a random table for old and new school tabletop RPGs. Every week.
A while back I made a 1-hex adventure location called the smuggler’s cliffs. I am working on a write-up of several more locations. The whole thing is very janky, which is the only way I know how to do it.
Here is another location, Mayfair lake. The evil Molak has butchered a whole village for his ritual, and ghoulish children roam the land… yet, he is missing a staff needed to complete his plan.
Potions, herbs and mushrooms have been part of D&D random tables since day one. So what’s one more table going to change?
I find that many of the tables tend to match herbs with an effect. Sometimes, the effect is narrative, sometimes mechanic. I have used such herbs and fungal tables in my current campaign, and with some care it has turned out ok. I guess this is a “wilderness” companion table to the simple alchemy table I made a while ago.
Looking at real life, no substance neatly matches with an “effect”: first of all – it is the dosage that makes the poison, and second, almost no compound, no matter how wondrous, is free of side effects or additional ramifications. Some herbs may ve very similar in appearance, and have completely different effects! Perhaps a failed forage check leads a character to misidentify a critical ingredient…
So, here’s a table of herbs, mushrooms, and plants that may be used as active ingredients of preparations. The effects are on a medium creature. The DM should scale the effects on gnomes and half-orcs accordingly, if he or she chooses to.
Roll 1d8 and read across rows, or 1d8 per column to fully randomize.
| Dice | Aspect | Preparation | Effect at low dose | Effect at high dose | Side effect |
| 1 | Thicket of thin, long brown mushrooms with small flat caps | Twist and squeeze to release juice | clarity of perception (improve chance of finding traps/secret rooms) | easily spooked: even distant noises will appear close | Mild drowsiness (-1 to attack rolls) for 1d4 hours upon smelling vapour |
| 2 | Dry, hay-like herbs growing out of the bark of trees | tie tightly with a cloth to apply directly on the skin | feel a more powerful connection with nature | speak sylvan or a similar language for 1d6 hours | Complete color blindness starting 1d6 hours after ingestion lasting 1d4 days |
| 3 | Dark yellow, soft fruits growing for 1 month a year from sentient trees | Macerate under the sun and chew it dried | Overcome physical injury with an incredible amount of pain, causing psychological damage | Overcome a psychological trauma, at the cost of physical injury | Iron and armor in contact with the skin will cause a burning sensation |
| 4 | Purple moss growing on rocks that have been touched by a licanthrope. | Bake into a pie | Resistance to cold, nightvision | Attunement to the hunt: smell and follow tracks like a wolf | 5% chance to contract lycanthropy |
| 5 | Long, thin blades of grass growing upside down in caves. | Break it down with mortar and pestle, release oils by adding something greasy | overcome fatigue, heat, or cold | can power through one day without sleeping, but weakening the character | more likely to take on reckless risks for 2d6 hours |
| 6 | Dark grey algae that gather at the bottom of undisturbed ponds. | Garble everything away from the stem. Rub the stem against an iron bar to extract the residue. | in your dreams, see the last event the plant witnessed | once only: appear in a dream of the last person who took the plant. If tried again: be permanently observable when sleeping. | Drowsy: drift in and out of conciousness 1d4 times at random over the next 4 days. |
| 8 | Spikey leafed bush with small green berries. Can retract and hide the spikes. | Infuse in a solution of beer, dry and distil | sound very persuasive to strangers over beer or mead (NOT wine or water). | be very easily persuaded by others if having drunk beer or mead. | Gambler’s fallacy: the character will do ANYTHING to find some dice. |
Classic setting for a dungeon: a family crypt, or an abandoned underground shrine to a forgotten god or hero. Winter’s daughter and the shattered gate are 2 OSR versions of this trope that I ran recently, and in both cases the players enjoyed their experience. Why? Because those are great adventures: there is something to do in every room, a reason for the dungeon to be there and to be the way it is. Still, I couldn’t help but feel the tension sag a little bit in parts, as the player took their sweet time to be careful and figure out the puzzle.
I thought I’d write a wondering monster/encouter table for crypt/shrine dungeons. This is meant to supplement the encounter tables that are specific to your dungeon, without veering into generic undead encounter territory.
The first half of the table are encounters that are not necessarily combat (either see what players do, or roll an NPC reaction roll). In the second half, combat is almost guaranteed.
Roll 1d12!
| Dice | Encounter |
| 1 | A portrait of the spouse of one of the deceased buried in the shrine. As the players pass by it, the portrait animates, asks their intentions and, if the conversation turns unfriendly, self-combusts to trigger a trap behind it. If they strike up a friendship, it will distract a wandering monster or help in other ways. |
| 2 | The ghost of Thessa the priestess, bound to perpetually sanctify the deceased. She is by now bored of it. |
| 3 | 1d4+1 petty looters, in over their head. Their leader, Faron, has a sack stuffed with brass door handles whom he believes are made of gold. |
| 4 | A brazier marked with the words “Touch and feel”. It is filled with embers that are perpetually hot. Stirring the embers will reveal 2 cores used to generate an elemental or power a golem. Handling them with weapons or poles will corrode them, only picking them up with one’s hands (and taking some fire damage) will preserve their integrity. |
| 5 | A marble baptismal font. Its holy water is stagnating and covered in moulds. If cleaned with fire or a ritual, it can be used to repel undead. If disturbed, the mould may release spores that can attach themselves to liquids and grow in them, leading to poisoning in 1d4 days. the At the bottom of the vessel lies a bony finger, belonging to a man who cursed while touching the pool. |
| 6 | An animated spellbook in a damaged library shelf. It can recount its 1d6 level 1 spells and cast them as it mentions them. It is really eager to talk, and the party should tell it to shut up if they want to use its spells later. Once the spells are cast, the spellbook is spent. |
| 7 | A pack of 2d6 wild dogs, howling, feeding on the corpse of 2 dead looters. |
| 8 | 2 wondering will-o’-wisps, the spirits of twin children of one of the deceased. They pretend to act as bright guides, but will try to lead the party to an ambush or a trap. They feed on souls and are hungry. |
| 9 | A statue of noble warrior with a mace and shield bearing a coat of arms, which is actually petrified in place. A basilisk is hiding in a dark corner. |
| 10 | An open sarcophagus, overflowing with a locust swarm. The skeleton in the sarcophagus wears a cursed gauntlet .that attracted and fed the swarm. |
| 11 | A doppelganger hiding near a loculus, eagerly awaiting to entomb one adventurer and take their place. |
| 12 | 2d8 vampiric ravens, nested in nooks and crannies in the ceiling. |
Next entry in the “dungeon locations” series, is cave pools. Which are so stereotypical and classic that in fact players barely react to them.
My players did in fact wander into a large, cavernous space with a knee-high resplendent pool of water. The encounter they had was memorable (a worm drake, defeated with a purify food and water on the pool), but the space itself could have been improved, I feel. In fact, the open nature of the cave kind of dulled the tactical aspect of the combat and did not provide much for the players to hang on to in terms of imagination or narrative.
With that, I got to thinking what descriptions would have improved this type of space, and what would have made the players stop, look and use their surroundings.
This table tries to answer the questions that sessions prompted, so that your cavern pools may provide intrigue, mystery and tactical opportunities. Personally, I would combine it with some of the early spaces of the incandescent grottoes.
Roll 4d10!
| Dice | Overall space | Water | Walls | Additional feature |
| 1 | An opening dotted with stalagtites and stalagmites so large they touch in spots. | transparent, clear. | Wet limestone that has been smoothed over centuries. Yellowish. | The floor of the cave, underwater, is covered in small clams. |
| 2 | A natural cave with man-made steps leading into the pool. At the center of the space, 6 marble columns are arranged in a circle. | Bubbling, sulphur smell in the air. | Black volcanic rock, jagged. Easy to climb, but also painful to grab. Many crevaces and hiding spots. | feels like being in a sanctuary in a storm. |
| 3 | A cave with irregular rock formations as a ceiling, making some points hundreds of feet high and others requiring crawling | Silvery, highly reflective, once light is shone on it. | 20-ft long, 2ft-deep claw marks on the eastern wall left from an ancient giant beast. | The water will rise by 1 foot per character entering the pool. |
| 4 | Sloped floor and celings. Very small entry space, very large pool. | A purple powdery substance deposits on the water surface, emitting a glow. Deep in points. | Black ivy covers the walls. It feeds on darkness and despair. | An opening at the bottom of the pool reveals a rusted mechanical gear covered in algae. More interlocking gears lie deep in the rock. |
| 5 | A cavernous space with rock formations ensuring a narrow path across. | The water is highly viscous and dark, petroleum-like. | 3 natural cave walls and one made of slabs of flagstone carefully engineered to lie at an angle. | The space is engulfed in a magical darkness that may only be dispelled. |
| 6 | The cave is the shape of an enormous hand, as if a colossus was entombed into a mountain. Broken sight lines. | The water is rich in minerals and iron. It will stain the skin. | The rock features of the cave walls can slowly shuffle (over hours) to force the party off their path. | Depending on the time of day, the water changes colour and properties, roll on the second column every 12 hours. |
| 7 | More of a large hall than a cave. Perhaps it belonged to some ancient fortress that ended up partially flooded and underground. | No pool per se but a wet sandy bottom that releases water when stepped on. | A small waterfall runs on the eastern wall. Itreplenishes the pool and hides a deep pit at its bottoom. | 1d6 crates of supplies left by a previous party. Some crates are infected by a mould. |
| 8 | A circular cavern formed around a giant stalagmite in the center, with water dropping from the rock above. Water surrounds the stalagmite. | A pool created by a geyser that releases a strong blast of water every few hours. | The walls are lined with glowing crystals of various colors and properties. | A thick fog rises above the water. In it, will ‘o wisps dance along an ancient path, dangerously illuminating the way |
| 9 | A long, narrow cave tunnel with high ceiling. | Despite being a pool, the water is not still. Strong vortexes and currents are animated by the ley lines in the ground. | One of the walls curves in to reveal some kind of natural refuge. The top of this small space has dark marks, as if a fire had regularly been lit under it. | One sip of the water wil satiate an adventurer for the day, but cause a mighty headache afterwards. |
| 10 | A cave lined with cracks in the rock from which earth, mould and worms come through to pollute the water. | The water is covered in lilies and other plants that survive despite no access to light. | The walls aren’t made of rock, but of chitin. | A tombstone lies in a crevace. “Her…li.. Gax… Pois… ro…cer”. Touching the tombstone will make the grave collapse and open a passage below. |
After more than a year running OSE games, with a long-running Dolmenwood campaign still chugging along, I thought I’d jot down the house rules I found to improve enjoyment of the game at the table, along with some thoughts.
The three “big ones” have been so helpful both in refreshing the game for veterans, and in bringing along the 5e crowd, or true beginners, in one-shot games. In my experience, they smooth out and modernise some of the B/X kinks, help the DM make rulings faster, and give the players more tension when they roll dice.
Perhaps this helps someone.
The big ones:
The mechanical ones:
We are on something like session 20 and characters are betwen 3rd and 4th level. I find it is important to get out of 1st level between session 2 or 3, but then players are more relaxed and advance along with the story. It helps that I have amazing players that don’t care much about stats, and the loot is interesting.
And finally:
The other face of ritual and alchemy is of course, curses. The ones presented here are easiest put on NPCs, seeing that DMing some of these may be quite challenging. But deployed in a way that makes narrative sense they may forever alter a PC in a very compelling way.
As always, I strive to provide plot and interactivity, so let’s hope this is useful for someone (besides the party I DM for that is about to run into one of these eheh).
Sample result: “the cursed individual has a venomous snake slowly consuming his insides. This appeared after the bite of a wild animal. The curse may only be lifted by undertaking the risky pilgrimage to the holy city of Merissa and having an audience with the head priestess of the temple.”
Roll 3d10!
| Dice | Curse | Mode of creation/caused by | Lifted by… |
| 1 | Swap face with a known criminal | Drinking from the fountain of Mazrak | Repeating the unknown curse words into the mouth of a cave |
| 2 | Never be able to hear music again | Murdering a holy man/bard/poet etc | Gifting one’s most prized possession tothe elusive satyr Narim |
| 3 | Plant lymph will flow through veins, bark will replace skin over years | An elderly man sacrificed a lamb in a nymph pool | Walking three times through holy fire |
| 4 | Will betray a faithful friend or relative | A parent has bargained with an evil being in order to conceive a child | Climbing mount Neversummer to bring a tribute to the goddess of the high rock |
| 5 | The land around his or her home will be divided by a chasm from the rest of the world | A bite or scratch of a cursed animal spreads the curse like a disease | A pilgrimage to the holy city of Maressa and an audience with the priestess |
| 6 | Unable to move through forests without awakening wild wolves | Carrying a weapon in a forbidden holy forest | Eating the bitter root of the Foddil tree, which only grows where blood was spilled in a duel between valiant men |
| 7 | The cursed will be able to fly, but will have to perform sacrifice to do so | Trapping the souls of three travellers in a gemstone encasted in a ring bearing the cursed’s name | The loss of what is more precious than gold |
| 8 | Ravens will haunt the cursed’s dreams and will travel alongside him or her | Daring to predict the future in the presence of a god | Whisper the magical words in the ears of a dove |
| 9 | Every object held in the cursed’s hands will have a hole in it (including weapons) | The alchemist Galef was commissioned a curse ointment by a rival of the cursed. The curse works like poison | Imposition of the hands by a king |
| 10 | A venomous snake will slowly (over years) grow inside the person | A crone using a lock of hair of the cursed | The love of a long-lost friend |
Somebody has to make a potion, a ritual, enchant a weapon, produce a device. It is clear, it will need some specific ingredients, and the appropriate instructions (barely legible on a mouldy anciant book) should be followed.
Newer D&D editions have mechanisms for DC checks based on what needs to be done. As always, “old school”-type systems eschew DC checks for an opportunity for player interaction and story telling. No matter the system, it should be fun to perform medieval chemistry.
I include ingredient columns, though one has to be careful not to reduce or overblow them them into fetch quests. Acquiring them should be either trivial or a matter of fun and consequence. They are best placed along the path of other adventure. An ingredent may always be found on some corpse of somebody trying to perform the same procedure, in someone else’s collection, or to be traded for a favor on behalf of somebody else.
Roll 1d10 per column! Some of the unintended consequences are “a bit over the top”, so use or skip as appropriate!
| Dice | Ingredient 1 | Ingredient 2 | Instrument | Protocol specifics | Unitnended consequence |
| 1 | A sacrifice that causes regret | A feather from a bird | A chondrometer | outcome depends on lunar phase | A hand turns to stone |
| 2 | A hood worn by a monster shaman | Dust from the trail of nomad tribes | Cauldron | Must be performed in a ritual circle | A vampire/ elemental etc can revert the incantation |
| 3 | Holy water | Pure copper | The canvas of a painting used as a surface | Can only be performed by a man/woman | The caster will get 2 glimpses of the futre, a truth and a lie |
| 4 | Wine aged more than 10 years | A mirror that has reflected an injustice | A fireplace | The ingredients should be added piece by piece, slowly as they are consumed, taking days | Someone learns the location of the party |
| 5 | A knife that has pierced a lycanthrope (or another monster) | The horn of a monster | A distilling apparatus | has to be performed outside on a rainy day | Daylight disappears for 24 hours |
| 6 | Sawdust from a ship that has survived a storm | Exotic tea leaves | A large water hourglass where the ingredients are deposited in the top half | A lost song must be sung | The caster of the ritual will hear voices of previous enchanters trying to speak to him or her |
| 7 | The voice of a domestic animal | The tip of a stalagmite from a cave | A press, squeezing the ingredients to extract their essence | A priest/ priestess of a particular god has to be involved in the ritual | A human performing the ritual will turn into another race, another race will turn human |
| 8 | A star-shaped white mountain flower | Air that is lighter than air | An oak tree from which the ingredients have to be hung | The ritual should be performed while sleeping, in a dream | Teleport the caster to a random location 1d20 miles away |
| 9 | A drop of blood of a particular blood line | The root of a tree infected by vermin | Mortar and pestle | Speak a specific tongue | A building will shatter |
| 10 | A weapon that is dear to the party | The cap of Skyshank mushrooms | A ceramic crucible | The ritual has to be concluded with a flash of light produced by true magic | The caster will be impaired in its ability to discern truth |
Did past me actually say a random table a week? What a naive thing to say. Truth is, I haven’t run out of stupid ideas, but rather, real life came for me and my spare time. But I hope I am back, or at least sufficiently free to post regularly. Where were we? Right, birds.
Flocks of birds have fascinated people for millennia of course, providing core aspects of people’s life, and especially marking the passage of seasons and time. For the romans, the behaviour of birds provided hints into whether a future endeavor would find success or fail, in the practice of augury. A specialised class of magistrates, the haruspexes, were tasked to look at (and dissect) birds to tell whether the gods were looking favourably at the task at hand or at the person interrogating them. Until extremely recently, the migration patterns of birds remained a complete mystery to us, and to some extent the phenomenon is still not fully understood. We can rule out the 18th century hypothesis that birds migrate to the moon in winter, at least.
Birds of prey, migratory birds, flocks of passenger pidgeons. Hitchcock horror bird attacks, George R.R. Martin messenger ravens, Poe premonitions… one can go on and on with birds playing key roles in fantasy settings. And yet, they somehow often end up neglected in homebrew settings or D&D play as a whole, only thrown in as the occasional monster encounter.
So – here is a table to give a species of birds a role in your world! KWAAAK!! Roll 1d12 per column!
| Dice | Base bird | Additional Feature | Civilization’s opinion and/or use | Cognitive feature |
| 1 | raven | One-eyed | its migratory paths mark safe overland trade routes | can comprehend human language |
| 2 | owl | Have flesh feet | civilization ferociously hunts them, believing them to be bringers of bad spirits | its songs cause a deep sense of longing for home |
| 3 | magpie | can change colour | they are dissected and the anatomy of their liver is interpreted as prophecy | hoard and steal small magical items and amulets |
| 4 | parrot | wing feathers made of jade | they can be domesticated by skilled trainers and used to relay messages between the wealthy | burrows in the edges of cliffs, leaving impressive structures |
| 5 | woodpecker | can hypnotise other creatures by waving its patterned crest | Nests are held in the vaults of temples and tended to by a specialised order. They fly off and come back with golden branches gathered from mysterious locations. | all birds of this species gather once a year under a gargantuan oak tree. Some say this “bird council” ritual lets the birds see the future. |
| 6 | bearded vulture | only flies in the shade | its feathers are ground to produce a traditional healing paste | Upon their deaths, these rare birds are reborn into guardians standing by their corpse |
| 7 | white finch | flocks of it gather rain and storms | kept on ships for navigation because of its innate wayfinding | vultures on corpses that have died of murder |
| 8 | crane | skeletal wings | used for hunting and tracking large beasts, as they gather up above them | will use songs to warn other birds of adventurers’ true intentions |
| 9 | Multicoloured tanager | tail leaves a purple trace in the sky | they are trained to remember secrets and code words | if fed a red berry, will recall events that happened in the distant past |
| 10 | Bearded helmetcrest | poisonous beak | This bird is a delicacy sought after by the cooks of royal courts | they can only be domesticated by magical means |
| 11 | turaco | its chest hides a carapace | knight tournaments are held where combatants are tasked with capturing one of these birds alive from a wood | build nests out of parchment and scrolls |
| 12 | bluethroat | its wings can shoot out spikes from their joints | these birds form flocks so dense they obscure the sky. Towns have been wrecked by their passage | will bring stolen objects to their rightful owner or his or her tomb |
I need to construct a random encounter table for a fisherman village my players are currently in. They are in the village of Dreg, in Dolmenwood. The village is ridden with crime, and is mostly not a fishing, but a farming village. Nevertheless, I have changed some things around, so I needed a table with more people to run into to supplement what has been so far released in the Dolmenwood handbook snippets.
I would roll on this table for a non-combat encounter. It is for simple flavour, though there are some entries with plot hooks. It mostly focuses on the area that would be the docks and the market. I also use a separate table for night encounters which are more “dangerous”, or for combat encounters. But those are more easily done as simple city encounters, e.g. from the OSE manual, or from any number of other sources.
Anyways, it’s a simple one for the return from the holidays. Roll a d20!
| Dice | Encounter |
| 1 | 1d4 fishermen, tugging a boat in harbor. They are coming home nearly empty handed. They curse the donations made to the temple, which clearly did not help. |
| 2 | Marlow, a cleric for the local temple, preaching forgiveness in the most crime-ridden area of town. |
| 3 | Reena, a fishmonger who is after the freshest product. She is in fact a witch enchanting the fish: consumers are charmed to do her bidding. |
| 4 | Connor Candleswick, a rich merchant who runs shipping expeditions. He is stuck in this town as his galley awaits repairs after being attacked by a sea monster. He is secretly smuggling magical herbs into the town. |
| 5 | A crowd forms in the harbor. At its center, the corpse of Gundar, a veteran sailor, lies washed ashore. Its arm was mangledby a terrible beast. |
| 6 | A hooded figure is seen disappearing into a wall after following the party around. A seemingly normal house is an illusion. |
| 7 | A pair of elderly ladies, scaling fish. They tell stories of an ancient sea fairy who fell in love with an evil pirate to a raptured audience of small children. |
| 8 | Carla, a short woman carrying several scrolls under her arm. She is an inspector for the local lord, keeping tabs on the comings and goings of ships. She is looking for smuggled cargo. |
| 9 | Angus, an enterprising young kid who is sure to have found a treasure map. He asks the party to go check out the location. |
| 10 | Vanda, the owner of the local tavern, out to retrieve new casks of ale. Strangely, the last batch was bad… |
| 11 | Smilne, a seclusive scholar who is said to be compiling a tome on all water monsters. He is locked in a bitter academic dispute with the court historian over the first recorded appearance of sea snakes. |
| 12 | Cairn, a bard/musician/jester who also dries and pickles root vegetables and sells them on the street to make ends meet. |
| 13 | A group of guards passing by, mentioning that “the crazy old man in the town prison is clutching to an oyster and talking to it day and night! I could swear that oyster was smaller yesterday…” |
| 14 | Nimo, once captain of a mighty warship. Ostracised for fleeing a decisive battle, he is manning his own fishing boat. |
| 15 | 1d4 farmers from further inland, on their way into town to look for a missing child. They are convinced a witch is involved. |
| 16 | Thatrout, a mercenary passing through town, travelling to a bigger city to find employment. |
| 17 | Fastrada, a halfling, sitting outside a hut smoking large batches of fish, to the dismay of the neighbours. |
| 18 | Timo, a beggar, walking through the street asking for small coins in exchange for a blessing. He is fond of foreigners, whom he calls “free ones”, no matter where they are from. |
| 19 | Menvan, the blacksmith. He mostly produces fishing spears. He knows old legends of infusing the spirit of the sea into an anvil, and is obsessed with finding how to do it. |
| 20 | A group of guards arrives on the scene and wants to search a boat or a person for contraband. |
You need some shady characters in a tavern in a wretched hive of scum and villainy. Roll 1d12 per column to generate characters and backstory!
| Dice | Character | Looks | Skill | Last Job | Bond/employer | Keeps.. |
| 1 | Cornelia, a bounty hunter | Wears foreign clothes, tries to avoid conversation | Can open any common lock in seconds | Escaped a prison by digging a tunnel | An evil fairy who controls him or her | A small hourglass pendant. |
| 2 | Wan, a ruthless burglar with no moral code | Bolsterous, plays cards, wears expensive jewelry | Can hit a target with a crossbow from 200 yards | Organised raiding a merchant caravan in broad daylight | A sibling who is an honest citizen | A lucky silver coin |
| 3 | Kalin, a bodyguard | Strong, tall, military background. Stands straight | Master of disguise | Infiltrated a noble household as a servant and stole a precious necklace | A friend in a political movement who asks occasional favours | A special tool to open locks |
| 4 | Red, a theater actor with a double life | Plays a aurdy-gurdy, rebel spirit, traditional clothes | Knows secret passages and tunnels in the city/area | Pretended to be a cleric and stole a rate ancient tome from the temple | A vampire who promised to make him or her one of their own | A letter from a former lover |
| 5 | Grimmo, a scam artist with a penchant for impersonating people | Stinky, scarred, mud-stained. On the run from someone? | Has a secret library of lost artefacts | Ran a tavern as a front for a criminal gang | A merchant with shady business practices | A knife won at a card game |
| 6 | Butch, a bandit from the wilderness | Prosthetic hand, finely dressed, appears of noble background | Can prepare poisons | Lived off of petty crimes in some of the poorest areas | Member of a thief guild | A waterskin of extremely high value elven wine |
| 7 | Lena, a pickpocketer who struck it big | Wears unassuming clothes, blends in background, yet somehow charismatic | Can charm people into revealing information | Carried a package of unknown content for a shadowy wizard across a desert | A foreign diplomat | A silver earring. Is it whispering something? |
| 8 | Double-hit Sam, burglar known for hitting the same people over and over | Tall, slender, always drinking and yet always aware | Can be extremely scary and intimidating | Was a sailor on a pirate ship that terrorized the kingdom’s navy | A rich collector of rare items | A ledger. This person earns but also spends an insane amount of money |
| 9 | Fain, a corrupt city guard | Tireless, fidgety, nervous-looking. Always playing with a small knife | Uncle is a very important person and this can open many doors | Intimidated farmers into giving up crop or animals | A necromancer looking for lost or hidden secret recipes | A ring etched with the icon of a noble house |
| 10 | Delven, an illusionist scammer | Intimidating grimace. Scar on the cheek. A belt with notches | Can hide in the shadows | Smuggled dried herbs used to make illegal potions across the border | A larger criminal gang running all sorts of crime in the city | A flask of red goo |
| 11 | Thorsten, a courier for “special” packages | Short and thin, very young. Wears stolen clothes of the wrong size. Babbling, eager | Impressive sleight of hand, card cheat etc | Kidnapped a rich merchant to obtain ransom | A monster from the woods seeking to hoard riches | A magnifying glass |
| 12 | Gemma, a marksman assassin | Grizzled, wrinkles on the face. Moves gracefully at his or her own pace. Relaxed, experienced | Setting up ambushes, traps, only fights with the advantage | Was a rogue on a mercenary adventuring bounty hunter party | A priest convinced he has a mission from god | A cat |
Random table of the week 