More Hexenbracken + How The Hell Do You Run A Hexcrawl Anyway

Ok first thing's first:

Ramanan took the collaborative hexmap from yesterday and totally pimped it out.

That link should take you to a clickable map of the whole area, it has a few less locations marked than the map I posted yesterday but makes up for it by being super-useful. Click a hex, it takes you to the description. Click a reference to a hex in another hex and it takes you straight there.

It's also a lot easier to cut and paste the text to make your own notes than the original spreadsheet.

Also, here's some more detail on one of those hexes.

Now that that's out of the way...somebody asked me a pretty reasonable question this morning...

"Assuming I never played a hexcrawl before, where can I find advice on how to run such a thing?"

Let me see if I can get the basics down, then tell you where to look...

-The players will be either traveling overland from point to point (moving at traveling speed) and just running into stuff incidentally or carefully searching through each hex individually (moving at "mapping" or "searching" speed--which is slower). Which depends on the kind of campaign goals they have (like this one is all about mapping, while these involve both traveling and searching). Frodo and company were traveling, Lewis and Clark were searching.

-Searching characters are trying to find all the interesting stuff in an area. Traveling characters will only note the obvious stuff (mountains, huge rivers) or things that find them (angry cultists, stirges, etc)

-The key to this kind of thing is meaningful choices and choices require information. There are two traditional ways hexcrawling players can get information: A. They start with a partial map B. They look around.

-In either case, these two options should be jiggered as much as possible to present players with at least two options for how to go at all times. For traveling, the simplest choice is: Fast, dangerous route or slow, easier route. Of course the slow route is also dangerous because it gives more time to run into random encounters.

-If the players just look around (no map), they will see landmarks. Landmarks are super important. These are things PCs can see in different directions that indicate what kinda thing to expect in that direction--mountain? City? Monument? River? Without landmarks the players are just going "Hmm, east or west?" and that's totally arbitrary and boring because there's no information behind it.

-You can see 3 miles to the horizon over flat ground. If you or the landmark are higher up than flat ground and your view is unobstructed you'll see things that are farther away.

-Players walk (or ride) and you keep track of time (figure out movement speeds per hour and per day for whatever method the PCs are using). When you get to a new area figure out what's obvious and (if your players are searching) what's hidden. Tell them about the obvious thing right off "So you ride for an hour and then you see a huge rock shaped like a weasel".

-If there's an encounter, figure out whether the thing sees them or they see it first or whether they see each other simultaneously (just like a dungeon). Remember that since most hex products or maps you make are, of necessity, sketchy, you can and should embroider the hell out of what the PCs see. You do not have to stick to the description. "1047 River, Demon" can be turned into..."You see a bridge with an insect demon eating a giant pink ooze on it, there appears to be no other crossing here".

-Build up the setting around the players as they move. They meet a random cleric? If you can figure out who this is a cleric of and where the cleric's going and what temple the cleric is from you've just added lots of obstacles and resources for the players and added a layer to what's going on.

-At the end of a session, ask the players what they intend to do next session. You can prep more detail around their likely routes. The key to making a hexcrawl more than a bunch of random encounters is building relationships between locations on the map--a good hex map will have these seeded in to begin with, but there's always room for more.

-If your players are searching, remember there's lots of room in a hex for stuff no matter how small. Don't have any ideas? That's what all these goddamn random tables are for.

-A lotta times, if they're just traveling, the PCs will come upon nothing special in a given hex, that's ok.

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Other stuff I wrote:

An example,  motivations for PCs in a sandbox, making your own sandbox (the bottom-up method)

Other useful resources for this kinda campaign:

-AD&D DMG pages 47-49

-Random hex key generator

-Making your own sandbox (by bat--from the top down method)

-The OSR Wisdom Wiki (particularly scroll down to "Wilderness Adventures")
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Why Am I Awake And Writing This Dungeon?

1-You woke up here, Jesus, the floor...how does this keep happening? Is there even an exit to this place? Sometimes they make them without exits--you know that, right? Fucking lunatics. What do they even do with these? Dungeons. What did you fucking build these places in some era before the sun cooled down and you were afraid to go outside? Anyway yay surprise you're in a dungeon.

2-This room is full of fucks. They're drunk.

3-This is the room where they hang out and laugh at you for trying to come through the trapped door to the--like, what is that? southwest. Yeah. Mmmm, what is it? mmmm...Reverse door--trying to open it via the handle activates a paralyzing needle trap (and opens the door so they can laugh at you), pushing on the other side opens it clean. Of course then there are all the Snow Leopard men, so what are you gonna do?

4-This is obviously some room no-one gives a fuck about since you can just walk right in. There is a corpse here with needles all up his right side though--and an axe in his face--and his right hand outreached as if to open a door. Maybe soft-pedal that, DMs.

5-This is your mom. Seriously, not a changeling or a face-thief, this is actually your mom, PC. I bet you thought there was going to be some loot this far in. What's she doing in here? I don't know, you have a DM, right? I'm giving him or her a whole effing dungeon, least s/he/it can do is decide what your mom is doing underground one room over from a bunch of drunks. Or were they fucks? Wait, scroll up--drunk fucks, ok. Anyway point is things look bad for your mom. Probably deal or lose points for bad role-playing.

6-Again: Why am I up this early and why am I writing a dungeon? anyway Room 6 must be the beginning of a secret lair because it's behind a portcullis and there's a secret door (in a rather obvious door niche if I do-say-so-myself first-random-dungeon-software-Google-gave-me) behind it. This must be like some guards. No, okay, it's a monster they stuck here. This is that large blue toad on the far right of this picture and it's all hulky and gross and for each 5 hit points it takes it will launch a little gross toad at you out of its bubbling back that will try to pull body parts off you and return them and glubblegub them back into the flesh of the original toad and that heals it. Also has big teeth (the original toad).

The Snow Leopard men sometimes come out of the secret door and throw fat bloated mutant flies to it. Getting past the portcullis requires one of those bend bars/lift gates rolls from page one of the PHB or else being smarter than me when I wrote this.

7-This room has a beer and a pastrami sandwich from Canter's on Fairfax. Oh my god I wish. Actually no it has an illusion of food. It's olfactory and visual and covers up some sort of tarbaby trap thing. Generally that means you're stuck here until he Snow Leopard men or the toad find you and try to eat you but hey maybe write a d20 chart for who finds you and what they do instead.

8-Oh it's behind a secret door. Cracks in the walls. Shoving reveals...millions of gold pieces worth of rare albino iguanas. Only they keen with an unholy wailing noise that Snow Leopard men are really good at hearing when touched. They are only worth gold if you can get them back alive. Also not many people really want to buy pet albino iguanas so you won't be able to sell them all to one dealer in one city. May require some hexcrawling. Plus how far from civilization are you? Fuck if you knew, you woke up here.

9-This is obviously some prisoner. (Who laid this place out and how high were they? Oh, it's an ancient repurposed whatever so, y'know--waves hand--) This is a lonely princess. In her stomach is a small, undigestible sliver of the Moon. If you ever find that out I'll be amazed.

10-Snow Leopard man guards. 2d4? Too many? d4+1? Ok, d4+1. The trapped door to the south is just like the one south of room 3.

11-Oh my god how many more rooms are there? I asked the mapping thing for a "small" dungeon...ok this room is actually a gigantic oven. What's being cooked? You don't find out until room 18 because seriously why does the mapping software put room 11 next to 18?

12-Evil supplies.

13-This is the room where they breed the fat mutant flies. They eat them as grubs and the toad eats them as flies. Actually, did you know that the Carrion Crawler is just the pupal stage of a giant black fly that tries to kiss you and suck the air from your lungs? Each Crawler splits into two flies at gestation. So anyway point is this room is just a ball of grub Carrion Crawlers and some rotting vegetation for them to eat. Opening the west door too hastily will cause them to fall upon you. (Why not just have a carrion crawler as a guard and forget the Toad? Shut up, mythic underworld, remember?)

14-This room is full of Hate. Literally. The frost witch who rules these particular Snow Leopard men believes in removing their berserk hatred in order that they can function more efficiently as a fighting unit. This room is all carved and rune-y and stuff and there's candles and anyway if you walk in here you feel hate for whatever you see.

15-Almost done I hope. What's in here? I don't know...spare weapons. Worth some gp I guess. A torch? Stuff stolen off dead people. Some random lame amount of gp.

16-Concealed behind this secret door is The Oracle. It's a greenish-bluish pool-viscous. You drop something in it and it spits back information about it. The information appears in the form of a whispering starfish. You have to put it right next to your ear. Going down in the pool is crazy and you get glommed onto by all these smart starfish and it's weird.

17-This is where the Frost Witch is hanging out in Maximum Polar Frazetta style. She is protected by a man of wounds which is some monster from either rules rolls roles or Telecanter and I am too tires to link anyway you know about google already or you wouldn't have found this blog while looking for porn so I'm gonna just assume you can handle it, already, kiddo?

18-Kitchen. Full of half-dead carrion crawler grubs and leopard men trying to butcher them. Was it worth it? Man I'm tired...

The next level should have a little statue of Demogorgon behind a hidden door that if you touch it then maggots pour out (of the statue not the door) that is the beginning of a big underground temple the witch is down here looking for and also a room that if you stand in the circle in the middle of it you fall in love with whoever you see.

A Warbox

Consider Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings interpreted as things that happened during a wilderness crawl.

The PCs can go wherever they want and do whatever they want, but they're going to have random encounters, right?

As Black Vulmea points out here, random encounters don't have to mean the story thus generated is random.

If you think of these two stories, who are the Hobbits and Lannisters randomly encountering as they try to get from here to there? Not loose bears and trolls, mostly, but other people. Forces on patrol, emanations of various political entities.

By constantly encountering all these interested parties, the opportunity to take part in the big drama is there and it forms part of the atmosphere even if what the PCs mostly do is ignore it. The events of the setting and powers in it become part of it in a way where they're not just waiting for the PCs to come near them.

Right now the campaign I'm running has a war going on, and the PC stuff happens sort of "underneath" it. The game is all between the raindrops of the war.

So this is my idea for the Warbox (or...Politicrawl?) basically: map an area and its encounters not in the classic AD&D way in terms of climate--winter wolves in the north, tigers in the plains, etc--but in terms of the distance the PCs are from the power centers.

This can work on any scale, so long as you want the PCs encounters to be mostly with intelligent species with motives.

I drew up this slightly abstracted map of my campaign's important places...

click to enlarge

The red dots represent the center of various powers relative to each other. They also represent encounters with whoever is the Big Boss of that place (exactly how is described in a second). So like the red dot at the center of Nornrik represents an encounter with the Frost Giant Queens of that city but also shows about how far that city is from Vornheim (count the squares, 30 miles each).

The dark blue is a river or sea between continents, it's not to scale.

Each concentric color around the center represents an encounter related to that power center, like so:

The boss is whoever's in charge, the lieutenants are anyone in the ruling class of that city, the soldiers are the fighting forces (duh), the citizens are a catch-all for any kind of people who live in that place and the epiphenomena are mostly just traces of that group or things it's responsible for.

Like if we're mapping epiphenomena of the Goblin Empire it might be a few mutant pigs from the goblin alchemists running free or a crashed goblin juggernaut. If we're talking about epiphenomena of a small barbarian tribe we might say it's a looted caravan or a cairn proclaiming the awesomeness of said tribe.

This is a quick list I made for Nornrik, the white elf city, though it occurs to me with only a little tweak it could apply to most of the powers on this map:

click to enlarge

Now, here's the part I like:

See where there's that block labelled 1-9?

Dead in the middle of that 1-9 block at 5--center that on wherever the PCs are at any given point.

So wherever the PCs are on the big map at the top, you draw or just imagine a little square around it with 9 blocks like that. Imagine it labelled like a phone dial.

Roll a d10 if encounters are common, d12 if they're less common, roll a d20 if they only happen about half the time.

On a result of 1-9, there's an encounter. Which encounter?

Well it says, right there on the map. In the case of the example above with the square on the upper right edge there 1-3 is no color it's a wilderness encounter, 4-6 and 9 are blue so it's an encounter with an epiphenomenon, if it's 7 or 8 that's green so it's a citizen or servant encounter, if it's above that there's no encounter.

The next day (or however often you're checking) you move the PCs one square closer to their goal, imagine the box redrawn around their current position and roll again. The encounters come right off the map.

The concentric circles don't represent where stuff actually is, they're just a handy way of charting what kind of encounters are likely where. As you get closer to the power centers, encounters with more powerful NPCs become more likely. You skirt the edges, you don't have to worry so much.

Another nice thing is this method of charting/mapping means you can place a likelihood of an encounter on the map without placing an actual encounter or writing a new chart.

Like: let's say the goblins of Gaxen Kane moved their army over to the river. You just draw a yellow line parallel to the river somewhere. Now every time the PCs are in that area, there's a 1 in 3 chance of running into the goblin army--but you didn't have to calculate percentages or add any notes or deicde their precise location, just get out a highlighter...


P.S.
You could also do this:

You collapse all the  tables like this for a more mixed population.

1 Temple 
2 Wagon
3 Statue 
4 Graveyard
5 Citizen elf
6 Servant elf
7 Fighter elf
8 Ranger elf
9 Wizard elf
10 Cleric elf
11 Castle servant/aristocrat elf
12 Boss elf/Frost Giant Queen 

And so basically blue squares roll a d4 on this chart, green roll a d6 on this chart, yellow roll a d8, orange roll a d10, red roll a d12.

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The Most OSR Session

Before I go on to this actual play report, a legal update:

Details here. 

And here.

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Anyway, let's get back to games. This is Slorm:

Slorm is a goblin and a cleric who appears weekly in OSR founder* Jeff Rients' weekly game alongside a guy named Graham played by Lamentations of the Flame Princess founder James Edward Raggi IVs guy, Graham, a fighter who goes around dressed as the dungon-boss necromancer we killed in our first adventure.

Anyway Slorm worships a god that fell out of the God Maker, the Sister of Infinite Punishments.

Last time Slorm played, he was in a giant slime and got stung by an LotFP-style trap where he looked through a telescope and gained a view of the infinite universe like the Aleph in that Borges story and was incapacitated and then the session ended.

Then I spent several weeks not playing because life, then I came back and we're in a dungeon but Slorm now has Expanded Life Universe Perspective and talks like a SoCal acid guru who sees....who like seeeees, man, he sees youuuu, he sees what you're about, man, like....enTIREly.

So this game is Jeff Gameblog DMing, Zak S fresh off suing someone, James Raggi on fighter, two trans people and a Ukrainian sniper--you don't get more OSR than that.

So, this report straight from the from the seeeecret LotFP weekly game! (ssssh) :

Slorm wakes up to find the party's bard is dead. "Good!" he says. He is replaced by a blind dwarf.

We are in a Library. James' henchman El Grec has identified a sigil! its the sigil of the king! 

I , theee goblinn has posted henchindividuals outside the library, theres .MAGnificent fresco of the king leading troops. Slorm, filled with a wholly fraudulent sense of the inherent spirituality of a blind dwarf, says we have to follow the blind dwarf's lead through the library.

The blind dwarf has got a book off the shelf. As has Dr Merchandise thee henchman. 

(Not a real doctor just needed a name that began with D to go with previous henchfolk Astrid (R.I.P.), Boulder, and Christopher (R.I.P.).)

One d8 roll later  @Jeff Rients  "Does your character  actually read dwarf braille is the question?". More rolls, no. 

The henchmen notice one of the walls outside are bleeding. Slorm the goblin casts cure light wounds" on it, it scabs over. 

Blarnibus the Ogre licks the wall. The blood tastes significantly more acidic than expected.

Slorm then casts Cure Light on the ogre's tongue.  

The dwarves roll architecture. Nothing happens. Goblin cleric insists we just let the wall bleed because its dungeon dressing mannn. 

Slorm can see through the veil of maya ok? 

We go on. El Grec has picked up some Old Haldrani and can see a book called Lords of Gold!  It says where all the local gold mines are.

I am glad I am doing this write-up because I forgot that we found this.

Slorm can read a book called the Grimoire of Par Kaare which has some spells.

I also forgot that--Jeff what spells are in there?

but WHATEVER...down to level NEXT. We're in a huge corridor. With some...passages? idk James Edward Raggi IV is mapping so I trust him. 

Did I mention my goblin looked through a telescope into the infinite, got incapacitated for 3 sessions and now talks like a cult leader on mushrooms? Ok anyway. So he gets the blind dwarf to listen and he hears Sinister Laughter!  To the north. We go north. 

120 feet and then. Ok this dungeon is REALLLY big like it was drawn in the 70s by someone who didn't do rational architecture but its a Jeff Rients game so that is probably what it is.

(Turns out it's from Judges' Guild Journal. 2 decades of  game blogging for nothing, we are still running around in some eccentric notebook dungeon written by people who know people who give out the 3 Castles Award. ) 

We are in a martini-glass shaped room. Slorm the goblin casts Augury and does not have the spell Augury and so randomly decides to go right and not left. Both left and right doors lead to the same room.

Score! 

Goblin casts Insect Plague and sends the insects go down the corridor, they eventually find a secret door. Graham opens it. 

A TEMPLE! Scarabs on the walls. The floor is made of blue marble with white veins--all veins leading toward a laughing buddha/dwarf like statue. Blarnibus the ogre approaches it. The Statue is entirely blued silver and its eyes are gems. Slorm urges any party member but himself to approach the statue. Quoth Blarnibus "i'm gonna shake it like its a piggybank".

 

The only image that comes up when you google "Ogre with piggybank"

When he picks it up a hidden gong sounds! There's a delay on the guards showing up (Jeff just tells us the mechanic) Blarnibus rolls...4! A bunch of weirdoes in red and black start pouring out. 

I highly suspect Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is a reference here. 

Weirdoes? Shaved heads and forky beards! James takes the rearguard and the goblin sends an Insect Plague to protect them.

Slorm is insane but has the Rod of something for Clerics so that's why he's casting all this bullshit. 

The lowest level cultists show up first, and the plague takes them!! We get away scott free! 2500gp statue!

So far, so dungeon. But here's that real sauce:

Then--OF COURSE!--we dress the two dwarves up like the statue of the god by paying 500gp to the best cosplayer in the village. Jeff rules that by coincidence our blind dwarf has EXACTLY the same build as the god. Because: Jeff. 

But the god mostly wears a loin cloth."I'm gonna fast-forward to the stupid corridor with the 2 sets of double doors". Slorm rolls a 2. Slorm casts Continual Light on the dwarf god's loincloths.

So they'll glow, naturally. 

So the nonblind god-cosplaying dwarf leads the blind one to the plinth. The plinth is really tall though. One dwarf tosses the other. "Does he get up there before he sets off the alarm or not?". 1-3 or 4-6? 6. 

So fuck ok the dwarves are messing around on the floor as the alarm rings. Slorm casts Insect Plague! Scarabs to the front! Protect your gods! Guards in chainmail with spears roll up.

They are not intelligent. The statue of their scarab-friendly god that's been missing has no been replaced by two gods? And a bunch of live scarab beetles.

They immediately declare--ITS A MIRACLE. The guards bow "We're not worthy!" The blind dwarf says "No you are not". 

They fetch the high priest. One of the guards is confused to see two gods. Slorm casts Command. The one word command? PHILOSOPHIZE! For a round (6 seconds) the guard rhapsodizes about how there are TWO where once there were ONE!!! A holy mystery! 

4 junior clerics roll up. Jeff rolls to see if they are swept up by the religious hysteria. They fail their save and begin praying. 

James Edward Raggi IV asks "Um no reason, just asking....whats the dwarf gestation period?" Jeff rules 12 months. 

Blind dwarf goes "I don't feel safe". 

James goes..."i'm just saying, that we have the ability, at the rate of one per year, new gods!" "WE ARE JACK KIRBY!" 

 

Jeff: "You know i don't do this very often but I'm awarding everybody 50 extra xp for shenanigans!" 

550xp each. 

No fights.

*?

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Retropost Sunday: Dungeon Types

Some kinds of dungeons I'm interested in:


The Lesser Crazy-Wizard (or Funhouse) Dungeon

So this guy (often a wizard, though it can be a demi-lich or an innkeeper or just some jerk) threw a place together for largely the purpose of fucking with people. Full of puzzles. Un-full of internal logic. Room follows upon room for no particular normal-architectural-function-serving reason. Egregious genre violations are likely but not essential. (The Crazy Wizard being the traditional catch-all excuse for all D&D genre-violations). The worst parts usually have stupid puns, old jokes and references to showtunes in them but these, likewise, are not essential.

A slightly more "sane" rationale for a puzzle dungeon like this can be: "Evil force treating the PCs like test subjects in order to plan future attack on humans/earthlings/surface-dwellers/air-breathers/two-legged-ones etc."

Either way, this sort of dungeon is among the easiest to write. (Though the hardest to master.) Perhaps the best thing about puzzle dungeons is it's very easy to pull individual rooms, gimmicks, or traps out of them and stick them into other puzzle dungeons. So if your players miss a bit of it, you can stick one onto the next lunatic mage tower.

It's kind of pointless to buy a published one of these and just keep the structure and re-skin all the details, because all the designer's work generally went into the details, not the structure.


The Greater Crazy-Wizard Dungeon

This resembles the Lesser Crazy Wizard Dungeon only there is a structure and that structure is as crazy as the details.

That is--some over-arching meta-puzzle or meta-challenge profoundly affects everything you try to do in the dungeon. The rooms all spin independently of each other so it's a mapping challenge or you can only see what's in a room if you enter from the proper direction or you have to kill everything in the blue rooms but not everything in the red rooms. These can be awesome if done right but are highly taste sensitive--if the gimmick doesn't fit what you or your PCs want to do, the whole thing's pretty much useless.


Working Palace

This is any kind of big residence of some people/monsters/entities that are alive and active in the world and have built a big place to hang out in. The logistics and aesthetics of the place tend to match whatever race inhabits it.

These dungeons put the most pressure on the DM to actually make some sense. (DM's are free to ignore this pressure, but whatever, anyway...) Locked doors have keys, the inhabitants have bedrooms or other quarters, and there should probably be whatever things a big residence is supposed to have just in order to function normally as a residence like, say, a kitchen.

All this, PLUS the fact that it should still be fun, PLUS you need a way for the PCs to get in there without immediately being killed by guards, PLUS trying to give it enough monster/NPC variety so that, say The Palace of the Lizard Prince isn't just endless fights with Lizard Man Guards makes this the hardest kind of dungeon to write. Plus it's really hard to buy a published adventure of this kind and re-skin it because if the featured monster/NPC race doesn't particularly fit what you're trying to do, then a lot of the other elements might not fit either. Like, sure the Red Dragonmen have a magma bath but if I want to re-skin it as a Kenku palace then you've got to re-write the bath, too, which sucks because the magma bath was kind of cool...

It is usually easier to write by making the monarch insane, therefore giving excuses for making parts of it into a Puzzle Dungeon.

I have yet to see a good, published Pure Working Palace dungeon. Yes, that's a challenge.


One-Shot Funnel Dungeon

This dungeon can be gotten through in a session or two and never lets you forget the main objective. You know "Den of the Moldy Ogre Who Is Like Ten Feet Away" or whatever. There's a big bad or quest item or major gimmick in there and the rest is just roadbumps and the PCs generally know it. These are useful to have around but a good DM can write one in his sleep.

(A subgenre of this is the Strongly Implied Plot One-Shot Dungeon, where the PCs not only are moving toward some simple goal, but have few enough options that they have a decent chance of tripping certain predictable plot events on the way. This doesn't have to be a railroad.)

When you buy one, you tend to go "I could've written that in my sleep", unless it has some really clever stuff in there which allows the PCs to "use" the place in more than one way.

When you buy a full-length adventure that turns out to be just one of these stretched out to ridiculous proportions--say, not just Dragon + A Handful Of Sucksmear Kobolds And Not Much Else, but, say Dragon + Several Thousand Sucksmear Kobolds And Not Much Else, then it can make you want to not buy a published adventure ever again.


Re-Purposed Forgotten PlaceThere once was a mighty empire, then it sucked and died and now blobs and tribes of ratmen crawl around their Once Mighty halls. Relatively easy to write because if you don't want to write in the Once Mighty Kitchen or Once Mighty Horseshoe-Making Room then you can just say there was a cave-in or it's been emptied out or lost to the mists of time or whatever. However, they're more fun when you write in some politics among the new inhabitants--like the ratmen hate the blobmen who are servants of the cheesemen who are imprisoned by the Elephant Pig who worships the Demon Pheasant who possesses the Fairy Cow. If they bump around long enough, the PCs can do a pretty good job of unwittingly stitching together their own plot.

(This is a good place for Schrodinger's motive--i.e. there's several mcguffins and several mcguffin-wanting NPCs/intelligent monsters, but which of them wants which mcguffin is left in the air 'til the PCs actually show up. Whatever the NPC/critter wants inevitably forces the PCs to go to some part of the dungeon they haven't been in yet or go to some place they have been and try harder.)

It also allows you to throw in bits of Crazy Wizard Logic but you don't have to carry them out to their conclusion because maybe part of it has Fallen Into Ruin. So like this room fills with water if you try to cast a spell in it but the next one just has some orcs and a pine cone.

Also, this kind is really easy and fun to re-skin if there's some politics since you can just change the factions around and pin any uncongruous element on the long-dead "architect" culture. Like I pointed out yesterday while re-skinning Tomb of The Bull King.


The Dungeon Where Something Just HappenedThis dungeon can be any of the other kinds of dungeons, but then some large and transformative event just occurred--invasion from without, meteorite strike, experiment-gone-awry. An important function of this change is to create an easy in-game reason why a horde of supposedly powerful, intelligent, dungeon-dwelling beings can't keep 3-12 adventurers of levels 1-3 from just waddling up to their front door and stealing all their stuff.

Once you come up with a good event, this kind of dungeon writes itself. Plus it provides an instant in-game excuse for rooms to radically change if things get boring. The only problem is it can get in the way of the default "delve/loot/rest at inn/delve/loot/rest at inn" default-OD&D type adventurer-whim-centric dungeoneering schedule. Things in this kind of dungeon have to have a little bit of a life of their own.


The Place That Wasn't A Dungeon A Second Ago But Now Is

Basically, it's like Alien. It's an ordinary (to the PCs) place and something bad just got loose and so now every corridor is infused with primal terror and whatnot. Generally I kind of hate this kind of dungeon because it's hard to make the environment "come alive" for an extended period of time (In a game, I mean, not in a movie. I like Alien just fine--I'm not a psycho) and, to me, D&D is as much about the place itself as the things in it. I've yet to see a really good one. However, it is closely related to...


The Dungeon that Used To Be That But Now Is This

This place was, long ago, something interesting but benign, like a zoo. Then it became horrible. Some malevolent and probably supernatural thing has evilified every inch of it. Like the Greater Crazy Wizard Dungeon, it's all about the premise. Unless you like that, a published one is probably going to be kind of useless.


The Dungeon of Beings Who Are Completely Weird

Unlike the Crazy Wizard/Puzzle dungeon, the entities in charge here are not necessarily hostile or cruel, they just behave or live in such an alien way that it's a big pain in the ass to go around finding stuff in their house. Like the Bath House in Spirited Away or Lewis Carrol's Wonderland. Again: the premise here is everything, and there is a huge possibility of genre-dissonance. If you don't like the premise then you won't like the dungeon because the premise affects everything about it.
__________

Obviously there are other kinds of dungeons--and most dungeons have elements of more than one "species".

Anyway, can anybody think of excellent examples of dungeons that fit one of these bills (aside from the usual suspects--like we already know about White Plume Mountain)? Are there types of dungeon you like that I've left out?

(Not "types" in terms of what specfically is in the dungeon, but in the sense of the structure of the dungeon.)

What My Players Are Doing When They're Supposed To Be Listening To My Enthralling Descriptions Of 10' x 10' Rooms

If you click on the picture, you'll see a meticulous list of magic-items the party's acquired. As for the rest...what is that, paladin-playing-guy, a bear wearing paisley? And what's with the bunnies? There are no bunnies in this dungeon.

The "fail" I think refers to the paladin's die rolls. The misspelled "Fale" in the upper left is a reference to "Yale" the artist's alma mater. As for "Don't Shake Me Lucifer" well, we were listening to Roky Erickson. As you do.

This drawing has been censored to spare your delicate sensibilities. Note the flail snail.

Yes, I made them fight a flail snail. This is largely because I am awesome.

The rogue player illustrates her exploits. Left--attempting to seduce the White Elf Amazon guard. Right--dwarf attacking the skin-stealing gremlin after it leaps from the hollowed-out-body of a party guest.

This character sketch was drawn on the back of one of those shiny lid things you get on top of mexican food. By someone with a master's in fine arts.

Somewhere in one of the 666 layers of the Abyss, they are showing this drawing to a 4-armed demon and going "Yeah, man, this is the palooka that natural-20ed you from behind."

Horst Von Chasm--1st level wizard--who survived a slime trap only to be crushed by a giant toad. He might've pulled through if the cleric hadn't decided Hey, he'll probably die anyway, why not test this red potion on him?

Hey look, somebody's mapping. Excellent. Note the "ribbit noises" in the lower right hand corner.

Finally! The Magic Item Challenge Results

Remember this thing? It's a magic item and I had a thing in this blog about how we were all gonna write it up as a magic item.

I decided it was Forgetting Dust.

Forgetting Dust removes whatever it touches from the memories of men, women, and beasts.

The unusually high concentration pictured here is enough to not only cause the glass and vitrine to be forgotten, but to cause the location of the room it is in to be forgotten, to make mapping the building the room is in impossible, and to cause the location of the city in which that building, room and pile of dust lie to become permanently obscure to all travellers, despite the fact that it lies along a major trade route.

The room also contains a number of powerful and terrible devices as well as maps, pets, poems, poets, founding documents of various religious faiths, chemical formulae, musical scores, and dinner recipes that were all deliberately placed in the room (generally at great cost and with great difficulty) over the course of milennia by those who wished them forever forgotten.

Here are the rest of the write-ups...

Tetsubo said...

Chalice of the Broken Vow

At one time this chalice was used as part of the commitment ceremony for a Paladin order. The greatest of their host has sipped holy water from it for a hundred years. But when one of their most trusted members brtrayed the order and became a Blackard the chalice shattered into it's current form.

The youngest and newest member to have joined the order took up the brioken remains and vowed to redeem her fallen companion. After years of questing she finally succeeded in redeeming his soul even as she drove his life from his corrupted body.

If a vial of holy water is drunk from this vessel the drinker takes 3d6 damage but benefits from a Greater Restoration spell. It will only work for any one individual once.

Rod said...

The Broken Hourglass

When the cork is placed in the source of the sand, time stops for all but 1d6+1 randomly chosen creatures within a 100 foot radius of the hourglass. If there are insufficient creatures within the initial radius to make up the rolled number, the hourglass casts a progressively wider net until the quota is filled.

Rod said...

Alternate, possibly better idea -- it's 1 randomly chosen creature for each alignment.

James said...

This is a Relic. It is "That which was Shattered," and "The Despair of Gods." In various legends, it is known as "Cerridwen's Cauldron," "The Holy Grail," "The Cure for the World's Pain," and several other names on several different worlds. Originally, a gift from the gods, the vessel was shattered when mortals refused to repent of their wickedness and sought to use this beneficent item in selfish ways. Blessed water continually pours into the cup, but, the water now turns to Sand before it reaches the vessel. The cup will remain in this state until such time as men and other creatures finally learn to treat themselves and others with decency.
A grain of Sand taken from the Relic will serve as the ultimate Bane. It may be used as a Wish, so long as Evil is the purpose, though this destroys the grain. Furthermore, a grain of the Sand may be used in a formula for Lichdom, cutting the research time and cost by as much as a third, and increasing the chance for success by an amount to be determined by the DM. Also, the bearer may cast Harm, once per day, so long as he carries a grain. Due to it's very nature, everyone within a 100 yard range will suffer a cumulative 10% penalty to all rolls for each grain of sand present. Also, anyone actually carrying a grain, will become ill, losing one point of constitution per day, for each grain carried. These may be restored via the usual means.

squidman said...

The Tabernacle of The Forgotten One This object is a tabernacle used by the order of a long forgotten god. It’s a box two feet wide, four tall and three deep. It was made in ancient times, crafted from black wood and covered with lead plates. Upon closer examination, the plates will reveal symbols and markings in the form of pressings, but most of them are unreadable. The front panel is a door opened by a magical key/glyph, the inside, in contrast to it's outside, is full of white light.

...Little is known of the tabernacle or the order to which it belonged. It is said that it was an unholy cult which--due to it’s dark rituals and human sacrifices--has been outlawed throughout the civilized lands. Thus the Tabernacle was created as a portable altar, that could be easily disguised and transported without suspicion.
Those who have spent long years investigating the tales and scraps of information that have escaped the flames of inquisition, still debate about the nature of the tabernacle. The old manuscripts describe it as a fountain and a glass chalice. It is not clear what sprang from the fountain, some sources say water, other claim that it was a substance of unknown origin, grainy in appearance but liquid to the touch. The cult believed that what was inside was literally the substance of their god.

...It is known that at least once the ancient artifact was nearly destroyed. Many hundreds of years ago, the cult was discovered and its hideout was overridden by paladins and clerics. Almost all of them were slain by evil magic, but the strongest champion of law prevailed and finished the last of the dark priests. He then decided to destroy the tabernacle--beginning with the chalice. When he grabbed the chalice, the attention of the forgotten god started to focus upon him.

The Evil One was tempting him by sending visions of power and splendor but, when the holy man resisted, the god started tormenting him with images of horror and pain. The cleric was trying to keep his sanity and fulfill his mission, but his will was weakened by the long battle and the many wounds he had taken. His mind was giving out but in the last effort he tried to destroy the chalice. As he raised his hand to cast it against the floor, in a sudden flash of sanity, he realized that he was standing in a middle of a large and powerful glyph.

...He suddenly understood that the evil god foresaw the destruction of the cult and had his priests prepare a trap. Now he knew he was to be the next leader of the cult, his tormented mind finally gave out to the evil power, but it sent one final command to his hand-attempting to smash the chalice. The action came too late. The blow was too weak and the the chalice was only partially damaged.
That is the last known mention of the tabernacle or the cleric... It’s important to note that the PC’s should be aware of the potency and danger that the Tabernacle represents. Perhaps the party’s wizard can decipher some of the symbols on the surface of the lead enclosure, maybe a famous bard has came across a fragment of an obscure tale of a long forgotten cult... The whole artifact is immune to any divinations.
Upon drinking from the chalice the character has to roll a d12, effects below. If players decide to pour the liquid into anything else, it automatically changes into sand. 1 - the character has an epiphany in which he is shown the true nature of the Forgotten One and goes mad, no save throws, no nothing. Just plain MAD! 2 - the god looks favorably upon the mortal and grants him a wish 3 - the god decides to share a piece of his unholy knowledge with the hero, PC looses two pints of intelligence but gains 2 points of wisdom 4 -the god sees the person worthy and blesses him/her. That works like a Cause Fear and Iron Skin cast on that person by a high level wizard, and lasts one day 5 - the god decides to heal all wounds of the drinking character 6 - nothing happens 7 - nothing happens 8 - the god doesn’t see the person worthy, s/he is dealt 4d8 damage, with no saves or reduction whatsoever 9 - the god decides to punish the person by paralyzing them for as long as the DM wishes (but not permanently) 10 - the god is angered by the mortal and punishes him/her by permanently draining 1 point of strength and constitution 11 - in punishment for disturbance, the god permanently drains character’s level 12 - the god sees the mortal as a useful tool and transfers part of his consciousness (or a demon servant?) into the PC’s body. From now on the PC becomes prone to blackouts during which the evil power takes control of his body...

Barking Alien said...

I'll tell you what it once was...
Guthryndael's Goblet.

The 'Goblet', also known as 'The Blue Goblet', though this was not its true title, was once a painting by the famed artist Guthryndael of Gael'Bannon, also known to be an alchemist of some skill.

It was said that Guthryndael made and mixed his own paints and often did so using his alchemy knowledge. Many people whisper that this made his paintings seem unnaturally realistic. Was he a fantastic painter or a talented amateur mage? Who can say.

Was is known is that the 'Goblet' was eventually purchased by a minor noble of the Gaullegue Empire and he in turn passed it on to his eldest son. Now this son married a most attractive and sweet young woman, who truth be told he did not deserve. Many a night he would come home from an evening of drinking, womanizing and other foul passions and strike at his lovely young wife. One evening, with his mind both fogged and heated, he went to hit her hard with a closed fist. He missed and struck the painting and the room echoed suddenly with the sound of shattered glass.

When servants and guards entered the chamber they found the young noble on his knees, clutching his arm. In place of his hand was a writhing, twisting mass of blue tendrils, all of which tried desperately to choke its wielder to death.

Tales say the young noble died soon after. The yong wife inherited the keep and remarried a distant cousin of the noble (the family always prefered her presence to their own blood anyway). She and her husband live there to this day and last I had heard one of her children is a painter now, or an apprentice on their way.

The ruins of the 'Goblet' and the frame that held it now sit in a distant and forgotten corner of the keep's deepest dungeon. Some say that criminals guilty of striking their wives and/or children are left in the section of the dungeon the 'Goblet' occupies. Once in a while a guard or grounds keeper can be seen carrying away a large sack stained deep blue.

Others say the keep's original owner, the young noble son, is locked down below as well, now little more then a mass of blue tentacles and hunger, smelling of pain and old paint.

At least...this is the story I know.

Al said...

That's the "Cork of Dessication."

If placed into a bottle or other container, it will transform up to 1d6 gallons of liquid into a fine dry powder. Upon speaking a command word, the powder will immediately transform back into its original liquid state. Magical potions, poisons, oils, etc, all retain their normal effect despite the alteration in form.

Originally intended to facilitate daring new forms of alchemy, these Corks have nonetheless been put to less conventional uses, such as smuggling or assassination.

myrystyr said...

It is not a magic item.

It is debris from an altered timeline. Any magic that is detected is residual energy from time travelling. Anyone inspecting the debris, taking part of it, or remaining in its presence for more than a few minutes will dream of alternate realities the next time they go to sleep. This may cause nightmares.

Also, anyone who comes in contact with the debris has a chance of attracting psychic predators (such as the Thought Eater). They are also placed on a watch list by the Time Lords, or equivalent dimensional guardians.

Chris said...

The Dryest Martini.

Anyone holding this deliciously astringent beverage may make two Encounter Reaction rolls and accept the better of the two. The wielder must maintain an air of slightly caddish sophistication and attempt to communicate in bon mots and one liners at all times.

GodEyeHate

So it all started when Patrick looked on the map and said "Well we should go to (the heretofore neglected) Abu Zin Zeer--it's a port, they'll probably have some idea which way the elves took the Eye of Vorn"...

So to Abu Zin Zeer they went. They were to have a meeting with the thieves' guild next session to discuss getting into the high end of the city, where Lord Gormengeth and his sticking-out-like-a-sore-thumb white elves were last seen heading with their suspicious 25-foot wide crate.

-

But a funny thing happened on the way to the next session... namely a game of Slow War, wherein Dr Noisms, playing eastern interloper Liangyu Hui in that domain-scale wargame, hired one 10th-level and 2 5th level assassins to kill the Warlord of Abu Zin Zeer. I rolled on the AD&D assassination tables and they all failed miserably.

And then Noisms sailed his fleet into the harbor.

And the pharaoh did, too

And Michael sent the Red King's vampire troops in there through a mirror to seize the city.

-

So your humble narrator and GM figures that in the timeline of the game, all this Slow War stuff happens after the D&D session the players are currently in, giving them time to do their thing and, if they fuck Abu Zin Zeer up so bad it makes the Slow War events impossible, then, ok, alternate universe.

-

The players are, however, having horrible nightmares of things to come.

_

Now the players meet with the thieves' guild, who, naturally, have a shadowy figure sent by Liangyu Hui offering to aid the PCs getting up to the palace in exchange for them slaying the Warlord. Makes perfect sense and thank you Noisms for the vicarious plot assist. Players take a 5000gp downpayment. 

_

The PCs then devise a wonderful, elaborate plan: druid turns into an exotic bird, is delivered by the fighter as a gift from his army to the Warlord's. They roll well on charisma and the Warlord invites them into the palace.

_

However.... this all takes a day. So it's beginning to overlap the first day of the Slow War timeline. I roll to see when Noisms first assassination attempt takes place...7 AM. 

So, right after the party starts, one of the harem girls (a hijra) leaps toward with a wavy blade to decapitate the Warlord. Despite or perhaps because of the fact that this random NPC is about to do his job for him, the party fighter gets initiative and lops off the hijra's hand.

So, Noisms, that's why assassination attempt #1 failed. If you were wondering.

As for why the other 2 failed? Well, it's complicated...

Taking a look at the disposition of the palace...

They concocted a plan for heisting the 20' diameter eye of the Grim Grey God of Iron And Rain whose essentials should be obvious to anyone with even a passing familiarity with Marble Madness...

...a plan which, if successful, would surely ensure them a large and well-appointed home in D&D-PC Valhalla.

After a lot of chaos in the palace and kinda-mapping and crawling around on roofs, the confident high level players use Detect Magic to locate the room the Eye's in and use Stone Shape to peel open the wall from the outside.

And then they saw what the elves had done to the Eye of Vorn...

God's Eye Triple Beholder MechGolem.

To make a long story short:

Three spend most of the fight unconscious.

One now made of stone.

One dead.

One palace totalled.

Everyone in the city runs.

And that, Liangyu Hui, Most August Desert Troll And Oligarch of Silaish Vo, Blessed Of The Burning Sea, Challenger of the Necropharaoh, Bringer of Murder By Sea, is why your assassination attempts failed.

-

I guess next week we find out how the players escaped the city just before it was overrun by vampires...

-

-

-

Urbancrawl Rules For Slacker DMs

Note: this stuff all got put into Vornheim eventually. So if you like it--buy that. It won awards.

What shape is Los Angeles? I have no idea. (It's way bigger than The City-State of the Invincible Overlord, and that map is huge.)

I don't think anyone knows except maybe Noah Cross. Anyway, point is, I want the big cities in this campaign to be big and mysterious and noiry and, perhaps, in that way, unlike real medieval cities.

In the mind and in books and movies, the noir city is more like a dungeon than a mapped thing in a tour book--it's an amorphous dark space through which the characters grope and carve their way. It's a romantic rather than a classical approach to the city.

Plus, like I've said before, I don't want to world-build a lot of stuff I'll never use. So I'm writing some "urbancrawl" rules so that I can build the city as the PCs explore it.

Urbancrawl Rules:

Once a place is explored, it's fixed on the map. Until then, though, anything the DM hasn't written is up for grabs.


Neighborhoods

Above is a neighborhood map of Vornheim. It was achieved by writing out numbers one through ten in different colored markers. Pretty much randomly.

So far, as you can see, Vornheim has 10 neighborhoods, which is about a third as many as LA or Manhattan and about twice as many as Fritz Lieber appeared to need to write all the Lankhmar stories.

It doesn't show the actual shape of the city, just where neighborhoods are relative to each other and where the major streets and bridges are (Vornheim has building-to-building bridges everywhere--like Sharn in the Eberron setting and many previous pulp sci-fi cities, but for these rules, the bridges aren't necessary). For example, the fastest route from neighborhood ten to neighborhood four is via neighborhoods five or six, though you could go 10-9-2-1-4 if there was a giant lizard eating neighborhoods 5 and 6 or something.


Unique Buildings

Certain kinds of buildings there just isn't that many of even in a big medieval city. Like, Vornheim has:

1 Arena
2 Shipping operations (it's landlocked)
1 Barracks
1 Prison
3 Major theaters
1 Orphanage
1 Spymaster's secret headquarters
1 Cartographer
2 (competing) Cathedrals
1 Zoo
2 Markets
1 Independent library
1 Graveyard
1 Palace
4 Courts of law

If, in the middle of an adventure, the PCs suddenly need to know where one of these things is, or find some other unique place, roll a d10. That's what neighborhood it's in.


Getting From Neighborhood To Neighborhood

The major thoroughfares roughly match all the lines in the words spelling out the numbers in the neighborhood map. i.e. to get from neighborhood ten to neighborhood seven the PCs need to walk across a big "x" shaped intersection and if you flew in a dirigible over neighborhood six you'd see that the major streets spelled out the word "six".

(This is just the default street map for if a neighborhood is improvised during play. You always have the option of getting off your ass and mapping more realistic streets in any part of town, as long as the PCs haven't been through it yet. Plus if you count the bridges, there's several "layers" of connecting streets.)

Walking from one neighborhood to the next isn't that hard if the PCs know where they're going and it's daytime.

If it's not daytime, the DM may roll once on the Who Are You And Why Are You In My Way Table (Vornheim)(below)(Or any other random urban encounter table) once for each neighborhood the PCs travel through on their way to wherever they're going.

If they don't know where they're going, they can ask a random stranger for directions. Roll a charisma check. Success means they get where they're going. If they fail, the stranger isn't charmed enough to give conscientious directions, consult the following chart:

Fail by 1: You're lost, roll d10 to see what area you ended up in.
Fail by 2: You're in a dark alley, there's a thief trying to pick your pocket.
by 3: ...make that several thieves.
by 4: Refuses to give directions.
by 5: Refuses and is offended.
by 6: Person you're asking attacks you.


Non-Unique Buildings

Some stuff is everywhere. Assume every neighborhood contains at least one of the kinds of buildings listed in the table below under "Random Individual Buildings". (This is probably unrealistic, like is there really a jeweller in every neighborhood? No. Is there only one? No. But in a pinch, it'll do.) This way if the PCs go--"We need the nearest cheesemaker, stat!" you just use the "Travel Within A Neighborhood" rules.


Travel Within A Neighborhood

Once the PCs are in the same neighborhood as whatever they're looking for, if the DM is lazy and hasn't mapped that neighborhood yet, s/he rolls a d10. The streets between the PC and his/her objective are shaped like whatever number comes up on the die. For example, if the PC comes into the neighborhood from the north and the DM rolls a "1" then the map to wherever the PC is going looks like this:

If it's in the middle of a pleasant and sunny day then the DM shows them this (and makes up some street names) and everyone goes, Well, gee, that's nice to know, the PCs note that down and the DM draws it onto the map of the neighborhood and that's that. (The streets aren't shaped like numbers--the segment of their journey that lies between them and their goal is. And often, it'll only be shaped like part of a number--in this case, the right half. Just add on extra side streets so they don't realize you're doing this.)

However, if the PCs run out of arrows durring a goblin invasion and desperately need arrows and want to find the nearest arrowsmith, then the DM doesn't show the PCs this little "1"-shaped map and watches them run around on it trying to find what they need.

If the PCs take a wrong turn and unwittingly run off the edge of the "1" into an unknown zone, simply roll d10 again for the layout of the streets they just ran onto.

Over time, once the PCs have been a few places in a neighborhood, the "known streets" of the neighborhood might look like this:



And the DM can flesh out the neighborhood at will and throw in "decoy" streets to disguise the scheme--it's easy, numbers are just straight lines and circles.

That's the same neighborhood after 5 seconds of extra streets.

All this is more complicated if you take into account the bridges, but for the sake of a single day's adventure this should do you. If a PC is on a bridge and gets knocked off to a lower "level" and doesn't climb back up, just start the process all over again on the lower city level.


Random Individual Buildings

If the PCs run into-, or just happen to be looking at-, a random building, roll d100 to determine what it is:

1-2-Watchtower
3-4-Whorehouse
5-6-Alchemist (1-3 public apothecary, 4-6 private residence)
7-8-Weird shop full of random crap
9-10-Famous local eccentric's residence
11-12-Nest of criminals
13-14-Armorer/Blacksmith
15-16-Whatever the name is for someone who sells horses (ostler?)(stableman?)
17-20-Tavern/Inn/Pub
21-22-Baker
23-24-Barber
25-Granary
26-27-Scholar (private residence)
28-29-Candlemaker
30-Jeweller
31-33-Butcher
34-35-Cheesemaker
36-37-Leatherworker
38-39-Mason
40-41-Miller
42-43-Brewery
44-Physician
45-46-Hatter
47-48-Veterinarian
49-50-Weaver
51-53-Gambling hall
54-55-Tailor
56-Winemaker
57-58-General outfitter (expedition equipment)
59-60 Bookbinder
61-62 Bowyer
63-65 Fortune Teller
66-Furrier
67-68 Glassblower
69-70 Locksmith
71-Moneylender
72-73 Shoemaker
74-75 Stonecarver
76-77 Printer/engraver
78-100 Private residence

If a PC enters an unmapped bulding, roll d6. The layout of rooms on a given floor will roughly match the layout of dots on a standard casino d6, i.e.:

If it becomes relevant, roll 2d6 to determine number of floors (in Vornheim, anyway, for a more realistic city, roll a smaller die).

Each floor can be laid out the same or differently, depending on how frantic the pace of the game is.

(For major buildings, just roll more dice and put the layouts next to each other. Or just be slightly less of a slacker and have a few of those generic church/castle/great hall layouts printed out.)


Pubs, Inns, and Other Commercial Establishments

Have four short pub descriptions locked and loaded before any urbancrawl session. (i.e. "quietest pub in town, red curtains, drunk painter eating sausage at counter, pick-pocketable for 2d6 g.p., waitress is 9th-level anti-paladin, rooms are cheap"). If the PCs enter a pub or inn roll d4 to determine which one they walked into. If your PCs enter more than four pubs in one session then, well, God help you.

God or Jeff.

Once you use a pub, write a new one between sessions.

Likewise, write short descriptions for four generic local merchants, i.e. "takes forever, expensive, but has valuable information about last NPC party met" and do the same with them.

Random Schmuck Table

If the PCs accost someone and you want it to be interesting, roll on the Who Are You and Why Are You In My Way Table. If they accost somebody and you just want it to be some random loser, roll below or on the WFRP career table if you've got that:

1 Acrobat
2 Apothecarist
3 Architect
4 Armorer
5 Artist
6 Astrologer
7 Baker
8 Barrister
9 Bowyer
10 Brewer
11 Bricklayer
12 Candlemaker
13 Carpenter
14 Cartographer
15 Clothier
16 Cook
17 Diplomat
18 Dyer
19 Engineer
20 Engraver
21 Farmer
22 Fisherman
23 Forester
24 Fortune-Teller
25 Furrier
26 Gardener
27 Glassblower
28 Grain Merchant
29 Gravedigger
30 Herbalist
31 Hunter
32 Innkeeper
33 Interpreter
34 Jester
35 Jeweler
36 Leatherworker
37 Locksmith
38 Messenger
39 Miner
40 Minstrel
41 Moneylender
42 Navigator
43 Painter
44 Peddler
45 Physician
46 Playwright
47 Rat Catcher
48 Sailor
49 Scribe
50 Servant
51 Shipwright
52 Shoemaker
53 Spy
54 Stonecarver
55 Storyteller
56 Weaver
57 Bookbinder
58 Mercenary
59 Beggar
60 Juggler
61 Dwarf (roll again)
62 Elf (roll again)
63 Half-orc (roll again)
64 Tiefling (roll again)
65 Half-elf (roll again)
66 Roll on WAYAWAYIMW Table below
67 Child
68 Extremely ugly child
69 Long lost relative (boring, but friendly and helpful)
70 Dog catcher
71 Thief (not working today)
72 Wizard
73 Soldier
74 Fishwife
75 Wife (non fish-)
76 Tavern wench
77 Strapping young lad, possibly unemployed
78 Lunatic
79 Alchemist
80 Executioner
81 Confused foreigner of indeterminate occupation
82 Two goblins standing on top of each other hiding inside a human-shaped costume
83 Noble
84 Drunk noble
85 Creepy...(roll again)
86 One-legged...(roll again)
87 Pirate
88 Bard (about to die of unknown causes) (authorities will be apathetic)
89 Tavern keeper
90 Fetch-it Boy
91 Knight
92 Siamese twin (roll twice)
93 Lovable scamp (1-3 red-headed 4-6 with stolen pie from windowsill) (is actually wererat)
94 Suspicious, evasive weirdo
95 Carnival freak
96 Fake carnival freak
97 PC chooses (holy shit it's all Gameforge in here!)
98 Cleric
99 Doppleganger (roll again)(means no harm)
100 King/Local lord in disguise roaming amongst the common folk


Who Are You And Why Are You In My Way Table (Vornheim)

(empty spaces to be filled in by DM when PCs aren't looking)

1-Pickpocket
2-Thugs (#=#of PCs)(level 1 fighters)(probably)
3-Kindly, helpful old woman, who happens to _______________
4-Fat fortune teller
5-Crazy poet who will __________
6-Drunk noble that __________
7-Drunk priest who ________ but only if ___________
8-Confused goblin
9-Drunk commoner (1-3 funny 4-6 boring)
10-Aggressive Prostitute (roll on world's most famous AD&D DMG table)
11-Thief with intriguing proposition (possibly plot-relevant)
12-Creepy noble with intriguing proposition (possibly plot-relevant)
13-Dog, normal, except _____________
14-Frightened child being pursued by (roll again on this table)
15-Old man who is actually _______________
16-Disshevelled damsel in distress, being pursued by (roll again on this table)
17-Helpful NPC who ________
18-Street fight between goblin raiders and locals
19-Corpse
20-Locked chest someone just threw out, containing _________

(Reader-suggested additions to this table welcome.)

Once an encounter has been used, cross it off and write a new one.
My "second string" so far includes...

-Travelling theatre (1-3 good 4-6 annoying)
-(Roll on table) being chased by (Roll on table)