Into the ruins, part I

I'm working on a ruined city for a fantasy adventure and developing charts to help me fill in details for the approximately 400 buildings on the map I drew up. Here's the charts for cisterns and the state of the roof. Most of the roofs in these ruins are flat topped so the rooftops offer more opportunity for action and encounters.

Cistern?
1-25    No rooftop cistern
26-35    Slow leak,in cistern compromising integrity of roof.
36-40    Empty and broken cistern.
41-45    Empty and broken, integrity of roof is compromised.
46-50    Intact but Empty cistern.
51-60    Cistern contains potable water.
61-65    Cistern appears to contain potable water, it isn’t.
66-80    Cistern contains clearly foul water.
81-85    Cistern contains a scummy water, safe if boiled.
86-88    Cistern is old and lined with bronze that includes arsenic, good luck with that.
89-90    Vermin swim in the stew-like broth in this cistern.
91-94    Vermin swim in the stew-like broth in this fragile cistern fit to burst at any moment.
95-97    Empty cistern is a nest for birds/vermin.
98    Empty cistern holds a body.
99    Full cistern of seemingly potable water contains a body.
100    Cistern full of foul water contains a body.

State of roof
1-5    Intact unremarkable roof.
6-10    Leaky roof.
11-14    Water pooling on roof, leaky but nor dangerous (yet).
15-18    Water pooling on roof, roof is dangerous to walk on.
19-22    Roof appears stable but is unsafe.
21-25    Roof appears hazardous but is safe, for now.
26-30    Roof appears hazardous and is dangerous.
31-34    Small hole in roof.
35-38    Small hole in roof with signs of fire damage.
39-42    Small poorly patch hole in roof.
43-46    Small poorly patch hole in roof with signs of fire damage.
47-50    Large hole in roof.
51-55    Large hole in roof with signs of fire damage.
56-59    Large poorly patched hole in roof.
60-64    Large poorly patched hole in roof with signs of fire damage.
65    Well maintained rooftop garden. (hmm someone must be taking care of it)
66-68    Overgrown rooftop garden.
69-71    Overgrown rooftop garden, vermin lurk in cover.
72-75    Overgrown rooftop garden, conceals weak points in danger of collapse.
76-79    Abandoned and barren rooftop garden.
80-82    Abandoned and barren rooftop garden, water pooling here and there.
83-85    Abandoned and barren rooftop garden, water pooling here, roof is dangerous to walk on.
86-90    Half collapsed roof.
91-95    Mostly collapsed roof.
96-100 Completely collapsed roof.

Giant Bloodhawk?

Just noticed this digging through the original Fiend Folio:  the table of contents in the Fiend Folio lists Blood Hawk and Bloodhawk, Giant  yet the monster listing for Blood Hawks doesn't have a peep about the Bloodhawk, Giant.   Wonder why it's taken me over 30 years to notice that?

Monsters for dinner?

My post yesterday was softening/prepping up the audience for this : Do adventurers ever have monster for dinner, not as guests but entrees?

Is eating a monster ever wise? Or is consumption of monsters a sign one is a monster themselves?

Is feasting on roast unicorn a mark of evil?  What about troll kebab or Dragon chops?

In my campaigns consumption of other tool users and talkign beasts is generally considered  taboo and unpleasant, maybe even evil but I wonder how it would really be for occupants of such a world.
Orcs and goblins are occasionally portrayed as cannibalistic, and I've played in many a campaign where they actively hunt other intelligent species making it pretty clear eating other folk is of course evil but where is the line?

If human where is the cut off on this spectrum: Hell Hound, Dragon, Blink Dog, Unicorn, Troll, Fairy, or Gnome? Are some of those actually dangerous to eat?

Hell Hounds if actually from the nether realms or the results of vile contamination may be entirely lethal to consumption of mortal men.  It woudl surprise me at all that Draogns are inedible or only have small portions that are safe for men to eat many are infused with toxins and magical energies.
Blink dogs however should have flesh that is entirely edible but maybe their magical nature makes that risky but what of the moral connection? Unicorns are genrally seen as creatures of magic and beauty but physical and people do eat horses. Trolls in classical D&D are pretty horrible critters that regenerate, woudl their flesh be savory, would it be possible for normal meant to eat them at all? What of fairies that stand slightly apart half in this world half in another, is flattened fairy under glass palatable? What of the gnome they are tool using folk but distantly related to man (if related at all) is it socially inappropriate to dine on them because they are often seen as goodly folk, what if they are more distant or an evil species?

Animals Eaten

I noticed a post outof the web talkign about duck and lamb as if they were unusual meats and I got wondering about the diets of folks playinngn games and how that impacts the diets of game worlds.

Here's a listing of animals I have eaten (or at least portions of):

Cow, Chicken, Pig (and boar), Lamb (and Mutton),
Game Hen, Pigeon, Duck, Turkey, Goose
Oytsers, Clams, mussels, scallops, shrimp, crayfish, crabs, lobsters, snails
Countless Varieties of Fish (including shark and eel)
Octopus and Squid
Venison,Buffalo,Llama,Caribou,Moose, Goat
Kangaroo,Alligator,Frog,Turtle
Squirrel, Rabbit, Bear
Ostrich,Emu,Nutrea (water rats, taste like squirrel meets rabbit)
I have tasted Ants, Earth Worms, Crickets as part of a foods in nature course but never had a whole meal of bugs.

How about you?

Expanded Melee Attack Matrix

A set of expanded Melee Attack Tables for Seven Voyages of Zylathern.

There's a little bit of minor variation in these charts. Some of the weapons vs some weapons don't improve by the rulebook progressions at higher levels to fit how I'd want the classes to run in a campaign I was running. Thieves lose access to a couple weapons: no maces, morningstars, or lances for the thief. Magic-Users gain access to swords but only magic swords at 10th level or higher so certain types of epic wizardly types can have swords (but it really isn't a superior option for them).

Computerizing tables and data sets

Been computerizing some of my tables (some of which will find their way here eventually).  I'm using quickbasic and javascript to get them done and the biggest pain in the tasks is compiling and formatting the data sets.  You see anyone with even a halfway decent random dungeon generator with monster stats give that person some respect getting the data together is a chore.

Oh yeah QuickBasic, getting use out of 20-30 year old programming skills thanks to qb64. Sure I'm using javascript too and it looks like I might have a qb64 program generating the javascript. Also messing about with android and have a number of tools for app development that I might also put to the task so I can use my smartphone at the table for DMing and adventure construction.

Sure I could be using C++ but I just don't like writing terminal apps in C++, and javascript is close enough for me ( i know some programmer out there is groaning). I can't help it I'm a BASIC sorta guy and enjoy writing programs in it even if I have written actually useful code in C/C++.

Is is just me or is there a curiously low number of folks that program apps/applets in RPG blog-land relative to computer usage an skill sets?

Big Citadel

From an idea i've been kicking around for a good long time now thanks to some inspiration on the elfmaids and octopi blog, a darned big citadel/citystate. Not sure if I'm ever going to go far with this idea but I felt like sharing.
Part of my design process for an adventure/campaign area is sketch things out, sometimes it's a relationship map, sometimes it's sort of a storyborad, maps, and other times it's panoramas.

Overall shot:

A painted sketchy render of the idea. The rows of grey blocky dots are a couple thousand buildings each.

Closeup on one outer bastion.

The little red dots are 6' tall people.

Going all 10' by 10'grid precision on this would be awesome and insanely crazy.  I have to wonder how much mileage I could get out of using these shots and others at the table to explain and illustrate the adventure setting and how much grunt work I could skip thanks to the limited spectacle; do players have to know where the barracks room is inside the outer western foot of the that bastion or would just knowing it's in there do the job?