Elemental Reductions

Cryogorgon Description Large wild mountain ram, with shaggy yellow-white fur, and frosted blue eyes. When it gets angry or hungry it grows to the size of a horse, and becomes even stronger. Drivers Needs   to eat: vegetation or frozen and shattered animals are fine. Needs   to breed with female sheep at least daily, if possible. Wants   to eat frozen and shattered intelligent life–it tastes best. Wants   to know it is feared, and will play with survivors after it has had its fill. O5R Str   14 (20)   Dex   15   Con   16   Int   2   Wis   15   Cha   10 MV   18", jump 6", wall run 12" vertically   HD   7   AC   16   HP   7d8+21 (52)   Att   +5:   Ram   2d6+2(5) blunt, target must Str save (-5) or be knocked back the Cryogorgon's feet in distance;   Trample   straight line run for double movement, against creatures two size leve...

This is untested. How to deal with weather?  I don't want a complicated table, and I don't want to roll too often--like less than three times per day of travel, and averaging close to once per day. This table is what I'm thinking about: 1-8 Calm (sunny day or clear night) 9-14 Partly cloudy 15-20 Cloudy 21-26 Precipitating (rain,  snow) 27-30 Turbulent (thunder, hail, fierce winds) Method : Roll 1d6:  If it's even,  subtract the value  if it's odd, add the value. The table bottoms out at 1, and is capped at 30.  If there's a transition to a new kind of weather, roll again in 1d6 turns. Otherwise roll again in 1d6 x 8 hours, unless the value is over 20, then roll in 1d3 hours. Why? : Weather goes for days at a time in a more or less steady state. If there is precipitation, it's preceded by clouds. Precipitation can last a while, but sometimes it only happens briefly (roll in 1d6 turns), then it's gone. But how do you deal with some...

Inspired by this post on Hack & Slash . Grave Robbing My first reaction was to make grave robbing dangerous, inconvenient, and socially negative.  If a party loots a corpse, or worse robs graves, there should be a chance of the following: Curses from the appropriate god of the dead/afterlife for stealing from the dead.  Especially if they're heretics, heathens, or godless. Cursed items.  Everyone knows that you bury dead warriors with their weapons not just because they need them in the next life, but because they become cursed in this life. Diseases for mucking about with decomposing bodies. A hit to their reputation if they're found out, because nobody likes grave robbers.  ("Hey, this looks like old aunt Bertha's necklace.  Wait, it is old aunt Bertha's necklace!") My second reaction was to look at those tables.  There are some good entries there.  I'd prefer the oddities event to be rarer, bu...

In response to: Are You Loyal to the Party? LS mentions two bothersome things about hirelings: 1) "I hate seeing them treated as props. As things that can be safely ignored until a player wants them to make an attack, or use an ability." 2) "I also hate determining a hireling’s loyalty when they are first hired, and having that number remain static throughout their tenure with the party. A person’s loyalty to their employer should be a function of their working experiences, not an innate attribute of their character. Loyalty should be a thing that goes up and down constantly, depending on how valued the retainer feels, and how much of a future they see for themselves in this work." Here's how I'd prefer to set up dynamic (between session) loyalty:  Use a 2d6 roll: 2d6: Result 2 -2 loyalty 3-5 -1 loyalty 9-11 +1 loyalty 12 +2 loyalty If the roll is 3 or more below current loyalty, subtract an additional -1 loyalty. If the roll...

This post is a response to an old thread on Monsters & Manuals .  One of Noism's dangling post ideas (“The players stumble across another NPC Party in the dungeon”) prompted an earlier version of this, which then morphed into an expanded Gygaxian table set.  It's mostly d12 based because I couldn't come up with 20 or 30 possibilities that didn't seem to be variations of the same thing.  For spur of the moment use, I'd trim down the “Desired Item”, “Person of note in the Community”, and “Local Villain” tables to d10s, so that I could throw a d12, d10, and 2 d6s at once to match things up as quickly as possible. What is their story? They are starving and attempting to make their way to the surface. They are searching for the relative of a randomly determined member. Use the “Personal Relationship” table below. One of the other members is secretly romantically engaged with the missing person as well. They are arguing over whether they actual...

In this blog, I hope to share ideas and prompt discussions on how to make playing role-playing games better, as a player, as a DM, and as a scenario designer.  I don't do this for a living (yet?), although even if I did, I suspect often there would be better ideas than I scrounge on my own out there. Please lend me your eye, your wit, and your insight. Regards, Empedocles