d100 – Magic Tattoos

Acquiring enchanted Body Art seems like a fantastic opportunity for Foreground Growth or Improvements to a Character obtained in Play. I imagine quite a bit of Adventuring might be required to locate the highly specialized Arcane Artists who can preform this delicate work. Charging steep Prices or only deigning to design one as a reward for Services Rendered. The Process could potentially also involve some sourcing of unusual or difficult or dangerous to acquire Reagents/Ingredients for use in the Pigments or as Needles. The resulting piece is likely brilliant to behold in terms of craftsmanship but these can also impart Magical Gifts to those whose skin they stain. I’ve always been a fan of granting Classes a little bit of limited Spell-Casting or Unconventional Abilities this way, and this kind of non-item-based Magical Augmentation can’t be as easily Removed via Ravenous Rust Monster.

How would these Magic Tattoos work in Play? My current line of thinking is to use them in conjunction with a Usage Die Mechanic (since the energy contained within them is less quantifiable), perhaps set it starting at d8, d6 (or even d4 for some of the more powerful ones, or more generous for the less), on each “Use” or “Activation” there’s a chance (on a roll of 1 or 2) the Incantations embedded alongside the Ink might begin to fade or become lose potency. Once the Magic depletes completely, the Tattoo vanishes! I’d recommend the Restriction that one set of Skin can never receive the same Tattoo Twice, in order to keep these a little more unique and special.

Here are a Hundred Ideas for these, along with some suggestions for “Flash” or descriptive designs.

d100 - Extraordinary Ointments & Unconventional Unguents

Another quick Single-Use Magic Item Table! This time we tackle some Special Substances that aren’t administered by drinking like Potions but applied externally. I would imagine that this process might take some Time, and therefore not necessarily be something one would want to do in the heat of Battle, but perhaps more suited to before or after, or during a Rest. Like my prior table on Incense, having these kinds of highly specific, but limited in use Wonders available to Players can really sometimes result in some pretty creative Problem Solving or Reward prior decisions in fun ways.

[Game Jam] Forest Farragoes

My often neglected itch.io page stirs with a new submission, brought about by the Cairn Forest Jam.

Seasonal Weather (d20, d100, or Choose)

Around these parts (and in a shockingly large number of other areas), the saying “If you don’t like the Weather wait five minutes and it’ll change” is a common saying (insert another time as applicable). I sometimes find that the focus on Weather sometimes veers away from the flavorful and more of a tad to the mechanical in terms of how it’s implemented at tables. If we’re very fortunate, we might get a word or so of description (Rain, Snow, Sunny, etc.), while most of the wordcount is dedicated to various negative impacts they have on Travel and the Player Characters.

I feel that Good Weather should be as good as Bad Weather is bad, and don’t like to pass up an opportunity to toss in some additional descriptors. Rather than just creating more penalties/bonuses to track, I usually have Weather interface with procedures. Encounter Distance/Visibility is a big one, but so is Foraging/Hunting (resources), and even Travel Times themselves. The Weather can make folks grumpy or even more predisposed to parley (Reaction Rolls). Awful Weather can ding Morale/Loyalty of certain Monsters and soldiery as well, just as auspicious skies might have the opposite effect. And of course, there’s always the narrative considerations of a puddle-strewn battlefield or sodden or wonderfully dry firewood as well. I could Talk About The Weather for ages.

So here are a hundred ways to embellish the meteorological goings on in your worlds. These tables can be utilized by Season with a d20 or randomized completely with a d100. There are even twenty especially strange ones that might crop up from time to time and spice things up even more.

Naturally, I may find myself revisiting this a bit. I’d like to finish about 16 more entries for each, so that I can map it to the d66, and then allow these tables to leveraged with my standard “Reaction Roll with the Sky” that I tend to start a Travel Day with (reading the 2d6 as “tens” and “ones” for that delicious double-duty. This will probably work in a similar way to my Wilderness Vignettes 😊.

d100 Terrible Toxins & Vile Venoms

Despite the ubiquitous presence of Poisons (my inner pedant nearly always perks up to mention that these are more accurately referred to as Venoms when it comes to monster attacks) I have never been terribly fond of just inflicting Hit Point Damage, a persistent (and often conveniently disremembered) penalty to rolls, or even that sainted staple of old-school play: Instant Death for these types of attacks.

Those may still occasionally appear as consequences, but I typically prefer these types of harm to linger a bit longer, create interesting challenges for the characters to overcome, and introduce another delicious layer of tension to the situation. For particularly dastardly critters, these sometimes can occur even on a “successful” Saving Throw.

I suppose some of the more physiologically improbable entries could serve as Calamitous Curses as well in a pinch, and I heartily encourage providing options for miraculous cures and treatments (driven by adventure generally of course). Perhaps some of these Herbs & Plants might be just what the Cunning Folk ordered?

So as promised during some of my d100 Encounter Activities, I went ahead and put together a table with One Hundred sometimes squicky ideas for giving these types of attacks a little more bite.

This table comes with a Content Warning for what I feel might qualify as mild Body Horror, because it is surprisingly tricky to explore these kinds of effects without a soupçon of the gruesome.

Wilderness Encounter Vignette Tables

Here’s something a little different! In my pursuit of repurposing/recycling those Procedural Rolls to have them do “double-duty” I came up with some tables for what I have nicknamed “Wilderness Encounter Vignettes.” These are almost a bit like TROIKA! Miens to flavor an Encounter Area or Place.

Basically, the intent is to leverage some metadata from some of those 2d6 rolls we frequently make for things like Surprise, Encounter Distance, and Reaction Rolls in the form of d66 (or d36, or d6xd6) tables that provide a little additional dressing to “set a stage” so to speak. Just use two different colored dice for these rolls (or pick one of the two entries if you prefer) and consult the table for the general character of the region. You could even trigger these types of descriptions on a “failed” Wandering Monster check, or to just quickly generate some minor details to add to a Campsite or Journey to make things a little more memorable. You could even use these to create some Landmarks to aid the Players with future Navigation.

These are getting a more granular breakdown than my typical Wilderness Hexes Terrain types but could easily be used in conjunction with them. I will be adding more Terrains as the mood strikes me (maybe for a total of 15-20), but until then I hope you find them useful.

d100 Magic Bows

Here are another hundred ideas for slaying those sometimes un-inspiring “only plus” possessing weapons. This time I decided to take aim at those Magical Bows.

See also: d100 Magic Blades and d100 Magic Shields.

d100 Magic Shields

Sometimes a simple numerical bonus just doesn’t seem sufficiently Magical to me or my Players, so to serve as a convenient companion to a prior table (d100 Magic Blades) here is one with One Hundred Ensorcelled Shields!

One Hundred Holy Taboos

Most older editions keep the tenants of Alignment, Clergy, and Religion almost maddeningly vague. This tends to have a somewhat homogenizing effect on Clerics, often leaning into some somewhat uninspiring implications of monotheism.

I prefer Pantheons & Polytheism for my Holy Wonder-Workers, and one easy way I’ve found to encourage this in games of the Older School is to assign each Spell in the Cleric Spell List a different Deity: so the Prayer Resist Cold is granted by Aldor the Unfeeling, while if one recites the Hymn that grants Light one finds oneself beseeching Eyeless Labha for aid. Each God or Daemon, Spirit or Numen, Totem or Tutelary grants a different Prayer (you can even start small with just 8 apiece and have this gradually grow over time...you have that whole first level after all 😊). Eight seems to be a pretty good number of petty Gods to begin with, and the less they like each other, the better generally.

Each of these divine beings, however, tends to ask for something in return as a show of dedication, faith, or furtherance of their sometimes-inscrutable causes. These can take the form of Taboos that must be followed or deeds that must be performed prior to petitioning them again. I find it seems to work better to work “backwards” rather than apply the proscription up front, and it is certainly sometimes more interesting if it has to inform behavior after the fact.

Sometimes the strictures are fairly finite (do the thing and you’ve appeased them), other times they can last a little longer. One good rule of thumb might be continued compliance for 1 day per level of the Prayer granted perhaps. Break Taboo? This might prevent selection of that spell until proper atonement is performed, or a level is gained. I tend to skin the Edged Weapon Prohibition common to all Clerics as the Taboo that allows them to Turn Undead.

So here is a table of One Hundred to get you started. I sometimes generate these on the fly during play with the Cleric making a note for the future (but sometimes Faith is more fluid and fickler, and what worked once is no longer enough, etc.). It is interesting how the accumulated Taboos can sometimes somewhat contradict, requiring some clever interpretation or tough choices.

One Hundred Holy Symbols

Here is a quick table for if you ever get put on the spot having to come up with a Holy Symbol or other assorted religious iconography. It can be fun sometimes to “work backwards” when establishing what a given ideology stands for based on its symbolism. Always arm Acolytes accordingly and give those Clerics something specific to clutch!

One Hundred Grimoires

With the defeat of every Wicked Wizard the party dutifully begins rifling through any present worldly possessions, but the savvy Magic-User will invariably turn their avaricious eyes to any tomes or codices.

It’s understandable: In some versions of the game, acquisition of these mystical texts becomes the primary way in which Magic Users expand their repertoires. When situating these Spellbooks in their respective shelves or happy hoards, considerable time and care may be given to enumerating what they contain, but sometimes only a cursory effort is devoted to describing the lore-full librams themselves.

As an unabashed bibliophile, I figured it might be fun if there were more to these tempting tomes and grandiloquent grimoires than just rattling off an iterative Table of Contents! Here are a hundred ideas for embellishing these Books a bit above and beyond just the exciting new sorceries a caster can sear into their skull:

Similar to my d100 tables for Unusual Magic Swords and Unconventional Potions, there’s a bit of potential here for the kind of creative problem solving I like to encourage in my Players. It could also be amusing to make a roll on this table part of Character Generation for new Magic Users to give them something distinctive and help foster the feeling that magic is wonderful and weird.

One Hundred Magic Missiles

Magic Missile is a popular first level spell in virtually all editions, but I have always found it to grow a little monotonous over time. I often encourage my players to come up with a “signature” look and feel for their sorcerous projectiles. Just a little bit of ornamentation and embellishment over the frightfully dull “glowing arrow” default.

Since it always hits (except in that wonderfully quirky Holmes), and engenders no Saving Throw it’s a wonderful candidate for “Never Name Your Spell” in the hands of wicked Wizards and malevolent Magic Users. But how should one describe it to preserve this mystery?

Here is a d100 Table to help. A hundred entries that you can roll or choose from to give our old stand-by a bit of a makeover. These should usually be treated as strictly cosmetic of course (unless you think it would be fun not to), with the actual evocation behaving as we have grown to expect over the years. After all, 1d6+1 can be re-skinned in uncounted ways.

Remarkable Bird Generator

Happy Friday!

Here’s another Random Table/Generator, this one is for creating Remarkable Birds. This one is similar to the Herb & Plant Generator, with a way to create some roughly convincing names and potentially a few interesting features for our feathered friends.

I’m very fond of sprinkling a little bit of set dressing into my Wildernesses via some interesting flora and fauna, and sometimes it can be a handy way to communicate changes in terrain, biome, and regions. As a very casual birder, these creatures have always captured my interest. They can be useful in seasoning other senses as well, through birdsong/sounds.

If you’d like to view some sample output, or prefer digital tools, here is an online generator I threw together for debugging:

Let me know how it works out for you! I hope you'll consider spicing up your skies and trees with a few of these atypical avians from time to time!

d100 Table - Locks & Lockpicks

Here is another table I have been working on. It is of distant relation to the d100 This Secret Door Opens... resource. This collection is primary geared toward providing a little embellishment for those pesky generic Locks and oft-hand-waved Lockpicks.

Sometimes naming minutia can be fun, and I have always been fond of giving specific lockpicks fanciful tradenames. A stray adjective can turn a boring and frustrating lock into something more engaging and interesting, with a bit of story and character to hopefully fire imaginations on both sides of the screen.

I’d be tempted to just let little details generated here inform the fiction and see what the players do with the information and if it results in any creative play, strategies, or emergent story, but this tends to dovetail with only certain styles of gaming.

For the more mechanically inclined or sub-system disposed, how could one use this other than decorative fluff? Well, you could transmute the Thief’s “Open Locks” roll a little bit to have it represent the chances of knowing or intuiting the “right tool for the job” and marry Traits to certain Picks. Perhaps something like this:

• This lock is Enameled and Gummed-up, it is opened easily with a Milkmaid's teaser
• This lock is Derivative and Kobold-made, it is handily defeated with a Crowhorn
• This lock is Straightforward and Spinous, it is especially susceptible to a King's rocker

Here's a handy perchance.org generator based on the above table:

In the above examples, each Lock encountered has a corresponding Pick/method that opens it instantly according to the traits it’s been assigned, or more generously, specific Lock traits are linked with certain Prefixes/Suffixes respectfully, and if you have a Rooktalon that works on “Rusty and Bulky” Locks then it will also work slightly better on all locks with the “Rusty” traits (maybe via a circumstantial bonus to the roll), or perhaps “Rook-“ picks work on Rusty, and “-talon” picks are especially good at “Bulky.” I’d lean toward tracking this being at least somewhat player-facing, any book-keeping seems easily worth an occasional bacon-saving, free Knock Spell. 😊

If you are feeling a tad more parsimonious, perhaps the “right tool” (or corresponding trait/pick) allows the Thief to flip the ones-and-tens for that lock.

Another option is to have the “Open Locks” percentile roll do some double duty by leveraging it alongside this table. Successful rolls might “name” a lock-pick, granting it additional character but also some sort of persistent bonus (either against certain Lock Traits, or something incremental and tracked with tick marks...say +1% for each successful roll).

If the d100 “Open Locks” is used to reveal information about the Lock, perhaps it can serve as a way to build in a “second chance” (I failed, but now that I know this lock is “Dwarven” and my Knitter’s Nose typically works on Dwarven locks, I get another try with that pick). Could be an interesting replacement for “gaining a level” before trying again.

With my House Rules that repurpose the Cleric’s Turn Undead Table for Thief Skills, I’d probably let the a Pick associated with the corresponding Trait turn a T into a D, or maybe step down the Difficulty by a step. The particularly callous/cruel could use the “ones” place of the d100 roll to inform this Difficulty when placing the locked door on the dungeon map itself.

I am very curious about what kinds of inspirations and ideas this table might ignite. Let me know if you can think of a useful way to utilize it!

OSE Encounter Activities - Blue Dragon

Have another set of Chromatic Dragon’s Activity Tables while I periodically furtle with layout, pagination, and publication. This time: Blue.

OSE Encounter Activities - Black Dragon (Compilation Sneak Peek)

Work continues on compiling my OSE Encounter Activity Table Project into a single, unified reference document. Wrangling the tables into contiguous spreads where necessary and fiddling with font-size/etc. has been going well.

Here's a single page sneak peek of the current state of things (nothing is really finalized at this stage) with one of the Namesake Monsters: the alphabetical first of the Chromatic Dragons: The swamp-dwelling Black Dragon!

Since “Activities” for these Monsters probably are not as varied from Dragon to Dragon as I would like, these are designed to function almost a bit more like “Rumor” tables or as a way to bestow a more bespoke Black Dragon for your tables. Hopefully by fleshing them about a bit in this fashion, it will make these types of terrifying encounters a little more interesting!

OSE Encounter Activities - Orc

We have reached entry #137: The Orc, the final one before I begin the process of compiling all these together under a unified layout and do a little proof-reading/editing. During this time, I’ll also be finishing up the multi-page entries for Dragons (since it’s 7 Monsters masquerading under one Entry, and I’ve decided to treat them a little differently and I want to make sure I can accommodate them appropriately in cohesive spreads).

This is another Monster entry I started on a while back, but just as I was putting the finishing touches on it, some interesting discussions developed in my periphery that had me second guessing myself on how best to handle the Entry for Orc. But hey, I did the distasteful Dervish, so we trundle onward.

Like the humble Halfling, I typically do not employ Orcs very often in my games these days. They’re simply just not as mythologically rich as most of the other Humanoid Monsters, and most of the attempts to make them more interesting still leave me a little cold. Mostly these days, it’s just a remixable stat block for me whenever I need a 1 HD, Humanoid Creature.

Others, much more clever than me, have agitated more and better electrons on the subject, but in the interest of transparency, I’ve included my own complicated history with the Orc below the table.

Here we have the final d100 Encounter Activity table, based on a reading of the Monster description for the broadest possible utility. You may also find a few of the following useful, depending on how you use Orcs in your games: Veterans, Mediums, Acolytes, Bandits, Normal Humans, Pirates, Buccaneers, Nomads, Merchants, Dervishes, Traders, Nobles, Brigands, and Berserkers.

Decades ago, when I started running D&D games for my friends, I was still in the target demographic for Saturday Morning Cartoons and Sugary Cereals with prizes inside. I had read a bit of The Hobbit, but not yet tackled the Lord of The Rings trilogy. I had extraordinarily little information on what Orcs were outside of the occasionally tantalizing Pig-Faced illustration. They were tougher than Goblins and Kobolds, but there still wasn’t much to go on touchstone-wise, so at the kitchen tables we began to weave our own mythologies for them, informed by our exposure to various pop culture tropes at the time.

From the media we collectively consumed as children, in order to be adequately “heroic,” heroes needed a lot of nameless Evil fodder to mow through: Stormtroopers in Star Wars, COBRA Vipers, etc. In these callow times, Orcs served this role relatively well. They became my go-to for generic and numerous, monolithically Chaotic Monsters that my players could eradicate without compunctions or consequences.

But this started to gradually change. After running B2 a few times through, it started to chafe a bit with my burgeoning sensibilities. I’m sure most veterans are familiar with the inhabitants of those awkward “COMMON ROOM” encounters. I might imagine that the “9 young (who do not fight)” were intentionally placed by a grinning Gygax in a fit of unrestrained, slightly sadistic naturalism, but their presence had the side effect of introducing considerable complications to our tales. What do we, the “Heroes” of these stories we are telling, do with a bunch of sobbing Orc young after slaughtering their parents?

With the many sorties to the Caves of Chaos I ran, I had all sorts of players end up doing all sorts of things when confronted with this clumsy morality test, running the gamut from utterly awful to unexpected adoption, but none of them really sat right with me. So I eventually ruled that Orcs didn’t reproduce. They were just there, a pervasive, possibly parthenogenic incarnation of Chaos, and I quietly scrubbed those kinds of complicating references whenever I came across them. The Cauldron-Born from Lloyd Alexander were probably a close analog I employed at the time, and I think at some point I went something similar to the Warhammer “Fungus” concept.

This worked well and good for a few years, until we grew a little older, and the mythologies we were making started to subtly shift once more. I started to have players that wanted to make Half-Orc Characters, throwing my lazy “fix” out the window. We wanted to tell more stories about “anti-heroes,” and were drawn to all the associated grey-areas and edge. We’d “matured” to the stage of Graphic Novels, Horror Movies, the associated More Mature Themes, and a grittier, uglier pop-culture. Orcs needed to have much more dimension to find their place in these new stories. There needed to be room for tragically sympathetic figures, and brooding/misunderstood individuals. They progressively stopped being monolithic and started becoming a People.

But this created it’s own problems. I’m pretty sure that almost any DM from these days is guilty of the same kind of kludge. Being original is often hard. Imagining things whole cloth out of nothing and convincingly conveying them is challenging, if not impossible at times. So, in times like these we relied on similar shorthands to front-load a ton of “believable” information instantaneously.

We stole from our underdeveloped and incomplete knowledges of reality/history, maybe filing off a few of the rougher edges, but the results were largely the same: These are Aztec Orcs. These are Mongol Orcs. These Orcs are basically Vikings. These Orcs are embodiments of our jejune and highly problematic interpretations of the “Noble Savage” ideal. Decades ago, at the tables of my teenage years, there was never any intentional malice driving any of this, just sheer laziness and that desire to furnish Orcs with a culture and more dimension as we attempted to try and tell richer, more meaningful stories.

It would seem that this creative laziness has still managed to become somewhat entwined with some of the current Orc stylings I come across. Resisting the urge to regress to the old habits of careless appropriation is still something I struggle with. I admit, I am sometimes sorely tempted to return, full-circle, to the Monolithically Opposed to Order, vat-spawned Orcs bereft of culture and depth. But this too, is lazy. It never hurts to challenge oneself and one’s old habits.

Other than my admonishments against lazy appropriation, I don’t have a fix or solution to offer. You will need to find your Orc on your own, and it should be one that works for your table and the stories you are working together to tell.

OSE Encounter Activities - Invisible Stalker

I freely admit that this was a pretty tricky one. I’ve been steadily plinking away at the table for a few weeks now, even starting from scratch more than once. It’s surprisingly challenging to create a table of entries to depict “what a Monster is doing” when this is something the Player Characters can’t conventionally perceive through standard observation.

So, there’s a little bit of compromise here. It was difficult, but I managed to resist the temptation to succumb to some of my more humorous impulses. I decided against a few of my original ideas (the blank table cop-out, selectively changing the text color to match backgrounds and frustrate, etc.) in favor of something at least somewhat useful.😊

The first 30 Entries on this table can be rolled on separately to provide DM’s with a quicker, potentially more actionable “dead giveaway,” but there are still one hundred entries total to play with, and I hope that at least a few of them come in handy for this Monster, as it is one of the knottier ones to depict and describe.

With that, I humbly present the Invisible Stalker:

OSE Encounter Activities - Hawk

I can barely believe it: ONLY THREE MORE MONSTERS TO GO!!!!

Here's the Encounter Activity Tables (3d30) for the Hawk:

OSE Encounter Activities - Salamander

Perhaps a signal of what was to come later, Salamanders are some of the few Elemental creatures in this version of the game. I find it strange that they don’t have a listed language and they are at least semi-intelligent in later editions where Intelligence scores are listed. Their damaging d8 auras almost necessitate some sort of resistance magic, and their Mundane damage Immunity makes them quite challenging.

I always picture Flame Salamanders as the more intelligent and industrious of the two (nearly always conflating them with or relating them to Fire Newts), while Frost Salamanders were more feral, and served as a good foil in frozen lands…I usually used them in a role similar to a popular culture Wendigo.

I could not decide if I wanted to do 3d30 or some other variation for the two Entries under this listing (Flame and Frost), so I just went ahead and populated two d100 tables, one for each 😊:

Four more to go! Three more before I begin the arduous process of compiling/laying all these out in a single document!