The Magic Eight Ball

Adrienne collects magic eight balls, so this one is for her. Hi Adrienne!

And now, an insidious magic item for your campaign:

That Accursed Eight Ball

The Magic Eight Ball is an item with a storied history, associated with great successes and mishaps throughout history.

When you consult the Magic Eight Ball about some action, roll 1d8.

1. "Outlook Bad" Receive -1 to your next dice roll


2. "Yes" Character receives +1 to dice rolls as though under the effect of a bless spell


3. "No" The next significant action the PCs attempt will fail if it is at all reasonable for failure to occur.


4. "Absolutely" The next time the PCs attempt something dangerous, their attempt will fail in an unreasonable and apparently random fashion, as though someone had cast a wish spell to bring the failure about.


5. "Death" The consulting character immediately drops to 0 HP.


6. "Kaboom" The Eight Ball explodes, causing 3d6 to anyone close. The Eight Ball will appear again in another dungeon 1d100 miles away soon after.


7. "Answer unclear" Nothing happens. For the next 1d20 hours, this is the only answer that can be obtained from the Eight Ball


8. "Ask again" Character receives -1 (cumulative) to next dice roll, plus effects of any future Eight Ball rolls.

East Sump

12 Things you can buy in East Sump

1. Enbalming Fluid
2. Organ meat
3. The services of a good Djinn banisher
4. Rat traps
5. Giant rat traps
6. Enchanted hats - exploding (third door on the left, knock three times)
7. Love potions (20 minute, 2 hour, and 4 day effectiveness)
8. Fake love potions (much cheaper)
9. Lodgings
10. A trained bear
11. Raincoats
12. Really good iron rations

Dusty End

When you seek advice from the Ogre, roll 1d4:

1. You are observed by agents of Dreadstone, who start looking into your affairs
2. The Enchantress of Dusty End demands you do her a service before you pass her grounds
3. The players of the Theatre Viande are out hunting for "volunteers" for the macabre performances
4. Someone is besiging Belaq's citadel, and the neighborhood is enveloped in violence and chaos

The Purple Worm Graveyard

What happens when you read those weird, squiggly inscriptions written along the bottom of that wall? What if you kneel in front of the altar of light and let what comes, come? And when you try to cast that really hard spell and it goes horribly wrong?

You open your mind to the worm god. The worm god is an ancient chaotic entity whose domains include destruction, decay, hunger, compost, and gardening.

Roll 2D6 plus your CON hit point bonus.

• On a 10+, your mind is in contact with the Worm god and it shows you what you want then offers you a bargain or a gift.


• On a 7-9, you receive a true impression or vision of what you're interested in, but then suffer a temporary insanity.


• On a 6 or less, the DM decides what happens.

Temporary Insanities:

1. Fall on your hands and knees and start eating dirt voraciously for 1-4 rounds


2. Projectile vomiting for several minutes


3. You realize that somewhere, somehow, there's a worm in your body. You can feel it, but you can't tell where it is.


4. The Worm god has a command for you, and he's watching to make sure you carry it out!

This is a little tidbit from the con scenario that I ran and Sage ran at Go Play NW. Opening your mind to the Worm god is fun!

Equisite Corpse Dungeon Stocking

I have a lot of difficulty stocking dungeons, so for Go Play NW I’m devising an exquisite corpse dungeon stocking technique. It works like this:
Make three columns of words and phrases. Each column should have 12-20 items in it.

In the first column, list stuff you already know is probably going to be in your dungeon. I’m doing this with microdungeons, so it’s easy. I just look at the Barrow on the Hill map:



So in column 1 I put:
ancestors, swords, spite, bats, visions, crypt, mural, hunger, bone pit, tomb, maze, dome, standing stones

In column 2 I put thematic words, monsters, events, or themes that match the color I want my dungeon to have.

Column2:
death, skeletons, ambush, gnawing, haunted, wailing cries, entombed, forgotten, blindness, tomb robbers, spikes, shadow

In column 3 I put macguffins, dungeon tricks, plot twists, and other fairly generic adventury bits.

Column 3:
not what it seems, treasure is hidden, item is actually magic, monster wants something, treasure conceals a monster, room is cursed, moving walls and floors, PC’s ancestry is involved, swarms of monsters, monster is also a wizard, rod of paralysis, scrying magic

Now roll 1d10 on each column, writing down the phrases you get and crossing them off the list. The three phrases are your exquisite corpse. Write 1-2 sentences about what encounter or thing in the dungeon this corpse represents. Do this 6-10 times. Each corpse is sort of an oracle to devise one encounter.

So, for example: a roll of 1, 7, 2 = “ancestors” – “entombed” – “treasure is hidden”. I decide this means that the protecting ancestral spirits who once guarded the barrow have been bound to their bones, swept into the bone pit, and magically entombed. The treasure is that if released, one of the skeleton warriors will serve a party member until destroyed. Perhaps opening the pit is quite dangerous unless the PCs can figure out the correct spell or command word.

Second roll: 3, 2, 3 = “bats” – “skeleton” – “monster wants something”. I decide that the ghosts of lesser servants buried in the barrow have possessed the skeletons of a swarm of bats in the cave labeled bats on the map. These creatures have a mindless compulsion to complete some ancient task that may be to the PCs benefit or detriment. They will fight if prevented from completing their goal. I don’t know what the goal is yet. I’m going to wait until I roll some more stuff up and see something jumps out at me.

I've made three dungeon outlines this way, and I"m very pleased with the results!

Another Coffee Dungeon

12 Random Beverages

1. Coffee
2. Coffee substitute brewed from fungus
3. Slime mold juice
4. Fermented slime mold juice
5. Blood
6. Crystal clear water
7. Tainted water, causes abdominal cramps for 1d8 hours
8. Unstable quintessence, roll on potion imiscibility table
9. Ethereal water, invisible, weightless, and tasteless, but quenches thirst
10. Alcohol
11. Cranberry liqueur
12. Herbal tea, cures 1 HP of damage

Dungeon Weird: Randomosity

A couple of nights ago I was feeling kind of down and exhausted after a busy, difficult couple of weeks of life and work, and feeling creatively drained. So I did that thing you do when you're down, I made some random tables.

The purpose of the Dungeon Weird: Randomosity Table is to generate cool, weird bits for your campaign.

To use the table, roll 1d20 on each column. Take two of the three words generated, mash them together, and create something weird.  

Light	Twilight	Dark
1. Honey 2. Top Hat * 3. Giggling 4. Pearl 5. Moon 6. Heart 7. Surgeon 8. Starlight 9. Glances 10. Operatic 11. Snow 12. Sponge 13. Roses 14. Perfume 15. Unicorn 16. Sparrow 17. Poet 18. Silk 19. Pilot 20. Jack-in-the-box	1. Stalactite 2. Fangs 3. Mandrake 4. Mushroom 5. Bandaged 6. Root 7. Tattoo 8. Dripping 9. Stockings 10. Chitinous 11. Frozen in amber 12. Fingernails 13. Petrified 14. Hair 15. Eagle 16. Rhinoceros horn 17. Sewer Engineer 18. Fisherman 19. Operating theatre 20. Naga	1. Leech 2. Brain 3. Rotting 4. Rust 5. Eyeball 6. Spider 7. Wound 8. Oozing 9. A black cat 10. Odd-shaped shadows 11. Vampire 12. Lice 13. Tears 14. Murder 15. Walled-up 16. Zombie 17. Millipede 18. Chimney Sweep 19. Pickpocket 20. Troll

Here's what I cam up with in a few rolls:

Surgeon - Fisherman - Zombie
A guild of bizarre fisherman/surgeons working by the magical principle of sympathy. They immerse you in a pool of tears, then hunt down your dreams and fears when they manifest in an underground lake of similar composition. They also look creepily like golems.

walled-up - Dripping - Surgeon
When a fisherman surgeon is kidnapped by a crime lord to perform an illegal operation, the walls of the lords dungeons being to weep tears and blood due to the magical radiation the surgeon has absorbed in plying his trade.

Silk - Lice - Operating Theatre
The fisherman surgeons primary competition is from the Guild of Seams, who create stunning tapestries by using highly trained silk-producing insects. The same insects can be directed into wounds to stitch up internal ruptures.

* I've been playing a bit of Echo Bazaar lately. Can you tell?