On January 1st, I had this idea: what if, every day, I posted one entry of a table on twitter? It’s such a minuscule thing that it should be easy to find time for it, and the limitations of twitter would prevent the entries from getting out of hand. The way I figured it, if I kept it up for a month, I could produce a d30 table with barely any effort at all; and by the end of the year I could have 12d30 tables! So every day of this past month, I’ve been tweeting with the hashtag #d30WizardBooks.
- “On Navigation of, and the Reliability of Perceptions Within, Non-Euclidean Space”
- “Putting out the Fireball: How to Assert Your Will Without Resorting to Evocations”
- “Beings of the Outer Planes IX: Demons, Devils, And Determining the Difference.”
- “Touring the Imbibularium: A Catalogue of All Known Elixirs, Poultices, Potions, and Tinctures.”
- “Dissection or Vivisection: Why the Moral Outcry of Lesser Minds is Stifling Your Mastery of the Cosmos”
- “A Hat as Tall as You Deserve: Uses for Extra-Dimensional Spaces in Fashion”
- “On the Relative Benefits of Living, Unliving, Monstrous and Constructed Minions”
- “Ditching the Love Potion: How to Use Charm Spells to Improve Your Sex Life.”
- “Going Where Only Gods Have Been Before: Creating New Life in Your Vats to Improve Your Sex Life.”
- “Check Your Beard: A Practical Guide to Avoiding Otherworldly Parasites While Traveling the Cosmos.”
- “Free Labor: A Guide to Selecting the Right Candidate for Apprenticeship”
- “Rare Spell Components and Where to Find Them.”
- “Shaming The Petty Gods Who Scorn You: A Study in Emulating Clerical Magics”
- “Correctly Conjugating Conjurations: A Coda for those Circumspect of Catastrophe”
- “Accurately Articulating Abjurations: Acquiring an Appropriate Accent”
- “How to Make Servitors & Influence People.”
- “How to Keep Insects Away from your Apparatuses to Prevent Unwanted Abominations”
- “Prolix Prose. Obfuscating Spellcasting Vocalizations by Employing A Needlessly Arcane Lexicon”
- “A Brief Study in the Practice of Law for Those Who Intend to Deal with Devils”
- “Ditch the Ball! Cubes, Pyramids, Spirals, and Other Amusing Shapes for Flaming Evocation”
- “Who Needs Resurrections? 300 Necromancy Spells to Put Clerics to Shame”
- “When You’ve got More Spell Slots than Enemies to Crush: 1000 Little Spells to Enhance your Life.”
- “Finding your Familiar: Contrasting the Benefits of Ravens, Felines, Toads, Salamanders, and Other Common Choices.”
- “When Devils Won’t Deal: How to Trick Celestial Beings”
- “Dumbing it Down for the Meat-Shields: A Primer for Engaging in Pleasant Conversation with your Adventuring Companions.”
- “Choosing the Material that’s Right for YOUR Golem.”
- “Stars, Moons, & Other Shapes That Will Never Go Out of Style”
- “Half the Storage Costs, All the Soul: Using Halfling Sacrifices for your Dark Rituals”
- “A Practical Guide to Time Manipulation.” Written by: “You, Twenty Years from Now.”
- “Dealing with Anti-Magic Fields: Martial Arts for a Wizardly Physique.”
As it turns out, the process is kind of a bummer. Spreading the creative work out over such a large period of time actually made it more difficult to come up with individual table entries. It just took too much time to get into the right headspace each day. Then it was always a struggle to come up with something fresh, without accidentally repeating an idea I’d forgotten about because I wrote it weeks previously. It was also difficult to avoid just making jokes, which is pretty much what I ended up doing.
I’m dubious as to whether I want to continue this project. The first month was certainly a failed experiment in my view, but I do have some thoughts on how to improve the experience. Moving the daily posting over to Google+, where there are more cool people than there are on twitter might help. It could also be fun to just embrace the comedic nature of the thing and go with full-on joke themes in the future.
Anyway, enjoy your bonus post! I’ll get back to discussing Cleric magic on Sunday.
Hahaha! I might have to use this sometime just for the lolz.
=D
I had a player who always liked to search for books where ever they could. Made it a running gag that they always found a different volume of “The sexual characteristics and behaviours of sentient plants”, thinking of a random title and a number from a d100.
HAH! Nice.