Here’s a quick companion to my more rustic and less “up-market” prior Carousing Consequences & Complications Table, with this one focusing a little more on the slightly more stuffy and formal occasions the Player Characters may find themselves invited to or even reuqired to attend. Potentially useful in the later Domain Tiers as well, alongside some of my recent tables for Stronghold Benefits and Castle Hassles.
When Telegraphing or Foreshadowing Encounters, sometimes other senses can be employed. Thinking about this led to another fun Table that had my imagination working overtime! I tried not to consult my prior Three Hundred Smells Table for this one, but I’m quite certain there might be a bit of overlap here and potentially with my Spoor & Sign or Tracks & Traces by Type Table as well.
Naturally, since our musty Monster Manuals don’t come in spectacular “Scratch & Sniff” these are all fanciful speculation and conjecture. I suppose that’s a good thing too, as I’m not sure I’d really like to experience a Troglodyte’s signature Stench ability!
Deity Disfavor is a Class Feature that doesn’t receive a ton of attention. One can infer a few potential concrete triggers for this from the Class Description (ignoring the Prohibition Sharp/Stabbing Weapons, failing to carry a Holy Symbol...those Poor Clerics that begin Play with only 30 gold pieces!) but much of it falls to Referee interpretation on adherence to the tenants of Alignment and the Religion. Some of my Prior Tables attempt to make this a little more transparent (such as my Hundred Holy Taboos) and less of a “Gotcha!” to be sprung on the Player out of the blue, but what should happen if a Cleric falls from those good graces?
Inspired by a conversation with another Referee, I decided to put together a d100 Table of potential Penances or Acts of Contrition that might serve as some ideas for these situations. Later presentations tend to handle this with the casting of a specific Divine Spell (such as Atonement) but that does strike me as a little perfunctory. I suppose if you aren’t capable of casting it on yourself, that could lead to a little leg work.
The table is a bit of a mixture: I wanted to try and avoid things that were too Restrictive or could potentially impact Play in a severely negative way (such as a “Vow of Silence” impairing communication, etc.) but some of those surely snuck in. I also wanted to try and avoid things that were just easily elided through a Downtime Activity if at all possible. I think I was a little less successful in that goal, but that would still be up to the individual Referee. I believe that some of these entries might be more useful for fleshing out a particular Faith when portraying other members: These could be used by a Referee in Play by attaching them to another Penitent in a Player Character’s Faith, in order to telegraph those Consequences of straying out of that Favor. I should definitely try to remember add this to my Deity Generator when I get the chance!
Content Warning for a soupçon of Self-Harm/Mortification of the Flesh. Feel free to season this to Table Tastes and Player Preferences.
Many of my Tables seem to revolve around Plants in some way, but I noticed that I didn’t have one devoted specifically to the potential Magical Effects of some of the Fruits or Berries of these. Since these are usually “Single-Use” Items they can definitely be an interesting Resource to plant in some of those Wildernesses (and maybe even some more atypical Dungeons!) As with most of these Tables, I often like to include Properties that might serve as specific Solutions for hereto Unknown Problems/Challenges. It’s awfully fun to see what Creative Applications the Players might come up with, but as always, feel free to season these to taste for your table.
I needed quite a bit of space in the entries for the effects, but should a Name be needed, I can see these being quite useful with my Magical Plant & Herb Generator, as well as my Fantasy Tree Generator. At some point in the future, I can even see these effects being combined with entries from other, related Tables in one of my Perchance Generators to cut down on the need to toss and tabulate those d10s so much.
Fruit with Magical Properties like this has a lot of folkloric resonance to me, but unfortunately, I couldn’t wait until another Fairy Tale Friday to publish this one!
As Promised, here is a Random Table of events to complement the one I completed Prior for Stronghold Struggles & Castle Hassles. Setting up a Stronghold should have some Windfalls associated with it after all, and I enjoy how some of these entries almost read like “Headlines.” In addition to serving as a Place to safeguard/store those hard-earned Treasures, by Default in my games, they also tend interface well with the Six “Rs” of Downtime:
But it’s always nice to have a blend of positive results to compliment any negatives, otherwise Players can quickly grow discouraged having invested so much in something that only seems to bring sorrow or inconvenience. Rolling on either one at Intervals might inject something interesting into the otherwise hum-drum day-over-day Duties. I tend to prefer to handle this on a Seasonal Basis, and in fact, my initial tinkerings had this presented as a more “Seasonal” affair (with Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter Tables.) Perhaps I might revisit this one and its counterpart for that kind of arrangement at some point in the future, but with two hundred entries between them, I suppose this could potentially handle about half century of Domain Management! For even more items of potential interest/overlap there is also my Haven Happenstances table.
Over on bluesky the peerless Prismatic Wasteland posted some suggestionsfor Blog Content Ideas , and this one immediately intrigued me. There are just so few Resources for the Domain Tier out there after all.
Lamentably, Domain Play does seems a bit rarer these days. It relies so heavily on the Preponderance of Prior Play generated from consistent, sustained Campaigns, that often we don’t really get a chance to see much of it with Contemporary Play Culture. But still, it does serve as a lofty aspiration, and if you’re using B/X or a similar presentation, don’t forget that the Fighter and Halfling Classes each possess a super secret Special Ability that lets them engage with Strongholds at any level, you can always get a taste of this in the lower levels that way!
Some of these might require a little tailoring to taste, but even for those Dungeon/Wilderness Tier games, I can see a few that might just be suitable for hiring a band of Lower-Level Adventurers to investigate or deal with while the Lord has more important things to attend to.
Whilst working on this one, I did dust off another older Table that I’ll now need to finally finish. I feel that having a corresponding “Bastion Boons” Table for Happy Happenstances to counterbalance the Misfortunes associated with these Strongholds might just be in order!
Occasionally, the Player Characters might come into possession of something infused with Mighty Magic, but also quite Cursed, Harmful, or Inconvenient in some way. They might then decide to try and figure out a way to Destroy or rid themselves of it. Here’s a list of some ideas for how to handle this situation, many involving some legwork on their part. I tried to avoid the “Cast it into a Forebodingly Named Volcano” trope, figuring that everyone was fairly aware of or perhaps a bit bored with that timeworm method.
There may be a bit of overlap between this Table and some of my others and I suppose one could even string together quite a Journey around gathering information concerning what needs to be done, and then discrete steps to insure its success (qq.v Methods for Magical Item Identification, Rumored Cures for Curses/Energy Drain, or even Whimsical Wants for Fickle Fey.)