Choose Your Columns Charts

One of the last mini-games I posted about was for shopping.  And, in play, it didn't work that well, most of what it did was make what you wanted to buy harder to get- it wasn't available or the wrong size, or too expensive.  It wasn't fun.  (I have a different solution I'm fleshing out).  But what surprised me in looking back at that post was how I had players choose which dice to apply to which column.  I had no recollection of using that mechanic whatsoever.  And looking at it now, that seems like the coolest part of that whole idea.

What other uses could we have for a roll all the dice table which let players choose which dice should apply to which column?  I'm at work, a bit under-caffienated, but it seems like the general principles are: higher is better, but smaller columns are less important.  So, for example if you roll a "1" on your d20 you really want to sacrifice a result lower on the table to bump up that d20 column's result, like moving a "6" on you d6 column up and taking the "1" on the d6 column.

So, one idea that springs to mind is a wild magic mini-game.  It would be just a matter of fleshing out the columns.  I'm thinking of something along these lines, though that was more designed for completely random effects.  Players would want to have a bit more control over being able to cause damage in combat etc.

What other possibles uses?  Maybe monster breeding where you select for traits.  Maybe an abstracted NPC conversation mini-game where it lets you choose what you learn from them and what you have to reveal in turn.  Maybe potion making where you are trying to get the best balance of ingredients that have side effects.

City Life, Costs

I'm currently trying to shake my players out of the city and get them back into creepy, dangerous dungeons.  But I've made it hard because the city has been interesting with unexpected events all the time.  I've known for a long time I need a way to drain off their money, to drive them to look for treasure.  So I finally sat down and worked out a chart for costs of living.  I based it on blog posts I saw here and here.

As with most my stuff this is a rough draft that needs development and revising.  I wanted simple labels for different levels of comfort to ease communicating with my players.  I wanted more than three levels.  This is because I knew I wanted sleeping on the streets and luxurious living but I doubt my players will ever use either and I wanted them to still have a bit of a choice of how comfortable they were living in the city.

I'm horrible about pricing stuff but as I was messing with the prices I noticed they were close to a pattern so I made them one to aid remembering.  Of course this immediately brings to mind how much it would be just to buy property to avoid all this.  And that is a whole other can of worms.  Although, I suppose even owning property the comfort level in regards to food and clothing could still be comparable.

I originally had a chance of having something stolen while you sleep a drawback of sleeping in common rooms, but my players weren't having any of that.  They didn't like it being something they couldn't prevent (taking their agency).  So I switched that to other people being robbed, yelling about it, and ruining your sleep.

My players requested safe item storage as a perk for the Fine/Rich levels.  I'm torn, because I'd want that too, but can nothing ever be stolen from them?

The food, lodging, and clothes columns aren't mechanically important right now and I thought about collapsing them all into a little blurb about that level of living, but it might aid me in describing how disheveled they (and npcs) are so I'll leave it for now.

I'd like a disease/affliction chart with lice and bedbugs and all kinds of filthy stuff to amusingly tell them they've been afflicted with.


I don't have anything fleshed out for the rumors or connections items either.  I might be able to use a chart I've for dreams that foretell the future, or for family drama for rumors, but I don't know.  Rumors seem to be usually DM generated adventure hooks and I' never that prepared in advance to have multiple rumors ready.

Anyway, if you've got ideas or more examples of similar charts, let me know.

The Bustling City

These aren't "encounters" so much as the groups of people characters moving through a city might encounter.  They may be just passing examples of the bustling, populous nature of the city.  If players want to interact with them, or somehow get swept up in the thing these groups are doing, more might come of it.

I'll probably have players roll on this (and then help them interpret the results) every time them move from one place to another in the city.

Roll 3d10 and fill in one of the three possible "sentences" with the results:

I've mashed social class and wealth together because, as an American, I'm less aware of class distinctions that aren't tied to cash.  You could make two columns if you want.

Entry #6 for Types of People is trying to get away from thinking that the default will be men.  In my world they will be a mix of genders.  So this result will signify that it is only men, only women, or maybe something different like a group of Hijra.

The second "sentence" is based on the idea that the Types of People categories are not  mutually exclusive.  In other words you might have a group of old soldiers or a group of foreign bureaucrats.

Let's try some for the first "sentence":

6, 2, 10
We could say it is a group of male peasants celebrating a sporting victory, carrying the best players on their shoulders.

5,7,3 
Ooh, this is odd.  A group of wealthier children are protesting something.  Maybe pelting their tutor with vegetables?

9,6,5

A group is pouring from a church after someone noticed a child went missing.

Seems to work okay.  Any of those might turn into an adventure; the players find out about some sport they can try in a minigame, or at least bet on-- they might meet this put-upon tutor and befriend him/her-- the missing child might be an abduction by something dire.

Treasure Items - revised

This is a revision of this table.  I added a column for traditional fantasy magic as suggested by a commenter.  Some of these are quite potent, but you can skip the column altogether if you want.

I also added the bare bones of a value system.  I was thinking of making the items worth a base value of 500 gp (or sp if on a silver economy) and each - or + is a d20 roll.  The results of those rolls are multiplied by 100 to give you gp values to add or subtract.  I'm trying to keep things as simple as possible.  So, that should give a potential value of 8500 if you get lucky.  I would probably put a lower limit of 10 or 20gp even if the item is crude and broken.  They are supposed to be of some value after all.

What do you think?  Are the values too low?  Too swingy?

I wouldn't use this to handle all my magic item needs.  I like making unique ones too much.  But this could be a handy way to quickly get a central treasure to place in a small dungeon.

Update 2/28/14:
I went back and made some revisions, including replacing fur cloak with leather saddle.  I was thinking spurs might be a good possibility as well, but went with saddle to use leather as a material.  I think leather is stiff enough to function as symbolic swords and coffers and such.  I also replaced hair with iron as a material.

I tried to make a couple more magical properties more abstract so as to work better with the other item possibilities.  The coffer holding more than it should is still a little too specific, but I thought it could also be understood as "expands to necessary size" for some of the items like ring, sword, helm, etc.

I want to make a separate clothing item table now with cloaks and hats made of fur and feathers and such.  I don't think I can stretch it to 20 entries maybe 6 would be enough.

Treasure Items

First a public service annoucement: I screwed up with my web host so all my sidebar links will be dead until I get it sorted.  Sorry, I'm an idiot.
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Okay, after all that talk of tables here's one I've been working on for a while.  A simple way to generate interesting treasure objects has been my white whale for a long time.  I want to be able to generate many different things you might uncover when ransacking tombs or catacombs.  You can see my attempt at coming up with some kind of item generator here, and a separate attempt at coming up with item qualities here.  In this new table I've simplified and smashed the two together into a layered table.

The idea is that rolling a d20 will result in a treasure that is fitting for western myths and folklore.  But by rolling more dice for the different columns you can get many variations.

A few notes.  "Votive" is something made specifically to be left as an offering at a shrine or altar.  "Funerary" is meant to be something made specifically to be buried with someone or consumed in their funeral somehow.  I would assume all of them have value with someone, even the wooden or wicker, if brought to right person, if only because of their significance or rarity.

You can see one of the difficulties with this kind of table when you note that a common treasure of folklore is a cloak, but cloaks are made of different materials than crowns and chalices.  Belts fall into a similar category.  In my object qualities chart I made two seperate columns depending on whether something is clothing or not.  But I want to simplify the tables I might need at the table.  And besides cloaks and girdles, there isn't really any iconic treasure clothing items I can think of (wait . . . maybe caps, and boots, dang it!).  So, if you tumble the sub-tables on this and end up with cloak, you might have to do some interpretive work.  Maybe the cloak is made up of metal links, or maybe the "material" just indicates a color of the cloth.

You can run into the same problem going the other way.  The cloak has a material "fur" which works for it, but what the heck is a fur mirror, or fur chariot?  Again, you'll have to do some interpretation.  Maybe the easiest would be to imagine fur-trimmed items etc.

Another problem this doesn't adress is how many gp is each item worth.  I hesitate to be explicit about that because it depends on so many variables- your campaign's economy, the relationship the party has with the buyers, etc.  But what I might do for myself is roll another d20 and multiply it by 100 to give a result in 100s of gp, from 100-2000.  And then maybe bump it up or down a bit from there.

After those caveats, I think this might still be a pretty compact way to come up with some interesting treasure items such as:
16, 15, 5, 6
A worn wicker spear that belonged to your family  (maybe it was your grandfather's toy?).
7, 11, 15, 16
A painted brass coffer used to bludgeon to death an heir to the throne.
20, 6, 12, 12
A beautiful, gem-cut piece of glass found on the beach after a tsunami destroyed a city.

Anyway, I'll be trying this for my own game and I hope you find it useful.

5 OSR Table Types

Happy Birthday D&D!  I remember the moment I first heard of the game.  My friend was excitedly  telling me about it on the playground of our elementary school.  A game with knights and dragons and treasure.  I remember the first thing I asked him was "Does it have witches?"  So, from the very first, the gift D&D gave me was more the knowledge that you could play a game based in your imagination than a particular incarnation of rules.  And I immediately wanted to make things myself to add and use in the game.  In that spirit I'd like to celebrate 40 years of D&D by sharing with you cool stuff I learned in just the last 4 years of blogging hoping that you will find it useful in making your own stuff.

First, I'm working from an understanding of the game that considers randomness essential to play.  The dice remove responsibility from the DM to know and plan everything and they give the game a sense life in the way their unexpected results surprise and must be dealt with.  Those dice work most commonly by interacting with tables of possibilities.  And the possibilities of what you can do with those tables are a lot more exciting than simple lists.  I'll show 5 below. 

Another assumption I'm making is that you are doing it yourself, and when you re making your own tables, the more possibilities you can get from them the better.  So, many of these "Tables" actually involve multiple subtables greatly multiplying the possible outcomes.  The problem with that is they become ungainly, hard to fit even on one page, hard to use quickly or during play.  So, the tables below are mostly trying to resolve that problem: how do you pack in as many crazy possibilities as possible in a table while still keeping it useful as a tool?

I would be surprised if some of these kinds of tables hadn't shown up back in the heyday of D&D, but as a very enthusiastic hobbyist, I never saw them.  Feel free to point out examples of these I might have missed in old products or even other table types you've seen in the community.

Roll All the Dice

Years ago now, James R. "Grim" Cone posted a random NPC generator online.  You can still get it and two other tables of his here.  The innovation was that the dice types would help you keep track of the subtables.  But also it acknowledged that the amount of space you need for good results on a subtable varies.

It can also be fun to resolve at the table , by players.  I praised it in a post way back here and have created several of them.  The one I use most often is probably my Hireling Traits linked in my sidebar.

So if you find yourself making a table and you can't squeeze everything you want into a single list, try laying out 6 lists with 4 to 20 entries and see if that works better.  Then pick a set of dice with a bright, easy-to-find color so you can grab them all when you need them.  And let your players roll and read out the results.

Sentence Sub-Tables

Okay, this isn't really a different table type but this simple innovation really helped think about my own tables differently and makes them much easier to understand when explaining to players.  Chris Hogan from Vaults of Nagoh posted a few roll all the dice tables that had a sentence up top with the subtables embedded as words in that sentence.  This showed how the subtables worked together.

The sentence in the image at right is basically the dice in order of magnitude, but they don't have to be.

I see blogposts to this day that would benefit from this kind of simple overview of what subtables to expect.  And, in looking, I realize I never added this to my older tables like hireling traits.  I'll have to do that.

Dice Drop

I think I probably encountered these first from Talysman's The Nine & Thirty Kingdoms where he calls them dice maps, but you may be most familiar with those that show up on ZakS' Vornheim covers.  He calls them die drop tables.  Both of them have been sharing ideas with blog readers for years of how to use the positions dice fall on a paper as well as their numerical results to squeeze out more information with the same effort.

(The images here are just examples I picked from the many they've posted to their blogs.)

When you roll dice they are going to fall somewhere, so why not use that info as well as the numbers on their faces to tell you something?

This can be efficient in telling you a lot fast, it can also be a showy way to have players roll up things.  One aspect I've also tried to explore is the "fuzziness" of the positions.  In other words, trying to use where the dice fall in an evocative way to push my thinking.  I tried that with my item generator here.

These tables probably aren't the most useful, the dice have a way of running off the table, for example, and putting these in a box to prevent that undermines the ability of players to see results, but they are fun and this kind of coming at D&D from a new angle is what keeps me excited and writing blog posts.



Graduated

I don't have an example of this type, which I just made up the name for.  I also haven't made one of my own yet.   But it's been banging around in my brain for a long time waiting for the right table.  (It looks like I was thinking about it way back here and called the idea "stepped charts.")  Link me some good examples in the comments.

Basically this is a single table designed to give graduated results depending what type of die you use to roll on it.  So, for a critical hit results table the first four results on the table might be the mildest, and the 20th or 100th the very worst.  And then built into your critical hit rules would be calls for rolling different dice on that single table.  (Now I'm remembering one that gave results for random encounters during the day and night.  But I don't remember where I saw it.) 

This type of table is interesting because there will be some results that are impossible to get during certain contexts.  They would probably be most useful for determining random things that often have different contexts, like monster encounter tables, without needing to make bunches of tables.  Night time, bad weather, making lots of noise, being wounded, these all bump you up to worse results.

Update 1/28/14: Okay, some sweet examples from the comments: here James Young has being resurrected at higher levels doing different things.  Here scrap princess has drugs doing graduated results based on exploding dice, which very cleverly means the more drugs you take the more likely you bump up the results.  And here scrap princess has linear and bell distributions preferencing different parts of a table.

Layered

I don't know which of Roger the GS' posts first clued me in to this type of table, it might have been his genre tables.  But the idea is, you have one table that can act as one table, but has multiple subtable parts that can each be rolled on independently as well.  This blew my mind, because it solves the problem of trying to include the old standby genre-standard results you might want for any table, while allowing for mixing and matching those parts into something weirdly new.

In a way, this is like a graduated result controlled by the DM's understanding of the context.  Playing with a group of newbies?  Why not let them experience some things we might consider rpg cliches?  Playing with a more experienced group or getting a result the newbies have experienced several times now, tumble those subtables.

I incorporated this idea in my own Traps table (notice I've incorporated Chris' sentence idea on that one) and have it foremost in my brain when making a new random table.

Bonus Ideas
Buffers - I never saw a published random table with more entries than could be indicated with a die or set of dice.  But I've liked the idea that a) some entries you might not want to have come up more than that one time in your campaign, so you scratch it out and replace it with an entry from the overflow results and b) folks will have different tastes and it's hard to predict which results any one person will find cool.  My 100 Rare Wonders actually has 110 entries.  Since it's more work, this more about sharing and tables you make with other people in mind.

Mix-n-match - I've had an idea for a long time for a way to use sets of subtables to build different tables to roll on based on context.  The idea in my head is magical effect that can be applied to a player.  You have many subtables of types of effects and whenever you make new dungeon with a migic pool or statue or something, you can tailor the effects those cause by your choice of subtables that you assemble.  I blogged about it here.  The 1e system of artifact effects is kiiiind of like this, if they were more about determining random effects for for artifacts in-game and not just determining a single static effect that artifact has beforehand.

p.s. - Am I the only one that has always interchangeably called these random doohickeys tables and charts?  I had to keep catching myself in this post to remain consistent.

Update 1/28/14

Toss & Trace

This isn't what I normally think of when I think "table" but Josh W is absolutely right, this is like the opposite side of the coin of the dice drop table.  Here you drop the dice and then create something based on where it fell and its result.  Josh mentions How to Host a Dungeon, which I don't own.  But this technique is near and dear to my heart, it's how I make most of my cave dungeon maps.  This technique really shines when you want to make something that is more organic in its placement like  caves or cottages in a village.

Here is my pyramid campsite which uses four-siders to get a simple topographical map of where the party is camping.  Here's my post about making caves.  I learned later to use the dice results to indicate elevation and even/odd to help me determine which caves are connected to each other with tunnels.

1d30 used this technique to make the scattered buildings of a village.  Check out the Babbling Bane's use of pocket change to make a village here.

Bonus 2
JD has kind of flipped the idea of the graduated table, rather than multiple ways to read a single table, multiple ways to read a single toss of the dice, here.

I love all the examples from the comments, thank you so much. There are probably tons of cool tables I've seen but now forgotten, if so I apologize for not mentioning them here.

Wouldn't it be cool if D&D Next used some of these kinds of tables?  They are simple to use and I think even simple conceptually.  So I don't see it hard for players to use.  They do take more work to make though.  The layered tables, for example, require a good sense of the core aspects of what you are making a table for (like classic treasure items, or classic trap types) and ways to divide them up into columns that will lead to fruitful results when rolled separately.

Update 1/30/14

Split Column

This is similar to the Layered table, but I think different enough in intent to be considered a different type.  It is essentially reducing the clutter and confusion of multiple little tables by associating them together.   Zak shows how to consolidate small tables here.  So, each of Jeremy's sub-tables can be incorporated into a single table that is easy to read across.  For a simple, fast result you roll 1d6, or to mix up things you can roll all 5d6 and read the tables individually.  Zak's Vornheim uses this several times and makes for efficient generation in limited space.  Why have 50 aristocrat names, when you can split first and last into two columns and double multiply the possibilities.  Why have a big list of npc details when you know you will want several details for each npc encountered in-game.  Instead have a split column chart with three details per npc entry and you can always roll them separately if you need to.

How is this different than what I called layered?  Well, it would be layered if the fast, simple result was a core trope, or genre expectation you wanted to make sure was possible to generate, and the rest were weird and unexpected.  I makes more sense for some topics than others.  Treasure items, traps, quests, might all have some results you might like to have possible with weirdoid results possible too.

Ah, it might be splitting hairs.  If it helps you make more useful tables in the end I'll be happy.

More Monster Making

I was hoping to do the room stuffing thing with my friends tonight, but I don't think I'm really prepared for it yet.  I did sit down and make this monster chart:

It's a roll-all-the-dice giving you the basic nuts and bolts of a monster.  I haven't even rolled on it yet, it might be entirely unusable.  But it was one of those things where I needed to make what I saw in my head so I could try it out.

I have used my dice drop chart a few times and haven't been that happy with the results.  I might try printing a bunch of the possibilities on business card-sized slip and draw from them like a deck.

Another idea is to prompt players with categories like "body horror" or "fairy tale."  Or maybe just with tones like "goofy" or "creepy."  I suppose those could be another roll, another draw, or, if you're being game-like anyway, rotate through them.  In other words, the first player has to come up with an explanation of their roll as something body horror related, the next fairy tale-esque, etc.  I suppose that's all assuming the stats and special abilities don't give an idea of what the monster is all about anyway.  Okay, I'm off to see about making the cards.  Have a great Friday night.

Update: 6:28: Acch, just realized the AC doesn't really make sense. I think I was mushing ascending and descending together in my head.  I think it can be an easy fix though, by switching the Size and AC columns.  That would give more size points also.

Quests!

Daily OSR Fix is a newer blog with some cool posts.  I wanted to take this post about sidequests and try and kick it up a notch.  So rather than just 20 archetypal options in your chart you get those and the possibility of many more if you roll twice and mix and match the columns.  (We need a name for this kind of chart like: two-layer chart to steal from burrito nomenclature, or something)

I abstracted some of the verbs a bit so they might work better with multiple nouns.  So, "clear out monsters" became "secure a location."  I had to change "Explore" to "Investigate" for the same reason and left out the old "Escort" standby altogether. 

Some of the actions are pretty similar, like "Spy on," "Reconnoiter," "Investigate," and "Research."  They have subtle differences that could still work.  I think of research as requiring books and resources, not necessarily the object of study itself while spying requires not just direct but surreptitious, observation, for example.  But if you can think of some alternative actions that might be a bit more distinct, please share.


There are some odd possible results. What does it mean to deliver a location?  Maybe acquire ownership and then hand it over to someone?  Maybe provide a way for someone to reach the location easily like magical travel?  What does get a relationship mean?  Maybe you have to get married or acquire a sponsor of some sort?  Ah well, this kind of chart will always require a little interpretation.

Why is the Secret Door Secret?

One way we could add details and logic to secret doors is to look at them from the angle of what was meant to be hidden.  I broke that down into four categories.  Here are some ideas on each:

Individuals hiding something from society
Probably more crudely built in easy-to-work materials since one person was doing it.  These might be more covered holes or dirt tunnels than true secret corridors.  Or they could be one of the other types of passages that have been forgotten by everyone, now found by this individual and re-purposed.

The peeper will have holes into the most private areas of the community and maybe a network of these.  The hoarder has a pantry hidden away with alcohol, preserved foods, anything the community is only allowed certain amounts of.  That and the Shirker's quiet hideaway could be nice finds for visiting adventurers.  Mania is where your celebrity stalker pastes up their pictures or the miniatures collector stores their armies.  Blasphemy is where dark idols are kept.  But, really, depending on the community anything considered forbidden could be reason to hide here.

Small groups hiding from society
Trysts allow for forbidden love and will usually span long distances, literally or culturally.  So the Montagues live far from the Capulets, or the king sneaks right next door into the maid's quarters.  These lover's passages should probably have secret doors on each end.  The rest in this category are the cults and secret societies.  These will be better built with warning bells and even traps.  They should lead to, not just more windy little passages, but hidden rooms, big enough for people to meet and scheme.  Could include small barracks, warehouses, or libraries.  Forbidden lore could include magics or heretical religious teachings.

Rulers hiding from society
These are the best quality, built with money, planning, and plenty of labor.  Probably have locks.  The peepholes will be not just into bedrooms, but places people might meet and talk.  Some passages could open into travel routes for easy disappearing of troublesome folks.  Fraud includes the hidden panels that allow priests to make an idol "eat" its offerings.

Society hiding from invaders
These are of similar quality to those built by the rulers, unless they are built after occupation and then they'll be more like the individual's crude attempts but full of traps.  Peepholes may function as murder holes.  The escape route may be one-way and much larger than the ruler's bolthole.  The flanking and guerrilla type should be located in tactically advantageous positions.  Most people in the community should know about these.

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I have been messing about with this for several days trying to figure out the best way to present it.  I had an idea that you might use little icons in the table-- eyes, bells, and such-- to represent the features each category has..  But I figure I'll just post it now to share the ideas and revise it later. 

Traps!

Here's my take on a trap chart in the Roger the GS style.  If you read straight across you get a standard trap that should be easy to work with even at the last moment in play.  If you mix and match the columns you get weird stuff you need to interpret a bit and is intended more for pre-play prep.

A few notes.  If you are rolling to get something weird you can still get the straight-across result.  Rather than re-roll I put in to add insects or animals to get some Indiana Jones style snake pits or bug filled rooms.  The trigger column was the last thing I added and the fact that some are nouns and some verbs bugs me, but it should work.  For the chute being "revealed" I was thinking of staircases that flatten out, the chute was always there built into the feature itself.

Let's roll some and see how we might interpret them:

4, 3, 5, 4
shim, gas, swings, block
Whew, that's a tough one on the first go.  Okay, let's say a section of a hallway is a big pendulum.  Knocking out a wooden shim will cause it to swing, replacing the current section of hall.  It contains a gas that is heavier than air and makes anything in it float to the ceiling and get stuck.

 2, 7, 10, 9
latch, noose, (shoot out, open), channel
Hmm, okay, a chamber with four doors.  Opening the "wrong" door causes a noose to shoot out and land around the opener's neck and start, slowly, constricting.  Opening the door the designer wants you to go through causes the noose to go slack.

7, 1, 6, 1
touch, darts, jut out, wound
This one seems pretty straight forward.  The walls of an area are lined with tiny, sharp points.  Brushing up against them causes them to jut out and inflict damage.  I would say battles in the area would be at a negative because the battlers are being careful not to touch the walls.  Or maybe roll a save every time you miss to see if you've bumped into a wall.

Well, you get the picture.  Let me know if you have any suggestions or questions.  Hope this helps in designing your dungeons.

The Dramarama

I was never as excited about Jeff Rient's Carousing Table as everyone else because it seemed the only player that would roll on a table that takes your money and gets you into trouble is thinking a little more extra-diegetically than made sense to me.  Or maybe I should just say I doubt I would take the risk with any of my characters.

But then I got to thinking, what carousing is really doing is injecting some story complications from outside player or DM contributions into the game that has few ways to do that.  Well, the players are choosing to roll on the table, so you could say they are injecting these twists, but they don't know all the possibilities on the chart and they certainly aren't making up bits of story on their own.  Neither DM nor players have to be responsible for it making sense or being good, or all the things you might feel responsible for if you were plotting out a railroad.  This works because when carousing you are presumably soused out of your mind, so the player can feel okay about giving up some agency for any choices they make while carousing.

I realized this some time after making my table that let's you know what you did when you were a werewolf.  Which absolves players of responsibility in a different way.  And I started wondering if there were any other ways than carousing or lycanthropy you might inject some story-like twists without taking away the players' agency.  And I thought the one thing we can't choose and all have is Family, baby!  And thus was born the Dramarama:

Roll 4d30.  First tells you which of your family members is causing a ruckus, second what they are up to, third is for who else is involved and fourth is what they want from you.

There are nonsensical and gonzo results possible, as well as results that may require a little interpretation work on you part.

Why would players want to mess with this?  Well, it could be a "fee" for coming back into town.  That would keep players from shopping incessantly or hunkering down and not exploring.  I would probably roll randomly to determine which party member was affected once per session spent in town to go this route.

Or, you could balance it with reward: allow any player to gather a rumor per roll on the Dramarama or gather more information about things they want to investigate.  Presumably their sprawling chaotic families have heard lots.

Of course, the results from the table could be completely ignored by players.   But I would probably make the Second Parties involved or local authorities (for the more criminal results) put some pressure on PCs about  the issue somehow.

I'll upload a pdf when I'm back home.

Update: Here is the pdf.

Port Specific Trade III

Here is my best shot at making a reality of what I had in my mind.  A cool isometric view of an actual specific port.  Size and layout of sections can generally correspond with importance of results you want to get.  Here are some more ideas:

• It's a little busier than I would want.  I like the idea of giving the sense of the port, but the main job should be to be easy to read by people sitting around a table throwing dice on it.
• Imagine the icons here were separate tokens you could move around and mix and match on top of the map.  If trade changes in a city, you could rearrange the tokens rather than having to create a whole new image.
• Better yet, imagine a web-thingy like Telemonster that has a dice drop map as a blank template and you can put whatever image you want in each spot.  Infinite visual charts, baby!
• I included icons that could represent piracy and disease to show how random events might also be incorporated.
• I left some spots blank thinking maybe there are times or seasons where there are no buyers for particular cargoes.  But you could put other goods in those spaces too.
• You could also use small numbers next to the icons for prices or to convey extra information.
• If the spaces around different buildings come up, maybe those could have specific meanings.  The lower left looks like a church- a random church-related event?  The town is central-- guild issues?, then a fortress to the right-- embargoes?
• Again, are these the biggest trade goods this port is exporting, or just the most likely cargoes to be found coming or going?  Do we just roll on here to determine gluts, or demand?  I want to accomplish everything you'd ever need on this one page, but maybe that's too simplistic.
• Yeah, so I'm sort of working the implementation backwards towards what it's supposed to be solving, but, man, I really have a sense this is the right direction to be going.  Imagine adding a bunch of possibilities for players and a sense of a more real, working world to the game with just a few pages.

Dice Drop Charts

I'm up in the mountains.  Spent the last several days with a bunch of family so my mind is kind of muzzy.  But here are some ideas for dice drop charts for someone feeling more ambitious than me right now:

• body locations - use it for locating hits in combats, where tentacle mutations emerge from, or even where you got your carousing tattoo
• ship locations - what the meteorites disabled and how badly, or where the Greek fire is burning
• fortress locations - which walls the orcs are swarming and how many of them
• fortress creation - how many troops of various sorts, type of lord etc.
• village creation -type of lord, number of families etc.
• city locations - robberies in a hero game, plague outbreaks in a fantasy setting
• quick and dirty pantheons - have all the domains (war, love, death) drop d4s for lesser deities d8s for the biggies
• random rituals - gems, plants, and other ingredients needed to make a spell work this time-- for chaotic magic systems or simulating absent minded wizards ("Oh yes, I need some rosemary")
• character creation - yeah it's more fun to see your character reveal itself before you, but could you make a single sheet of paper that would do it all at once?  drop 6 dice for stats, one for $, one for HD, and maybe even equipment or at least starting wizard spells
•  demon/monster generation - you've seen plenty of them, now do it in one dramatic role 
• animal mash-up - chart has tons of animals dice dropped are different colors for different body parts- so if the blue "head" die falls on elephant your creature has an elephant head
• treasure hoard determination

Hmm, I guess most of those "locations" entries would need a schematic first so they're more a short cut than actual universal chart.  I think I want to do the pantheon one for own campaign.  Maybe that animal mash-up too, that seems fun.. What would you like a drop dice table for?

What They Left Inside of You

Is that a lump?  A bruise?  I had bad dreams, dreams that someone was cutting me open, dreams that they took something that should be there or left something that shouldn't.  Oh god, it's moving . . .

What They Left Inside of You
Some are new organs intentionally installed, some foreign objects forgotten or left . . . as a message?  It seems to be a(n) :

1. key
2. egg
3. clump of dirty rags
4. Tactile map - you can read the bumps through your skin
5. 100gp brooch
6. tangle of hair
7. Downy Pinkus - 1d4 inches long, you are able to cast spells as a wizard of that level
8. Dwarvish Carbuncle - you can detect slopes and altitude flawlessly
9. Sleestak Somatophore - you can detect minute gradients of heat now
10. Single rune inscribed on a clay chip
11. 1 stone lead weight
12. Extra Heart - gives you an extra HD when you should be dead
13. Extra Lung - You can hold your breath twice as long, not affected by fumes as much
14. Extra Stomach - you can subsist on plants now
15. Gizzard - you can subsist on gravel and rocks
16. Extra Liver - immune to poisons and potions
17. Extra Spleen - you can spit acid once a day
18. small rodent that is moving under your skin
19. bulb that grows into a rare drug plant
20. tiny, iron, locked box
21. brass sphere that plays a sweet melody when rolled
22. tumor that will grow into an Unborn in a week
23. vial of rare poison with a person's name on it
24. tightly scrolled piece of tin with never-seen scriptures scratched in it
25. voodoo doll (someone else)
26. magic ring
27. rusty knife blade
28. slim tube of light, unknown metal (beacon?)
29. pocket of grey liquid that sloshes as you move around
30. your own organ thief, sneaks out at night and brings you back, then installs, one of 12-17

The Dreamers are Dreaming . . .

This one's for Richard who asked on G+ what the citizens of Bukhara might be dreaming of.  It took me a while.   I just started listing things at first, then thought it might be cool if the dreams had actual in-games effects on the dreamer when they wake.  So, this pdf:

Secret Santicore!

Here's my gift of Goblin Alchemical Mishaps.  First a chart:

And next something a little more ambitious, a game where you drop your dice and generate mishaps with the whole family:

I think it would work better if the two wheels could spin independently, but I ran out of time. Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas!

What are the Monsters Doing?

So, If we put a relatively small number of creatures that can be randomly encountered in a particular area it will give it a flavor, a sense of verisimilitude.  But then you get to the point where your players are groaning "Ugh, not skunkbats again!"  So after one or two random encounters rolled for the same creature type roll on the following chart to add something interesting to the encounter:
Okay, some of those are not actions but states of being (trained, diseased) but you get the idea.  I wouldn't make this mean the encounter is necessarily harmless, just distracted perhaps.  And if you start taking pot shots at them it turns into your typical skunkbat strafing run.

Also, it may seem this is skewed towards simulationist creatures, but I think you could get some real weird stuff if you try to make it work.  Here are some notes and ideas:

At Play
Because you know you play D&D to imagine young beholders frolicking.

Decoy / Construct
It isn't a real skunkbat after all, someone must be hunting them.  Or it's a mechanical wonder.  If you catch it might be worth a lot.

Disoriented / Mourning
Like dolphins beaching themselves, sometimes gelatinous cubes will push themselves into the acid pools.  Or maybe it's a sabretooth lying on its dead, giant master's chest

Displaying / Singing / Calling
What would the display of a gelatinous cube be?  Iridescent colors playing across its surface?  Or maybe it fluctuates between sphere, cube, and toroid shapes.

Fighting
Like mountain goats butting each other for superiority ( or flailsnails!), or maybe like crows mobbing a hawk.  You really wanted to see a dragon, right? Well, these skunkbats are trying to drive one off.

Giving Birth / Hatching
Okay, no, you play D&D to experience the miracle of beholders being born.  Happening daily this season at the beholder calving caves.

Mating
Lots of weird  possibilities here, think zombies, men and women of wounds, etc.

Migrating
Ever heard of migrating tarantulas? How about grunion runs? See, these particular gelatinous cubes aren't interested in eating you, they're just trying to get up-dungeon like transparent, cubic salmon. Multiply the number encountered by 10.

Trained / Tamed
Wearing collars or ribbons, these things could be worth money, or it could mean their masters are nearby.  Maybe someone uses stirge like hunting falcons.  Also, can you train a gelatinous cube?

Undead
Same creature except it's an undead version.  What is an undead gelatinous cube?  Maybe it's got a yellowish tinge to it and is extra rubbery (read more hd)

The Drug is Actually . . .

At work, so I'll make this into a nicer chart later.  So, tired of the drugs in your campaign being plant parts that are smoked or chewed?  Here are 30 other possibilities.  Actually the ideas from alternate potions might work too, but here I worried less about the strict time limit implied in many of those options and tended more towards rare and slightly taboo stuff.  Keep in mind they aren't spells, I would make them all still addictive to varying degrees.

1. the bite of a live ant, tiny farms must be carried around
2. a mantra from a forgotten language chanted several times
3. tiny human-like creatures that are gazed at in wonder
4. a lamprey the size of a mouse, attached to the body under clothes
5. feathers burnt
6. tiny pastries made exquisitely with rare spices
7. the exudations off the back of a giant toad
8. ashes of ancient heroes snorted
9. paste made for the fat of the executed
10. entrancing figure made with string as in cat's cradle
11. the rarest drug, only the blood of someone previously intoxicated
12. reptile scales held under the tongue
13. animal spines used to pierce the flesh
14. clothes woven from the hair of an anti-saint
15. dust taken from the footprint of witches/giants/demons
16. nymph tears
17. centaur milk
18. a Feng shui-like arrangement of furniture, candles, and flowers
19. a temporary tattoo from plant sap
20. an arcane pattern painted across the face
21. plant pollen of low efficacy so that the user must be covered with it
22. breath of a dying mage
23. heavy water
24. distillation from the scraps of an ordination feast
25. Yogic-like poses performed in a particular sequence
26. pink crystals from deep in the earth
27. palm-sized clay coin, broken for effect
28. Ent water
29. Tomb salt, scraped from the mineral buildup on tombs
30. Temple tar, scraped from the smokey residue in the dark corners of busy temples

Update: I made it into a chart and bundled it with the one-page drugs for your phone or tablet here. I'm not too happy with the "drugs" icon, doesn't seem as iconic at a small size, but I'll worry about revising it a little later.

I was thinking the mantra and yogic poses would be a little different because the character can partake any time they want.  I might adjust the addiction rules to make them require them more and more often, until the mantra chanter would be unable to pray, cast spells, or be quiet in the dungeon.  The yogi would have to withdraw from adventuring to perform the postures full time.

The lamprey seems gross to me, I might roll randomly to see what it does, then make it a fad in Nidus.

One-Pagers for Phone

I've come to realize my phone is quite handy on game nights.  If I forget something I have pretty much everything I've made on my blog somewhere.  I've also put some pdfs directly on myphone for expediency's sake-- no need to search the blog.

The new pdfs upper left, then a draft.  Hard-to-read chart example lower left.

But the problem with those pdfs is that, at that tiny size, my charts tend to all look alike.  So I used my silhouettes and blew them up so you can easily see what each chart is about.  I also added in the "The Potion/Ring is Actually . . ." as a third page.  That way my base and possible weird variants is right where I need them.

The only hiccup I had was learning how to create my own page style to switch from portrait to landscape to portrait again.  Otherwise, you should be able to customize the one pagers to your heart's content and do this for yourself.

Here is my phone pdf for Potions and for Rings.  This makes me think, what would a chart of "The Drug is Actually . . ." look like?  Better get on that.

Faction Spice

Give your next megadungeon faction a little zing.  Hell, roll multiple times.

I tried to think of features that would make a faction (not necessarily demi-human/humanoid) interesting in the context of a megadungeon. What other traits would you include?