d100 Wondrous Items

Etching of a table cluttered with curiosities. A skull, a flower, scattered papers and open books, etc.

(Before we begin: Bones of Contention is a new TTRPG review site, for which I am a contributing member. Please give it a look!)

“Wondrous Items” is the category where D&D puts all the good magic items. At their best they demand creativity from the players who possess them in a way that a Flaming Sword or Ring of Protection never could. Wondrous Items didn’t make the leap to video games the way so many of D&D’s other trappings did, because Wondrous Items require a tactically infinite environment in order to thrive.

Here I have endeavored to present the greatest diversity of physical objects I could, marrying each to a magic power intended to push players to engage with the game in new ways.

The treasure chest contains a…

  1. Knife which will expertly season any food prepared with it. Even a novice cook could significantly elevate the quality of their ingredients. The knife loses its enchantment permanently if it is ever used for violence.
  2. Saddle which will resize itself to fit any natural beast it’s placed on. Once the saddle is strapped in place that creature will behave as a well-trained mount for one day. After this the saddle falls off not matter how well secured. Some animals may resent having been ridden, and turn claws and fang upon their fallen rider.
  3. Book which records every conversation of the person who owns it. It does this no matter how far away its owner is. If a new person takes possession of the book (without having it explicitly lent to them by the owner), all its pages become blank
  4. Dry log which burns, but is never consumed by fire. Its owner never needs to gather another piece of firewood again. This log was probably cut from some very special tree, and probably has some much more amazing properties to it, but this is the only remarkable thing anyone has ever discovered about it.
  5. Battle standard which appears friendly to anyone who would recognize a battle standard. One could ride through two warring armies, and both forces would perceive them to be allies. If a person has no knowledge of flags or battle standards, it displays a gray-and-white checkered pattern.
  6. Set of magically silenced woodworking tools in a nice box. Hand drills of various sizes, files, saws, planes, a mallet, none of which will ever make a sound when in use.
  7. Winnowing basket which will sift objects according to any rules described to it. An excellent tool for finding needles in haystacks. For example, it might be told to sift a load of treasure for items worth more than 100 gp, after which any item worth less than that will fall right through the basket’s bottom regardless of its size. The imp bound to the basket cannot read, and refuses to learn, so any attempt to use scrabble tiles to turn the basket into a tedious oracle will not work.
  8. Mirror of capricious deceptions. It will never reflect reality properly, though most of the time the differences it displays are slight enough that one must study the image carefully to determine what’s wrong. Perhaps a ring is shown on the wrong finger, or cheeks are displayed more flush than they are. This isn’t always the case. When one least expects it the mirror will show a demon looming behind them, or spiders crawling out of the viewer’s nose. If someone spends a good Turn or two polishing the mirror to make it look its best, they may whisper a request to it and it will reflect one lie of their choosing.
  9. Pipe which, when lit and puffed on, produces great clouds of cloying, sight-obscuring smoke. If the pipe is loaded with any substance that carries a particular effect (hallucinogenics, poisons, narcotics, etc.) the cloud will also carry those effects, which must be Saved against by anyone in the vicinity. Note that the smoker is not immune, and must save along with everyone else.
  10. Tripod which folds down to fill the smallest unit of encumbrance the game uses. When fully opened up it’s large and strong enough to support the weight of a standard adventuring party.
  11. Bell of attention. For one moment after the bell is rung all eyes and ears will be focused on the ringer. It is up to them to be interesting enough to hold people’s attention after that first moment. If anyone hears the bell a second time within a single day, they will perceive that the ringer is attempting to control their minds with magic. People do not generally appreciate this, and will almost certainly turn violent towards the bell-bearer.
  12. Directional magnet, of the U-shaped variety. The magnetic field it projects is tightly focused on a single point, and is powerful enough to attract any metal object its pointed towards with 2 horsepower.
  13. Music box which suppresses all sound except the plink-plink-plink of its own music. A full wind lasts 3 minutes, after which it takes a few moments to wind up again. The silencing effect is exactly proportional to how well the music can be heard. Those near the box will hear absolutely nothing but the music, while those far enough away to hear the music only faintly will also experience all other sounds being slightly suppressed.
  14. Tent which rolls up as small as a pup tent. However, when properly put up, the tent is spacious enough to stand in, with several semi-private rooms. Additionally, there is an extra flap at the back of the tent which leads to an extra-dimensional reference library. This library is used by a variety of magicians across the planes, and tended by a dangerous librarian. No object may be taken from the library, but anyone willing to spend time there ought to be able to find the knowledge they’re seeking.
  15. Sponge capable of absorbing an abnormal amount of liquid. If thrown into a body of water it could soak up a good-sized lake. It never grows any larger or heavier no matter how much liquid it holds. A single squeeze will always release the whole volume at once.
  16. Wand which allows the wielder to ‘save’ up to ten outfits. They simply must dress themselves a certain way, then wave the wand over themselves from head to foot to store that outfit in extra-dimensional space. By thinking of the outfit and waving the wand over themselves again—from foot to head this time—the clothes will be returned to their body. There is nothing to prevent the wand from being used to store worn treasures, though it must be noted that one cannot switch partially between outfits.
  17. Scabbard which shapes itself to any weapon one wishes to put in it. When the wearer calls for their weapon, the scabbard will oblige by propelling the weapon out of itself. This is best used to instantaneously bring a weapon to hand, even if one is mid-grapple. One may also attempt to launch a weapon directly from the scabbard and towards an enemy, but this form of surprise attack is clumsy, and only rarely strikes successfully.
  18. Ball about the size and density of an apple. It is perfectly accurate within the range of the thrower’s strength, hitting whatever they were aiming at no matter how small or mobile. The ball is unlikely to do any serious harm if used as a weapon.
  19. Net with eight weights around its edge. Each weight has a button which causes it to stay exactly where it was when the button was pressed—even if that means levitating in mid-air. The magic which holds the weights is released if jostled. The net can thus be used to quickly set a simple snare in almost any environment.
  20. Board game with a subtle magic. Everyone who sits down to play it will have a comfortable understanding of the rules, without ever needing to learn them. The play of the game is as simple or as deep as is appropriate to the temperament of the players; and as short or as lengthy as the time they have available to play. Any creature who can be convinced to play will have a nice time, and will remember the party pleasantly.
  21. Key of Imaginary Transportation. When used to mime starting a car, the key enables the holder to also mime sitting down in a car, and driving at car-speeds. The magic lasts for as long as they continue to mime. It will instantly cease to work if they break character by speaking or taking action not possible with a car, or if they ram their imaginary car into something solid / try to take it where it could not reasonably go. If moving at speed, the sudden faltering of this magic can prove exceptionally dangerous. The imaginary car can carry a party’s worth of passengers and luggage.
  22. Wood barrel which will find its way back to its owner (with all its contents) one week after being cast away. It must be truly cast away in order for the magic to work: thrown into an ocean or river, given to a stranger as they leave town for parts unknown, etc. So long as the owner cannot reasonably retrieve the barrel themselves, the barrel’s magic will work, and it will return.
  23. Polished bronze torque which allows the wearer to lengthen or shorten their neck at will. Elongated necks are difficult to move with, but can coil like a snake, and even be climbed by allies. If the wearer is attacked, each additional foot of length their neck current has results in a 5% chance that a successful hit deals 5x its normal damage. (So for 1 extra foot, an attack roll of 20 deals 5x damage. For 2 extra feet it’s 19-20, for 3 extra feet 18-20, etc.)
  24. Mummified cat’s paw. When placed on an object, the paw causes that object (and itself) to immediately become buried ten feet under ground. The buried items can only be retrieved by digging, which may take more or less effort depending on the material they were buried in.
  25. Candle which will undo any harm that is done within the range of its light. The harm simply reverses itself when the candle naturally burns itself out as a stub. Note that the candle must be fully used up before its magic can take effect. If a person is killed in the candle’s light, but then the candle is snuffed out and not used up until 100 years later, then it will be 100 years before that person is revived. Candle burns for 4 hours.
  26. Fish hook that works its magic when slipped into someone’s clothes. An ethereal tether extends between the hook and the person who placed it, so that they always know which direction to go to find the target. If pulled on, the tether will drag the hooked person with magic force along the most expedient path to the one who placed the hook. The magic is undone if the hook is discovered, or if the hooked person changes clothes.
Two etchings of a hand holding a peculiar writing tool. They demonstrate that it ought to be held with its base resting in the palm, and its point guided by the index finger.
  1. Manacles of escaping. If a person goes to sleep while wearing them, they will awaken in a completely different situation. It will be some generally bad situation, such as rower on a slave galley, or prisoner in a foreign dungeon—but perhaps it is a better situation than the one which prompted the person to wear the manacles in the first place.
  2. Feather duster with a wooden handle that has been carved into the figure of a gossipy maid. When the duster is used to brush a layer of dust, the wooden gossip will come to life and tell the whole history of the room since that dust settled here. They know exactly how long it has been since someone passed through, what sort of creature they were, what they did, etc.
  3. Shears which imbue any hair they cut with magic properties. The person who holds a lock of hair cut by these shears is suffused with a subtle aura that makes it completely believable that they are best buds with the person whose hair they hold. Cut the hair of a king? Everyone you meet will believe you’re the king’s friend. The effect lasts until the person who’s hair was cut denies the relationship, after which that lock will never work on anyone again.
  4. Large vermilion folding fan. If a creature or object’s shadow falls upon the fan’s folds while it is opened, then the fan may be snapped closed to fold that creature or object away in extra-dimensional space. Whatever is stored in the fan will be released again the moment it is opened, believing that no time has passed. There are no limits to the size of objects stored, save that their entire shadow must fit on the folds of the fan.
  5. Gloves capable of magically producing cord of any commonly available type and thickness between them. It may be ropes, chains, fishing line, twine, etc. The cord can be attached to the gloves, or released from them, but will never be any longer than the width to which the wearer can stretch their arms.
  6. Metal stud for wearing in a pierced tongue. While worn, the wearer gains a sticky frog’s tongue with 5 feet of reach.
  7. Steel bucket which is able to produce twenty times the amount of sand, water, gravel, or any other useless material it is filled with.
  8. Gardening trowel. If used to dig a shallow trench, and that trench is filled with water, the little furrow will expand to become a full-sized moat.
  9. Vase which “melts” any metal placed into it down to a liquid state. If one then whispers a shape into the vase and pours the metal out, it will “cool” and form itself into the shape desired. One can form the metal into coins, or statues, or bricks, or balls. The process is quick and does not involve any heat.
  10. Quill and ink-pot that imbue any words they write with supernatural comprehensibility. They can be read and understood even people people who do not read the language they are written in, people who are entirely illiterate, and even by creatures who lack language entirely. Even a mindless zombie or an alien slug could understand what is written.
  11. Lockpicking tools which work on people’s hearts. If someone skilled in legerdemain is able to sneak up on an unconscious person, or do their work on a restrained person, they can use these tools to “open” the person’s heart, and place some new love inside of it.
  12. False mustache cut from the lip of a great warrior who was cast out of his tribe, and ritually deprived of this symbol of his manhood. When it tied by straps to be worn on a person’s face, the mustache grants the ability to tell absolutely superb war stories.
  13. Farming scythe. If passed backwards over some dead thing, that thing will very briefly be brought back to life. It may be a few minutes, or an hour, but they will shortly return to death.
  14. Crowbar which is a magical force multiplier, in addition to being a mundane one. If an average person uses it, it will be as though 10 burly strongmen are all helping them. Note that this functions only when the crowbar is used as a lever, not if it’s used as a cudgel.
  15. Bright clear crystal which cleans any room it’s left in. Nothing will happen while one watches, but leaving it alone for only a few moments will eliminate dust and detritus, put items back in their proper place, brighten paint, etc.
  16. Folded fortune teller made of browned and tattered papyrus. If placed in a dead person’s hands, the hands will move to open and close the fortune teller. Back and forth, accelerating rapidly, until a choice is made, and an inky rune is revealed, taking immediate effect (d8): 1-3: Speak With Dead, 4: An illusory scene appears, depicting this dead creature’s final moments of life, and how they came to be where they are. 5. Raise the dead as a powerful undead revenant which loathes the living. 6. Raise the dead as a simple creature under the command of the caster. 7. Animate the dead, and return the creature’s mind to it, for one day. Experience of the afterlife will have made them weird, and they will likely have their own unfinished business they want to attend to. 8. The body explodes, splattering those nearby with blood, and leaving nothing left for a magician to tamper with.
  17. Straw whisk tied with simple cord. If waved vigorously in the air, the whisk will make a huge mess of any room. Anything that isn’t nailed down will be scattered pell mell.
  18. Quizzing glass which allows its wielder to see through another’s eyes. They simply need orient the glass towards any creature with eyes, and it will display what that creature is seeing.
  19. Complex and awkward vestment which must be actively held together by one hand in order to be worn, precluding the use of other weapons or tools. The garment takes a full Turn to don or doff, but while it is worn anything a person says is significantly more compelling. If one uses a 2d6 reaction roll, this vestment would enable the wearer to roll 2d8 instead.
  20. Grappling hook which falls up. It’s prongs have a jagged zig-zag pattern, as stylized lightning bolts. If allowed to reach 100′ in height, a lightning bolt will flash from the sky to catch the hook, and carry it away. The hook—and anyone holding on to its rope—will be transported [d12 * 10] miles towards the destination of their choosing. The travel is instantaneous, but dangerous, as everyone going on the journey must make a saving throw or take 2d6 damage from the lightning bolt.
  21. Wagon with a hatch door in its bed. Beyond the door are stairs which lead into an extra-dimensional cellar. Cool, dry, and with plenty of space for storage. There is a door in the cellar which is heavily barred on the other side.
  22. Statue of a roaring leopard carved from tufa. It has a perfectly ordinary appearance, but has been enchanted so that if someone tells a lie while their hand is in the leopard’s mouth, it will snap closed hard enough to crush bone, and won’t release until they reveal the truth that they lied to protect.
  23. Rustic hat with a wide shady brim. The shade cast by the hat is variable depending on how tight or loose the band around its rim is fitted. The wearer can vary the shadow to be simply personal, or up to 20′ in diameter. Anyone within this shade is immune to magical spying, and will appear to be a mere trick of the light to anyone observing from more than 60 feet away.
  24. Clay jug filled with three corrupting ichors: Slurry of Instantaneous Decay, Ooze of Malignant Mutation, and Vinegar of Undousable Incineration. The three fluids occupy the same space within the jug, each filling it entirely, but never mixing with one another. One never knows which one will come out when the jug is tipped, and no other vessel can safely contain these three potent liquids. The jug contains one gallon of each.
Etching of a woman with a black cat sitting beside a table of men. The men are drinking, with swords, axes, and shields resting nearby. The woman leans forward as if to intimidate them, and some men appear cowed, while others are defiant.
  1. Buff coat which makes anyone who wears it appear to be the most physically powerful person in the world. All bulging muscle and towering height. This strength is entirely illusory.
  2. Prop sword which is obviously fake and not at all threatening. Anyone touched by the blade will perceive that they’ve been stabbed by a real weapon, and react accordingly. To anyone watching, however, the object is clearly harmless. They’ll think the person who was “stabbed” is wildly overreacting.
  3. Wooden pole which can be pressed down to 2 feet long, or stretched out to 15 feet long at the wielder’s preference. On one end of the pole is a willowy wooden hand which the wielder of the pole can manipulate as easily as they do their own hand.
  4. Roll of cotton bandage which surreptitiously draws out more blood from any wound it binds. Unless used on a very minor cut, the bandaged person will bleed out and die without ever realizing that they haven’t been properly tended to.
  5. Domed birdcage with a little locking door, large enough to fit most tiny creatures inside. Any such creature placed within gains a humanlike intelligence and understanding of itself, as well as the ability to speak, and a desire to be pleasing and cooperative. This state is very uncomfortable for the animal. They don’t want to be rude, but they would really very much like to get the heck out of this cage as soon as possible.
  6. Small statue which watches and listens. When picked up it will describe everything it has seen and heard since the last time it was set down. If only recently rediscovered after being left alone somewhere for many years, this may be a lengthy and tedious recitation.
  7. Wrought iron fire poker. Each time it touches a fire, that fire will double in size. Fortunately, irresponsible wielders of this item will kill themselves long before they pose an existential threat to the whole region.
  8. Mousetrap of the spring bar & board style. When the jaw is pulled back and locked in place the weight of the trap increases to ten tons, and it will remain in this magically-heavy state until the trap arm is fully closed. Few creatures will be strong enough to escape the trap, and their own trapped foot or hand will prevent the bar from closing enough to dispel the magic.
  9. Small brazier, in which burns a magic fire. Legend has it this is the first fire made by human hands, kept burning through the eons by careful tending. If it ever goes out the magic is lost forever, but so long as it still burns, any creature close enough to be warmed by its heat will be healed 1hp every 2 Turns.
  10. Glass thermometer with a plug at its top. It’s meant to be filled with a few drops of a person’s blood, rather than with mercury. It will then display hotter temperatures when it is closer to that person, and cooler temperatures when it is further away from them.
  11. Parasol which stores the current weather at the moment it’s opened. Closing the parasol then conjures that same weather regardless of place or time. For example the parasol might be opened in the arctic during a blizzard, then kept open until it can be closed in an arid desert to really mess with the local environment. Of course, an open parasol is an awkward thing to move around, and cannot be easily kept in one’s bags.
  12. Comb which will quickly ferret out any needles hiding in haystacks, or any other aberrant objects that have been lost in a material fine enough to be ‘combed’ through.
  13. Twelve marbles which accurately and unerringly roll and bounce anywhere their user desires, within the range of a thumb flick. This is not limited to a single target or semi-natural path. They will zig-zag, hop, and backtrack as needed to accomplish their wielder’s goals. This is the only power which the marbles wish their wielder to access. Together they are an object of immense cosmic power, with a will all their own. On any given flick there is a 1-in-20 chance that the marbles will choose to become lost, having decided their time with the player character is done. The marbles do not move with enough force to deal damage to most creatures.
  14. Maraca filled with the broken teeth of the dead. Shaking it draws the attentions of nearby ghosts, causing at least one to appear (1d6 – 3, min 1). Ghosts are not friendly, but they know many secrets which were taken with them to the grave, and will sometimes trade what they know in exchange for the characters acting as their living agents in some way. Often what they want is minor, but never is it wholesome.
  15. Satchel of wood blocks. They’re brightly colored, come in various shapes, and are of a style a child might play with. They may be arranged however the user would like. A single clap causes the blocks to grow to become structure sized, while three claps in rapid succession cause them to shrink down to normal. Note that while they could be used to build a little house for the night, the blocks are not affixed to one another, and would make for a somewhat unstable structure.
  16. Sand timer which lasts 10 minutes. When the sand runs through to the bottom chamber, the hourglass and the person who set it in motion will jump backwards in time 10 minutes. Very handy for testing out uncertain actions, since you’re guaranteed a second try. Be warned, however, that the timer can’t be stopped once started, and there’s a 1-in-12 chance for each use that the timer will jump back without the person who turned it, disappearing from their reality, and leaving them stuck with whatever actions they’ve taken.
  17. Line measure of the type commonly used aboard boats. When lowered into a body of water the line causes that body to be at least as deep as the line. A shallow puddle could be made into a 15-foot-deep pool by lowering 15 feet of the line into it. Note that the magic does not actually create more water, it simply causes the water that exists to bi-locate or multi-locate into extra-dimensional space.
  18. Conductor’s baton. When pointed at an object or creature, that thing’s movement begins to produce a musical sound. If pointed at a rat, every scurrying movement and twitch of whiskers will produce melodic tones, which will merge nicely with other tones produced by other moving objects, revealing a sort of music underlying the ecology of a space. Once the baton is used, the thing indicated will continue to produce sound until the next sunrise.
  19. Plumage arrayed in a crest, with a bolt for affixing it to a helmet. Whomever wears it may see and speak with the ghost of the long dead bird whose feathers adorn the crest. The bird is of a large sort which has long since ceased to exist anywhere in the world. It’s not kindly disposed towards the descendants of primates which wear its feathers, but will grudgingly scout for them, and offer mostly accurate information. Doing the bidding of primates is moderately preferable to existing in the tedious limbo the bird returns to whenever the crest is not being worn.
  20. Blanket which traps any 1 person who sleeps with it in a fuzzy, two-dimensional prison. While there they perceive time, but suffer no hunger, thirst, or other basic need. Shaking the blanket causes them to come tumbling out of it.
  21. Stained glass in a 2 foot by 2 foot wood frame, depicting a sleeping dragon. The magic of this device must be attuned to a room by hanging it in a window long enough for one full cycle of moonlight to shine through it. After which the dragon recognizes this room as the location of its hoard. The glass may be carried anywhere in the world, and functions as a small portal back to that room. Any objects placed on the stained glass will disappear when no one is looking, and can be found later in the dragon’s hoard room.
  22. Length of chain 15′ from end-to-end. If lain in a circle, only true promises may be spoken within. It does not lay a geas on the promise-maker, but it does prevent them from speaking if they lack the intention and the will to carry their promise through.
  23. Locket capable of binding a willing soul to this world. It must be placed on the dead person’s body before the body grows cold, after which the soul may be asked to remain awhile before moving on. If they agree, they will appear in the locket as a tiny portrait capable of speech. Being stuck in a locket is dreadfully tedious, and the amount of time any soul is willing to stay there will range from hours to weeks, but not longer.
  24. Razor-sharp scalpel which can cut into living flesh without causing any pain, and any damage caused by its cuts heals itself within a few hours.
  25. Dirty rag of cloth which must be worn in some way in order to work its magic. It might be used as a pocket square, a kerchief, or just lain on top of one’s head. The rag then causes it to appear as though everything the user is wearing or carrying is trash. If they were to hold up a gold coin, it would look like a rock to everyone else. They will be dismissed as a beggar or a dirt farming peasant.
  26. Hide of a great animal treated with magic oils. Three people holding its edges can hurl a fourth person 30′ in the air, after which they will drift gently and safely back to the ground. Each additional person adds 10′ to how high the bouncer can be thrown, up to a maximum of 10 people hurling someone 100′.
An etching depicting an assortment of farm tools. Saws, shears, knives, a bell, ladders, a wheelbarrow, a bucket, a hammer, and a few items of unclear function.
  1. Rake which creates a magical one-way window through any surface it’s dragged across. Each stroke of the rake causes the window to show a space 10 feet deeper. So, for example, if there is a secret cultist den 20 feet underground, then raking the surface a single time will show whatever earth is 10′ below the spot, and raking the surface a second time will show the cultist’s hideout.
  2. Perfume spritzer which causes any ol’ liquid placed inside it to smell like delicious food when sprayed. “Delicious” here being relative to the nose that smells it.
  3. Bar of soap which is most effectively used when one is fully dressed. Not only does it clean the user perfectly, but it also removes minor bruises and abrasions, performs minor mending to clothes, polishes gear until it gleams, and otherwise removes all signs of wear and tear.
  4. Bicycle with a peculiar lever on its handle bar. Any distance covered while riding this bike can be instantaneously un-covered by pulling on the lever. The bike and rider are teleported immediately to where they started from. This option is lost the moment the rider dismounts the bike.
  5. Torch made from treated hardwoods which will never burn down so long as the cloth fuel is replaced regularly. Carvings indicate a particular way of holding the torch (somewhat awkwardly) which causes its flame to stay in whatever air it moves through. Somewhat like the images that are left behind by moving the torch quickly, except semi-permanent and still as hot as ever. With a little patience a person could create a wall of torch fire to close up a corridor, for example. Once placed, the fire remains until the wielder adjusts their grip on the torch.
  6. Ball of yarn with little wisps of smoke twirling off it. When dropped, it will tend to roll towards something that deserves the dropper’s attention. It may indicate secret doors, trap triggers, the hiding spot of a foe waiting in ambush, or just a good deal at market. Each time the yarn is dropped, a few inches of its length burns away, until there’s not enough left for it to have any use.
  7. Paper envelope, appropriate to contain a folded piece of paper. When closed with a wax seal, and words describing a destination location are etched on the wax, a gust of wind will whisk the envelope (and anything it carries) away towards that destination. The location can be anywhere, so long as it is a specific place. “Tom’s desk on the second floor office of his home in Bluehaven” will work. “Tom’s current location” will not. The wind carries the envelope about as fast as a bird flies.
  8. Snow globe which contains a small village. If placed down somewhere and rubbed with the hand, a person can be transported into the village. There they can access the goods and services of the town, and when they wish to leave they merely need to rub the glass dome from the inside to pop out again. The villagers are fully aware of their condition. This place is a purgatory for them, where they are punished for terrible sins committed in life. If they can behave like decent people for for 100 years they’ll get to be reborn, and have a second chance at living a good life. If the snow globe is smashed while someone is inside, they will be trapped at that smaller size until some alternate means of growing large can be found.
  9. Pale blue paste flecked with silver. Safe to touch with the fingers for spreading, but a mere moment after being spread the paste hardens to the strength of iron welds.
  10. Broom which produces a strong gust of wind in whatever direction it’s swept towards. Strong enough to cause an unsuspecting person to stumble, or to propel a sailing ship. There is no limitation on the frequency this item can be used, though note that once a foe gets used to the wind it will have almost no impact on their ability to act.
  11. Tiny catapult, small enough to fit in a backpack. A peculiar spigot allows it to be “inflated” to full size by blowing or using a bellows. At full size it is just as sturdy and heavy as any other catapult, yet if the spigot is opened it will release all the air pumped into it and the catapult will return to its small size.
  12. Plow which digs furrows that are potent with fertile magic which will grow plants from any item as if it were a seed. Plant a sword, get a sword tree. Plant a gold coin, get a gold coin flower. The plants require a normal amount of time and care to develop, and the items they produce will not replicate any magic or artistry present in the original seed. For example, a gold coin will not produce a flower with the same image stamped on it.
  13. Whetstone, long with two flat sides. Twelve strokes will hone any blade to a set purpose. The first side hones a blade to fighting trim, and could make a butter knife dagger-sharp. The second side forms a worker’s edge, allowing even a delicate rapier to chop trees like an axe, or strike stone with its point like a pick.
  14. Belt buckle in the shape of an alligator’s head. A whistle brings the buckle to life, and it can move about using the belt its attached to to push itself along the ground. Its abilities are limited, but it will do whatever it’s asked. Once awakened the alligator will not go back to sleep until it is fed.
  15. Scale which is able to weigh values other than weight. A dial on its base allows it to be set to measure monetary value, cultural value, academic value, spiritual value, and probably a few other sorts of value as well. In order to be of any use, the scale must have something to be weighed against. A gold coin to measure monetary value, or a holy symbol to measure spiritual value, for example.
  16. Spectacles which allow the wearer to see a number above the head of any property-owning creature, showing the net value of their assets.
  17. Whip which tangles expertly and perfectly every time. Able to quickly grab a far ledge, or reliably initiate a distance grapple against a foe. When targeting a living creature the wielder must roll a d20 all the same, and if a 1 is rolled the whip deals draws blood, and deals 1 hp of damage. Contact with blood causes it to lose its magic until ritually purified for 30 days and 31 nights.
  18. Veil of coarse thread, but hemmed elaborately. When worn it reduces vision to indistinct shapes. Putting it on and wandering aimlessly for d6 + 3 turns will lead a person to a safe place. There is food, potable water, shelter, and safety from attack. (All relative to the environment. Where the veil leads in a dungeon or desert will be different than where it would lead in a lush countryside or city). The veil wearer may bring as many people as they like with them, led in a chain of hands, all with eyes closed. While wandering the wearer and followers are guided by the veil’s magics, and will remain safe from harm or violent encounters. However, if anyone opens their eyes, or if the veil wandering is halted before its proper end, the wanderers will invariably find themselves in a terribly dangerous situation. The veil’s magic is able to lead the wearer, but cannot phase them through bars if they’re locked in a cell, or divert a determined foe from killing them if donned mid-combat.
  19. Casket of dark citrus wood. If a person is properly buried in this casket, then the very next day a tree will have grown where they were put to rest. High in the branches of the tree is a book, or perhaps several, which contain every noteworthy piece of information which this individual took with them to the grave.
  20. Censer which produces smoke of special divinatory power. After a space has been thoroughly filled with its fumes, items and marks which are evidence of some wrongdoing will glow a faint yellow. The censer reveals anything that points towards violence, deceit, oath-breaking, or willful disregard towards the welfare of others.
  21. Rug, blue with floral patterns at its edges. About 3′ wide, and 30′ long. When rolled out it’s stiff enough to serve as a bridge, and tough enough to form a short barricade. Only the very ends remain pliable, and allow the rug to be rolled up again.
  22. Empty turtle’s shell which, when placed in water, propels itself at incredible speeds. If the user is able to keep hold of it (no easy task!) they may learn the nuances of movement which allow them to guide its course, and move through the water with the speed and grace of any marine animal.
  23. Embroidery hoop which allows objects to be stored as images on fabric. The fabric must be held firmly in place by the hoop, after which anything from a dagger to a dog can be placed on the taut cloth. The placed item will disappear, existing now only as an embroidered image. At any time the cloth can be torn to break the enchantment and release whatever was stored there.
  24. City seed. Heavy and awkward. When planted, it will overnight grow into a bustling town filled with people who believe in a fictional history of their lives and their town.

That’s another d100 table on the books! I hope you enjoyed it, and that you’re happy, healthy, and getting vaccinated!

The Dungeon d100s: Locks & Keys

A good dungeon will have many places in it that the players wish to go. On their way, they will need to overcome many obstacles which make their journey interesting. Sometimes the “lock” they encounter will be a goblin, and the “key” is a sharp sword and a good attack roll. Sometimes the lock is an illusory wall, and the key is realizing there’s a breeze coming from nowhere. Sometimes the lock is a literal lock, and the key is in a chest at the other end of the dungeon.

One must always remember, however, that in Adventure Games, no lock is always going to be overcome with the intended key. The goblin could easily be avoided with some clever sneaking, the location of the illusory wall could be bullied out of the goblin, and that locked door could have its hinges popped out. One must never get too attached to their keys, and sometimes I do not even plan out a key at all. I simply trust that the players are clever enough to figure their way past an obstacle.

It must be mentioned that a good dungeon is one where the players can walk away from a barrier if they can’t figure out how to deal with it. Don’t design a dungeon that will come to a complete grinding halt just because the players can’t get past a single barrier. There should always be some other direction to explore in.

I will also note that some of the keys below imply the presence of a door keeper who controls who gets in and out. In most cases it will be best to make these guardians difficult to kill. They might operate the door remotely for example, and speak only via an intercom. They might be shouting from the other side of the door. The guardian might be an incredibly powerful and dangerous creature that is otherwise not interested in doing the party harm, or the guardian could even be the door itself via an animated face. If the door guard is available to be killed, and the players do so, then whoever put that guard there is going to send more later, and with increased security to back them up.

Thanks to Gus L. for reading through this post to ensure it all made sense.

The Dungeon d100s
1 – Themes
2 – Structures
3 – Rewards
4 – Doors, Floors, Walls, & Ceilings
5 – Factions
6 – Locks & Keys

Bonus – Auto-roller, at Liche’s Libram.

d100 Dungeon Locks & Keys:

  1. A landslide has blocked the path forward. Time must be taken to dig it out.
  2. A great tree has grown through the doorway. Chopping it down from one side will be awkward.
  3. The passage is high up, and in the middle of a vaulted ceiling. Getting there would require something like a skillfully thrown grappling hook, a very tall ladder, a flight or spider climb spell, etc.
  4. The way forward is tiny, barely big enough to get your hand through. A person would have to shrink, or transform into a small animal to get through.
  5. A well constructed and unattended drawbridge on the other side of a chasm. There is no prescribed way to open it from this side.
  6. An energy barrier bars the way forward, sustained by the life essence of some notable creature who may or may not reside in the dungeon. So long as this creature lives, the barrier will remain impassable.
  7. The pathway is out of phase with our reality. It can only be moved through by shifting oneself into the phase where the pathway exists. This phase will doubtless have other differences as well, and may not be friendly to outerphasic life.
  8. There is a combination or password which must be entered. It might be written down or known by someone elsewhere in the dungeon, or it may require searching outside of the dungeon to learn.
  9. A particular sound opens the way forward. Perhaps it is a specific song, or the sound of a specific instrument.
  10. The key to the door is has been copied several times by a certain faction. Many members of the faction carry a copy.
  11. They key is in some treacherous location: tangled in a spiders web, or on a plinth in the center of a pool of lava.
  12. They key is itself hazardous or difficult to handle, requiring the players to make some clever plan for transporting it to the lock. As examples, the key might generate enough heat to melt through steel, or it could be incorporeal. The key might be possessed by an intelligence that dominates whoever holds it, or it might bestow some curse on whomever touches it, etc.
  13. The key to the door is an object of importance to some particular dungeon faction. It may be a sacred object used in their religious devotions, or a symbol of office worn by their leader.
  14. The door ought to be easy to open, but some essential element of its mechanism has been removed by previous adventurers. Perhaps a golden sprocket or magic gem. It must be found and returned here to open the way forward.
  15. The way forward is blocked by a terrible guardian beast, who will allow passage so long as they are brought the food that they like to eat.
  16. A door opening ritual must be performed. Its details may be provided, at least in part, by carvings on the door, or it may need to be learned in dusty tomes in the basements of old libraries.
  17. The lock and key are both obvious, and near one another, but the key is a huge 250lb object which must be carried up a vertical ladder to reach the keyhole.
  18. A biometric scanner will only open the way forward for certain people, using eye/face/voice/hand scan to identify them. The scanner may or may not have measures to prevent its being used by force.
  19. Some previous adventurer got all set to destroy the barrier. There’s a ram, or a cannon, or some TNT, etc set up here, but for some reason they didn’t do it, and now an essential component has been removed, and must be replaced to clear the way forward.
  20. The way forward is opened by placing three objects of power (gems, medallions, orbs, etc.) in the proper place. All three might be found in the dungeon, or may require adventuring outside the dungeon, or some combination of the two.
  21. Before the sealed door is a round table with a bronze statue sitting at it, and several empty seats with pressure plates on them. Adding the exact correct amount of weight to each seat will be tricky, but might take less time than recovering the other bronze statues which have been taken as trophies by various dungeon factions. Either way, once the correct weight is in place the door will open.
  22. A terra cotta warrior stands guard before a sealed door. Portions of the figure are clearly less worn and dirty than others, implying it once wore armor which has been removed. If the warrior is fully outfitted once again, the way forward will open.
  23. Two feuding factions must work together to open the way forward. Perhaps each knows half a password, or there is a ceremonial table which only opens if representatives from each both sit at it.
  24. The way forward can only be opened by a doorkeeper who is too sad to do their job. The party must somehow cheer them up, or otherwise convince them.
  25. The lever which opens the door is visible, but inaccessible. Perhaps behind bars, or glass, or in the middle of an acid lake. There is a creature near it who can open it, but they are incapable of understanding language. Perhaps a monkey, or a toddler golem.
  26. Vampire rules apply to everyone. Anyone who wishes to pass through this barrier must be invited by someone who lives beyond it.
  27. The walls of the room are covered in dozens or hundreds of forearm-sized holes. One of these contains the lever which will open the way forward, while many others are trapped, or have become nests for potentially poisonous plants or animals.
  28. The way forward opens only for those who have legitimately achieved some particular social position. (Mayor, King, Priest, Spouse, etc). To enter, the players may need to win an election, gain an appointment, complete training or rituals, etc.
  29. There is no actual barrier to entry. However, surrounding cultures all observe a strict taboo against going through. At the very least people who disregard this taboo will be shunned.
  30. Only those dressed a certain way will be allowed inside. The guard may be checking for a certain uniform, or for formal wear, or perhaps ritual garb.
  31. Anyone who wishes to enter must commit some suitable crime, so that the doorkeeper knows you’re cool before letting you through.
  32. The door is a philosopher. It postulates that as a door its purpose is to bar entry, and further that the party are the exact sort against whom the way forward must be protected. The door is willing to listen to counter arguments.
  1. An impenetrable physical barrier will only open for those who have accomplished some specific deed, such as raising a child, or slaying a dragon. They may bring guests with them if they wish.
  2. No one may pass unless they convince the gatekeeper that they’re qualified to handle the hazards beyond the gate. They do not want blood on their hands by allowing brash young folk to charge straight to their doom.
  3. The way forward is blocked by a thick tangle of vines and briers. An axe, machete, or sword will be adequate to hack a path through, but it will take time to do so, and there may be consequences for damaging these plants.
  4. The way forward is opened by paying a toll. There may be a powerful toll taker, like a dragon, or simply a coin slot which opens a door when sufficient gold is dropped into it.
  5. The way forward is hindered by customs officials who wish to inspect goods, assess taxes, and collect information for their records.
  6. The dungeon seals up when outsiders enter it. If they wish to leave again they must deposit some item into a chest. It may be a specific key located further in the dungeon, or perhaps it’s just 10% of their total carried wealth.
  7. The space ahead is an “X Free Zone.” Players can only enter it if they relinquish whatever X is: weapons, armor, illumination, meat, or whatever else the players are accustomed to having access to.
  8. The space ahead is subject to magically enforced terms and conditions. Failure to adhere to the agreement will result in being hurled back out by a mysterious and irresistible force. This usually hurts quite a bit.
  9. Anyone who goes through this passage experiences severe time dilation. There are no barriers, but those who go through must accept that they will miss some significant span of time. Months, or even years will pass by in the outside world.
  10. The door is opened by performing a spell on it. It doesn’t matter what spell, so long as the party’s magical resources are somewhat diminished.
  11. The door requires an offering of blood before it will open. Approximately d4 hp worth.
  12. The way forward explicitly only opens for a certain sort of creature: rats, dogs, goblins, etc. Characters who wish to enter will need to find means of transforming themselves into the appropriate shape.
  13. Dungeons do not tidy themselves. Chores are carved in the stone of the door. It will only open once an appropriate amount of cleaning has been done.
  14. The way forward only opens at a certain time, and for a certain length of time. It may open once a day, once a year, or once every hundred years.
  15. The switch to open the door is far away, and the door slowly closes immediately after it opens. Getting through the door before it closes requires either splitting the party, or moving with great haste.
  16. The way forward will open itself only after everyone in the room has slept in its presence, so that the spirit in the door may observe their dreams.
  17. This room is a sort of airlock. Before the way forward opens, the way back must be sealed, and vice versa. The process takes time, such that the party could easily become cornered in this room if they’re being pursued.
  18. The way forward opens when a target is hit. It may be near enough for thrown weapons, or distant enough that a sling, or a bow is required.
  19. The way forward is on the other side of a peculiar court. A ghostly figure challenges you to a match. The nature of this game has been lost to history, but the way forward will only open once you can win a round.
  20. The way forward is through a complex clockwork mechanism. You could jam it to make it safe, but doing so will cause the machine to stop functioning. Depending on its purpose, players may not wish to do that. Another option is to observe the timing of the mechanisms carefully, and attempt to dodge through them as they move. This would be a difficult check with dangerous consequences for failure.
  21. A surveillance system activates deadly countermeasures against any who attempt to pass through. To reach the other side, one must move stealthily.
  22. The passage forward is large, heavy, and imbued with magical intelligence. It spends most of its time asleep, and open. If roused by heavy steps or clanging armor it will slam itself closed, crushing to pulp anyone who was attempting to pass.
  23. The way forward is blocked by a heavy door which must be lifted or pushed aside. Requires either great strength, or a clever use of leverage.
  24. A tumultuous body of water lies between where the characters are, and where they wish to be. They must navigate it using some seaworthy vessel. This may involve the characters being shrunk to cross some tiny body of water, or the dungeon might contain a subterranean lake.
  25. The way forward is open, but is much too hot to pass through. It must somehow be cooled to a safe temperature.
  26. The way forward is a long hallway with a ceiling that begins to lower as soon as anyone enters it. Not even the fastest runner could get through safely. It must be wedged open somehow.
  27. The players must pass through a literal minefield to reach the other side. Doing so safely requires that they find some way to detect the mines, or perhaps acquire a map which shows a safe path through.
  28. The way forward is a maze shrouded in magical darkness, and filled with spike pits and other traps. If the darkness could be dispelled, or the traps turned off, it would be easy to pass through safely just by taking a little time. While both are active, it is certain death to try.
  29. A bridge used to span a deadly gap here. It has long since collapsed.
  30. Unbelievably powerful magnets line the corridor. Enough that a ferrous sword would fly out of its sheath, and require immense strength just to drag it along a few feet. Gods save you if you’re wearing ferrous armor. Those who pass through can only reasonably expect to bring non-ferrous metals with them.
  31. The way forward is underwater. It would take an excellent swimmer 5+ minutes to reach the other side if they were unencumbered.
  32. The path forward is up-stream of a powerful flow of water. It must be turned off or diverted in order to progress.
  33. The path forward is through a swamp or sewer. The players should be informed that they will definitely contract an illness if they don’t take precautions.
  34. A series of powerful lasers bar the way forward. Powerful enough to slice through most materials easily, but mirrors or heavy stones will redirect them long enough to allow the characters to slip through.
  1. A great blind guardian beast sniffs everyone who passes through. Those who smell correctly are let by, those who don’t are devoured.
  2. The way forward is blocked by a belching geyser of fire, a waterfall of acid, or other constant source of harm with an identifiable “type.” It is contingent on those who pass to procure the correct potions of temporary immunity. Preferably enough both to get in, and to get out again.
  3. Axe wielding statues stand on either side of the door, and will swing mighty blows at anyone they see walk past. Their attacks are deadly, but they are simple constructs. If their eyes are covered with a blindfold or a basket, they cannot see, and will not attack.
  4. A winding corridor with an electrified floor, spinning buzz saws, or similar impassable danger. The ‘off’ switch for these is at the other end, and could be activated by a creature or device capable of getting through safely.
  5. Writhing, grasping tentacles protrude from every surface of the corridor. Instinctively they tangle and crush any object that comes within reach. They must be occupied, or made docile in order to skirt through.
  6. A room filled with air so noxious it will melt skin from bones. Some sealed protective clothing is required to survive moving through it.
  7. Three or more objects rest on a plinth. A riddle describes one of those objects in an obscure way. Anyone holding that object as they pass through will be safe. Anyone who isn’t, or who is holding multiple objects, will be subject to deadly traps of some kind.
  8. The lock is a huge cylinder pin-tumbler. Large enough for people to walk inside it, and each push one of the pins. If all are pushed just right, then others standing outside the lock can rotate the chamber their companions are standing in.
  9. The door is sealed by a heavy magnetized bar, which is completely hidden within the door and wall. Characters may notice ferrous metal objects being drawn towards it if they stand near. If a substantial ferrous metal object is dragged along the wall, the magnetized bar can be moved to unseal the door.
  10. Were the whole dungeon annihilated by the angry fist of God, this door would still stand. It is absolutely impenetrable. It will only open if knocked on politely, in which case it swings easily inward.
  11. The way forward was walled up, but that nearby column doesn’t look terribly stable, and it’s probably not load bearing…
  12. A statue holds out their hands in anticipation. Clues elsewhere in the dungeon indicate that the statue wants some sort of common object: a stick, rock, string, some water or a bit of money. If that object is placed in the statue’s hands, the way forward will open.
  13. A sort of guest book rests on a lectern beside the door. It prompts anyone who wishes to pass through to write their name, the current date and time, as well as to enter an example of some specified wordplay. Perhaps characters must write an alliterative sentence of at least 2d4 + 2 words, or a unique joke, or a set of seven rhyming words, etc. Once this is done, the door will open. The magic doesn’t work if the characters lied about their name or time, or if they copied an example from elsewhere in the guest book.
  14. Near the door are several torches which, if lit, will open the way forward. For added complexity, one of the torches may be in a previous room, it may be disguised, or it may have been destroyed and need to be replaced.
  15. A plinth with an obvious weight pad sits in front of the door. It requires an immense weight to open the door. The players will either need a material of unusual density (like an anvil made from osmium), or devise some contraption that allows them to balance a great deal of weight on this tiny plinth.
  16. Candles rest on inset shelves on either side of the door. Clearly many candles have been placed here over the years, because there is a sheet of melted wax an inch thick coating the wall. If this sheet is chipped away, the lever for opening the door will be revealed.
  17. A skeleton lies in an open coffin beneath a headstone which reads “Here lies a bastard who deserves what he got.” If the long dead corpse is in any way abused or desecrated, the way forward will open.
  18. The way forward is high up, and a powerful current of air prevents throwing grapples, climbing sheer walls, or placing ladders. There is a strange plot of soil beneath the passage. Anything planted here will go through its whole life cycle very rapidly, so if one were to plant an oak tree, it would quickly grow large enough to be climbed, then rot away and die by the end of the day. Note that this magic is tied to the spot, not to the soil.
  19. The door forward has a clock face on it, which must be set to some appropriate time which is hinted at either on the door itself, or elsewhere in the dungeon. It may be a fixed time (the minute on which the door builder’s child was born), a fluid time (the minute that the clock-turner woke up this morning), or not a time at all but simply a number that can be expressed by clock hands (such as 3:14 representing pi). In any event, the time must be held in place for at least 60 seconds to prevent characters simply spinning the hands quickly through every possible option.
  20. The players come upon a place that is clearly labeled “The Dark Stair,” or “The Dark Passage.” If they attempt to traverse it with illumination, it will seem to go on infinitely. If they bravely douse their lights and go through it in complete darkness, they will reach the other end easily.
  21. Murals in the room depict a story where a fisherman catches a fish, it spits out a key, and the key opens the way to great treasure. The room contains a pool of water, but no fish. If a living fish is brought to this room and placed in the water, the way forward will open. Transporting a live fish and keeping it healthy through the dungeon up to this point may prove to be somewhat difficult.
  22. The room appears to have been the site of a battle. There are skeletons leaning against the walls, spatters of dried blood, gouges in the walls, blades stuck in mortar or wood. Examining any of these objects will reveal that they have been staged. Everything is fixed in its place by adhesive or nails. One of the items in the room (perhaps a spear stuck in the floor) is actually a disguised lever. When pulled, the way forward will open.
  23. The door is shaped like a great closed mouth in the middle of licking its own lips. Above the mouth is a nose. If the smells of good food are wafted beneath the nose, the mouth will open.
  24. The way forward is blocked by a magic cube which transforms into whatever material has most recently touched it (with the exception of gases that naturally occur in its environment, such as oxygen). Regardless of what material it transforms into, it always retains its exact shape. If touched by sand, it will transform into a cube of sand without sliding out into a loose heap. If transformed into water, it will be a cube of standing water which players may swim through. When the players enter the room the cube is likely made of stone or steel.
  25. Though the door appears to be a three dimensional object of wood and stone, to the touch it feels like a single smooth sheet of glass. If a mirror is held up which reflects the door, the reflection will have the texture which the door ought to have, and the characters can travel through it.
  26. The way is opened by performing a human sacrifice.
  27. The way forward requires you to climb into a sealed room (or box, or carriage). Unseen forces will move you along an unseen route, eventually depositing you at your destination. The journey may be quite long, and require that players provision themselves so they do not die of thirst and hunger while traveling. Alternately there may be some appropriate offering or behavior with which to request this service, and failure to do so may result in being dropped off in some undesirable location.
  28. Each character who passes through must first reveal something which they would rather keep to themselves. The barrier detects both truth, and reluctance. If either are not present in a person’s statement, they would be incinerated.
  29. A crank near the door opens it, but clearly does something else as well. There are too many mechanisms for this to simply be a door opener, but it’s not immediately clear what consequences there will be for turning it.
  30. Only the dead may enter. Those who die in the doorway may inhabit an empty homonculous in the chambers beyond. If they are resurrected their souls will be destroyed. When they return back through the entry, they may be resurrected properly.
  31. Passing through requires that a person allow their mind and body to be thoroughly scanned and recorded. Who knows that is done with that information? Definitely something.
  32. An adjunct to the fates guards the way forward. They show the characters visions of two people. One of those people will die today, and the party must choose who it is. If they attempt to pass without choosing, then they themselves will die instead. There is no save.
  33. One side of a great scale is held down by a feather. Someone must stand on the other side and be balanced against the feather for the path to open. The scale determines whether or not you are a good person, according to the precepts of the dungeon builders.
  34. Before reaching the door, in some unrelated situation, a mysterious stranger will test the party’s virtue. If they pass, the door will be open for them. If not, it will not. (Did they give alms to the homeless man they met on the road? No? Then the door is sealed.)

And with that, The Dungeon d100s has come to an end. It has been absolutely exhausting to ensure that this project would be completed before the end of the year, but I didn’t want 2020 to pass by without Papers & Pencils getting a little more attention than I had given it. There will be one more post yet to come this year, my annual Christmas Embarrassment, so I’ll save the sappy end of year stuff until then. Please stay safe, love one another, and never stop fighting for Trans Rights.

The Dungeon d100s: Factions

Two or more factions competing for resources might be the most vital element of a good dungeon. Certainly they are the bedrock of the social dungeons that most excite me.

Unrepentant enthusiast for alliteration that I am, my first step in creating these hundred factions was to name them. As discussed in my Two Week Megadungeon post I generally stuck to the Type of Creature + Type of Behavior format, with the added constraint that the two must be alliterative. I then used the names as a loose creative prompt from which to derive the details of the faction. In some cases, a great emphasis must be placed on “loose.” Certainly this post would come across as way less silly if I deleted the original names for these groups. I seriously considered doing just that, but decided against it because I thought it might be a useful glimpse into the process, and also because silliness is a good thing.

The Dungeon d100s
1 – Themes
2 – Structures
3 – Rewards
4 – Doors, Floors, Walls, & Ceilings
5 – Factions
6 – Locks & Keys

Bonus – Auto-roller, at Liche’s Libram.

d100 Dungeon Factions:

  1. Academic Arsonists: A group philosophically opposed to philosophy, and all other forms of impractical knowledge. Each week they ritually burn any high minded books they’ve managed to collect. Whomever contributes most is given special consideration in the coming week.
  2. Avaricious Architects: Constantly making elaborate alterations to the dungeon. Are very greedy. Will make claims on anything the party finds, and shake them down for money at every encounter.
  3. Argumentative Anatomists: Creatures with the ability to rearrange their body parts. Each thinks they know what the best configuration is, and insists everyone who disagrees is a fool for not doing it the way they do.
  4. Ancient Anarchists: Cursed with immortality without eternal youth, this decrepit faction live in an equitable little commune where everyone shares in the work when they’re able, and is cared for whenever they break a hip. Lacking physical strength, most have learned minor magics.
  5. Barbarous Bovines: Muscular cow folk who speak in a language that is difficult for outsiders to learn. Unless special effort is made, only gestural communication is possible.
  6. Bedazzled Beardmen: More beard than they are man, these tumbles of tangled hair have little hands and feet sticking out from their brush, as well as deep sunken eyes visible through it. They decorate their bodies with glitter.
  7. Boastful Beavers: Supremely confident in their own cultural supremacy, though their primary interest seems to be filling the dungeon with haphazardly constructed barricades which they regard as great works of art.
  8. Bloodthirsty Bibliomaniacs: All books belong to them, whether or not those books have yet entered their possession. They rarely read the books. Possessing them is merely an unhealthy compulsion which has become a cultural obsession.
  9. Bridal Battalion: A young member of this faction comes of age when they venture into civilization to steal a bridal gown of their very own. For the rest of their lives the gown will mark them both as an adult and a warrior.
  10. Cantankerous Crystals: A group of yoni eggs given life after being “born” so many times over. Discovering their frustrated intelligence, a mountebank lich bestowed them with arms, legs, and size. They have gratefully served her ever since.
  11. Cultured Cranes: Lanky bird people who stand twice the height of a man. They socially organize themselves in a fopocracy, where the snootiest and most flippant become their leaders.
  12. Ceiling Celebrities: Creatures which are something like a cross between bats and spiders, and vastly prefer being “upside down,” though they find that term somewhat offensive. A few years back another adventurer wrote a book about living among them for awhile. It was quite popular, and everyone in the party will be at least passingly familiar with the text. The creatures themselves loathe the book, and the many self-serving inaccuracies the author inserted into it.
  13. Churchgoing Charioteers: Tiny folk who use mouse-drawn chariots to get around the dungeon quickly enough to keep up with their larger neighbors. They’re devoted followers of the same religion that is dominant in the region outside the dungeon, though their own precepts have drifted into some minor heresies.
  14. Debonair Dads: Whilst attempting to get out of some parental responsibilities, a wizard accidentally created several dozens facsimiles of themselves, all of whom were significantly more charming. Only one was put into service, while the rest were dumped here in this dungeon to form a loose community together.
  15. Devotees of the Debauched Dauphin: The rightful prince of a surface kingdom was so debased in his predilections that everyone agreed to have him quietly killed. Exhibiting a surprising cleverness, he escaped to the dungeon with his closest confidants where they continue their debauch in somewhat humbler circumstances.
  16. Diplomatic Deerfolk: Lean creatures wearing armor made from shed antlers. They make an effort to appear amicable, but only so they can trick people into disadvantageous agreements. Once the agreements are made, they must be obeyed, or violence is justified.
  17. Determined Doorkeepers: A religious sect who have taken certain metaphors about God opening and/or closing doors a bit too literally. Small groups are assigned to doors deemed religiously significant, and tend them 24/7.
  18. Exploitative Employers: They have money, but are miserly loathe to party with it. They’re always trying to hire people in wildly unbalanced deals, and have no qualms against taking vital resources hostage if it means someone will work for them.
  19. Enigmatic Eels: Tusk-mouthed sea serpents which drift through the air as easily as through water. Their culture has a somewhat unusual relationship with names, such that each individual has several dozen, several of which they are meant to use only while praying, and never to speak out loud to anyone at all. They are an insular society, and none have any name which is appropriate to share with an outsider.
  20. Erupting Essayist: Shambling cones of rock which slide around without any recognizable anatomy. They do perceive the outside world in their own way, and communicate by blasting papers covered with their thoughts and feelings out of the hole at their peak.
  21. Earnest Earth: Humanoids made from packed earth. Their bodies are fragile, and they much prefer to avoid violence at all costs. They’re gifted speakers, friendly, and likable, but this often leads them into forming alliances with whomever is most willing and able of doing violence to them.
  22. Fundamentalist Fedoras: A dogmatic religious group which is among the weakest of the dungeon’s factions. They believe themselves to be an inherently superior species, and that they are owed the submission of outsiders. Difficult to get along with, but easy to manipulate.
  23. Fecund Fowl: Flightless birdfolk capable of firing eggs out of their bodies like projectile weapons. Likely occupy a space with high ceilings to maximize the distance of their attacks. Their society is nominally equitable, though many jokes are made at the male’s relative defenselessness.
  24. Frank Frauds: A group of con artists who have recently been cursed with the need to be honest. Their habits have not yet adjusted to their new condition, and they frequently find themselves putting their feet in their mouths.
  25. Folklorist Fog: Mist creatures which trade in stories. They do not understand anyone who fails to recognize the value of this currency, though most of what they have to share is from cultures too alien to be easily understood.
  26. Garrulous Ghouls: Corpse enthusiasts who believe it is an absolute shame that so many bodies are left in the ground to decompose alone, where the process cannot be witnessed or smelled. They collect bodies in their domain, and celebrate the whole process start to finish.
  27. Glowing Gazers: Humanoids made entirely from light, save for their terrible unlidded eyes. This form is a state of enlightenment which they wish to share with others, but it is obvious they have some sinister secret they’re not sharing.
  28. Grimacing Grandmas: A group of cantankerous older women who were tired of being considered a nuisance and set off to enjoy the end of their lives with some good rows against monsters. They typically call most people “grandchild,” or “sweet pea.”
  29. Gifted Gaffers: A people suffering under a curse which causes them to metaphorically put their foot in their mouth during every social interaction. They have very few friends, due to their constantly unintentional insults. If their speech can be tolerated, they’re eager to have allies.
  30. Heretical Haberdashers: Devotees of a certain style of headwear which has gone so starkly out of fashion that they were cast out of polite society. Plunging head first into the depths of the sunk cost fallacy, they’ve become a grubby band of dungeon dwellers marked out only by their pristine and ugly hats.
  31. Hook Handed Humorists: A genetic offshoot of hook horrors which are capable of speech, and absolutely addicted to comedy. It is their only art form. A novel joke is as good as currency with them.
  32. Hygienic Hogs: Pig people in fitted white clothing. They are obsessively clean, to the point of distraction. They spend hours each day scrubbing every inch of themselves and their home. Untidiness of any kind is an offense, though they know to set their expectations low for outsiders.
  1. Havoc Harlots: Muscle-bound and clad in armored lingerie, these worshipers of elemental chaos must do battle as part of their mating ritual with one another. They’re a horny lot, and tend to throw themselves into a lot of pointless fights. If an outsider can roll with that, the Havoc Harlots are otherwise a pretty chill group.
  2. Ignorant Intellectuals: A cadre of know-nothings and dilettantes convinced their armchair rationalism enables them to understand, grapple with, and solve every problem faced by “lesser” minds. Easily flattered, but infuriatingly pedantic.
  3. Irritable Immolators: Sensitive to loud noise, quiet noise, and most forms of vibration, these grouchy dungeon denizens are sometimes difficult to get along with, which wouldn’t be so troublesome if they couldn’t set things on fire with their minds.
  4. Irresolute Idealists: They have some good ideas about how the dungeon ought to be run, but refuse to do the work to make it happen. Instead they pretend the world already works the way they want it to. When they can’t pretend, they mostly just complain about how this wouldn’t have happened if everyone had listened to them.
  5. Icy Investigators: Puzzle solving savants with very little emotional affect. The only thing they value more than a good solution is a new problem to solve. Often called upon as a neutral party to settle disputes among other factions, though their interest always values revealing the truth above facilitating peace.
  6. Jade Janitors: Living statues of green stone created for the explicit purpose of keeping the dungeon tidy and in good repair. They have developed their own consciousness. They have free will and a rich culture, but none the less janitorial work is fundamental to their nature.
  7. Jittery Jousters: Wearing patchy armor and mounted on various creatures, these nervous folk live by a strict code passed down from more prosperous ancestors. It involves a lot of jousting, which few of them are comfortable with, but anyone who admitted that would be shunned by everyone still to afraid to admit it.
  8. Jubilant Jocks: Wholesome partiers who are always eager to engage in vigorous physical competition of some sort, and to exuberantly celebrate the winner regardless of who they are. Their whole vibe tends to make you think it’s only a matter of time before they say or do something real shitty, but they are basically decent folk who just happen to have the mannerisms of dudebros.
  9. Jackbooted Jurist: A whole faction who believe they are uniquely suited to being judge, jury, and executioner over everyone they meet. Their rulings are harsh, prejudiced against whoever they perceive as least valuable to society, and predicated more on a desire not to have their preconceptions of the world challenged rather than out of any sense of justice.
  10. Kite Kings: A gang of lightweight ruffians who’ve learned to glide and soar through the air using large kites. Their tough-guy posturing tends to make a bad first impression, but they are genuinely good natured if their pride is not wounded.
  11. Knowledgeable Klaxoneers: It is well known (according to these folk) that lions assert dominance by roaring louder than any other lion in the pride. This is their justification for why their groups regularly sound klaxons as they move about the dungeon. It is just one of many “facts” they enjoy sharing to justify their odd behaviors.
  12. Keg Kidnappers: Any time they don’t spend partying is spent planning and executing elaborate heists to acquire sufficient booze for the next party. They have refined tastes, but aren’t above shaking down passers by for a bit of cheap moonshine to pass the time with.
  13. Lusty Loggers: If the dungeon has no ready source of timber, they make regular excursions to gather it. With it, they reinforce and expand the dungeon, as well as craft their erotic arts. Their polished statues and wood carvings are most numerous in their own territory, but have often been traded to other factions for resources. Whether or not their concepts of eroticism match anything that would be recognizable as such to the players depend on the sort of game being run.
  14. Lyrical Lobster Lords & Ladies: Oversize Decapods with fine clothing, ornamented shells, and an aristocratic bearing. Normal speech is considered to be a peasant’s habit. As people of refinement, they never communicate any idea without singing it.
  15. League of the Listless Logicians: A group of rationalists who sequestered themselves here away from all distraction so they could use the power of logic to work through all the problems of the universe. It is a hopeless endeavor, but before coming here they burned so many academic bridges boasting about the success they would have that they feel obligated to continue making token efforts, even though they now indulge in every distraction the dungeon has to offer.
  16. Lucky Lightning: Entities of pure electricity, only partially bound to humanoid shape. They can travel near instantaneously along a network of copper wires they’ve run through the dungeon, which their foes make every effort to find and destroy. If that weren’t bad enough, goddess Fortuna seems to favor these creatures. They love to gamble, but anyone who knows them knows better than to play.
  17. Masked Mamas: By happenstance, these folk found a cache of masks which look like the mother of whomever is seeing them. The masks are not convincing, but they are a little unsettling. They’re worn away from home, to unsettle outsiders.
  18. Mega Microorganisms: By some magic gone horribly awry, a group of bacteria was enlarged to human size, each gaining fragments of the mind of their destroyed creator. They’re led by a cruel virus.
  19. Nagging Neoclassical Nerds: Living in a dungeon can be boring, which is why this group has devoted so much time and energy to reading, re-reading, discussing, and agonizing over the single book they have access to: a textbook survey of classical mythology, art, and history. They interpret everything through this lens. It’s insufferable.
  20. Microwave Mutants: Sterile creatures who reproduce by cajoling lonely people into allowing themselves to be strapped into the device which transforms a person into one of them. Each of the creatures has a lidded organ in their chests, which directs a beam of heat when pulled open.
  21. Metal Mannequins: Fashionable tin gormless. Despite a fearsome appearance, their bodies are hollow, and can be destroyed as any fleshy creature’s could. They spend their time acquiring and creation pleasant clothing. There’s a great diversity of styles among them, though also an agreed upon language to each choice of shape and color, so that each one can know a great deal about what another is thinking and feeling just by looking at them.
  22. Magic Mildew: Fungus people whose bodies are incredibly delicious, and produce delightful psychotropic effects when consumed by most creatures. They do not enjoy being eaten. They are diligently stealthy in their movements, and consider themselves at war with the whole world.
  23. Nudist Nuns: Fuzzy bearlike creatures. If their nudity is not commented on, they will be surprised. Among their own species they are a renegade cult, expelled for their insistence that clothes are unnatural. Given that they’re covered in thick fur, it’s hard to disagree with this precept.
  24. Neighborhood Newsfolk: A faction which, on the surface, remains resolutely uninvolved in any dungeon conflict. They devote themselves to simply reporting the facts on post boards around the dungeon. In secret, they use tricky reporting and occasional falsehoods to manipulate the other factions. Keeping them divided and warlike, so they gradually erode each other’s power.
  25. Narcissistic Novelists: A cadre who long ago agreed to foster unity by passing around a story to each member of the community, to make a paragraph of additions, then on to the next person. The book is now dozens of volumes long and still ongoing. If you meet them, they’ll insist that you read it, and be offended if you don’t like it.
  26. Organfarm Orphans: A group of teens and young adults who all lived together in an orphanage which was selling their body parts to the rich as remedies for various ailments. They escaped about ten years back, and have built a good life for themselves in this dungeon. They have no desire to rejoin society.
  27. Oak Octopi: Land dwelling octopi made from wood. They treat their bodies with tinctures that make them significantly less flammable, since that’s invariably the first thing their enemies attempt. They have a great love of percussive music, and a great fear of mildews and fungi.
  28. Outcast Oligarchs: A group of former slave owners who were forced to flee their homes once the slaves revolted. They’re still infuriated about the event, and how profoundly “evil” it was for those “greedy revolutionaries” to “steal” all of “their hard earned wealth.” They keep trying to force other factions in the dungeon into being their slaves, and it makes them even angrier that nobody is falling for it. They view it as a good deal.
  29. Orbiting Oysters: Clusters of 5-12 oysters which all orbit around a central point, (which they insist is an infinitely dense gravitational mass, and also the location of each cluster’s mind, but there is no evidence for this outside their claims). Each cluster of oysters acts as a single person, with different shells opening to speak in chorus at different times. They are somewhat socially isolated within the dungeon, and it’s never quite clear whether they perceive a reality beyond our own, or whether they’re merely adhering to an inscrutable religion.
  30. Paperweight Pals: A friendly and verbally boisterous faction of speaking boulders. Aside from their faces these folk have no moving parts. Aside from oxygen they have no physical needs. They like to chat, and really appreciate being carried around a bit by anyone strong enough to lift them.
  31. Pompous Pirates: A crew of pirates who were shipwrecked several years ago, and came to plunder the dungeon to buy a new ship. They haven’t been able to earn the treasure they need, but are unwilling to accept defeat, and have become defacto dungeon denizens.
  32. Purple Poets: Purple skinned humanoids who found themselves unwelcome on the surface, and have adapted well to dungeon life. They’re hardy, cunning, and never settle for one word when twelve would do the same job. Language is beautiful after all, and begs to be well used.
  33. Powermad Princess: A twelve year old princess of remarkable ambition and cunning has been quietly planning a coup. Her parents are only in their 40s, and won’t die nearly soon enough. Her most loyal followers have been secreted away down here to train, plunder wealth, make plans, and allies. Many of her followers are themselves quite young, but there’s more than a few adults in the group.
  34. Quixotic Quilters: A strange folk who may or may not be blind, it’s difficult to tell from their behavior. They travel in groups of four or more, always sewing a quilt between them as they go. They wear quilts as clothing, and use them as tools, and hang them as art. The quilts they make depict strange portents and messages, but their meaning is muddled and nigh impossible to interpret most of the time.
  1. Quiet Quarrymen: Svelte and flexible creatures. They wield pick axes with knitted cozies around the metal bits. By some peculiar art they’re able to dig through stone silently, and their wriggling nature enables them to slip through holes too small for most creatures. Note that neither the picks nor the cozies are magical, they are merely components of a technique which also involves certain traits unique to the creatures themselves.
  2. Radiant Rodent Wranglers: Having brightly luminescent skin isn’t a great trait for long term survival in the dungeon, and these folk were easy prey before they learned the art of giant rat riding. They’ve become adept at mounted battle tactics, and a dominating presence in dungeon politics.
  3. Reclining Respectables: A faction of powerful sleepers, able to manifest their will through lucid dreaming, but rendered powerless if awakened. Their sleeping bodies float through the dungeon, often accompanied by ensorcled guardians. Their voices echo as if from everywhere at once.
  4. Romantic Radials: Disk like creatures without recognizable anatomy who have been exiled to this place from somewhere beyond human knowledge. They find the human form profoundly beautiful, and desire to appreciate it—though not in any way we would recognize as sexual.
  5. Rubber Roofer: Rogue golems which resemble something like a species of Gumbies. They’ve fought hard to be free of control, but are still compelled by the last command they were given. They are like addicts who must resist the urge to build roofs over things, and like all addicts they occasionally relapse.
  6. Rumermongering Rooster: A long legged feathery folk, both wingless and flightless. They’re terrible gossips, both in that they gossip a lot and gossip is a generally terrible trait, and also in that they’re bad at it. They frequently invent obviously false information for fun, or profit.
  7. Sanctimonious Sinners: A group of renegades from the surface who are entirely too impressed with themselves for transgressing certain social taboos. They boast of how enlightened they are for not going to ceremonies every churchday, and having sex outside of lifebonds. It is their one defining personality trait. They have so far failed to construct a philosophical framework for their new society, and are thus prone to going crawling back to the ways of their ancestors the moment life gets difficult.
  8. Scary Schoolteachers: Creatures formed from the accumulated fears children have of their teachers, made manifest by so many imaginations working in tandem. They often use big words which don’t exist, and enforce arbitrary rules just to make the world a less fun place to live.
  9. Sulking Sluts: A community of erotic enthusiasts who have so thoroughly explored one another that there doesn’t seem to be anything new left to enjoy. They’d very much like to broaden their horizons, but everyone is put off by all the weird stuff they like to do.
  10. Successful Salamanders: Bipedal amphibians who have really got their shit together as a society. Every problem they face, they just keep knockin’ it outta the park. You wait. Five, maybe six generations from now? It’ll be them dominating the planet, and humans lurking in dungeons.
  11. Simpleton Socialites: When encountered they are either partying, or preparing for a party. These are the two states of being. Guests are always welcome, but one must be wary of being considered a buzzkill. They are not friendly to buzz-killers.
  12. Togate Tabbies: Kitty cats who herd great meat farms of mice, have a complicated political system, hold spirited debates, and solve most of their problems by finding some reason to go to war with one of their neighbors. When not wearing armor, they all wear white togas.
  13. Tame Tyrannosaurs: Man-sized cousins to thunder lizards. They tend to speak slowly, pausing between each word. They’re very chill creatures, and nervous about how imposing they appear to others. They’re not above eating their enemies, but domesticated meat beasts do just as well.
  14. Testy Tabernacles: Creatures with doors on their torsos. They were created only recently, but do not know who their creator is, or why they were made. They do know that the doors in their torsos must never be opened, and whatever is inside must never be witnessed. They are otherwise a generally brusk and irreverent people, but the security of their doors is held absolutely sacrosanct.
  15. Terrible Takers: Intensely suspicious of outsiders. Nearly anything a person says or does is somehow interpreted to be a slight against their dignity, and it takes very careful phrasing to earn their good graces.
  16. Thirsty Thespians: Cut off from most of the dungeon’s sources of water, this group has resorted to putting on plays where the price of admission is a certain quantity of potable water. They must work tirelessly at their art to convince the other dungeon denizens to pay the fee.
  17. Tagging Tadpoles: Oversize tadpoles which swim through the air, and have tiny arms and faces on the front. Whenever they’re not hunting, eating, or sleeping, they’re sneaking into other factions territories to tag the walls with their art as a show of courage and dominance.
  18. Uniformed Ukelelists: A mouthless species, each individual of which appears to be exactly identical to every other. They communicate by playing small stringed instruments that are easily carried on their person. Outsiders are unlikely to understand the nuances of their language, but could grasp the basic emotions being communicated easily enough.
  19. Umbra Union: A collective of spectral shadows who’ve banded together to advance the cause of making the world a darker place. They propose a dimming of the sun, or perhaps placing day moons in the sky to facilitate more frequent solar eclipses. They’re nowhere near accomplishing their goals, but are confident in their eventual success.
  20. Unsatisfied Urges: Adherents of an ascetic philosophy who are teetering on the edge of abandoning their whole way of life. Some cling to their beliefs harder than others, but years of cold gruel, no music, no sex, and no joy seeking of any kind have taken a desperate toll on morale.
  21. Ubiquitous Umpires: There seems to be one in every room and corridor of the dungeon, watching to ensure that no one causes undue damage to the structure, conducts themselves unfairly in a fight, or accomplishes nearly any goal by stealth. It is difficult to stay on their good side unless one is willing to pay the penalty fines they assign for infractions.
  22. Veiled Vestigials: A mystery cult which reveres people who are born with webbed fingers, tails, or other unusual adaptations commonly regarded as “birth defects.” They are regarded as messengers from humanity’s forgotten past. Much weight is given to drug induced visions of past lives.
  23. Vampy Visigoths: A cadre of svelte, leanly muscled, well groomed, hair plucked, makeup wearing, axe wielding brutes. They revel in brutality and destruction, but enjoy sophisticated and sensual home lives.
  24. Vapid Veterans: A group of lost soldiers whose minds appear to have been irresponsibly tinkered with. They believe the dungeon is a war zone where they have no future, and no past. Each day they go through the motions of fighting a war, sometimes allies to other dungeon factions, sometimes imagining that they’re the enemy, and sometimes fighting whole battles against nothing at all.
  25. Vigilant Vermin: Colonies composed of various beetles, flies, centipedes, and other exoskeletal vermin. Each colony can compose itself into an approximation of a human shape at will, though often they spread themselves out through the dungeon to spy on what’s going on, and report back to their fellows.
  26. Volcanic Vicars: Religious zealots who do not know how to communicate with outsiders except by preaching. The fervor of their sermons carries real power. They can compel those who listen to do their will, or speak fiery words which literally burn their foes.
  27. Weakling Warriors: Once a proud clan of warriors, a devastating defeat has left only the noncombatants alive. They retain their culture and their code, and are trying to rise to the challenge of preserving their heritage, but they were noncombatants for a reason.
  28. Wallopin’ Widows: A prim and proper matriarchy. Their warriors garb themselves in heavy black gowns and wield tremendous hammers. Their traditions go back to a period in their history which they’d rather not discuss. They consider impolite conduct as grave an offense as theft.
  29. Wizard Wranglers: Carrying all manner of ingenious traps and anti-magic powders, these hunters proudly proclaim that they’ve never met a magician whose pointy hat isn’t now adorning the walls of their lodge. Fortunately they seem to regard pointy hats as a magician’s uniform. Any magician not wearing one will be safe from detection unless they cast a spell. Note also that these folk may not care to differentiate between wizards and clerics.
  30. Wicker Wildcats: Jaguars woven out of wicker, and animated by magic. They cannot speak, but are quick and capable writers. The fragility and lightweight nature of wicker makes them cautious combatants who prefer only to fight on prepared battlefields.
  31. Woebegotten Weightlifters: A muscular band, passionate about fitness, who have recently been targeted by a spell of depression sent by one of their enemies. Each of them is miserable, simply going through the motions of their lives without feeling any of the joy they used to get from their favorite activities.
  32. Xenolithic Xerophyte: Living cactus people once roamed the dungeon freely, until they tampered with forces beyond their control and became fused with their environment. They exist now only as living carvings, able to move around the dungeon only so long as they slide across one of its surfaces.
  33. Yearlength Yowlers: When these creatures are born they have all the air inside them they will ever need. Over the course of their life it is slowly expelled out a flap in their head, producing a yowling sound. After about one year the air is gone, they have no means by which to draw in new breath, and they die.
  34. Zealous Zucchini: There once was a wizard who transformed themselves into a Zucchini to prove how cool they were. They got stuck, and lived out the rest of their life as sentient produce. They did learn how to reproduce, though their numerous offspring are a little eccentric given that only half their DNA is from a creature with a mind, as well as the significant amount of inbreeding that was necessary to continue the species. They are an overall friendly people, eager to share their cantaloupe-worshiping religion with whomever will listen.

Also, America delenda est.

The Dungeon d100s: Rewards

(An Italian translation of this post is available on Dragons’ Lair)

Nothing on this list is meant to be exchanged for money, nor could most of it be described as “magic items” in the traditional sense. Both those things are excellent rewards for players to find in dungeons. Both have even been subjects for my own writing, (see d100 Objects of Moderate Value, or the Magic Items subheading of my Index). However, my goal with this table is to focus on the sorts of treasures that are often neglected when planning a dungeon. Things like relationships, information, opportunities to be creative, unusual tools, character modifications, and access to tremendous and terrible power.

Like any reward from a dungeon, these objects must be earned. Once cannot simply place “friendship with an elder red dragon” inside a chest. Instead the players might find an elder red dragon whose tail was caught in a massive bear trap, and was left here to starve while adventurers looted his treasure horde. Other rewards on this list might be better suited to being quest rewards. For example, a king will listen to the party on matters of public policy if they go into the dungeon and take care of this’n’that for them.

The Dungeon d100s
1 – Themes
2 – Structures
3 – Rewards
4 – Doors, Floors, Walls, & Ceilings
5 – Factions
6 – Locks & Keys

Bonus – Auto-roller, at Liche’s Libram.

d100 Dungeon Rewards:

  1. A printing press.
  2. A fine fleet of chariots.
  3. Some well constructed bit of mobile siege equipment, such as a catapult or scorpion.
  4. Complex siege equipment which must be disassembled for transport, such as trebuchets or rolling towers.
  5. A supply of a rare material with incredible properties. Something like mithril or gopher wood.
  6. A ship in good condition.
  7. A war tank, perhaps brought here by a time warp, or a remnant from an ancient magical empire.
  8. A backhoe, cement mixer, bulldozer, steamroller, or other piece of time-warped industrial construction equipment or its ancient magical counterpart.
  9. A supply of absolutely primo drugs. They do all the stuff you like, none of the stuff you don’t like, and there’s enough of it to throw the world’s greatest party.
  10. A bank of unknown seeds with a supply sufficient for long term cultivation. They may be from a far distant land, extinct local flora, or from some entirely alien world.
  11. Command over a great orbiting eye (or telescope if your game allows for it) which can communicate its observations from space.
  12. Access to a heretofore unknown deposit of natural resources. A rich vein of precious metals, a well of oil, etc.
  13. A massive cache of supplies. Stuff like food, medicine, or war materiel. Enough to solve a famine, alleviate a plague, or outfit an army.
  14. A legitimate coin press, or a convincing counterfeit one. Enables the owner to create fake currency if they wish.
  15. An artifact from the future left behind by a clumsy time traveler. It could be information that advances the party’s knowledge, some bit of useful tech like a flashlight or motorcycle, or a weapon like a ray gun.
  16. A specialized encryption machine, which allows some certain group to send secret messages to one another. None has ever fallen into the wrong hands before, and with it the party could intercept highly sensitive messages.
  17. Access to a secret and wide ranging communications network, enabling the players to pass messages quickly and effectively over great distances. Alternately, the players may have the opportunity to exploit or disrupt such a network.
  18. A single-use item of tremendous restorative power. Using it could end a plague, or resurrect a dead army.
  19. A single-use item of tremendous destructive power. Essentially a briefcase sized atom bomb.
  20. A single-use item of tremendous transportation power. Enough that a whole city could be gracefully moved to another planet or plane of existence with the snap of a finger.
  21. An artifact of religious or historical significance which would alter what is commonly believed. The powers that be are probably threatened by this.
  22. Some bit of culture lost to history. Something like extra verses of Gilgamesh, a forgotten board game, or the lost writings of an ancient philosopher.
  23. An imprisoned dungeon delver. If freed they will join your party at least to the end of the dungeon, and if you impress them, may continue on as a hireling.
  24. A kidnapped prisoner, brought to the dungeon against their will. Are they known to be missing? Were they replaced by a doppelganger? Regardless of other circumstances, they will be grateful to be rescued.
  25. The friendship of a skilled professional of some kind, happy to perform some free work for the party. They may be a craftsperson, a lawyer, an accountant, a guide, an engineer, an artist, etc.
  26. The friendship of an individual or a group with the ability to easily access spaces which might be out of reach for the players. For example, merfolk, ghosts, harpies, mole men, desert worm riders, or plane hoppers.
  27. The friendship of an individual or a group which is usually intractably isolationist, or at least opposed to forming friendships with people of the player character’s type. Perhaps wood elves, faeries, or members of an enemy nation.
  28. The friendship of a great and terrible beast which might normally be inclined to eat you, like a troll or dragon.
  29. The friendship of a person who is highly placed within some powerful system. An aristocrat, military officer, or postmaster general.
  30. A group of slaves whom the party can set free. Some of them may choose to join the party, others will spread stories of their heroism, while still others might be positioned to offer substantive rewards once they get home.
  31. Animals of a heretofore unknown type. They might be alien creatures, dinosaurs frozen in ice, dodo birds surviving in a sealed valley, or anything in between. They could be useful for exotic meat, domestic labor, companionship, or merely as curiosities. There are enough to breed a healthy population.
  32. A golem or robot imprints itself on you. It follows wherever you lead and tirelessly performs any task you set it to. It is limited by rudimentary intelligence and creativity, and perhaps a lack of agility.
  1. An ethereal servitor imprints itself on you.
  2. The companionship of an animal which is not normally attainable as a pet. It may be an elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, elk, cheetah, etc. The animal is already trained, understands basic commands, and will aid you so long as it is well treated.
  3. An object with no significant trade value or use value, but which would be the perfect gift for a particular person in the game world. Perhaps a lost painting of a king’s dead lover, or the childhood toy of an elder dragon.
  4. The opportunity to create a new spell, ignoring many of the normal restrictions on time, cost, or scope.
  5. The opportunity to craft a powerful weapon or suit of armor, ignoring many of the normal restrictions on time, cost, or scope.
  6. The opportunity to use a rapid evolution device to guide a new form of animal into existence, matching specifications you set within a certain margin of error.
  7. The opportunity to plan a public works project on the scale of a bridge, road, bath house, grain dole, etc. The party will not need to pay for creating or maintaining this project.
  8. The opportunity to dictate what the production of a factory will be over a given period, and what will be done with the items produced. Players may wish to outfit an army, take a new product to market, or introduce new technology to society.
  9. Temporary command over a work force of builder elves. In a single night they will build any construction that is described to them.
  10. The opportunity to direct the efforts of a team of scientists or engineers towards a problem of the player characters’ choosing.
  11. The opportunity to establish a charity which will tackle some particular social ill.
  12. The opportunity to direct an angry mob towards a particular target.
  13. For a fraction of a second the character becomes a god. Just enough time to make a single world-altering decision. The other gods are swift to put the character back in their proper place, but will not undo this one change.
  14. The opportunity to advise someone powerful about how they ought to proceed. To influence the social policies of a king, or the military tactics of a general. This advice will be followed unless it would be suicidally absurd to do so.
  15. The opportunity to lay down the precepts of a new religion, or life philosophy, which will be adhered to (and no doubt eventually distorted to some degree) by a community of peoples.
  16. A clearly stated and completely accurate prophecy describing an a celestial, geological, or otherwise uncontrollable event. A solar eclipse, a falling meteor, an erupting volcano, a monarch dying or birthing an heir, etc. Only you know this thing will happen.
  17. A clearly stated and accurate prophecy describing an event which could be altered if you choose to pursue it. Someone being murdered, the outcome of a battle or an election, etc.
  18. Knowledge to any one secret in the world, so long as a single person exists who knows about it.
  19. The opportunity to ask an omnipotent intelligence a single question, and receive a fully detailed answer.
  20. The opportunity to ask an omnipotent intelligence three yes-or-no questions, which will be answered honestly and accurately.
  21. All the details of someone’s plans or battle strategies, or perhaps diagrams which describe their defensive arrangements in detail.
  22. Genealogical records which could alter someone’s social position. A member of or friend to the party may find that they’re actually a minor noble, or even in line of succession for the crown. Alternately these records might reveal that some aristocrat’s lineage has been faked.
  23. Evidence which disproves a criminal or embarrassing claim made against the party, friend of the party, or employer of the party. The evidence may or may not be faked, but it is convincing.
  24. Evidence which proves that one of the party’s foes has committed a serious crime, which they will otherwise get away with. Alternately, evidence of a conspiracy the party wishes to expose.
  25. Blackmail sufficiently damning to earn concessions from some person or group. The strength of the blackmail will determine how much the blackmailer can get for it.
  26. A pirate’s map, complete with annotations, passwords for safe rooms, several uncharted islands, and a few spots marked X.
  27. A map to an abandoned tower, castle, city, fleet of warships, or other sturdy construction left over from a previous era. It belongs to anyone who wants to lay claim to it.
  28. A map of a place the player characters would be familiar with. The map reveals hidden passages, buried treasures, forgotten underground structures, or other lost knowledge.
  29. A complete map of this, or some other dungeon, with enough information to make plundering dramatically easier.
  30. Access to an unknown hideyhole which allows someone to spy easily on some incredibly secret location, such as a monarch’s private audience chamber.
  31. Instructions for replicating some secret technology which has become lost. Ulfberht steel, roman concrete, greek fire, brilliantly blue paint, etc.
  32. A map which highlights a valuable traveling route, such as a quick path through a difficult range of mountains, directions that would allow ships to avoid rocks and sandbars in a treacherous river, the safe path through a minefield, or route through an impenetrable marsh.
  33. Access to a magic tunnel which, when crawled through, allows the crawler to temporarily inhabit the body of some notable figure in the game world. At the end of their time, they consistently appear at some place a few miles from the tunnel access.
  34. A control panel for activating some particular catastrophe. Perhaps an earthquake, a tsunami, a meteor, an ice age, etc. The players cannot choose what the disaster is, only where, when, and whether it will happen.
  1. Access to the settings for creation. The power of magnetism, the rate of evolution, etc. Curiously, gravity is currently set to 120% normal strength.
  2. The services of an expert assassin who will eliminate any one person of your choosing. No cost. Success guaranteed.
  3. Command over an army or navy of the damned who will be freed when a certain condition is met. It could be when they win their next battle, when they recapture a certain territory, or avenge an ancient wrong.
  4. The opportunity for characters to clone themselves. It may be that the clone is immediately active, or may be kept dormant. The clone may have complete free will, or be willing to defer to the original.
  5. The opportunity to time travel. This might be subject to any number of limitations (one way and permanent, only within the travelers lifetime, only outside their lifetime, only backwards in time, the traveler can only exist outside their proper time for a few moments, the list goes on.)
  6. The opportunity to stop time the whole world over, allowing the player characters some set period (a few hours/a day/a week) in which they may act before time sets itself into motion once again.
  7. The opportunity to open a door between our world and another. The pathway will be large, permanent, and accessible to many people on both sides. The inhabitants of both worlds will begin to mingle, and influence one another in unpredictable ways.
  8. The chance to bestow a curse of misfortune on someone, such that all their current prosperity will leave them, and all their future ventures will fail, until some condition is met.
  9. A large seed which, when planted, will spread and grow rapidly. In a single afternoon it will produce a whole forest of trees.
  10. The opportunity to parley on friendly terms with a powerful creature. Anywhere from an elder dragon, to a god.
  11. The opportunity to undo a single mistake from the characters past. It must be a choice they made, not just a roll they failed. The change may have unintended consequences.
  12. The opportunity to remove a single person from existence. They will have never existed, and much of what they’ve done
  13. The players find themselves in just the right place at just the right time to influence a war that is well beyond their ken. Some conflict between solar empires, or between the gods themselves. The choice the players make will tip the scales.
  14. A character is inducted into an auspicious order. In addition to potential social benefits, they may gain class features not normally available to their class. For example, they might be declared paladins, and gain a Smite Evil ability.
  15. An upgrade to a skill, spell, or ability the character already possesses. A spell which deals d4 damage may now deal d6; a skill may now be able to ignore certain limitations; An ability may be usable more times per day; etc.
  16. The opportunity to combine their genetic makeup with another creature in some beneficial way. Gaining bird’s wings, or the speed of a cheetah, or the dignified mane of a lion, etc.
  17. The opportunity to subject themselves to a random beneficial mutation.
  18. The opportunity for characters to alter their physical selves. Change their height, sex, age, reroll one or more stats, and even their species to whatever they want.
  19. The opportunity to work with a teacher or therapist who can help characters learn a new skill, or remove some mental hindrance.
  20. Magical or mechanical replacements for lost body parts, which function just as well (or perhaps better) than natural ones.
  21. Experimental body modifications. Adrenaline boosters, sub-dermal armor, internal potion injectors, etc.
  22. Become immune to some specified thing: burns from fire, inhaled poisons, axes, etc.
  23. Secret techniques for better living. Perhaps breathing techniques which double the length of time breath can be held, exercises which grant a set amount of temporary hit points each day they are performed, or sleeping methods which allow a full night’s rest in a scant few hours.
  24. A shipment of stolen goods which, if returned, would prevent a sea captain or merchant from going bankrupt.
  25. Documents which prove that an obscure law or treaty is still in effect. It may become repealed, but until it is the player characters can abuse it to some advantage.
  26. The ability to understand and speak with something unusual. Birds, cats, fish, trees, etc.
  27. The opportunity to perform a profoundly good deed, such as releasing a thousand imprisoned souls. Performing the good deed is trivial, but offers no tangible personal benefit.
  28. A key needed to access something in another dungeon, or a bank vault, or to bypass security somewhere.
  29. The remains of some notable figure who disappeared mysteriously. Perhaps a noted political reformer, a heroic adventurer, or a renowned artist. Apparently they met their end in this dungeon.
  30. The remains of a ghost or phylactery of a lich, enabling the characters to send some wayward spirit to its proper rest.
  31. The opportunity to undergo a ritual which will allow characters to become ghosts (or perhaps other forms of undead) when they die.
  32. Alternate versions of common spells which are dramatically more effective, but are more difficult to cast. Perhaps they have a longer casting time, require multiple casters, or have expensive material components.
  33. Access to a great tunnel through the underdark which allows travelers to bypass some surface danger, such as a terrible desert, marsh, or enemy nation.
  34. Access to one or more magical portals, which could transport a person instantaneously to set locations throughout the world, or even to different planes and planets.

Also, defund the police.

The Dungeon d100s: Doors, Floors, Walls & Ceilings

(An Italian translation of this post is available on Dragons’ Lair)

It has been my experience that even the most creatively written dungeons tend to ignore the opportunity to be creative with their basic building blocks. This isn’t the worst thing. Stone walls and wood doors work. Dungeons don’t exist to be flashy, they exist to channel play into interesting situations. That said, something as simple as giving your dungeon carpeted floors and steel doors goes a long way towards making it memorable. After being introduced those details can easily slip into the background, until brought forward again when the Magic User tries to power up their Lightning Bolt by rubbing their socks on the carpet.

Because this table is made up of details which are meant to slip into the background, I have specifically indicated that each results applies to everything of its type. That’s just my framing, though. If you roll “Floors are carpeted,” it is worth considering that instead of all the floors, perhaps only some are carpeted. Alternatively it may be that all floors in a particular section are carpeted. For that matter you might also consider that if the floors are carpeted, what does that say about the walls? The ceilings? Are they carpeted as well, or do they have some other styling which seems like an appropriate accompaniment to carpeted floors?

Thanks are due to Qpop for proof reading this post.

The Dungeon d100s
1 – Themes
2 – Structures
3 – Rewards
4 – Doors, Floors, Walls, & Ceilings
5 – Factions
6 – Locks & Keys

Bonus – Auto-roller, at Liche’s Libram.

d100 Dungeon Doors, Floors, Walls & Ceilings:

  1. Doors are all heavy portculli. They are difficult to lift, and will slam shut again the moment they are released unless special care is taken to brace them.
  2. Doors open automatically whenever someone comes near them, and automatically close again behind them.
  3. Doors are all quite small, requiring adult humans to crouch or crawl to pass through.
  4. Doors all swing freely in either direction, like saloon doors do (also called batwing doors).
  5. Doors all have windows in them. Perhaps open bars or safety glass which can only be looked through, or perhaps easily broken plate glass.
  6. Doors all have windows in them which advantage viewing from a single side, such as peep holes, or sliding hatches.
  7. Doors are all terribly noisy when opened or closed. Perhaps their hinges squeak, or maybe each has a chime attached to it.
  8. Doors have arms on the hinge side, allowing them to be barred. Some or all may even have bars nearby ready to be put in place.
  9. Doors are all high up on the walls, and must be climbed up to.
  10. Doors are all trapdoors in the floor or ceiling. Thus even rooms on the same dungeon level are connected by passages above or below.
  11. Doors are all one-way. They close behind each person who passes through them, and cannot be opened from the other side.
  12. Doors are all revolving doors, with “wings” that rotate around a central pivot point. There may be 2 or more of these, creating separated sections between them.
  13. Doors are all open doorways, without any way of being closed.
  14. Doors are all insubstantial. Hanging drapes, or strings of beads. Just enough to block clear sight, but not sound or entry.
  15. Doors are all rollup style, like a garage door. The rails which guide and hold it might be exposed, or could be enclosed within the wall.
  16. Doors all have a stable door style, with upper and lower halves. (Also called Dutch Doors.)
  17. Doors all have smaller “wicket doors” built into them. (Are the wicket doors for creatures smaller than humans, or are the proper doors for masses of humans / large creatures?)
  18. Doors all have a lower lip to step over as you go through them, like those found on ships.
  19. Doors are all air tight, and opened via a time consuming turn crank or wheel.
  20. Doors are all airlock chambers, with air tight doors on each side, and a space between where characters must wait. The airlocks might exist because the rooms are kept at different temperatures or pressure levels, or because their atmospheres contain trace elements which are dangerous when mixed, or potentially for no reason at all.
  21. Doors are all janky, old, and often get stuck.
  22. Doors are all locked, barred, or otherwise intentionally sealed. Some creatures may carry key rings, key cards, know passwords, etc.
  23. Doors are all sliding doors.
  24. Doors are all folding doors, to one or both sides.
  25. Doors are all double doors.
  26. Doors all have sticky notes, thumbtacks, or doodles on them. Clearly they’re being used as a means of casual communication between dungeon inhabitants.
  27. Doors are made in the style of oversize pet doors. Great flaps which must be lifted as one passes through, and fall back down behind.
  28. Floors are carpeted.
  29. Floors are all slippery, perhaps covered in goo, or ice.
  30. Floors are a raised constructed path through a natural space. Like a catwalk through a cave, or a pontoon walkway along a canal.
  31. Floors are packed earth, or so thoroughly covered in dirt that they may as well be packed earth.
  32. Floors are sandy, snowy, or otherwise provide awkward and unstable footing.
  1. Floors are bouncy. They might be springy lick a trampoline or mattress, or they may have been coated in flubber.
  2. Floors all have drains in them, and are gently sloped so water will run towards these drains.
  3. Floors have dry channels running at their edges, perhaps once used as gutters, or ruts for wheels.
  4. Floors are cracked and uneven. Footing is poor, and dropped items may be lost.
  5. Floors have many weeds growing up through them, perhaps dense enough to occasionally tangle feet during vigorous action.
  6. Floors are loose tiles or boards which can be removed easily.
  7. Floors are noisy: metal plates, creaking timbers, or covered in dry leaves.
  8. Floors all have paths to various locations painted on them, like you might see in an airport or train station.
  9. Floors are solid marble.
  10. Floors are angled steeply to one side, as if the dungeon is tilted at a 20°+ angle.
  11. Oops! All pressure plates! There is nowhere to step that doesn’t depress with an ominous mechanical click.
  12. Floors move those who stand on them. They may be conveyor belts, or be under the influence of magical riptides.
  13. Floors are scattered with toys. Dolls, balls, bicycles, left scattered haphazardly about.
  14. Floors have a rail system built on them. There may be mine carts or handcars.
  15. Floors are wet, soggy, or perhaps even covered in ankle-deep water.
  16. Floors are very wet. The water is at least waist high. A boat may be required.
  17. Floors are fragile. Glass, or ice. One must tread carefully lest it crack, and drop them into danger, or simply into a lower level.
  18. Floors are metal grating.
  19. There is no proper floor. One must traverse the rooms and corridors by hopping between stepping stones.
  20. Floors are pointy, covered in caltrops, broken glass, or nails mounted as spikes.
  21. Floors are covered in detritus and trash. It may be omnipresent but scattered, or so dense that one’s feet sink into it.
  22. Walls are easily destructible, perhaps made of rice paper.
  23. Walls are dense with written language. It could be intended carvings, modern graffiti, or science fictiony scrolling text.
  24. Walls are dense with art, perhaps carved bas relief, or murals.
  25. Walls are dense with holes, cupboards, drawers, or animal burrows. These are mostly empty, gross, dangerous, or filled with useless junk.
  26. Walls are dense with buttons, switches, and other controls. Some don’t do anything, others seem to cause random events to occur. Insert your favorite random table here.
  27. Walls are dense with shelves displaying tchotchkes. Ceramic figurines, papercraft, old toys, fake flowers. Objects which once brought someone joy, but now serve only to collect dust.
  28. Walls are plaster, and perhaps covered with wallpaper. The pattern could be nearly anything.
  29. Walls are densely stacked with bones.
  30. Walls have regularly spaced air vents built into them, which are too small to climb into.
  31. Walls have regularly spaced air vents built into them, which are large enough to climb into.
  32. Walls are very smooth. Not even the most skilled climber could find handholds.
  33. Walls are rough. Even a complete novice can climb them with relative ease.
  34. Walls are padded. Perhaps thoroughly so to prevent injury, as in an asylum. Alternately they may be fine tufted leather or velvet, meant to create an air of sophistication.
  1. Walls often have windows into adjacent spaces. These might be glass, wicker, barred with metal, tiny arrow slits, etc.
  2. Walls are periodically interrupted by half columns which could be used for cover.
  3. Walls are constructed of a thick bramble, like blackberry bushes.
  4. Something icky oozes out of the walls. Slime, blood, or more feculent excretions.
  5. Walls are limited force fields. They might keep air in, and water/vacuum/monsters out. However, if one were to stumble, they’d go right through, and may not be able to get back.
  6. Walls are constructed of poorly mortared bricks, many of which are loose.
  7. Walls are made from honeycomb, shellac, or other insect excretion.
  8. Walls on the interior of the dungeon are all metal bars. They can be seen through, reached through, and for particularly small characters possibly squeezed through.
  9. Walls are dangerous to touch. Perhaps because they are very hot or cold, are dense with sharp protrusions, or charged with electricity.
  10. Walls and Ceilings can be walked on as easily as floors.
  11. Walls are great ramshackle heaps of junk. Oak tables nailed to bed frames, densely stacked chairs, supported by cast iron bath tubs, and insulated with soiled mattresses.
  12. Ceilings have pipes running along them.
  13. Ceiling leaks. Probably water, but perhaps fluids less wholesome.
  14. Ceilings have thick roots protruding through them from plants up above.
  15. Ceilings are low. Human sized creatures will need to hunch, or even crawl to get through.
  16. Ceilings have cameras, crystal balls, or disgusting organic eyes on them. It’s unclear who (if anyone) is observing.
  17. Ceilings are high enough that most light sources cannot illuminate them. What might lurk up there?
  18. Ceilings are mirrored.
  19. Ceilings have skylights or open shafts in them, which partially illuminate the dungeon.
  20. Ceilings do not exist. The dungeon is open to the sky, perhaps with some danger on top of the walls preventing easily cheating one’s way through the dungeon.
  21. Ceilings are covered by colorful drapes. These might be bright and tidy, or soiled and tattered.
  22. Ceilings are home to a number of birds who’ve made their nests in the dungeon.
  23. Ceilings are covered in sleeping bats, or docile insects. If disturbed they will swarm.
  24. Ceilings are covered in loose paneling, which could be pushed aside to access a crawlspace above.
  25. Ceiling has exposed rafters.
  26. Ceilings are made up of something which, if the laws of physics were being obeyed, ought to immediately collapse. Something like water, or loose sand.
  27. Ceiling has regularly placed fans, which may or may not operate.
  28. Ceilings droop precariously, and are supported by ramshackle post hoc construction.
  29. Ceilings have footprints on them.
  30. Ceilings are coated in a weird and dense mist. If it is dangerous to breathe, it is at least too high to be accidentally inhaled.
  31. Ceilings are dense with hanging chains, hooks, pulleys, and rails.
  32. Ceilings are metal of a peculiar color. Anything which hits them bounces directly away without losing energy.
  33. Ceilings are dense with hanging papercrafts clearly made by children.
  34. Ceilings are dense with precarious icicles or stalactites, ready to drop dangerously if jostled.

Also, All Cops Are Bastards.

The Dungeon d100s: Themes

A 19th century drawing of castle.

(An Italian translation of this post is available on Dragons’ Lair)

The Dungeon d100s is a series of six tables that will appear here over the next six days. Each will provide 100 prompts for creating an interesting dungeon. The tables are not necessarily meant to be used in tandem. A dungeon forced to include one more more results from all six of them would likely be an overstimulating, unplayable mess. Better to pick one or two tables, or even roll a d6 to determine which of the tables you roll on, then employ your own creativity to build out from the result you get. If a result doesn’t spark your own creativity, reroll.

This first table is the most general. At various times it has been called d100 Dungeon Origins, d100 Dungeon Gimmicks, and at one point simply d100 Dungeons. At least two of the six tables in the series budded off from this one when I realized far too many entries revolved around the same shtick. At times I was tempted to split even a third table off from this one, but 600 prompts has proven to be the hard limit of my creativity. Thanks are due to my sister Veronica Whelan for proofreading this colossus.

Good dungeons are places in decline. Knowing their original purpose is useful both before and during play as a creative prompt, but it is essential in my view that the whole dungeon cannot be united in its purpose. Dungeons are wild places. Places where players can get into shenanigans, where they can do violence, and not be immediately rebuked from all sides by a united front of defenders. If a place is active; held in whole by a single faction, then the mode of play is dramatically different. The players are storming a fortress, not exploring a dungeon. Both activities have the potential to generate fun play situations, but are so different from one another that I don’t think they can be usefully discussed in the same breath.

The Dungeon d100s
1 – Themes
2 – Structures
3 – Rewards
4 – Doors, Floors, Walls, & Ceilings
5 – Factions
6 – Locks & Keys

Bonus – Auto-roller, at Liche’s Libram.

d100 Dungeon Themes:

  1. A palace made entirely from sea foam, which comes into and out of existence with the tides. Inhabited by folk who are able to survive the transition.
  2. The folly of a forgotten ancient civilization, jealous that none of their accomplishments were listed among the wonders of the world. They built this labyrinth in hopes that their architectural ambition would be recognized, but it never was.
  3. A magical board game which the party has been drawn into. The game may have rules or random events which don’t conform the laws of normal reality. Leaving the game may be as simple as reaching the exit, or require completing arduous win conditions.
  4. An alternate version of some familiar game space. Perhaps the tower of a friendly wizard, the party’s home city, or their own citadel. The place may have fallen into chaos while they were away, or may be mirrored in an extradimensianal space, or be fully recreated elsewhere for some mysterious purpose.
  5. Alive, in the same sense that an intelligent magic item is alive. The dungeon has a consciousness, and a will. New corridors and rooms sometimes appear as it becomes stronger, and it seeks to better itself further by accumulating greater hordes of treasure within itself.
  6. An in-game version of a real world location that some or all of the players would be personally familiar with. A local grocery store, church, school, or someone’s current or former home. It may need to be altered to function as a useful dungeon, but the players ought to be aware of its origin so they can use their real world knowledge in play.
  7. A holy site built in ancient times by a religion which still exists today. It was ceremonially sealed to mark the end of some forgotten religious schism. What few pilgrims still visit must be content to make their prayers at the entrance.
  8. Mobile, requiring that characters catch up to it, or anticipate its route when they wish to enter. It may have been built on (or in) a massive creature, it might move mechanically with understandable mechanisms, or by inscrutable magics. It might walk on legs, roll on wheels or treads, hover, swim, or burrow. Its movement might be destructive or not, intentionally or unintentionally. It might have an operator, or follow a per-designated program, or simply have gone rogue. It may be new or ancient: a familiar sight, or something unexpected and frightening. When the players leave, they could be quite far from anywhere they’ve ever been before.
  9. Flying high in the air, requiring some effort for characters to reach it. Its flight may be slow and drifting, or swift. It may be stable in the air, or in the process of falling, or there may be something the players can do within the dungeon to cause it to come crashing down.
  10. The colossal pleasure barge of some ancient ruler. The reach of its construction exceeded the grasp of ancient ship builders, and it sank. It may still be underwater, or it may be resting in a dry lake bed, or existing in some stage between the two extremes. After being here so long it may have been connected to tunnels, or to some greater dungeon beneath it.
  11. A focal point for a time fracture. Within it, the characters can travel to different eras of the dungeon’s existence. Probably a fixed number of them. Travel through time can only occur at certain fixed locations, and the players can only exit the dungeon in their own era.
  12. The elaborate hairpiece of a grand lady, who contracted a wizard to fill it with tiny treasure and tiny monsters, and to shrinkify any adventurers who want to brave the danger so she can show off during the grandest party of the season.
  13. The death palace of an ancient conqueror queen who demanded that each of her subject people’s build a grand home for her. This particular one was filled with confusing corridors and traps, in the express hope that she might visit someday.
  14. Permeated by extreme temperature: perhaps very hot, in which case armor is dangerous to wear, metal objects are dangerous to touch, and copious water rations are needed. Alternately it may be very cold, in which case layered clothing is necessary, floors will often be slippery, and important details may be obscured by ice or snow.
  15. A defense built by a subterranean civilization. They dug ever upwards, not realizing until too late that eventually the solid earth would give way to a terrifying sky. Believing they had discovered hell, they built this place to prevent any horrible surface creatures from reaching the wholesome lands below.
  16. A training ground for a creature which predates on humans. Their young must learn to hunt perfectly in controlled conditions, lest they make some mistake which reveals the creature’s existence to human kind. People are lured to this place with rumors of hidden riches.
  17. A facility for the creation of new forms of life. It may be a naturally occurring spot where evolution is wild and rapid, it may be God’s own workshop, or it could be the magical or scientific laboratory of an ambitious mortal. In the latter case, there must have been some intent: to replace people with clones, to produce an army, to satisfy a god complex, etc.
  18. An afterlife, which was once a paradise for the adherents of faith now long forgotten. The gods who made it are dead, asleep, or so weakened they can no longer justify the effort of maintaining the place. Many of its pleasures have turned to horrors, and much of its boundless space has collapsed into the ether between realities.
  19. The former hive of an extinct colony of giant architect ants. The spaces are more complex and intricate than one would expect of a typical ant, but retain a naturalistic quality.
  20. A small cog in the mechanism of reality. If the birth and death of the whole universe is a cycle that takes ten billion billion years, it is only because its cycle is powered by other cycles which turn more rapidly. This place is born, dies, and is reborn within a mere few hundred years, and is presently in a state of collapse. Even as the player characters plunder it, parts of it will cease to exist around them.
  21. The extra-dimensional retreat of a long dead wizard. It is located on another world, and enjoys grand views of beautiful vistas. The exits all lead back to our world however, as this planet is entirely inhospitable to all familiar modes of life.
  22. The habitat of a unique species of creature that lives nowhere else. They are not hostile, and may not even know how to respond to violence. Their presence alters the typical dungeoneering experience in a major way: perhaps they scream when they see light, or exhibit a natural anti-magic field, they may excrete a slippery or sticky substance on every surface, or be naturally inclined towards serving as mounts.
  23. A mysterious structure which appeared overnight, and occupies a much-used space. It may be sitting in a farmer’s field, or in a town square, or perhaps its appearance has displaced other structures whose inhabitants are missing. (Did they go wherever their homes went, or are they in the dungeon?) Alternately, the dungeon might have formed itself around existing structures, such that their inhabitants are now trapped in their own homes.
  24. A towering lighthouse, abandoned after an ancient catastrophe sundered the earth and caused the shore to move hundreds of miles away.
  25. The studio of an eccentric artist who stumbled into being considered a “genius” by wealthy elites. This person dabbled in every medium, indulging every depraved and harmful instinct in the pursuit of novel modes of expression. When they passed, their multiple wills created such a tangle of confusion (another attempt at unusual artistic expression) that the descendants of the original beneficiaries are still arguing in the courts.
  26. A snowy mountain resort for affluent guests. It may have been a ski or hunting lodge which has fallen out of fashion, and gone many years without proper maintenance to protect it from the bitter cold.
  27. A secluded island or private stretch of beach which was once a popular destination for wealthy people on holiday. Nearby is a severely depopulated service village where the help was left to fend for themselves. They resent living in hovels and penury while all this wealth has sat abandoned for decades. They’d move in if they could, but the owners left many dangers behind to “protect their property.”
  28. A great multi-level stable. The folly of an obscenely wealthy aristocrat who loved horses more than they loved people. Much more.
  29. Someones unconscious mind, which has been temporarily manifested as a series of rooms and corridors. It may be the psyche of a king, a demigod, or a player who happens to be absent for this session. Within are creatures that represent the character’s hangups, insecurities, and defensiveness. The treasures may be their secrets, spells, or access to levers which control their feelings in some way. The players might want to help this person heal from trauma, recall vital information, or may simply be taking advantage of a person who has fallen into this peculiar and vulnerable position.
  30. A slaughterhouse or fish gutting plant. An industrial building for killing and disassembling meat creatures. Perhaps built in a strange way by an eccentric industrialist, or warped by angry magics.
  31. An island which has only recently risen up from the sea. Its spaces are constructed of coral, lava channels, sea monster corpses, and dense groupings of strange plants which only survive underwater. If it rose only yesterday it will be teeming with dying sea life, lashing out at anything that comes near. If it rose a few years ago, a new ecology will be emerging, and the inhabitants will be migrants seeking to build a new life for themselves.
  32. The seasonal villa of an obscenely wealthy bourgeois or aristocrat. They are not in residence, and so it is protected by traps and guard creatures. The deeper one delves into the villa, the more terrible depravities are uncovered.
  1. In heaven there is a house waiting for each of us. Angels toil to make these homes worthy of our goodness. Recently a true saint who had earned themselves a sprawling and decadent mansion committed a horrific sin just before their death. They were cast into hell, and in His disgust God hurled their mansion away, and did not realize that it fell to earth.
  2. Placed here by the gods themselves as a test for those who might wish to consider themselves heroes. Those who overcome its many challenges will earn themselves divine attention. This is, at best, a mixed blessing.
  3. A great landfill where the detritus of civilization is discarded. A series of passages and chambers have been hollowed out of of the great heaps of trash, perhaps connecting further to underground tunnels or sewers. Inhabitants probably include a mystery cult of rich kids on a poverty tourism kick.
  4. A titanic boulder impossibly rolling back and forth between two mountain peaks without ever appearing to loose momentum. Perhaps the spirit of Sisyphus labors on it. The dungeon within the boulder may be terribly disorienting, or may have a sort of artificial gravity to it.
  5. Radiant with powerful healing energies. Any living creatures within the dungeon gain fast healing 20, though this only applies to injuries sustained while inside the dungeon. This makes both the player characters, and the inhabitants they may come into conflict with, functionally invulnerable. Violence will not effectively solve problems here.
  6. An active factory whose interior is a mystery. The dungeon’s produce simply emerges, and is taken for granted by those who collect and use it. Alternately, the factory dungeon may take input, but give no output. People may continue to load coal onto a mysterious conveyor belt simply because it is a traditional ritual.
  7. So high tech as to be impossible for the player characters to comprehend. It might be an alien vessel or space station, or an anthropological observation post. It is destroyed, abandoned, and at least partially reclaimed by nature. There may or may not be some survivors left behind, some bits of technology could still work, a clever person could learn a lot from studying this place, and potentially advance their own culture’s technological abilities.
  8. Santa’s Workshop, or the lair of some other folkloric character. The burrow of the Easter Bunny, or the sky castle of the twelve merry goblins of [insert setting specific holiday here]. The more out of season it is when this dungeon is delved the better. It might be properly abandoned, or perhaps the mighty folkloric creature is hibernating until their appropriate season. Perhaps each year they wake up and spend a week sweeping out all the squatters who settled in their home while they slept.
  9. Builder Beetles were born from a poorly-worded wish, spoken by a dying architect who regretted never being responsible for any truly spectacular structures. Where they come from before they do what they do, and where they go after they’re done, is a mystery. They appear in small human settlements, drive everyone out, and build. Great walls and ceilings over the whole town, connecting existing buildings with elaborate tunnels and sky bridges until the whole village is a dungeon. Humans rarely want to live in the spaces the Builder Beetles leave behind, but for other creatures it is a very convenient domicile.
  10. Noah’s Ark (or perhaps the arc of Ziusudra, Atra-Hasis, Utnapishtim, etc). A great vessel large enough to shelter a breeding stock of all the world’s land animals during a great flood, which came to rest on the top of a mountain when the water receded. It still rests their, perhaps filled with the descendants of those unrecorded creatures who chose not to disembark with the rest.
  11. A legal library, for The Law is sacred, and its sanctity depends on its secrecy. Only the arbiters could ever know The Law, only they could study and interpret its precepts. To maintain the purity of The Law, it had to be housed in a labyrinth beneath the city, with entrances known only to the arbiters, so they could disappear to consult the law, and reappear to render their verdict wherever their intercession was needed.
  12. A woodland where the trees and bramble grow so thickly they might as well be walls surrounding ‘rooms’ and ‘corridors’ that were carved into existence by an ancient and secretive religion.
  13. A test of maturity, constructed bit by bit by the girls of the People at the Foot of the Mountain became women. Before any girl could seek a mate and a home of her own she must present a plan for a new corridor or room, then build it with her own two hands. She may be instructed, but never aided. Many began their work quite young, as it could take years to complete an ambitious addition. The temple is so sprawling now that no complete map of it exists, and all manner of creature have settled in long neglected sections.
  14. An abandoned train yard. No active rails even connect to this place anymore, and the rusting hulks are scattered pell mell about the place.
  15. The work of true artisans. Folks who believe in craftsmanship for its own sake. It should not matter whether anyone will ever see a thing, one should still labor to make it as beautiful and sturdy as they possibly can. The result of your work should stand apart from every other example of its kind because even if other people don’t see it, it will be appreciated by god who sees everything. Even this sewer system.
  16. A trap for humanity, eroded into existence by spiteful water spirits who do not appreciate the haphazard way their essence is often drawn up to the surface via hateful human wells. The spirits deposited many noxious fungi, amphibious carnivores, and subterranean treasures here.
  17. An active temple for a god of foolhardy death. Attempting to plunder the temple is an act of religious devotion. The priests say that even if you don’t die, taking such risks is an act of prayer that will surely be heard by their god. Others contest that there is no such thing as a god of foolhardy death. They argue instead that the priesthood is cover for a demonic cult, and the dungeon is an elaborate form of human sacrifice. Sure, a few folks might make it out with fabulous wealth, but far more will perish in the attempt!
  18. An abandoned factory, which may have been built to produce statuary, war materiel, print publications, worked metals, candy, etc. Much will have been left behind, but only because extracting it would be more expensive than it’s worth.
  19. An arctic research station composed of multiple buildings and some excavated ice caves, all with guidelines between them to aid movement whenever thick fog or snowstorm makes vision unreliable. Unless your setting is more modern, this place is likely the caprice of a wizard who believed there was some ancient wisdom hidden nearby, or the former home of some hero who was cursed to be unable to endure warmer climes.
  20. A mystery. A few years ago the people of a nearby village all blacked out in tandem. When they awoke, there was the dungeon. The callouses on their hands told them they had done the work themselves. Years had clearly passed, and those who had been too young or too old to work were found long dead from starvation. With nowhere else to go the people resumed their lives, but it is a trauma none of them will ever overcome, and they make a concerted effort never to look at the structure they don’t remember building.
  21. A forgotten showcase structure, built in collaboration between various guilds of artisans to demonstrate their skills, and serve as a unified guild hall and catalogue for potential employers.
  22. A cold, cold revenge from the dinosaurs. Their sages foresaw the meteor which heralded their destruction, and could find no means by which to avoid death. They foresaw also that the planet would come to be dominated by disgusting ape creatures. The final years of their race was spent building this place, and placing their greatest treasures within it so as to better tempt as many of the ape things as possible to their deaths.
  23. An archaeological dig of massive scope, abandoned perhaps due to lack of funds, or because it released something it should not have. The rooms are semi permanent living structures, and partially excavated buildings.
  24. A sort of rat’s maze built by a cosmic entity who wishes to observe and rate humanity’s quality. This is not hidden. Everyone knows that when you enter this dungeon you will be watched, and tested. The tests are often different, and are rarely fair. People attempt it anyway because the “cheese” at the end is a legitimately bounteous treasure.
  25. An ancient military base. Perhaps a grand permanent campus with parade grounds, thick walls, and offices for generals. Alternately it may have been a frontier structure, built in haste to to withstand brutal assaults.
  26. The refuge of a wealthy and powerful old man who suffered a public embarrassment so severe that he decided to build a miniature city for himself, populated by his servants, where he could live out his final days. It was inhabited for a scant few years before he died. No one else ever took up residence, as it was in a terribly inconvenient location, and managing its great size would have been an absurd expense.
  27. Formerly a political prison. A place where the ruling elite could cause enemies of the state to disappear, “convince” them to turn against their comrades, and put an ultimate end to their disloyalty in some efficient and satisfying way.
  28. An artificial tiered garden out in the middle of a desert. Unless there is magical watering at work, the plants will have long ago died from lack of imported water. Only native desert plants grow here now, though some invasive plants may have survived by eerie mutation. Within the garden’s tiers are a series of chambers originally meant for maintenance staff and visiting guests.
  29. An elaborately ornamented temple built by a short lived religion which worshiped some particular animal. It could be any relatively simple animal: iguanas, penguins, beards, crows, flamingos, etc. The whole place exudes big Horse Girl energy.
  30. A time capsule built beneath the foundations of the city, and intended to be opened on the 1000th anniversary of its founding. It was intended as a showcase of the city’s original culture, and to play a few pranks on the naughty future-folk. Doubtless, the past thousand years have seen a few other creatures sneak their way in via unintended means.
  31. An ancient race track, or other sports stadium. The field of play will likely have had other structures built within it by the dungeon’s current residents, and will likely also contain chambers that were intended for food vendors, green rooms, announcers, VIPs, perhaps even an attached palace.
  32. Intended to trap a terrestrial god, built by a sect of that god’s worshipers. They came to believe their god had a hellthorn in its paw, which they wished to remove. As such the dungeon is in all ways designed to show respect to those it traps.
  33. Formerly a school of some kind. It may have been for primary education (elementary, high school), higher education (university, philosophy, science), trade education (culinary, carpentry, cosmetology, medicine, law, military officer), spiritual education (seminary, martial arts dojo), or something fanciful (necromancy, spying, assassination). It may have been abandoned because it lacked funds, due to fallout from some horrible scandal, or simply because the civilization which built it is long extinct.
  34. The first draft of hell. Eventually more capacity was needed, as well as updated security since a few souls had managed to escape. All the damned souls and devilish tormentors are long since moved on to better facilities.
  1. The dungeon is a metaphorical space. Different rooms and creatures are representations of places and people. There are clues to what the various elements of the dungeon represent, but the connections are not always obvious. None the less, actions taken in the dungeon will be reflected outwards. If the party were to meet a goblin who represents their house, for example, and they killed that goblin, they might return home to find their house had burned down.
  2. A zoo, aquarium, or menagerie. Presumably the animals have either escaped, died, or become mutated in some fashion.
  3. An enchanted pleasure palace wished into existence by someone long dead. The magically created servants within have split into factions over whether they want to kill anyone who visits the palace so they won’t be compelled to serve any more, and those who miss having someone to serve, and wish to trap visitors so that their lives can have purpose again.
  4. An intact suburra from the ancient world. These were a sort of ancient apartment buildings. The bottom floors would be businesses or upper-middle class homes. The higher floors were rented by poorer and poorer people as you went up. Given that these buildings were notoriously prone to fire and collapse, this one most likely survived either by being buried, or by some preservative magics.
  5. A testing ground built by order of a capricious prince who declared he would only marry the person who could retrieve the treasure from the dungeon’s center. Legends say he never did marry, so presumably that treasure would still be there, right?
  6. An ancient library assembled by a philosopher king, who made it their goal to record and collect all the knowledge in their world. Its treasures include many alternate versions of texts which are still well known in modern times, as well as lost literature, history, and science which may or may not have been rediscovered since it was lost. Unfortunately for looters, much of this writing is on great stone tablets which are incredibly difficult to move, and much of the rest is on scrolls which crumble to dust if touched.
  7. Laid out in an incredibly precise shape. Its structure forms a magic sigil that was used in an ancient and dark time in a grand summoning ritual which created the sun.
  8. There is a member of the royal family who was so mean spirited, ambitious, and stupid, that they were eventually exiled to a small island. Great care was taken to ensure all the perquisites of their royal rank remained in place, save only their freedoms of movement and association. They could never leave the island nor have contact with anyone not personally approved by the king, but were otherwise left to enjoy a life of excess however they saw fit. This is all ancient history, and now this island prison / pleasure palace is a dungeon filled with all manner of creatures. Alternately, it may be that the king has only recently died, and their will stipulates that this troublesome royal must be assassinated to prevent future troubles. The player characters could have been hired to do the deed, or to smuggle the prisoner off the island to safety.
  9. A place which predates the world. It floated through space for eons, gradually accumulating bits a space detritus, until its gravitational mass was great enough that it formed a rogue planet, and eventually fell into stable orbit around our star.
  10. The interior of an inscrutable tool which was left here by a creature beyond our understanding. It could be God’s anvil, or Yog-Sthoth’s power loom. Though, obviously, the names of human tools can only vaguely approximate the scope of this thing’s function. It may have been left intentionally, or dropped and forgotten. Some of its functions could potentially be manipulated by player characters to produce strange results, or the things it does may be entirely beyond human ability or understanding.
  11. A laboratory in which a wizard or scientist conducted various atmospheric and ecological experiments. One room may emulate conditions of an arctic tundra, while another is meant to simulate a rain forest. Hazards might include tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, etc.
  12. An embassy built when humanity was at peace with a strange race who had strange needs. Perhaps sea creatures who needed to be submerged in water to live, sky creatures who could not breathe our thick air, or burrowing creatures who could not abide the light. This place was built to accommodate their needs, and facilitate better relations between the two peoples. Peace has long since broken down, and the two races have parted ways. The embassy still stands, though. As hostile to human life as it was adapted to theirs.
  13. A former senate house or parliamentary building. It contains a large space for collective lawmaking, and ancillary spaces for offices, ceremonies, meetings, and other amenities peculiar to the culture who built it.
  14. Crafted for no particular reason by a wizard who had created a peculiar nightmare-scanning device, which enabled them to construct real versions of the imaginary spaces those nightmares took palace in, and link them together. The complex connected dozens of dream spaces before the wizard realized there was actually no point to this activity, and moved on.
  15. Created by and for very small creatures: rat sized rat people rearranging sewer pipes, or intelligent viruses building a citadel within a human body, or pixies hollowing out trees and boulders. The player characters will need to shrink themselves to enter the dungeon. They could perhaps just destroy it if they wished, but doing so would likely destroy any treasures contained within. (After all, such treasures are likely to be art, magic, or information. One does not plunder a minuscule dungeon looking for great heaps of gold!) It should also be noted that tiny folks are well acquainted with the tactics and defenses necessary to protect themselves against giants.
  16. Created by and for very large creatures. Everything in this dungeon is far too big for the player characters. Stairs and furniture require difficult climbing to navigate. Note that just because it was built by large peoples, does not mean they are its only inhabitants. They may not even use it at all anymore.
  17. A prison constructed according to some armchair philosopher’s notions of how to reform undesirable peoples. Perhaps it is filled with challenges, on the belief that overcoming them would make a person deserving of reentering society. Perhaps it is built on the idea that isolation, medical torture, or constant observation would best ‘fix’ a person.
  18. A great complex tree house, possibly built by long gone elves, or long dead architects attempting to survive whilst marooned on an uncharted island.
  19. A medieval monastery of the western style, built for the outwards appearance of maintaining a simple life of prayer and holy labor, while allowing the monks some privacy to indulge in sinful luxury. Perhaps more privacy than usually was provided here with great chambers hidden underground for all manner of decadence.
  20. A performance space built for the delectation of the upper classes, with greater social rank allowing access to lower chambers where ever less socially acceptable art is performed. At the lowest levels, the performers themselves rarely ever came out again.
  21. An important cultural site for your people. Your ancestors built it and used it, but at some point chose to abandon it. Until recently it was fairly common to visit the place and view its wonders, leaving offerings to the ancient dead where appropriate. Recently, a colonial power has brutally dominated your lands. They’ve declared this place to be an archaeological site, and forbidden your people from entering it.
  22. A high class casino where the highest of high stakes bets were placed. It was transformed into a dungeon by a really, really foolhardy bet which went very poorly.
  23. The maintenance corridors of a massive inscrutable machine, the engine of a natural process. Perhaps this dungeon is what turns the sun and moon in the sky, what controls the tides, the passing of the seasons, or the birth of heroes. It may even be an engine of destruction. God’s own fail-safe in case creation ever gets out of hand. It may or may not be possible for the players to make minor alterations without completely disrupting the machine. Perhaps it is broken before they arrive and they wish to fix it. Perhaps they can radically alter the nature of their world with some ill-advised tinkering.
  24. The exterior of a titanic creature. A mega-elk, ur-mammoth, or humaniform colossus. There is a whole ecology across—and even within—their body. Pockets and purses are like rooms, fur is a forest, whole settlements could rest on their back or hang from their underside.
  25. Knowing they would be conquered when the next campaigning season began, a whole civilization dedicated themselves to building this dungeon. They sold their souls for the necessary magics, and heaped the whole treasures of their history in a room that is visible from the entrance, but protected by a great and impenetrable wall of death.
  26. A petrified egg from which a god would have hatched if it had been properly tended. The dry yolk still forms the center of the dungeon. Alternately, there may be a creature which gestates in dungeons is if they were an egg. Protected by the shell of the mythic underworld, nourished by the yolk of the dungeon’s inhabitents once its digestive tract develops.
  27. The labyrinthine halls from which the enforcers emerged, dragging criminal wrongthinkers into dark rooms from which they rarely emerged. The space connects here and there, and contains many unpleasant places now settled by creatures less horrible than the enforcers were, though that is not a high bar to clear.
  28. Shelter built against a civilization-ending cataclysm which never came. Or perhaps did come, was survived thanks to the shelter, and is now only long forgotten history.
  29. A facility for containing creatures and objects with dangerous abilities and unknown purpose. There was a breakout long ago, so many of these things have since escaped into the world and may even be widely considered normal today. Perhaps, before the breakout, nobody ever got cancer, pregnancy and birth were trivial affairs, and the human lifespan was triple what it is now. Some safeguards and some anomalies are still here and still dangerous. The world is a better place for not being subjected to the influence of those which are still secured, contained, and protected. Whilst exploring this dungeon, the characters should certainly encounter clues as to how the world was better before certain anomalies got away.
  30. A reverse tower, hanging down from the sky of a great underground cavern. Alternately, a sideways tower, straight out from a cliff face. Gravity may or may not be reoriented within the interior.
  31. Sailing ships clustered together and left unattended. They may have all run aground on an uncharted island, or been discarded and left to rot together in a shallow bay, or forgotten in the secret dry dock of a fallen military power, or abandoned in the shipyard of an insolvent corporation.
  32. Constructed as a habitat for an endangered creature with a sensitivity to something which has been magically warded against. Perhaps light kills them, so the whole dungeon is shrouded in magical darkness. Alternately the whole dungeon may be under a zone of silence, an anti-magic field, or have a robust automated fire suppression system.
  33. The world ship on which ancient human colonists arrived on this world. Malfunction caused it to crash, and those who made it to the escape pods are our ancestors. It is a history so thoroughly lost that no human even suspects we did not originate on this world.
  34. The famous money hole. Of late it has become a fad among the wealthy to flaunt their excess by throwing larger and larger amounts into a deep natural shaft. The more a person can afford to discard, the more affluent everyone assumes they must be. Of course, the hole itself is heavily guarded to prevent any dirty poors from misappropriating the discarded funds and unbalancing the economy. Perhaps creatures have also been set loose below to make recovering the treasure even more foolhardy, or creatures may have come up from the underdark to fight over this great heap of treasure. Regardless, there might be some other way into those caves.

Can you believe that titanic tirade is just one sixth of what I’ve written for this series? I mean, the entries in this one are particularly verbose, but none the less, dang.

Also, All Cops Are Bastards.

Weird Cleric Magic: Oddities

The Glory from God system as established before now stands perfectly well on its own. If the stuff that already exists is all you want to play with, that works great. But, if you’d like the magic to be a little more chaotic, you can play with these casting oddities, which add an element of risk and reward to players considering rolling more dice than they need to in order to cast a spell.

When dice are rolled to cast a spell, if any of those dice share the same face, the player must roll on the oddities table. Which number is showing doubles determines which of the tables below the player must roll on. Each set of doubles must be resolved, so if a player rolls 4 dice, and they roll two 3s and two 4s, then they must roll on both of those tables.

In the event that the player rolls triples, treat that as rolling two sets of doubles of the same number. So if a player rolls three 1s, they must roll on the 1s oddities table twice. They must likewise roll three times for quads, four times for a quintet, and so on.

There are essentially three types of oddities. Good things, bad things, and things which may be good, bad, or irrelevant depending on the specific situation in which they occur. The subtables for lower numbered doubles are weighted more in favor of bad things, and the subtables for higher numbered doubles are weighted in favor of good things.

It should be noted that the success or failure of a spell is determined before any dice are rolled on the oddities table. Nothing that happens on the oddities table can change the fact that the spell did or did not succeed. (Though it can lower or improve the spell’s efficacy if the spell did succeed).

Snake Eyes (Double 1s)

  1. You have made a deeply offensive error in your casting. Your god curses you. Roll a random curse.
  2. Your interference in this matter has come to the attention of a rival god. Your deity and this one are now struggling for influence over this place, and clerical magic from either one of them will be blocked until the contest is resolved. (1-in-6 chance each round. 50/50 chance whose god will win.)
  3. Though it may not be immediately apparent to the caster, their religious superior (currently deep in prayer) has been told by god that the cleric is a disappointment. In the coming weeks they will be called before this superior, and it will be demanded that some failing in their character be corrected.
  4. The caster briefly experiences a nirvana-like state in which they cease to exist. To others, it appears that they simply disappear. They reapper 1d4 rounds later, with no memory of what they experienced, save for a vague sense that they ultimately proved unworthy of some great gift.
  5. The caster’s appearance changes slightly, and permanently. Their nose gets a little wider, their hair changes color. They grow taller or shorter, thinner or fatter. In rare cases they may even change gender entirely. The specific alteration is decided on by the referee.
  6. A special zeal was noticed in your casting. The spell goes off as normal, and is 50% more effective than it ought to be.

Double 2s

  1. Your faith is shaken. Treat this spell as though it were one level higher for the purposes of determining which spell dice are lost.
  2. The caster realizes they have made an error, and must seek penance. (1. They must go without food for a week, suffering any penalties that entails. 2. They must self-flaggelate, dealing 1d3 damage, each morning for a week. 3. They must publicly announce their sin to their companions. All of their hirelings have their loyalty reduced by one. 4. They must spend one entire haven turn in prayer, undertaking no other activity. )
  3. The caster has been deceived! The prayer they just uttered was taught them by a demon, and is deeply offensive to god. They may not attempt to cast this spell again until they’ve spent a week in prayer learning the proper version of it.
  4. Everyone in a 30′ radius feels their hands twitch and spasm, and they drop anything they’re holding.
  5. All animals within 100′ of the caster stop whatever they’re doing and kneel down in reverence to the god whose presence they are in. They will accept no commands until a turn has passed.
  6. A nearby NPC who is neutrally or better disposed towards you is inspired by your faith. Your reaction with them increases by 1, and they want to learn about your god.

Double 3s

  1. The white hot fire of your god exceeds your own zeal. Your holy symbol becomes too hot to touch. You must either drop the holy symbol (and cannot cast until you recover it) or take 1d4 damage.
  2. The vulgar nature of your god has disgusted some NPC. Their reaction to you is lowered by one.
  3. A nearby source of water becomes holy water.
  4. Nearby plants flourish and grow into their most vibrant selves, or wither and die, whichever is more appropriate to indicate your god’s presence.
  5. Your god grants you a moment of foresight. You’re meant to step slightly to one side. Next round you have +2 AC, and if you are hit, the damage taken is halved.
  6. Guided by the wisdom of a saint, a random skill is raised to 6-in-6 until it is next used.

Double 4s

  1. You are struck blind for 1d6 turns.
  2. The caster begins speaking in tongues. They babble nonsense that occasionally brushes with religious themes at the top of their voice for the next hour, and cannot say anything else. This doesn’t prevent them from casting spells.
  3. Everything the caster says echoes loudly, as if they are speaking with a dozen voices at once. This lasts for 1d4 hours. During this time they are incapable of whispering.
  4. The cleric’s body appears to catch fire, but no harm is done to them. The fire is not hot and does not burn anything, but provides light equivalent to a large bonfire. The fire slowly dwindles to nothing over the course of 1 exploration turn.
  5. If the spell cast was beneficial, the wearer gains the mark of the god. Anyone who loves the cleric’s god will do that person favors for 1 month. Conversely, if the spell was harmful, the target gains the mark of the god inverted. Anyone who loves the god will shun this person, and pelt them with stones, for 1 month.
  6. A soft veil of light descends over the cleric’s allies. They all get a +1 benefit to whatever their next roll is.

Double 5s

  1. The power of the spell knocks you off of your feet and you land flat on your back.
  2. The target of a beneficial spell becomes notably more attractive. The target of a harmful spell becomes notably less attractive.
  3. The earth shakes with the casting of the spell, felt by people up to a mile away.
  4. Along with the spell, a bolt of lightning strikes down from the sky dealing 1d6 damage to whomever the caster wants. They are branded with some appropriate passage from the god’s holy words.
  5. The cleric is affected by the serenity of being so close to their god. Their next reaction roll gets a +1 bonus.
  6. Your faith is strengthened. Return a lost die to your pool, or add an extra one for the day if one has not yet been expended.

Boxcars (Double 6s)

  1. A lack of zeal has been noticed in your casting. The spell works as intended, but is only half as effective as it ought to be.
  2. All damage taken and dealt by anyone this round is halved.
  3. A flash of insight allows the cleric to ask the referee one yes-or-no question, and receive an honest answer. This must be done immediately, and cannot be saved for later.
  4. An angel of god comes down and participates in the combat for a single round. They’re astonishingly effective. No one sees it except the cleric, everyone else is just a little baffled as to why something completely unexpected just happened.
  5. The spell is considered one level lower for the purpose of determining which dice are removed from the dice pool.
  6. The spell goes off twice, affecting the intended target, as well as a second target indicated by the caster.

And that concludes my foray into tinkering with Clerical magic. At least until I’m able to test the system a bit, or have some new idea. I hope you enjoyed it! Next week, I’ll be presenting you with a piece I am immensely proud of: Better Magic Wands + d100 Magic Wands. This is easily one of the best things I’ve written in the last couple months, and I cannot wait to share it. If you’re interested, it’s already available on my advance feed for anyone who pledges $5/month to my Patreon campaign. Hint hint.

LotFP Class: Bangtail

Life is never kind to the bottom rung. While the well-off have the luxury of fretting over their dignity, the rest are too busy fretting over where their next meal will come from. For some, their own body is the only commodity they have that anyone will trade for. It’s a step that, once taken, cannot be taken back. Society will never see you the same way again. There is no reprieve, no climbing out of that dank pit.

But then there are those who take well to the work. Who may even enjoy it. They can’t pull themselves out of the pit any more than their less adept colleagues, but they can stake a claim in the pit. Build a life in the pit. Become the queen of the pit. To those looking in from outside, you’re just another whore. But that is their weakness, their failure to see. And that failure is the Bangtail’s opportunity.

For experience points, hit dice, and saves, the Bangtail progresses as a Specialist. The Bangtail also gains skill points, but does so at half the rate of the Specialist: two at first level, and one at each subsequent level.

Bangtails can spend their skill points on any skill available to Specialists, including Sneak Attack. In addition, there are 3 new skills available only to members of the Bangtail class. All Bangtails start with a 1-in-6 chance for each of these skills.

Bangtail-Only Skills:

Goodtime: If there is an item for sale, and the NPC selling it has any sex drive whatsoever, then the Bangtail can make a Goodtime check. On success, they spend a Watch (4hrs) alone with the seller. In exchange the price of the item is reduced by 5% per level of the Bangtail.

Goodtime checks may also be made during a Haven turn so the Bangtail may ply their trade in whatever town they are in. On a successful check, the Bangtail earns 300 money per level. This money doesn’t grant any experience.

Note: NPC sexuality or curiosity is determined by the success or failure of the check. Nobody is immune simply because they’re not into members of the Bangtail’s expressed gender.

Bedroom Talk: Whores talk. When a Bangtail indicates an NPC, they can make a Bedroom Talk roll to determine if they’ve heard anything about that person. On a successful roll, the Bangtail has heard such stories. The referee may choose from two types of information to give. Either the Bangtail has heard some detailed information about this person’s secrets, or, they have heard shameful stories about that person’s darkest desires.  The latter would certainly be useful as blackmail.

Different people respond to blackmail in different ways of course: some capitulate, others become violent, and still others gamble that no one would believe you even if you did tell. Regardless of the way the NPC reacts, the information you learned is true.

Note: Bedroom Talk checks may only ever be made once per NPC, until the Bangtail increases their base success chance.

Amorous Gymnastics: It is an occupational necessity to practice flexibility. The Bangtail, as in all aspects of their craft, has raised this skill to a form of art. A successful Amorous Gymnastics check allows a Bangtail to fit themselves into spaces that might normally be considered too small, and move freely in those spaces. Using this they could slide through the bars of a prison cell, or hide themselves inside a briefcase. The skill could also be used to escape any bonds, balance under any circumstances, or generally use their body in unusual ways, such as firing a bow with their feet.

Other Bangtail Abilities:

  • In any decently sized town, a Bangtail will be able to make contact with the local network of prostitutes within 1 Watch. This network will be able to provide a safe (if rough) place to sleep when hiding from the authorities, and will know exactly how to help you slip out of town unnoticed if need be. They can also offer a wide variety of information about the city they work in.
  • You don’t make it far as a Bangtail without learning how to avoid trouble. Once per session, when a random encounter is rolled, a Bangtail can announce that they avoid the encounter. They saw the signs of trouble coming, and directed the party away from danger. That encounter doesn’t happen.
  • Despite the skill they’re most known for, the most important skill of a Bangtail is knowing how to talk to people. Bangtails receive a +1 to all social rolls. This increases to +2 at level four, and again to +3 at level seven.

Credit to Mick Reddick for suggesting the name “Bangtail” for me, and thereby inspiring me to create an entirely new class to do justice to that amazingly evocative word.

1d100 Small Town Quirks

A way to spice up those bland little settlements of 1d6*100 people that are scattered through your hex maps.

  1. Within the city limits (demarcated by a ring of stones), is a criss-cross of overgrown stone pathways leading all over town. The routes are indirect, but it’s considered extremely rude to step off of the path. Outsiders might be granted a single warning, then face expulsion from the village.
  2. Every home contains the death masks of relatives who have passed. Once a year the townsfolk wear them and mingle in the square, acting out the roles of the deceased.
  3. Each home contains a “fortune flower,” whose health reflects the family’s spiritual well-being and future potential. If the flower dies the house is demolished, and everyone in the family changes their name.
  4. Disputes are settled by tossing a particular type local frog back and forth. After each catch, the person who caught the frog takes a step back. Whoever fails to catch the frog must eat it whole, which usually results in a very bad hallucinogenic trip. The rare good trip is interpreted as meaning that the other person is the truly guilty party, and must somehow have cheated in the frog toss. Thus making them doubly guilty.
  5. Anyone who spends a night in the town must first get the town’s crest branded on their cheek. It’s important to the townsfolk that they be able to recognize anyone who has walked on their town’s soil. The residents themselves don’t have the crest, because they’ll all recognize one another.
  6. Residents always wear masks when outside of their homes. Most are just burlap sacks with holes cut for the eyes, but a few are carved and painted wooden affairs. They won’t discuss why it is they do this, but it’s not because their faces look weird or anything.
  7. Every structure in the village has a name. Person names, like Sarah, John, and Amy. The townsfolk talk about the buildings as though they are people, and refer to a structure’s opinions and emotional states. They aren’t crazy, it’s just an unusual form of animism.
  8. It is considered arrogant and rude to accept food, gifts, or an invitation before first refusing it 3 times. Strangers are not exempted from this assumption. Some of the town’s youth have taken to refusing the first offer three times, and then accepting the second offer. The degree of scandal an individual villager feels about this is proportional to their age.
  9. No single home will ever host more than a single guest at a time, which includes animals. If an adventuring party wishes to stay in town, their lodgings will be divided among multiple families.
  10. No coin or work is expected of visitors for the food they eat or the bed they sleep in while in town. However, visitors are expected to pay for their hospitality by sexually pleasing the village’s elderly, ugly, and mentally deficient residents.
  11. Anybody not wearing weapons in public is considered to be insulting the townsfolk’s martial abilities. “You’re such shitty warriors, I don’t even need weapons to defend myself.” The community will attack in force to prove the outsider wrong.
  12. Villagers believe that disease is a result of social brusqueness and confrontation. They aim to be always pleasant, but mostly they’re just really passive aggressive. If anyone actually is confrontational, the ‘victim’ will usually descend into an intense coughing fit. Whether it’s psychosomatic, or just another layer of passive aggression is unclear.
  13. It is fashionable in the village for women to shave their heads. Very few women have any hair at all, and those who do keep it extremely short.
  14. Each member of the community wears a single iron manacle on their left hand, with a few links of chain dangling from it. These are keepsakes from the town’s founders, who were a band of escaped slaves that successfully fled here to escape their masters.
  15. Any dispute in town is settled with a poetry slam. Any players who are too shy to participate in an actual poetry slam around the table should be considered to have delivered a really piss-poor poem.
  16. When speaking to outsiders, every member of the community claims to be David. David is a 33 year old man who drives mules for a living. They will acknowledge contradictions, but will not concede the point. (“Yes, I clearly am a 94 year old woman. And yet I am not. I am David, a 33 year old man.”)
  17. A community of religious fanatics who believe technology has led man from the path god set him on. They use tools of stone, leather, wood, and bone. Metal objects are absolutely prohibited within the city. They will allow travelers to bury their metals outside town if they wish to enter.
  18. There is a “children’s dormitory” in town where all of the children live. Children’s names are given to them by the town’s elders, and no single adult in the village may claim any specific child as their own offspring. Most adults in the village do show extra attention to their own children, but will be punished for doing so if it is too overt.
  19. While there are visitors in town, the villagers worship whatever god their visitors worship. They will be extremely insistent on knowing what gods the PCs worship, and what the proper form of reverence is.
  20. The dreams of children are of paramount importance, and considered coded harbingers of what is to come. Each family begins the day by reverently listening to the dreams of their children. If any child has a dream that is particularly portentous, a town gathering is called and the dream is repeated for everyone to hear.
  21. Before eating, the each member of the community will ask someone nearby to give them a solid punch in the gut. It’s a practice which dates back to a time of famine, when the punch was meant to make you feel less hungry right before you ate your meager scraps of food.
  22. Once per year, the town holds a lottery. Every man, woman, and child draws lots, and whomever ‘wins’ is beaten to death by the rest of the townsfolk. Tradition holds that if this ritual is ever abandoned, disaster will befall the town.
  23. Disputes are settled through a practice called Sharo. Each participant bludgeons the other with their fists, and whichever of the two shows pain first is the loser.
  24. Children are not considered “real” until their first birthday, when it is much less likely they will die unexpectedly. On this day, they are given a name, and their mother cuts off their father’s scrotum. The father remains a member of the family as a eunuch, honored for doing his duty in fostering a healthy child, and now meant to devote himself to nothing except for that child’s care. Meanwhile, the mother remarries. Women fashion the scrotums they’ve taken into a belt of pouches, denoting their status within the community.
  25. If two village women are pregnant at the same time, they must battle to the death. Thus, children are born only to the strongest parents.
  26. A man’s livestock is his worth, and a representation of his ability to provide for a family. As such men are typically allowed to marry as many women as they have cows.
  27. All of the town’s women learn how to juggle from a young age. Juggling is a deeply ingrained part of the town’s courtship rituals, and a man will always prefer an impressive juggler over an impressive beauty.
  28. Local children may never be seen by visitors. At all. When visitors are spotted approaching the town, the children are hurried into a special windowless building. They must remain there until the visitors leave, and any visitor who sees one of the local children will be sentenced to death by stoning on the spot.
  29. Blessings and good wishes are given by spitting. The locals spit in cooking pots to pray for a good meal, they spit on their weapons to ensure a good hunt, and they spit on visitors to wish them good travels.
  30. Men and woman who don’t live in the same house with one another may only communicate by proxy, or in writing.
  31. There is an unusual flower that grows bountifully in the area, and is consumed with almost every meal. Its effects are notably similar to cocaine.
  32. Each evening the townsfolk gather in the common house to watch a new tattoo being added to one of their number. Everyone in town is covered in dozens of tattoos, and almost everyone has some skill with a needle and ink.
  33. Every single one of the townsfolk is actually some local critter that was polymorphed into a human shape by a drunken wizard. Rabbits, foxes, frogs, spiders, etc. They retain a semblance of their lower instincts, but they think and function as well as you or I. And after more than a decade, they’re very comfortable being human. They’re terrified of being found out and returned to their natural state. Any visitor that might have Dispell Magic prepared will be turned away, but they will otherwise do their best to act natural.
  34. All town activity stops abruptly at noon for a ritual dance. It is announced by a bell rung by a cripple, and everyone performs the dance wherever they happen to be standing when they hear it. The dance lasts 13 minutes.
  35. Everyone in town wears matching uniforms. A drab grey and brown tunic and breeches, skillfully hemmed. Everyone is clean shaven, with their hair in a long ponytail. Each tunic has a bright red band at chest height, which the townsfolk take pains to keep clean.
  36. A Displacer Beast wanders the town freely. The townsfolk will step out of its path if it is approaching, and allow it to wander freely in and out of their homes. They provide it with food and reverence, and in turn they believe it protects them from evil.
  37. When animals are slaughtered for their meat, it is believed that they must be made to suffer before their death. Several methods of torturous death have been devised for various animals. It is believed that eating meat that was made to experience pain will protect the consumer from suffering in their own life.
  38. There are layers upon layers of conspiracy in the town. Plots and counter plots, all with the eventual goal of bringing down the mayor and replacing him with a man of the people. Nobody seems to understand why this is ridiculous in such a small community.
  39. A unique, deck-building card game using tarot cards is insanely popular in town. Visitors will be asked to play by nearly everyone they meet.
  40. At birth, everyone is bitten by a particular local snake. If they live, they’ll have a splotchy scar from the venom. The shape of the scar is then used to determine something about their future, and the way they ought to be raised.
  41. Each structure in town is a unique color. Any new structures must be painted in a color that has not been used yet.
  42. The townsfolk touch butts with people as a greeting, the same way decent god-fearing folk shake hands or wave.
  43. The townsfolk are a group of time travelers. They became trapped here in the past, and are determined not to disrupt the timeline.
  44. The village is a nudist colony. Nobody minds if you bring weapons into town, but clothing and armor are absolutely banned from being worn.
  45. Bathing is considered unlucky. Nobody will want to be anywhere near a traveler who is “too clean.”
  46. A smithocracy. Whomever is able to make the most impressive object is elevated to be the town’s ruler.
  47. A settlement of people from a far off culture. One which is extremely out of place here. Like a Japanese village in the middle of 16th century France. They have a very good reason for being here.
  48. The mayor is a cat. The townsfolk take this as seriously as you think they ought to.
  49. The town is a secret haven for those who practice a completely innocuous, but also highly illegal religion. They live in fear of anyone associated with the dominant religion of the area.
  50. The town is run like a military fort. The people pursue their industry (farming, trading, etc.), but they also build walls, train with weapons, and have guard rotations. Their preparedness is as impressive as it is out of place.
  51. The locals place their dead in a nearby peat bog. Once the bodies are well preserved, they’re pulled out. Each body spends several years being moved around the village. Sitting in chairs, leaning against walls, etc. After a time they are finally buried beneath whatever house they originally lived in.
  52. The town uses its own internal currency.
  53. The town’s founding myth speaks of horrible giants that tortured their forebears. All doors are 5′ 11″ high. Anyone who has to duck to walk through them is unwelcome in the town and must wait outside.
  54. The town has a communal poop-pit for making Jenkams.
  55. A full kiss on the mouth is the standard greeting.
  56. Visitors are expected to provide entertainment in the evening.
  57. The town is divided into two teams, based on the town’s two founders. Everything is scored.
  58. At the center of town is a large board. The surprisingly literate townsfolk have lengthy written discussions about important matters of the day by posting messages to this board.
  59. The town has an official storyteller who spends the day walking around and observing the happenings in town. Each work day ends by gathering to hear the storyteller share what he saw that day.
  60. All visitors must wear a special hat. It’s bright pink and utterly ridiculous.
  61. Everyone in town insists that they’re all badgers in human suits. It’s an inside joke. You’d have had to be there.
  62. The town was an experiment by the church. A number of particularly pious priests and nuns were released from their vows of chastity and told to build the perfect, most godly community. Since that particular piety was the result of these folks being gay, they performed their new duties only with the utmost resentment for the act. They’ve created a town this is punishingly repressive, and even hostile towards sex.
  63. It’s one of the player’s childhood villages. In the wrong place, but otherwise exactly as it was when they were a child. If they go looking they may even be able to find themselves as a child.
  64. The town has a corporate structure, with everything being owned by the town council. The mayor directs the town’s industry, and the mayor’s directions are implemented by overseers. The townsfolk are payed a relatively small fixed amount for their labor, (minus rent).
  65. The town is a commune with no obvious hierarchy. The town’s money is pooled together in a vault, and only used when dealing with outsiders. Otherwise, everyone merely does what jobs they’re able, and is given what they need.
  66. This village is well off the beaten path, and rarely receives visitors. They haven’t gotten any news of the outside world in 20+ years.
  67. They have an intense rivalry with a neighboring town. There is very little at stake really, but emotions run high. Assassinations are not uncommon.
  68. There are two towns. One where all of the men reside, and one where all of the women reside. They’re a day’s travel apart from one another. Randomly determine which one your players have encountered.
  69. A village populated entirely by the elderly. Several other villages in the area expel their elderly and send them here, where they live together and eke out an existence as best they can. They are considered dead by the outside world.
  70. Four years ago, a plague ravaged this village. Almost overnight anyone who had gone through puberty died, leaving only children behind. The oldest kids are now about 17 years old, and they’ve been on their own for awhile. They’ve got a system worked out for themselves, but they lack a lot of necessary education, so it’s not a very good system.
  71. The townsfolk have a unique and complicated moral code involving food. It’s nearly a certainty that if they see anyone from outside their community eating, they will find some food combination, utensil use, or chewing pattern to be reprehensible.
  72. The town is highly democratic. Citizens are passionate about their civic duties, and they gather to discuss new laws weekly. Each week operates under a significantly revised legal code.
  73. The townsfolk place a high value on personal honor. Like a drunk Spaniard, or a racist’s depiction of an Asian person.
  74. The townsfolk have a completely unique language.
  75. The people in town are argumentative to the point of insanity. Play them like a living incarnation of youtube comments.
  76. The town was founded by a group of sexual deviants who just couldn’t deal with sexual repression of common society. They know how to present a “normal” face to outsiders to prevent lynch mobs from showing up, but when there’s nobody around they have a lot of orgies.
  77. Everyone in town acts very suspiciously. There’s no reason for it, it’s just the way the local dialect and customs developed.
  78. The locals are all eldritch lizardfolk wearing human skins.
  79. The village is trapped in an infinite timeloop, living the same day over and over again, but none of them realize it. Fortunately, visitors are not affected by this.
  80. Once a visitor has been welcomed within the town, they will not be allowed to leave until the omens for their departure are good.
  81. Visitors are highly prized for their stories.
  82. Visitors are highly prized for their meat
  83. The town issued a letter of secession 12 years ago, and no one has noticed yet. They firmly believe themselves to be a sovereign nation.
  84. Everyone in town wears a mirror around their neck so that people can see what they look like when they talk. They believe it prevents people from “acting with an ugly spirit.”
  85. The local noble is a dilettante for social improvement. They’ve set up this village as a model town. It’s very pretty and well manicured. The peasants are all required to attend classes each day on etiquette, history, and philosophy. The townsfolk are too exhausted after the long days of work they still have to perform to really do well in these classes, and everyone involved is just getting more and more frustrated.
  86. The townsfolk are actually a group of nobles “roughing it.” The real villagers have mostly been displaced, save a few who are there to show the nobles how things are done.
  87. Strapping large tree branches to one’s back and head has become very fashionable.
  88. Capes are fashionable. As are constant flourishes.
  89. Mustaches are so fashionable that the women wear fake ones.
  90. At first glance, the town appears to be composed entirely of women. In fact, the men of this town are excellent cross dressers. It’s a practice they began as a means of avoiding being called to war, but after 15 years this androgyny has become a way of life. Many of the actual women are entirely fed up with the practice.
  91. An experimental music collective has taken up in the town. There are nightly performances with instruments that were invented just earlier that day. Things like captured birds squeezed by leather belts, logs rhythmically rolled in mud, or tiny hammers used to tap a person’s teeth.
  92. The lands belongs to a far off noble lady who has never so much as visited. She has the whole town carving cat figurines for no real reason.
  93. The town is a haven for bandits and burglars. Everyone in town is somehow involved, even if they’re just working as farmers to maintain the illusion that it’s a normal town.
  94. A con artist impersonating the town’s distant lord has taken up residence. They’ve got the whole town catering to their whims, but they’re being careful not to push anybody too far.
  95. The townsfolk have been cursed. They are all nocturnal.
  96. The townsfolk have been cursed to age at 3x the normal rate.
  97. The townsfolk have been cursed to be incorporeal to other living creatures. They can interact with the world around them, pick up and manipulate physical objects. But if they touch another person, they will pass right through them. None of them have touched another human being in years.
  98. There was an omnipotent child terrorizing the town, forcing every adult to bend to their whims. The child is still there, and still terrorizing the townsfolk, but they somehow lost their omnipotence. They’re just a normal 11 year old kid now, and they’re terrified of what’s going to happen when everybody realizes it.
  99. The townsfolk are cursed so that each one of them believes that they have an imaginary loved one being held at knife-point nearby. Their completely fictional loved one will be killed unless they act natural.
  100. The people of the town are the dream of a wizard on the other side of the world whose mind is leaking. While the wizard sleeps, the people are entirely real, but they disappear when he is awake.

Jumping on a 2-Year Old Bandwagon: Replacing +1 Swords

In 2014 it was fashionable to post evocative alternatives to +1 swords. Gus did it. Courtney did it. Arnold did it. Errybody did it. I wasn’t blogging much at the time, but I really enjoyed reading those. I miss reading them. So I’m gonna write one.

The Mugger’s Choice:  On a natural 20, the wound dealt to the target becomes a geyser of money! 1d100 coins spray across the room, making a terrible racket. Literal blood money!

Sword of Justification: If used to slay a human or human-like creature, the Sword of Justification will cause the corpse to undergo a gruesome metamorphosis. It will contort itself into monstrous shapes, growing horns or fur, oozing black blood, and reeking of sulfur and brimstone. The specific shape will vary, but no one looking at the result will imagine it was anything but an evil creature.

Immovable Sword – There’s a switch on the hilt which locks the swords position relative to its environment. It’ll stay floating in mid air if you tell it to. Like an immovable rod, but a sword. Useful for setting impromptu traps.

Self Preservation Sword – Anytime a save v. breath is required, both wielder and sword attempt the save. (Sword saves as a 1st level fighter.) If the sword saves and the wielder do not, the wielder can make a strength check to hold on to the sword. If they succeed, the sword pulls them along with it and effectively makes their save for them. If they fail, their sword flies out of their hands.

Chewing Sword: Each miss with this sword deals 1 notch of damage to the opponent’s weapon. Standard weapons can take 6 notches before they break and become useless. Does not work against unarmed characters, or characters using natural weapons.

The No-Blade: A hilt without any blade. When the crossbar of the hilt is tapped against a material, a blade of that material grows from the hilt, and lasts for 10 minutes. All blade materials are functional, but most have quirks. Dirt blades deal 1d4 damage and only work for one hit, stone blades deal 1d6 but break on a 1, wood blades can be lit on fire to deal +1d6 damage for 3 rounds until they’ve been burned to the point of uselessness, metal blades work normally. Be creative. What do blades of grass, bone, crystal, clay, or flesh do?

Binding Blade: On a successful attack the wielder may choose for the sword to become a pair of manacles binding the humanoid target instead of dealing damage. Target may save v. magic to avoid. On a successful save, the sword does not transform, and the wielder may continue using it.

Spelltning Swo-Rod: Comes with a special lead-lined scabbard. If this weapon is drawn, then the wielder becomes the target of any spell cast within their general vicinity. Every “Cure Light Wounds” and “Fireball” will be centered on the person holding the Spelltning Swo-Rod, even if they are technically out of the spell’s range. Note that casters may not immediately catch on to this fact. The cleric may notice that their healing spell didn’t work, but they won’t instinctively know that someone else nearby was healed.

Charming Sword: On a successful hit, instead of dealing damage, the player may opt to make a new reaction roll. If the result is better than neutral, the enemy will be willing to forgive and forget the battle up to this point. If the party then resumes hostilities, their foe gains a +2 to all attack rolls due to their outrage at the bad manners of the party.

The Sword of Second Chances: The blade of this sword is the shaved finger bone of a titan, with sharp bits of steel inlaid around the edge. When it cuts an intelligent living creature, noises come from within the wounds. There’s someone behind them. They might speak, voicing their confusion over what is happening.

If the Sword of Second Chances delivers the killing blow, then the newly dead corpse will shortly be torn apart. A person will emerge, like a chicken from an egg. Within the last 25 years of your campaign world, this person died an unnatural death within 100 miles of the wielder’s current location. Whether or not they deserved it may not be immediately apparent. They’ve been stuck in the afterlife for who knows how long, and now they’ve got a second chance. Perhaps they’ll run off to find their family, perhaps they’ll join the party out of gratitude, or perhaps the players just resurrected a serial killer. Who really knows?

The Wall-Slidy Sword: When the blade is touched to a wall, the character can slide down it at a rate of 20′ per round, allowing them to reach a safe landing below. Using the sword in this capacity causes a shower of sparks to illuminate the character’s descent, and elicits screeching sound that’ll make the rest of the party want to act passive aggressively towards the wielder for a few turns. Also it may mimic the mating squawk of the Biting Leatherhorn. So watch out for those.

The Reflection Holding Blade: A wide blade polished to a mirror sheen. By use of a command word, the reflection on the blade can be frozen, causing whatever image is currently being reflected to remain visible on the blade until the reverse command word is uttered. Will eventually be made obsolete by camera phones.

The Useless Sword: Damage dealt with this weapon only lasts 24 hours. After that, wounds will slowly knit themselves back together, even to the point of reversing death or decapitation. Note that it is only wounds dealt with this particular weapon that are reversed, So if the corpse is burned after being killed with the Useless Sword, it’s not gonna un-burn itself.

The Blage of Empires: If two turns (20 minutes) are spent striking at a piece of stone, that stone will catch on fire and burn like wood. This fire can spread to other stones of similar composition, but it will not spread to wood or other typically flammable material. Nor will it spread to different types of stone. The Blage of Empires is never dulled or broken by striking at stone.

The Sword which is Not Yours – The wielder may summon a 7th level fighter in gleaming armor, who will appear from around the nearest corner or through the nearest doorway. When the fighter sees her “squire” in danger, she will hold out her hand and call for the PC to give her her sword. Once she has it, she will join the fray with wild abandon. When the danger is passed, she will thank her squire for caring for her weapon, and depart with the sword.

The Sword of Weeping Mothers: Though it appears normal, out of the corner of your eye this sword sometimes appears to, for lack of a better word, “pulse.” Any time this blade deals damage, eyes look out from the wound it opens. They appear bloodshot, and afraid. If anyone with one of these wounds drops to 4 hit points or less, the eyes bulge, trying to press out of the body, and dealing 1d3 damage. If this damage kills the target, a dozen screaming shadows rocket into the distance and fade into nothingness. Something bad happens in the nearest community. The referee is encouraged to be creative, but to be clear, we’re talking “pile of dead children” levels of bad. Whether or not the players ever know about it, it does happen.

Bit of a tone shift from the rest of these, I know.