Random tables and brief comments

My favorite thing to do as a GM is bring out one of the crazy random tables that I've found on the internet or in one of my books to resolve a situation. This is most frequently done for things like damage, insanities, mutations, and similar. However, there is nothing like bringing up a random petty loot or a drug effect table. It tends to be what gets talked about for the longest.

Dark Heresy was my introduction to critical hit tables actually being used in a session. I'd read about them before, but hadn't experienced that yet. The tables sorted by weapon type and body part combined with the exploding damage produced an amazingly destructive but also extremely entertaining experience. Of course, this was really made possible by the Fate points which allowed the players to not get completely screwed over by dying.

I recently got a hold of the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st edition GM screen plus 2 booklets, one of which is just critical hits. The earlier, raw-er tables are a real joy to check out. They also provide a nice alternative or supplement to the Dungeon Crawl Classics critical hit tables.

One of the most best blog posts I've read was a short review of a bunch of books of random tables on the Gnome Stew blog. Here is a series of brief commentaries on a bunch books of random tables I've picked up over the years. There is a wide range in quality and of styles in this variety of books.

The Dungeon Dozen: This book and the accompanying blog are great sources of weird inspiration for how to randomly deal with strange situations. While I really enjoy reading these tables, I've not found them very useful at the actual table, making it a very GM's side as opposed to PC side experience.

d30 Sandbox Companion: Great tool for providing set ups or surfaces to riff off of. Big fan. Hard to use at the table.

1e Oriental Adventures: One of the coolest parts of this book is the method for generating a series of yearly and monthly events. Great fodder for a longer running sandbox like game. Impossible to use at the table.

Renegade Crowns: Another book that is impossible to use at the table. However, this book is amazing. It takes on the very odd task of providing series of random tables to completely generate a "working" brutal, grim fantasy sandbox. Complete with monsters, towns, rulers, and ruins this book has it all. Some people were disappointed that it wasn't an adventure, I've found this book unbelievably worth it. Perfect for sandboxes, point crawls, fiefdoms, and the like.

Karak Azgal: Similar to Renegade Crows, this is a "fill in the blank" style adventure. It describes two towns on the surface, a dwarven fortress and a shanty town of adventurers. Underneath is the ruins of an ancient dwarven city. The ruins are infested with all manner of beasties. The book provides almost no maps of the underground and instead provides a series of nested random encounter tables and a series of points of interest. The encounter tables include interacting factions and neutral parties. The points of interest are sources of the wandering monsters or even worse horrors. Amazing tool for a GM wanting to generate a believable series of dungeon levels.

Format change and recent sessions

I've been running and playing in a lot of games recently and the weight of the backlog of all these sessions has made me realize I would prefer a format switch. So, instead of writing mostly play reports I'm going to focus on short recaps of recent games, random tables, hooks, and other RPG related creative ideas I might have. Not just meta-roleplaying like how to best prepare, but also ideas about adventure design and presentation.

Given that, since the last written-up Planescape session there has only been one new Planescape session. It was my take on The Flower Infernal from The Great Modron March by Monte Cook and Colin McComb. Plots are a foot. Valran was finally defeated but the amulet and the modron artifact hidden deep in Acheron await. We're going to have one last session before a possible reboot or major story line shift.

Instead recently, we've been playing a lot of Dark Heresy. Mostly my takes on a few published adventures. The group are pregens and the players are new to Dark Heresy, though one is familiar with the 40k universe.

This weekend there is a good chance I will be running Death Frost Doom by Raggi using a combination of basic Labryinth Lord with Lammentation of the Flame Princess' skill system. Additionally, all the characters will get one unique ability. Characters are second level. I'll be pregen-ing a bunch of characters to choose from.

Otherwise, I've been devoting a fair amount of energy to the D&D Organized Play open call. I've got my two scenes ready, just need to transcribe into the correct format and finish up a random table or two. My goal is to find a middle ground between pure random table encounter generator and prewritten encounter.

I'm also drafting a review piece on useful books of ideas/random generators I've been particularily fond of recently. I can tell you already that I consider Renegade Crowns from the WFRP 2nd edition to be stand out piece considering the ambition and ability to very accurately capture setting tone while only using random tables.

Limbo-ing with the Modron

After the summer long hiatus, Plane-atary Express is back! This break was both in game and out of game, so the characters were still gaining experience and wealth but we weren't "paying attention" to them. Now we're back and everyone has new (useful) trinkets and magic items! The reasons for both are up to the players to decide and tell the rest of the party over the course of adventure.

The session started off with all the players choosing their items, remembering the 2nd edition rules, and getting into character.

The party, along with their two subordinate teams, were meeting in the Plane-atary Express offices when a loud knocking on the door was heard. On the other side was the unlikely pair of a githzerai monk and an absolutely crazy looking homeless man. Turns out that the homeless man was Factol Karan, "leader" of the Xaiosect. Karan takes great pains to tell the party that he brought the monk, Haeronimil, as a favor to to the plane of Limbo. At this point Haeronimil interrupted and said that he was interested in hiring the party, and all their teams, to help the modron cross Limbo successfully. After some long negotiations, the party said "yes" and off they went.

The journey started at the boarder between Ysgard and Limbo, on one of the branches of Yggdrasil the World Ash. There, the modron had assembled while the githzerai attempted to break them apart into different groups.

The party found their group of modrons, and after convincing an octon that it was most logical to let the party lead them through the roiling chaos, they set off on their long journey.

Stepping into Limbo, Nearin took the lead on manifesting the terrain for everyone to travel on. After a few hours, the party was attacked by red slaad which swooped in over the pack of modrons. The red slaads were a pain in the ass for the players. They stun, gate in more slaad, and sometimes deposit eggs when they hit something. The combat took a long time, but through clever use of shaping the chaos of Limbo and some help from a pentadrone the party was able to route the slaad and keep safe. Bobby has eggs deposited in her now though.

After passing through a giant whirlpool of chaos, the party was then attacked again by slaad. This time blue ones. The combat was a lot faster than the first, with the players having learned a lot of tricks from the combat. And this time there were no eggs deposited!

This was most of the Law in Chaos from the Great Modron March.

Ambient environments and weather for Numenera

Numenera presents a nice opportunity to create some really weird weather or ambient environmental moments. A basic encounters like "a deer stands in the middle of a field of wildflowers" just doesn't cut it in the Ninth World. Below is a random table of possible ambient scenes to act as a tool or jumping off point for future ideas.

1d6	Ambient encounter
1	Large round black drones slowly meander across the sky in a small pack. Every so often, they all stop in formation and extend four large arms from their middle. Fresh, untainted water rains down. After an hour or so, the drones retract their arms and fly away again.
2	A huge, red flowing manta ray-like creature called a batolec flies through the sky. These creatures filer out nanites from the sky above using its monomolecular filaments in its mouth. The atmosphere passing across these filaments emits a low hum which can be heard for miles. It is said that when two of these creatures meet, they engage in an incredible aerial display and the range of sounds echoing across the surface to be utterly enchanting.
3	Rolling hills of scrapheaps extend for miles. Green fumes waft off of them, the products of hundreds of years of corrosion. The sky is a dark green with motes of yellow dispersed through out. Generally the motes appear fixed in the sky, but every so often they shuffle around in the sky. This shuffling is accompanied by a cacophony of all-to-human screaming and shouting.
4	An immense cloud of nanites and drones float above the land. It slowly moves through the sky, darkening the land beneath. Every so often, a section separates, and flies off on its own to form its own cloud. Broken and de-powered nanites and drones rain down from the sky. This has attracted small bands of scavengers that follow these clouds over the land.
5	In the distance, a flock biotic creatures float in the air, their tentacles hanging down. Called clairedones, they are large, transparent sacks with colors and structures floating and spinning inside. The tentacles grab almost randomly at any mostly biotic organism that might happen by.
6	Water starts coalescing as pools on the surface of the ground. As the pools grow and grow, eventually they start gurgling softly. The intensity of the movement increases with every second until, suddenly, droplets of water start shooting up from the ground. This reverse rainfall continues until all the pools have emptied and the land is left completely desiccate.

Alternative forms of wealth in Numenera

Wealth takes many forms through out the Ninth Realsm. While shins are the standard form of currency in Numenera, there are many other forms of wealth and value. Below is a table various different valuable items can be used in trade almost everywhere. Suggested values are provided in parentheses but feel free to use whatever values you want.

1d12	Form
1	Disc of pure, black graphite. There are no traces of synths or biotics. (10 shins each)
2	Many fine synth threads woven together into a small ring. Multiple rings are worn on cords as necklaces or bracelets. (3 shins each)
3	A small transparent globe with shards of minerals and synth floating around inside. When placed on level surface the globe does not roll, and when pushed it does not roll but slide. (5 shins each)
4	Brick of crystalline matrix supported by a fine weave of synth around it. These bricks are commonly used by trade groups and merchants who deal in very large quantities. Worth nothing outside of the Steadfast. (100 shins each)
5	Seskii teeth set in a delicate synth facet with a roundel of seskii scales wrapping around it. (0.5 shins each)
6	Strange fish-like scales which glimmer only under the night sky. (1 shin each)
7	Foot-long rod of scintillating white-yellow light. When touched, small arcs of electricity course up and down the outside of the rod. While they cause a slight tingle, there is no negative effect. These rods can be rigged to power archaeo-tech if necessary. Valued highly by tinkers and artificers. (50 shins each)
8	Small blue flat crystals. When gripped by a biotic, the grip ends at an very small slightly glowing force-field that makes the crystal float in the hand. When not being help by a biotic appendage, these crystals lie flat and behave as expected. (5 shins each)
9	Tiny black marbles. When inspected very closely, tiny human like skulls float inside moving via their own accord. (3 shins each)
10	Autobits. Small synth-steel cubes with random numbers on every side which change every second. If on your person, if they are thought about they automatically appear in your hand. This effect does not persist once traded or stolen. This effect appears tied to "ownership". (2 shins each)
11	Shards cut from biologically grown crystal matrices that naturally occur deep below the Black Riage. These crystals are considered extremely valuable not only for their beauty, but also for their excellent conducting properties. (5 shins each)
12	Half-inch thick woven cords of synth about a foot long. When pressure is applied to the cord, it changes color depending on both the pressure and temperature of the bearer. When placed end to end, these cords automatically splice together to form a longer and longer cord. Long ropes of these cords are traded for very valuable goods. (10 shins per foot)

Alchemical (gastric) brooding frog

The alchemical (gastric) brooding frog is a combination of natural and magical breeding that has resulted in an incredible useful, albeit disgusting, small creature. This multi-colored frog broods its tadpoles in its mouth. Each tadpole, when ingested, produce a minor magical effect. When the frog is squeezed, it shoots out a random tadpole with one of the following colors and magical effects. These frogs can be found for purchase in Sigil.

1d8	Tadpole
1	red: +1 to all damage for one minute.
2	blue: +1 to all saving throws for one minute.
3	green: heal 1d4+1 HP.
4	pink: character can jump extra high once given a successful Strength check, jumping up to twice their movement.
5	yellow: character's palms become extremely sticky allowing them to stick to sheer surfaces without moving for up to once minute.
6	purple: for one minute, if this character is struck with a melee attack, the attacked must make a save versus poison or be blinded for one round.
7	white: breath underwater for one minute.
8	orange: character produces a massive belch and all hostile creatures within 10 feet must make a saveversus breath weapon or be sickened for one round (-2 all rolls).

Warhammer Fantasy Firearms and 5e

Continuing this Warhammer Fantasy meets 5e D&D train, I decided to move onto a very important part of the world: firearms.

The Warhammer fantasy world is best comparable to the early Modern period so things like multinational trade, roads, printing, arrival of the middle/merchant class, and the introduction of firearms into military usage. As such, the Empire from WFRP and WFB has a lot of guns. And in the roleplaying games, the PCs get access to guns (sometimes) though they are extremely expensive.

Currently, 5e does not have rules for guns let alone guns that are analogous to WFRP. Here are some rules that are mostly just doing the ratios between WFRP and 5e with a bit of massaging. I'm not sure about making them simple, but let's see how that goes. The 1d10 bit from the firearm property is very not 5e, but I don't care. I'm also pretty sure these could be made a bit deadlier, but I have yet to actually test these all out. Also it is kind of the point that these are prohibitively expensive. Knock off a 0 if you want to have players actually be able to buy these.

Weapon properties

Firearm To reload a weapon that has the firearm property, this character must take their entire turn (both action and movement). If a 1 is rolled while making an attack roll with a weapon with the firearm property that weapon is now jammed. This weapon cannot be reloaded or fired until a successful DC 10 Intelligence or Dexterity check is made as a Use an Object action to unjam the weapon. Additionally, that character must roll 1d10. On a 1 the weapon explodes, is destroyed, and does it's damage to the bearer. Unless noted, a weapon with the firearm quality needs both shot and gunpowder in order to be fired.

Weapons

Martial Ranged Weapons
Arquebus	1000 gp	1d10 piercing	8 lb.	Ammunition (range 150/600), firearm, loading, two-handed
Blunderbuss	100 gp	1d8 piercing	4 lb.	Ammunition (range 20/60), firearm, loading, special
Pistol	600	1d8 piercing	2 lb.	Ammunition (range 30/120), firearm, loading

Special weapons

Blunderbuss The blunderbus does not have traditional ammunition and instead is just a bunch of nails and other random hard bits propelled via a bit of gunpowder.

Adventuring gear

Ammunition
Gunpowder (10)	30 gp	1 lb.
Shot (10)	1 gp	10 lb.