d100 ways to become a werebeast

 i'm doing a thing where i'm trying to quit smoking cigarettes and in addition to using patches and nicotine lozenges i'm also writing d100 tables instead of smoking. also writing tables if i fuck up and smoke.

so get ready for lots of great tables

i'm taking suggestions for tables on the discord

cw there's some fucked up shit in here

d100 ways to become a werebeast

1. Kiss the beast

2. Get scratched by the beast

3. Get bitten by the beast

4. Consume a bit of the beast’s fur

5. Consume a bit of the beast’s blood

6. Yiff the beast

7. Look into the eyes of the beast

8. Walk through a doorway with some of the beast’s scat on your boot

9. Receive a curse from a witch

10. Piss off the gods

11. Please the wrong gods

12. Sacred pact with a vengeful spirit

13. Kill your parents

14. Practice cannibalism

15. Kill a man in cold blood by moonlight

16. Eat food prepared by a widow on her period without having it cleansed first

17. Curse the name of the ancestors

18. Eat the flesh of a deer whom you killed for sport

19. Wear your clothes backwards and circumambulate a temple backwards, chanting the compassion mantra backwards

20. Fail in a your promise to an ape

21. Sleep with the fingernails of a man hanging from a gibbet under your pillow

22. Don’t say “bless you” when someone sneezes

23. Steal from an orphan

24. Spit on a holyman

25. Eat a meal while others starve without offering to share it first

26. Sleep in an open grave during a thunderstorm

27. Break fast on a cross-quarter day that falls on a full moon

28. Bewitch three people into carnal favors

29. Poison a child

30. Drown a baby in a cesspit

31. Push an old man down a flight of stairs

32. Drink the blood of a virgin from a skull chalice

33. Laugh during funeral rites

34. Be put on trial for killing a family and get released from punishment despite being guilty

35. Poison a well

36. Hold a person accountable for a debt they can’t pay in such a way that their death results

37. Live with wild animals for one year and a day

38. Have the Zoanthropic ritual performed: a surgical procedure which destroys the frontal lobe in such a way as to render one a beastial lunatic. Usually performed on the criminally insane as a punishment, though occasionally voluntarily chosen.

39. Drag a man to death through the streets in full view of his children

40. Forcefully remove the dignity of an already humiliated person as they die

41. Kill someone in cold blood who previously saved your life

42. Desecrate a holy site of the Eight Great Saints

43. Enact a policy which evaporates the livelihood of an entire town for personal profit

44. Eat 84 ghosts

45. Entomb a man up to his neck in ice and set his hair on fire

46. Cut open a pregnant woman and strangle her with her own fetus

47. Have your brain implanted into a frankensteinian vessel

48. Transmutation by evil sorceries

49. Step into a teleporter and be fused with an animal

50. Live like such an animal for 101 days.

51. Be trapped in a cage and fed nothing but raw meat for a year and a day

52. Live in a sewer eating filth

53. Have sex with a severed head

54. Crush a child in a cider press and drink the remains

55. Tar and feather yourself with pine pitch and raven feathers, jump into a volcano, and live

56. Eat an entire 80 pound wheel of cheese

57. Break into every single house in a town of at least 100 residents and cut a piece of a hair from ever occupant, wear a pair of leggings woven from said hair while you set fire to a temple

58. Have yourself sewn into the corpse of such an animal

59. Dress as such an animal and kill one victim a night for an entire moon cycle without being seen

60. Be buried alive along with such an animal and survive

61. Petition the primal deities for intercession and refuse to pay when they come to collect

62. Have one piece of your body surgically replaced with an equivalent part of such an animal every year until complete

63. Have an entire platoon of captured enemy soldiers dipped one by one into molten gold

64. Exterminate an entire species of animal

65. Stuff a wickerman full of people, set it on fire, and run into the flames

66. Survive the spell “forlorn encystment” 4 times

67. Kill a saint

68. Execute an executioner with their own tool

69. Fart in a man’s face

70. Bake a baby into bread and serve it to her mother

71. Kill a man by tying him down and planting a tree in his stomach

72. Invert a goat

73. Attach wheels to everything you see

74. Murder a planet

75. Piss on a fairy

76. Eat an entire horse in one sitting

77. Trade skin with said animal

78. Swim to the bottom of the ocean and punch poseidon in the dick

79. Curse a gnome

80. Get cursed by a gnome

81. Eat the wrong kind of mushroom

82. Eat the right kind of cactus

83. Drink your own pee for 444 days

84. Drink sand instead of water for 444 days

85. Brew wine from the contents of 99 men and get totally wasted, barf, and brew that barf into wine and drink that

86. Cut your hand off, bury it, come back 33 years later, dig it up, and re-attach it. The new hand will slowly take over your body transforming you

87. Eat nothing but earwax and wood shavings while meditating in the desert

88. Chase the god of antelopes down in the tundra, tackle him, and drink his blood

89. Ask a werebeast nicely to please share

90. Commune with the fur deities

91. Try and fail to quit smoking cigarettes 44 times

92. Stop sleeping

93. Avoid seeing the sun for 666 days

94. Allow your fingernails to grow for at least ten years, cut them off, powder them, then eat them a tsp at a time for the rest of your life. As long as you eat the powder every day you can transform and continue to live. Whenever the powder runs out you die.

95. Get struck by lightning and live 13 times

96. Be born on Friday the 13th at 3:13 during a full moon

97. Piss off the rat god

98. Burn down an entire forest

99. Forget to apologize

100. Be a jerk one too many times

Simple Firearms

 The concern about adding guns to d&d is that they tend to change the game the same way guns changed combat in real life; it's even more deadly than it was before and heavy armor is less useful. Combat skill is a little less useful as anyone can point and pull a trigger and kill.

I see these effects as reinforcing what makes old school d&d fun - deadly, unpredictable combat, focus on diegetic problem solving rather than relying on stats and abilities, weighing risk/reward before getting involved in combat, with the default being to avoid a fair fight at all costs.

There's lots of things to talk about when it comes to how to integrate firearms into your campaign, but I'm not doing that today. Instead I'm going to offer simple mechanics for handling firearms in the game. We can talk about the intricacies another time.

Primitive firearms

These include all ancient or early black powder guns, mini-canons, arquebuses, flintlocks, muskets, blunderbusses, and cap-and-powder pistols. These are probably the ones most refs will be willing to include because their primitive nature offers a fair number of counterbalancing drawbacks.

Looks like 4d6 damage to me.

First, these things take a long time to load. The kind of muskets used during the revolutionary war could get 2, maybe 3, shots off per minute, if you knew what you were doing. At 20 seconds reload time per shot that's about three rounds to reload, if you're using 6-second combat rounds. During that time you have to be standing still like a doofus.

As you can see in the above gif from Princess Mononoke, Lady Eboshi has peasant women busy loading rifles in preparation to hand to someone else to shoot. This is a good use of unskilled henchmen, like porters or torchbearers, and seems like something clever players might come up with to avoid the drawback of spending several rounds reloading to get one shot.

another alternative is what Blackbeard the pirate was famous for. Having a bunch of wheellock pistols lit in holsters all over your body. Just draw and fire. In WWN you can have half your strength score in readied items on your body. Leaving a slot for a melee weapon that gives the average player maybe 4-5 pistol shots. 

Difference between Firearms

The main difference between different styles of primitive firearms is power, accuracy, reload time, and how susceptible the weapon is to being ruined by water. 

First: water. If the gun gets wet it's ruined. In Princess Mononoke there's a scene where Lady Eboshi and her men fight off some giant wolves in a storm. They have the weapons wrapped in waxed/lacquered paper and large umbrellas to protect them from the elements. I'd rule that any steps like these would be effective. Maybe if the non-combatants holding the paper failed morale and fled the weapons would be ruined. Ruined could mean anything from the black powder being soaked, to the weapons needing to be cleaned or even taken apart in a safe, dry location.

As for Power, this really depends on your campaign. Compare to similar in-game effects. To my thinking d6 represents the ability of a weapon to kill a man in one blow - the average HD being a d6 (OD&D rules). Somebody 

For pistols I'd do 2d6 damage. Rifles are 3d6. Really heavy duty stuff is more, maybe 4, 5, or even 6d6 for stuff as powerful as a fireball spell: like mortars or cannons.

Of course, in real life people often don't die from a single gunshot wound, especially if it doesn't hit any vital organs. If healing magic is prevalent in your campaign you might even assume anybody who survives the combat is likely to make a full recovery. Some of your own guess work is required here to see what works for you and your players. 

Then there comes the problem of armor. Anyone familiar with the history of firearms is aware of the arms race between firearms and armor until the point at which it made more sense just to get rid of the armor all together. In world war 1 they started experimenting with metal plates woven into gambesons again, and eventually to modern times there are effective armors against firearm.

In medieval times plate armor was "proofed" against firearms. That means that the armor maker would shoot the armor with a firearm at a certain distance after it had been completed "proving" that it was capable of deflecting a bullet at such and such distance. Of course the average soldier couldn't afford such state-of-the-art fully articulated battle plate, but they could probably afford a steel cuirasse and helm which would be proofed the same way.

Shock Damage from WWN is pretty cool, but I don't like the fuss of implementing specific shock ratings and minimum damage values for each weapon and armor. 

Instead we'll split them into basic categories. 

Firearms come in Light (2d6) Heavy (3d6), and Artillery (4d6 or more). Probably nothing short of enchanted armor could withstand the force of Artillery, so we'll mostly ignore those.

Armor is either proofed or unproofed. Unproofed armor is basically no armor against firearms: you have to make a successful saving throw to avoid. Wands/Rays seems like a good choice. If you successfully save you "dodged the bullet", otherwise take full damage.

Proofed armor offers some protection. By the way, this is gonna use Ascending Armor Class. If you insist on using Descending Armor Class you're probably use to doing pointless math, so I'll let you figure it out yourself.

AC11 is unarmored, roll 11 or better to hit. That gives a regular ole human (1hd, AC11, +0 to hit) a 50/50 chance of hitting another regular ole unarmored human. That AC11 represents your ability to dodge an attack without bringing armor into the mix.

Thus, the first 10 points of AC are just you. If you want to apply Dex bonus to this base AC be my guest, but I don't.

Every point after that is your Armor. If a firearm attack (d20+Dex+Ranged bonus) beats the proofed AC, attack successfully penetrated the armor.

If the attack was at least 11 but less than the AC of the armor, it was stopped by the "proofing" or bullet-resistance of the armor, you only take half damage (roll damage, divide by 2).

If the attack was 10 or less it misses completely or deflects off the armor harmlessly.

Light armor is rarely proofed. Its main components are textile or leather. Maybe if the armor is Kevlar, or is woven with mythril thread it'll be bullet proofed.

Medium armor can be proofed, that's the steel cuirasse mentioned before.

Plate armor is ye old standby of proofed armor.

Another alternative is to have "proofed" armor simply deduct its armor bonus from the attack on a successful hit, so Proofed Light would reduce the incoming damage by 2, Medium by 4, and Plate by 6. Might be enough to save your ass.

Accuracy. I'm not gonna muck about with different accuracies for different firearms. Instead you can go look up the effective ranges for different firearms. If the attack is further than that it automatically misses. Don't forget that a lot of weapon accuracy for old weapons is typically assuming the weapon would be used in formation, like a firing squad, and shot towards a large surface, like an enemy battalion. Combat in d&d isn't like that, it's usually man-to-man skirmishes. So if some old ass rifle says it was effective up to 400 meters or some shit, I'd be skeptical. They probably mean it's capable of hitting a barn at 400 meters, not a little mustachoed goon picking his nose.

Reload time

We already touched on this before: 20 seconds for a trained musketeer to reload a familiar musket. That's roughly three 6-second combat rounds. Double or triple that for big guns, halve it for small guns like pistols.

pew pew

hermetic inoculation - Buddhism / Morrowind OD&D

 taking a break from the Internet, except for writing work, blog posts, research, and music. not doing anything social. those of you who know me on the discord are aware i retreat into hermetic semi-seclusion 3-4 times a year. i probably won't be very active again outside this blog until after Halloween, potentially until after new year. we'll see how it goes. if you really want to contact me for some reason I'm sure it'll happen.

in the mean time I'm tinkering with system stuff. my goal is to set up a system which matches my playstyle, which lends itself to quick generation of game content. i prefer to rely on randomization to cut down on prep time and increase player agency, and encourage me (the GM) to take a more backseat role in guiding the game. i like each session to be as much a surprise and discovery as my players. i don't like pretending to be in control or guiding the experience.

y'know, the reason why there are so many rulesets is because, if you want to do something other than totally vanilla rules as written d&d, if you wanna do *anything* out of the ordinary, you need houserules. if you have houserules you'll need a document of some kind. then, in order to educate players as to which rules you're keeping and which you're changing, you almost end up needing to rewrite the entire rulebook to some degree. 

thus, for every campaign there's the potential for a modified rulset to take shape. since GMs spend so much time tinkering with their stuff they get attached to it, make it wanna look nice, and before you know it they've put enough work in that, heck, i might as well put it out there.

the reason there's so few adventure modules, comparatively, is that at table play tends to be a mix of published stuff, original content, and heavily edited published stuff, stuff copied from elsewhere and spliced in. most people's games are pretty ad hoc compared to their carefully articulated rulesets, they take poor notes on what happened in the game, and their keying structure is often just what they need to run the game.

so then you have it people don't release as much of their adventure material. they crossbreed other people's content with their own gibberish and slop, and so it requires much more work to go back and replace all the recycled material with OC so people don't call you a thief 

of course, you could just take honor in being a thief and publish it anyway, hint hint. don't try to make money off it. just make it zines and fan work. this is a hobby, after all 

I'm not gonna lie, i really like the idea of skill systems for taking some of the weight off. i explain what that means below. Morrowind has a nice skill system, as does Worlds Without Number. What would happen if we mixed these things with my two favorite systems, OD&D and Knave? I'll be tinkering with these ideas over the next couple seasons.

=====

Attributes

Roll 3d6 for Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma

score (adj)

3 (-2)

4-7 (- 1)

8-13 (+0)

14-17( +1)

18 (+2)

Strength - Adjusts melee attacks, used for feats of strength.

Dexterity - Ranged attacks, speed, agility, reflexes

Constitution - Used to resist poison, illness, exposure. You can carry 1.5x this many slots. You can survive this many days without food.

Intelligence - You start with Int/5 languages. Languages include elements of cultural familiarity. Occultists start with Int bonus +1 spells

Wisdom - insight into karmic vicissitudes, intuition, ability to deal with spirits appropriately.

Charisma - Affability, charm, wit, leadership. Adjusts reaction rolls. You can have half your Charisma in followers.

Attribute adjustment

You may subtract 2 points from one attribute to add 1 to another.

Saving Throws

Fortitude - overcoming with strength, effort, endurance. Adjusted by the better of Strength and Constitution.

Reflex - overcoming with agility, dexterity, reflexes. Adjusted by the better of Dexterity and Charisma.

Warding - overcoming with spirituality, intelligence, esoteric science. Adjusted by the better of Intelligence and Wisdom.

Each saving throw starts at 15, adding or subtracting your best attribute adjustment for each. To make a successful save, throw d20 Equal or Over the relevant saving throw. Each level you can distribute 3 points between saving throws.

At level 2 Maghada the Wise distributes 3 points between her saving throws. Her saves are Fort 14 Reflex 15 Warding 16. She puts 2 points into Fort, reducing it to 12, and one point into Warding, reducing it to 15.

Skill System

Difficulty

Rating

Easy

7

Average

9

Difficult

11

Impossible

13

Roll 2d6 + Attribute + Skill Level

Without the appropriate skill some things are impossible, like casting magic. Other things you can still attempt, like Riding a horse in difficult conditions, but incur a -1 penalty when it's clear none of your skills or backgrounds fit the situation. Further penalties and bonuses can be applied for careful planning, appropriate or inappropriate equipment, less than ideal environments, timing, etc. this is worked out via conversation between players and GM.

Lots of people groan about skills in OSR games, so I’ve never tried using them. This system is lifted straight out of WWN. I’m wondering if it’ll take some of the guesswork out of dealing with niche situations and coming up with, and remembering, new rulings for every case. This way I can just assign a difficulty, we pick out which skill and attribute makes the most sense, and throw. In some cases, like Sneak, Speech, Perception, they’ll be rolled behind the scenes so you don’t know when you’ve failed. In some cases, different skills with both fit the situation and we’ll all have to figure out what makes the most sense. Shrug. That’s the game. If it sucks we can throw it out.

Skill List

Administer - Running an organization, handling bureaucracy, performing scribal duties, identifying incompetent or treacherous workers, analyzing records or archives. Handling anything an executive or middle manager would do.

Alchemy - Treat wounds, cure diseases, neutralize poisons, diagnose problems of body and mind. Produce potions and poisons using alchemical ingredients.

Athletics - Run, Climb, Swim, Jump, Labor for long periods. Strength, Stamina, Coordination.

Combat - Knowing the art of war, being skilled in hand-to-hand combat. Added to attack rolls. each time you take combat you put a point into blades, axes, polearms, or clubs. Warrior-types like Nomad Blades get two-for-one when they spend points in Combat.

Connect - Finding people who are useful to your purposes, know who to talk to for favors or services, calling on help or resources of an organization you belong to. Covers ability to find people you need, though convincing them to help may require more.

Craft - Craft or repair items / technology appropriate to PC’s background. GM is within their rights to prevent PC from building complex things outside their background and experience.

Dharma - Understand the fundamental cosmic underpinnings of the world, perform clerical and ritual duties, familiarity with daemons, saints, and taboos, identify iconography, understand local faiths and religious hierarchies.

Language - Speak and write in a language, understand the culture and context of native speakers.

Leadership - Inspire others to follow you and believe in your plans and goals. Manage subordinates, encourage loyalty and motivation. A successful skillcheck can prevent morale decay and route of followers.

Lore - Know matters of history, geography, natural science, zoology, and other academic fields appropriate to a scholar. Some might specialize in a specific field, otters may have a broad range of understanding.

Magic - Cast or analyze magic, know things about famous magicians or magical events. non-occultists with this only obtain intellectual benefits. there's like d8 schools of magic and you have to spend skill points for each style.

Marksman - Firing a crossbow, maintaining ranged weapons. primitive, black powder, hurlant.

Mercantile - Running a successful business, buying/selling, identifying the worth of goods/treasures, dealing with merchants, finding blackmarket, knowing smuggling law

Perception - Identify ambushes, hear distant sounds, notice small details or concealed objects, find secret doors or traps. Frequently rolled secretly as a result of PC actions.

Perform - Sing, dance, orate, perform impressively for an audience. Compose music, plays, writings, or other performance arts. Most have a field they specialize in, though polymaths may exist if PC’s background is appropriate.

Profession - Pick some mundane workaday job thing you did in your past life. Bricklaying, Blacksmith, Incense Roller, Midwife, Well Digger, whatever. Make something up or I’ll get a list.

Ride - Handling riding animals and beasts of burden, driving carts / wagons, carriage repair, judging a good horse, shoeing.

Sail - Sail or reair ship, build small craft, navigate by stars, read sea weather, manage sailors.

Speechcraft - Persuade a listener. The more implausible or repugnant the claim, the more difficult. How they act on their new conviction is up to them and their motivations, not always predictable.

Stealth - Moving silently, hiding in shadows, picking pockets, disguise, pick locks, defeat small mechanisms. Hack security bots?

Survival - hunt, fish, navigate by the stars, deal with environment, identify plants / wildlife, craft survive tools and shelter.

Technology - familiarity with hyper-advanced technology from bygone ages. may be able to identify, use, or even repair ancient relics.

Unarmed - Fighting unarmed. Pugilism, grappling.

The Use of Skills

 The function of skills is intentionally loose and open to interpretation. some of them overlap with each other to cover different bases. for instance, a character with lore and one with technology may both be able to identify an alien artifact, but the character with technology may have better odds since the specifics align more closely with his domain. on the flip side, a character with lore+4 may have better odds than a character with tech+1 for identification, history, and source of said object, but likely wouldn't know how to use or repair it, as lore is considered of a more scholarly than practical knowledge. 

Skills are intended to aid in making more consistent rulings and support diegetic play, rather than act as strict rules or replace at-table discussion. The GM is encouraged to pick the closest option and move on rather than stick a player with a -1 penalty for not having the right skill.

D20 Background (will flesh these out later)

1

Artisan

blacksmith, tanner, carpenter

2

Barbarian

savage, hermit, wildman

3

Carter

hauling goods, riding post

4

Courtesan

prostitute, geisha

5

Criminal

thief, conman, burglar

6

Hunter

trapper, recluse

7

Laborer

skilled or unskilled worker

8

Merchant

trader, peddler, shopkeeper

9

Noble

spare son, exile, black sheep

10

Nomad

raider, tribal wanderer

11

Peasant

Peasant farmer, rural laborer, serf

12

Performer

bard, dancer, singer

13

Physician

village healer, chirurgeon

14

Priest

monk, ascetic, holy hermit

15

Sailor

bargeman, fisherman, pirate

16

Scholar

Scholar sage, mage’s apprentice

17

Slave

indentured laborer, runaway

18

Soldier

bandit, mercenary, guardsman

19

Thug

ruffian, gang member, village bully

20

Wanderer

exile, explorer, traveler

though a few interesting details are nice, long character back stories are discouraged.at most a quick paragraph in broad strokes is plenty. if you need an exact number keep it at 5 sentences or less.

 the game is about facing difficult dilemmas, making the best of bad situations - more about how our values come into conflict with reality, and how the goals we achieve in the end often aren't the ones we set out after. How you change, and the world changes with you, for better or worse.

karma

a character's karma can be chaotic, neutral, or lawful. how this is interpreted is up to the player. karma has background mechanics invisible to the players which affects various situations. it's possible a PC's karma can change enough to warrant a shift in alignment, though this will likely be rare and you'll never be held accountable for sticking to an alignment designation - you're always free to change your ways at any moment. if you're unsure, just pick neutral.

Leveling up

all classes use the same XP progression. prime requisites offer extra features and better abilities rather than XP adjustments.

PCs earn XP by defeating enemies, showing mercy, upholding difficult vows, finding clever ways around obstacles, recovering valuable treasures, completing quests, restoring shrines, purifying corrupted areas, and making personal sacrifices for the benefit of strangers. 

100xp is average, though it can be more depending on the potency. XP is awarded at the end of the session. this is less about playing to your particular character concept and more about making meaningful decisions and development as a person in the world. don't ask “what would my character do?” ask “what would *I* do?”

1g = 10xp

treasure and XP is split between the entire party, including henchmen who each take a 1/2 share for themselves first, the rest divided between the players. some henchmen may make additional demands according to their personality, karma, and morale. henchmen tend to be scrupulous and may behave unreasonably if they feel cheated.

an easy way to figure this is to divide the treasure by twice the number of total people in the pot (PCs+henchmen) to get the value of a half share. multiply it by the number of hechmen to get their earnings, which is subtracted from the total pot. the remainder is divided evenly by players.

a party of 3 PCs and 5 henchmen loot 200g.

200 divided by 16 = a half share of 12.5. times 5 henchmen is 62.5 total paid to the henchmen

the remaining 137.5 is divided between the players for 45.8g each.

if you wanted henchmen to get a third share instead you could multiply the total number of party members by three and divide the treasure by that to get the henchman's share.

i used to avoid doing this because i thought math was scary, but it's a lot of fun to imagine the hechmen’s greedy faces, sticking out their tongues and rubbing their hands together, as they eagerly wait on the PC that can actually do basic math to divide the treasure.

thinking about separating class types into warrior, magician, specialist, or adventurer types, allowing them to get two-for-one when they put points in appropriate skills.

OR maybe they pick major, minor, and misc skills like in Morrowind.

whatever will be fastest. 

I'll probably come back and add some art later.

ruislip dissected

lol I did all this work for nothing, Luke already posted his hexfilling procedures on his blog go look at them and use them they're wonderful

I dissected the Ruislip demo of Luke Gearing's Wolves upon the Coast game to see what I could learn. I like the way the keys are written. It feels to me like it could have been generated using dice and random tables from something like OD&D, then fleshed out. I'm kind of enamored with the idea of randomly generating hexmap content, then going back and forming connection and loose reasons for things to be, and adding unstable situations for players to mess with.

the Ruislip map has about 46 hexes. Of that 27 are keyed (58.6%), 19 are empty (41.3%)

There's 9 towns (19.5%), 13 lairs (28.26%), and 5 set pieces (10.8%).

I'm counting a town as a mostly friendly place the players will come back to for rest, quests, equipment, resources. Lairs are places that are inhabited by enemies. Usually this means monsters, but I've included a few pagan settlements where they're acting like jerks and probably gonna be violent to the PCs. One of the lairs could also be used as a monster town if the PCs play their cards right. Set pieces are the other things - interesting locations with something to interact with that may or may not have treasure.

• You could get pretty close to those odds by by throwing a d6: 1 is a town, 2-3 is a lair, 4 is a set-piece, 5-6 is nothing (empty).

The Lairs are mostly one monster type. A few of them have 2 or 3 monster types. Some lairs have no treasure at all, but none of the sites have bullshit treasure (except the whale is a little bullshit, but it's a set-piece). None of the locations are really your typical dungeon delve where the players are crawling through a trap-infested pit, fighting different kinds of monsters and interacting with monster factions. The Orc and Goblin lairs come the closest to this, but those would be more heist-type or kill-em-all or deal-with-the-faction scenarios, not crawls. It's a classic 1975-style hexcrawl campaign, where the focus was on overland exploration and picaresque shenanigans Vs. traditional dungeon crawling.

of the 9 friendly human settlements 6 are villages (have less than 100 people) and 3 are towns (have people in the several hundreds). If you get a friendly settlement throw a d6, on 1-4 it's a village, 5-6 is a town.

It looks like village population was thrown on a d00 and town populations were d10x100.

Villages tended to have a higher combatant to villager ratio, around 24-30% of the population for each being soldiers.

Towns had comparatively smaller populations of combatants, about 12-15%, but they generally have fortifications.

Here's my notes on the hex keys:

02.05 Dunrick (set piece)
weird plant thing makes people sleep. turns them into wraiths

05.05 shoal (lair)
griffon nest, attacking griffon mama

01.16 burnt village (set piece)
a destroyed village with nothing

02.16 lair of sruthkin (lair)
dragon lair, treasure

03.07 ogre house (lair)
ogre lair, treasure

04.07 beached whale (set piece)
beached whale, some treasure

01.08 runestones (set piece)
fancy rocks with words

02.08 stamullen (town)
79 people, 15 skirmishers (18% combatants)
weird bee town with pagan influences. a situation to get involved in. a druid you could befriend and learn some spells from.

04.08 culemwardern (town)
600 houses, 40 footmen, 50 skirmishers, boats (15% combantants)
a situation involving griffons. druid influences, a few characters and their relationships

05.08 cloyne (town)
58 people, 19 skirmishers, 5 fishing boats (32% combatants)
pagan town, some situations

01.09 manticore cave (lair)
cool manticore lair and interesting situation, treasure

03.09 donenashoe (lair / monster town)
juggernaut, medusa, 198 goblins, some ruins and treasures.

05.09 belcarra (town / lair)
99 people, 80 footmen (80% combatants)
unpredictable pagan town

06.09 bitter druid (lair)
evil wizard lair, treasure

01.10 dorbog (town)
800 people, 50 armored foot, 50 skirmishers, boats (12% combatant)
some characters, leader, druids, situations, relations to other hexes, henchies

03.10 awoken king (lair)
mummy lair, a time-sensitive situation, treasure

05.10 stone circle (lair)
evil pagan wizard faction, spells and treasure to be had, a situation, a thread to some other hex and situation

06.10 pirates (lair)
pirates, a faction, some treasure

02.11 ogonnelloe (town)
80 people 24 skirmishers (24% combatant)
ruined fort, town, characters, a time-sensitive situation, a werewolf,

03.11 orc fort (lair)
80 orcs, orcs in vats, a fortification, treasure

01.12 st olham's monastary (town)
only monastary 96 monks, a faction, treasure, resource for PCs: sages / library

03.12 a dog (set piece)
cool a dog

05.12 blulach (town)
1000 people 20 armored foot 40 foot 60 skirmishers 20 horsemen boats (14% combatant)
fortification, market, alehouse, church, docks, characters with goals, relations to other hexes, quests, henchies, horse stables

06.12 barrows (lair)
ruined camp, hidden lair, wraith, zombies, treasure

02.13 nameless hemlet (lair)
abandoned town, merfolk, no treasure

04.13 gargoyles (lair)
gargoyles, no treasure, relations to other hexes

04.14 killucan (town)
43 people 5 foot 5 skirmishers 5 boats (23% combatant)
cattle town, fishing, a situation, relation to other hex, a mystery

The Rain Game

 I was inspired to write this solo wilderness exploration / survival RPG based on an outdoor adventure my three-year old took me on at our neighborhood park. I let her lead me through a pretend exploration in which we gathered nuts, built campfires, caught monsters in traps, protected our nest using magic herbs, stored away food, gave gifts to buddhas, and hid from the rain underneath trees. I'm so lucky to have such a being of pure light in my life. 

A note about the name: she initiated our adventure by saying "Come play the rain game with me, daddy!"

I haven't playtested it, I don't know how fun or functional it is. If you play it, tell me about your adventures.

The Rain Game Link

 

Quest Generator

 A quest is when a faction wants to hire the party to do something. An adventure is when the party decides to pursue a goal of their own accord. Quests often spawn adventures, and adventures typically involve quests.

Roll d3 for the number of factions involved. If you already have factions use those, otherwise generate some.

Determine an alignment for each faction.

1. Lawful 2. Neutral 4. Chaotic

Opposing factions of similar alignments may have similar goals but disagree about methods, or are competing, but not necessarily want to destroy each other 

Neutral alignments do their own thing, may be unwilling participants or bystanders, and may switch sides with the tides of fortune.

Faction:

1-10. Humans

11. Demi-humans

12. Monstrous humanoids

13. Celestial / daemonic / elemental beings

14. Dragon / mythical creature

15.  Deity / demigod / immortal

16. Government / army / nobility

17. Secret faction / cult 

18. Wizard

19. Technological / Outsider

20. Roll two: first is puppet for second.

Goal

1. Power / money / control

2. Paying back a debt

3. Consolidating assets

4. A weapon against enemies

5. Turn an enemy / neutral faction into an ally

6. Mindless revenge

7. Gain favor with another faction

8. Restore what was lost

9. Control / access to resources

10. End / avoid some misfortune, current or future

Methods:

1. Direct and confrontational

2. Scheming and secretive

3. Regretful and hesitant

4. Hopeful, fearful

5. Courageous and bold

7. Despotic and malicious

8. Ignorant, unaware, selfish

9. Plays the victim / greed

10. Bent on vengeance / insane 

Where do we go?

1. Cave, cavern

2. Ruin

3. Temple

4. Keep / stronghold

5. Prison

6. Lair

7. Another plane / planet

8. Population center (d6 for size)

9. Terrain hex (roll)

10. Island

Object of importance:

1. Valuable treasure

2. Resource (food, gold, fuel)

3. Promise / assistance / oath

4. Lost information

5. Technological artifact

6. Magical item

7. Lost heirloom

8. A person of importance

9. Pass / path / conveyance

10. Medicine / religious artifact

Complications

1. Flooded

2. Buried

3. In different location

4. Additional faction

5. Powerful monsters

6. Radiation storm

7. Thieves

8. Army / battle

9. Difficult choice

10. Roll twice

Payment for accomplishing goal

1. Respect / trust / honor

2. Money

3. Artifact

4. Magic item / spell

5. Needed information

6. Transportation

7. Access to resource

8. Ally in time of need

9. Safe passage

10. Debt

Trap Generator

 A trap is something that looks harmless/useful but actually kills you.

What does it protect?

1. A treasure

2. A lair

3. A passage

4. A holy site

5. Just built out of malice

6. It's something that was once helpful, but now dangerous or misused.

7. Keep people out

8. Keep people in

Style

1. Arcane

2. Mechanical

3. Hidden

4. Obvious

5. Trick

6. Warning

What is the method of application? 

1-3 mundane

4-6 Arcane 

Mundane

1. Spikes

2. Gas

3. Blades

4. Arrows / spears

5. Crusher

6. Pit (falling)

7. Pit + roll again

8. Water

9. Fire

10. Twisting

11. Rolling boulder

12. Ripping

14. Catapult

15. Boiling oil / water

16. Monofilament

17. Attacking monster

18. Trapping / Containing

19. Shifting walls / confusing environment

20. Collapsing environment / natural disaster

Arcane

1. Teleport

2. Vaporize

4. Ice / electricity

5. Stone / crystal

6. Transform

7. Alert / summon

8. Adhesion / slippery 

9. Gravity / propulsion

10. Melting / acid 

11. Charm / hallucination

12. Roll spell effect

13. Mutation / radiation

14. Memory wipe / psychic attack

15. Repelling force / magnetism

16. Laser beam / plasma

17. Darkness / confusing senses 

18. Plants / fungus / drugs

19. Sound / echoes / music

20. Physics disruption / aging / time

What shape does it take?

1. Passageway

2. Door

3. Table / chair

4. Bed / dresser / cabinet

5. Bookcase / picture / tapestry

6. Statue / pillar

7. Mirror / window / screen

8. Vase / pottery

9. Chest / coffin / box

10. Staircase / elevator

11. Hole

12. Chamber

13. Weapon / armor

14. Plant / natural substance

15. Animal / living thing

16. Mineral / crystal

17. Pool

18. Machine

19. Computer

20. Tube / pod

21. Ship / conveyance

22. Bottle / wine / food

23. Taxidermy

24. Floor

25. Wall

26. Ceiling

27. Jury rigged contraption

28. Cage

29. Carving

30. Treasure / mundane curiosity

Method of activation

1. Touch / sound

2. Button / pressure plate

3. Chemical reaction

4. Proximity / camera

5. Magical detection

6. Tripwire

7. Timer

8. Movement / sound

9. Weight / gravity/ magnetism

10. Always active / generating

11. Violence

12. Identity / race / class

Other features

1. Rope

2. Needle

3. Sand

4. Weights / scales

5. Book / chart / map / diagram

4. Sentient being

6. Illusion

7. Lure

8. Skulls

9. Ladder / stairs

10. Trapdoor

11. Constructed recently

12. Arcane experiment gone wrong/right

13. Transdimensional horror

14. Alien / monstrous technology

15. Maintained by faction

16. Long forgotten

17. Antique / valuable-looking / opulent

18. Worthless / ruined

19. Chasm

20. Falls apart before completing it's intended purpose

How a party of Level 1 adventurers beat a fucking vampire

So I decided to run a quick game on the discord, thinking there should be more low stakes 'just for fun' mess around games on the server. There's a lot of hijinks you can get into in an hour! We tossed around some ideas and decided to run Knave. I had a half-finished dungeon that was burning a hole in my brain, but i couldn't locate the file, so I generated a random dungeon on Donjon and familiarized myself with it while the players rolled up theirs characters.

I don't enjoy reading other people's play reports, because I find them tedious. This is my attempt to write one I would want read (short, snappy, not getting bogged in deets)

ALL CLUTCH, XX NO FUDGE

pretty much like this

THE CAST:

Osse > Odio, Chaotic Peregrine, spear, gambeson, helmet PROPER PREPARED

Feirsteax > Asgelasgus the Wizard, INT 15 cultist, mutilated, neutral, Spells: raise dead, masquerade. the only one that can read

DustyHalo > Joris of Boris, neutral, ropeless whelp (pullies, grappling hook, no rope) 

Taha > xáos!!!11! brigandine, helmet, spear, perfume A BAD DUDE WITH A MEAN TUDE

MARCHING ORDER

Single:
Osse
Feirsteax
DustyHalo
Taha

Double:
Osse, Taha
Dusty, Feirsteax

SET UP: Party locked into terrible death pits for crimes they may or may not have committed, dungeon extends all over Domzwolek. Left to fair as they will or die trying to escape in the name of justice.

Bottom of stairs, two paths. Listening: Stinky & dripping one way, quite 'nother. Follow the quiet around windy passage.

Find door w/ fanged face near handle - poke with spear CHOMP! Acid fangs. Open door. Medium room w/ rubble. N stone door w satyr, s plain wood door, e 2x2 ft portcullis tunnel.

Osse climbs in small tunnel, finds niches w baby skeleton, rummages and finds 9 gold & gem. Explores further, spooky eyes in hole. Backs out, party uses rubble and tar to brick up portcullis.

As their working orcs come in thru north stone door. Party makes a bunch of bold attacks and runs them off in one round. Routed! Joris/Dusty makes a parting shot and kills 'nother.

Follow the fleeing orcs into next room, they disappear into secret door. Party starts exploring the room. it's so big their noises echo. Asgelasgus/Feirsteax sees a worn out old mural and stars contemplating it. Orcs return thru secret door w their buddies and start hurling jars of oil. Party wins initiative and makes some smart attacks, Bow and Spear, Asgelasgus hurls dagger in the midst of studying wall. orcs fall dropping torches & oil, incinerating themselves.

Not pictures: lots of groin shots

Asgalasgus finishes inspecting mural, finds this:

Giant froglike mawed creature with whirling razor teeth, people being hurled from ramparts of castle into maw, shredded like garbage disposal, limbs and blood everyhere, but their spirits are flying up to heaven where a giant with a smiling sun face is peaking out, welcoming them into his arms. He recognizes it as a mural dedicated to the Dawnbringer, the most popular religion in Domzwolek. Being a cultist he is disgusted by the heretical sun god religion and spits on the mural.

someone said: "if only i could be so grossly incandescent"

Party crosses over charred corpses into an even HUEGER room, truly cavernous. Joris of Boris finds refuse, old cooking fires, piles of rotting furs. Inside is a letter, gives it to Asgalasgus to read. and I quote:

"To my dearest. Please accept this small token of our love. One day I will return to you." within is a ring w red gem. Asgalasgus puts it on, feels a spring breeze rush over him, followed by a warm glow of nastolgia, followed by a hollow emptiness which remains. "Nope, not magical ... I'll just hang on to it"

Next party inspects rope hanging from ceiling which leads up to mezzanine. Joris helps Odio/Osse climb up rope. boot crunch on mezzanine, no torch - can't see. Joris ties lit torch to rope, Odio carefully pulls it up.

Floor littered w bones. Two statues flanking a sarcophagus of black metal. One gold the other silver. Both statues of babes with bat wings holding swords. Odio tries taking a sword from silver but hand freezes to it. Thinking quickly Asgalasgus takes off the ring and puts it on Odio - the warmth thaws his hand and he releases. Joris uses their pick to push the sword out of the hand of gold and picks it up w/ strip of cloth. Warm, brandishing it releases sparks. Touches the two swords together CRAASHHHH!! Barely makes a dex save to avoid melting along with the swords - puddles cool into hard sheets, one silver one gold.

Next check out sarcophagus. Asgalasgus recognizes evil runes as undead language. Team tries to open Sarcophagus. black mist erupts out MUHAHAHA FOOLISH MORTALS

A VAMPIRE EMERGES! lucky shot knocks him against gold statue - burns his flesh! Party gets lucky with good initiative rolls throughout fight, but quickly find out their mundane attacks do nothing. Vampire backhands Taha's head off, which goes bouncing around the room like the ball in Arkanoid, slumps to the ground.

YOU DIED

Asgalasgus casts raise dead to make a skeleton but vampy takes control of it and sends it back at him. Asgalasgus distracts skeleton while Odio makes valiant effort to shove vampire into statue again but he's rooted in place.

Joris tries to get gold disc to hurl at vampire but slips and knocks the wind out of themself w a fumble. Odio winds up for another shove, but vampire backhands him, nearly kiling him, but not quite.

Asgalasgus uses masquerade to turn into copy of vampire and commands skeleton to 'attack the imposter!' stupid skeleton is duped and goes after vampy w harmless swipes - mundane attack. Vampire is distracted by the ploy and loses initiative

Odio tries to make a save to get up and shove vampire again, but fails and collapses onto sarcophagus to hold himself up. sees something glint inside. Joris spends their turn slowly collecting themselves. Asgalasgus dives into sarcophagus to retrieve the thing, smooshing his face and lips all over a nasty mummy body. a silver dagger shaped like one of the sexy bat-winged ladies! def magic as fuck.

vampire goes DBZ mode and backhands Odio killing him,

YOU DIED then punches the skeleton, bones flying everywhere with a crash like a bowling strik

YOU reDIED?

Asgalasgus goes to town swiping at vampire w magic dagger, but vamp is teleporting away from the attacks like instant transmission.  Joris calmly picks up gold puddle throws it like a discus at the vamp, who just happens to teleport away at the last second. Vamp teleports behind Asgalasgus, grabs him & BITES sucking out most his life and healing from the earlier burns. While vamp is busy stucking out Asgalasguses' juices, Joris runs up, grabs the dagger, and stabs it into the vampire's brain. Vampire reels back, spraying black mist and shrieking.

Vampire says 'enough fooling around! Time to show you my true form!' starts transforming, face becomes beastial, giant bat wings erupt from his back, his limbs grow long and lanky, body covered in fur.

Asgalasgus comes to, grabs gold puddle and smashes it against vampire. More burning and shrieking! Vampire down to 16hp. Vampire makes attack stabs with knife hand spearing Asgalasgus straight through the chest, heart stuck on end of claws, pulls heart back through and bites it like an apple.

YOU DIED

Joris of Boris the ropeless whelp is last one standing, takes knife and dives behind statue to hide. Vampire pops around 'BOO!' Joris tries to stab him but vamp teleports behind them, tries to give 'em the same knife hand that did in Asgalasgus but vamp fumbles! Joris rolls aside and vamp's knife hand spears into the statue, which freezes him in place and starts burning him terribly. Vamp starts trying to rip arm off to escape. 

Joris makes sneak attack on unaware vamp, C-C-C-CRITICAL HIT with the magical vampire-killing dagger, right in the heart. Spewing black smoke vampire melts into puddle of ectoplasmic goo, destroyed with a weapon designed just for him.

WOO HOO! Joris of Boris glows up! A part of level 1 adventurers managed to kill a vampire!

Here's the loot Joris recieved (rolled on vampire treasure table):

a piece of jewelry worth 900gp

    4 pieces of jewelry worth 1000gp each

    a piece of jewelry worth 1600gp

    a piece of jewelry worth 1700gp

    a piece of jewelry worth 1800gp

    a piece of jewelry worth 2000gp

    a piece of jewelry worth 3000gp

    a piece of jewelry worth 4000gp

    a piece of jewelry worth 6000gp

    a piece of jewelry worth 8000gp

    a piece of jewelry worth 9000gp

    Potion of Human Control

    Curse Scroll: Transportation 1,000 miles, random direction

    Curse Scroll: Transportation to another planet

    Scroll of Protection: Undead

    Spell Scroll (Protection/Evil, )

Pictured: Dusty messin up this vampire real quick

Here's the fanfares:

Osse: Holy shit you guys actually did it, what a knock down drag out slugfest!

DustHalo: we did it

Taha: Hail Joris o'Boris!

Vilecult: the 99th level welp

Osse: it'll be like going from Gothic 2 to Gothic 3, a paradigm shift glowup 

joris in the first adventure? dumped into a dungeon left to get smoked

joris in the second adventure? dumping *us* into the dungeon to get smoked

Feirsteax yea insane critcal fumble on the part of the vampire saved us only joris made it out alive

DustyHalo: he thrust through Asgelasgus and pulled out their heart before I hid behind the statue and waited for them to come at me, then they rolled a 1 and got stuck in the statue before I was able to drive the magic dagger into their heart and slay them

had like 9 health and hit them with 10

Vampire Stats:
8 HD, 27hp, AC 17
Str 17/+7

Dex 16/+6

Dmg: 2d8 claw
Bite: Stun, d6 life drain per round
Treasure Table F

TRAPS and the joys not having fun

My friend Strawberry Milk on the OSR discord asked me to write an article about traps. You can blame him for this.

Traps are environmental hazards which sometimes kill you and usually don't make sense. Typically they prevent you from accessing something you want like treasure, a pathway between locations, or your life.

There's two big camps when it comes to traps: people who prefer to telegraph and people who don't have strong opinions about making sure their players have fun.

All things in life are ultimately transient and without satisfaction. Playing a game, making a million dollars, being especially good at something, all of these joys are ultimately sources of decay, pain, and displeasure as they ultimately slip through your fingers like so much water. The only true joy in life is the ending of attachments to finite things.

With that in mind, I fall into the latter category. I don't care if my players are having fun. I want them to *enjoy* themselves, because I want my friends to enjoy spending time with me, but whether or not they're having fun is ultimately their own personal responsibility.

I understand this is probably a huge turn off for a lot of people. That's okay - I've accepted the fact that I'm doomed to be a walking anachronism. There's a lot of different ways to play games and everybody is looking for something different. If someone sits down to my table and ends up not wanting to play with me again, that's okay, this kind of game is not for everyone. 

I think of it like this: do mountain climbers do what they do because it's 'fun'? How about cave explorers? Marathon runners? Spelunkers? Surely spelunkers aren't having 'fun'. Getting stuck in a cave a quarter mile below the earth is not fun.

Fuck Fun

What exactly is 'fun'? Two definitions I found: 1. a source of enjoyment, amusement, or pleasure, and 2. sport, merriment, frolicsome amusement. Therein lies the confusion.

Some people think of 'fun' as the sensation of pleasurable joy in the body that comes from the feelings of energetic freedom, playful openness, and getting desires satisfied. That is definition 2. Definition 1 can refer to anything which 'amuses' or produces 'enjoyment' and 'pleasure'.

Now, all people enjoy 'fun' of both definitions, but I suspect people who prefer Def 2 are less interested in Def 1. Definition 1 fun, in terms of the explanation I'm giving, includes things like knitting a sweater, reading a Russian novel, watching an opera, hiking in the mountains, or meditating. These things don't bring joyful, energetic bliss, but a sense of satisfaction that arises out of communion, concentration, and delaying gratification. Definition 2 is more like eating chocolate cake, playing video games, or watching Wrestlemania.

It's sort of like the difference between the pleasure of working hard to overcome an obstacle, seeing our efforts come to fruition, and the pleasure of getting to go to cheesecake factory for your birthday. I've never been inside a cheesecake factory, but I suppose humans enjoy it. One of them comes about through your own efforts, one is blasted as you from the exciting end of a super-soaker.

I'm not trying to denigrate one and laud the other. All people enjoy both. However, I do feel that there is an over-saturation of recreation directed towards Definition 2 fun, and not as much to Definition 1 fun. I like Definition 1 fun better. Definition 2 fun tends to leave me with a hang-over, tends to be addicting, and fries my nerves. It's given to anhedonia. That's why I lean heavier into the long-term, gratification-delaying Def 1 fun in my games. If you don't like it, there's plenty of other things for you to do than play this specific game as my specific table.

Late night thought

Maybe a good d&d game is described as being somewhere in the middle of Def 1 and Def 2 'fun' - sometimes you have to pull teeth with stone-age dentistry and sometime you get to pie Succubuses in the face and get paid doing it.

The part I'm really against is pulling punches or being afraid to hang out punishments or unfair odds. I don't really care about 'fairness'. The point isn't for me to articulate a scenario for the players. I'm an objective party in all this - if the players wanna roll stupid I'm down to fuck around. If they break my stuff, good for them. If my stuff breaks them, maybe they learn something or don't come back and I have to look for new players (Fresh meat). Maybe we play a different kind of game, or adjust the style of the campaign. But this is my default and preferred mode.

My fun as the DM comes from seeing players enthusiastically applying ingenuity, gusto, and daring. I get my thrills both from seeing parties decimated and parties overcoming unbeatable odds by the skin of their teeth. I feel that if I bend the odds in any direction I'm tampering with that.

How to do a trap

What exactly is a trap? My loose definition is a potentially dangerous or weird thing that prevents the players from getting something they want. Traps are sometimes mandatory for accessing an area, but they're usually hidden, artificially constructed, or somehow lurking just out of sight. For instance: a series of columns you have to jump across to access a door on the other side of a chasm isn't a trap, although it's dangerous and prevents players from getting somewhere. However, if one of those columns has a 1-in-6 chance of collapsing when landed on, that would be a trap.

Good traps are puzzles that create some harm or difficulty for giving the wrong answers, but you should generally be able to experiment with traps to learn what they do and how to overcome them. It's hard to experiment with a floor tile that causes an arrow to shoot out from a statue, but it's easy and fun to experiment with a floor tile that causes a lime-green acid waterfall to pour from the ceiling. In this way, good traps also lend themselves to alternative uses.

It's boring if most traps just straight up kill you. Often times players will become traumatized the first time an unexpected trap kills a PC. They'll start turtling up, poking everything with sticks. If you're really unlucky they'll come up with a door routine, or a plan they can just run on script that deals with the basics, like this:

Every time we come to a door we do these steps:

1. Examine the floor, walls, and ceiling around the door for anything weird.

2. Poke the wood with a stick. Poke the handle with a stick.

3. Look closely at the handle to see if there's anything weird.

4. Listen at the door

5. Look through the key hole

etc

If they're doing shit like this you may be going a bit too hard. Ease off the gas a bit or try telegraphing a little more. However, some players are just babies. They just have to be taught a lesson.

The easy and dickish way to get players to stop running door routines is to make each of those steps take 10 minutes. If you roll for a wandering encounter every 10 or 20 minutes, they're bound to be attacked every time they find a door. Instead, they'll just have to use their wits. At a minimum, roll an encounter check when they meet a door and don't walk by or try to open it right away.

Encounter checks are DESIGNED to be the force of 'Time' in the dungeon. Encounter checks are how you give time its meaning. The more often you roll them, the more important time is. My default it every 20 minutes or every other turn. I adjust that up or down depending on difficulty of area. I also throw more if the players are being loud, or if they were recently in combat (eg, monsters are on high alert or looking for them)

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

Oh, also. Traps thrive on context. Sure, you could roll some generic shit on a table like "paralyzing gas, released from butt statue" or "poisoned arrow, inside umbrella rack" or "electrocuting disco-ball, descends from ceiling when music is played", or "swinging axe pendulum" but those get stale quick. Good traps are integrated with their surroundings in a clever way.

No, I don't edit this stuff after I write it. 

Edit: That's not true.

Arnold K famously defined traps like this:

- No obvious solution

- Multiple possible solutions

- Solution depends on common sense

- No specific tool required

Hazards aren't really traps

A hazard is like a stupid trap. It just sits there, it's not really trying to hide itself. It's dangerous to everybody, even denizens, although denizens are usually aware of it and know how to go around. Hazards also exist higher on the scale of permanency

This is a thing from Permaculture aka my day job. As you go down the scale (stuff with the bigger numbers, yes it's confusing) things get less permanent, easier to change. Soil can be changed by adding compost, easy. Trees are harder because they take a long time to grow. Farm roads are harder I guess because like it costs lots of money and they're really big? I guess it's harder to move a road than a building, but like, what kind of road are we talking about here? Oh sorry I'm getting pedantic. Anyway, up at the top you have the fucking climate and the terrain, geological factors that require some number of atomic bombs to really change.

Hazards are like a 2. They're just there. You can't move em. Barring some magical circumstances, most traps are in the realm of 6-7.

My process for coming up with traps

My creative process is something like this:

1. Pick some stuff to be the 'seeds' of the thing I'm making. Maybe these are ideas from books or TV, things from the campaign setting, or stuff rolled on tables, from tarot or i ching, or grabbed from my subconscious. Just some raw materials.

2. Smash it together with some other stuff from my subconscious.

3. If it's good enough, go. If it's not, pick an element and change it.

That's not a lot to go on, but a lot of the creative process kind of happens in the dark, on the inside. I could meditate on it and find out more about the process, but maybe I'll save that for a different post. If you don't know how to be creative you might be in the wrong hobby (although not necessarily).

So let's do it with traps. Let's say we're working with a dungeon that has a "Dinosaurs" and "Lava" theme. Easy. First 10 ideas off the top of my head, stream of consciousness style:

1. Lava geyser

2. Rock slide

3. Paranha fish...thing?

4. Tarantulas, webs,

5. Giant emerald that sucks your soul out

6. Friendly bunny rabbit?

7. Magnetic stalactites

8. A t-rex skull that hides a door, bites the first approacher in half

9. Pteradactyl riding amazons

10. Earthquake

Okay, so some of these are traps, some of these are hazards, some of these are monster encounters, all of them are half-baked. Let's move on.

Next, traps need something to interact with. Call it a 'trigger'. It might be an actual trigger, like the aforementioned depressible floor tile, or it might just be a thing, like a cool glowing floating skull, or a lightning rod hooked up to an impressive machine. When you fuck with it in the wrong way it goes boom.

Take the lava geyser: maybe it spurts out on a timer. Every sixth turn it goes off with a GOOSH. Not really trappy, more like a hazard. To be a trap it has to A, have surprise and B. Protect something. Did I cover this already? Maybe when you get too close a dino-man tries to run out and push you in.

Paranha fish thing. I liked this one. I was imagining a cartoon fish skeleton trying to bite you, but that's not enough. Let's make it metallic and electrified. It's huge and affixed to the stone wall, like some kind of futuristic fossil. Oh, and some asshole has hooked it up to the underground river flowing nearby, so if you get in you get fried.

OH or maybe like there's a hydro-electric dam the fish is hooked up to, like they're trying to power it, but there's all these wires laying everywhere so you might get shocked, but if you have rubber gloves you could take the wires and zap dudes with them. Sounds like a dangerous place to have a fight.

Okay, next, tarantula webs? Easy. Webs, with tarantulas. You don't see 'em 'til they catch you. But the tarantulas don't want to eat you, instead they just want to drone on about niche subjects. Roll on your favorite "spider's favorite niche subjects" table or this one:

1. Flavors of baby scalp

2. Reading fortunes in bat guano shapes

3. How cool it is to absorb light oscillating parallel to your long axis.

4. Preferred mode of cleaning silk ducts

5. Genres of decomposed ooze

6. Brenda

Maybe if you're really interested you actually learn something useful. Otherwise save vs sleep. 

This is just an annoying NPC encounter, not really a trap.

This sucks. Okay, maybe I can't dissect how my creative process works. Instead, I'm just going to give you a list of traps.

1. A brain in a jar. Can cause hallucinations in one PC within 20' per turn. Tucked away on a shelf.

2. A stuffed coyote with its mouth open. Bites your hand off if you reach in. Gems contained within butthole.

3. A suspicious pull-rope dangling from the ceiling. When tugged 2 tons of corn spills on hapless fool.

4. A chair. IT'S ELECTRIFIED.

5. That t-rex skull door that bites you in half I mentioned earlier I liked that one

6. A floor of greased glass. The walls are spikes. Below the glass is a pool of acid. The ceiling is made of fire. GOOD LUCK ASSHOLES.

7. A big statue that shoots lasers. There's a big red power off switch next to it.

8. In a big cavernous area there's one of those quarter operated binoculars dealies, like at the Grand Canyon, with an "out of order" sign on it. When you look in the viewfinders there's a tiny medusa inside and she stones you.

9. A field of grass, the grass is razor sharp.

10. A magical punchy tree. It has a corncob pipe and a jug of moonshine.

11. Teleporter to the moon. Labeled 'teleporter to the moon'

Okay that's enough. I don't know what I'm doing. If you're not having fun just try harder. Goodnight.