Random Lists

Wildspace Encounters

Yesterday Wizards of the Coast announced that they’re bringing Spelljammer back for 5th edition. I’ve got a lot of nostalgia for Spelljammer and I’ve posted some stuff before. After the announcement I dug out Adventures In Space and Wildspsace and immediately got the urge to write some random encounters for travelling through wildspace.

Adventures In Space says this about encounters:

Given the nature of space movement, an oppossing craft may appear suddenly in the distance, then slow to combat speed almost immediately. Since it is in the nature of the spelljamming helm to stop when it nears the gravity plance of another body, many encounters will occur without the desire of either side.
The opposing ship(s) will appear 11-20 hexes away (1d10 + 10) in a random direction determined by rolling 1d6:

Directly Ahead

Ahead & Right (Starboard)

Behind & Right

Directly Behind

Behind & Left (Port)

Ahead and Left

Heading is usually toward the player’s ship, though the DM can determine this if he desires.

It goes on to say that there is no surprise roll and that there should be several rounds of maneuver before ships come within effective weapon range. We’re directed to use the standard Encounter Reactions roll. (As an aside, I really like the combination of determined encounter direction alongside distance and I think this can be useful in a dungeon, too. I did this in In The Bluelight as the PCs traverse a dungeon made entirely from ice, allowing them to see shapes through the walls and floor, but I think this has applications in a "normal" dungeon as well. But that’s for another time.)

One thing the core Spelljammer book doesn’t give us are tables of random encounters to go with this system. So I’ve written one for you. Not everything here has stats in the AD&D books. You’ll have to do some work if you want to use them but I also expect that most people aren’t playing 2nd edition and so stats for that system would be next to useless for readers anyway.

Some of these encounters are more specific than a random encounter table generally should be but that’s because I wanted to have fun while I wrote it rather than just writing a list of things you might bump into.

3d6	Encounter
3	A beholder the size of an asteroid, concocting plans to devour a moon.
4	A debris cloud, remnants of a battle. The shards of twisted metal crawl with 4d100 clockwork horrors.
5	1d3 Asteroid Spiders
6	Solar flares from the nearest fire body.
7	A colossus, frozen and drifting.
8	A ghost ship, crewed by Ancient Mariners, drifting aimlessly.
9	A pod of 1d6 space whales seeking their ancestral mating ground.
10	Astral pirates sailing under a red flag.
11	A Wasp crewed by 2d6 goblins.
12	An astrologer on a golden barge, attempting to birth a new star in a copper crucible.
13	Shards of a lost moon.
14	A mirror several thousand miles wide and half as tall, drifting between stars.
15	1d4+1 jammer leeches.
16	Abandoned dyson sphere, the external walls daubed with warnings in all known languages.
17	Abandoned Citadel.
18	Ship mimic. (Roll for type on Ship Mimic Typetable)

2d6	Ship mimic type
2	Spelljammer
3	Dwarven Citadel
4	Galleon
5	Nautiloid
6	Wasp
7	Mosquito
8	Flitter
9	Dragonship
10	Neogi Deathspider
11	Gnomish Citadel
12	Man-o-War

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Unlooted: Gifts From A Ghost

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I write random tables as a warm-up every day. You can suggest a prompt here.

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Things A Ghost Leaves By Your Bedside While You’re Sleeping

An antique straight razor with a bone handle, carved with a name you don’t recognise.
A small photo album containing the chronicle of a life, from birth to death. Once the owner is old enough to hold a camera, they never appear in any of the photos themselves.
Twigs of birch and stalks of yarrow, bound together with a worn strip of leather. At the centre of the bundle is a tarnished copper coin with a hole drilled through the middle that the leather passes through several times.
Tickets for a train that crashed a century ago, unused.
Lightbulbs, taken from around your house and crushed into pieces.
Seven grey pebbles streaked with yellow and purple. They have been worn smooth by water and time and are arranged in ascending order of size.
The heart of a doe, wrapped in barbed wire and thorns. It is still warm.
A hand mirror, the frame and handle made from deep mahogany. The glass is misted over and won’t come clean.
A knitted pair of gloves. The little finger has been cut off both hands and the hole sewn shut.
An old farmer’s almanac with long-range weather forecasts, full moon dates and times, and notes about significant astronomical events. The page that shares today’s date has been marked and annotated, and the weather forecast matches what you see despite being from 50 years ago.
A letter to an estranged lover, stamped but never posted.
A cassette tape in a clear plastic box with no insert. It has been wound back to the beginning but the writing on the label has been scribbled out.

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Some Monsters for Troika

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Down In Yongardy is currently funding on Kickstarter.

These monsters were created by rolling random results on my random monster generator.

The monster approaches, skittering like an insect, with the strong smell of rotting wood. It is slowly sinking into the earth. It is a…

Thorgnat

Skill 7

Stamina 9

Initiative 2

Armour 0

Damage as Small Beast

The more the city of Troika spreads the more the wilds outside it resent the encroaching concrete steel and glass. The Thorgnats are a living manifestation of nature’s irritation with the constant expansion of the "civilised" city. A pest best driven from the city or left to the owls, a Thorgnat infestation in your garden means other, bigger pests from the wilds can’t be far behind.

Mien

Brittle
Cautious
Flitting
Testing
Splintering
Violent

The monster approaches, whispering your name, with a cracked porcelain mask over its face. It is arguing with itself. It is a…

Semascere

Skill 10

Stamina 19

Initiative 3

Armour 2

Damage as Modest Beast

Beneath the mask is a writhing, pitiful pile of secrets and lies. The Semascere knows your deepest, darkest machinations and wants to make sure you know it knows. They’re often employed by rulers to keep those around them in check. They’re often killed by rulers for failing to keep their mouths shut.

Special

The Semascere has access to Languages and Natter.

Mien

Inquisitive
Colluding
Salacious
Revelatory
Insidious
Gleeful

The monster approaches with the sound of glass breaking, endlessly. Its skin is translucent. It is lost and hungry. It is a…

Glass Eater

Skill 8

Stamina 12

Initiative 1

Armour 3

Damage as Fusil or Modest Beast.

Scourge of churches and tall, shiny buildings everywhere, the Glass Eaters roam Troika in search of their next meal. Some say they are the result of strange experiments gone awry (but that’s what some say about most things they don’t understand). Others are convinced that the Eaters are what happen when Tower Wizards don’t properly dispose of their glassware. Whatever they are, they’re ugly as hell and they’ll eat the windows right out of your house.

Mien

Resting
Sad
Hungry
Hungry
Chewing
Searching

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What’s Beneath The Church?

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I write random tables as a warm-up every day. You can suggest a prompt here.

Deep beneath the vaults you find… (1d11)

Footprints that run circles in the dust. They shift and change, evidence that someone – many someones – move around down here regularly, but nobody ever sees or hears them.
A long row of dead priests, sealed into the walls behind ancient brick. The state of the mortar tells you they weren’t all dead were they were buried in the masonry of the church.
A slithering, slobbering mound of bones and flesh that oozes and creeps. The priest has been making sacrifices to placate it for years – goats, dogs, crows, even the occasional penitent worshipper who trusted the man with their sins.
A ritual chamber, bare stone and blood-soaked earth, candles and runes and broken sticks of chalk. The stone of the foundations is soot-black and baked from heat.
A broken church bell wrapped tight in chains and strips of thick leather. The air around it sings softly to itself, resonating in harmony with a dampened frequency you’re not sure if you hear or imagine.
Tunnels, endless tunnels, claustrophobic walls of crushing rock and trickling dirt. They run for miles beneath the local village, a labyrinth of unclear purpose.
The shed skins of the local priest, a man who has served his flock far longer than is natural.
A body made of parchment and sealing wax. Fragile breaths rattle in its chest and it flinches and squeals away from naked flames.
An inversion of the church above, a vertiginous pit whose stained glass windows stare onto bare rock. All the idols and images are twisted reflections of their counterparts above-ground, and the cackling priest would rather draw your blood than feed you the blood of the lamb.
A deep excavation sealed under thick glass. What little light there is shows the ruins of an even older church that once stood on this site. Huge clay pots line one wall, each sealed with a disc of wax a foot thick.
A low wooden door, far thicker than normal and reinforced with sturdy strips of iron. Beyond it is a small chamber carved into the rock. The walls are covered with words painted in dried blood and etched into the earth, a manic Revelation that foretells endless misery.

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Astronomical Events & Portents

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I have a Troika! solo adventure on Kickstarter right now and I’d love it if you supported it!

I write random tables as a warm-up every day. You can suggest a prompt here.

What do you see?

A new constellation appears.
A comet, bright blue, the biggest star in the sky. It takes a week to pass overhead and is visible even during daylight.
A week of solar eclipses, lasting for an hour at the same time every day. The moon is in the wrong part of the sky to be responsible.
Patches of the night sky, normally a tapestry of stars and galaxies, slowly turn black as though they were filled with candles that are being snuffed out one by one.
The sun begins to change colour, shifting from blazing yellow to cold blue over a month or more.
A week-long meteor shower, contained to one small area. Buildings are destroyed by meteorites the size of cows, and where they pummel the ground a serious of undiscovered caves and tunnels is revealed.
Instruments detect a new sound from deep space – a constant wailing, like some kind of extraterrestrial banshee.
A new moon appears in the sky suddenly, destroying the regular tides and sending animals into a frenzy.

What does it mean?

Roll 3d7 and read the tables in order to create a portent.

d7	Who?	What?	Where?
1	A new monarch	will be born	in the frozen north.
2	A sleeping god	will awaken	beneath the sands.
3	An orphan child	will begin a reign of terror	in the capital city.
4	A dead prophet	will begin to speak prophecy	in the ruins of the old empire.
5	The leper queen	will lead an army	across the waves.
6	A thousand forgotten daughters	will have their revenge	on the fields of blood.
7	The serpent gods	will begin a feast	in the heart of the empire.

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A Skeleton Holding A…

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

A Skeleton Holding…

A wooden carving of an orange, with one strip of the skin peeled back. The inside sparkles like a geode. It’s probably valuable, but the wooden skin is tough and the fruit inside is incredibly delicate.
Another skeleton. The two are wrapped in a close embrace near the bones of an ancient fire.
A wooden sign that reads "Do Not Remove This Notice".
Their own finger bone, sharpened to a point and stained with old ink. The journal they were writing in has succumbed to age and rot. Only the binding remains, and even that is riddled with mould.
A deck of cards for divination, still in perfect condition. The skeleton is cross-legged on the ground as though about to perform a reading.
A tarnished copper flute, green and corroded. The skeleton’s bones have been chewed on and the ground is covered in rat droppings.
An ivory carving of a small bear wrapped in faux fur.
A set of seven hand bells of different sizes. Their tolling makes you feel sleepy and cold.

Like this post? Leave a tip at Ko-Fi I write random tables as a warmup every day. You can suggest a prompt here.

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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Loot From A Sea Monster’s Lair

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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.
A circular mine, studded with rusted iron spikes and wrapped in chains.
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.
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.
The beak of a giant squid daubed with incoherent symbols painted in its own ink.
A makeshift mirror, a riot of shards and fragments of glass, pieced together from a thousand stolen spyglass lenses.
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.
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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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 Lovecraftian Trinkets

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

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A long, sinuous key set in silver. Eldritch symbols are embossed along the shaft, and the teeth of the key resemble grasping tentacles.
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.
A long twisted wand made of crystal. The tip splits into three thick points, each carved with a leering face.
A train ticket, torn partway through and clipped with a conductor’s ticket punch. It is valid for one journey from Newburyport to Arkham.
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”.
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.

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