Building a Village Example

A little while ago I did a podcast about Random Encounters for a Village. I spoke about how I tend to do it. This is one of my methods. I like the twp page spread, easy to reference, if I put them into a binder there is no page flipping. Here is the link to the PDF on Google Drive for Thurber Village. I made the village on a map not made for a village, I just added the black squares as houses and it served the purpose well.

If your interested in listening to the podcast, here is the link.

Creating Village Random Encounters

Flea Market Treasure-Like Finds

Had the day off. Went to a flea market cause I didn't go to the movies. Neither one has anything to do with the other, but that's how it happened. I took pictures of some interesting items I thought would be interesting to add to a random table of some sort of stuff the party finds.

Creepy ass dolls are always good for loot. Creepy ass rat dolls are even better.

A couple of simple African statuettes. I like the dude's white necklace. Maybe these could be some sort of Figurines of Lesser Power. Dude has a white necklace and a giant butter knife. The lady is holding a water jug on her head. I think both would make great magi items.

Not something I would put in the dungeon, just thought it was funny.

This thing was about 4' tall. Not sure what it is. Looks like it would tip over if you put anything in it. Giant candle stick?

Again, not found in my game, but funny. It wasn't for sale. I was sad.

Another creepy ass item, this time featuring a soulless mask dedicated to a duck god of death.

Don't judge my photo skills. I think this was a bull mask with a mohawk. Yeah this has to find its way into my game.

Wait for it.

I found this a little funny.

And this. So close!

Okay, that was my trip.

Bye.

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

Since the Rapture is Upon Us...

I thought I do what I think is cool in gaming right now.  Because tomorrow may never come, unless your bad than you have a little extra time.  At least you'll be able to catch the final Harry Potter movie.

These are in no particular order, just as I think of them and this is by no means a complete list because my memory is more sieve than hard drive these days. 

DungeonMorph Dice these things are excellent.  I remember watching them when they had just met their fist goal to do one set of dice.  They are now flown past their 3rd goal and have gathered over $19,000 in backers.  My god, 19k.  I think that's great.  And two of my favorite dungeon morphers are leading the way, Dyson Logos and Risus Monkey.

I've already written a blog about the One-Page Dungeon contest.  I still need to do a couple of reviews on the winners and the other one pagers I liked and swiped for myself.

The Underdark Gazette's weekly newsletter of what is going on in the world of the OSR and gaming in general.  James works his ass off each week to put that out for all of us to catch up on things we may have missed through out the week.  I'm always surprised at how much I miss. 

Another James who works his ass off.  Mr. Raggi who continues to do his way.  I appreciate the work and the balls it takes to start your own company and get your product into the stores.  I dabble with adventures and sell PDFs and hope to sell some print copies soon, but James has taken this to the next level, hell the next couple of levels. 

Johnathan's passion for pie and a hell of an artist. 

Hill Cantons's cake position and his top 5 worst old school blogs.

I've enjoyed watching Christian's battle with his backyard, passion for gaming and the kick ass food he makes for his players.  Not to mention his One Square Equals One Foot magazine.

Satyre's never ending supply of taverns and inns.  He's got a ton of them!

Underworld Ink, Jason and John helping me with my next project.  Their work is really making a storm giant sized difference in it and much appreciated. 

And not the last, but sort of...my gaming group.  Rob, Dwayne and Rusty, very cool guys that make killing thing that much more fun.

Enjoy the Rapture everyone.  See you on the flip side...

Random Events for Players Arriving in a Village

1 - The village is celebrating the wedding of one of its own. The villagers are in a great mood and welcome the players to join in the celebration. During the celebration the villagers have several contests, a foot race, wrestling, rock throw (both accuracy and distance), and a giant tug of war at the end. The players will be treated as family, fed well and their tankards will never be found empty.

2 - The players see the burnt husks of cabins where the village once stood. Among the ruins the villager bodies can be found, but there are too few bodies. The livestock have fled to the fields which remain untouched. In the middle of the ruins is a spear thrust in the ground with a brown shield hung on it.

3 - The men are working the fields and the women are going about their chores. All the children are all hiding in their homes. As the players enter the village they pay little notice. If approached a villager will look terrified. Some will tremble and be unable to speak, others may feint, and others will cry and ramble on about something horrible in the forest. Within the forest an eldridge creature of nightmares has awaken and has been feeding off the villagers for the past two weeks.

4 - A tinker will approach the players as they near a village and shake his head. I wouldn't go in there. Bad stuff. If he is pressed for more information he will just explain that something ain't right. If the players enter the village they will be greeted with by friendly villagers as they go about their business. They will offer the players the visitors cabin to stay in and invite them to join them for dinner that night. All the villagers meet under an open air pole building to talk about their day. They will ask for stories from the adventurers and any news they might share. The players food will be laced with a subtle poison that will make them very tired. The villagers worship a blood god and need a sacrifice. They don't want to kill the players, but drain some of their blood.

5 - The harvest is in full swing. Villagers are working hard. As the players approach they will see a knight riding his horse across the field at a full gallop. His armor is torn and he shouting warnings to everyone. A few moments la wolf, the size of an elephant pursues him. One of the wolves grabs the closest villagers and swallows him whole.

6 - The local baron is holding court at the village. A local mage is being tried for murder. Many mages are in attendance as well as many local nobility. The tension between between the two groups. This quiet village now has 4x as many people within that usual. It has become an event and craftsmen and merchants are taking advantage of the spectacle.

Advocating for Planned Encounters

So you've strained your wrist rolling on random tables, for random encounters, random contents in a chest, random villagers a villaging, random names of said villagers, random monsters and provide random treasure for them. It makes my wrist sore writing about it. I am not against random tables at all. They can provide an unexpected twist for the players and GM and let's face it, they are fun.

My soapbox rant today is about doing the work ahead of time. There are blogs after articles and comments about random tables and short cuts. I will admit I do not use random tables too often, especially during a game. Where I use random tables is during the creation of the session ,to get inspiration and creating a quirky juxtaposition of two items I would have never thought of combining.

In my games, if I feel the players are having an easy row during the adventure than I select an encounter from a list, not random ones, created ahead of time to help kick the challenge level up a notch. The only time I will use random tables during a game is if the players are camped in a certain area for a time. This allows me to give each encounter a depth a normal random encounter would not have. These encounters can become significant to the adventure.

Since random encounters have a wide following I thought I would be the advocate for planned encounters.

Random Encounters (and Hobbit Pie)

We've all seen tables like this.
1 - 1d6 orcs
2 - 1d6 goblins
3 - 1d6 orcs with chief
4 - 1d6 goblins with chief
5 - 1d4 sleestacks
6 - a flying purple people eater

How many times did you have to hit the snooze button? This kind of random encounter table sucks rocks among other inedible substances. So let's imagine a dungeon. Let's call it the Fire Breathing Orcs and Hobbit Pie Dungeon. Good title eh? I thought so. Premise of the dungeon is you have orcs raiding hobbit land to gather them up because they are the most important ingredient in the most popular pie in orc land. So let's base some of the encounters on what the heck is going on in the adventure.

1 - The first entry into our random encounters table could be an escaped hobbit, beaten and battered and he tells the players exactly why the hobbits are being captured. Not for slaves, but for pie. "They're eating Hobbits! Hobbits!" end of Heston imitation. And scene.

2 - The second entry would be a group of orcs that are hunting for the rascally hobbit, see above. They are grumpy because no hobbit, no pie. They are preoccupied with following furry footed prints. Players can avoid them and get bonuses or engage them in a historic battle I am sure. Once engaged in combat, one of the orcs, make him the fast one, runs into orc land and tells everyone the players are coming.

3 - The players encounter a line of orc soldiers and a cart full of shackled hobbits among them. The orcs are led by a big orc that is wearing a big scary helmet to make him look scary. This encounter can turn future events in the adventure because adventures should always be fluid. Players are a weird bunch and want to do what they want to do. But enough about the players. The players can try to save this bunch of hobbits and eliminate a group of orcs, but run the risk as above, alerting the other orcs and making it more difficult to save the other pie filling.

4 - The players run into another hobbit. He doesn't look so bad. If the players confront him he will say his brother was captured and he sneaking around to see if he can save him. He promises to show the precious players where he found the orcs. Well this is the little bastard who has been setting up his other hobbit people. He's in it for the dough and as long as he supplies the filling he won't become the filling. Anyways, if he can lead the players to a place where there are lots of orcs he'll scream like the little punk he is.

5 - The party encounters a small group of orcs finishing off their share of a hobbit pie. They are resting against a few burn stumps commenting on which bits are the tastiest. They are completely relaxed and are not prepared for combat at all.

6 - The adventuring party encounters an ogre. This ogre is headed into orc land because the hobbit pie smells good and he wants it. The players can attack the ogre probably alerting the orcs or they can follow the ogre's march into camp to make a mess. To demonstrate this, the GM could have the ogre encounter entry 2 looking for the hobbit and have the ogre bash the stinky meat into the ground.

So here ends this little tale. Make your random encounters as interesting as any room or entry you place in your adventure. They should never be an afterthought they should be motivators, clues, surprises and fun as hell.