Saturday, January 14, 2017

What I want from this second module

This module is about episodic content, but also about wilderness exploration and adventure. It would be a book that you could pick up, roll on some tables and have an entire session right there.

Every session begins with this line: "You're lost in the woods again."

Then you begin.


  • roll on the "what are we found doing" table, which would be a list of 100 things that the session could open with. Everything from the mundane "setting up camp under a stormy sky inside the ruins of a keep", to the dangerous "running from a monster that will kill us". 
  • There are subsequent tables for this, because some rolls cause plot on their own (such as the monster example). There is a table for generating monsters, a table for generating villages, a table for generating dragons, NPCs, and a list of special NPCs.
  • If the first situation is simple and taken care of with inter-party talking, then you roll on the "what do we run into" table. This could be anything from a cave that was recently the sight of a doppelganger murder scene, to "a village with a tower of bones is ahead". 
  • The party does with this as they like, but in Monty Python fashion it'll be about the moments. Rolling up an NPC or generating a monster will be an experience for the party and the DM as they discover who it is or what it does.
  • Anytime there's a lapse of silence the DM will roll on the Complication Chart, which will have  list of 100 easily adaptable problems or events that can spice up the situation. Things like "someone falls dead with a dagger in the back" and "lost lover arrives with a drastic warning".
  • If these are all failing to drag the party in, you can flip to the "Bounty Board" table, which will have 100 monster bounties to pursue.
  • Or you could roll on the "What does farmer Brown need help with today?" table to see what kind of quests people around need help with. 
  • Did I mention a random dragon table? 
  • It'll double as a campaign setting book, with the tables helping to shape the idea of the world. My dragon table, for instance, is not just determining color and body size. My dragons are strange and interesting creatures who can have the body of a cat and the antlers of a stag.

No comments:

Post a Comment