Dan Sumption's Blog, page 4

Nobody Asked for This!

I have a new email newsletter!

The more observant of you may have noticed that I also have an old email newsletter (sign-up boxes to the right and to the bottom of this post). This new one is utterly different.

It’s called Dan Sumption’s Mycoleum Mind, and each week I post a short idea. Sometimes a particular way of looking at the universe, other times a lifehack, or just some gentle advice. Very importantly, it will always be short. You ought to be able to read it in a minute or less. I explain w...

Cadero 1: The Entrance Hall

Entrance to The CaderoAs per yesterday's post, this is my first #Dungeon23 entry.001: Entrance to The CaderoUp a short flight of steps are two huge revolving doors; the left one is jammed and the right one is moving very slowly. There is a long queue of SHOPPERS waiting to get in. It takes 3d6 minutes to reach the front of the queue. Above the revolving doors is a large TCT monogram. The same design is repeated on the glass of the doors and elsewhere inside the mall.Once inside, the huge vaulted...

#Dungeon23

#Dungeon23 is about making a megadungeon throughout 2023, one location per day. I'm joining in.

Like photo-a-day, selfie-a-month, and landscape-painting-a-fortnight activities I've joined before, I expect this fad to last no more than a few days. But perhaps 2023 will be different?

You see, last night I had an idea. An idea for an Electric Bastionland megadungeon.

9 months ago, noted surgical-tools magnate The Very Mentionable Theophilus Q. Trocad Snr., lost his only daughter, Madamoiselle Cadero I...

Mycelium Parish News

The Mycelium Parish News

Earlier this year, on a walk with James Burt, he proposed that the two of us produce a “parish newsletter”, to let our friends know what our other friends have been up to.

James and I first met on the Cerne to CERN pilgrimage. Between us and the other 69 pilgrims exist fecund networks of creative folks. But none of those folks has a full picture of what all the others have been up to.

James suggested we publish a newsletter, listing as much of the good stuff as we could tra...

d∞ Caltrops

Because I can't stop tinkering with AI, I asked it to "Write a random OSR RPG table in the style of the d4 Caltrops blog". Oh boy!

d20: Dungeon Hazards

A pit filled with venomous snakesA room full of acidic fogA room with a magical trap that teleports the party to another planeA hidden door that leads to a room full of giant spidersA false floor that drops the party into a lake of lavaA room with a magical force field that drains the life force of anyone who passes through itA room full of bone-ch...

Gelatinous Cube podcast

I've just driven from one end of England to the other (ish), which means that I've just listened to a lot of podcasts, one of which was the excellent Gelatinous Cube.
Most RPG podcasts feature reviews of games, or actual play, or occasionally a bit of pontificating about games design and worldbuilding. And then there's Gelatinous Cube, in a class of its own.
Each GC podcast starts with a very short prompt for an adventure: "This Goblin Wears Lipstick", "This Mountain has a Witch on it", "The Spiri...

Further Encounters in AI

OpenAI have just added a new model, text-davinci-003, to their GPT-3 text generators. It is supposedly much higher quality than previous models, so I decided to generate some random encounters and some nanodeities using the same prompts as before. I also, for shits & giggles, decided to ask another AI to make pictures of the encounters, because: why wouldn't I? 

Here are the results:

Random encounters

* At the edge of a nearby lake, a giant 3-headed turtle is sunning itself on a rock. It has a larg...

The Mycoleum

My friend James Burt and I are producing a “Mycelium Parish Newsletter”, a round-up of what’s been going on in our corner of the UK counterculture over the last year (James explains in a little more detail here).

Our underground network of threads has birthed some fairly significant mushrooms recently, including the books What Remains? Life, Death and the Human Art of Undertaking by Ru Callendar, and John Higgs' Love and Let Die: Bond, the Beatles and the British Psyche, while the goetic sitcom D...

Something Happened

image by The Mycoleum
 Last night, I was reading dark short stories from some of Nightjar Press's excellent chapbooks. Walking the dog later, I thought "I fancy writing a short story like one of those writers. You know, those ones". And suddenly this came spewing out, stream of consciousness-style:

The effects were subtle but they were certainly there. Obvious, really.

When we waved goodbye to Kim that morning, nothing changed. The rain of the last few weeks was unabated. If anything, it got worse....

You May Find A Bed

 

There is no convenient time to break your leg 
There is no convenient time to find your soul 
There is no convenient time to submit to force 
There is no convenient time to starve 
There is no convenient time to have a child 
There is no convenient time to lose your will 
There is no convenient time to have a flat tyre  

from You May Find A Bed, by Skeleton Crew

I had hoped, by now, to be selling a book called King Arthur vs Devil Kitteh. But, as is the course of things, obstacles have been encountered...