Elena's second face off with the Wan Brothers corp.

Elena's second face off with the Wan Brothers corp.

Still continuing to use concordances, but now I'm mixing that up with using a Bayesian formula to come up with the odds of some things given facts established in the fiction (or made up on the spot, as needed). Bayes comes mostly into play when I have some assumptions about how the flow should go but don't want to fiat things, or when I've constructed a potential flow out of concordances I've collected.

I've asked a few questions about using Bayesian inference as an Oracle of sorts here and on RPGNet. I'm still not sure I'm doing Bayesian inference correctly, but at least it looks like I'm getting consistent numbers to roll against. Feel free to chime in about that if you have any ideas.

#SoloPlayWithAlgorithms #SoloActualPlay #SoloRpg #Solo #ActualPlay #RememberTomorrow

If it is of interest to anyone I've tagged some of my posts related to using predictive text tools in solo play. The tag is #SoloPlayWithAlgorithms. If you have any posts on the topic you think might be of interest, you can tag their main body with #SoloPlayWithAlgorithms so others can find these posts more easily.

Our Last Best Hope - The Killer Asteroid - Final Scene: Taking on the Crisis

Our Last Best Hope - The Killer Asteroid - Final Scene: Taking on the Crisis

Our last hero has made it this far to finally face the Crisis. Will the world be saved? Read on to find out!

Stay tuned after the credits for the Blue Ray special features: Alternate endings!

http://solorpggamer.blogspot.com/2017/07/our-last-best-hope-killer-asteroid-act.html

#SoloActualPlay #OurLastBestHope #TheKillerAsteroid #sharedscifi #SoloPlayWithAlgorithms

Holy moly!

Holy moly!

http://hackaday.com/2017/07/14/a-neural-network-can-now-be-your-writing-assistant/

Original, more informative post here:

https://www.robinsloan.com/notes/writing-with-the-machine/

"The results are interesting. [Robin] himself says “it’s like writing with a deranged but very well-read parrot on your shoulder.”

Sounds about like my last attempt at incorporating markov into Pythia, ha. Going to be playing with this this afternoon for sure!

#SoloPlayWithAlgorithms
http://hackaday.com/2017/07/14/a-neural-network-can-now-be-your-writing-assistant/

Scene 18 of Greta Vs. The Lord of Kragg Keep

Scene 18 of Greta Vs. The Lord of Kragg Keep
Epilogue

~[Later that night, after Greta had set up camp far away from Kragg Keep, two glittering eyes watched her from the dark, waiting.]~


/************/

This is what the iOS app CreativeWriter led me to write. It partly answers the fate of the entity, and suggests further adventures for Greta. As to the fate of the town, well, Greta isn't there to find out, so I myself won't know until and if she receives news.

We'll see.

#solorpg #actualplay #solitairerpg #SoloPlayWithAlgorithms #SoloActualPlay

http://mypersonaloracle.blogspot.com/2017/01/var-text-quick-brown-fox-jumps-over.html

http://mypersonaloracle.blogspot.com/2017/01/var-text-quick-brown-fox-jumps-over.html

Just made some major updates to the predictive text inspired tool. Now you are able to replace the default seed text in the text area, as well as set the distance (counted in words) that you want to lookup ahead and backwards.

It also behaves a lot more like predictive text in that it will show words that start with the letters you are typing. So for the string "mem" I just typed, I got "membrane, memex, and mem" at the top of the results with their corresponding context (consisting of words found around them, arranged into phrases). Other words and their context are also shown based on whether they contain the word you typed (e.g. "mem") in them. This is just an extra I added to show more content.

The context of each key word shown (on the left column) is constructed as "phrases" (basically take the word and attach the five words preceding it and following it to form one phrase). The phrases are not always exactly as they were found in the seed text, because the only word allowed to be repeated in the context is the key word itself.

The reason is that originally I just wanted to show a comma separated word list in the context. Later I decided that it would be nice to see the partial phrases, while still getting a set of unique words (except for the repeating key word on the left column). you can still treat the words as a list, but I may change this in the future to toggle the display between phrases and plain lists.

If you're tech savvy and into python, there is a tool (that also inspired me) that someone made for writing scripts that sounded like the source material (you can get the GitHub link from the article below):

Article about python tool, with link to GitHub: http://www.dailydot.com/unclick/jamie-brew-predictive-text-clickhole-coding-comedy/

This one is a lot closer to how CreativeWriter works, but it allows you to add your own corpus of text for analysis (which is what I wanted, but available in mobile format-- thus why I built my own JavaScript tool).

If you have any feedback as to what would make this more helpful to you, or why you would or wouldn't use it, that'd be cool. I have a feeling that I'm the only one that likes the predictive stuff for playing.

#SoloPlayWithAlgorithms

Realizing you might be the villain in the story (also, stumbling into a potential character arc)

Realizing you might be the villain in the story (also, stumbling into a potential character arc)

So, I've been playing a solo game of Trollbabe, experimenting with various things in a search to take more of that "writing exercise" edge off it.*

However, what prompted me to write this bite sized AP is that the latest scene I played was probably the most immersive solo experience I've had so far, and probably the only time in my roleplaying career (social or otherwise) where a potential player character arc has manifested itself without any planning or engineering on my part.

I'll try to make it truly bite sized:

Greta, the trollbabe, arrived to a walled city called Kragg Keep (the real Keep is inside the city, so it's like the settlement grew around it). The area has had a bad harvest, and for some reason, it wasn't very welcoming to her. She was almost turned back by the authorities, but was allowed to stay for one night after some convincing. During that night, she had a comical run in with the Lord of Kragg Keep, who had invaded her room in the middle of the night. He is able to practice some sort of magic (glittering eyes, and can disguise himself as a statue).

During the course of that, Greta is accused of stealing from the innkeeper and is put on trial. She also finds out second hand that Lord Ingald is quite the unsavory character due to his wanton nature. Some conflict ensues and it's decided she is to leave the city immediately. She is sure that Lord Ingald had something to do with it, and so begins her quest to both clear her name and put this character in his place. Eventually, things escalate to a point where she is forced to kill and hurt some soldiers, including hurting one that she had some sexual/romantic tension with.

She is very close to achieving her goal of infiltrating the actual Keep and finding Lord Ingald. As the author/player, I want to make some connection between the bad harvest that is in the background, and Lord Ingald as the character responsible for it (in some way). I also want to make that connection in-character, and through the events in play, not by fiat.

In-character, Greta wants to find the same connection in order to justify her actions so far beyond just vengeance...and it is at this point that I begin feel that Greta and I don’t have very good justifications for our decisions; decisions that have led to killing in order to continue her quest, but which could have been avoided if she had just left the city.

So basically, all of a sudden it's dawning on me that she may not be all that noble (actually, 'we', because I made the decisions to keep the adventure going)...all because we were stubborn (me in not wanting a boring story where nothing much happens, and her in wanting to clear her name and get some payback against Lord Ingald).

I don’t know what's going to happen, but if it turns out Lord Ingald is not responsible for the bad harvest (in some supernatural way), she's basically ending up as a tragic anti-hero, or worse, a villain. And, it's also an opportunity for a character arc, because both of us have realized now that she might have a big character flaw.

I never expected that, and it has been one of the coolest moments I've ever had in anything RPG. I doubt that I'll ever luck into this experience again, because I don't think I can ever trick myself this way again.

######

*To that end I have tried enhancing my experience with the help of my own #writingwithdice framework accompanied by technology in the form of iOS apps that use predictive text or cut up techniques. The apps replace your keyboard with actual words (rather than letters) and this tends to make the apps suggest "their" own ideas to me, since available words are limited. You have to play around with the apps to see what I mean.

Creative Writer: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/creative-writer-fun!-easy!/id737521232?mt=8
Word palette: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wordpalette-experimental-creative/id995679850?mt=8

Actual play link here: https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?793890-Solo-Gaming-Appreciation-Month-2016-Trollbabe-actual-play&p=20689252#post20689252

#SoloPlayWithAlgorithms #SoloActualPlay
https://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?793890-Solo-Gaming-Appreciation-Month-2016-Trollbabe-actual-play&p=20689252#post20689252

Lone Wolf Roleplaying • View topic - Solo Gaming Appreciation Month 2016: Trollbabe actual play

Solo Gaming Appreciation Month 2016 is over, but Greta's adventure is still ongoing.

I've continued to use the iOS app CreativeWriter, but as I go along, a few rules for interacting with it seem to have evolved from play:

- allow pronouns, and even proper names suggested in the tool to act as stand ins for NPCs and PCs that come to mind in the current context of the scene. These bring up more contextual word suggestions than names that do not exist in the apps word bank. (e.g. If I think Joss could say or do something next, I'll pick the pronoun 'he' rather than type in 'Joss')

- do the same for some nouns and words. If they are close enough to suggest a meaning related to the adventure, I'll use them and substitute as needed later when prettifying the game log. (E.g. If the word 'king' is available, I'll bend the meaning to mean Lord Ingald).

- don't try to force grammatically correct sentences or try to make the tool describe an idea in an extremely precise manner. If a phrase is grammatically ugly and also vague, I'll take it if it gets the meaning across well enough.

- All that stuff above can be clarified and prettified later [you will see the ugly truth in the History Log].

- I would rather not do it, but it's ok to provide some of my own input to get the tool to spit word suggestions that make sense to me, if the words that are showing in the word bank do not make sense in the adventure context.

This time I tried hard to make the app responses obey the prompts' instructions, but I'm still on the fence on whether it's worth it with a tool like this which seems to provide a direction all on its own.

It seems like I have to fish deeper into the word bank more often when trying to find a string of words that fit a sense of what would be 'best', 'worse' or more 'logical' given a context. It feels more like I'm fighting the app than letting it lead. I think that this means that the Prompts are superfluous, and all I need is a random system to accept or reject the app’s input in order to keep things interesting for myself.

http://solorpgs.freeforums.org/solo-gaming-appreciation-month-2016-trollbabe-actual-play-t35.html#p70

Scene 5

(from stack):
Lord Ingald was not overjoyed. He was not so much surprised as simultaneously confused and vexed. Incredulously, he asked,"What makes you think that you have right to address the lord of Kragg Keep in such manner?"

She was already stepping away from him, in the direction of the city gate. "What makes YOU think that YOU have a right to come into MY room uninvited?" Horse ass, she thought.

Dawn was already breaking and Joss soon appeared from the opposite direction where Greta was heading. Lord Ingald could not be discovered in this compromising position, so he returned to his old statue form before Joss reached them.

: (from stack): Joss saw the bearded face of lord ingald and his eyes immediately looked had a miserable look on them. Pointing at the "statue", Greta said, "You don't like it much, huh?" He didn't answer, however.

Acting the fool, she then asked: "who is it?"

"Lord Ingald," he replied. He also said he did not know how the "monument" got to be here. All the same, he would lead her out of the city astride.

[I attempt another Social conflict to find out why Joss seems to dislike Ingald (my goal), but fail.]

"Why do I sense you're not very fond of this man?"

Joss did not remark on it, however. "I'm not at liberty to talk about such things."

: (from stack):
He did as he had been charged and took her to the city's entrance. Greta took the view that while the visit had been all for naught, at the least she would put the incident with Ingald behind her definitively.

Save that it was not to be so simple. Another guard had come down from the opposite direction to arrest her for having taken possession of innkeeper Hilde's money.

: (from stack):
"Wait, what?? That's a big heap of horse... "

They told her death was the fate of those who commit such crimes.

"Looney town, this one," she thought. She was confident that she could easily hurt these guards and escape to the countryside, but she didn't have a desire to do so. She was almost sure this Ingald character was setting her up. she'd love to teach him a lesson in how to treat a girl.

\End Scene 5\


#SoloActualPlay #SoloPlayWithAlgorithms
http://solorpgs.freeforums.org/solo-gaming-appreciation-month-2016-trollbabe-actual-play-t35.html#p70