such a novel experience with such high production values.
Visited
We visited the Bowes Museum in County Durham which is an art gallery with a famous animatronic called the Silver Swan. The building itself is very impressive, looking like an immense country house with vast, high ceilinged rooms. The exhibits were of collections of aristocratic artifacts with some neat early forms of pianos and metal sculptures. There was also a wealth of art which was mostly displayed in a dense array like the galleries you would find in aristocrat homes. There were some more down to earth pieces like a collection of sketchbooks by a coal miner depicting life in a mining town.
The main attraction was the Silver Swan automaton which would be performing its animation. The swan, which was over 250 years old, had a neck made of silver bands which allowed it to have an impressive range of movement. In its performance it moves its head side to side, bending all the way backwards before dipping into the pool of water in front of it to pick out a fish. It really was impressive how fluid its motions were and there was a very nice effect for the water made out of rotating glass rods.
We also went on a boat ride along the Tyne. It went downstream all the way to the ocean and then back the way to cross under all seven bridges of Newcastle. It had a pretty good commentary as it picked out what was visible on the sides of the river and also talked about what was previously there in Newcastle's industrial heyday.
Honestly the signs of industry that were still there were most impressive with truly giant cranes, huge cable reels and dry docks. It was very interesting to learn how much of the surrounding banks were shaped by the shipping industry as ships would dump their ballast onto the banks, building up these considerable hills. The ballast could be soil or stone from all over the world so some unusual species of trees had grown up on the mounds from seeds transported along with the ballast.
It was nice going to Newcastle again as it gave me a chance to become even more familiar with the layout of the city. My dad and his sisters grew up there so they were full of stories about how the city had changed. I do like how enormous some of the constructions there are with bridges looming over whole houses down at the quayside. It seems a more lively place than Aberdeen too.
Other
Ludum Dare will be starting tomorrow and there have been votes happening for the theme. There are a lot of promising themes in the running this time, see below for how I rated those in the finals.
Honestly I wouldn't particularly mind which theme wins as I think they could all prompt some fun games. I'm glad that none of the submitted themes that were complaining about AI got into the final round as I feel that would result in some rather negative entries.
Indeed the specter of AI generated content has loomed over the competition. It is more likely to be used in the three day jam whilst I'll be taking part in the two day competition but even there people are concerned about AI code generation. Personally it won't be an issue for me as I still haven't looked into AI code generation on a serious level and I think it would just slow me down if I started using it for this competition.
Anyway I'm a bit anxious but looking forward to the competition. My last entry did rather well and I've been on something of a streak over the last few Ludum Dares. Even if I don't manage to finish anything I'll still write about the process here.
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