In which we answer questions, add to and improve a product review

 Ok so in the post immediately before this one I reviewed some products from Infinium Game Studios.  I grabbed my copies from here because they were on sale and I'm a cheap bastard.frugal.  I liked the products for the most part but had a couple caveats/concerns/questions.  A few short days later their product that ANSWERED some of those questions and addressed some of those concerns.  

It's their Solo Adventuring Tool Kit!  It's great for those looking for a little "lonely fun" as we used to call it.  It's also great for playing out "off screen" stories.  That was my first use of it.  I had a NPC paladin who needed a quest.  Some dice rolls generated most of the story.  I filled in details based on our current ongoing main narrative.  I then put the facts of the final battle into ChatGPT and let it write a nice synopsis of the final batle.  Tweaked the narrative to get a little more Tolkien and Poe into it.  Will present to the party when they meet back up with the paladin.

As I usually do with IGS products I'm setting up their tables on a spreadsheet so rather than taking space and rolling dice for everything and chewing up a lot of time I can use a simple F9 command, generate the needed random numbers AND give me all of the results in one place.  Do NOT like flipping from page to pade or scrolling up and down to find stuff.  

Nine types of quests - and they hit pretty much everything you can imagine.  Covers about 160 pages.  Tables for urgency, stakes, pace, suggested rewards, consequences (of success OR failure.)  Graphic templates for every variety of quest (albeit a bit simplistic, they CAN help a DM keep plot lines straight.)  

This product is NOT for every table.  If you're playing pre-packaged adventures or campaigns you might not benefit as much.  Monster of the week?  It'll be helpful.  My current game is a vast garden style game and if I need a quick plotline - to be played or just talked about, it takes me (spreadsheet in hand) less than a minuted to come up with the overview of a vast quest - or one that might be reolsved in 15 minutes of game time.

Good product. Can confirm.

In which we actually review a product, kinda sorta

 

I use a LOT of sources to build a world and to run my weekly (?) game. Roughly two years ago I stumbled onto the products of a company called Infinium Game Studio. Their product is called FlexTale. My first work was with their combat tactics. The product was DEEP and a good idea, but you need to know the “role” for every critter and it wasn't somerhing I didn't wanna fidle with. Next up was their Social Choice product. Went DEEP into that one which is where I'll start.

You as the DM assign the role that the interlocutor plays, selects the conditions under which the interaction occurs and the player decides what approach they're taking in the interaction. Find the right chart, roll the right dice, and adjudicate the result. Easy-peasy lemon squeezy. But I HATE tables and charts and turning pages. So I took a few hours, converted the WHOLE thing onto a spreadsheet. Then when I'm playing I can use a simple filter, input the player's dice role and have my result in nothing flat. VERY happy with THAT product.

So a year later they come out with their environmental encounters product. A crapton of information. Again I converted to a spreadsheet. Since a party rarely changes environments (at least at my table) us is even faster. Again: filter, input players role, adjudicate result. Smooth. Working out REALLY well. I'm even taking steps to automate the secondary dice rolls, of which there can be many, so that the entire encounter is presented to me in one place again without having to flip through scores of pages. My party has no idea of the level of detail I'm drawing from.

Which brings me to THIS years acquisition. Their Adventure Omnibus. MY interest was in the hundreds of Places of Interest (POI) generated. From the companies text:

What is This Thing?

FlexTale Infinite Adventures is a concept that applies the Infinium Game Studio approach to points of interest on a fantasy TTRPG map.  Detailed descriptions, endless permutations of things to keep things fresh, easy-to-use tables and resources, and plenty of ideas and inspiration.

This book is the first in a series describing the various Points of Interest (POI) in the Western Realm of Aquilae.  Though it was created with this setting in mind, everything in this book was designed to be system- and setting-agnostic.

Inside, you'll find:

• Discovery, including read-aloud text, "Why You Might Come Here", "So You Find Yourself Here", Hooks, and more.

• Activities, including Adventure Snippets, Quests, Secrets, Threats, and more.

• Location information, including a heatmap / location guide for the POI's presence in the Realm of Aquilae.

• Rumors & Lore table with true, partially true, and false stories about the POI.

• Events and Quirks, describing unique phenomena that might occur as you explore.

More interesting for players.  Easier to run for D/GMs.  Full, out of the box support for solo players.

And above all: NOT BORING!

Contents

Inside, you'll find:

• 668 tables, 129 FlexTables (each one four tables in one), and 150 full-color maps

• Dozens of Utility Tables: quickly and dynamically generate entire dungeon maps, traps, poisons, diseases, curses, treasure, and spells.

• "Jump Right In" introduciton describing exactly how to use this book based on your needs as a G/DM

• Dedicated discussion on how to use this book as a solo adventurer

• Creature Modifiers to quickly make even the most ho-hum, boring common monster more interesting and unique

• Much, much more!

So here's how I'm using it: every week during my game prep I RNG a POI. I read up on it. If it can fit into my immediate location I will. If NOT I'll add it to my list of rumors and perhaps add it to my library research system, in case the parties interest is piqued and they wanna go poking around. Example? I have a paladin NPC who needs a quest for his plate armor. Rolled up a castle, used the provided table for a simple quest

On the downside:

1. Their complete quest engine is apparently in a different product.

2. Each book seems to include more or less the same first 2-3 dozen pages – necissary perhaps but a PITA nonetheless.

In conclusion if you're a GM who just needs an occasional jump-start or a little extra seasoning in your world building soup, these products are for you.

In which we travel

And eat. And hunt. And forage. And carry stuff. All at once.

OK so MANY DM's out there skip ALL of this stuff. There's a TON of discussion out there about overland travel – how to do it, when to do it, even IF to do it. Me? In an immersive world it's an important part of the game. There's an “easy” way to do it. One twenty mile hex per day. Period. Done and done. But not immersive. And passes up some GREAT gaming opportunites. So I designed a spreadsheet. It considers terrain, weather and pace and movement rate and in seconds tells me miles per day as well as MPH, how long it will take to cross a 20-, 6- and 2-mile hex. So every morning after checking the weather the party sets their pace: fast, normal, exploring or foraging. Finding how far they progress on the map is a piece of cake. This is the easy part. Check.

Then there's encumbrance. Again, MANY DM's hand waive this away. I HATE that. A significant part of the game is asset management: hit points, spell slots … and weight! But how much? First there's RAW. Strength x 15. That's it. Oversimplified? Indubitably. After more research it seems that 64 year old 215 pound me is about a STR 7. That means I could carry 105# without an issue. No a US Marine has to do that as a matter of course and I'm no Marine. Then there's a variant rule provided that provides for slowing down if you're carrying it. So my “7” means I could carry 35# without slowing down. That's a little more accurate. I take another step loss at 10x. Again, reasonably accurate. Of course I had to go one step further – what about weight. The CHARACTER's weight. So Alexis has a chart for that and I'm using it. Seems to mesh nicely with the variant rule. Not a fan with how Beyond tracks this though, so I've put together my own spreadsheet. Each character gets a tab. I plug in their weight and STR and list their inventory along with weight (and condition.) Between each session I update it to keep it close. ALSO use this sheet to track the condition of equipment: checks after every 3 hours in a dungeon, 3 days on the trail and the 1^st of every month. Whole thing takes less than 5 minutes. Done.

Which brings me to eating. Sustenance. And travel. And encumbrance. And HERE is where I go down the rabbit hole and over the edge. I'll skip a lot of the failed attempts and see if I can get to where I am – and then maybe where I WANT to be.

1. Characters eat. They consume calories. I use https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/bmr-harris-benedict-equation to calculate the daily expenditure.

2. Rations? Hard tack and jerkey? No thanks. I wanna dive down the rat hole of nutrition! Five

   catagories of food: protied, carbs, fruits/veggies/nuts, dairy, salt/spices/stuff

3. Where does it come from? Town? Hunting? Foraging?

Whatever I do it's gonna be on a spreadsheet. Crunch a LOT of numbers in short order.

<a day later>

Spent quite a few hours reading RAW and variants and AU and dozens of homebrews. And I'm back at the point of beginning. The above stuff is easy, fun and playable. The mechanic lends itself to game play. Player agency matters. Input counts. But I still need a mechanic that doesn't take forever. The fact that my party just finished a long cross-country journey in February may have something to do with my sudden interest in fixing this! No game in season and limited plants to forage.

So how about this. Using all the stuff mentioned above we determine how many pounds of food per day the party needs. My current party requires 56 pounds, so we'll round that up to 60. At the beginning of the journey we set a die with the “6” face showing <edit to add: this number is 1 for each load bearing party member). Each day it resets one lower. When it gets to 0 starvation sets in. In the following we'll refer to the face of the die as “X”.

1. <edit to alter: this only applies if 1/2 X is greater than 1/2 the party)  X is added to the negative repercussions already effecting movement rate, so as food is consumed the MR increases.

2. X is not reduced IF the party passes through a civilized area where food may be purchased although this only adds 1 to X.

3. If the party allows for ½ a day of foraging and the result is <5 pounds the die moves as normal. If between 5 and 15 pounds there is no movement for that day and if more than 15 it increases one.

4. If the party allows a day for hunting and the hunter brings back <4 pounds the die moves as normal, if between 4 and 16 pounds there is no movement. None can be used the next day.

5. Harvested meat counted the same as #4

Spreadsheet calculates lifestyle expenses for days in town and food cost for six days of food plus whatever days are added during the trip via purchases.

I actually think this might work!