d24 Living doors - built with gygaxian democracy, neural networks

This was another 'rapid encounter table generation' exercise. Original prompt was a post the r/DnDAcademy prompt for 'Living Locks'. This time I tried bulking it out through gygaxian democracy on the OSR discord then fed that to the Bellard tool to bulk it out.

d20 tricks for a villainous escape, boosted by neural network tools

A few ideas thrown together to challenge high-level PCs. The core assumption being that once the villain is in the clutches of the party, they will be torn down pretty quickly so the theme here is how to prolong the fight.

This is generic as much as possible to allow tailoring to the specific terrains you want.
1. Traversible but difficult terrain between the PC and foe; presents the puzzle of just slogging across (a known factor) vs spending resources to rapidly come to grips.
2. Terrain the foe can trigger - e.g. hiding on the far side of a tarpit or oil slick that sucks up movement to cross, that the foe can then ignite while the players are traversing
3. Multi-level close quarters - allowing crossing of paths without opponents blocking; e.g. running around on top of shelves in a library or facing something that can swim under the ice of a shallow lake
4. Highly visible, obvious traps - snares, pitfalls, things that won't kill but will delay individuals either de-activating or extricating themselves from - all action soaks while allowing the foe freedom to attack or flee
5. Living terrain - the foes are in a howdah of a large beast or fleeing past a sleeping dragon - both cases where slips or wild attacks risk bringing a new foe into the fight
6. Collateral innocents - fight happens atop a creature or with the foes holding a hostage - PCs need to defeat them with precision
7. A time limit for action - the foes have escaped into a mine with an avalanche descending or into a passenger pod on a giant turtle about to dive - the PCs must address the environmental challenge before their access is cut off.
8. For truly advanced challenge, crack out the non-eucidean architecture (part 1, and part 2) starting with part 3; wierd gravity.
9. Avoiding multiple objects in one spot - e.g. having to worry about multiple objects being piled up against a wall to allow foe to climb and escape; or bones tumbling from opening tombs that will rise to fight once enough falls in to allow skeletons to form
10. Avoid being surrounded by obstacles - foe tries to keep you in a place because they know they will be able to escape but not you - e.g. water rising toward a drain chute or other exit path that they will be able to slip away down, spiders building webs that will trap the PCs but the foe can slip through
11. Random encounters - The enemy won't just randomly drop on the map when they die e.g. they need to be brought to a place where they can be pinned to finish them off or else will likely escape - e.g. a planar being or vampire will reform elsewhere if killed
12. Endless encounters - prolonged or loud clashes are likely to bring reinforcements or generally worsen the situation - e.g. both parties are thieves/assassins where an alert will rouse the guards
13. Unwanted enemies - crushing the known foes at current location will turn current friendlies against the party - mistakenly assuming you are attacking innocents or breaking hospitality rules or some such
14. Moving on to the next phase - roll twice on this table and combine; success in the first phase shifts the fight to the second so more tactics need to be employed e.g. front-running an avalanche then having to negotiate traps in the cavern everyone is sheltered in
15. Raining - a thunderstorm on icy or rocky surfaces, making them first slick, then flooding, bringing a risk of lightning strikes to those near tall things and making communications and sight difficult as flashes disrupt vision
16. Water - a large area may have pools, rivers, bogs, lakes, swamps, rivers, ponds, deep waters, rivers in tributaries or even entire lakes making pursuit difficult for heavily armoured adventurers
17. Fences - some fortifications with solid walls or fences or trenches that regularly block line of sight and provide lots of close cover
18. Ropes - an area is a maze of spikes that requires pursuit by swinging on ropes- e.g. a huge cave with a lot of spikes or large pits within tunnels
19. Crumbling - an ancient stone floor is crumbling and pursuit paths must be judged by the weight of the pursuer
20. Narrows - the path to the foe requires that players can engage only piecemeal - some must power a lift or hold a rope bridge while others cross - requiring careful choice on who gets to grips in what order

A mightier list of terrain features can be found here to flesh out and modify the high level concepts described above.

Items 1-8 above were standard off the cuff responses to a prompt but from 9 onwards are slightly cleaned up outputs from the GPT-2 network at Bellard.org. I found this through Eldritch Fields. I fed it sub-sets of the 8 prompts I had created, chopping and changing to get more responses. A neat tool for beefing up some content that may be a bit scant.

Note 11 was originally "the map is randomly generated each time you start a new playthrough"
12 was "enemies can be friendly (for instance you can see where they are coming from or they can"
20 was "Tidal wave - a time warp from earlier phases of the fight - either the foes are still trapped deep into the cavern or they are under attack or drowning and need to escape quickly" - too similar to 7

d10 Things the lizardfolk aristocrats are in a twist about

d10 Things the Lizard Aristos are in a twist about this week

1. That someone has bred bees to produce something indistinguishable from moon bee imperial jelly! But the rituals!
2. The dragon gods are thirsty and someone drank the holy offering beer!
3. The war in the East has disrupted trade and the price of scale wax has skyrocketed
4. Cold snap. Everyone slow and grumpy.
5. Imitation gold scale paint now indistinguishable from the real thing. Poor people are wearing it! Existing artful designs now worthless for flaunting.
6. Heirs of two rival castes discovered sharing a sunning stone. Scandalous!
7. The flies taste different since Tuesday. Not bad, per se. But different. And different is bad.
8. Those damned humans left corpses in the swamp. Again. The value of the swampedge property is plummeting.
9. Lady Ysscale is holding a party, but failed to provide adequate frog legs. Some of the guests left hungry.
10. How is green this season's colour? The common lizards are green. It is all because Lord Twiss married that jumped-up serving lizard, and no everyone is slumming it with green scalepaint.

With thanks to: ArkosDawn, Thriftomancer, Vance, Spekkio, stm, MerlynZero, mtb-za

What vengeance is the fey court taking on your town? (d8)

My contributions to a gygaxian democracy effort on a walled garden discord on 'd8 things the party find as they approach the town that has angered the fey lord?'


1 The proper sidhe of legend did their worst tricks were with time - time speeds up towards the centre of the city (cab play out like Inception or Interstellar)
2.'Nothing is what it seems'; manifesting lots of glamours, illusions with the aim of having people coming to harm by walking up stairs that lead to nowhere, falling into pits, walking into fires
3. Children gone for a night, returned as old, old people with mass confusion among the townsfolk
4. People are spirited away; fed fey food, now cannot eat food of the prime - they waste away, starving to death for fey foods at tables laden with their own cooking
5. The fey prince who wants a monument to the folly of those who cross him turns the townsfolk to trees and roots them along all approaches to the city, there to cry warning to any who would come to the city (this stolen from Richard K Morgans 'A land fit for heroes' series)
6. The wyld hunt is a classic, with the twist of turning all the townsfolk into animals for the hunt
7. Animated terrain - a walking clock tower or town gate stomping about seeking folk to squash. This from the legend of the split rock - cross through it three times and it will close on you
8. Noone in the city can recognise beauty that is not the fey, they cannot stand the sight of other humans now and flee in horror from each other

d12 natural items for quest objects

Reworking a conversation on discord into a table of d12 druidic-themed quest objects


1. A fruit, or seed that has been changed or infected - like the boll of a boll-weevil, those grapes that need fungal infestation before you can make certain wines; blue-cheese would be a common example.
2. The blood of a were-wolf drawn at full moon for a time-bound encounter
3. Something like a 7-year locust - it only comes out at certain times and is common as dirt then, but now is an off year and the challenge is to figure out what completionist bug-collector is going to have a couple of these things spare when noone really cares about them
4. A tree that has grown only knowing the light of certain stars and not others - i.e. in a valley that faces in a very specific direction.
5. Seemingly impossible places - this temperature, moisture but that type of rock - find a place where glaciers, volcanic activity, crashed magical cities brought the right kinds of rock/soil far, far off the places they originated
6. All the temple walls show friezes of the McGuffin tree but they were all cut down and burnt as offerings. The ritual needs some to be burnt and they used to grow around here so the players need to find some - e.g. under an ashfall like Pompeii
7. Preserved extinct things such as leaves and seeds can be found trapped in amber in the nearby amber mines
8. Vanished plants or animals in the local nobles residence as the panelling or as the trophy heads mounted on his wall - a heist where the key issue is the size of the thing being stolen
9. The quest item is hiding in plain sight as part of all the ancient imperial mile-makers and signposts but the authorities are going to come after whoever tears them up
10. Finding a critter frozen above the snowline to get a 'fresh' pelt
11. Cultivate a fruit or flower from the last existing seed - maybe the seed needs to be watered with tears or some such ritual madness
12. Certain paths and trails can only be walked at this time of year; e.g. the ritual must be held on a mountain in Asgard; a gate will open at the top of this mountain in X days - the only time you can hike there without being dead yourself.

An inversion of this could be that when these things were made long long ago, the BBEG thought they were making things hard by requiring certain ingredients that were impossible to source at the time but once the party figures out the translation for the named ingredient they realise it is a commonly available spice these days and they probably have some on them.