1d30 things the lost tribe worships (neural-network generated)

1. The mummified body of an ancestor, submerged in honey.
2. The golden statue of a deity, lying on the ocean floor.
3. The sacrificial knife of a god, dipped in the blood of a person.
4. The bones of an ancestor that were eaten by a snake.
5. The head of a person, which was carved from its chest by a king.
6. The head of a serpent carved into a wood, which then became snake heads.
7. The intestines of an ancestor that were eaten by a lion.
8. The egg and skull of a person whose ancestors have been buried in the mud and not yet emerged.
9. The mummy with two hands holding an infant who is worshiped by the lost tribe.
10. The sacred fruit of a dead god.
11. An abstract metal altar with four wooden doors.
12. A sacred river to drain the polluted water of the world, and prevent the evil spirits from destroying mankind.
13. The gods who rule over the worlds, all of them wearing white garments of stone, or who have their heads covered with golden rings, and are said to be able to make magic.
14. The city of the underworld, with the entrance to the citadel of a sacred city, to the surface of which is a labyrinth of halls and shrines.
15. Five different types of rock, with different shapes, and arranged in a tree-shaped array.
16. A deity of fire who sacrifices himself, with fireflies and snakes.
17. An ark-like pillar made of ice.
18. A gaseous corpse-like object, placed at the base of a temple.
19. A sea-god with nine arms, symbolizing the nine seas of the world.
20. A deity with a ten-winged animal on its back, symbolizing the ten cardinal directions of the compass.
21. The hidden sun that has been created from a fiery star that is now being unleashed on the world.
22. The water god’s horn.
23. The burial of a king who died within the city of the gods.
24. An ancient legend which speaks of a man who was born with blue eyes and a purple coat of hair. The god of the lost tribe was believed to be the one who looked like him, hence he must have been the one who made him.
25. The black stone of the mountain.
26. A tree with two branches which was cut down by fire.
27. A fire-drinker.
28. The earth god's hand, symbolizing the underworld where earthmen dwell.
29. The sky god's mouth, symbolizing the sky where the stars reside.
30. The people who have become possessed by the underworld and who have a dream of being reborn, to come to a great city.

Generated by the GPT-2 network over at https://bellard.org/textsynth/ Only the first entry was written by me, as the main prompt / starting point.

[Actual Play] A Foray into the Transformed & Generated Land

My neural network generated hexcrawl is closing completion!! I ran a short play-test today for two players who happened to be available, with random characters. Procedures and mechanics still need work, but overall it was FUN, gonzo, but playable!

The characters were "strangers in a strange land" - people who were randomly transported from their home dimension into the Transformed & Generated land.

The first one up was Little Timmy, Specialist 1 (one-legged urchin from London). I had him roll for the starting hex. He woke up in the middle of a wide grassland. It was snowing, and quite cold. He discovered a musky smelling tunnel leading underground - but decided not to enter it just yet. Instead, he moved to the nearby forest. He couldn't recognize the trees, but was happy to see that they were fruit-bearing - or rather, there were some big fungoid-type growths on them. He harvested a couple. While he was picking the "fruits", a woman dressed in dark robes appeared. She seemed to be looking for someone. She approached Little Timmy, and asked something - but the two of them didn't share a language, so she resorted to pantomime. Little Timmy gathered that the woman was looking for her child (or other short person), but couldn't help her. Then she asked, using signs, whether Little Timmy was planning to eat the "fruits". Timmy nodded, and the woman stepped back and started shaking her head. Another pantomime followed, which could have meant that whoever eats the fruits turns into a monster. So he dropped them. The woman left.

Little Timmy continued exploring the forest, and entered another area, where the ground was covered with a thick mat from the roots of the trees. The air was full of snowflakes, but also tiny fleeces just floating in the air. Forest creatures were moving under the intertwining roots.

Suddenly, another visitor showed up - Sally Mason, Magic-User 1 (sorceress who prefers Floating Disc to walking)! The two of them decided to travel together. They only had a couple of rations on them, so decided to hunt in the eerie forest. They noticed a turkey-like bird, and fired arrows at it - when hit, the bird turned into stone...

Disappointed, the duo moved out of the forest, and towards the wasteland/grassland to the south.

Around sundown, they met two groups of people, who were clearly in the middle of an argument. They were brandishing guns and other weapons. Timmy hid behind a rock, but Sally floated forth and approached them. Luckily, one of them was also a "displaced" person, and could speak Sally Mason's language. He explained that they were arguing about some food that the other group took from them, and they were ready to fight over it. Sally offered her own rations instead to keep the peace. The people accepted the offer, and parted in peace. Three of them stayed behind, and invited Sally and Timmy to their camp, especially that night was rapidly approaching, and a thunderstorm was gathering.

The group camped, and Sally and Timmy learned some things about the lay of the land and about the dangers that are everywhere - monsters along the river, monster along the sea, and insect overlords in the north-east area...

In the morning, the weather got even colder.

Sally and Timmy traveled further, and soon they heard voices and distress calls in the distance. They investigated, and found a man and a woman stuck inside a split tree... The woman spoke a language they all understood, and told about how she and her husband climbed the tree to escape dire wolves, but the tree broke, split, and trapped them... They offered some apples and potions in exchange for help. Sally lit a torch, melted some snow, and used her soap and the water to lubricate the stuck people. This way, they could pull them out, and the tree snapped back together.

The woman told them that she got the potion as payment for work from a witch who lives in a small village in the swamps to the west. However, she couldn't tell what the potions were for. Timmy tried one, and instantly fell asleep! Sally put him on her Floating Disc, and they continued the exploration.

After a half day of travel through the prairie, they noticed a centaur who was busy digging the half-frozen ground. Timmy sneaked closer, and realized that the centaur was digging up corpses!!! The centaur noticed him, and got all defensive - he was digging up the bodies to eat them, and was not about to share this precious food with anybody. Timmy retreated, and the duo waited while the centaur finished and moved on.

Afterwards, they arrived to the seaside.

Sally wanted to create a raft or a boat, but without much success.

Timmy fished in the sea, and caught a strange fish - but got attacked by a huge, neckless and eyeless toad creature!! The monster caught him by surprise, and almost instantly killed him! Timmy retreated and tried to staunch the bleeding, but didn't succeed. The toad monster attack Sally, but Sally proved to be quite the swordfighter and defeated the toad monster. However, it was already too late for poor Timmy, who bled out...

The toad monster's body twitched, and a human crawled out from it - Mathilde the Warrior Princess, Fighter 1 (a barbarian who got turned into a toad monster by an evil witch). She joined Sally, and they decided to go and look for the "insects overlords" of the north-east, because Mathilde had sworn an oath to defeat the "ant people". Sally wanted to travel on her Floating Disc, but her spell misfired (risky casting!). The Disc materialized, but cut off the sorceress's right arm (I was using my lovely miscast result tables)!!!

Anyway, the new duo traveled up to the north-east, and eventually found a cave that was guarded by drooling flying monkeys... When they approached, the monkeys sounded an alarm, and some insect people came out from the cave. They turned out to be almost friendly, and invited Sally and Mathilde for their monthly religious festival. They even assured them, that they won't be in any danger, as this month's sacrifice (a huge lizard creature) was already secured. The feast would take place during the full moon, three days later.

Sally and Mathilde decided to camp nearby for one night, then go and hunt to replenish their stocks.

In the morning, however, they got all the rations they needed, because it started RAINING FROGS!

The duo waited for full moon, and entered the cave of the insect people. They were shown to a huge cavern, where an insect person statue stood on a gold pillar. At least a hundred insects were present. They sacrificed a dinosaur-like creature, and the feast began. Everybody got a small chunk of the lizard meat. Sally and Mathilde also partook in the feast.

When Sally inquired about a way to grow back her arm, the insects told her about a brutal half-goat half-man monster that lives up north and is rumored to have the power to regenerate itself.

In the meantime, they noticed that a young humanoid girl with insect wings was also present. She just observed the feast, didn't take any of the meat. A huge yellow toad was following her around.

Sally asked one of the insect people about the girl. At first, the insect person was not eager to talk about the girl, but after some convincing, she told Sally that the girl is the queen of the insects, a powerful being who can predict the future.


And this was the end of the session.

Neural Network Generated Hexcrawl

Talk to Transformer is awesome. I already collaborated with this text-writing neural network to create a dungeon adventure, called The Tomb of the Daughter. Nowadays I am using Transformer to create hex descriptions. It started out when I fed it some fragments from Carcosa... then it became pretty much its own thing. I'm slowly compiling materials for a post-apocalyptic science fantasy world. It's fun. It's also much harder to control than just the dungeon. I try to edit as little as possible, and most text still comes from Transformer's outputs, but I have to link them together on the editor-level so that it makes more sense. I'm also going deeper and generating mini-dungeons for a couple of hexes.

Guodong Zhao

The hexcrawl has humans on the rainbow specter and more (the heritage from those Carcosa prompts), but also dwarves, elves, insect people...

A handful of examples:

SALTWATER SPRING

Trolls of the monstrous Trollpaw tribe appear on the western shore, fighting together to control a spring of seawater.
This spring has been known to grow more dangerous by nightfall. The spirits wander the area looking to drink, and cause problems for others in the night. It's a curse from a deity who made this particular spring; at night it contains powerful acid which breaks down barriers to spirits.

CAVERN OF THE KUPO

The hex is inhabited by a race of reptilian humanoid insects known as the Kupo.
The Kupo have very sharp wings and no tail, though they do have a very sharp sparrow-like mandibles. Their eyes are black, and they resemble a bird's, and are shaped like what looks like a long tail. They are usually accompanied by drooling, wingless monkeys.
They live in a vast underground cavern that reaches beneath the ocean. The Kupo are generally quite peaceful, but their presence causes alarm to the other races of the underground. The Kupo sometimes use traps to capture monsters and eat creatures found in their tunnels. They eat the most interesting things, including humans.
The Kupo are very fast, able to fly long distances without the use of their arms.

DROMUND KAAS ENCLAVE

A small, ancient, magical enclave of Dwarves and Elves sits in a small circular cove called Dromund Kaas. Some of their numbers are fugitives from King Kommr. King Kommr was feared because of a smallpox epidemic that had plagued his country, and Kommr's sons were blamed for it because they carried the plague with them.
The inhabitants of Dromund Kaas are known to lurk around the island with their strange magic, and when they can, they travel through the mountains and into the interior of the island in search of treasure.
The place is guarded by an old-style swordswoman named Aelian with a mysterious curse: she was killed by a magical dagger sheathed in her heart, but she is very much alive. To kill her, one must use this enchanted dagger.

GORE-CAVE OF THE HALF-GOAT

The ruins of a small town, whose inhabitants were all murdered at birth.
The current resident of the ruins is a monstrous, grotesque half-goat. The half-goat lives in secret in a small, enchanted cave made of stone. It feeds only on living humans and has been so for centuries.
The half-goat has a human face that hides itself from its eyes but is able to see through humans and their clothing. Its hair is black-like blue, and it is able to grow new parts of its body every so often.

1. FROZEN PITS The first chamber is located on the northern side of the cave, just beyond the entrance. Inside the cave are six gigantic pits. Here in the first pit, a human corpse lay frozen for months, until its bones became stuck to a frozen ice block. It was left to decay there for so long, it was nearly entirely gone as of the last time it was dug up.
The corpse is inhabited by a bloated redhead humanoid, who we don't know if it is human, or if it is a creature of the dark. It looks vaguely human in that form, but this thing has no eyes or ears. And it's talking. When it's talking, it's speaking in a different tone. The creature gives this weird, creepy hum. It's almost human-in-a-possible-other-form thing, but it's a lot tougher. Its mouth is wide open, almost a mouth-like gape. The creature attacks with one or both of the following attacks: A slow, stabbing growl from the top of its head or a piercing, piercing growl from the bottom of its head. It wants nothing more than to see its own reflection in the water and then see if they can trust it.

2. TREASURE CHAMBER The second cavern is also located on the northern side of the cave. This is the oldest cavern in the entire Half-goat's world. This is also where a young Ogre was killed, although he died from his injuries, rather than from frostbite.
The half-goat’s treasure is hidden in the second cavern:
a. A stone ball filled with dark energy which causes everybody to bleed profusely, a crystal tablet contains blood plasma to control the body's natural defences (from heat, cold/therapeutic radiation and blood pressure) and the ability to stop a virus from spreading if implanted into a body;
b. a book of magical lore about a pair of wizards, each of which has developed a certain form of mind magic and which will also have a particular ability in the area of a given time period, and will also know how to summon spirits and other magical beings that work in those areas. The book ends with an interview with the two wizards.
c. a wand of invisibility and a scroll of silence.

3. REGENERATION PITS The third chamber on the other side is a narrow corridor that must be crawled through, with one wall blocked off. In the third chamber there are nine gigantic pits, filled with ichor which is dried out, ready to receive water. The half-goat submerges itself into these pits to regenerate.

[Adventure] The Tomb of the Daughter

A new activity popped up on the OSR discord channel: people use the Talk to Transformer neural network to generate RPG-related texts.
Edit: and here's some of the stuff from the blogosphere that started it off: Coins and Scrolls; Throne of Salt.

I made an adventure.

99% of the text was written by the neural network. I curated, compiled, interpreted and edited it, and drew a dungeon map. It is a weird, surreal dungeon... but, surprisingly, playable!

Have fun!

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THE TOMB OF THE DAUGHTER