Redbeard's Ravings

Today's Catastrophe.  Catastrophes are obligatory character choices that involve rolling on tables like the one below.  I'm looking for critiques or brilliance that's evaded me before I put them onto their final dice tables, arranging odds of about the same chance for good and ill on the different catastrophes. Here is what you could get if you were Cursed Who Cursed you? 1.        Drank from a cursed well/stationary cursed object. 2.        Came into contact with a cursed artifact/item 3.        Came into contact with a demon 4.        Came into contact with undead 5.        Creature of the wild 6.        Enemy: offended a witch/warlock 7.        Enemy: offended a priest of the Church of the Sun 8.        Enem...

A little late in the day to post, but trying to actually consistently blog for once.  Waiting on a ride to a game at the moment. So, Catastrophes are obligatory character choices that involve rolling on tables like the one below.  I have a decent start for all of them. I'm looking for critiques or brilliance that's evaded me before I put them onto their final dice tables, arranging odds of about the same chance for good and ill on the different catastrophes. Without further ado, here is what you could get as a Follower of Failed Apocalyptic Vision 1.        You have no starting cash, only the basic equipment of your background and class, and nothing else but disillusionment.   You are currently begging for work to pay for food and lodging. 2.        Wise from your experience, you have advantage in your intelligence (investigation) checks to discern illusions. 3.      ...

The real seed of this idea sprang from playing in Desert Scribe's Holmes megadungeon some months ago.  Something of a funhouse aspect of the dungeon was expressed in the "guestbook" in the dungeon entrance which each character had the option of signing. A cool device, I thought.  But DS didn't actually have a book for us to sign there at the table. As campaigns come and campaigns go, I'm working on a new dungeon.  So now I've got the chance to steal the Desert Scribe's conceit and take it further: get a physical book that the players could sign as their characters.  Especially as I intend to run this dungeon for a variety of different players, the book itself could be an interesting artifact that people could look forward to reading and signing. I'll have to look at Pike Market, Etsy and the Freemont Market for hand made book makers and drop a dime or two for a nice book.  Something that will make an impression. Too much? Next though i...

"Specials" aka "Saturday Night Specials" are one of the fascinating set pieces of old school play, whether they're in a megadungeon or a location in a hex crawl.  By definition they are "unbalanced" and potentially either capricious or magnanimous. Sometimes they are adventure goals and occasionally they are obstacles.  Often they are the focus of megadungeon faction conflict , and they frequently are listed on your rumor tables.  They should be in some way enigmatic, unstandard but definitely memorable. One common old school standard recommends that 5% of megadungeon encounters be "specials", but I've been upping the percent in my recent level creations.  I like'm too much as a DM, even if I could be accused of being too cautious with them as a player (well, with some of my characters.) If you like these, pester me and I'll put up more of them. Statue of Prophetic Doom This statue of golden stone is of the goddess...

Often, an ooze can go for a very long time between meals. When faced with prospects of starvation, some oozes adapted a dormant stage – and of those, a better survival trait was a mimicing dormant stage. The ooze goes dormant and assumes the characteristics of the surface it is on. Like a bacteria spore, it can last nearly indefinitely in this state. How long has it been since anyone has disturbed this tomb? But once disturbed by movement near or upon it, the ooze begins to awake from its dormant state. Allow 1-3 rounds of disturbance to rouse the ooze. Then in a progression of 4 rounds, the ooze returns to its normal state. So, it goes like this: The dormant ooze at the bottom of the pit appears to be the same material as the stone floor beneath. Landing on it, the ooze is as hard as the stone the players were expecting. But then it wakes up. In the first round, one character or two (the dwarf's stonecraft in this example) may notice that the the floor shifted ...

First, check this out as an inspirational image for your next hex crawl location: (Click to embiggen of course) For all the coolness that this is, I would be remiss in not informing you that it is one of many monuments to World War II veterans erected in what was then Yugoslavia under a program by Marshal Tito. There is a website devoted to those veterans. Now for another image: You can find more by a google image search I could go on about their abstract majesty and how their neglect adds to their appeal and mystery, but a random table would be more useful, don't you think? Here's one for you to riff off of for the "purpose" of your spomenik. Roll d20 Temple of Tharizdun (or a local equivalent if you prefer.) Is it active? Abandoned? Waiting for the PCs to be sacrificed? Confluence of ley lines. Use another table for how magic is f'd with here. Portal to another plane. I'm sure there's a table for random planes s...

As I've posted before , I've been disappointed with how ordinary the Wychwood encounters seemed as depicted in the Yggsburgh hardback. I've tried to flavor it more with fey quality ala Midsummer Night's Dream. For players in Yggsburgh, there is a one very big unstated spoiler from the Yggsburgh hardback. Nearly all the rest of the adventure is my own creation or my own import from other sources. The players seemed to enjoy the puzzle solving and negotiation challenges that the evening entailed. Having had bad experiences on both sides of riddle situations, I picked a riddle that was hopefully easy to solve for the six players; the alternative would be that a party of level 2-4 would have to fight an ettin. They did have the idea from the ettin's size and description that they didn't really want to fight the ettin, but they had alternatives besides the riddle; getting the heads to argue and running away. Fighting was certainly a choice - one that surely woul...

Another in a series of posts of monsters inspired by Amazing Monsters: Verses to Thrill and Chill a wonderful collection of whimsical monster verses. This is definitely in my Appendix N. I'd like more whimsy in the game, and I'd especially like a more different 'fey'; something more Midsummer Nights Dream or folk tale like than simply invisible pixies with darts. They'll be there too, for sure. One of my few disappointments in the Yggsburgh hardback was the 'Wychwood' encounters which amounted to little more than wood elves, satyrs and centaurs. All of these creatures could be all too easily interpreted as bags of hit dice with no mystery whatsoever; by the book that's pretty much all they are. I'll certainly be following Mandragora as he's already done real research into all this. So, here it is: The Zobo Bird Do you think we skip, Do you think we hop, Do you think we flip, Do you think we flop, Do you think we trip This fearful measure An...

The bogus boo is a creature who comes out at night, and why? He likes the air, he likes to scare the nervous passer-by! He has two wings - pathetic things - with which he cannot fly. His tusks are fierce, yet could not pierce the softest butterfly. He has two ears , but what he hears is very faint and small. And with his claws on his four paws he cannot scratch at all. He looks too wise with his owl eyes, his aspects grim and ghoulish. But truth to tell, he sees not well and is distinctly foolish. The bogus boo - what can he do, but huffle in the dark? So don't take fright: he has no bite, and very little bark! by James Reeves Frequency: Rare No. Appearing: 1, possibly 2 (mated pair) Armor Class: 8 (1E) 12 (C&C) Move: 20" Hit Dice: 2 % in Lair: 50 % Treasure Type: See below No. of Attacks: 2 Damage/Attack: 1-2 Special Attacks: Surprise, Fright, Mistaken Identity Special Defenses: Dark Vision Magic Resistance: Standard Intelligence: Low Saves: P (C&C) Alignment: Neu...