Last-Minute GM: Too Many Tables!

The Problem

In Reddit’s /r/osr subreddit, someone posted a thread about having too many tables when generating adventures on the fly.

[…] I’ve found/made some random tables resources that are great, but I’m getting to the point where I have 14-17 pages of random tables. […] Is there such a thing as too many roll tables?

The Real Problem

The easy answer would be “if you are having problems with your current number of tables, that’s too many.” But if we dive into the problem in more detail, I think there’s actually two different kinds of tables:

1. Tables you use on the fly; and,
2. Tables you use between sessions to prep adventures.

Most of your tables will fall into the second category. These are things like contents of treasure troves, qualities of magic swords, random names for taverns, ships, or NPCs, and so on.

The first category, however, should be a very small number of tables. Your current wandering monster tables geared for the adventure area, for example. Area event tables. The standard attack, save, and reaction tables. Maybe a couple generic multipurpose tables to help you improvise when things go off script, like a table of random letters to create initials to suggest NPC names or other names.

But how do you use Category 2 tables if you want to go full improv?

Lists to the Rescue!

The trick is to prep lists rather than dungeon keys. Remember the TSR Monster and Treasure Assortments? Or the NPC rosters? Those were randomly-generated monsters, treasures, NPCs, and occasionally other things. You could roll or pick from these lists, instead of rolling multiple times on multiple tables. But we don’t really need 100+ entries on a list. We can shorten things a bit.

Between sessions, use those random tables to create a list of 6 to 8 ships, or pirate captains, or taverns, or unique named monsters with personalities, or whatever else you know you will need for the areas the PCs will be exploring. You may need several pages of lists for your entire session, but at any given time, you will only need a few of those lists: the ships and pirate captains lists when down by the pirate docks, or the tavern list when wandering the streets.

Rather than treating a list as a table, use this generic table to pick entries from the list:

2d6	Result
2-3	Use second item on list
4-7	Use first item on list
8-10	Use last item on list
11+	Use second to last item on list

Put a checkmark next to an item when it’s used. The second time you use the list, skip items that have been used. Between sessions, restock your lists. You will probably never need more than 6 to 8 entries for any given session.

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Last-Minute d6 Dungeons: Map Glyphs

I’m looking at the Last-Minute d6 Dungeons series (links below) and wanting to simplify it some more… but also, wanting to make it more readable.

Here’s what I mean: I plan on creating customizable dungeon maps that use these techniques. It would help people a lot if I could put an instruction right on the map, so that the GM using it wouldn’t need to turn back to an instructions page. Instead, the introduction would give a couple simple icons and how to interpret them.

Example A: Side Passages

The glyph for this shows three boxes, each representing a d6. The position of each door or doorway along the main corridor is the position of each d6, in order.

Look for the lowest d6 roll first.

• If it is Odd, the exits start on the North or West side of the corridor.
• If it is Even, the exits start on the South or East side of the corridor.

If the second or third exits exist, it will be on the same side as the first exit if the d6 that represents it is odd, or the opposite side if the d6 is even.

(There would, of course, be another glyph for tunnels that run vertical on the map instead of horizontal, but I didn’t make one yet. It would look like the above glyph, but rotated 90 degrees.)

Example B: Tunnel Junctions

Same 3d6 roll as for Side Passages, but the position of each d6 is the order of branches or exits clockwise around the compass. (This is what the curved “triangle” represents.)

• If two of the dice match, the d6 that doesn’t match tells you which direction to skip (left, middle, right.) Branches or exits will be in the other two directions, in clockwise order.
• If all the dice match, roll another d6 and check the result: 1-2 = turn left, 3-4 = middle or straight, 5-6 = turn right.

In either Example A or Example B, the number of matches tells which table to use to look up the d6 result (loose, doubles, or triples,) as per the Drop Dice Exits post.

Links to Last-Minute d6 Dungeons series:

1. Tunnels
2. Tunnels update
3. Exits
4. Drop Dice Exits
5. Side Exits Update

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Last-Minute d6 Dungeons: Side Exits from Tunnels

Readers may have noticed that the Wednesday installment of the Last-Minute d6 Dungeons (links at end of post) reduced everything down to one (semi-) drop dice method to determining exits, but there was something missing. When rolling for side exits from tunnels, the drop dice method only tells you how far along the tunnel section each exit is, but doesn’t tell you which side of the tunnel it is.

I was aware of this, but left it out for a reason: I wasn’t happy with the methods I came up with. There’s basically four obvious methods of dealing with it.

1. Roll 1d6 or flip a coin for each exit to determine which side.
2. Don’t roll again. Just pick the side that makes the most sense (no connecting back to already-mapped areas, for example.)
3. Make the exit roll do double duty. If d6 result is odd, exit is on North or West side of tunnel, whichever makes sense. If d6 is even, exit is on South or East.
4. Same as #3, but only for first exit in tunnel section. Second exit will be on the side alternate, and third exit will be on the same side as first exit.

Method #1 adds extra dice rolls, right after we trimmed some out, so it’s no good.

Method #2 is fine as a general principal to modify random results where needed, but the whole point is to make a random generator.

Method #3 is a bit predictable. For example, a loose (no match) d6 result of 1 is a side tunnel, but under this rule, all side tunnels would be on the same side of a tunnel. Method #4 fixes this a little, but still could be more random.

But since we are also rolling dice of different colors (two light-colored, one dark-colored,) we could make use of that to modify Method #4.

5. If the dark d6 result is odd, the first exit is on the North or West side of the tunnel. If the dark d6 is even, the first exit is on the South or East. Second exit will be on the opposite side, and third exit will be on the same side as the first. Modify any result that would lead back into already-mapped areas.

If we really feel the need for more randomness, flip the second or third exit to the alternate side if the d6 result is the “opposite” of the dark d6. In other words, if the dark d6 is even but the d6 for the 2nd exit is odd, that exit is on the same side of the tunnel as the first exit.

Links to Last-Minute d6 Dungeons series:

1. Tunnels
2. Tunnels update
3. Exits
4. Drop Dice Exits

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Last-Minute d6 Dungeons: Drop Dice Version

I did some testing for the Last-Minute d6 Dungeons series (d6 Dungeons 1, d6 Dungeons 2, and d6 Dungeons 3,) and decided the ratio of rooms to tunnels was too low (Oops! All tunnels!) The problem is the Side Exits roll, which works fine in its original iteration for the semi-random dungeons pamphlets, but that is because that version only has a 42% chance of at least one tunnel, instead of a 97% chance.

One solution would be to replace the Side Exits roll with the Exit Destination roll, but treat it as a freeform drop-dice roll.

1. Roll 3d6 for each tunnel.
2. The position of each d6 is the position of each door or doorway (read left to right as West to East for horizontal tunnels, North to South for vertical tunnels.)
3. For dice that match, only use the position of the first d6.
4. Read the d6 result from the appropriate Exits subtable below, depending on whether its a triple, a double, or a loose d6 with no match.

d6	Loose d6 Result
1	Simple Corridor
2	Minor Debris
3	Missing Ceiling/Floor
4	Well or Fountain
5	Staircase or Ladder
6	Statue/Monument

d6	Doubles Result
1	Animal Pens
2	Storage (roll 1d6 again)
3	Jail Cell(s)
4	Food Prep
5	Living Area
6	Guard Station

d6	Triples Result
1	Armory (Weapons/Armor)
2	Execution Chamber
3	Temple or Shrine
4	Forge
5	Library
6	Magical Lab

In some cases, the GM could improvise a second roll to specify the variants. The only example specifically referenced on the table is “Storage”, where another d6 is rolled and the same table read again as a clue to what is stored in that room. Similarly, a well or a fountain could be dry or full of fresh, stagnant or poisoned water, or acid (2d6 reaction roll, with Dry as the middle result.)

This same Exits roll could replace the Tunnel Turns roll, but using two light-colored dice and one dark.

• If no dice match, each position represents one of the three direction (left, right, straight ahead.)
• If only two dice match, read the dark d6 first to find out which direction is blocked.
  • First Position: No door or passage North in a horizontal West/East tunnel, No door or passage West in a vertical North/South tunnel.
  • Second Position: No door or passage straight ahead.
  • Third Position: No door or passage South in a horizontal West/East tunnel, No door or passage East in a vertical North/South tunnel.
• If all three dice match, read the dark d6 as the direction to use (First Position = North or West, etc.)

Inside rooms, roll 3d6 for exits in the same way.

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Last-Minute d6 Dungeons: Exit Destinations

I may be making changes to the Last-Minute d6 Dungeons and its update, but before I did so, I thought I would address the missing portion: what’s behind that door?

Usually, a room, although in rare cases, it would be another tunnel. The GM would roll on a table, but there would in fact be several tables, for different dungeon themes and styles, and there may even be multiple tables for one theme/style.

But here’s a generic approach: roll 2d6 on the table below. If the roll is doubles, use the information in the (If Doubles) column.

2d6	Room Type		(If Doubles)
2	–>		No Floor
3	Jail cell(s)		–
4	Food		Farm/Pens
5	Lair/Living		–
6	Storage		Special
7	Monument		–
8	Kill Chamber		Flooded pit
9	Guard/Defense		–
10	Crafting		Tunnel
11	Debris/Ruin		–
12	–>		Tunnel

Doubles generally means a special version of the general room type: A 4 result means food prep (kitchen, fire pit) or food storage, but double 2 means a food source: a farm or animal pen.

Since a result of 2 is always double 1, it is always one specific result, On this table, it’s a room without a floor. Double 5 or 6 is a tunnel.

The “Special” doubles result next to “Storage” means it’s special storage, like an armory or library.

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Last-Minute d6 Dungeons: Update

I decided to make some changes to the graphics from yesterday's post.

What's Different: 

• Switched the dice results so that they are numbered left to right, top to bottom, which might be easier to remember.
• Switched to absolute orientation (horizontal or vertical, using compass directions) instead of relative orientation (left or right,) since not everyone can handle imagining themselves rotating in space.
• Labels for the d6 results printed on the diagram.
• Made it clearer that dice can be rolled at either end of a tunnel section to see if the tunnel continues, branches, or turns.
• Added doorways and room shapes to make it clearer where these would be drawn on the map.
• Summary of instructions in lower left.

Technically, it would have been better to center the hypothetical rooms relative to their doorways. But I use Alex Schroeder's Gridmapper for quick one-off diagrams like this, and there are limitations to what it can do. If I do a more refined version of this as a PDF, I can do fancier illustrations in Inkscape.

Last-Minute d6 Dungeons

I want to revisit the semi-random dungeon generation technique. I originally developed this for my dungeon expander pamphlet series, the idea being that a GM who suddenly needs a dungeon or needs to expand an existing dungeon can just grab a random pamphlet and create a random one with a minimum of rolling. But I’ve had some ideas on how to update this for a while.

The original system involved a pseudo-map of a corridor with six potential exits and six possible kinds of exits. What I’m proposing now is a more universal framework.

d6	Exit Location	Tunnel Direction
		Right Side
1	First Third	Turn Right
2	Middle Third	Turn Right
3	Last Third	Straight Ahead
		Left Side
4	First Third	Turn Left
5	Middle Third	Turn Left
6	Last Third	Straight Ahead

1. Start with a Basic Tunnel Segment (24 paces, or 60 feet long) heading in any direction.
2. Make a Side Exits Roll (3d6) to determine where each side exit is (See Exit Location column on table above.) On doubles, the exit is a Portal (standard door.) On triples, the exit is a Special Portal (heavy door.) Otherwise, it’s an Exit (open archway.)
3. Make a Tunnel Roll (3d6) to determine the basic tunnel shape. On triples, the tunnel dead-ends in a Portal (standard door) straight ahead. Otherwise, each d6 result represents a tunnel direction, which means the tunnel may turn, branch to one side, end in a T-junction, or become a four-way intersection (See Tunnel Direction column on table above.)
4. For every Portal or Special Portal, make a Chamber Roll to see what’s behind the portal. (More on this later.)
5. After making one or more rolls for a room’s contents, end with a Room Exits Roll (Probably 4d6.) Each d6 represents one exit’s direction (1-4 = one wall of room, numbered clockwise starting at the top; 5-6 = up or down.)

You may notice the pattern of bold name followed by (italic parenthetical information.) Extracting that, we get this summary:

• Basic Tunnel Segment (24 paces)
• Side Exits Roll (3d6)
• Tunnel Roll (3d6)
• Chamber Roll (1d6 or more)
• Room Exits Roll (4d6)
• Extras:
  • Exit (open archway)
  • Portal (standard door)
  • Special Portal (heavy door)

The bold names are the underlying framework of the system, but the italicized information can be changed for custom dungeon types. For example, changing Basic Tunnel Segment to a shorter length like 12 paces or 30 feet makes tighter, twisty-er dungeon designs, while changing the Side Exits Roll to 4d6 packs more tunnels and rooms into the space. Changing Exit from open archway to curtains changes the feel of the place, perhaps making it more like a temple or palace. Swapping Exit and Portal (so that exits only appear on doubles) makes doors more common than archways. Changing Special Portal to portcullis might make more sense in a true castle dungeon or prison.

Chamber Rolls are left vague for now, but the basic idea is that there is a table of room types, possibly two separate tables, one each for portals and special portals. But there could be different tables for different dungeon themes. This is something I’m still working on, but would most likely be a 1d6 or 2d6 table, perhaps with extra numeric entries reachable only when there is a bonus to the role (for example, a +1 for every 2 full levels of depth, so that some room types only show up on deeper levels.

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Regional Hex Template PDF

Did a quick PDF this morning for something requested on a forum: a hex sheet with numbered hexes and an area to record notes on what's in various hexes. This is based on a previous hex sheet I made using mkhexgrid, but I removed the megahex (it wasn't lining up) and added borders and the record area. This is good for a regional map.

Regional Hex Template

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Other PDFs

Urban Geomorphs: Common Quarter Block 3 and 4 (PDF)

This Map Monday, I have not one, but two new Last-Minute GM Urban Geomorphs for the Common Quarter: Block 3 and Block 4. Both are still mostly common laborers, although in Block 4, there’s a craftsperson of one kind or another.

I’ve been thinking a bit about the future of the urban geomorphs. Although unique places, merchants, and inns still make a lot of sense, if you are reusing city blocks for the residential areas – the intention of the series – you’ll wind up with a lot of repetitive intrigues going on. Part of this is because we aren’t mixing and matching houses from different blocks.

Now, you could do exactly that: swap the description of a house in one pamphlet with one from another pamphlet. But that leads to some handling problems. But I think I have a solution to make the residential areas work better, one that actually involves something I’m already kind of doing.

More on that in a future post.

Urban Geomorphs: Stables 2/Common Quarter 2 (PDF)

Map Monday this week is another Last-Minute GM Urban Geomorph. Or rather, not one, but two! Urban Geomorphs: Stables 2, for a larger stable than seen in Stables 1. Room for ten horses! Or giant horned jackals, or some other mount! For this geomorph, there’s only one house. The stablemaster doubles as the farrier. The second is Urban Geomorphs: Common Quarter Block 2. More common laborers for your enjoyment!

I have to fix one or both of the first two urban geomorphs, because I found some errors. I may also post some new thoughts I have about urban geomorphs sometime later this week.

Urban Geomorphs: Stables 1 (PDF)

Here’s a bonus urban geomorph pamphlet for the week: Urban Geomorphs: Stables 1, the one I hinted at yesterday. I wanted to show the difference between a residential block and a shops and services block. There would be one other kind of block, of course: a unique feature. Residential and commercial blocks can be reused within a single town or city, but unique features can only be used once each per city. (We’ll have to see if I can inject enough randomness to allow unique features to be reused in other cities…)

I also updated the common quarter block 1 geomorph. There was an error in the Random Personal Info and Quirks section: the last two entries can be repeated. This is why I used a “checked box” for those two lines and an “unchecked box” in the first four entries. You can mark an “X” in an unchecked box when it’s been used.

An aside: I hope everyone understood how those quirk lists are supposed to work. Roll a d6. Count from the first entry, skipping entries that have already been used. In other words, if the result is a 1, use the first unused entry, if it is 2, use the second unused entry. If the result of the roll is more than the number of unused entries, use the last entry.

There will, of course, be more urban geomorphs. And I was discussing with Scott Anderson in the comments what other accessories I might make to go along with these geomorphs.

Urban Geomorphs: Common Quarter Block 1 (PDF)

This week’s Map Monday is an urban geomorph, a town or city block usable in any map. Behold! Last-Minute GM Urban Geomorphs: Common Quarter Block 1. I’ve been working on this since before I posted the review and discussion of Lankhmar, City of Adventure.

My thought process was this: when I was doing the Instant Village series of pamphlets, I tried to do a town (Revelode) and mentioned then that I noticed a problem: the pamphlet format is just too tight a space for a town map, let alone a city map. If I insisted on doing towns and cities in the pamphlet format, I’d have to split the map across several pamphlets.

Which is when I though of Lankhmar and its geomorphs. One of the problems I had with Lankhmar was that I thought there weren’t enough geomorphs. There’s only twelve. That lead to the idea: “Why not do more geomorphs for Lankhmar or a similar city?” And that in turn lead to: “Why not do each geomorph as a pamphlet, so that a GM could randomly pull a pamphlet out and use that for unique locations in a city?”

The pamphlet uses several random rolls to make the geomorph reusable. There’s a random jobs table specific to this city block (everyone’s a simple laborer.) The head of the household’s name is random, as are the number of additional people living in a household. In addition to the built-in randomness, the GM can always ignore the map key and use the map for another city block with no special encounters or custom encounters they write themselves.

There will be more urban geomorphs. I will also continue the Instant Village series, focusing on villages and hamlets there instead of towns.

Last-Minute Keys and Locks: 4d6 Lockpicking

I’ve been thinking a little more about last-minute keys and locks. First, there was a brief discussion in the comments about whether the process was too convoluted. Ynas Midgard suggested going back to the idea of d4+d8 instead of 2d6 for the reaction roll, because then it’s easier to specify that the d4 can be used for the number of keys that must match for a Close Match result. But there’s also the possibility of just changing a Close Match to mean “at least half the keywords match”. At first, I thought this was a viable optional rule and that I’d stick to 1-4 matches for my personal use… but the more I thought about it, I think “half the keywords match” is just a better rule.

But I have also been thinking of adapting this to the" 4d6 drop 6s" idea. Specifically, the approach mentioned in reaction rolls with four dice. It’s not just for the fun of playing with an alternate table, as you’ll soon see. First, though, the table.

4d6 drop 6	Reaction	Detailed Explanation
Up to 1	Broken!	Key snaps off and jams lock.
2-3	Wrong Key	Lock jammed on 5+ (1d6).
4-7	Might Fit	All keywords must match.
8-12	Close Match	At least half must match.
13-16	Fits	Lock opens if any keywords match.
17-18	Lucky Fit!	1st letter of a keyword must match.
19-20	I Made It Fit!	No matches necessary.

Table should be self-explanatory now. Curses shift the result one category worse. Blessings shift the result one category better.

Now here’s the tricky part: when adapting this keyword trick to other situations that involve skills, you need to distinguish unskilled people from skilled people. For example, you could have a set of lockpicks instead of a single lockpick, each with a different keyword. Anyone trained as a thief rolls 4d6, dropping 6s. The thief class would add their level to the roll. Anyone who’s still in training would only roll 2d6, though, again dropping 6s, for a range of 0 to 10. So:

• An untrained character picking a lock requires one lockpick for every keyword on the lock (two picks for a green copper lock, for example.)
• A trained lockpick must use at least half as many picks as there are keywords on the lock.
• A true thief (class) never worries about jamming the lock.
• A 5th level thief has a good chance of opening any lock with one pick, but two picks are still a safer bet.
• An 8th level thief can open any two-keyword locks with only one matching pick.

It will probably get more interesting when adapted to “metaphorical keys and locks”, but that’s for later. The important point, here, is that I used to talk about dividing the reaction roll by two if a person was untrained, but rolling half as many dice is a lot easier.

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Last-Minute Keys and Locks: Reaction Roll Table

Not sure why this didn’t occur to me when I was working on keys and locks before… but here’s the well-known reaction table, repurposed yet again…

Every key (literal or metaphoric) has one or more keywords describing it: brass key, iron dragon key, crystal goblin key. Doors, chests, and other locked items also have key words.
When attempting to use a key to unlock a lock, count the number of keywords that are identical (match,) note whether any keywords start with the same letter (near match,) and make a 2d6 reaction roll using this table.

2d6	Results
2	Wrong Key, might break in lock.
3-5	Might Fit, all keywords must match.
6-8	Close Match, need 1-4 matches.
9-11	Fits, lock opens if any words match.
12	Lucky Fit! lock opens for near match.

On a wrong key result, the key breaks in the lock, jamming it, unless there is at least one match. If the character is cursed, the key breaks no matter what. The lock can’t be opened anymore.

On a close match, the lowest individual d6 result is the number of matches needed to open the lock.

On a lucky fit, the lock opens even if there are no exact matches, as long as at least one pair of keywords start with the same letter (the rusty key opens the red lock.) If the character is blessed, the lock opens no matter what.

For metaphoric keys and locks, what counts as a match may be expanded. For example, keywords for herbal remedies might only need to start with the same letter as a keyword for a disease, or might only need to be logically related in some way, for example through the medieval four humours system or doctrine of signatures. On a lucky fit result, a keyword matches if it comes first alphabetically when compared to the keywords for the disease.

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Last-Minute GM: Random Entertainers and Performers

The local market, whether it’s weekly or daily, will have more than just goods for sale. There’s also entertainment! Traveling performers come to markets to scrape up a few coins from the locals and can be a lead-in to other events: rumors, thievery, false accusations of thievery, or other drama.

You’ll need two kind of dice, d10 and d8, to use the following table. Roll one of each for a village, two for a small town, three for a larger town, and four of each for a city. Really large cities will probably have more than one market area, so you would roll again each time a new market is visited.

d10	Act Type	d8	Modifier
1	acrobat	1	aerial
2	actor	2	balance
3	beast	3	aquatic
4	dancer	4	escape
5	freak	5	fire
6	jester	6	blade
7	juggler	7	strong
8	mime	8	trick
9	musician
10	other

There are a couple ways to handle this roll:

• The Straight Roll: Just roll one d10 and one d8 at a time, one to four times, and read the results. For this method, it might be better to use a d12 instead of a d8 and treat results of 9+ as “no modifier”.
• All in a Line: Roll all the dice at once and read across, left to right. Apply the modifier roll to any act that follows it. Any d10 that does not follow a d8 is an unmodified basic performer.
• Drop Dice: Roll all the dice on a sheet of paper somehow divided into four quarters. Each quarter represents one possible entertainer. If a quarter doesn’t have a d10 in it, there’s one fewer entertainer at the market this time. If two d10s land in the same quarter, it’s a hybrid act: the singing acrobat, the woman who dances on beasts, and so on. If there’s no d8 in a quarter, it’s a standard version of the act, otherwise all modifiers apply to that act.

For the All in a Line and Drop Dice methods, if two d8s both apply to the same act and you roll doubles (dice values match,) the act is a magic version of that modifier. If you roll triples for the same act, it’s an extreme magic version.

Most of the act types should be self-explanatory, but “Beast” refers to any animal act. “Freak” refers to any human or humanoid exhibited for the way they look or behave, including geek and blockhead acts, and “Other” refers to any display of skill that doesn’t fit one of the other types, such as a sharpshooter. The modifiers are also pretty easy to figure out, but here are some notes:

• Aerial involves swinging, jumping, or diving from high places. The magic version is actual flight.
• Balance is a performance on a tightrope or unstable object like a unicycle or rolling barrel. The magic version is balancing on something impossible, like the point of a random sword or the top of a rope that rises in the air by itself.
• Aquatic is a performance while swimming in or submerged under water. Magic versions involve obvious water-breathing, although not necessarily via a spell (an aquatic freak would be a fishman, for example.)
• Escape is for escape artists, of course, although if the act type is not “Other”, the artist does something else before or after or perhaps even while escaping.
• Fire means performing while on fire, or with flaming objects.
• Blade involves swords or knives. “Blade” + “Other” could be a knife thrower or a sword swallower. “Blade” + “Freak” is someone who cuts or stabs themselves for the amusement of the audience.
• Strong means the performer is strong. “Strong” + “Other” is your basic circus strongman, bending and lifting things. Combine “Strong” with other acts to get some very unusual acts, like someone lifting three other people on their shoulders and then dancing.
• Trick is magic tricks, pretending to make things vanish and appear, and so on. The magic version is… well, actual magic or illusion.

Edit to Add: Obviously, there's no longer a way to delay publication if you post to Blogger using StackEdit. Guess I have to start manually copying and pasting if I want to do that again...

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Temporary Place Names

Alex Schroeder has a quick blog post about place names and how to handle them, and has this to say:

If the village is run by a guy called Marcel, should it be Marcelsby, Marcelden, or perhaps based on the forest or river name? [ … ] Perhaps simply waiting for the players to name things works just as well.

That’s an approach I hadn’t even considered, even though I’m always going on about letting the world be created during play. Not everything can be left for players to name, though. Kingdoms, major cities, and large regions should get names. Basically, anything NPCs are going to use to give directions or mention in rumors.

One solution to the naming problem: temporary pseudonames. Take two or three features of a place, compress each down to a single word, and add the generic type (village, forest, river, etc.) This becomes a prompt to help describe a place: “paranoid mining village” means the mines and mining paraphenalia will get mentioned a lot, and NPCs will be secretive and hostile to outsiders.

This doesn’t mean that any of the features of the pseudoname will definitely be part of the actual name, especially if players are doing the naming. They might latch onto other features, perhaps those you don’t consider important.

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Last-Minute GM: List Picks II

On the random list picks post, ruprecht asked:

For a list of 40 items wouldn’t it be easier to roll 1d4 and 1d10 and derive the line from two?

However, the larger the count, the greater the chance you will loose count, especially when you are counting a large group of small-size items. I was also concerned about items far down the list somehow not getting selected as often because of hidden dice bias. So, I split the count by starting from both ends of the list instead of just from the top.

However, there’s a non-dice-based method that people have used in non-RPG contexts: closing your eyes and pointing with your finger. I felt that raw method had the potential for bias as well, but there’s a way to combine dice rolls and random pointing to lessen the chance of bias: blindly pick a line at random, then roll a d4 + d10 (or another die) to determine direction to count and amount to count:

1-2: count up from that point
3-4: count down from that point

This process allows you to use any list, without knowing the exact number of items on the list or finding the right die to use. It’s perhaps a little better, though, if you still allow counting from the top or bottom of the list:

1. count down from top
2. count up from random point
3. count down from random point
4. count up from bottom

We can call this the “roll and point” method.

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Last-Minute GM: Random List Picks

I’ve been messing around for some time trying to come up with a good basic procedure for picking something at random from an arbitrary unordered list. Prepared tables with numbers indicating dice results are easy, but it would be nice to be able to grab just about any list and pick something randomly. But I hadn’t found a method that was satisfying until now.

You need two dice, usually a d4 and a d10 numbered 0 to 9. The d10 is how many lines to skip, while the d4 tells you where to start and what to do with the d10.

1. Start at top of list and skip down 0 to 9 lines.
2. Start at the top and skip down 10 to 19 lines (d10 + 10.)
3. Start at the bottom and skip up 10 to 19 lines (d10 + 10.)
4. Start at the bottom and skip up 0 to 9 lines.

This lets you pick from a list of 40 items. If you only have 20 items, don’t add 10 to the d10 for results 2 and 3. Some other dice can be used instead of the d10, if you have a different number of items:

• d4 + d6 (reading 6 as zero): 24 items
• d4 + d8 (reading 8 as zero): 32 items
• d4 + d12 (reading 12 as zero): 48 items
• d4 + d20 (reading 20 as zero): 80 items

Always read the highest number on the second die as a zero, so that one of the results will be “use first/last item on list”. For the middle results of the d4 (2 and 3,) add the number of sides the die has to the result.

You can also use a d6 instead of a d4, with this chart:

1. Start at top of list and skip down 0 to 9 lines.
2. Start at the top and skip down 10 to 19 lines (d10 + 10.)
3. Start at the top and skip down 20 to 29 lines (d10 + 20.)
4. Start at the bottom and skip up 20 to 29 lines (d10 + 20.)
5. Start at the bottom and skip up 10 to 19 lines (d10 + 10.)
6. Start at the bottom and skip up 0 to 9 lines.

This gives you a range of 1 to 60 items.

There are other tricks you could do for two-column lists.

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Last-Minute GM: City Street Mapping Options

I was thinking about how to handle city street maps after reading a blogpost I can no longer find concerning improv streetcrawls, where you only pre-generate the major streets and save side streets and alley ways for when you actually need them. But what about those major streets? How do you generate those, if you don’t feel like drawing them out?

There’s a couple ways it could be done:

• Use the Sketchbox Dice Tool: The Quarters roll has you roll a d6 with pips for every town quarter (or every city district.) The pips represent neighborhoods, so the spaces between the pips represent streets.
• Use leximorphs (letter-shapes): Pick a word in some random way, or roll on the Random Random Table or equivalent for individual letters in each city district. Strokes in each letter represent streets.
• Use routes or “clock-paths”: This a new name for something I’ve described before: rolling several d12s and interpreting each as a clock direction (12 o’clock = North, 3 o’clock = East, etc.)

Option 1 generates some fairly grid-like streets that don’t feel very organic, although you can get a little less rigid if you are reading the orientation of the d6 as well as the number and placement of the pips. Option 2 is better for generating maze-like city maps, but needs extra info about orientation for each letter if you don’t want it to be too obvious.

However, I want to expand on Option 3. In a couple of my random wilderness posts, I talked about navigation by landmark and creating random routes from one point to another. This seems the best approach for a city with a more organic feel.

1. Start by defining the central features of each city quarter (the palace, the main temple or marketplace, etc.) Place those on your rough city map, perhaps using a roll on the Sketchbox Dice Tool as a guide to position.
2. Each pair of major features can potentially be connected by a major thoroughfare. Decide which ones, or roll 1d6 for each pair: 5+ = connection. These are the main streets of the city.
3. Each quarter contains five city districts, each of which will have a major landmark of some kind as its hub or central point: fountains, statues, unusual buildings, parks. Place these landmarks as you would place a central feature.
4. For major streets, first check if a major landmark is connected by a street to the next closest landmark (5+ on 1d6.) Then, roll 3d12 for each landmark for additional major streets, using the result as the clock direction. Only unique results on the d12 count, so triples mean one extra street instead of three.
5. City districts may also share major streets with neighboring districts (border streets) Roll 5d6 on the Sketchbox Dice Tool and treat any result of 5+ as a border street along the border indicated (north, south, east, west) on the tool.

This creates your city framework. What comes next depends on whether you are mapping one or more (or all) city districts beforehand or doing it as players explore. For the former, you would roll 1d6 for the minimum number of neighborhoods in each district and place those, using the existing streets as much as possible to define neighborhood borders, adding minor streets if necessary. Follow this by rolling 1d6 for the number of blocks in each district and arrange those as desired, separating blocks with more minor streets. The Town and City Block Tool can be used for building and alley way placement.

If you need to know the orientation of any border street or minor street, roll 2d12. Read each die as a clock direction for one endpoint, relative to the center of a block, neighborhood, or district. If this seems to make a street double back on itself, make it a curve. When a minor street would cross another street, roll 1d12 for another clock direction. If this result would double back, the minor street ends instead. Otherwise, it crosses the other street, possibly changing direction.

Mapping city districts as players explore would resemble techniques I described in various wilderness hexcrawl posts, but I will have to describe this later.

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Town and City Blocks: Variety

The town and city block tool I posted yesterday is meant to work with the sketchbox dice tool to help map towns and cities, especially when you postpone mapping beforehand and instead do it as the players explore the streets. There is some helpful information I left out, perhaps deliberately, although I don’t recall for sure. And that is: how do you make sure the streets have variety?

When making a “quarters roll” with the sketchbox dice tool, villages will have 3-18 blocks and towns will have 15-180 blocks. You do not want to have to roll for the arrangement of each block. So, roll 2d6 once for each group of blocks: once per quarter, for villages, or once per neighborhood, for towns. This sets the default block arrangement in that quarter or neighborhood. Almost all the blocks in that section will look the same.

If there are more than three blocks in a quarter or neighborhood, though, roll 2d6 a second time for the exception. One block out of the group will have a different arrangement. Pick which one is the exception block randomly in any way desired, for example by rolling 1d12 to get a clock direction from the center of the quarter or neighborhood.

Rolling cities with the sketchbox dice tool is not described, but is easy to do. Each quarter of a city is basically a whole town, subdivided into city districts instead of quarters.

• Small cities will have four quarters containing a total of 20 districts and up to 120 neighborhoods.
• Medium cities will have five quarters containing a total of 25 districts and up to 150 neighborhoods
• Large cities will have six quarters containing a total of 30 districts and up to 180 neighborhoods.

Thus, it’s better to map out just the broadest details of a city in advance: where the quarters are and what they focus on, and perhaps the one or two most important districts in each quarter. Map the actual districts and neighborhoods as they are explored.

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