Found in a circle of ancient stones. You can speak with animals/plants/elements/the Dead (choose one), but may never learn to read, write or do complex maths. Start with a fetish.| The Library of Attnam
If you prefer fantasy wilderness to post-apocalyptic wasteland, here are some starting tables for you.| The Library of Attnam
A while ago, one of my players was having a hard time coming up with a reason as to why someone of the occupation they rolled up would bec...| explodecorpse.blogspot.com
I n most of my Campaign Settings, I try to emphasize that Magic is a rather Rare and Wonderous thing. You’ll seldom find Arcane Artifacts ...| blog.d4caltrops.com
Map Crow is a YouTube vlog that’s hit-and-miss with| Trollsmyth
Second in a series of three 1d10 encounter tables, one for each of the three biomes that my PCs have been most active in recently. This post covers the uplands. Feel free to roll on them next time you need to stock a random hex!| Against The Wicked City
A year ago I posted tables of 72 encounters from the City of Spires, as a convenient means of recycling material from my ongoing campaign into something that other people might find gameable. As the game is still going on (and now approaching the two-and-a-half year mark, or five and a half if it's considered as an extension of the previous Team Tsathogga campaign set in the same world), I thought it was probably time for an update.| Against The Wicked City
In yesterday's game, one PC was rescued from captivity by the party, but not before undergoing some pretty severe torture. This presented me with a bit of a quandary: having him simply bounce back from such an ordeal after a couple of Cure Light Wounds spells felt wrong, but at the same time I didn't want the consequences to feel like a punishment. (The problem with most 'lasting injury' rules is that they make you weaker as a consequence for failure, which makes you more likely to fail again...| Against The Wicked City
You know what makes for good drama? Unequal power relations!| Against The Wicked City
I've been running OSR D&D more-or-less weekly for over five years, now, with a heavy focus on exploration, problem-solving, and diplomacy. Combat happens, but I learned early on that the kind of combat power-ups that most later D&D editions obsess over were almost irrelevant: when most fights are either one-sided ambushes or desperate fighting retreats, the shift from 1d8 damage to 1d8+2 damage is really not that big a deal. My players regularly forget which magical weapons their PCs are carr...| Against The Wicked City
I've always thought that Aeolus's bag of wind from The Odyssey would be a great item for a D&D campaign. It's a bag with a wind inside it: point it in the right direction and open it to blow your ship across the sea, or knock your opponents down, or blow out a fire, or whatever. The effect is powerful enough to be useful, but specific enough to force players to think about how to turn it to their advantage, and the fact that it's a one-use item means you don't need to worry about the PCs sudd...| Against The Wicked City
There's a legend about the Battle of Brunanburh, at which King Aethelstan confronted the allied kings of Scotland, Dublin, and Strathclyde in 937 AD. Before the battle, one of Aethelstan's soldiers was lying sick: he happened to be a Devonshire man, so in his sickness he prayed to his local saint, the martyr St Nectan, to heal him. That night he had a vision of St Nectan, and in the morning the sickness was gone and he was well enough to fight.| Against The Wicked City
I've written before about the dangers of simply doubling down on the same ideas ad infinitum, leading to extremely one-note characters, settings, and situations: barbarians primarily characterised by their barbaric barbarism, rogues notable for their roguish roguery, and so on. Not only does this tend to make scenarios more boring on a conceptual level, it often also leads to less satisfying actual play. If the Pyromantic Fire Coven of the Burning Flame Witch are totally all in on fire magi...| Against The Wicked City
My department has been interviewing for new academic posts this week - and as I contemplated the mountain of incoming job applications, the vast majority of them inevitably doomed to failure, I found myself thinking about D&D wizards. Becoming a D&D magic-user clearly requires a specialised education, and yet many of these highly-educated wizards end up as expendable dungeon-crawling adventurers. This suggests to me that D&D wizarding, like modern academia, is probably a profession in which s...| Against The Wicked City
F or a little diversion, here’s a table that contains a hundred ideas for Hobbies/Pastimes that might be useful for adding to Characters. ...| blog.d4caltrops.com
My most recent foray into using the AD&D DMG to stock a hex map sparked some discussion about the frequency of "totally deserted" castles.| Blog of Forlorn Encystment
ForSave VS. Hollowing. Happy Holidays, Anton.| In The Land of Twilight, Under The Moon
So your party finds a chamberpot under the wizard's bed in his secret laboratory and look in it. For...some reason. What could be inside this Magical Realm?| In The Land of Twilight, Under The Moon
This ultimate guide will teach you how to play a solo RPG in six quick steps and cover some common pitfalls for new solo players. In this guide, I will discuss: What is a solo RPG? A solo RPG is just like any other group RPG, except you are both the game master (GM) and […]| The Bardic Inquiry
Inspired by this post, I decided to make my own post in this style from character ideas I had lying around. Also shout out to Cat Dragon for providing feedback and editing help with this post!1.Elena Smirt| The Whimsical Mountain
It's been more than six years since I added the Barbarian class to my game, and in that time we've had a fair few of them! Unfortunately ...| tenfootpolemic.blogspot.com
I've been running OSR D&D more-or-less weekly for over five years, now, with a heavy focus on exploration, problem-solving, and diplomacy. C...| udan-adan.blogspot.com
Been busy with various projects. One of them is a small game that uses a d10 for pretty much every roll, including random tables for the GM'...| glaucushauriant.blogspot.com
My computer is getting repaired at the moment and my back up one can't seem to manage editing large blog posts. So instead of the next planescrap post here's a post inspired by the game I'm currently chipping away at, Dark Souls.| Monster Manual Sewn From Pants
I recently finished a campaign of Knave Second Edition, and I think there’s stuff to say about it. This isn’t a review per se – neither of Knave 2e nor of the material that saw pl…| Augury Ignored
H ere’s a d100 Table that features some additional ideas for starting a Session, Campaign, or Adventure outside of the rather timeworn “Ta...| blog.d4caltrops.com
T he following table contains a Hundred Ideas for unusual features that might be possessed by Tieflings or those of uniquely Fantastic Blo...| blog.d4caltrops.com
W ho doesn’t love a good Magical Ring? Compact and convenient (for those with Fingers or other places to wear them), here are a hundred ad...| blog.d4caltrops.com
Currently, I am working on another 1d100 random ass list, this one is a list for “I loot the body”. Looting the body happens alot in my current campaign, go figure! I was at work today,…| Stonewerks
O ne bit of Set Dressing that I often find myself scrambling to embellish are Bookshelves. I will place them frequently but am often at a ...| blog.d4caltrops.com
W hen it comes to Encounters with the Fair Folk, it’s always handy to have some idea of what they might want from Mortals in exchange for ...| blog.d4caltrops.com
W hen it comes to Wands and Staffs, I have always preferred the ones that are a bit more unique than just the standard “single purpose” Sp...| blog.d4caltrops.com
I was sorting through my files and found this list of random sci-fi items. I have no idea why I wrote them.| Last Gasp
YELLOW QUEEN Equal parts mystic folklore and flesh, ruler of the Yellow City, smooth-limbed and whisper-voiced, a creamy advanced jaundice complexion and a face hidden behind a brocaded veil to be disposed of on her next wedding night. Summoned by sects and cults to offer her a new groom that they might hear her rattled| Last Gasp
Emmy Allen just put up a great post over at Cavegirl's Game Stuff about wounds/not automatically dying at 0HP, you should read it.On a tangent, last year I found time to start thinking about D&D again, and I found that after such a long time without playing at all it really changes/solidifies what you want| Last Gasp
If it's not clear yet, I've been raiding some unfinished tables (and by 'tables' I mean the giant spreadsheets I start putting together like "oh I should make a wilderness travel table... okay so I'll need a table of human encounters and a table of creature encounters and a table for the scenery and a| Last Gasp
Okay just who the hell is in charge of this shitshow?| Last Gasp
T ime to polish off another Magic Item Post! These are always really fun to produce and this time we’re focusing a little bit more on re...| blog.d4caltrops.com
S erving as a bit of an “opposite” to my Magical Mishaps & Calamitous Curses table, the following entries are geared more toward those “...| blog.d4caltrops.com
T he travelling Troubadour is a wonderful way to dispense Rumors and Information. Sometimes they even find themselves within Party Rosters...| blog.d4caltrops.com
I ’ve always been quite fond of placing Magical Portals leading to other Places and Planes in my games. During the Higher Levels of Play (...| blog.d4caltrops.com
O ften coming as a Surprise, by default in some earlier presentations (like B/X) transcribing Spells from captured Enemy Spellbooks isn’t ...| blog.d4caltrops.com
F requently, it might be useful to festoon an NPC with Fame or Infamy to create a more compelling Character. Whether it’s a Denizen’s Deed...| blog.d4caltrops.com
F rustratingly for some participants, within the standard rules for B/X and in other early presentations, there simply isn’t really a way ...| blog.d4caltrops.com
P roponents of Overloaded Encounter/Hazard Die might sometimes find themselves in a bit of a bind or at a loss for some of those Telegraph...| blog.d4caltrops.com
W hen painstakingly placing a happy Haven or convenient Village somewhere in a World, I often find myself needing a few things. Names are ...| blog.d4caltrops.com
R ecently inspired to finally polish off this Table off by a recent post from the I Cast Light Blog , I’ve often found myself needing some...| blog.d4caltrops.com
I nspired by a request from another Referee, here is a century of entries that can be used to explain why a the location attached to a Dun...| blog.d4caltrops.com
O ne of the ways some Referees handle Magic Item Identification is by imbuing the Items themselves with tiny Clues or Hints to their funct...| blog.d4caltrops.com