d100 - A Juxtaposition of Jellyfish

Here is a fun one! A fellow Referee is running an “Ocean Themed” OD&D Campaign and requested some assistance with generating interesting Jellyfish for the Adventurers to encounter. When I heard that there was a D&D game themed around exploring the Ocean, the first thought that came to my mind was this old meme:

My first Random Encounter with a Jellyfish was pretty memorable: My father was stung quite severely by one at a beach when I was very young and required medical assistance from a Lifeguard, so I was always oddly angry with them, despite how compelling and beautiful they can appear to be.

Much like my Remarkable Birds or Fantastical Fishes, this seemed like a fun opportunity for more of a “Generator” approach. I’m not sure the math works out to be quite 12 million, but this should be a good starting point at least! 😊

I like to include a handy dandy “One Click” Generator for these types of tables:

d100 - Assorted Alchemical Gimcrack & Enchanted Ephemera

Here are a hundred Minor Magical Wonders that didn’t quite fit nicely into lists of their own. The intention was to provide some ideas for stocking the shelves in your typical “Magic Shop” or some trinkets to represent an Itinerant Alchemist or Medicine Show's Wares. Most of these are intended to be single-use and not too terribly expensive. They fall under the framing of permitting the Player Characters to spend some of their hard-earned money in order to potentially improve their chances of success in an Adventure. As always, most are very specific Tools for Problems that are undefined, so it is often up to the reader to imagine situations where they might be found to be extremely helpful to have on hand.

As I rounded it out, I began to notice that many of these items might serve as a substitute for systems that invoke Cantrips to perform minor magical deeds, or some could even stand-in for those neglected “utility” spells that often go unprepared. If you decide that these aren’t too dreadfully dear in price, they might even help pad out a party’s arsenal to make a Magic User feel more Magical at those lower levels. Prices, Availability, and Reliability can always be seasoned to table taste.

d100 - How Do Those Wizards Know Each Other?

Recently when re-watching The Last Unicorn for the umpteenth time, I noticed something interesting in a scene I know I had seen so many times before:

In King Haggard’s Court, when Schmendrick seeks the role of King Haggard’s Royal Magician, Mabruk is summoned and seems to already *know of* Schmendrick, greeting him with a “My Dear Boy!” and everything. It started me thinking about the implications of a Setting where each and every practitioner of the Arcane Arts knew each other in some way.

So here are a hundred potential ideas for those Magical Meetings or serendipitous situations where Sorcerous Paths may have crossed prior. There are obvious interactions one could exploit with the Mentor/Apprentice Relationships, but some of these get a little more specific. Seems like it might work a little better in those Worlds where Magic is a bit more Wonderous and Rare, but the opportunity for those kinds of interesting NPC and PC interactions seems just far too tempting not to try out once in a while.

d100 - Where Does That Lamp Oil Come From?

Sometimes, I like to confront a few of the curious questions that occasionally come up in various Settings. This time I decided to tackle that ubiquitous Lamp Oil, filling up all those Flasks flung over the years or reliably illuminating the way via Lanterns. Where does it come from? Who makes the stuff? Why is it so ubiquitous? This table contains a hundred less-conventional notions on how it’s derived to make a given Game World a little more interesting.

d100 - Magical Masks

Earlier today I was tagged in by Eldritch Fields for a blog bandwagon concerning Masks, so I decided to whip up a quick d100 Table with some ideas for Magic Items that fit that theme. These sorts of Wearable Wonders are rather rare in my games, so hopefully now that I’ve ruminated on them for a bit that will change!

I hereby tag in Cascade Fault to make a Mask and keep them coming!

d100 - Magic Bracers & Bracelets

Here we have another hundred Magical Items, this time focusing on those Bracers and Bracelets that might be masquerading among the Jewelry in a hard-earned Hoard. My hope is that you find something interesting to adorn those Characters wrists with a little more Wonder!

The Magical Item Generator has also been updated with these entries.

Variegated Vocabularies for Limited Languages

R

ecently I was seized with the idea that what if some of the “Languages” the Players gain access to in these games had a more Limited Vocabulary of Words than a full-fledged tongue. The “Common” Language is often characterized as a type of Trade Talk after all, so might not be as adept at communicating certain concepts without a bit of creativity. This led me down a rabbit hole of constructing “Vocabularies” for some of these more Limited Languages.

In this document, you will find Ten Vocabularies, each featuring one hundred Words. The Common Tongue is present (and may also be useful for things like “Dungeon Graffiti”) and once I had finished this, I immediately began thinking of what other types of communication might “benefit” from this kind of terser treatment.

Speak with the Dead is often maligned as a “Murder Mystery” Shortcut, so perhaps using this rather restrictive Vocabulary might help make it more puzzling. The words here could be used either by the respondent, or by the Players themselves to construct their queries.

It’s often said that Spells like Speak with Plants and Speak with Animals might only provide a kind of curtailed conversation: Seeing as how these organisms may perceive the world much differently than us. I’ve included two lists (one for each) to help invoke this sensation for those kinds of contacts.

Many games have a “Thieves Cant” or coded means of communication shared among ne-er do-wells. I found it really fun to try and focus on what they would be able to speak with each other about using this method.

Though often maligned, I personally adore Alignment Languages, and I think I like them even more when they’re limited by the lists I’ve made for each (one for Lawful, one for Chaotic, and one for Neutral.) Once more it might prove challenging to discuss granular topics with them, but I think this turns them into a bit of a mini-game or puzzle to solve sometimes.

Another tricky thing to tackle sometimes are those Spells that allow a Cleric to Commune with their Deities, Contact other Planes, or perform Divinations/Prophesies. It’s usually best to keep these somewhat cryptic sometimes, so the Vocabulary I put together tries to emphasize that somewhat.

Rounding out these, the final Vocabulary can be used in conjunction with Psionics or Telepathic Communication. While Psionics might not show up in every setting, there’s still plenty of Sentient Swords that might communicate with this method, or Magical Items and Spells that allow Minds to Speak directly to each other, even if it is sometimes stilted.

I will have to see how these end up working out In Play, but my gut feeling is that I probably wouldn’t want to use them for every conversation. More as the occasional brain-teaser or quandary. Perhaps the Speaker isn’t very fluent, a text is fragmented or fractured in some way, or the mysteriously pulsing Gemstone only murmurs the occasional word into the minds of those who approach it.

But due to the constraints, I wanted them to encourage some creativity: I view these Languages as relying on a lot of combinations and compounds: Trees have no word for Lightning, so instead they might call it “Sky FIRE.” Another inspiration was Kennings: There’s no word in Common for River, because everyone just says “Boat Road” and so forth. It can be surprising just how much this opens up the Lists in interesting ways, and finding those ways to “work around” their seemingly restrictive nature would be part of the fun for me.