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Category: yould (Page 1 of 2)

First Posted Generator – Sanskrit-ish City Names

Here are the original tweets for this idea in the order they were written. Better write up coming soon. The available yould egine, if folks want to use Yould, is called sk. (This is a note for myself more than anything.)

Properly, the web enhancement is called Mahasarpa and it's available as a web enhancement from WOTC here. Please bear with the misspelling.

THinking about Masharpa (from WOTC) and India flavored articles from old Dragon magazines.

Then came across Inkwell Ideas' generators for city names: http://bit.ly/6H6lYC and http://bit.ly/4BvC2z about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

Then thought about adding an area with India-like flavor for BFRPG setting. Would use Anti-Paladin Games format of one-page descriptions. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

Of course, when creating a new setting, I start with the language so that I know what to call things. Most of the time, it's English. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

This time, I want something Sanskrit-ish. I turn to my favorite tool, Yould, which I helped document. http://bit.ly/7PvMfM about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

Firing up Yould, I realize that I prefer transliterated texts to work up a few ideas. You see, Yould requires texts to "train" the generator about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

In a perfect would, I would use documents written in Sanskrit and generate from there (Yould is UTF-8, works with anything) about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

But I am looking for 'good enough' because I do not want to get bogged down in my linguist OCD issues. (Yes, I love languages) about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

Not finding any larger transliterated texts that I could use easily, I take a readily available English text and use google translate about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

Google Translate provides "romanization" of the English to Hindi translation of my long passage. I use the romanization to train yould. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

After some work, yould has a masharpa engine I can use to make Sanskrit-ish words. Decision: generate 100 words and choose the best ones? about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

Or create a name generator similar to the ones I saw on Inkwell Ideas. I decide to create a name generator similar to the Chinese City one. about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

I generate small words to correspond to same concepts used (directions, geologic features, pleasant adjectives, colors,etc) and expand list about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

Final Generator has Five Colums with 20 entries per column. Roll D6 twice to choose which colums. Roll D20 to find entry. Viola! about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

Final Generator produces names with the flavors I want, as well as provide 100 vocabulary woods for the setting. Will post on sycarion soon about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck

Example results: Vanataane, Lahekan, Prekham, Rushaim, Apharuen, Pahrahta, Itashaya. 38 minutes ago from TweetDeck

Life is good, I feel like I can make some one page writeups of various areas. 38 minutes ago from TweetDeck

Recent Work on Projects

I'm sorry for the recent spam. I got overwhelmed by the spam when I didn't update my hashcash filter.

I have been working on a few things. I'll update the current development page soon. Really.

I stopped the football project long enough to actually play Statis-Pro Football again. I have a pretty good team with a few holes to fill in the draft. I made the questionable call of not keeping a good RB. I am afraid that will haunt me.

Anyway, I have used yould to generate most of the Lenga language. This is the last piece in creating all the crunchy bits for the backstory of this world.

I have also stumbled upon an old usenet posting of a spell description language. I have modified it, adding an element and a few actions. Using it, I am translating the OGL spells from the SRD into the magic system I have created. It's not as straight-forward as I would like. There is a bit of fuzziness in some of the descriptions. It also takes a while. There are even a few spells that do not translate, like Air Walk.

The goal is to have something that is more or less systematic in determining difficulty and power of a spell without making the player use a lot of math to create their own. I think this has been done. In the player's book, it will basically show a spell, a description of the effects, a mana cost and a TN. To make a spell, a player must use simple sentences to describe the effect of the spell. Conjunctions cannot be used, only one verb per sentence.

For example, the Aid spell is described in the SRD this way:

Aid grants the target a +1 morale bonus on attack rolls and saves against fear effects, plus temporary hit points equal to 1d8 + caster level (to a maximum of 1d8+10 temporary hit points at caster level 10th).

This translate to:
Give target bonus against fear.
Give target temporary LIF.

Using the rules, the GM then figures out the Mana Cost (11) and TN (24).

One rule about Magic is that it is easier and cheaper for spells to do one simple thing. If a person casts two spells instead of a combined one, the breakdown would be:

Bonus against fear spell: Cost 5, TN 20
Give temp LIF points: Cost 5, TN 18.

If someone has time to cast two spells instead of a combined one, it is 1 point cheaper and about 10% more likely to work as intended.

Other spells demonstrate this more dramatically, like Animal Messenger, which I'll detail later.

Later Post

Turns out that I won't be making that post after all.

Yannick, the creator of yould liked my process enough to add another option to basic yould command.

To test the quality of any yould engine, type the following:
yould -t foo.yould -q

You will get a percentage of real words generated by the engine listed in the command. Anything under 10% will say that more training is needed. Between 10 and 20 % will say sufficient training. Over 20 will say well trained.

This option is in the 3.9 beta. It should be released soon.

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