Crossword Spell Research

I've always loved playing magic-users, loved finding and searching for books in D&D, and the open-ended possibilities that being allowed to make your own spells gives the game.  Here's an idea for making player spell research interesting and engaging itself, by making it a mini-game.  I haven't tried it yet (I plan to offer it, but my players are big football fans and home games keep falling on our game night) but wanted to share the idea:

• Have the player mage describe the spell they want to make in a single sentence.
• Each word in the description is a word you can put into an auto-crossword creator like this one: https://www.puzzle-maker.com/CW/
• Each box of the crossword is a book they need to find or buy that loosely corresponds to the subject of that word. 
• Boxes at the intersections of the words are harder to find and are about both topics.  
• Each book should be 1d6 100gp

So, an example.  In all the years I played D&D myself I never made my own spell, but after a bad run in with an invisible magic-user I thought it would be nice to have something like a magic missile that would hit anything hidden like that.  Not do a ton of damage, but flush them out of hiding.  I was going to call it Telecanter's Homing Dart.  My simple description of the spell might be: Dart Seeks Enemy Mage.  The crossword that produces is this:

Dart Seeks Enemy Mage example

So, 1 across means I will need to find 5 books about the seeking aspect of the spell, maybe there are books on Migratory Birds, or Lodestones, books on a Tribe of Night Hunters, etc.  I can go to booksellers in a city and purchase these for 100 to 600gp, but if I can't find them, I might need to keep a look out for them in dungeon libraries.  Another thought is that these don't have to books, they could be scrolls, other spells that are about that topic, or even NPCs you can interview.

The intersections of the words on the crossword, like the first square of 2 Down, are something more difficult to find.  In this example Enemy crosses Seeking.  So, maybe the book here would deal with even determining that someone is a threat-- Divination of Hidden Enemies-- or maybe it would be Esoteric Auras of those Using Magic.  I would say if we can buy one of these rarer books it should be more expensive 1000-6000gp, but more likely it would be worthy of a mini-quest.

More words or more complicated words make for a bigger library requirement and more expense.  I think part of the fun of it would be the player putting the spell they want into as few words as possible.  And I don't think the DM needs to be the devil in negotiating here, trying to trip them up.  The point is to produce fun.

Some other thoughts.  The books the player acquires could be used to research other spells later.  This would make it feel like they actually had a research library, if they could say something like "I have a good selection on magical Seeking."  One potential problem is that players don't know what spells they might make, especially newer players.  For my game I thought about making a new spell a requirement for joining the City Mage Guild, to kind of force the issue.  If the player has a hard time coming up with a specific spell idea, I can have the Guildmaster suggest something they need.

A bigger problem could be that the potentially powerful effects that are traditionally kept from players by higher spell level would be easily available here.  I mean like damage causing spells that always hit or spells that incapacitate enemies.  With this simple word system there is nothing to keep a player from making a super powerful spell.  I guess that might be the DMs role, to negotiate this, and say for example "Traditionally in this world, it has been very difficult to put more than a few weak minded fools asleep at once," etc.

 But, anyway, I think it might be fun, let me know any ideas you have.

NPC Interaction Bingo

I’ve long been interested in taking existing parlor games and absorbing them into D&D.  The idea is that if the game has existed forever as something people do to have fun. then why not leverage that fun into D&D, instead of always having to come up with mini-games and mechanics from whole cloth.

For example, I have an idea for using Yahtzee for a one-page Thieves' Guild (Hopefully more on that later).  But here is an idea of how to make NPC interactions more interesting for all players, not just those that are the most talkative and confident:

• Give each player a bingo card with spaces that correspond to things an NPC is likely to do or say in a conversation.
• Getting a “bingo” would mean that player could either ask a single question that would be answered truthfully, or ask a favor that the NPC will do their best to perform.

The mini-game is meant to portray a character paying close attention to a person speaking and interacting with their comrades, and then leveraging a weakness or some bit of insight they noticed to gain an advantage.  The player can role-play a bit what that looks like “You keep dancing around this, but I get a feeling someone told you not to help us, who was it?”, and the DM can role-play out what the response might look like, “I’m so sorry, Count Ris said he would burn my inn down if he found you had stayed here.”

Player with a high charisma should get a bonus of some sort, maybe a free square of their choice— which would add some strategy— maybe cover a spot less likely to come up in a conversation or put just put it in the middle to make “bingos” easier to get.

So, now I need to come up with the cards.  What should I fill the blanks with?  I was thinking “Mentions a person you haven’t heard of,” “Mentions a place you’ve never been to.”  But what else?

What I’m noticing now is that this would lead to not just passively listening to a NPC talking, but a player trying to maneuver them into doing things that would fill their bingo card.  So, for example, asking them where they grew up in hopes of having them mention a place the players have never been to.  That’s cool, because if the bingo cards are different enough, it should tend to draw all the players into the conversation; each participating to try and hit their different bingo spaces.

Other possible spaces:
offers an excuse
makes a threat
mentions a person they dislike
begs or pleads for something
snitches on someone

How about you, what are typical things that happen in NPC interactions that we could fill the bingo card spaces with?