Actual Test: d4 Caltrops Wilderness Stocking - Expanded

tl;dr: tested out d4 Caltrops Wilderness Stocking - Expanded - good in itself but elevated to great by the vast library of supporting tables for every circumstance.

I needed to rustle up some off-map hexes that were immediately behind a target site for the players and ktrey launched the 'expanded' version so I decided to give it a whirl. I was running using the Hexcrawl25 set up - 19 sub-hexes within the hex - which for me were 2.5 mile sub-hexes and a 10 mile hex. I am not sure who that relates to the intended density of stuff ktrey had in mind but sticking one main thing in each sub-hex and then teasing out the implications worked pretty well.

The specific hex I was looking at was D8 on the map below (lower left) and I knew a few things about it - that it was the north-west facing entrance to a valley running to the south east, that the terrain was rainforest.

I knew the north-east overlapping hex was occupied by the castle of an infernalist warlord, everything else was open so I rolled up something for each sub-hex. After each roll I popped the suggested linked list elsewhere on d4 Caltrops and refined whatever it was there. This gave me a lot of relatively general things but as I kept going, slowly a pattern emerged - there was a fey-bunch at the eastern side of the hex, something else laired at the west with ambush encounters around it. There were tracks and another lair in the centre and a line of impassible terrain cutting north-east to south-west in the south-east corner.

My main reason for working up the hex and running this exercise was to answer 'what was keeping the infernalist busy?' The fey presense provided part of that answer but what was the other faction/force in the hex? I needed something that was opposed to both the fey and the infernal forces so an aberation fits the bill - given this is a nice damp rainforest, an aboleth works.

I tagged the things I had rolled up to those groups then marked them all out on the hexmap to see patterns - colour-coding the things that seemed to fit together. What appears to emerge is a rainforest with a number of dangerous features within it, an aboleth with thralls at their command an fey that are enchanting the rain-forest to be hostile to try and keep them out.

The huge range of odd things that dropped out of the tables on d4 Caltrops provided tons of interesting little hooks and bits to assemble into an emergent narrative of what is happening in the hex. Not all of them immediately link to that core conflict, which is even better - this is the kind of rut-busting I need when I am doing these things, otherwise I ended up getting too focused and everything ties back to the one big thing going on. Variety is better.

Once this was complete, the mess on their doorstep points to why the infernalists have been unable to fully exert control over their surrounds - and speaks to what their objectives will be when the players turn up on their doorstep. A few things have not been fully hammered out at this point but I will wait for the players to actually get down this direction before applying that last level of polish.

The first layer "Wilderness Stocking - Expanded" table is pretty good, a nice, useable example of the craft. What elevates it to seriously good stuff is the huge depth of additional tables scattered across d4 Caltrops that are pulled together in the links, those make this really useful, driving it down to that next level of detail where the creative juices start to really flow.

d30 dwellings and sites

d30 dwellings and sites

Inspired by scrubbing through old newspapers while recycling.


1. Heritage - an ancient site, falling into ruin, maintained with grueling effort by descendants of the original builders. Inhabitants are a powder-keg of blame and recrimination about how it came to this
2. Tapestry workshop, light-soaking yarns for heat management, also rare magic and soul-absorbing threads made by experts - good for banishing the undead
3. Dwelling set on only high-tide rise above sand-banks; very hard to approach without being observed, unhinged weather mage with a solar obsession and their protective staff; very grand, chic, baking hot. Effort is exhausting
4. Dwelling of trellises, "rooms" are defined gardens, most of the structure is outdoors - lush, humid, full of pollen, scent, insects, lizards and toiling gardners. Very little privacy, cheerfully communal
5. Grand old country lodge being restored - busy work parties, with crafts folk, local laborers, experts.
6. Tower with the gardens surrounding it as a maze of pathways through shallow waterways clogged with lillies and fish - one could with difficulty jump a direct path or simply slog through the knee high water and spoil the plants. Stubby old fortified manor at the centre
7. Geometric tiles and carvings within and without with continual perspective tricks that make movement between rooms disturbing but staying within a room serene. Inhabitants can be observed moving about by memory.
8. Fortified manor with enthusiastic young lord raising new breed of burly cattle - locals are aggravated at the disturbance and interference, cattle are also smarter and keep escaping.
9. Survey team from local nobility attempting to refortify an old castle - have just discovered it is far worse than thought plus infested with monsters, noone wants to go back with the bad news, workers refusing to enter.
10. Half built wizards tower, caught fire, just extinguished, exhausted minions and injured watch-beasts scattered around in hasty triage. Multiple traps were left in unstable state.

August 2024 RPG Blog Carnival: It Came From Beyond Time

Welcome to the new month for the RPG Blog Carnival - our topic for August 2024 is "It Came From Beyond Time" - on my mind is the stramge effects of long life and magic can have in dredging things up from the deep past and hurl them into your current campaign. You can find some deeper background on the RPG Blog Carnival on 'of Dice and Dragons'.

If you want to join the carnival, write up your own entry and post it in a comment below, send me a link (my username at gmail.com) or ping me on the 'blog-carnival' OSR discord channel or find me bluesky, twitter or mastodon. I will gather all the participants into a wrap-up post on September 4th.

Below is my own take on the topic.

Sundered’s Encounter Stocking Technique (ZEST) test for Menagerie world

Poking about I stumbled over Sundered Shillings anti-Joesky tax - their Sundered’s Encounter Stocking Technique (ZEST) which I liked the look of because I do love a good unified table you throw different dice at depending on the circumstances.

To summarise the mnemonics -
For random encounters, we get IN FIVE (Interruption, Numerous, Friendly, Indifferent, Violent, Extreme).
For random structures, we get FLAVOR (Fane, Lair, Abandoned, Vault, Oddity, Ruin).

Tweaking their structure to create a combo d12/d20 table by re-stacking the entries we get a way to generate a unified travel/delve table - first IN FIVE then a gap then FLAVOR and a filler gap at the top.

Site Encounter (d12)/Travel Encounter (d20) table
1. Interruption,
2. Numerous,
3. Friendly,
4. Indifferent,
5. Violent,
6. Extreme
7-12. No encounter
13. Fane
14. Lair
15. Abandoned
16. Vault
17. Oddity
18. Ruin
19-20 - no encounter

I recently had a game of my Brancalonia-mod go off the rails and while I was able to catch that one, it struck me that having a good random encounter table for that campaign locale could be helpful.

Version I am taking to table-testing at the Friday night open tables:
1. Interruption - the Law; Queens Guard on patrol against such knaves as the party
2. Numerous - the locals; pilgrims, farmers or others
3. Friendly - travelling performer - puppeteer or seer
4. Indifferent - non-hostile other knaves; curious what the players are up to may be tempted to follow
5. Violent - Hostile knaves - one of the NPC gangs the party has messed around in their adventures
6. Extreme - Stray monster - viperwolf or bavalisk
7-12. No encounter
13. Fane - Animalings - shrine to one of the small gods with lots of offerings
14. Lair - Bevana - cottage-in-the-woods with spooky hag resident
15. Abandoned - Elves - hunting lodge style luxury holiday spot - dangerously decayed magical nonsense
16. Vault - Insectfolk - stacked up eldritch weirdness
17. Oddity - Dwarven Great Works - Borehole - physically hazardous, potentially rewarding
18. Ruin - Predator Queen 'this is not a place of honour' castle-shrine - dreadful, players own fault if they go near it
19-20 - no encounter

Dwarven Synthetic Cuisine (RPG Blog Carnival)

Another idea for VDonnut Valley for the topic of Feasts, Foods and Fancy Drinks, oh my!. You can see the rest of the topics for 2024 on Of Dice And Dragons 2024 Blog Carnival hosting list.

The old Dwarven Empire were masters of alchemy based off botany. The empire fell and with it their easy access to their plants. The cultural tastes remained but the source was gone - everything was recreated from alchemy and minerals. Now dwarves live on mostly synthetic diets and swear they taste better.

The Great Wheel of the Far North (GLoGtober 7 '23)

Last of Glass Candles GLoGtober '23, challenge #7 is from their own list - "A post about a weird train." Here endeth my run at GLoGtober for 2023!

The technologies of the Forge clan are misunderstood. Outsiders think their discussions of agitating water and fire elementals by proximity to one another are their crude ways of describing steam technologies. In fact it is more like 'cats-in-a-sack' drive.

The pinnacle of their works is the Great Wheel. A towering framework, a pyramid on sleds with a roaring, spinning disk in the centre. Within the disk, an unlikely prize - a fire elemental that is fascinated by artifice and adores clambering around inside the labyrinth within the disk. The outside of the disk is grooved with treads that bites into the glaciers and tundra and hurls the train along.

Behind are great sleds with lesser sleds and wagons tied down under rickety frames on which catch dries, travellers loaf and sight-seers perch for the view. The Great Wheel grinds along throughout the year, shuttling nomadic communities around on the great ice-fields, bringing fishers from the rivers to the sea, herdsmen across the tundra and above all towing the workshops and stores of the clan in an endless trading circuit.

The Great Wheel itself is attended by a dedicated group of artificers from the Forge clan, some old conjuring hands who commune with the fire elemental, danger-addicts who maintain the ever-spinning parts, and apprentices come to learn from the others at this culmination of their craft.

The train is a perpetual nomads conclave, the default seat of government of the Forge clan since more likely than not the largest concentration of the clan elders will probably be on-board at any given time.

d6 groups onboard just now
1. forge mages with acolytes and arcane equipment
2. skimmer crews with their ice-sleds
3. herdsfolk with their herd
4. nomads with dwellings, packbeasts, families
5. workers and crafters, processing some of the cargo in transit
6. dungeon-divers with packs of equipment en route to a site

The Great Wheel descends on a location like an anteater come to a nest, disgorging tribesfolk and warrior bands, cracking open dungeons, uprooting wizard towers and breaching fortresses that what lies within can be hauled out and carried away back to the icefields.

d6 raw plunder being carried
1. raiders with hand-carried winnings from raids
2. a whole ship, dragged from the sea
3. a mine, dismantled
4. quarried materials, for a new fortress
5. a great beast, being butchered and rendered down on the move
6. a wizards tower, wrenched whole from it foundations

It is said with some encouragement the spirit of the wheel can do more than simply drive it. Witnesses say they have seen it form a great humanoid shape and fling things - barrels of pitch, rocks and even grappling hooks to drag things to it. Mostly those who witness this and live to tell the tale recall the unnerving joyful yells of the creature, cheery 'yaaahhhgs' ringing our across the tundra as it visits chaos wherever it has arrived.

d20 illithid cultural artefacts

After spending a bunch of time thinking about illithid worlds due to Spelljammer, some general thoughts about things they will have lying around beyond the usual, recognisable stuff.

First, the general aesthetic will be:
- upsettingly asymmetrical because they like to hold things with their tentacles and long-fingered hands and like to know which way is the 'front' by feel
- flanged or ridged design with bits sticking out for ease of tentacle holding
- sensory tools for the senses of a mindflayer - emotion (empath), thought (telepathy), telekinesis, dream (which for them is 'channel the far realm'), body-mastery (a slightly taboo hobby of attuning with whatever form your tadpole took over)
- textural approach - etched in qualith text is very common both as instruction on the item, makers marks, dedications and other notes associated with its use or origin
- materials can include mother-of-pearl and other shell-like substances shaped into desired forms and highly precise carvings rendered using telekinetic abilities

d20 illithid cultural artifacts
1. Qualith meditation beads - quadripartite inscriptions spiralling around beads on a string, a relatively common design with a huge variety of writings available. Can be inscribed with koan-type truths, community doctrines, great questions, forget-me-not messages
2. Infinite sagas - a long flexible spiral, typically an embroidered or otherwise textured ribbon, containing stories that run on forever, reflecting the time-skipping nature of mindflayer dominion itself ".. until once more, at the far end of time, our Empire rose again and..."
3. Empathy detector - equivalent to an ear-horn, particularly for illithids who have spent too much time alone and want a little more clarity. Weakens defenses against 'blast' psychic attacks. Usually a hidden necklace as wearing one is a sign of weakness.
4. Emotional broadcaster - usually a very ostentatious head-piece that makes sure that what you feel, everyone else feels too. Wearing one of these is an illithid boss-move, be very sure of your place on the social ladder.
5. Empathy shield - for when others tiresome emotions are just not worth dealing with. Also provides some limited defense against psychic attacks. Usually a discrete brooch or pendant worn hidden as openly displaying you have one of these is seen as rude.

d20 things encountered at Deep Sea Mindflayer Colonies

Sparked by a discussion on the limits of what mindflayers can turn into themselves on the Piazza with my thought at the time being:

I think the most interesting of these are the Urophion, Tzakandi, Mindwitness, Uchuulon and Brainstealer Dragon since they seem to show that there is a very wide range of useable forms. The Kezreth mutated war-machine mentioned in "The Illithid Empire and the New Illithid Arsenal" implies that further changes can be made post-transformation.

Some initial rough thoughts were:
- The only limit that seems to be there is size - we see no ogres, giants, etc.
- If lizardfolk, grimlocks, gnolls and the wide range of goblinoids can be ceromorphised, why not aquatics - merfolk and tritons seem obviously suitable hosts, perhaps even loacathah, sahaugin and kuo-toa
- One would imagine that suitably adapted mindflayer colonies would be perfectly happy in the depths of the oceans, with extra miles of sun-blocking water overhead
- If a roper or dragon can be ceromorphised into Urophions and Brainstealer Dragons, why not a dragon turtle or giant crab?
- What about other large mammals with big brains - whales, dolphins? Are they tasty as is? What about an awakened one?

But testing this a bit more; mindflayers can move in 3D through psionic or magical power anyway so as a start point would prefer to dwell out of water to avoid being slowed down. The ideal state would be mountains and the surface in a place where the sun has been blocked or snuffed out. Where this has not happened and the baleful glare of the hateful day-star still dominate the sky, mindflayers may well choose the vast open ranges of the aquatic deeps. The sun is kept at bay by hundreds of feet of water, and they have greater freedom than the cave systems of the underdark.

Assuming our seas are populated with aquatics then there will be an abundance of tasty brains too. Our first difference is that it will be much more easy to tell who a mind-flayers base species was compared to the surface; merfolk, tritons and sahuagin look very different from the waist down.

So with that in mind, d20 things one might encounter at a deep sea mindflayer colony

d30 Things Above a Mindflayer World

We have a couple of examples of mindflayer dominated worlds starting with the 'obvious' Glyth in Realmspace but with other examples of Falx, Ssirik Akuar the Sunset World, and Penumbra of Truespace. Given mindflayers are, by various lore, actually from the far future, the distant past and/or the far realm and given that they have the majestic nautiloid as a well known tool, one would imagine they would be well aware of their skyward flank once they achieve dominance on a world. This is balanced against their hatred of sunlight and preference to live deep underground.

I rolled up a giant world that turned out to be teeming with illithids for a recent campaign, hence the question arising of what does one encounter on the approaches to an illithid world? It seems to me that they would be aware of their near-space approaches, particularly since in the current incarnation of the game that direction lies the astral and the hated githyanki.

So with those in mind, here are d30 things you might run into as you near a mindflayer world
1. Orbiting watch monoliths - greatly upscaled resonance stones that emanate psychic dread. Unclear whether these are scarecrows or they just like the ambience
2. Sun-shades - where plans to snuff out the sun are not yet far advanced, some worlds will float great spindly parasols above the world to block out the hateful glare of the baleful day-star. These may be large for whole realms or small for single locations
3. Watchers above - semi-undead flying thralls; alive enough to be psychically contactible, not so alive that they need much sustenance. Watch-creatures.
4. Remnant of previous sun-killer project; great broken incomprehensible thing
5. Floating illithid mage tower - a Cuttlefish command where some irritating illithid was exiled by their Elderbrain. (3-in-6 the illithid mage is still in residence)
6. Nautiloid ship nursery - junior nautiloids being adapted to null gravity, being shaped to have decks and crew quarters. Not intrinsically hostile but being 'played with' by a flotilla of half-sized nautiloids might be as bad as a deliberate attack
7. Stellar ley-line tap (1-in-6 being tuned/maintained by a nautiloid and its crew) - a magical accumulator, perhaps discharging towards something else in orbit, or some planetary receiving spire. May cause spelljammer-shock if approached while near-discharge
8. Fallback asteroid base, mothballed. An asteroid all carved out to be a space lair but currently unfurnished. May have some random stellar monster in residence.
9. Psurlon base - guarding to the approaches to the world due to their higher tolerance of sunlight. Very enthusiastic about their duties as they get to eat what they catch
10. Mooncarver yard - scaffold with undead servitors for making asteroid bases, obelisks and other great illithid orbital works. A necromancer or other powerful arcanist could probably get them to do any needed ship repairs. Failing to take a firm hand with the crew will lead to them attempting to do something with the raw materials you represent if you come within their reach

June 2023 RPG Blog Carnival: Travels, by Wave, Cloud or Portal

Welcome to the new month for the RPG Blog Carnival - our topic for June 2023 is "Travels, by Wave, Cloud or Portal" - on my mind was the lots of fun I have wrung from travelling campaigns - portal-hopping through Planescape, sailing the seas in a swashbuckler game or navigating the stars with Spelljammer. You can find some deeper background on the RPG Blog Carnival on 'of Dice and Dragons'.

If you want to join the carnival, write up your own entry and post it in a comment below, send me a link (my username at gmail.com) or ping me on the 'blog-carnival' discord channel. I will gather all the participants into a wrap-up post on July 1st.

For my own contribution, I want to talk about subsea travels, because it looks like a bit of a gap and seems like something fun to try.

This starts with the question of who is travelling around beneath the ocean? Lots of things down there move around a lot - fish shoals, nomadic aquatic peoples, etc - with relatively fewer fixed groups - reefs, laired monsters, undersea cities - compared to the surface. Being highly mobile - a flyer equivalent - is much easier, where one can allow currents to carry you around, or just sleep 'on the fin' as you float about.

So we have a large group of nomads and wandering folk and we can add trade between fixed locations, hunting parties and others coming and going from those places. What of the voyagers in the deep? What are the beasts of burden, the wagons and other means for travellers in the ocean depths?

First - beast of burden in classic fashion - big fish, other mighty creatures can serve. You will have a big split here between turtles, whales, dolphins etc that need to surface to breath and things that can stay down in the depths

Second - neutral bouyancy wagons - cargo floated along - just needs to be bouyant enough to stay off the sea floor then you can drag it along. That could be through captured air, harvested swim bladders, blocks of floating wood like cork or some manner of rock. Light enough to be bouyant in the deeps can still be surprisingly heavy. Drag in water is going to be much higher so long-haul volume trade is more difficult. Bulky things get processed down to small, valuable before being moved in the currents or they are walked along the bottom

Third - big things can be marched along the bottom by giant crabs or other such critters - either pulling them on sleds or floating them along just above the bottom.

Fourth - trade routes will tie to the currents, some routes will be ring-routes, where it is easier to return to your start by following a current the whole way around a sea than to try and fight it all the way home. It may well be possible to follow shallow currents one way and deep currents back. Alternatives will be surfacing, using sails to counter a current, or marching along the bottom.

We have an awful lot of seabed in a typical campaign map

d30 Archmage status flexes

Status seeking among archmages or what does the mage who has everything want?

This is rooted in a snip I recall from The Status Seekers about how once all material wants were met, a person sought status. Considering how a mage is effectively a post-scarcity entity in a world that is not there yet, they are competing for status with other mages.

Some things like political power, wealth, etc. can also be contested by lesser beings such as dragons, nobles and others that many archmages hold as beneath their notice. To gain status among other archmages, truly preposterous amounts must be gathered - a world ruled without challenge, every ounce of gold ever mined - scales no mere non-magician could hope to even consider.

Many of the things archmages pursue reflect the fact that only the opinions of their fellow archmages count, like the most esoteric of high art, often the uninitiatied will be unable to appreciate the glory of their achievements - but this is not for them, their opinions do not matter.

The below table of goals are also what its realm/lair/demiplane can be expected to be built around - the attainment and maintenance of whatever status display it has deemed worth while.

d30 status flexes of an archmage
1. Most dangerous beast collection - caged or free-roaming
2. Most ludicrous home - e.g. lava moats, bubbles on the Negative elemental plane, carried by a megalodon
3. Most ancient ruin inhabited - proportional to the dire reputation of the creators and the amount of their dangerous defenses left intact
4. Epic rituals - the more dangerous for the most frivolous gain the better
5. Most esoteric addiction - maintained through incredible effort to source supplies e.g. time travel to gather an extinct herb
6. Most unlikely political machination - holding some polity in place against significant destructive forces
7. Greatest realm sponsored - being known as a champion of a place and effectively accepting any and all challengers where/when they choose
8. Quantity of vassals - having nations, tribes, cults and organisations operating under your banner
9. Unlikeliness of servitors - getting everything done with really impractical servants - spring breezes, turtles, an order of blind monks
10. Stamp on the land / territory dominated - sheer scale of land indisputably dominated - nothing moves without their will

NPC personality creation workflow

I took the 3 lists of traits from Out of the Weaving Secrets 638 Primary Personality Traits article in 2014 and set up a trio of random selector functions in my big excel sheet. I get a positive, a neutral and a negative trait. It also randomises male/female and romantic preference.

I combine that with my big list of ancestries - started from Skerples OSR: Table of Races, the usual D&D suspects from the core books and the raceoids from Lizardman Diaries - for 73 different possible ancestries. You could swap this out for a cultural background table also for similar effect.

This gives a bit of who they are, what are they like - combine that with some motivations - basically tagging them to a local faction to say what they might care about and then deciding how invested they are in that factions goals (from fanatic to casual). I talk about this a bit more in NPC motivations to meet player role-play preference. Most of the non-recyclable effort has gone into what he local factions are, who is doing what in a location. That is what I have to put the effort into when the players move around the map. Otherwise, if whatever is going on locally is sufficiently big, bad news (undead invasion, natural disaster) then what anyone encountered cares about will be clear.

And that gives me seeds to get me going:
- What this person is like individually (randomised traits)
- Their background / ancestry (randomised background)
- What they care about (picked faction)

d6 solar cults of the Scaledlands

For tis the Solstice let us talk about the sun. In honour of the Baleful Glare of the Hateful Day-star we have d6 Solar Cults of Sholtipec.

1. Children of the Solar Queen - build ever higher, seek the life giving heat. Great spires, temples, mirror-dish topped ziggurats, all to gather and concentrate the glorious rays

Once national cult of the lizard imperium, now supplanted by a cult of elemental fire. Remnants can be found in the old high-land strongholds left behind in the great retreat.

Dancer of the Solar Queen by Evlyn Moreau

2. Withering Sun - all exists at the permission of the sun, all decays, withers, collapses beneath the weight of the suns mighty gaze - so hasten that decay, tear down all that offends the suns gaze that the new brighter realm be born

Typically followed by natives of the scaled lands from before the lizardfolk came. Resurgent since great retreat. Some renegade red dragon cultists have started venerating the Withering Sun alongside their draconic patron.

3. Devouring Sun - weakness is anathema, contest for space in the light of the sun through strength of arms. All the suns light falls upon is the rightful domain of her faithful. Bring all to her faith, destroy those who fail to see the light.

Mostly followed by human cultists from the desert world nearer the sun. To the faithful, a unifying force that sustained them against tides of darkness, to others, a scourge.

4. Scouring Sun - ascetics, do more with less, adversity is the crucible for the spirit, be kind for we are all one another can rely on, there is no help coming under the baleful glare of the devouring sun

Rare, mostly found within odd planetary wanderers, refugees from the Devourers and mystics.

5. Nourishing Sun - sunlight brings growth, her moods mark the seasons, through her generosity we have the plants that feed us, the light for our days. Steward her bounty, tend to her garden, pass on her gifts to those that come after you

Most popular of the local variants, followed by much of the peasantry

6. Searing Sun - simplicity is best, exposure yourself to the light of the sun, cleanse your soul beneath its gaze, live in the wilds, reject caverns and roofs.

Part of the pantheon together with Grandfather Crocodile and the spirits of nature followed by the local saurial and lizardfolk population in the once-imperial lands.

Bonus: The Staircase to the Sun - the huge artefact at the heart of the city of the same name, onceo known as the Labyrinth between Worlds. A stolen dwarven solar forge at its heart drew power from the sun to open gates between worlds then over time something in the complex of artefact, site and spells began to open more portals to places where the sun was shining on other worlds - first at night and then more and more until the sun always shone within the Staircase. The different shades of light from the daylight of different worlds mixes to make day and night within sight of the great tower of the Staircase an eternal glorious dawn. As the grip of the Children of the Sun and the lizard imperium has loosened of late, more and more of the other solar cults have been drawn to the city to contest posession of this mighty artefact.

Review: The Kontext Spiel Collection

tl:dr; three light-weight free kriegspiel systems, a setting and lots of useful content generation tools in this compilation of tabletop goodness.

This is "a variety of resources for running freeform tabletop games" by Michael Raston of The Lizardman Diaries. Anyone who has tracked this blog for a while will have seen me plug Infinigrad and other pieces of genius scattered across the Lizardman Diaries blog. This book is a handy compilation with some of the best of those.

Bigger and slimmer than I expected - 56 pages of A4 in the soft cover I got off Lulu. The art is Michael Rastons trade mark out-of-copyright mashups. I respect the mans patience in searching up his source material and hacking it all together. A long time advocate of 'take your inspiration from an image', his works have always had a certain aesthetic that has tended towards the baroque in previous publications (A Blasphemous Roster being first to mind) but here I like how there is a clean seperation between the content and the tables making the crunch more accessible.

Actual Test: World, Climate and Globe Mapping Tools

tl;dr: testing online tools for generating world maps then simulating the climate.

I stumbled across a piece of paper, scribbled with notes that make up a hard-core world-building workflow I got from a guy at an Adventurers League in the before-times. I pass on the steps and hope this might bring joy to those among us who like super-crunchy world-building.

First step is to generate a random height map. For this we use the Planet Map Generator. There are a few sliders you can play with here but what you need for the next step is to generate a greyscale height map in Mercator projection. Adding a coastline contour will allow you to track the 'normal' coastline as you fiddle with water levels later.

Next you generate a map with "Make map" then right-click, save-as to get your grey-scale height map.

Data driven Appendix P: 3xd100 NPC party generation tables

tl;dr: NPC party generation tables to match what people are actually playing as PCs

Inspired by Appendix P of the AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide - for “Creating a Party on the Spur of the Moment” - as discussed by the Mystical Trash Heap just recently. This is a deep dive back to the question that started this blog in the first place - what if randomly encountered NPC parties reflected what players actually play, not what you can generate from the DMG.

So the following are some tables if you want to roll up a party of NPCs that reflect what you might expect to encounter, assuming a group of classed NPCs (reflecting the typical game table). If you want to roll up your own the following tables have 'Core' derived from D&D Beyond and 'Alternative' based on forum surveys. Typical table size is five.

d12/2d6 How goes the Blood-War on Gehenna?

For upcoming Gehenna hex-crawl piece, I am snapping off this mercenary band generator.

In particular I had in mind the volcanic slopes of Khalas, known as 'the Gentle Land', where the front lines of the Blood War surge back and forth but the broken landscape means there is no static, fortified line and lots of room for wandering around without being seen - or without seeing and thus avoiding some other band of ne'er-do-wells abroad beneath the Furnaces. I like about Gehenna is the cragginess of the place - the terrain is so difficult to deal with that again, it makes sense that even though the Blood War rolls over this place, you can move around unseen and avoid the clashes of mighty armies.

Khalas was where I set one of my longer running campaigns and I think it is a great part of the lower planes for many reasons. Least horrible of the lower planes you could pitch into Gehenna and while it is dangerous, it is plausible that you could survive there long enough to think you way out. Pitch up on Avernus or into the Gray Wastes and the clock is ticking for you. All of the 'off-cardinal' lower planes are generally more survivable because they do not have a native power of the lower planes - no devils, no demons, in theory the yugoloths live here but they hold the place with a lighter grasp if so. The noted local powers of Gehenna are the Barghests - described as the 'only true natives' of Gehenna. Taking this as true, then Gehenna is sufficiently easy to slip about in that CR4 blue goblin lycanthropes can hold dominion where the rulers in the planes on either side are CR13 Ultroloths and CR20 Pit fiends.

Altogether, I read that as a canon license for cunning lower level adventurers to slither about in the shadows without that being against the spirit of the place. Below you will find some tables for setting the scene for the local Blood War and the mercenary bands players could run into.

Know Us By Our Trail Food (d20 Cuisine Generator)

As an additional tool for city building, cuisine is a nice one - certainly nothing makes a city memorable like the entire food economy being based around an odd local crop or reflecting an unusual local taste.

As adventurers are typically new to town, the partys experience of a city is going to be through tavern fare and street food rather than food in the home. There are any number of fantasy tavern fare generators our there so let us consider that angle covered and focus on street food.

Actual test: Liche's Librams MtG location generator

This is a test of using the very neat set up by Liches Libram to delve into the amazing settings of Magic the Gathering to create interesting locations. This is something very dear to my heart - I have always found the Magic settings to be awesome fodder for tabletop RPGs, going all the way back - what has been a bit of a nuisance is working through the sheer volume of cards that now exist. This problem is now fixed thanks to Liche's Libram and I suggest you give it a whirl.

I mashed all the buttons on the widget to see what we got - and it told the story almost without me having to think about it like any good card reading. First the place:

Cinder Marsh with Mishra's Workshop - we are looking at an installation deep in a destroyed, polluted waste.

d6 Schools of Draconic Art

1. Vaulting - massive and elaborate fortifications; the archetype of this is huge reinforced doors. The message of this is to imply the fabulous wealth of the dragons hoard when all this visible effort has been put into the barriers around it.

2. Relief-work - typically seen in the carving of scenes glorifying the dragon onto the sides of mountains or other suitable rock-surfaces in its territory. The symbolism here is that the dragons control of its territory is so unquestioned, it could take the time to carve all this undisturbed.