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Thursday, December 29, 2011

Evil Garden with a Free Download

I'm on vacation and prone to doing something completely irrational.  In this case I went through all the monster manuals, tomes, catalogs and bestiarys to form a comprehensive list of all the plants, fungi and rock creatures.  I tried to keep it to creatures, not constructs.  You will find piercers within, but you'll find nary a stone golem.   In all I scoured 22 different books.  I'm sure I missed one or two and maybe included one that shouldn't be on the list, but give a poor fellow a break.

The reason I did this you ask?  I was creating wilderness encounters and though it would be a good idea to have a listing of natural inhabitants that make it so dangerous.  I also made myself a makeshift random table as I created these encounters which is included at the bottom of the post and within the list.

A not on my manual selection, even though there is a lot of redundancy in the creatures (Shambling Mound leading the pack with 5 separate entries, the Treant, Quickwood and Yellow Musk Creeper each scoring four), but there are differences in each entry.  Not to mention whole books dedicated to the ecology of the so and so.  While I did include the AD&D version of monsters I did not list the 3.0 and 4.0 editions.  I have no idea why just didn't.

Hope this list is of some use to someone.  I plan on using it for another goofy vacation project I will post about soon.  And as promised, here is the random table I produced to come up with a variety of encounters.  The percentages may not make any sense, nor were they meant to.

Random Wilderness Table
01-08   Monster
09-20   Animal
21-28   Person
29-35   Item
36-41   Magic
41-47   Water
48-56   Roll Twice and Combine
56-61   Trap
61-71   Plant
72-77   Weather
78-83   After Scene (roll again)
84-87   Ruin
88-93   Empty Lair
94-97   Landmark
97-00   Grave
at

7 comments:

  1. AnonymousDecember 29, 2011 at 1:33 PM

    Thanks for sharing this! It should come in handy when I come up with an excuse to use it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Digital OrcDecember 29, 2011 at 1:46 PM

    This is cool, thanks! I've often thought it would be cool to open-source a shared spreadsheet in this way. I made one with LL data, but then it kind of fizzled out.

    Anyway, I like the spreadsheet format for design, in particular, because you can sort as needed.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Digital OrcDecember 29, 2011 at 3:19 PM

    Also, I've been rummaging through your earlier posts regarding self-publication. Do have any on the process, itself, of writing a good adventure? I wrote a brief post speculating on this topic at: http://digitalorc.blogspot.com/2011/12/creativity-editing-in-rpg-adventures.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. NecropraxisDecember 30, 2011 at 3:23 PM

    Nice. You should add your name and/or blog URL to the document so that people can remember where they got it from. I have accumulated a surprising number of these kind of helper sheets.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Gothridge ManorDecember 30, 2011 at 10:03 PM

    Aaron: I hope it does come in handy. I've been using it for a few days and like it.

    Digital Orc: Thanks. Not sure about the spreadsheet thing, this is the only way I know how to do it. On writing adventures I may do a few posts coming up on that.

    Brendan: Now don't be all logical and have me do something I should have done from the get go. :P Added it to the new file I uploaded tonight. Thanks for the catch.

    ReplyDelete
  6. migellitoDecember 31, 2011 at 10:16 PM

    I tried to dl the list, but it told me it was an invalid or deleted file. Just an fyi Tim :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. Gothridge ManorDecember 31, 2011 at 10:33 PM

    Michael, thanks. I must not have changed the addy when I updated it. I need to find a better file downloader place.

    ReplyDelete