Random Village Generator

[I will get onto druids tomorrow, but I'm prepping a new Yoon-Suin campaign starting this Saturday and I wanted to get this down.]

Whenever the players first enter a 'settled' or 'mostly settled' hex, d3 villages should be randomly generated and placed in that hex, assuming a hex size of 6 miles. [It is likely there would be more villages than this in 'real life', but d3 is fine for game purposes.] Then, determine village characteristics as follows:

Size

1 - Tiny (3d20 inhabitants)
2-4 - Small (1d100+20 inhabitants)
5-10 - Average (1d100+50 inhabitants)
11-12 - Large (1d100+100 inhabitants)

There will be number of inhabitants/6 houses, number of inhabitants/50 shrines, and 1 hall per village (rounding up all fractions).

Layout

1 - Centralized: houses grouped together around the hall, with rice paddies encircling.
2-4 - Scattered: houses spread evenly, separated by rice paddies, with a hall somewhere in the middle.
6 - Dispersed: the village represents a spread-out and sparse series of tiny hamlets and individual farmsteads, only loosely united, with a hall located apparently at random.

NPCs

Each village has a headman, a priest for each shrine, and a number of NPCs from the following list (1 for tiny, d2 for small, d3 for average, d4 for large):

1. A mad hermit
2. A hedge witch (25% chance of being a level 1 magic-user, otherwise a charlatan)
3. A healer (25% chance of being a level 1 cleric, otherwise a charlatan)
4. An expert guide who knows about all of the contents of the hex
5. A locally reknowned beauty
6. A retired hero
7. An exiled criminal living as an anonymous farmer
8. An expert baker
9. An old man revered for his extraordinary wisdom
10. A locally reknowned hunter
11. A great story teller
12. A great flute player
13. A great singer
14. A visiting sage, studying the local night sky
15. A visiting sage, studying the local wildlife
16. A visiting sage, studying the local dialect
17. A fortune teller
18. A man who has been panning for gold in the local stream for years
19. An escaped slave
20. An escaped eunuch

Resources

1. Poor - the village has barely enough to scrape by
2-5. Average - the village produces enough of a surplus to trade with the nearest or most accessible town
6. Rich - the village has a special resource; roll d6:

1. Nearby forest is rich in furs
2. Nearby river is rich in fish
3. Tiny amounts of gold are sometimes found in the river
4. A small amount of opium is grown in a hidden field somewhere
5. The soil is very rich, so the villagers can afford to sell a percentage of their children into servitude at the nearest town
6. The villagers have organized a toll on the nearest road or river

Special

Each village has 1 special quality from the following list:


1. A secret stash of savings is hidden under the village hall, worth d300sp.
2. The villagers are very hospitable, but kill, rob and eat visitors who stay the night.
3. The villagers shelter a group of bandits.
4. The villagers worship a giant crayfish who lives in a nearby lake.
5. The villagers breed giant velvet worms to help them hunt.
6. The villagers are very hospitable, but abduct visitors who stay the night and sell them into slavery.
7. The villagers speak an unusual dialect that is impossible for outsiders to understand.
8. The village has a fighting pit, and the locals will challenge visitors to wrestle their champion.
9. The villagers eat disgusting moths that they consider a delicacy.
10. The villagers are plagued by a group of bandits who live nearby.
11. The villagers are plagued by poisonous scorpions which inhabit the rice fields, rendering them unusable.
12. The villagers have a pet giant frog who has a 10% change of becoming aggressive if outsiders enter the village.
13. The villagers eat a type of mushroom that is mildly poisonous; they build up an immunity from an early age but outsiders will be violently ill and incapacitated for 3 days if they eat the fungus.
14. There are weirdly colourful snails everywhere, because of some characteristic of the local climate.
15. There are weirdly colourful beetles everywhere, because of some characteristic of the local climate.
16. The villagers are unusually short and stocky; it is rumoured that their ancestors were dwarfs who bred with humans, though everybody knows this is impossible.
17. The villagers worship a mantis god who demands animal sacrifices from visitors.
18. The villagers have the skeleton of a yak folk on display in the hall.
19. The villagers know where there is a mi-go lair in the mountains.
20. Almost all the menfolk were conscripted to go to war two years ago by the local oligarch, and none returned.
21. The villagers have a spell book a wandering wizard once 'left behind'.
22. The villagers are cannibals who eat the dead.
23. The villagers have a blood feud with the next village.
24. The villagers have a blood feud with a group of yak herders in the nearest 'hilly' hex.
25. The village is divided in two between two large families and their allies, who are hostile towards each other.
26. The village is frequented by gamblers seeking to avoid taxation in the nearby towns.
27. The villagers harvest a special kind of moss which has health benefits.
28. The village has a hot spring.
29. There is an ancient monument in the village.
30. There is a group of ancient statues in the village that it is rumoured are golems which will one day come to life.

Chaos My Ride

I postulated a theory on Google+ just now: if you put the word "Chaos" before any animal, monster, or mythical being, it instantly makes it sound cooler.

Try it. Chaos dog. Chaos monkey. Chaos unicorn. Chaos goat. Chaos wasp. Chaos ghost. It never gets old.

To make an animal a chaos animal, take the ordinary version and then roll d3 times on the following table:

1. Extra hit dice
2. Can phase as a phase spider
3. Can breathe fire (2d6)
4. Can breathe ice (1d6)
5. Can breathe poisoned gas (2d6; save vs poison halves damage)
6. Can breathe lightning (2d6)
7. Can breathe CHAOS (3d6; save vs magic or be teleported d500 metres in a random direction)
8. Immune to normal weapons
9. Half damage from fire
10. Half damage from cold
11. Two heads
12. Three heads
13. Four heads
14. Extra pair of legs
15. Human hands instead of feet
16. Human face
17. Human nose
18. Can speak; always lies
19. Can cast a random spell once per day
20. Can cast a random cleric spell once per day
21. Can gate demons d3 times per day
22. Makes no sound
23. Translucent
24. Invisible
25. Blue
26. Red
27. Purple
28. Yellow
29. Zebra striped
30. +4 AC
31. Moves at double speed
32. Never surprised
33. Extra eyes
34. Deadly poison (save versus poison)
35. Spits acid (d6 damage first turn, d3 damage second and third turn)
36. Causes fear
37. Gaze petrifies as medusa
38. Can always detect nearest source of treasure
39. Can always detect nearest source of treasure; always goes in the other direction
40. Can cast darkness, 15' radius three times per day. Always does so when 'stressed'
41. Likes women, hates men
42. Likes men, hates women
43. Can fly

Bored now. Add your own.

Creation by Question

I ran a first session of Diaspora today; it was entirely comprised of setting- and character generation, which went well - so far, the system looks interesting, and I can't wait to get it started and see how it works in practice.

What struck me while playing is that it's important for lots of questions to be asked during the game. That sounds like a banal observation, but it isn't: I'm not talking about the necessary sort of questions that players have to ask ("Where is the exit?" "What are the orcs carrying?" etc.) but questions which spur the questionee to think, and thereby create.

For instance, I was describing one of the worlds, in one of the systems we were creating, as being a water world, populated by Melnibonean-esque decadent epicureans. One of the players cut in, "Do they live on the surface in big floating cities, or under the water, or what?" And I was forced to think, "Well, where do they live?" And in answering the question more detail was added to the setting: creation by question in action.

There is a lot of power in this, and it applies not just during shared setting-creation type games like Diaspora: it applies in any kind of game - I'm reminded of a Yoon-Suin session I ran online in which one of the players asked whether hijras existed, and I had to think, "Well, do they?" The answer was yes, and another detail was added to the world. But it just as frequently happens during character generation too: "My character is about six feet, built like a brick-shit house, and he's carrying a glaive." "What does the glaive look like?" "Well....It's engraved with runic patterns." "What do they mean?" "Er...he doesn't know, it's a family heirloom and it's a mystery." And so on: questions have power.

I think this comes from the fact that, like using random generators, questions spur creativity through restricting the options. It is the same adage that I've used before: give a man a paper and pencil and say "write a story" and he'll take 10 times as long to come up with something than he would if you'd said "write a story about a murder", and it'll probably be 10 times less interesting. Likewise, saying to somebody "Come up with a world" is a thoroughly different proposition to saying to him: "What is the geography of your world like? Is there a desert? What kind of people live there? Are they warlike? Do they do drugs?" By restricting his creativity, you give it legs.

Two Themes are a Couple, Three are a Crowd

In the comments on my post on Shadowrun a few days ago, John wrote the following:

Cyberpunk is already a mash-up of hardboiled fiction and science fiction. Fantasy and hardboiled both combine well with science fiction on their own, but trying to combine fantasy with hardboiled without seeming frivolous or banal is a major undertaking in itself. Throw in s.f. as well and you've got a major oversaturation of themes going on.

This got me thinking: perhaps John is right, and mashing up two themes works fine, but adding a third causes the edifice to collapse under its own weight? Are there any famous or successful three-way, or four-way, genre mashups?

An experiment. Roll 3d10 and mashup the genres in this table. What do you get?

2, 7, 3: Noir, gothic horror, hard SF. There's a female vampire disguised on a space ship and gradually killing off the crew, and there's a whiskey-soaked detective on board who is in love with her and trying to solve the crime at the same time; the way he solves the mystery is through application of a clever scientific theory. Yeah, I can see how that wouldn't work - gothic horror and hard SF cancel each other out; if the vampire is really supernatural it isn't hard SF any more, but if there is a scientific solution then it isn't actually really gothic horror. Though both work well with noir.

10, 2, 3: Victoriana, noir, hard SF. A steampunk setting in which the details are meticulously laid out so that every element of the steam-powered world makes perfect sense. A whiskey-soaked detective attempts to solve a murder, but the solution revolves around understanding something specifically to do with steam engines. That kind of works, actually, though I'm taking a very loose definition of "hard SF". You'd have to really like steam engines, and really understand what they're capable of and what the implications would be.

10, 9, 6: Victoriana, literary fiction, western. A steampunk western in which nobody does anything except mope and ponder the imponderables while having ennui-inducing sex and taking mild intoxicants. Could sort of work if the writer made great play of the fact that steam, social conservatism and violence are sort of like the human condition. But would be boring and wasteful of its setting.

Maybe John is onto something.

Of All The Splatbooks I've Loved Before: The Complete Thief's Handbook

I'm conflicted about the 2nd edition "Completes". For every good idea, there was a bad one, and I think there was something damaging about the mentality of endless rules-based customization (as opposed to imagination-based customization) they promoted. Instead of just imagining that your thief was a burglar, you now had a mechanical justification for it, which actually functioned to restrict options by sending the message that in order to do something interesting with a character class there needed to be a TSR-sanctioned way to do so. Rather than extremely broad character classes functioning as a canvas on which a player could paint almost whatever he wanted, suddenly people were rushing to the breast of Mummy TSR to suckle on her dangling teats for their imaginative milk.

However, one thing that the earlier Completes had in common was promotion of random generation as a means of sub-creation. This was an unqualified good. And it gave me an abiding love for the random generator which I don't think will ever go away.

A good set of random generator tables is a game unto itself. It makes DM prep genuinely enjoyable, because it allows you to roll lots of dice and surprise yourself with the results. This is intrinsically fun, but it does something extra - it, in turn, sets off creative sparks in your own mind as you attempt to weld the results together into something that fits. This gives the campaign world detail and throws out, like confetti, hooks for the PCs to get caught on.

Let's illustrate this through reference to the The Complete Thief's Handbook's Random Thieves' Guild Generator. I will now use this generator to create a thieves' guild for the town of Swiftly, which I have just thought up (and stolen the name of from the title of a book I recently read). Swiftly is a river port, and it's a decent sized town - we'll say a population of 8,000. Here goes:

First, we find out how wealthy the town is. It's on a trade route, it has a port, and it's a major town, so it gets some bonuses for this. The final result of 19 - it's very wealthy. Naturally Swiftly is plush with cash from all the goods and money changing hands.

Next, we determine the attitude of the law. I have to know the dominant social alignment, but we'll call that neutral. I roll a 20, which means the law is corrupt. Obviously, the wealth in the town makes it easy to buy off judges. Or maybe the judges are just merchants - they're one and the same thing, and merchant courts run the legal system itself.

After that, we find out the relationships of the thieves to the merchants, and to other guilds. Again, we get some modifiers here because the law is corrupt, the society is rich, and so on. The result is a "standoff". The merchants are not in cahoots with the thieves' guild, but nor are they hostile. Their relationships with the assassins and bards' guilds are indifferent, but there is hostility with the beggars' guild. (I love, by the way, how it is taken for granted that these other guilds exist.) Beggars and thieves don't get along in Swiftly.

We now find out how many thieves there are in the town. The population is 8,000, and it is wealthy, and the law is corrupt, so the number is 2d10+3+10%. So that makes 15, rounded down. Some of these may not actually be in the guild itself - we'll find out shortly.

Now, the characteristics of the guild. I roll a 4, which indicates the leader is a guildmaster. A little disappointing, because if you get a 20 you get to roll on a special sub-table including results like "the guildmaster is a dragon". But you don't want to overdo things. We then turn to the nature of the rule, which is based on three axes: strong/weak, cruel/just, and despotic/populist. The leadership rolls reveal it to be weak, fairly cruel, and fairly despotic. A further roll, on another table, indicates that the membership is cohesive.

From this a picture emerges of a rather pathetic guildmaster who resorts to cruelty and despotism in an attempt to hold sway. The thieves in the guild remain cohesive, perhaps because life is good in Swiftly (it is so rich, and the law is so corrupt), and perhaps because none of them are particularly willing to challenge the guildmaster. They'd prefer to avoid being head of the organisation and thereby becoming targets themselves. They like the easy status quo - the guildmaster is not powerful enough to be anything more than a nuisance - and they are willing to let him be the fall guy if necessary.

The number of thieves in the guild is 75% of the population of thieves as a base rate, with -10% because leadership is weak, making it 65%. That's 9.75, rounded up to 10. The members are neutral to the 5 thieves who are not in the guild. The picture of a relatively lazy, laid-back guild solidifies. The thieves of Swiftly have it so easy, it isn't worth fighting - except, apparently, with beggars.

We now find out the levels of the thieves in the town. There are 2 of level 4, 1 of level 3, and 5 of level 2. The other 7 are 1st level. It makes sense for one of the 4th level thieves to be the guildmaster, with a the 3rd level guy/girl as his lieutenant. The remaining 4th level thief, and 4 of the 2nd levellers, would be independent - being of a certain level of competence, they don't need the guild and prefer to keep all their loot to themselves rather than pay guild fees. The 1st levellers are all good members - probably mostly youngsters.

And there you have it. The next steps would be to flesh out the names, personality and equipment of the higher-level thieves, think up a reason for the war with the beggars' guild, perhaps jot down some other NPCs - notably corrupt merchant/judges, high-up beggars, and so on - and there you have it: a finished thieves' guild. About 10 minutes' work, and something for the PCs to interact with should they ever end up in Swiftly.

Incontrovertible evidence that random generators are your friend.

Random Campaign Setting Major Races

Let's play a game. Take the 2nd edtion AD&D Monstrous Manual (or any bestiary of your choice), and randomly select 2d6 monsters from it using this.

For the Monstous Manual this is between 1 and 1,089 (the number of monsters in the book), or you could do it by page number if that's easier. 

If you get something unintelligent or of animal intelligence, imagine an intelligent version.

These selections are the dominant intelligent races of a campaign world. You now have to figure out how to build a setting around them.

I got 6:

Jackalwere, beaver, sirine, ankheg, wererat, satyr. I'll talk about a campaign world idea based on them tomorrow.

Sentient Doors

"NEEDS YOU," intoned the door abruptly, in a precise, hollow voice: "NEEDS YOU, BAA, BAA, BAA. OURUBUNDOS — "

The gathered Northmen dropped their spades. Many of them made religious signs with their fingers. Eyes round, they clutched their weapons, breathing through their open mouths.

"DOG MOON, DOG YEARS," moaned the door: "BAA, BAA, BAA."

And to each ritualistic syllable, Tomb made a suitable reply. Their dialogue lasted for some minutes before silence descended and he began again the process of moving his hands across the ancient script.

"GOLEBOG!" screamed the door.

A brief, intense flare of white light obscured the Dwarf. He staggered out of it, beating at his clothes. He chuckled. His hair reeked, his leggings smouldered. He blew on his fingers. "The door mechanism has become insane over the years," he said. "It — " Here, he said a word that no one knew " — me, but I misled it. Look."

...As Cromis entered the bunker, the door whispered malevolently to him, but it left him alone...

- M. John Harrison, The Pastel City.

Sentient doors in ancient dungeons often go mad, having long ago forgotten their original purpose, or failed to perform it for so long that they have become confused. Each time a group of PCs comes across a sentient door, randomly generate how it reacts by rolling a d12 and consulting the following table:

1. The door whispers vague threats about what lies ahead. This has a 10% chance of being accurate.
2. The door hisses "I'm behind you" after being passed through.
3. The door shuts itself 10 seconds after being opened, regardless of who or what is standing in its way. It causes d4 damage.
4. The door shouts incoherent gibberish if disturbed (i.e. touched).
5. The door announces that it is offended by the presence of intruders, and has to be begged and cajoled to open.
6. The door makes a very human weeping sound as the PCs approach, and begs them not to open it. There are no consequences if they do so.
7. The door is apparently friendly and offers information about who has opened it recently. 10% of the time the information given is accurate.
8. As above, but there is a 90% chance of the information being accurate. However, the door will also tell the next set of passers-by about the PCs.
9. The door makes a loud, horrible wailing sound when opened, and doesn't shut up.
10. The door can be opened, but the next time the PCs come this way, it will refuse to do so.
11. The door sucks magical energy. There is a 50% chance that each passing magic-user will forget a randomly-determined spell.
12. The door offers in a loud voice to answer three questions about the dungeon. Its answers are absolutely truthful about the state of play as the door understands it, i.e. 3000 years ago.

Sage/Archmage/Wizard's Book Case

Your players find a book case. They root through its contents and you need to make up some titles on the fly that may or may not come in useful. Here's a random table to generate author, subject, and format.

Random "Mr Jones" Mission Generator

It's an urban setting in a grim future, and your players are trying to rustle up some work. They ask around, get in touch with some old friends, and discover:

The idea being you roll a d8 four times and see what happens. Very rudimentary - this took about 2 minutes to create; in reality I'd probably make it a d20 or d30 table. Also, "Deliver" should obviously read "Deliver something to".

If I had more time I would create sub-tables to flesh out things a little more (deliver what?), but you get the idea. Make your own.

Dynamic/Nested Encounter Tables

Roger is correct that this (what he calls "dynamic encounter tables") would be a lot of work, but he's yet again proved himself to be an utter dynamo of ideas. I'd like to tweak it a bit and, instead of genre, create a specific set for each terrain type/monster type, so you would have, for instance, a table for Human encounter, hexes 1103, 1203, 1104, 1205:

Which is a table I literally just threw together in 5 minutes, so don't expect anything marvellous, but it serves to signify what I'd be aiming at. You'd just roll 3d10 and see what came up (in reality I'd make them d20 or d30 of course), re-rolling anything that didn't make sense. Thus, the results:

6, 8, 9: Vagrants searching for hohools (Hohools are a kind of monster).

2, 7, 7: Brigands worshipping a statue.

2, 2, 3: Brigands guarding rice.

What I like about such tables is that they demand that the DM (and players too) come up with some sort of narrative right from the start. Whey are the vagrants searching for hohools? What statue are the brigands worshipping? Why are brigands guarding rice, from what, and for who?

Pimp My Orc

Bored of green-skinned, vaguely man-like orcs? Reskin your orcs using the following tables:

The Orcs' faces are:

1. Crocodilian
2. Porcine
3. Lupine
4. Bovine
5. Feline
6. Simian.
7. Cervine
8. Insectoid
9. All-too-human
10. Beaked

Their skin is:

1. Feathered
2. Furry
3-5. Scaly
6-10. Smooth

They have (roll d3 times):

1. Long tails
2. Single horns like unicorns
3. Twin horns like rams
4. Useless flapping wings
5. Extra eyes
6. Cloven hoofs for feet
7. Male and female sex organs
8. Abnormally large heads
9. Very long necks
10. Tusks like wild boar
11. Very long noses
12. An especially foul stench
13. No spoken language
14. Legs which bend the 'wrong' way
15. Purple skin
16. No eyes but can somehow see anyway
17. Grasping feet like a monkey
18. Tattoos covering their bodies
19. Tongues which are too long and permamently hang out of their mouths
20. Horrible warts, boils and other growths all over their skin

Their favourite weapons are:

1. Axes
2. Swords
3. Spears
4. Polearms
5. Nets and tridents
6. Morning stars and maces

A Series of Unfortunate Events

Sometimes you find some great ideas by just traipsing through forums. Like this post by Pseudoephedrine:

Instead of numbering hexes with a four digit set, use X:Y where both X:Y are ranges from 1 to the maximum value of some die type (a d10 for a hundred hex map, a d20 for a 400 hex map, etc.). You draw up a list of generic events that represent an external force somehow influencing whatever normally resides in that hex.

Then, instead of predetermining the hex locales where these events will happen, you roll 2dwhatever with one determining the vertical coordinate and the other the horizontal coordinate whenever you feel like, with the event happening in that hex.

So, for example:

Event: A black dragon (HD7) swoops down to burn anything it finds - people, monsters, buildings and PCs.

You roll 2d10 and get 7 and 9, so in hex 7:9, a black dragon comes swooping down and attacks the village of Bumburg (having already determined prior to play that Bumburg is in that hex). If the PCs are in that hex, well, great. If not, well, they can always stumble across the effects later. Perhaps a month later in game, you roll again to see where the dragon swoops down this time. And so on.

I think this a very efficient and simple way of making a game world feel organic and evolutionary rather than static. Ideally, you would want your table of events to be a bit more detailed and linked to the geography of the hexmap, of course - so, to continue with the above example, you would have something like:

Event: A black dragon (HD7) swoops down to burn anything it finds - people, monsters, buildings and PCs. It's lair is d6 hexes to the [compass direction corresponding to second d6 roll where 1 = North]; roll again if the result makes no sense (e.g. it's in the sea).

And, of course, you (or at least, I) would want something more rigorous than just rolling such events whenever you feel like it. I'd probably draw up a table of 100 events for the campaign area, and assume a 10% chance per day of one of them happening. Instant organic random campaign happenings!

Magic Items Belong to Somebody

I was continuing with my plotting out of a grand Yoon-Suin hexmap this morning; slow going, but enjoyable. As I was randomly generating a treasure hoard the thought occurred to me: somebody would miss this Banded Mail +4 if they lost it. A magical banded mail, particularly one so powerfully enchanted, would not be something that you would leave lying around. It would likely be an important family heirloom, once owned by the family of a king or noble, passed down from generation to generation. Once discovered by an adventurer, there would be a reasonable chance that somebody who was in the know would recognise it and word would get back to the original owner, or their descendants, presuming they are still around. These original owners might offer to buy it back. They might decide to seek bloody vengeance on the "thief" who now owned it.

This is a thought that has never occurred to me in all my history playing D&D, but I like it. So, a rule:

"That's the old duke's banded mail!" rule

Whenever a magical weapon or armour is discovered, there is a 10% chance per bonus that it is a "known" item and the original owners, or (more likely) their descendants, are still in existence. The DM should pick a suitable candidate in the region for ownership. Whenever the PCs visit any settlement within 50 miles of the location of this original owner(s), there is a 1 in 3 chance per day that somebody in that settlement will recognise the magic item and report it to the owner, unless it is kept covered. 

On discovery, the DM should roll a d6 to determine the owner's reaction:

1 - Jealousy. The owner will attempt to regain the item however he can.
2 - Anger. The owner will attempt to regain the item and, preferably, punish the PC.
3-4 - Vengeance. The owner will attempt to kill the PC and, preferably, regain the item.
5 - Appeal to authority. The owner will attempt to bring the PC to justice in front of the local ruler as a "thief".
6 - Plea. The owner will attempt to contact the PC to buy the item.

Freshwater Octopuses of the Lapis River Valley

The Lapis River is a cold, glacial river network flowing down from the Mountains of the Moon all the way south to the God River in Lamarakh. It is fast running, totally pure, and often frozen in its upstream during winter. So it is a surprising place to find freshwater octopuses, but actually they flourish there, feeding off the many oysters, crayfish and water snails in its depths.

There are hundreds of species, of many colours. Some are edible, some are poisonous. Some have unusual, colour changing abilities. Some are social, others are solitary. The only thing they have in common is that they are all small - no bigger than a man's hand. In an encounter with freshwater octopuses, the DM should randomly generate their species using the following tables:

Table 1: Appearance

Roll a d10 to determine main colour, then a d6 to determine pattern, and then roll another d10 to determine secondary colour (roll again if the result is the same as the main colour).

Colour

1 - Blue
2 - Green
3 - Red
4 - Yellow
5 - Purple
6 - Black
7 - Brown
8 - Grey
9 - Orange
10 - White

Pattern

1 - Striped
2 - Solid
3 - Solid
4 - Solid
5 - Spotted
6 - Leopard-spotted

Table 2: Sociability

Roll a d6 to determine how social the species is, then roll again to determine the number encountered.

1 - Solitary or Pair (d2)
2 - Solitary or Pair (d2)
3 - Family (d4)
4 - Family (d4)
5 - Social (1d10)
6 - Flocking (3d6)

Table 3: Abilities

Roll 1d30 to determine abilities.

1-2 - Chameleon camouflage. Can change the colour of the skin to match surroundings. Opponents always surprised, -4 to hit.
3-4 - Minor toxin. On a successful hit, opponent must Save v. Poison or suffer weakness for d3 days (-2 to all rolls).
5-6 - Moderate toxin. On a successful hit, opponent must Save v. Poison or suffer weakness for d3 days (-2 to all rolls); a successful save reduces this to d3 hours.
7 - Major toxin. On a successful hit, opponent must Save v. Poison or be paralysed for d3 days.
8 - Deadly toxin. On a successful hit, opponent must Save v. Poison or die within d6 turns (can be magically healed during that time). A successful save results in weakness as per result 2.
9-10 - Feeds on magic. A successful hit on a magic-user causes him/her to forget a random spell.
11-12 - Psionic. Can perform a mind-blast which always hits for d6 damage; a Save v. Death defeats it.
13-16 - Electrical. Can electrify the water surrounding it like an electric eel. Anything within two yards takes d6 damage and must Save v. Death or be paralysed for d6 turns; other octopuses are immune.
17-20 - Ink. Can squirt ink 3 times per day. Acts like a Darkness, 15' Radius spell in the river.
21 - Friendly. Unaggressive and benign.
22 - Poisonous if eaten. Same effect as per result 8.
23-25 - Emits stench. This acts as a stinking cloud spell, to which other octopuses are immune.
26-28 - Emits alarm hormones which travel downstream and will be detected within 1 hour by 1) more octopuses of a random species; 2) giant crayfish; 3) river troll; 4) nereid; 5) freshwater sea hag; 6) merrow.
29 - Spits acid at land targets for d6 damage.
30 - Can phase as a phase spider.

Stats

Frequency: Rare
AC: 5
Hit Dice: 1/2*
Move: 150' (50') Sw
Attacks : 1 bite
Damage: 1d4
No. App: See above
Save As: F1
Morale: 6
Treasure: M (scattered around territory)
Intelligence: 2
XP: 6

On Steered Imagination and the Random Generator

As we know, restriction of options is usually a spur to creativity rather than a hindrance. The narrower the scope in which your imagination is allowed to run riot, perversely, the more productive it usually becomes (within reason). An illustration: Give a man a pen and paper and he might spend 6 hours just thinking of something to write about. Give him a pen and paper and say "Write me a story about a murder" and he'll have a finished piece in half the time it took for him to even think of an idea in the first scenario.

Random generators are such a great aid to creativity, I think, because they embody this fundamental truth. They steer imagination and make it more productive. The simplest illustration of this is the random encounter in D&D (much maligned by people who don't actually really think about their gaming). Without random encounters, traditional games become stale and stressful for the DM, who has to spend unproductive and boring hours trying to think up interesting scenarios from the aether to entertain his players and keep the game going. With random encounters, his creativity becomes focused: why are these goblins here, and where have they come from? Bang: Focus. Interest. Post hoc narrative. Story. If he knows his game world reasonably well, he has it made.

This is also why generating random results on a table is enjoyable in its own right, even taken outside of the context of a game. I can't be the only person who feels this way - a peculiar glee in having a big set of d30 tables and just generating results to find out what happens. What is this treasure hoard, what is its history, and who put it here? What is this group of giants doing in this area, what are their names, and what do they own? What spells does this spellbook contain, and who is its original owner? Your imagination is steered, and consequently becomes productive, and the endorphines begin to flow.

Of course, without the ultimate random generators - players - even generating random results becomes boring after a while. Random generators need a game, just as games need random generators. It's a yin-yang thing, or something.

Forge Some Monsters. You. Do it Now.

I've blogged about The Forge before. No, not that Forge. This is one which randomly generates fantasy personal, beast, spell and land names. The names it generates are resolutely High Fantasy, and can bring to mind the worst excesses of the DnD 4e bestiary writers (Phase Acid Slaughter Orc, etc.), but they can also be pretty evocative. Viz: Dusk Butterfly, Pebble Monster, Scream Crab, and Grin Monkey, which are the names I've just generated.

So, here's a blogging game that anyone can play. Go to The Forge. Click "BeastForge". Four beast names will be generated. If they're crap, do it again until you find some more to your liking. Names can also be changed slightly (e.g. Scream Crab = Screaming Crab; Grin Monkey = Grinning Monkey). Then stat the resulting monsters up in the DnD edition of your choice.

Here are mine:

Dusk Butterfly

Dusk Butterflies are, as the name suggests, butterflies which appear in the evenings in meadowy areas, just as the sun is dipping towards the horizon and before twilight descends. They come in various colours, pale blues and pinks and yellows, and flock in eerie silence in their hundreds. Dusk Butterflies are harmless but feed off magic; for every turn that a magic-user is surrounded by Dusk Butterflies there is a 10% chance per turn that he will forget a random memorised spell, a 5% chance that a random scroll will become useless or a wand lose all its charges, and a 1% change that a magical weapon will lose a +1. They can sense the presence of magic and will fly in its general direction.

Frequency: Rare
AC: 6
Hit Dice : 1 hp*
Move: 150' (50')
Attacks: None
No. App: 5d20
Save As: F1
Morale: N/A
Treasure: None
Intelligence: 0
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 6


Pebble Monster

On shingle beaches lurk nameless malicious spirits who embody a number of pebbles and form them into vaguely humanoid or quadrapedic shapes. They typically wait unseen in the shingle to ambush the unwary and appear to outsiders to have no discernable motiviation other than the thrill of murder. In fact, they worship the ocean as a God and attempt to "feed" it with the bodies of the dead.

Pebble monsters do not have a uniform appearance. Sometimes they appear small and dwarf-like in shape; at others they manifest themselves as resembling giant beasts; at others they are formless vorteces of whirling stone. They attack by thrashing themselves against their opponents in a haphazard fashion. Being comprised entirely of animated pebbles, they are immune to damage from non-blunt weapons.

Frequency: Very rare
AC: 4
HD: 4*
Move: 120' (40')
Attacks: Typically 2 "fists"
Damage: 1d8/1d8
No. App: 2d6
Save As: F2
Morale: 9
Treasure: M
Intelligence: 9
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 125


Screaming Crab

Screaming crabs are ordinary-looking purple-coloured crabs which roam beaches in loose colonies of several dozen. They spend their lives picking over dead fish and seabirds washed up on the shore, along with general flotsam and jetsam.

If they are approached by anything they deem to be dangerous - adventurers being an obvious choice - they will emit an extremely powerful high-pitched whine in its direction. This whining sound is so powerful it can temporarily deafen those hearing it; those who are exposed must Save vs. Death or be deafened for d3 days. A successful save means that deafening only lasts for d3 hours. Deafening can be healed by a cure serious wounds spell. (This ability requires at least 6 Screaming Crabs to be present, otherwise the scream is irritating but ineffectual.)

Frequency: Rare
AC: 7
HD: 1hp*
Move: 120' (40')
Attacks : none
No. App: 4d6
Save As: F1
Morale: 6
Treasure: None
Intelligence: 1
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 6


Grinning Monkey

This is a breed of simian which inhabits snowy bamboo forests high in the Mountains of the Moon. Their fur is white and their faces are red, and their usual facial expression is, as you might expect, a rictus grin. Their teeth are sharp and they have a taste for flesh; typically they hunt and kill other monkeys and small deer, but they are not averse to feeding on carrion of all kinds.

Grinning Monkeys are small and will not attack groups of armed humans in good health. But they can scent blood and will opportunistically attack weakened prey. If at least one member of an adventuring group in such forests has lost 50% or more of his/her hit points, they are 10% likely to attract a group of Grinning Monkeys per hour. The Monkeys usually attack from on high, pelting their prey large nuts (1d3 damage). They will only descend from the trees if they make a kill. They are easily scared off, but will return each hour to attack again until they lose 25% of their number.

Frequency: Rare
AC: 6
HD: 1+1
Move: 120' (40')
Climb: 120' (40')
Attacks: 1 bite/1 throw
Damage: 1d4/1d3
No. App: 2d12
Save As: F1
Morale: 6
Treasure: None
Intelligence: 6
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 15

But the Dogs, Well They're Only Dogs

Having just read this piece, in which a modern-day war-dog (a Belgian Malinois) plays a starring role, I got to thinking about dogs in RPGs. As any old schooler knows, dogs are indispensable to an adventurer - especially to magic-users. They give muscle, an extra set of eyes, an extra nose, and, if push comes to shove, meat. Forget hirelings. No 1st level character should ever leave home without a dog or three.

They're also historically accurate. Real-world D and D parties - for instance, bandeirantes and conquistadors - were constantly surrounded by dogs and pigs wherever they went. Dogs were used for hunting and fighting (the conquistadors used armoured mastiffs specially trained to disembowel their semi-naked native American adversaries), and pigs were slaughtered for food (it is believed that escapee pigs were one of the major disease spreaders in native populaces). It would be extremely unusual for a group of roguish adventurers in a fantasy world to venture out into the wilds without a pack of hounds.

I've always been fond of the AD&D 2nd Edition DMG's 'Horse Personality' table, which allowed you to randomly determine a set of traits for any given horse (from being a good jumper to being a notorious biter). So without further ado, here's the equivalent for a conquistador's best friend:

Dog Personality Table

A dog will have d2 traits, randomly determined from the following table (roll 1d12); if the dog is expensive (+10% cost), add +1 to the roll, and if it is particularly expensive (+25% cost), add +2 to the roll; corresponding negative penalties should be applied to the roll for cheap and particularly cheap dogs respectively.

-2: The dog is extremely bad tempered. It will attack anybody except for the owner who approaches within 5 feet.
-1: The dog has only three legs. It moves at half rate.
0: The dog is very bad tempered. There is a 25% chance it will attack anybody except for the owner who approaches within 5 feet.
1: The dog is a coward. Before a fight it has to check morale (10) or it will cower behind its owner.
2: The dog is stupid. It cannot be trained to do anything, though it will attack enemies of its owner and is generally docile otherwise.
3: The dog has an unfortunate body odour that doesn't seem to go away. The stench can be detected within 15 yards.
4: The dog is easily distracted. It will try to chase anything fast-moving that it sees.
5: The dog is a nipper. Anybody except the owner who tries to touch it will be bitten (roll for attack as normal; damage is 1 hp).
6: The dog has a strange taste for a certain type of food (player's choice). It will try, remorselessly, to eat this food if it ever comes across it.
7: The dog is greedy. It will eat uncontrollably at any chance it gets, and if it kills an opponent will stop to feed rather than continue the fight.
8: The dog is very intelligent. It can pick up new tricks very easily (+3 bonus to Animal Training proficiency checks).
9: The dog is very tough (maximum hit points).
10: The dog is very fast (+2 to initiative rolls).
11: The dog seems to be a very good judge of character (will growl at any evil human it comes across).
12: The dog is extremely brave and loyal (always passes morale checks).
13: The dog has animal perception (can see invisible things on a 25% chance).
14: The dog is immensely powerful (+4 damage)

Why Everyone Should Have 3d6 For Stats

Following on from discussions here and here, I've been thinking about stats. Specifically: what is the relationship between stats and social status in a quasi-medieval society? Are all peasants cursed by their poor upbringing to a lifetime of dimwittedness and ill-health? Do all kings make the best use of the opportunities available to them and become highly educated and physically perfect? Does genetic inheritance limit ones horizons and capacity for social advancement?

I've written before about epistemic arrogance, and one of my pet peeves in life is the tendency towards know-it-all-ism on the part of academics, journalists and political commentators. (To hear talking heads rambling on about the future of the global economy - as if something that complicated is within the grasp of one mind to understand.) In fact, human society is grotesquely, exhuberantly, vastly, incomprehensibly complex. So much so that great thinkers from Weber to Marx to Luhmann have devoted their entire lives to attempting to explain how it works, and failed. The more you burrow into it the vaster it appears, and it grows, tardis-like, in complexity with each layer of its onion that you peel. The idea that one could make statements about "serfs" and "labourers" and "artisans" and "merchants" (or whatever social strata you care to name) as single discrete units with defined characteristics, other than those that are very simple and banal (e.g. labourers perform labour, merchants sell things) is hopelessly misguided.

What rolling 3d6 for stats for everybody (arranging to taste) in a given society does, is reflect great complexity in its beautiful simplicity. It denies that we can map social status to ability in any coherent way, and instead allows us to represent the fact that we can never really predict human ability by social class, beyond what we know by common sense (labourers perform labour and will therefore likely be strong, etc.). We can't expect that kings, guildmasters, priests and marshalls will have higher-than-average stats across the board than merchants, fishermen and soldiers.

What 3d6-for-stats also does is allows the DM to riff. The party encounters an innkeeper; the DM rolls 3d6 for all his stats. One of the scores is 16; the DM has to put it somewhere and decides to put it in Intelligence. So the next questions are: Why is this bar-room genius an innkeeper, and is there more to him than meets the eye? What is his role in the village? And why isn't he doing something else? Next they come across a guildmaster who ends up with a host of crap scores, including an Intelligence of 8 and a Charisma of 5. How come this guy came to the position he is in; is he the tool of powers behind the scene, or is it due to nepotism?

There is great creative power in random generation, particularly random number generation, that is not adequately tapped into by players of D&D (and I include myself in this). Embrace randomness, my children, and discover the secret of everlasting life.

Law and Monsters

I've been thinking this past week about trying to construct a post about conservatist legal theorists like Anthony Kronman and Michael Oakeshott and how their writings pertain to the Old School Renaissance, especially in regard to Oakeshott's thoughts on Rationalism. Haven't quite had time yet. In lieu of all that intellectual wankery, some forged monsters:

Switch Ghoul

Not true ghouls but the product of a warped magical experiment, a switch ghoul consists of two corpses stitched together, back to back, so that there is no front and back, just two fronts. In battle, if one 'side' is killed or wounded, the entire body can simply switch around and continue fighting; both sides are treated as separate entities for the purposes of damage.

AC: 6
HD: 2* (x2)
Move: 90' (30')
Attacks: 2 claws, 1 bite
Damage: 1d3/1d3/1d6
No. App: 2d8
Save As: F2
Morale: 9
Treasure: B
Intelligence: 3
Alignment: Chaotic
XP: 25


Lead Monkey

A golem made entirely out of lead fashioned into the shape of a monkey, this creature is so heavy and dense that the damage it causes with its swinging fists is far greater than its size would suggest. Its movements are of immense power and weighty strength. Three times per day it can breathe poisonous gas, the equivalent of a cloudkill spell, to which it is itself immune.

Inside each Lead Monkey is an alchemical core of gold which gives the creature its power.

AC: 0
HD: 8**
Move: 120' (40')
Attacks: 2 claws, 1 bite
Damage: 1d10/1d10/1d10
No. App: 1d12
Save As: F6
Morale: 12
Treasure: None (though each contains a gold core worth 500 gps)
Intelligence: 0
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 1750


Bubble Wraith

Bubble wraiths are undead spirits of humanoids who have lost their lives in rapids, whirlpools or rivers. On certain occasions when the flow of water is strong, they gain a semi-coalescent form from the mist and spray. They are not evil, and their thoughts are characterised by despair and loneliness. Sometimes they will ask bypassers to give them information, or fulfill a quest, in return for knowledge of goings-on throughout the waterways they inhabit.

HD: 4*
Move: Swim 150' (50')
Attacks: 2 fist
Damage: 1d6/1d6, wight level drain
No. App: 1
Save As: F4
Morale: 8
Treasure: None
Intelligence: 9
Alignment: Neutral
XP: 125

Chaos Patrons Revisited

Critical Hits may not be my scene, but they do occasionally have interesting articles. Today, for example, I find this, by somebody called Scott, which basically just discusses ways of making it interesting when a PC gets killed.

I've never seen anyone get genuinely upset and hissy about a character dying in real life, except once when a member of a group lost his genuinely-rolled-up paladin character to an illithid and literally gave up role playing games forever thereafter (at least the last I heard). But I assume it happens all the time, because you read about it a lot on the internet. (It may just be one of those internet things, though - I sometimes suspect that there is an entire coterie of conspirators who spend their entire time on internet forums perpetuating myths, truisms and recieved wisdom like "people get really upset about their characters dying" and "random encounters are not fun" and "save-or-die is really unfair", without ever actually playing in games where characters die, random encounters happen, and save-or-die occurs.)

I also don't understand this idea that Scott talks about that death in an RPG is, for the player, "their invested time, work and creation disappear before them with a single roll of the dice" - because dead characters always add something to a campaign. It might be something as simple as his comrades going off to wreak terrible revenge on the monster that did it, or as complicated as family members showing up and dispensing quests.

However, I do like the concepts he presents for toying with death and resurrection, and it gives me the chance to resurrect my old post about Chaos Patrons (which was itself a riff on something from the roguelike game Zangband - this is where you realise that this blog is essentially a pack of stolen cards resting precariously on a borrowed table; well fuck you, I never claimed to be original!).

Here's a rejigging of that old saw.

Chaos Patrons

The layers of the Abyss are infinite, and so are its Powers. Endless multitudes of dark gods throng its depths, scheming of ways to attract more mortal followers and thus gather power. Every so often one of them finds a way to dominate some foolish individual on the prime material plane, usually through striking some kind of Faustian bargain. These chaos patrons are capricious and flighty, however, and they are just as likely to curse or bless their unfortunate worshipers.

A player may come to be adopted by a Chaos Patron in three ways:

1. He can choose for his character to follow a chaos patron at character creation.
2. He can decide to follow one during the course of the game should the opportunity arise. (The DM should come up with a suitably painful and tortuous ritual for a PC who wishes to take up the worship of a chaos god.)
3. He can choose to strike a faustian bargain with a chaos god at death, and be resurrected in return for eternal servitude.

The only requirement for a PC who wishes to worship a chaos god is that he be willing, and that he be Chaotic Evil or Chaotic Neutral in alignment (or willing to shift his existing alignment to either of those positions).

There are infinite chaos gods, and the DM and player are encouraged to be as creative as they like when coming up with their patron. Alternatively, they can roll 1d20 and consult the following table of example gods:

1. Slortar the Old
2. Mabelode the Faceless
3. Chardros the Reaper
4. Hionhurn the Executioner
5. Xiombarg the Sword Queen
6. Pyaray the Tentacled Whisperer of Impossible Secrets
7. Balaan the Grim
8. Arioch, Duke of Hell
9. Eequor, Blue Lady of Dismay
10. Narjhan, Lord of Beggars
11. Balo the Jester
12. Khorne the Blood God
13. Slaanesh, God of Pleasure
14. Nurgle, the Rotting God
15. Tzeentch, the Lord of Change
16. Djobidjoba, the King of Grubs
17. Azathoth, the Devil's Bannerman
18. Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies
19. Dusty Miller, the Mad Baker
20. Bindapaparabba, Mistress of Waterlilies

Effects of worshiping a chaos patron:

A character with a chaos patron who advances in level is given a boon or a curse at random. This either takes effect at the moment of advancement, or at the first combat after advancement, or at another time defined in the text. When the character levels up, roll 1d30 and consult the following table:

Boons and Curses

1. "Thou needst a new form, mortal!" - The character is Polymorphed into a randomly determined race without chance of saving throw (1-2: Human, 3-4: Gnome, 5-6: Dwarf, 7-8: Elf, 9-10: Halfling; roll again if the character is already of that race).
2. "Well done, mortal! Lead on!" - The character is awarded a 10% experience point bonus.
3. "Thou didst not deserve that, slave!" - The character loses 10% of his experience and is relegated to the previous level.
4. "Use my gift wisely!" - A randomly determined magical item is created on the floor beside the character.
5. "Thy deed hath earned thee a worthy blade!" - A randomly determined magical weapon is created on the floor beside the character.
6. "Thy deed hath earned thee a worthy reward!" - 1d3 randomly determined magical items are created on the floor beside the character.
7. "Behold, mortal, how generously I reward thy loyalty!" - The character is granted a limited wish.
8. "Thou art grown arrogant, mortal!" - The character loses 33% of his experience.
9. "My pets, destroy the arrogant mortal!" - 2-6 randomly determined tanar'ri (with HD equal to the character's level) are created next to the character at the beginning of his next combat.
10. "Thou needst worthier opponents!" - 1d100 dretches appear next to the character at the beginning of his next combat.
11. "Death and destruction, this pleases me!" - An earthquake occurs, centered on the character the next time he kills an opponent.
12. "Stay, mortal, and let me mold thee!" - +1 to prime requisite.
13. "I grow tired of thee, mortal!" - -1 to prime requisite.
14. "Thou needst a lesson in humility, mortal!" -1 to all stats.
15. "Receive this modest gift from me!" - +1 to all stats.
16. "Rise, my servant!" - The next time the character is reduced to 10% of his hit point total, all his hit points are immediately restored.
17. "Suffer, pathetic fool!" - A ball of chaos, 12' in radius, blast the character and anyone within its range for the character's level x4 in damage at the beginning of his next combat.
18. "Thou reliest too much on thy weapon!" - Has the same effect of a scroll of curse weapon.
19. "Thou reliest too much on thy equipment!" - Has the same effect of a scroll of curse armour.
20. "Now thou shalt pay for annoying me!" - All the effects of items 17, 14 and 10.
21. "Die, mortal!" - The character immediately takes level x4 in damage.
22. "Let me relieve thee of thine oppressors!" - Immediate Power Word: Kill on the character's opponents as soon as the next combat begins.
23. "Let me relieve thee of thine oppressors!" - Immediate banishment of the next group of undead or daemonic monsters which confront the character.
24. "Thou shalt not die yet, mortal!" - All monsters threatening the character are immediately hit for the character's level x4 in damage as soon as the next combat begins.
25. The patron ignores the character.
26. "Let me reward thee with an undead servant!" The character gains a randomly determined undead servant, of any kind with HD equal to or less than his level.
27. "Let me reward thee with a demonic servant!" The character gains a randomly determined tanar'ri servant, of any kind with HD equal to or less than his level.
28. "Let me reward thee with a servant!" The character gains a randomly determined monstrous servant, of any kind with HD equal to or less than his level.
29. "Let me reward thee with a henchman!" The character gains a henchman of his own level (1-2 Fighter, 3-4 Mage, 5-6 Cleric; all henchmen are Chaotic Evil in alignment).
30. "Mortal, bore me no longer!" The chaos patron abandons the character.

In addition, a follower of a chaos patron gains a random mutation at each level of advancement.

1. You are superhumanly strong (+4 STR)
2. You are puny (-4 STR)
3. Your brain is a living computer (+4 INT/WIS)
4. You are moronic (-4 INT/WIS)
5. You are very resilient (+4 CON)
6. You are extremely fat (+2 CON, -20' speed)
7. You are albino (-4 CON)
8. Your flesh is rotting (-2 CON, -1 CHR)
9. Your voice is a silly squeak (-4 CHR)
10. Your face is featureless (-1 CHR)
11. Your appearance is masked with illusion (overrides your current CHR and provides a new value ranging from 3 to 18)
12. You have an extra pair of eyes (detect doors/traps, 1 in 2 times)
13. You are resistant to magic (+4 bonus to save vs. magic)
14. You make a lot of strange noises (never surprise opponents)
15. You have remarkable infravision (+120' infravision)
16. You have an extra pair of legs (+30' movement)
17. Your legs are short stubs (-30' movement)
18. Electricity is running through your veins (grants an electricity aura, doing 2d6 electricity damage to any monster that hits you)
19. Your body is enveloped in flames (grants a fire aura, doing 2d6 fire damage to any monster that hits you; also gives permanent light (radius 10'))
20. Your skin is covered with warts (-2 CHR, +1 bonus to AC)
21. Your skin has turned into scales (-1 CHR, +3 bonus to AC)
22. Your skin is made of steel (-1 DEX, +5 bonus to AC)
23. You have wings (fly 150')
24. You are regenerating (regeneration, 1hp/turn)
25. You are telepathic (telepathy)
26. Your body is very limber (+3 DEX)
27. Your joints ache constantly (-3 DEX)
28. You are protected from the ravages of time (undying)
29. You are susceptible to the ravages of the elements (you take double damage from elemental attacks)
30. Your movements are precise and forceful (halfling stealth bonuses, free action)