Resources

Unlooted: Random Monster Generator

Random Monster Generator

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The format of this generator is inspired by The Monster Approaches by Pelle Nilsson, which can be found in Mörk Borg Cult: Feretory.

Roll 3d10. Read these tables from left to right. Save the dice.

1d10 The monster approaches… with… It is…
1 rolling like smoke hooks for hands. made of liquid metal.
2 skittering like an insect a small arsenal of blades protruding from its shoulders. lost and hungry.
3 with the sound of glass breaking, endlessly a swarm of insects trailing in its wake. delighted to see you.
4 sloughing off its scabrous skin tumours sprouting from its flesh, multiplying in real time. limping, mortally wounded.
5 ursine and diseased translucent skin. chasing something, and you’re in the way.
6 cracking the ground with each step seven mouths, tongues lolling and licking. hissing and spitting, eager for a fight.
7 billowing smoke from beneath its paws too many eyes. slowly sinking into the earth.
8 a thing of far too many limbs a cracked porcelain mask over its face. a chimera of multiple creatures, crudely stitched together.
9 slipping in and out of vision the strong smell of rotting wood. arguing with itself.
10 whispering your name an aura of intense heat. specifically looking for you.

Look at the dice you rolled.

The highest result is its Hit Dice and Morale.

The lowest result is its Armour Class. (For games with ascending AC, subtract this value from 20.)

The middle result is its number of attacks each turn and the damage those attacks do:

Middle d10 Damage
1-3 d4
4-5 d6
6-7 d8
8-9 d10
10 d12

Make It Nasty

d12 What horrible thing does it do?
1 It splits in two when reduced to half health.
2 It oozes contact poison from its skin. Make a Save when you touch it or become poisoned and take damage equal to its damage dice every turn you don’t make the Save.
3 Eats your weapons.
4 Every round it doesn’t suffer holy damage it regenerates 1d6 hit points.
5 It blinks out of existence every other round, appearing directly behind the most vulnerable opponent.
6 A hidden mouth in its chest has a 1-in-6 chance each turn of opening up and unleashing a devastating scream that deafens anyone in earshot who fails to Make a Save.
7 Turns stone to mud beneath your feet – then solidifies it again after you start to sink.
8 Constantly whispers a stream of nonsense syllables that tickle the edges of your consciousness. You can’t understand the words but you want to, and might easily become obsessed even long after you’ve left the creature behind.
9 Drills into your mind, seeing the world from behind your eyes and using you as a puppet.
10 Opens portals to places best left untouched and tries to push you through them.
11 Turns any liquid it can see or smell to acid.
12 Inhales so deeply that it sucks all the oxygen out of the room. Torches go out, and its prey begins to asphyxiate.

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I write random tables as a warmup every day. You can suggest a prompt here.

Get the PDF here.

Unlooted: Loot From A Sea Monster's Lair

Loot From A Sea Monster’s Lair

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  1. The carved wooden figurehead from the prow of a ship – a woman with long flowing hair and the tail of a fish. She clutches a wicked spear and points off to the horizon. The sea-monster has placed her gently in a deep crack between two rocks, where she watches over the entrance to the lair.
  2. A circular mine, studded with rusted iron spikes and wrapped in chains.
  3. The beacon room of a lighthouse, placed carefully over a deep rock pool like a makeshift dome. An octopus lives in the pool, presumably kept as a pet by the sea-monster.
  4. A collection of hooks mounted on severed wrists. Some are very old, the wrists little more than bones and rags, but some still ooze congealed blood. Inspecting them reveals that the older ones have been removed much more violently than the newer ones. Practice, it seems, makes perfect.
  5. The beak of a giant squid daubed with incoherent symbols painted in its own ink.
  6. A makeshift mirror, a riot of shards and fragments of glass, pieced together from a thousand stolen spyglass lenses.
  7. A collection of nautical charts, crudely stuck together in the spots where they overlap. They’ve been written on in ink and blood and marrow, in illegible words formed from an alien alphabet.
  8. Hundreds of femurs, held in an ancient net. They’ve been broken to different lengths, smoothed and sharpened, and painted with unique symbols. Beside them on the ground, an ink circle divided into seventeen segments each bearing symbols of their own. Some of the bones have been cast into the circle.

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WritingExercises

RPG Writing Exercises

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This was originally posted in February 2018. The link and images got broken when I moved to this new site, and I’m slowly fixing things. This has now been updated, though the text remains the same as it was in 2018.

Last week I got talking to a few people on Twitter about writing habits – in particular, we were talking about writing exercises and warmups. Historically they’re not something I’ve made much use of, but we were strongly encouraged to warm up while I was doing my Masters and I’ve since discovered that (for me, at least) warming up before working on something can be very beneficial.

There are tons of suggestions for methods of warming up available online, but they are all geared towards fiction writers. And that got me wondering whether warming up might also be useful for GMs and RPG designers. I know that when I go into a new project – or an old one that I haven’t looked at for some time – it can often be hard to get into the groove and start producing work that I’m happy with.

Warm ups are generally not intended to produce finished work (or even work that you ever intend to develop or show to anybody). Instead they’re designed to turn off your inner editor and get you creating. That’s all well and good, but I figure that for gamers it might also be nice if at the end of your warm up you have something that you can use in a session (if you’re a GM) or develop further for a project (if you’re a creator of some kind).

It turns out that we already have a lot of resources for generating these kinds of exercises, in the form of the thousands of random roll tables and tools for generating randomised content that this hobby is filled with. So, with that in mind, I’ve come up with some ideas for writing warm ups for RPG creators, and I’ve compiled them into their own roll table.

How To Be Warm

Before you dive into whatever project you’re working on today, roll on the table below (I’ve tried to make sure that the prompts that rely on external resources don’t require you to have commercial products that you might not have access to). Read the prompt, then spend 20 minutes responding to it in whatever way you like. Try to write in a stream of consciousness, not stopping to reread your work or edit it in any way. Focus more on the fluff of what you’re writing, rather than the mechanical aspects of it. Game balance, mechanical integrity, and actual usability can come later. For now, it’s more important that something exists at the end of the 20 minutes that didn’t exist before it, whether you intend to ever look at it again or not.

More importantly than anything else – have fun. Write something ridiculous that you wouldn’t normally try. Embrace the fact that it might suck, and allow yourself to build something that might not ever get used.

  1. Make a creature using this Seventh Sanctum Legendary Creature Generator. Write a monster manual entry for it. No stats; just figure out where it comes from, what’s unique and different about it, and what its driving motivations are. If you have time, brainstorm some ideas for fun abilities it might have.
  2. Use this Quest Item generator to create a list of items. Spend a minute or so writing a very quick description for each items generated – what does it look like, who made it, and what kind of thing does it do?
  3. Locate your favourite name generator. Get yourself a name. Then spend 15 minutes writing about that person. Who are they, what do they do, what do they want, and how do they intend to achieve it? Bonus points if you get something useful out of a truly ridiculous name.
  4. Generate a place name and write about that place’s dark secret, and about the one person who knows that secret.
  5. Grab a random map from Uncharted Atlas. Spend 20 minutes writing about one historical event that took place there.
  6. Generate an opening line and write an event from a character’s backstory. This doesn’t have to be an already-existing character. (Since that isn’t specifically a fantasy generator, not all of the lines will be suitable. Bonus points if you can make it work anyway).

On top of these six ideas, I also like to warm up using the trinket table in the Players Handbook (or with my own trinkets releases). [Update 2020: you could also use the random trinket generator on this very website!] I like to take a random trinket and then simply write about where it came from and what – if anything – it does that might not be obvious when the item is first encountered.

Let me know what you think of these, and if you create anything you like using them feel free to share it in the comments!

Tomorrow we’ll be looking at the best new releases on the DMs Guild in our monthly roundup, and on Thursday we’ll be returning to Shadepoint. Don’t forget to grab a copy of Cities: Shadepoint if you haven’t already – it’s completely free!

If you enjoyed this post or found it useful, consider leaving me a tip on Ko-Fi.

Image Credit: An alchemist peacefully writing in a room strewn with papers. Engraving by V.A.L. Texier after Gianni after T. Wyck. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

GolemMalfunctions

1d44 Flatpack Golem Malfunctions

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Matt Sanders of Sealed Library made a post on Twitter about flatpack golems and how much fun they could be, and we decided to write up a table of their potential malfunctions. Matt also provided two golem-peddling merchants for you to drop into your games, too. Enjoy!

1d4 1d4 Golem Malfunction
1 1 Its right leg is shorter than its left. For every 15ft it moves forward, it moves 5ft left.
1 2 The screw you could never find a place for means something internal creaks loudly when it moves any quicker than a snail’s pace.
1 3 Should you be able to see straight out the other side when you look into its ears? When it’s windy, this makes a pleasant whistling noise.
1 4 Something is wrong with its knees. When moving more than 25ft in a round, there is a 1 in 6 chance its knee will dislocate and it will topple over. Reattaching the lower leg and getting up right takes a full action.
2 1 Its balance is poor and it can easily be knocked over. Anyone attacking who does max damage on their roll will knock it over. It’s 50/50 if it topples forwards or backwards.
2 2 A lack of articulation in its preferred arm makes the golem’s reach longer, but it is incredibly clumsy and has a tendency to smash things when it turns.
2 3 A misconnected ocular sensor means the golem has heat vision. This makes it useless in some situations, but powerful in others.
2 4 Something is wound too tightly and the golem moves at high speed. It has a 2 in 6 chance of overshooting its intended movement by half.
3 1 Something in the shoulder is wound the wrong way. Every time it swings its arm the joint tightens up. Eventually the arm will stop working entirely.
3 2 A piece was missing from the box – the golem’s lower jaw. The opening where its mouth should be acts as an amplifier for the mechanisms inside it, so that every time it moves it emits a low-level rumble like a neverending growl.
3 3 It literally has two left feet, and often walks in circles until explicitly instructed to pay attention.
3 4 Part of its arm is calibrated incorrectly and acts as a dowsing rod. When unattended or acting without specific instructions, the golem can usually be found stumbling in the direction of water.
4 1 It’s cheaply made, and that is most obvious in the construction of its valves and seals. It leaves a thin trail of oil wherever it goes, and needs topping up regularly.
4 2 Whatever rudimentary intelligence exists inside it latched on to the box it was transported in as “home”. It regularly tries to climb into boxes and crates when it doesn’t have a task to perform.
4 3 The springs in its legs are calibrated wrong. It walks with an exaggerated bounce, as though gravity is slightly lower for it. It can jump surprisingly high, but landing tends to be chaotic.
4 4 The piece that forms the golem’s neck is slightly too long and can’t properly support the weight of the head. It lolls to the side, and the golem struggles to walk in a straight line.

Discount Golem Vendors

Grondor’s Used Golem Warehouse

Grondor is a diminutive and hirsute seller of second hand golems. His prices are almost too good to believe, and his promises about quality definitely are. Any golem bought from Grondor has a 3-in-6 chance of failing in the first dungeon or encounter you use it in. Sod’s law means it’ll get there just fine, but as soon as you need it something will go wrong. Grondor will never accept responsibility and will always refer to a previously not-at-all obvious sign with a disclaimer in tiny text on it. This is in contrast to the large and lurid signs with things like WIZARD’S TOWER CLEARANCE – ALL STOCK MUST GO emblazoned on them. Amongst those in the know, Grundor is famed for filling second hand golems with sawdust or cheap ooze to keep them running smoothly until after you’ve bought them.

Smorkea

Smorkea’s big innovation was making golem’s affordable for the masses. You walk around and they have golem’s set up performing tasks in pre-made dioramas that make everything look lovely and aspirational. Once you reach the end, you select a flat pack golem from the shelf and build it yourself at home. The instructions are arcane and hard to follow for even the most accomplished wizard, let alone the bargain-seekers who typically shop at Smirkea.

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Image Credit: A market scene with a water vendor, sellers of vegetables and a woman selling fish to a man as a soldier looks on. Coloured etching with aquatint by R.B. Peake. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

1d6-Lovecraft

1d6 Lovecraftian Trinkets

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Encounter Roleplay asked me to write a table of Lovecraftian trinkets to go with their Cthulu games.

If you would like you own table of trinkets, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi!

  1. A long, sinuous key set in silver. Eldritch symbols are embossed along the shaft, and the teeth of the key resemble grasping tentacles.
  2. A map of a large, sprawling manor house, drawn on a thick leathery parchment. It has been annotated in an unknown hand that writes of strange geometry and spaces behind the walls that should not exist.
  3. A long twisted wand made of crystal. The tip splits into three thick points, each carved with a leering face.
  4. A train ticket, torn partway through and clipped with a conductor’s ticket punch. It is valid for one journey from Newburyport to Arkham.
  5. An antique, yellowed photograph. It depicts a group of men standing on the end of a long wooden jetty. The are dressed in high-collared black coats and tall narrow hats, and each of them is holding a long, narrow knife. A shape on the floor at their feet appears to be a mutilated human body. A handwritten note on the back of the photo states “Innsmouth, 1845”.
  6. A stack of glass beads on a long wooden dowel. They are cloudy and imperfect but their hues and deep and luscious, a variety of purples, greens, and deep oranges, flecked with yellow and gold.

If you would like you own table of trinkets, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi!

Image Credit © Penetralia Press/Alex Mayo used with permission

1d6-Grim

1d6 Grim Trinkets

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Encounter Roleplay asked me to write some trinkets to tie in to their Zewihander Grim & Perilous game. Trinkets within the system tend to be low-value objets d’art, which is exactly the kind of thing I enjoy writing.

If you would like your own set of trinkets, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi.

  1. A green velvet coin purse tied with black ribbon. It contains a handful of brass pennies, worn smooth and shiny from regular handling.
  2. A thick iron ring holding a pair of heavy keys. The head of one has been shaped and engraved to resemble the head and beak of a raven. The head of the other resembles an hourglass.
  3. An oilskin bag containing a collection of severed fingers and toes. They have been wrapped in gauze and soaked in saline in order to preserve them, but they began to rot a long time ago.
  4. A set of false teeth housed in a wooden box. Each tooth has been carved with a different alchemical symbol.
  5. A foot-long piece of driftwood carved with a two-headed horse. One of the heads has a single long horn; the other has tusks descending from its lower jaw.
  6. The boss of a shield, dented and battleworn. It is engraved with a roaring lion’s head.

If you would like your own set of trinkets, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi.

Image Credit: James Graham Marquess of Montrose about to mount the ladder to the gibbet in the marketplace of Edinburgh. Wood engraving after C.R. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

1d12-CultistItems

1d12 Cultist Items

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This set of trinkets was created for ThatSaltyGinger in exchange for a tip on Ko-Fi. Lauren is one of my favourite streamers and an all-around good person, and I was really happy to come up with some evidence of the Cult of the Bloody Tongue.

  1. This small figurine is around 8 inches tall and carved from a solid piece of red onyx. The base resembles bubbling liquid, with a single long tentacle extending upwards out of it. 
  2. A tangled mass of glass and metal that resists your attempts to make sense of what it looks like. Pieces of the glass seem to pass through the metal in places, and sections of it twist in ways that don’t seem possible. It draws your eye constantly even though looking at it fills you with a low-level sense of dread.
  3. A small music box with a copper crank. It is painted with stars and strange symbols, and when the crank is turned it plays sounds of quiet sobbing and howling winds.
  4. A glass dome mounted on a heavy piece of wood, like a snowglobe but bigger. It contains a miniature diorama of an unknown city complete with temples, red-roofed buildings, gardens filled with fountains that somehow flow with real water, and bridges of veined marble arching over wide streets and narrow waterways. The windows blaze in an unseen sunset, and staring at it too long fills you with a sense of something almost-remembered.
  5. A small urn made from red-veined marble. It is empty, but smells faintly of burned spices.
  6. A black velvet pouch with a silk drawstring. It contains a set of seven-sided dice carved from bone, with numbers stained in shimmering black ink. Each of them is marked with an ankh in place of the number 7.
  7. A small travelling chest containing sets of ceremonial robes. They are made from long strips of silken fabric in the deep red hues of the setting sun.
  8. A miniature oak tree growing in a wide, shallow pot lined with mossy stones. The wood is twisted and warped, the boughs twining over each other as though trying to reach out and grasp something.
  9. A mask of a man’s face, made from soft wax that is cold and clammy to the touch. It is very pliable and seems like it should be easy to pull the wax apart, but it resists any attempts to do this. There are no holes for the eyes, and sinuous red lines are painted down the cheeks from the base of the eye socket. 
  10. A glass vial stoppered with blood-red wax. It contains a shimmering, metallic dust that calls to mind the silent burning fury of a falling star.
  11. A heavy book bound in an unidentified black material that is always slick and clammy to the touch. The pages are thick, irregular sheets of paper and containing seemingly nonsensical scrawlings of strange symbols and formulae. It looks like nonsense, but it’s easy to find that you have spent long minutes blindly following the shapes of the ink of the paper.
  12. A thin flute made from bone. One half has been dipped in deep red pigment. Playing it produces no audible sound.

If you want your own table of items, drop me a tip on Ko-Fi and give me a theme to play with!

Image Credit © Penetralia Press/Alex Mayo used with permission

1d6-ExplorersPack

1d6 Items In An Explorer’s Pack

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As part of my continued effort to make 5e’s starting equipment packs more interesting, today I present the Explorer’s Pack!

You can find the other packs in this series here.

If you would like me to write a table of trinkets for you, leave me a tip on Ko-Fi!

The Pack Itself

The explorer’s pack is a sturdy canvas backpack treated with wax to resist the elements. It carries a large number of external pockets fastened with heavy leather straps, and another pair of heavy straps over the main top flap to hold a bedroll in place. The top flap is made of a large piece of tarp that folds up to sit on top of the pack. When unfolded it opens to a large sheet 6 feet long and 4 feet wide, which can be tied off to a tree or overhang as a makeshift shelter, with the weight of the pack holding it down where the tarp joins it.

Inside The Pack

As well as the basics – a bedroll, a mess kit, a tinderbox, torches, rations, a waterskin, and 50 feet of hempen rope – the explorer’s pack contains the following items:

  1. An assortment of short pieces of rope fashioned into loops to act as slings when climbing. Useful for tying off to rocks to run rope through, anchoring yourself, or for tying directly around lengths of rope to make ascent easier.
  2. A rolled piece of thick canvas tied with narrow strips of leather. When unfurled it has a number of compartments sewn into it to hold cartographer’s supplies – calipers, a pair of compasses, slim vials of ink, a narrow quill, and a ruler. A wax-lined pocket sewn into the lining holds sheets of parchment.
  3. A hollow wooden pole segmented into increasingly narrow sections so that they can be pushed down into each other. It is only a foot long when collapsed but extends up to ten feet. It comes with a set of different tips that can be screwed on or off – a sharp point, a small brass hook, a miniature saw blade, and a heavy brass ball.
  4. A small belt pouch stained with ink made from bioluminescent plankton, so that it glows a dull greenish-yellow in low light. It contains essential items for exploring cave networks and other labyrinthine environments – lengths of different coloured string, a selection of coloured chalks, plus a lodestone and set of needles pushed through pieces of cork, used to make an impromptu compass.
  5. A thick pocket-sized notebook filled with your notes and sketches. It is string-tied and bound in mulberry bark.
  6. A strange insect encased in amber. It has a long armored thorax with multiple legs, and appears to have a head at both ends. The amber has been seated in a brass housing and hangs from a slim chain necklace.

If you would like me to write a table of trinkets for you, leave me a tip on Ko-Fi!

Image Credit: Explorers cutting up whales.. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

2d6-DiplomatPack

2d6 Items In A Diplomat’s Pack

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As part of my continued effort to make 5e’s starting equipment packs more interesting, today I present the Entertainer’s Pack!

The Diplomat’s Pack is an interesting one, because RAW it contains a chest – which you obviously aren’t going to be carrying with you. So for this one, I split it into two and wrote trinkets for the chest and for a smaller pack that you carry with you.

If you would like me to write a table of trinkets for you, leave me a tip on Ko-Fi!

The Pack Itself

The diplomat’s pack comprises a sturdy travelling chest sealed with a number of heavy locks, and a small leather briefcase. Both are of high quality materials and emblazoned with the coat of arms of the country or ruler you serve.

Inside The Chest

The chest contains the most valuable things you bring with you, and is generally left under lock and key in a safe place – an embassy, your rooms in a royal palace, etc. As well as the expected items – two cases for maps and scrolls, fine clothes, extra bottles of ink and sheets of paper, perfumes, a lamp and oil, etc. – it also contains the following items:

  1. A portfolio case containing generic “boilerplate” documents to use as templates when agreeing new treaties and agreements. 
  2. A heavy ledger sealed with a padlock. This contains minutes of meetings and conversations you have had with rulers and leaders during your travels. The information contained in it could be very damaging if it fell into the wrong hands.
  3. A slim, flat case that is hidden inside a concealed compartment in the base of the chest. It contains documents with details of the information networks your employers have in place in the locations you are tasked to travel to – aliases and locations of informants, details of dead drops, and the like. It is written in a cipher you know how to decode.
  4. A pair of sandalwood boxes, finely crafted and inlaid with ivory with a red felt lining inside. These are used to present small gifts to rulers who you are meeting with, though the gifts themselves are left up to you to source.
  5. A thick, finely-crafted chain. One end has a strong manacle for your wrist, and the other can be fastened securely to your briefcase. 
  6. A long velvet cape embroidered with the coat of arms of the ruler you serve. This is purely ceremonial, worn when you are representing your country at large events.

Inside The Case

The briefcase contains your day-to-day items – a bottle of ink, an ink pen, a small vial of perfume, sealing wax and a seal, and fine soap – along with the following items:

  1. A letter written on heavy parchment and treated with wax to protect it against wear. It serves as both a letter of introduction and proof of your position, and is signed with the official seal of the ruler you serve.
  2. A slim scroll tube. The lid locks with an intricate twisting mechanism that only you know how to release. You use it to hold vital documents as you go about your daily business.
  3. A letter-sized piece of slate mounted in a silver frame, with a piece of chalk mounted on a silver handle attached to it by a chain. This is magically twinned with an identical slate kept by the people you report to. Anything written on either slate appears instantly on its twin. 
  4. A quill pen made from the tail feather of a bird native to your home lands. It is deep purple, streaked with mustard and iridescent silver.
  5. A pocket-sized leatherbound book that contains facsimiles of various official seals of the lands you are tasked to travel to, annotated with information about how to detect forgeries.
  6. A felt pouch containing 15gp worth of coin in various denominations and currencies. A small inner pocket contains a handful of coins that you find interesting or attractive and that you have kept aside so that you don’t spend them.

If you would like me to write a table of trinkets for you, leave me a tip on Ko-Fi!

If you would like more trinkets, check out my work on the DMs Guild.

Image Credit: Saint Wilfred (Wilfrid, Wilfrith) the Younger (of York): he petitions King Cædwalla of Wessex to grant him land, at Selsey, which is granted. Engraving by T. King, 1807. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

PerilousPits

Save or Suck: Perilous Pits

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This post was originally posted in 2018. I’ve re-posted it with updated artwork, but haven’t changed anything about the post itself. I’m still pretty happy with this!

While you’re here – it’s my birthday this week, so all of my games on itch.io are currently on sale. Go check it out!

If you follow me on Twitter you’ll have seen that I’ve been working my way through back issues of Dragon Magazine, beginning at issue #1. As well as being a fascinating glimpse into the history and development of this hobby that I love so much, I’ve also been finding some useful things among those pages – and some things that could be useful, but fall a little short of the mark.

One of those things crops up in Issue #15 in the form of an article entitled “PITS” by Richard Morenoff, which presents “A set of charts to help the dungeon master when player characters or monsters fall into a pit”.

What follows are a series of random roll tables to help determine what might actually be in the pit. I got unreasonably excited by this when I saw the article, but unfortunately the tables themselves aren’t much use if we want to generate interesting results. 60% of the time the pit is simply an empty pit; to my mind, the point of rolling on a table like this is when you want something other than an empty pit. The rest of the results are fairly typical of early D&D, with most of them being some variant of a monster/random NPC/spellcaster who is tied or chained down in the pit, or else generating a pit of snakes or random oozes. One of the results even directs DMs to roll on the D&D monster matrix to generate a result, requiring you to turn to another book to finish generating your pit.

I think we can do better than that. The philosophy of dungeon design has changed in the intervening 40 years since this set of tables was published, so we need something that works with the modern game. I’d also like to preserve some of the strangeness of early games, too. My main goal, though, is to provide you with something quick and easy to use that a) doesn’t result in empty pits (and, thus, wasted time while rolling on the tables) and b) doesn’t require you to turn to another table somewhere else and roll on that (although you will need to consult the Monster Manual if you roll for any creatures).

A quick word to the wise; this table is very much in the vein of “save or suck”, which may not gell well with everyone’s preferred style of play. Be aware that using this table is guaranteed to ruin the day of at least one of your players.

Here’s what I’ve come up with.

PERILOUS PITS

Random pits for Fifth Edition

Using these tables is easy. Beginning at Table 1 – Concealment roll 1d100 and note the result, working through the tables in numerical order. Some categories contain sub-tables; entries on the main tables will direct you to roll on these depending on the result of your roll on that category’s main table. Once you have rolled on any sub-tables required for that category, move on.

Concealment

In all cases where a pit is not immediately visible, there is a 50% chance that there is visible evidence of dungeon creatures avoiding the pit. Spotting these tracks requires a passive Perception of 14 or higher.

Table 1: Concealment
1d100 Concealment Passive Perception DC to spot
01-20 Open; immediately visible. –
21-40 Concealed with tarp/cloth/a net 10
41-60 Concealed with wooden boards/a false floor 15
61-80 Concealed with a trap door. (50% chance the trap door closes and locks after the pit is triggered.) 18
81-100 Concealed with an illusion 20 (or spellcaster’s Save DC, if known)

The Basics

Determine the size of the opening and the depth of the pit by rolling on Table 2a: Opening and Table 2b: Depth. Then roll on Table 3a: Hazards, generating Additional Hazards and Creatures if necessary.

Table 2a: Opening
1d100 Opening
1-15 5’ square
16-30 5’ diameter circle
31-45 10’ square
46-60 10’ diameter circle
61-70 15’ diameter circle
71-80 Rectangular; 5’ x 10’
81-90 Rectangular; 5’ x 15’
91-100 Rectangular; 10’ x 15’

 

Table 2b: Depth
1d100 Depth Base Falling Damage
1-20 10’ 1d6
21-35 15’ 1d6
36-50 20’ 2d6
51-65 30’ 3d6
66-75 40’ 4d6
76-85 50’ 5d6
86-95 60’ 6d6
96-100 Bottomless. Roll for Hazards as normal, but do not roll for Special Features.

 

Table 3a: Hazards
1d100 Hazard Effect
01-15 Spiked floor 11 (2d10) piercing damage plus base falling damage
16-25 Creature Roll on Table 3c: Creatures
26-35 Pool of acid 10’ deep (or that fills the pit, if pit is less than 10’ deep) 5 (1d10) acid damage on entering the acid, and at the end of each turn spent in the acid
36-45 Pool of tar 15’ deep (or that fills the pit if pit is less than 15’ deep) Creatures in the tar must succeed on a DC 15 Athletics (Strength) check to keep themselves afloat, repeating this save at the beginning of each turn spent in the tar. The speed of creatures in tar is reduced to 5’. Creatures failing the save sink and begin to drown (see drowning rules). Tar ignites if brought into contact with an open flame, dealing 11 (2d10) fire damage each round to any creatures in the tar.
46-55 Spiked floor as above, and roll for Additional Hazards  
56-65 Creature as above, and roll for Additional Hazards  
66-75 Acid as above, and roll for Additional Hazards  
76-85 Tar as above, and roll for Additional Hazards  
86-95 Quicksand Functions as tar, but DC is 18. Minimum depth 10’; if the pit is deeper than this, quicksand fills it to within 5’ of the opening.
96-100 Sphere of Annihilation at the base of the pit If pit is wider than 5’, DC 13 Dexterity saving throw to avoid the sphere. Otherwise, falling creatures make contact with it. See sphere of annihilation, see DMG p. 201. GM decides if the sphere is already under the control of another creature.

Additional Hazards

First roll to determine how many additional hazards are present. Then roll that many times on the Additional Hazards table. When rolling for multiple additional hazards, reroll duplicates.

Table 3b: # of Additional Hazards
1d100 # of times to roll on Table 3c
01-50 1
51-80 2
81-90 3
91-100 4

 

Table 3c: Additional Hazards
1d100 Hazard Effect/Notes
1-15 Greased/oiled sides Attempts to climb the sides of the pit are at Disadvantage
16-30 Spiked walls Additional 3 (1d6) piercing damage per 10’ fallen
31-45 Spinning blades at base of pit* Blades deal 16 (3d10) slashing damage to creatures at the bottom of the pit, and an additional 16 (3d10) slashing damage at the beginning of each subsequent turn. Blades can be disabled withsuccessful  a DC 15 Dexterity check using thieves’ tools.
46-55 Spinning blades on walls Additional 16 (3d10) slashing damage per 10’ fallen. Climbing the pit requires a successful DC 20 Dexterity (Acrobatics) check to avoid the blades. Creatures who fail this save take 16 (3d10) slashing damage and fall back to the bottom of the pit. Blades can be disabled with a successful DC 15 Dexterity check using thieves’ tools.
56-65 Rotting bodies at the bottom of the pit Creatures falling to the bottom of the pit must succeed on a DC 13 Constitution saving throw or be infected with Sewer Plague (see DMG, p. 257)
66-75 Contact poison on walls Creatures attempting to climb the walls must succeed on a DC 18 Constitution saving throw or take 11 (2d10) poison damage and be poisoned.
76-85 Greased/oiled sides, and roll for Special Features  
86-90 Spiked walls, and roll for Special Features  
91-95 Contact poison on walls, and roll for Special Features  
96-100 Roll again on this table, and roll for Special Features. If second roll also results in Special Features, roll twice on that table.
 * Items marked with an asterisk do not appear in bottomless pits. Ignore these hazards if rolled. Do not roll again to replace them.

 

Table 3d – Creatures

Table 3d: Creatures
1d100 Creatures
01-15 1d12 constrictor snakes
16-30 Gelatinous cube
31-45 Black pudding
46-60 1d4 giant scorpions
61-70 1d6 skeletons
71-80 Carrion crawler
81-90 Chest mimic
91-100 Troll; 50% chance it is chained to an iron ring in the ground.

 

Special Features

Table 4a: Special Features
1d100 Special Feature
01-15 Pit widens at the bottom and is a monster’s lair. The only way out is through the pit. Choose a suitable monster according to your dungeon’s needs.
16-30 Pit can be bypassed by secret doors concealed on the surface at both sides of the pit.
31-45 Secret door at the base of the pit reveals a staircase back to the surface. DC 15 to locate. 50% chance the door is locked.
46-60 Secret door at the base of the pit reveals a staircase back to the surface. DC 15 to locate. Door is barred from the other side.
61-75 Pit is located in the ceiling, and it and the space directly beneath it are subject to a Reverse Gravity spell. All other features remain the same.
76-90 Top 5’ of the pit is a sliding block of stone that slams shut after a creature reaches the bottom of the pit, separating the creature from her companions as though she was on another level of the dungeon. Creatures located in the top 5’ of the pit when the block is triggered suffer 44 (8d10) bludgeoning damage, with a 50% chance of being pinned in place by the block and a 50% chance of falling into the pit.
91-100 Base of the pit is a teleportation portal. Roll on 4b: Teleportation Destination to determine where this leads.

Teleportation Destinations

Table 4b: Teleportation Destinations
1d100 Teleportation Destination
01-20 Ceiling directly above the pit.
21-40 Random point in the dungeon, as determined by the GM.
41-60 Entrance to the dungeon.
61-80 Random point within 100 miles (roll 1d4 to determine cardinal direction and 1d1000 to determine height above sea level in feet).
81-100 Random point on a random plane of existence, as determined by the GM.

 

 

Image Credit: Rustam rescues Bihzan from the pit, watched by Manizeh. Gouache painting by an Indian artist, ca. 1800. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

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