Monday, January 29, 2018

The Game of Hope



Originally a variant of Snakes & Ladders made by some old german guy, the game used a pack of cards in the place of a board. The game was developed using a piquet deck as the prototype, and so individual cards have playing card equivalencies. When the final version was sold, these equivalencies were published on the cards, so it could double as a piquet deck. What is truly unique about the game of hope, is that the booklet also contained a game of oracles; a cartomancy guide. It was extremely simple and vague, but essentially roughs out the foundation for the grand tableau spread in lenormand decks! In fact, the game of hope is the ur-deck for all petit lenormand packs. This is where the german school of cartomancy began: a silly game for children.

There is a detailed translation of the original rules. I have clarified, simplified, and specified those rules so that anyone may play the game today. I have made one change though: The original game used actual money for the counters, and the winner of the game won whatever money had been paid into the game. It was a gambling game for children. I have removed the gambling element because it was poorly implemented and thus not fun.


SUPPLIES:


1 Petit Lenormand deck. (Or a piquet deck if you know the card equivalencies)

2d6

Objects to use as tokens. Coins work well.

Objects to be used as counters. Other coins can do well.


THE SETUP:


Deal out the cards in numbered order into a 6*6 grid to form the board. (This is silly, what's the point of using cards if the board is static?? For a touch more fun, shuffle the deck and deal them out to the grid at random.)

Each player starts with 8 counters.

Each player rolls the dice to determine turn order. Higher rolls go before lower ones. Reroll ties.


THE PLAY:


Players take turns rolling the dice and moving their tokens along the track of the board.

On the first roll, placing your token on the first card counts as the first step of the turn.

Play begins in the bottom left card, movement flows rightward and zig-zags upward, such that the top left card is the last space in the board.

Certain cards cause a player to move their token once they land on it at the end of their turn. Arriving on a new card because of this action does not trigger the new card's action.

If a card requires you to pay counters, and you do not have the counters to pay, your turn is forfeit.

First player to remove their token from the board wins.


CARD EFFECTS:


Ship: Place your token on the birds card.

House: Pay 2 counters to gain entry.

Cloud: Go back 4 spaces.

Snake: Pay 3 counters.

Coffin: You can not move on your turn unless you roll a double, or until another player lands on this card.

Whip: You can pay 2 marks to move ahead 2 spaces.

Fox: Place your token on the tree card.

Star: Gain 6 counters.

Tower: Pay 2 counters.

Mountain: You can not move on your turn unless you roll a double, or until another player lands on this card.

Crossroad: Place your token on the garden card.

Heart: If you are a boy, place your token on the woman card. If you are a girl, place your token on the man card.

Ring: Gain 3 counters.

Book: Place your token on the garden card.

Letter: Pay 2 counters.

Man: Place your token on the sun card.

Woman: Place your token on the moon card.

Key: Gain 2 counters.

Fish: Pay 2 counters.

Monday, January 22, 2018

Cartomancy as Writing Prompt


I've done a couple of articles about divination already, so hopefully people will have some idea of what I'm getting at with this. Cartomancy is a form of divinatory spiritual practice intended to communicate with metaphysical powers. Traditionally, cartomancy is done to divine information about the future, but there is also a meditative school which uses cartomancy to explore the self through guided introspection.

All of this is, of course, a scam. There are no higher powers guiding the order of cards in a deck to cryptographically convey hidden messages to poker adicts. That's ridiculous. Cartomancy is a form of cold-reading that uses cards as guides to pose probing questions of your querent which sound like cryptic visions. The querent reacts in whatever way your "insight" most closely connects with them, and the rest is confirmation bias. It's pretty cheap to be honest. Modern cartomancers employ many other tools in the con as well. Some have philosophy and psychology diplomas under their belts, many are professional hypnotists, a few spy on querents in the waiting room to pull a hot read.

Really, all the cards do is give you a prompt about what to talk about, and in what order. This guarantees that your predictions always have unique structure and sound fresh. It prevents you from forming a habitual structure that would act as a tell to your lies. But if cards can do that for con artists, why not for other people? How could we repurpose this extremely effective tool?

I have found that cartomancy can easily be used as a writing prompt for authors. I have used it many times in the past to plan adventures for RPGs, and also just to practice writing. This article is a guide on how to take a cartomantic system and repurpose it for writing.


To begin using cartomancy as a writing prompt, you first need to assign a symbolic lexicon to the cards. That is to say, give each card an abstract meaning. You can make your own lexicon from scratch, or you can go the easy route and use one that already exists. I opt to just use the existing systems, because they have been proven to be highly versatile and robust within a competitive market.

Still though, cartomancers are a finnicky lot, and they all disagree a bit on what each card "means". Nobody has truly standardized it. So go on Google, search for card meanings lists, and copy as many as you can into a book. Give a page to each card and just list all the meanings you can find for it on that page. That'll get you a good cultural cross-section of the trends and conflicts in the professional community regarding each card. This book will now be your guide to the deck as a prompt.

Now you need to learn a bunch of spreads. See, early on, cartomancers discovered that a single vague card was rarely good enough to warrant their pay. It wasn't enough to say "you will receive a letter". People wanted to know when, what about, from who, etc. Their solution? Draw more cards! Certain patterns became so common with certain question types, cartomancers began drawing all the cards at once to skip the extra questions from the querent. Cartomancers with showmanship skills arranged the cards in seemingly important formations with specific order to give a visual appeal to the process. This marketing technique slowly became standardized over the centuries, and is now known as a card spread. Some of these spreads are beautiful and elaborate, while others are little more than a hand of cards splayed out on the table.

A spread is, essentially, a blank story skeleton waiting for details. A great example is the "general situation" spread of 3 cards, one card each for the past, present, and future. The most basic spread is a single card. You ask the deck a question and draw a card. That card represents, in some way, the answer the spirit can tell you. Hogwash. It's a random slip of wood pulp. Go browsing google and collect as many spreads as you can find. These will be the tools you use to formulate your prompts.

Don't want to do the leg work? Fine. Here, use mine. This is my collection of card meanings for the nameless deck. At the end is a huge collection of spreads as Well, and it opens with a history lesson about how playing cards came to be.


OK, time to write a story! Get out your pack of cards and shuffle it. The first thing you want might be characters. Choose a spread system you think could be used to describe people. Generally, the more important the character, the more detailed a spread you should use. Tertiary characters rarely need more than 1 card. Start with your protagonist. Add characters as the story demands them. Draw cards for your characters. Read the meanings of each card and consider the context of the placement of the spread. As an example, let's make a character using just the meanings from the above image. Note each card has multiple meanings. I'll just choose whichever one I feel is more interesting.

Protagonist, 3 card spread: Ace of diamonds, 3 of clubs, Queen of spades.

Past: A ring. The character is married.

Present: Secret admirer. Someone wants the protagonist to engage in an affair.

Future: False friend. Someone is going to stab the protagonist in the back.

Bam. We now know what our story is about; temptation of infidelity and betrayal. If we wanted to know more about the protagonist, we could pull more spreads. For example, a pinwheel (5 card) could be used to arbitrarily determine ethnicity, gender, age, hair, and eye color- if you've found meanings for those to apply to cards.

Next we need an overall story structure. Choose a spread. I like the 3 card spread, replacing past/present/future with first/second/third act. Then, for each act, I break it down into 3 more 3-card spreads. And so-on. But there's nothing stopping you from throwing a zodiac spread (12 card) for the overall story, a Celtic cross (10 card) for each chapter, or any other system you choose. Just remember, the more details your prompt has, the more writing you will wind up doing to connect it all together.

From the example above, let's make a 3-part short story about our unfortunate protagonist. Remember, they are trapped between treachery and temptation.

Act 1: 2 of Hearts
"Your next love affair will surprise you."
Holy dang the hero went and gave in to temptation!

Act 2: Jack of Hearts
"You are continually in someone's thoughts."
You'd think it's his mistress... But what about that traitor?

Act 3: 2 of Spades
"A sudden journey."
The story ends with them travelling far for some reason.

OK, so let's brainstorm a story off of that!

Our hero is a married man. A female friend of his has been pining over him for years. The story opens with her seducing him. The two fall in love in secret. The friend, however, has a husband- a good friend and coworker to our protagonist. He discovers the affair. Bad shenanigans happen. Eventually, the hero leaves his wife and runs away with the mistress, fleeing for adventure.

Not bad! Sounds like an exciting story. Depending on the details, it could be turned into a harlequin romance, a mystery, a space opera, all kinds of stuff!


Basically any and all divination techniques can be used as the foundation for a writing prompt. Remember, all of these tools were developed for the purposes of telling convincing lies about the future. Divination is simply a form of criminal storytelling.

Personally, I like to cross the three cartomantic traditions, using whichever suits my purposes for the prompt I need. The three schools can be characterized as focusing on three broad subject types.

Tarot focuses on emotions.

The nameless deck focuses on people.

Lenormand focuses on things.

So if you want to know if someone is lying to you, go with tarot; if you want to know who is lying to you, go with playing cards; and if you want to know what they are lying about, go with lenormand.

If you're interested in Lenormand, I also have a PDF of compiled lessons and meanings on the lenormand deck by Labyrinthos Academy, located here.

Monday, January 15, 2018

Crystallomancy: Scrying the Orbuculum


In studying game design, reading fantasy fiction, and designing RPG settings, I often find myself researching lots of real-world history in order to understand how to create verisimilitude in my creations. In particular, I often research traditional, real-life magic, the vast majority of which is just varying forms of divination. It seems, no matter what aspect of game design I explore, I always find myself bumping into divination in various forms. My most detailed knowledge regards cartomancy as part of my research on the history of card games. Since I don't believe in any of this crap, I play around with it often to try and grasp how people understood it in the past, mostly as a curiosity.

This article is about the one type of divination that doesn't contact game design: divination by vision scrying. In particular, I will cover crystal ball gazing.

Much of this article is not accepted by traditionalists in the profession, whom I consider to be living jokes. Rather, it is an explanation of my understanding of these things based on my knowledge of mythology and history. There are no written documents to support any real claim about most of my statements, so take it all with the heaviest grain of salt you can carry: This is pure fiction supplemented with history-inspired conjecture.

That said, I have scried an orbuculum several times and, whaddayaknow, I had visions! It's... interesting to intentionally invoke such a thing. It's also mildly frightening.


"Crystal ball gazing" is the layman's term for scrying. The correct term for a "crystal ball" is orbuculum. The following is a generic guide to the art of crystallomancy.

First, a bit of history on what we are talking about. Crystallomancy is one of many forms of necromancy. All necromancy is the contacting of spirits via any given means, and then communicating with them. The standard format of necromancy is for a person born with a unique soul to allow spirits to inhabit their body and communicate directly with the living. This person is referred to as a "medium" because they are acting as a material that is being shaped by the spirit that has been contacted. Most peoples' souls are not near enough to the material state to allow this to happen, they are far and away, safe from the manipulations of the dead.

In order for a non-medium to communicate with the dead, they must evoke conditions under which either they can channel a spirit to some extent, or to allow a spirit to be channeled through some alternative medium.

Theoretically, it may be possible to contact angels, demons, and possibly even gods through these techniques, so the more abstract umbrella term "divination" has been applied to all of these arts. That said, all divination is ultimately the vestigial surviving traditions of ancient ancestor worshiping cultures that were absorbed, misunderstood, and then misappropriated. All divination is a primeval religious tradition of forgotten origin.

The most fundamental form of scrying is that of gazing water, also known as hydromancy. The reflectiveness of the water was used as a combined concentration point and sensory deprivation system. Lecanomancy is a form of hydromancy in which a reflective dish of water is used, while Scyphomancy uses a reflective cup. Eventually, the water was done away with, giving rise to catoptromancy, scrying a mirror. This was innovated into scrying basically any shiny object, but knives were the particular interest of macharomancy. Crystallomancy is simply yet another variation of this tradition.


Although it seems anyone can scry, it is definitely influenced by your elemental alignment. Almost nobody outside of Hermeticism mentions this. Those of an earth alignment will find it easier to connect with a crystal. The farther removed from earth you are, (fire being the farthest removed) the more difficult it will be.

Get the details of your birth and build an accurate synastry chart for yourself. (Or have one made for you if you lack the technical knowhow) Knowing where you stand in this endeavor will help you prepare for the journey. (You may have a longer road than you expected)

It can also help to be aware of your eastern zodiac as supplemental details- be sure to use the correct calendar.


The correct stone is clear beryl. The clearer the better. The size of the stone doesn't matter, but the larger it is, the more easily it can fill your vision from a comfortable distance. (In this regard, consider the difference between a theater screen, a TV screen, and your cell phone screen.) At least 4 inches diameter and otherwise within your budget seems to be the industry standard.

You will see many glass and quartz orbucula. These will also work, but the practice began 4,000 years ago with beryl, switching over to quartz and glass only out of necessity due to scarcity. Using the most precise equipment will ease the practice.

Clarity is essential. Many people feel that it is harder to scry a clear stone because it lacks anything to concentrate upon; this is precisely the intent. Scrying anything is a meditative art, requiring the emptying of the conscious mind, concentrating on something impedes that state. One must practice meditation long before they begin attempting to use the trance state in a practical way.

You want your orbuculum to be as spherical and round as possible, so that its reflective and refractive properties are as even and consistent as possible.


The above is my orbuculum. It is a home-made object. My element is water, so I am more inclined to hydromancy. To ease the technique for myself, instead of using crystal, I constructed a spherical ampoule of distilled water. Despite my best efforts, some bubbles still manage to form at room temperature, and can only be removed by refrigerating it for a while. Le sigh.

This one's safe.
If you do this and see the beam concentrated to a single tiny point,
you've purchased a monster.

You will hear talk about storing your orbuculum in darkness, and never exposing it to sunlight. People claim the sun has energies that will contaminate the sphere. This is untrue. The real reason is actually much more pragmatic: a nearly perfect sphere of high clarity beryl is a genuine fire hazard.

The light will concentrate directly on the opposing surface of the stone, and anything flammable touching that spot will burn. The brighter the light, the hotter the stone will get. So, if you put the money into a really pure scrying stone, do the safe thing: store it in a dark box, and allow it to only be exposed to ambient light, never to a direct light source.

Lesser orbucula, such as quartz or glass, do not have the clarity to be hazardous in this manner, and are perfectly safe to store in direct sunlight. (Usually. Some get close though, and can start fires on objects near the surface.)

To test the focus of a stone, place it in a fire-safe bowl on some appropriate tinder, then place a UV lamp directly over it. If you have a hazard, it won't take long to see smoke.

It's actually a native American thing,
and part of their traditional religious ceremonies.

Many people discuss "cleansing" the orbuculum. Some people take this literally, and wash it with soap. (Which, I suppose, is a pretty reasonable thing to do with just about any object you have purchased) A few people interpret this symbolically, and discuss various meditative ceremonies to eliminate any perceived negativity associated with the sphere. (Eh. Couldn't hurt, I suppose, though I'm skeptical of any mention of abstract "energies" in absence of explanation for their nature) Nearly all promote "smudging" the orbuculum, the room to be scried in, and yourself

 Smudging is the exposure of a noun to the smoke of burnt sage grass. It must be actual sage grass, not just some cheap sage scented candle or something. The three can not be smudged together, there should be a separate smudging for each.

This is a spiritual act, though the exact function is nolonger fully understood. It seems to be a sort of expulsion or eviction of unwanted spirits- possibly even all spirits- from a noun, hence its universal role as the foundation of the cleansing. There may be other effects as well however, as I said the full meaning is lost to us.

This is where the first hints of spiritual danger in scrying begin: we do not truly understand the full impact of what we are doing any more. Early Christianity condemned crystallomancy outright very early on, with the ban occurring before the first texts written. There is likely a reason for that.

This. Whatever this is. Please don't. Just. Don't.

You want to eliminate as many distractions as possible. You need to clear your mind. This is the purpose of the orbuculum. To make it work, you need to set up an environment in which your orbuculum affects your senses in a deprivatory manner. This setup, the room in which the scrying will occur, is called a psychomanteum.

Traditionally, a psychomanteum refers specifically to catoptromancy, (scrying a mirror) all scrying methods are effectively altrnatives to that traditional format, with various reflective/refractive materials acting as the stand-in for the mirror. All the scrying object must achieve is an optical effect conducive of the trance state. A psychomanteum provides the object with the lighting to do that.

Start by relaxing yourself, body and mind. Take care of yourself. Meditate.

Next, set up the room. It should be dim, but not utterly dark as that would put you to sleep and introduce tripping hazards. The light source should be low, ambient, indirect. Sunlight peeking in from the edges of blackout curtains works just as well as candles.

Try to eliminate unnecessary reflections from the orbuculum. Placing it directly on a matte black surface (such as black velvet) helps with that. (Yet more reason to keep the expensive ones out of the sun) Placing yourself between the light source and sphere will eliminate reflected glare from the light source as well.

Some people like music and scents. Again, as distractions I would recommend against both.

If scrying for another, it'd be best done with them present but separate.

And finally, the scrying itself. Sit in a comfortable chair- REALLY comfortable- and gaze, unblinking, unmoving, at the orbuculum. Your gaze should be at the horizon of the orb, along its edge, not the center of the object itself. Meditate in this condition. Eventually, your trance like state will begin (with standard mist/cloud of phosphenes, a known biological effect caused by your eyes staying still. Your brain finds differences by subtly vibrating the eyes. When you enter a trance, this reflexive behavior stops, and your visual cortex loses context for information processing) and your visions will follow.

The visions are your dreams evoked while awake. The visions occur in the mind, not the stone. This is a form of lucid dreaming, though inverted to bring about subconsciousness while awake, rather than ego while unconscious.

They are people.
They were people.

Ok, time for the scary part. By inducing this state, you are exposing yourself to material spirits in the presence of the event, in much the same way as dreaming does. This is why dictionaries of dream interpretation are equally relevant to the interpretation of any visionary system: they are all variant methods of acting as the medium upon which spirits my imprint their influence.

This is done by bringing your personal spirit in as close to the material level as possible without actually dying.

The danger here is that, overall, we have lost the knowledge of controlling who exactly will be present at such an event. The old ways are practiced, but without understanding or context, there is neither rhyme nor reason to their application. Should dousing of salts be used? Before or after? Is smudging necessary after a reading? How about before each one? Do other things need smudging? Are there practices which invite certain types of spirits? How would we know?

We don't. Nobody does. Maybe it was written once in some tome lost to dust or ash. More likely, it was part of a verbal tradition, lost with the culture it was formed from. Whatever the case, there is no known way to truly control the presence of spirits at a reading. They might help you. They might be useless. They might attack you. You just can't know.

On the topic of an attack, understand that spirits can not ever hurt your body. They have passed, completely and utterly, and can not return. However, they can attack your soul if it is near enough to their material state, such as when we are dreaming.

These attacks are commonly called nightmares, but can also happen when you are awake. That weird feeling of dread that came out of nowhere and lingered for hours for no apparent reason? That was an attack.

The dead can use you as a material (a medium) upon which they can impress themselves, thus influencing your experience. This is how those visions are generated.

Cruel spirits will seek to impress themselves upon you to evoke a harmful experience. While this may be as simple as frightening visions, there is genuine reason to fear for your very safety regarding any act of mediumship.

Spirits can influence your beliefs, your attitude, even your memories. They can manipulate you into acting in self destructive ways, thus enacting an incredibly indirect and very real attack on your physical being. They can manipulate you into lashing out at loved ones, or losing a job by making bad decisions. They can foment mental disorder and encourage addiction or suicide. They can manifest themselves fully in your psyche, parasitically feeding off of your fear and attention to persist in your mind, as close to alive as they can get. They can haunt you for the rest of your life.

... That is, of course, only if you believe in ghost stories...

... and you're far too old for that.

Tuesday, January 9, 2018

15 Authors Meme


Here we go. Top 15 authors who significantly influenced me. I am not really attached to any particular author however, as I judge a work by its own merits alone. So instead, I'll list authors by the literature they produced that influenced me.

1. Scott McCloud

This book and its sequels not only defined how I think about comics, but also art and life in general. This book changed my life.

2. Sun Tzu

So much that happens in our world seems strange and terrifying, or even outright stupid. After reading this book, I finally understood. What we see on the news is insane because it is just another piece of the battlefield.

3. Orson Scott Card

This was the first novel that took over my soul after a literature dry-spell of several years after high school graduation. It didn't change me as a person much, it just got me reading again. The dialogue driven narrative really enchanted me.

4. George Orwell

This is a book every man, woman, and child should be required to read, in its entirety, at least once. It should be federally mandated literature in all school curricula. The more time goes on, the more relevant and important this book becomes to preserving our humanity.

5. Ursula K. Le Guin

Wonderful works of fantasy and charm. Le Guin's flouting of Tolkien's florid style while simultaneously producing a world that is at once more rich and vast is impressive.

6. J. R. R. Tolkien

This was the first major piece of literature I ever began reading and finished on my own. It changed my relationship with the written word.

7. Aldous Huxley

This book makes me feel things. Mostly pain. This book literally hurts to read. Every page is revolting to me. Yet it is so cold and clear in its savage truthfulness. This is the world as our worst tendencies would have it become.

8. Ray Bradbury

This is the only book I read in school that actually mattered to me. The teacher had us read this book outside of the curriculum, and told us we weren't allowed to tell people about it. There were no tests or assignments. We were simply required to read it on our own. I read it twice. This book is the ur text behind the story I am writing, Father's Library. This is a book about the destruction of literature.

9. Michael Crichton

The movies are cheap trash compared to this titanic monster story. The raptors in the kitchen scene do nothing compared to the chills I felt just reading about the tiny elephant in this book. True terror in print, and frighteningly relevant to our modern technological world.

10. H. P. Lovecraft

Sometimes, you just want to feel uncomfortable and slightly crept-out for a few hours, you know?

11. Isaac Asimov

I don't know what to say about these books. They aren't important, per-se, they are just something I enjoyed. His technical jargon goes over my head sometimes.

12. Warren Ellis

This comic series is our future. Literally. Others write about our fears of one or two technological changes. Transmet assumes all technological advancements will happen equally and simultaneously, both the good and the bad, all at once, all together. It is Star Trek and Fallout 4. Further, it assumes that no matter how insane our world, we will still yet somehow retain our innate humanity. This is a story about urine and blood, words and crimes, sex and money, it is about everything that makes us repugnant and exquisite.

13. Jhonen Vasquez

This book taught me morality in a postmodern and secular world defined by faith. Nny is a negative foil of our worst motivations. Utterly weak and contemptible in every way, he gives in to every violent and insane whim his mind fathoms. And yet, we identify with every spit-frothing word of his outrageous tirades, and cheer as he splits the skull of a child molester. This is a satire on the horror of everyday life.

14. Terry Pratchet & Neil Gaiman

Just damn good fun. I spend every day trying to be a little bit more like Crowley.

15. Philip K. Dick

And finally, this book. One of the few sci-fi novels where the movie did it better. The book is still worth a read though if you've already seen the movie. It fleshes out the world they live in with much greater detail.

Monday, January 1, 2018

Inspiration Pad Pro: Game Designer's Most Powerful Tool

This is not an advertisement or a paid endorsement. Sometimes, I just like to share things I like.


So, one of the tricks used by Dungeon Masters to come up with lots of information very quickly, is to make up random lists of stuff and roll dice to pull items from those lists. It's a useful way to get ideas that you can run with on the fly, or to buy yourself time while the players fight a random battle. However, even rolling on a table and pulling items from a list can be time consuming if the information is rather complex, such as with large treasure hordes. Fear not: just get inspiration pad. You'll never regret it.



Inspiration Pad Pro (by nbos software) is a program that allows you to create and run your own random content generation programs. While the program does use random lists, it can do so much more. It can combine results from multiple lists to create wholly new synthetic content. The true power of this program can not be underestimated. You can randomly generate full character sheets, entire civilizations, dungeons, combat encounters, treasure hordes, character names, star systems, ecosystems, weather, and more! You can even make one generator pull results from multiple other generators! All it takes is some creativity on your part to go out and build it.


First off, head over to their website to download the thing. Get the latest version. There are ways to download the older versions, and they're nice too, but the latest version is a beast. Nbos also makes a few other very fun little utilities, but none of them quite compare to the sheer versatility of inspiration pad.


The latest version of IPP looks like the IDE for a programming suite, but that's mostly cosmetics, don't let it intimidate you with the way it looks. Actually, older versions were dependent on you making your random generators in note pad. It was... fiddly. In the latest version, not only are there many utility improvements, but they have also included a built-in editor to design your generators within the program that runs them! IPP is actually an interpreter: instead of converting code into raw machine language as an independent application, it reads a text file and conducts pre-scripted actions based on that file's content. That means you don't need to spend any time compiling or learn how your computer manages data! Lowest barrier to entry for coding that I've ever seen.


IPP comes preloaded with a detailed help file that explains how to use every command and how to script a generator. It also comes with a stack of premade generators straight from nbos employees, which you can open and learn from! Even if that isn't enough to get you started, nbos has a community forum dedicated to just this program, where you can get help, learn advanced designs, and share generators. Speaking of sharing, here's a website full of fun generators made by other people!

One last gift, here's a generator made by me that you can use: Fantastic Forest.