The Bonehoard

Back from the dead! I'm fixin' to finally run a wilderness hexcrawl that I'm very excited about, and am refining some procedures prior to play. I figured I'd document some of the prep here, in case it's useful to others! After looking at some great examples of modified encounter checks but not quite finding what I wanted, I decided to incorporate some of the general ideas and formulate my own mechanic. The Hazard System and the Underclock were large inspirations to this. Goals : Allow for surprises, both good and bad. Sometimes create suspense. Have no "null" results. Have higher results be better, to allow modifiers to the roll depending on conditions. Roll 2d6: [Spoor (SP) starts at 0] 2: Bigger Encounter (surprise). Reset SP to 0 3: Regular Encounter. Reset SP to 0 4: SP > 0? Encounter. Else, SP+1 5: SP > 1? Encounter. Else, SP+1 6: SP > 2? Encounter. Else, SP+1 7:  SP > 0? SP+1. Else, Challenge 8: Flavor, SP-1 9:  Minor Resource (if

My players requested an animal trainer profession. One thing led to another, and I wound up making a table for dog breeds available in the marketplace. I'm planning on using James Young's mechanics for animal training ( link ) with a couple tweaks, since they seem super cool and please my programmer heart. Fair warning, I haven't playtested this yet so my approach could be way off base, but I wanted to post before I wandered off and forgot. Also, I am no expert on dogs, so my apologies if any of the below info is off. Dog base instincts: Obey 1 Chase 2 Protect/bark 2 Survive 3 Play 2 Personality : +1 random instinct Dog breed : roll 3d6 for more typical adventurer pups, or d20 for any. Whatever entry you roll, the adjacent two are also available for purchase here. x is the quality rating. Gets +x to the instinct listed for that breed (including non-standard instincts). For reference, in my system 5-6 is the starting grit and move for humans. Max trained move is 9

Here's a d20 town crier table to help the city feel more like a living entity. I'll roll on it near the beginning of a session to get an event (separate from the encounter tables I use periodically throughout the session). The list was started using this as a seed: [ link ]. Source: British Museum Event coming up (market day, holiday, festival, feast) Crown introducing new tax (luxury, staple, property, toll, market) Notorious criminal escapes / bounty offered (thief, murderer, assassin, arsonist, demon worshiper, sorcerer, monster) Someone did something to win renown (won prize fight, bred otherworldly roses, solved ancient riddle, saved child from burning building, etc) Superstition / tradition supposedly necessary for day (no crossing water, dress in red, fasting, etc) Public execution (thief, petty noble, murderer, arsonist, heretic, usurper, looters) Troubles in neighboring boroughs (riots, fires, famine, plague, sorcerous, monsters, warring groups) Weird

Are you interested in chickens? Are your players interested in chickens? If not, this post holds nothing for you. If, like me, you have players that inexplicably gravitate towards farming in your sandbox games, you may find this post useful. Last session the party began setting up a rooftop chicken coop as part of their gang territory, to turn a profit and keep the gang fed. They plan on periodically expanding the flock, so I threw together some breeds to make the buying more interesting. Except I went overboard on this minor aspect of the game, as usual. :P I used half index cards and sketched the 20 breeds for reasons. Chickens have two stats, LAYING and MEAT. LAYING indicates how many copper a day you earn off their eggs. MEAT indicates how many silver a week they make (cash in on Sundays). It's all a bit abstracted in an odd way, but since sessions average 1-2 in-game days, I had to step up the timeline to make it worth it. I'm only making two breeds available for pu

I love the feeling of bustling markets filled with strange goods, but players buying from equipment lists without the need for DM adjudication is so utilitarian as to have wholly supplanted any market-related roleplaying in my game. Telecanter made some cool shopping rules which I'll try out, but just for special commissions, since speed is a huge concern for me. Interactions that don't require DM adjudication are lamentably few and far between as it is. As a sort of compromise I've started utilizing "market specials" - the first time in a session the PCs say they're going through the marketplace (a central location in their borough as you might imagine), I tell 'em what freshly unloaded good is causing a buzz. Last session there was a foreigner with five "miniature bears" he was selling as exotic pets. One PC immediately bought one of the adorable critters and proudly walked it around town (leading to an invitation to meet an ennui-burdened nob

Mechanics are with Gutters, Guilds, and Grimoires in mind, but again should be easy enough to convert to your system of choice. Apologies for the poor image quality, the phone camera just didn't cut it on these. Gray Vengeance Projects colorless flame in a beam 80' long, dex save at disadvantage to avoid. Does dX+1 damage. If you roll max damage, the wand is partially depleted and goes down the die chain on future uses. (d8 -> d6 -> d4 -> depleted) Most wands start on d6. Minor wands of Gray Vengeance start on d4, Greater wands on d8. If 5+ damage is dealt with the wand, a mind point is temporarily drained from the victim. Burns inflicted with the wand are crumbly and colorless. Constructed from tempered dim glass with a core of witch ash taken from the death-pyre of Waruda the Traitor by sympathetic agents. Waruda was denounced by several rival Strigastadt nobles who claimed she was scheming to take the life of the Queen. She was stripped of her titles an