d100 – Arcane Avocations: Magic User Hobbies & Sorcerous Sidelines

As a vocal proponent of making Wizards a little Weirder whenever possible, here’s a Table that contains some ideas for what they might be “up to” in their Towers with their Spare Time. While most of these pursuits might be more applicable to the High-Level Magic User, I’m sure that some might lay the groundwork for these goals at much Lower Levels.

These preoccupations and obsessions might find their way into a Player Character’s Mentor or even serve as ways to decorate the Towers/Spellbooks of the Mighty Magi they come into conflict with from time to time. I can definitely see using these in conjunction with my Mercurial Mentors and Magic Marginalia Tables to further flesh out these situations. A good number of these entries might also be pilferable for PC Patronage in the form of Adventure Hooks/Rumors to help a Wily Wonder-Worker realize or even potentially prevent them from achieving certain long-term goals.

Listening to “What's He Building?” by Tom Waits whilst perusing this Table is purely optional.

d100 – Carousing Events for Sophisticated Soirées & Refined Revelry

Here’s a quick companion to my more rustic and less “up-market” prior Carousing Consequences & Complications Table, with this one focusing a little more on the slightly more stuffy and formal occasions the Player Characters may find themselves invited to or even reuqired to attend. Potentially useful in the later Domain Tiers as well, alongside some of my recent tables for Stronghold Benefits and Castle Hassles.

d100 – Bastion Boons & Helpful Holdings

As Promised, here is a Random Table of events to complement the one I completed Prior for Stronghold Struggles & Castle Hassles. Setting up a Stronghold should have some Windfalls associated with it after all, and I enjoy how some of these entries almost read like “Headlines.” In addition to serving as a Place to safeguard/store those hard-earned Treasures, by Default in my games, they also tend interface well with the Six “Rs” of Downtime:

• Rest/Recuperation
• Research
• Retainers
• Rumor Mongering
• Revelry
• Re-supplying

But it’s always nice to have a blend of positive results to compliment any negatives, otherwise Players can quickly grow discouraged having invested so much in something that only seems to bring sorrow or inconvenience. Rolling on either one at Intervals might inject something interesting into the otherwise hum-drum day-over-day Duties. I tend to prefer to handle this on a Seasonal Basis, and in fact, my initial tinkerings had this presented as a more “Seasonal” affair (with Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter Tables.) Perhaps I might revisit this one and its counterpart for that kind of arrangement at some point in the future, but with two hundred entries between them, I suppose this could potentially handle about half century of Domain Management! For even more items of potential interest/overlap there is also my Haven Happenstances table.

d100 – Stronghold Struggles & Castle Hassles

Over on bluesky the peerless Prismatic Wasteland posted some suggestionsfor Blog Content Ideas , and this one immediately intrigued me. There are just so few Resources for the Domain Tier out there after all.

Lamentably, Domain Play does seems a bit rarer these days. It relies so heavily on the Preponderance of Prior Play generated from consistent, sustained Campaigns, that often we don’t really get a chance to see much of it with Contemporary Play Culture. But still, it does serve as a lofty aspiration, and if you’re using B/X or a similar presentation, don’t forget that the Fighter and Halfling Classes each possess a super secret Special Ability that lets them engage with Strongholds at any level, you can always get a taste of this in the lower levels that way!

Some of these might require a little tailoring to taste, but even for those Dungeon/Wilderness Tier games, I can see a few that might just be suitable for hiring a band of Lower-Level Adventurers to investigate or deal with while the Lord has more important things to attend to.

Whilst working on this one, I did dust off another older Table that I’ll now need to finally finish. I feel that having a corresponding “Bastion Boons” Table for Happy Happenstances to counterbalance the Misfortunes associated with these Strongholds might just be in order!

d100 - Mercenary Minutiae & Sellsword Specifics

Eventually, games might reach a point at which the Players will seek out Mercenaries to assist them with achieving certain goals/aspirations. For when this occurs, I wanted to provide a few Resources for generating those Mercenary Companies, so I set about alloying a few existing tables, and even ended up hammering out a new one.

These will all eventually make their way into a “Mercenary Company Generator” I’m working on, but for the time being the newly minted Table is below. I have many thoughts on how to use Mercenaries in these games, but I’ll likely save those for a separate and more dedicated post.