d100 Table - This Secret Door Opens

It’s a relatively common conundrum: You’ve placed your concealed or secret doors in a lovingly designed dungeon but may have not bothered to give much thought to how they’re opened/operated other than “oh there must be a lever/pressure plate/button somewhere.”

I’ve created this table to help provide some inspiration. It might also be useful for methods of disabling tricky traps or burnishing an evening with minor puzzle elements as well:

As a caveat: Clues are completely crucial when sprinkling in secrets, mysteries, and puzzles. I’ve underlined items that could be expanded through virtuosic descriptions to help draw in players attention to certain features, but feel free to incorporate another nudge or so. If they must open the door by kissing the carving of a crone (#47), it stands to reason that perhaps the lady’s lips are worn or stained, etc. This underlining typically indicates that these should be incorporated somehow into dressing/room descriptions as the players interrogate the fiction and should only adjust the character of a room in a minor way. If it flatly doesn’t fit with character of the room contents, then it might be simpler to choose another or adjust it slightly.

Some puzzles require pieces. For these, I’ve applied bolding. If the players don’t have these, or a means of acquiring them, then this could serve as a “hard stop” in play which isn’t ideal. They can always come back at a future point in time with the proper component, or as above, you can always adjust or incorporate additional necessary ingredients in nearby dungeon dressings if it’s frustrating any fun. Not all secret doors have to opened, and fully exploring a deviously drawn dungeon often triggers other in-game resource/real-life dependent limitations or exasperation (this isn’t Myst after all and pixel-bitching is about as un-fun as you can get for most).

Feel free to flex your imagination on how things are “actually working” with lovably “off-screen” byzantine mechanisms or gonzo Rube-Goldberg contraptions. Inexplicable magics from mad mages are another common scapegoat. Most of the time this is largely less important to the players than simply bypassing a mercifully brief obstacle. I also like to muse on how these doors might see use by other dungeon denizens, but I don’t get too caught up on it. Like many, I prefer the more Mythic Underworld approach which is blessedly less logical: The monsters play by their own rules down here. But naturally, a canny party, silently tracking or carefully observing the inhabitants should be rewarded with revelations on how some of these triggers work.

Let me know if you find this useful or how an entry works out if it makes its way into one of your dungeons!

d100 Table - Dungeon Noises & Sounds

Here’s another d100 table to provide a little environmental dungeon dressing and furbelow. One often finds themselves fixating on the visual elements in descriptions, but occasionally engaging some of the other senses (see: d100 Table - Three Hundred Smells & Scents by Type) can make for an exciting change of pace. I wanted to whip up a handy table to make this process more inspiring and less repetitive, inspired by the old AD&D DMG.

How do you use sounds/noises in your games?

Safari Card Monster Manual

I was reminded today about the existence of Safari Cards. Here’s the commercial from the early 80s that some of you may remember:

As a child, I positively adored these things. I obsessively read, filed, and re-filed them. I think some of the first mail I received addressed to “me” alone were little packets containing these cards (though I have no idea how my parents were suckered into subscribing to them, probably under the laudable auspices of the cards being “educational.”)

I remember convincing a teacher to let me do my “book reports” on animals that she would draw randomly from a pile (I think I still have one of these somewhere on the terrific Jackson’s Horned Chameleon). I’d get to write down the name, and she’d keep the card while I scampered off to the school library and immersed myself in the reference sections. It was always fun “checking my work” versus the card.

So, the information presentation on these was actually pretty interesting and could have some application for rendering Monster/Encounter information in a compact format. Let’s take a look at the front and back of a card (these were 4¾ by 5 inches):

While the front is dominated by the photograph of the animal in question (prime real estate and size for a monster illustration you could show to the players), the top bar is usefully dense. You have the creature name above a series of icons. I believe these were used for filing/organizing the cards within their storage containers (there were dividers), I think they map to Class/Order/Family, but we could just as easily have a set of icons for Monster Type: Undead/Aberration/Dragonkind, or other types of Monster classification icons (maybe solitary/group, treasure type?, etc). Next is a nifty line illustration of the type of terrain it’s typically found in (especially relevant for Overland Encounters, but a “Dungeon” terrain could exist) which was also used for organizing the cards, and a map with the geographic region. This format seems pretty pilferable (insert your fantasy world hex-map over the Mercator projection, with hexes highlighted). I believe the color of the top bar also was different depending on the climate the animal preferred.

On the back, we have two columns of information (monster fluff goes here, ecology, etc), and a lovely little table at the bottom with some additional interesting information (this might have varied a bit from critter to critter). I think a stat-block could easily fit in here, or maybe keep some of this box (the measurements are neat, and gestation information is woefully under-represented, other “fun facts” could also be presented here, I am a sucker for having any collective nouns/terms of venery at the ready for instance) and reduce the amount of text in the information/ecology section to add another few rows for simple, broadly compatible stats.

The card format could be useful for quickly building a “deck” for random encounters within a region/terrain/climate to have the monster statistics and relevant information handy, not necessarily as a generator (frequency isn’t really represented here), but as reference with all the necessary information in one place and a quick way to locate/re-file the monsters as necessary.

Just another idle idea. Perhaps I might eventually find the time to create some templates or example cards for this.

Mountain Range Generator Idea

I’ve been thinking about Mountain Ranges a bit lately in preparation for some supplemental tools/tables for generating some names and flavor for the Mountain Hexes. In my musings, I hit upon the idea to procedurally generate a primitive visual profile using area charts.

Here’s a rough idea for a Mountain Range generator (using Google Sheets for web-based compatibility, sample output and link below).

Mountain Range Generator (this is a link that creates a copy to play with)

It could definitely benefit from a little more variety for the naming (I’ve only included some short tables as a proof of concept here) and some tinkering with the data series, but there might be some potential with this approach. It could be interesting to include some options for “young and tall” ranges (à la the Himalayas) as well as “old and worn” types (like the Appalachian Mountains). It is also tempting to nest a few more data series as well or have the number of series plotted to be randomly determined for more or less visual depth.

Updated Layout For Gorgon Trail TROIKA! Backgrounds

Found myself fiddling around a little bit with the Layout for the Gorgon Trail TROIKA! Backgrounds.

The document itself has been updated with a few more Backgrounds. Hoping to finish this up soon. To view the living document, use either the above link, or this link to the previous post.

Here's a quick preview of the latest layout styling:

TROIKA! Backgrounds for Gorgon Trail

Psst...I’ve started whipping up 36 Gorgon Trail Backgrounds for TROIKA!

This is a living document, that I’ll be adding to as I get some free time, so check back for updates!

Return Of The Mountain Hexes I

I decided to take a bit of a breather from the foliage of the Forests for some fresh Mountain Air. Alpine terrains are always interesting to me and were even the first terrain I tried tackling with this project, so it’s wonderful to return to these stony slopes.

Here's a brief breakdown of the contents of this draft:

• Help for Hikers: An ancient stone walkway
• A Mountain Lake, devoid of life
• A Scenic Way-Shrine
• Some distinctive, finger-like Formations
• Rabidly foaming Rapids

I’ll have to brainstorm on some supporting generators for Mountains (akin to all the material I’ve whipped up for Trees/Plants/Herbs), maybe a Mountain Range/Prominent Peak name generator would be useful. As always I welcome any ideas for these in addition to feedback!

These Mountain Hexes as part of my ongoing Wilderness Hexes project (browse the hexes tag on this blog for more).

Tex-Crawl/Gorgon Trail Backgrounds & Vocations

One of the first things I like to do these days when I’m contemplating Settings is to start with player facing materials.

For the Tex-Crawl project, Gorgon Trail (a Mystara-sytle Gazetteer for fantasy Texas) I went ahead and created an updated “Backgrounds & Vocations” list that tries to do some of the heavy lifting to communicate setting during Character Generation:

Ideally, as with the previous Backgrounds, these should create more questions than they answer and telegraph more of the entire world more quickly than a huge setting dump. It is also interesting to see which Backgrounds/Vocations are broadly applicable despite the setting, and how a simple tweak can completely change the tone.

The actual Gazetteer is going on 36 pages so far, and the sections on some of the really intriguing things (like how Clerics are handled, Rune-Branding, Barbed-Wire Wizards, and Hooch Magic) have been completed in their draft forms. It’s all very tongue and cheek, and the authorial voice/heavy use of idiomatic expressions is having the strange side-effect of my latent accent creep out in conversation :). I’m having to resist the urge to just go full on TROIKA! with these Backgrounds instead of something broadly compatible with B/X.

These Dwarfs Are... (d100 Table)

I’ve managed to somehow saddle myself with yet another project that I’ve been spending some spare time on. This one’s taking shape as a Mystara-style Gazetteer for a Fantasy Texas (tentatively calling it the Gorgon Trail Tex-Crawl). It’s fairly tongue-in-cheek, but it’s proving to be a fun distraction.

But I’m still hoping not to neglect this blog, so here’s another quick d100 Activities Table to liven up encounters (random, wandering, or otherwise) with Dwarfs this time. It could serve as a companion for the one I previously put together for Wood Elfs.

Feel free to browse the d100 label for similar tables I’ve posted in the past, and as always I love hearing about how they work out at your table.

d100 Table - One Hundred Unconventional Potions

When it comes to Magical Potions (or any magical items really), I’m particularly fond of effects that are less “duplicate an existing spell or class ability” and more “can this lead to potentially interesting or creative use later in play.” It tends to turn the more expendable gimcrack into something just a little more magical, a tad mysterious, and slightly special. It can also lead to some sensational surprises down the road when a player realizes they have “just the right tool for the job”, or better yet: something that should work with a little strategic modification to “the plan”. So, with that said, here’s a new random table of One Hundred Unconventional Potions to sprinkle throughout your heaping hoards, devilishly determine the perils of potion miscibility, salve the sting of adverse alchemical errors, or any other use that might strike your fancy. Some are strange, some are probably too powerful, and as with anything here you may need to season to the tastes of your table or your particular flavor of fantasy.

d100 Table - Three Hundred Smells & Scents by Type (for Yoon-Suin or anywhere really)

Foraging through a few orphan folders, I found another d100 table that has been languishing at the end of some content on my Yoon-Suin Resources page and decided to whip it into a single-page for more convenient use. Although I believe it was originally designed to assist with navigating city-blocks in Yoon-Suin, I frankly feel that this could be helpful for a variety of situations that need a little nose, even if does err a little on the exotic.

We often default to stressing sight and sound impressions when describing things, but a gentle reminder to remember how things and situations smell never hurts. It’s worth considering adding a trigger for this to an Overloaded Encounter Die/Wandering Monster Check, and I’d love to see more adventure authors use a little 👃 icon and a concise olfactory fact occasionally in their room descriptions. Odors can be a wonderful shorthand for the evocation of all kinds of memories and can easily trigger unexpected routes of play. They can also serve as a method of navigation for when the last torch sputters out: This is the room that smelled like eggs? OK, I think there’s a door to the left that leads to the one that smelt more like burning books. Or if you’d like, they can be used in conjunction with some other generators, like my Herb & Plant Generator or even to apply a bouquet to potions (I try to keep taste/smell/appearance consistent for identification purposes).

My hope is that even just having some potential smell inspiration ready at hand could help spur an occasional reminder to add a soupçon more sensory substance when describing a scene.

Hope this ends up passing the sniff test! If you feel that something a little more “traditionally vanilla” fantasy would be more useful, just let me know!

These Wood-Elfs Are... (d100 Table)

Here’s another quick d100 table. This one may prove useful if and when the party trespasses into decidedly Sylvan territory. As you will see, I prefer to paint my Elfs with the “weird and unsettling” brush, but you could easily re-skin these as Faerie Folk or something similar if your setting gravitates toward a more archetypal Elf. But don’t be shy when subverting tropes in order to keep your players on tenterhooks by mixing it up every now and then. This table could slot right in for settings that are on the spookier-side, like the lovely Dolmenwood:

The Batrachians/Frogfolk (“Just Use Goblins”)

Another entry for my ever-growing “Goblin Project,” this time we have some seemingly servile Frogfolk.

Forced into a sad state of serfdom by the stringent Storkfolk, don’t be fooled into thinking even for a fleeting moment, that this once wondrous salientian society is content with their awful lot in life!

Long live the ranine Resistance!

Hex-Describe & The Beauty Of Embracing Random Non-Sequiturs

Recently, I’ve been brainstorming with the brilliant Alex Schroeder on adding some additional content in the form of tables and items for his absolutely phenomenal Hex-Describe Tool. This online generator really checks all the right boxes in terms of the features I like to see, and he’s even been working to add additional features and improvements as our discussion on pluspora evolves. For example, some recent collaborative discussion about Ettercaps led to his inclusion of these super awesome Random Ettercap Faces.

The big thing for me though is random tables. Hex-Describe has a simple syntax for generating content from tables (detailed in the Help here) and the results end up being far more versatile than just a simple flat table that usually requires a little bit of “user-driven improvisatory fiddling” to make things work properly. The desire for table results to “make sense” is a natural one, and grows really hard to suppress over time.

The possibilities are boundless for how this tool can be used to generate some surprisingly in-depth random content at the push of a button once tables are created and populated. One thing we recently worked on including was some Goblin Markets within the procedurally generated Goblin Settlements that crop up in Hexes. The basic idea was that Goblins could have items for sale, but naturally since they’re Goblins, a lot of their items might not be in the greatest shape, be remotely useful, or even desirable to the players. They’d also likely try to rip off players at every available opportunity by overcharging for their shabby wares. They might have some stellar deals, and even some very “special” items available, but to find these you’d likely have to sift through a huge pile of second-rate detritus or go on a quest for them.

So, in order to start populating their wares, I created some Hex-Describe Tables using my old Random Impedimenta Table as a base. Hex-Describe lets me get even more granular and introduce far more variation than would ever be usable in the limited real estate of a single page and far more robust results than something that can be created in a single 1d100 roll. After adding some additional sub-tables, it generates all sorts of lovely random goblin junk:

• woven silk bandanna
• small chunk of cheese
• 3 shards of coconut shell
• sprite ear
• 4 plum pits
• live mammal (rabbit)
• chalk pieces
• bone chess pawn
• chunk of fungus
• 5 turtle eggshells
• clay spool
• shoddy wood hairbrush
• 8 pieces of candy/sweets

The next step was to add in some prices. I started out just assigning these rather randomly because I was still learning/getting a feel for how Hex-Describe’s existing tables worked. Then I kind of really started liking some of the ridiculous combinations of prices and junk that it was spitting out: 30 gold pieces for a dead rat, 20 copper pieces for a pair of broken clay buttons, a gold flask for 2 copper pieces (what’s wrong with it?), etc. This led me to create another table that adds some flavor text concerning how the Goblin tries to “up sell” items, and the results this generates, although completely random, sometimes just end up working really well together:

I find myself constantly chuckling and snickering at some of the combinations that turn up here, and even the most illogical things seem to work in unexpected ways for these shady and somewhat comical Goblins Merchants. The title of this post is really the crux of it: There’s actually quite a bit of beauty possible, even in randomly produced non-sequiturs, and sometimes our urges to make things logical/consistent can overshadow something potentially much more fun, amusing, or gameable.

You can see it in action for yourself by running the rule for Goblin Markets here. This rule calls some additional things that don’t generate unless you’re doing a full hex map, but it does help illustrates just how thorough this tool can get. This is really just the tip of the iceberg though, and I can't stress how amazing Hex-Describe is as a generator of inspiring and useful random content!

Finally Fifty: Five More Forest Hexes for Your Friday

Finally reached the half-century mark!

These Forest Hexes as part of my ongoing Wilderness Hexes project (browse the hexes tag on this blog for more).

This time we have:

• A small stream that needs crossing
• A Green Grotto chock-full of surprises
• Treant Adolescents!
• The Forest's very own Genius Loci
• And a treacherous wooden bridge!

Fifty is a great milestone to finally hit, and I can't believe I've managed to stick with it this long given my easily distracted nature :)

As always, I welcome any feedback or stories about how these work out for your table! Might celebrate by researching some POD options (cue trumpets & tuckets), so I'd love any information or options anyone is willing to share about that whole can of worms!

The Masked Ones (“Just Use Goblins”)

Here's another attempt at wrangling unruly layouts and the “Just Use Goblins” concept into something useful for handling encounters and descriptions at the table.

This time, I've taken some of the feedback from the previous post and replaced most of the “stat-block facts/lore dumps” with Rumors that harness that old workhorse: The Requisite Reaction Roll. You can choose to have even/unshaded numbers be True or False, or they can be deemed accurate on a case-by-case basis through direct interaction with these pesky thesps during play. It ends up doing quadruple duty by also determining the factions (my line of thinking here is that some are more likely to be friendlier than others) and even provides some sample descriptive assistance in addition to setting the traditional disposition of the encounter with the good ol’ bell curve.

I don’t mind how this seems to work on the surface, but as always feedback is greatly appreciated. I probably wouldn’t have hit on this specific line-of-thinking without the gracious and helpful observations of HDA from My Terrible Sorcery Is Without Equal In The West and Anne from DIY & Dragons. Thank you both ever so much!

Character Backgrounds & Prior Vocations

Some recent discussion on Reddit got me blathering on about Backgrounds. One of the things that draws me to skill-less systems is the freedom they provide to the players. A set-in-stone Skill List informs play and can narrow the scope of player actions as they look in askance at the Character Sheet for options and tactics, and a tendency develops to view Skills as “this is everything you can do.” They also discourage attempts by telegraphing odds directly (a Player whose sheet constantly informs them that they are terrible at Sneaking About will probably never try).

I really enjoy systems like WHITEHACK that bundle these potential activities into Vocations (or Backgrounds). All of the “Skills/Competencies/Familiarities” that come attached to a single Vocation will usually encompass more individual abilities that can fit on a character's sheet anyway, and best of all: it encourages the player to think of creative ways that their character could potentially interact with a situation based on their imagined history. The only challenge with more free-form systems like this tends to be the occasionally creative paralysis when a player is lightly pressed with “You can be anything, tell me about your character” without any kind of concept in mind. Mind you, I’m not a big proponent of preconceived character concepts and would much rather let the oracular dice do this work for me, but every tablemate is different.

So here’s a table of 100 Character Backgrounds & Prior Vocations to help inspire players that might find themselves in this rut, or simply enjoy the challenge of trying something new and breaking out of the classic class stereotypes. I like “Roll or Choose” for tables like these because they provide some agency, but this list should by no means considered exhaustive. I always recommend trying to accommodate any character you can, most settings can cope surprisingly well (it’s fantasy after all, and stories shared are best):

Remember that long-lists of Backgrounds like this can perform double-duty. They can help significantly with the legwork to communicate and develop an Implied Setting (TROIKA!’s Backgrounds are phenomenal at this). Don't simply stop with selection however: Always try to ask a few Leading Questions to flesh things out. In the Backgrounds Above for instance, a glance may pique some curiosity and some questions about the world we're playing in may spring to mind: Why is Magic so apparently dangerous? What’s an Ooze Wrangler or an Ex-Wood-Spouse? It sure seems like some of the Cleric Backgrounds suggest that not all is on the up-and-up, etc. I try to leave these mostly as an exercise to the player (only putting on the DM hat when a drastic misalignment in vision/fiction can’t be resolved through compromise or might not be fun or fair for everyone).

As always, I’d love to hear about how this works out for your group if you give it a spin.

These City-Dwellers Are... (d100 Table)

As a follow up to a previous post (These Village-folk Are...), not all local-color need be campestral. The exciting urban sprawl of a fantasy city can be a tempting destination post-delve to unload all that lovely lifted loot and purloined plunder. Let us breathe a little life into our Blocks & Boroughs as well:

Need a quick map? I have been enjoying experimenting with this wonderful Medieval Fantasy City Generator. I’d almost be tempted to give each of the different districts it designates a little bit of strategic embroidering as the players move between wards.

“Just Use Goblins”

I’ll let you in on a little secret: I’m a huge proponent of Just Use Bears when it comes to monsters and have been exploiting this chicanery for ages. Like many DMs that have been running games for a significant amount of time, I don’t always need to refer to a shiny new custom stat-block to adjudicate a memorable encounter on-the-fly, and hacks like this can be extremely useful to keep in mind.

There’s been an interesting compatibility development recently when sharing statistics to keep them system neutral, especially for Armor Class which can vary significantly between versions and reinterpretations. Seeing AC expressed with “as Chain” makes me happy, because I know instinctively what this works out to be in just about all the flavors I frequent. So for a while now to save space, I’ve just been expressing the Monster Stat-block with “as Goblin” or “as Ogre” with a few scribbled exceptions to emphasize utility. These are some monsters that I most frequently re-skin, and have grown to know the blocks pretty much by heart.

I’ve begun to take this trick to another level and I’m in the early stages of devising a supplement/tool tentatively titled “Just Use Goblins.” All it should require is access to, or a fair amount of familiarity with, the traditional Goblin Stat Block for the clone system of your choice. By reskinning one of the most frequently cast standbys we can eke a little more mileage out of them and even still steer things in a more fantastical direction (or simply just keep foes fresh and unpredictable). Players may be confident in their ability to thoroughly mess up a malignity of generic Goblins, but just might hesitate a bit when confronted with a tittering cluster of strange humanoids with Sea-Urchins on their shoulders instead of heads.

Here’s a sample spread/prototype page. It’s kind of dense, and I’d dearly love to squeeze in some art/illustration somehow eventually.

What would you modify to try and free up some space? The tables will likely vary somewhat for each re-skin. Is this intuitive? Too crowded? Are some features less than useful to have on a single spread and perhaps better served as a separate section/appendix?

I was really drawn to the concept from Middenmurk of overloading the assorted rolls associated with encounter generation (HD, No. Appearing, etc) wherever possible as a time-saver. Since one is rolling them anyway, let them perform some additional duties. But do you think this is actually something feasible to use during play, or only somewhat helpful during preparatory work?

I’d love to hear any feedback. Just something to work on periodically when I grow a little weary of staring at Hex Tables and need to recharge my creativity by distracting myself with something else. :)

These Village-Folk Are... (d100 Table)

The party has been slogging along through the unwelcoming wilderness for weeks now, and both rations and morale are at an all-time-low.

A dry bed, balmy bath, and a home-made meal featuring fresh ingredients that haven’t done a stretch in the Dwarf’s sweaty pack certainly wouldn’t go amiss. Distant curls of smoke slinking lazily above the horizon lead them to a well-worn and wagon-rutted road, which in turn winds its way toward a small settlement (or thorp, hamlet, village, etc.).

Need to give its population some distinctive peculiarities or breathe a little life into this mote on the map? Here's a table:

Friday Five (More Forest Hexes)

Happy Friday!

Here are five more Forest Hexes as part of my ongoing Wilderness Hexes project that I'm working on in idle moments.
(browse the hexes tag on this blog for more)

This time we have:

• An orchard overtaken by the wilds
• A bearded boulder hill with a mysterious past
• Ancient aqueducts
• The biggest Bear
• The previously portended Serpent Plinth.

Hope they bring you some fun and inspiration for your overland crawls! I can't believe I'm almost at Fifty for this terrain type :).

Background Questions for TROIKA!

My beautiful physical copies of the Troika! Numinous Editions arrived the other day and I've really enjoyed reading through them.

I grew up with the Fighting Fantasy series (I still have a particular fondness for the Sorcery! line), so mechanically the system was comfortingly nostalgic, but what struck me most about TROIKA! was the implicit shared world-building of the 36 default backgrounds. They are intriguingly terse and absolutely wonderful in their own right, but they almost taunt the reader/roller (in a good way) with unanswered questions due to the intentionally light touch.

So I had an adjunct idea to append on to the admittedly very quick TROIKA! Character Generation process: Have the player answer a few leading questions based on the Background rolled.

Here's what I came up with:

Special thanks to David Schirduan for saving me some typing by making the full list available on his super awesome Mobile-Friendly Character Generator/Initiative Tracker.

If you haven't had the chance to check out TROIKA! yet, there's a name-your-price artless version available here, but I highly recommend the second edition with all the astounding artwork.

Five More Forest Hexes

Here we have five more Forest Hexes (almost halfway to one hundred for just this terrain). (See prior posts here and here for more.)

This time we have a Forest Fire, a tempting target for tomb-raiders, some unusual and intriguing formations, the time-honored Wizard's Tower, and some Sylvan Ruins.

Leave no hexagon idle and empty :). As always, I'd love to hear how these work out for you if you find them useful or if there's a type of feature you'd like to see.

Dolmenwood Goat-Men Miniatures

One of our many local taprooms (a growler joint I believe) is selling custom-designed, D&D miniatures with a "Local" theme. 

My town has a resident cryptid affectionately referred to as the “Goat Man” and here’s the mini they put together for it:

Did I mention how awesome the place I live is? :)

I just might have to snag a few of these. They seem perfect for Dolmenwood.

Celestial Scent-Swinger - The Harry Clarke Bestiary

Another submission for the The Harry Clarke Bestiary

Get your submissions in! Cavegirl's blog post features a plenitude of inspiring images, and a gallery with even more.

Melōidía - The Harry Clarke Project

Cavegirl has posted about a new OSR Community Project in the vein of Ford's Faeries (I reviewed her excellent The Gardens of Ynn here):

The Harry Clarke Bestiary

I absolutely adore Harry Clarke's illustrations. They are weird, wild, and wonderful, so I couldn't resist contributing to this one as well:

Get your submissions in! Cavegirl's blog post features a plenitude of inspiring images, and a gallery with even more.

See The Forest For The Trees

Here's another handy-dandy table for adding some more botanical flavor to your fantasy wildernesses.

Again, my focus is still on Forests for the time being, but Trees tend to be present in most terrains₁:

Generate uncommon names for real-world trees, or graft-together completely new arboreal creations. I find that arming myself with 3-4 types per large woodland is generally sufficient, but I'll produce a new one when the terrain starts to change or I want to telegraph a shift in the overall hex biome.

I like to make a quick note when I make a new one, just for verisimilitude's sake if they ever come back through an area. As the title of the post says though, don't get too bogged down in details. Tables like this are intended to help provide inspiration and gingerly sprinkle on some flavor here and there. Even just a single distinctive tree can serve as a useful waypoint/landmark (“Meet up by that old Rotcoat Willow”).

Some quick results from the table seem to pass the "sniff test" so to speak:

• ❧ Yellow Briar Privet
• ❧ Cat Blister Laurel
• ❧ Gnomeblind Beech
• ❧ Towerleaf Paw-Paw
• ❧ Elf Shield Yew
• ❧ Stinkbark Hickory
• ❧ Queen Flower Tallow
• ❧ Graveknot Gum
• ❧ Sweetpetal Hemlock
• ❧ Tombseed Pine
• ❧ Deer Pip Cherry
• ❧ Priestburn Cypress

Might experiment with weighing results by Precipitation/Climate/Terrain somehow, or even placing more "common" trees lower on the table so that smaller die can be rolled to make them more prevalent. Ideally, I'd start by breaking out Broad-leaf and Conifer trees in some way, because that can go a long way to informing climate.

1. Save maybe Deserts (although one could remix this as Cacti/Succulents], Oceans [Weird Kelp/Coral?], and Polar environments.

Herbs & Plants - Online Generator

A gracious and patient individual took the liberty of loading all the table entries from my Herbs & Plants document into an online tool that quickly generates results:

❧Fantasy Herb Generator❧

It is certainly more convenient to see them instantaneously. Here are a few that stuck out after a few clicks:

• ❧ Stinknecklace is a plant sometimes found near planar gateways. Side effects of brewing it include a glowing ring finger.
• ❧Witchsorrel is a herb rarely found on hanged man's graves. Side effects of keeping it under your tongue include being compelled to wear clothes inside out.
• ❧ Giantbright is a plant rarely found in bird nests. Side effects of keeping it tucked inside your cheek include excessive thirst.
• ❧ Horseheather is a herb occasionally found on sandy beaches. Side effects of applying it include chapped lips.
• ❧Honeybonnet is a herb rarely found where sheep graze. Side effects of keeping it under your tongue include developing feathers.
• ❧Hencelery is a herb commonly found in ancient dolmens. Side effects of applying a paste made from it include migraines.

The benefit derived from generating the names alone is great, because it's always handy to have some semi-reasonable common plant names at the ready. It appears that they added a system that includes the frequency or rarity of the plants as well.

Eventually, I might try to add a 1d100 table or two for what a given plant's positive/intended uses might be. Right now I've just been roughly mapping them to the Rules Cyclopedia Cleric/Druid spells with a 1d8 for level (with an 8 re-rolling on the Magic User Spells), and then a 1d12 for the spell, but it might be more interesting to build word pairs using something similar to the old Magic Word system.

Even More Wilderness Hexes - Forests

Work is gradually progressing on my ambitious Wilderness Hexes project. Attempting to get each Terrain up to one hundred entries apiece is proving to be a challenge, but the final product will hopefully be rewarding!

As a tantalizer of things to come, here are fifteen (15) additional Forest Hexes:

These are still in the early days/rough draft form, and I'll most certainly be revising them with an eye for more interrelationships and layout once I've settled on a full final list for the Terrain.

As always, I'm open to suggestions and ideas for other types of interesting landmarks/locations, especially at this early stage in the process. The demise of G+ has sadly scattered a lot of my previous sources of invaluable feedback to the winds. If you end up finding them useful, I'd love to hear about it, and how these end up working at the table with your group. If they help at least one flustered or prep-starved GM entertain their players for a session, then I consider them to be time well spent.

d100 Magic Swords

A bog-standard Sword +1 is a boring blade indeed. Here are a hundred extra features to make a magical weapon more magical than just the basic bonus.

These are largely system neutral, but feel free to season to taste. If anythings unclear, go with your gut or feel free to ask and I can try to explain my thinking in a less intentionally terse format :). Let me know how your players respond to these, and if you think it might be worth trying to put together separate tables for other types of weapons.

Random Impedimenta (d100) - Single Page Vertical Version

I've whipped up an updated version of the d100 Random Impedimenta Table. This one is a single page and arranged vertically for easy printing. It's a handy table to have behind the screen for character generation, dungeon dressing, “I search the body,” etc. See this prior post for more details.

Generate Four Random Mundane Items