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Dice Drop Table: Institute of Deathology

February 7, 2012 5:32 pm / 4 Comments /
Dice drop for basement of Necromancer's Lab

This table I call the Institute of Deathology. It can be used to quickly populate a necromancer’s tower or hidden lab. It works almost the same as yesterday’s Kaotic Cave, but has fewer possible encounters. You get one die for each room on the same level and drop it on the chart. The large hex the die falls mostly in suggests the theme and use of the room along with a possible occupant. If the die falls in the inner hex, or the occupant is not mobile, then the occupant is there. Otherwise, wait and see where else it might be. If the die is on the border of a few large hexes, see what it touches that goes well together. This tool is meant to suggest, not dictate, so go with whatever makes sense to you and looks fun.

I’m going to populate four floors of a tower that has two rooms each. There are only 12 possible ‘encounters’ on this table, but some rooms might be empty and I’m going to have the head necromancer be in her quarters on the fifth floor.

First two dice come up square on the shoggoth and the traitorous demon familiar.

Dice drop for basement of Necromancer's Lab

Dice drop for basement of Necromancer's Lab

Basement

  1. A shoggoth is hidden in the corner of a room that includes a captive NPC (unconscious or crazy or mute, let’s say), a hideous painting, broken glass, a golden leash, a scroll of banishment and a slime trail near the door. I think I’ll make the cellar one big room and add the familiar, the ‘phone’ to other planes and the broken iron chains. I could have added the rest of the trappings around the familiar but the  die fell only barely on the familiar and the room is already pretty rich with stuff. The familiar or the NPC might have useful information or want to help you deal with the necromancer. The demon is not to be trusted, of course, and might just forget to mention the shoggoth…

Ground Floor

  1. Room one is where the talking head is. Let’s say they use it as an entryway decoration or mojordomo. The d4 doesn’t touch the inner hex, so he could be away (perhaps getting repaired next door). I’ll wait and see what else comes up then decide. In the meantime, the entryway has at least the column the head stands on, a music box, a tray of hard candies and a library (probably for show). Hidden away is a case for the head (to sleep at night) and vials of blood (for maintenance).  The d4 also hit ‘cadaver’ but since I only want 2 rooms per level, I’ll just have a dead body in the entryway. Perhaps Igor needs to take it upstairs…
  2. Room two. The d10 landed mostly on oil lamp and barrel of eyeballs and only a but on shovel, tools and rope. Let’s put the caged zombie(s) room in back with those things and also the straight jacket, lightning prod, mummified cat and the parts on the tables. Seems Igor is making a mess today…

Floor 2

The d10 landed square on the doppelganger apprentice. It has foreign coins, a sword, mirror, torn clothes, a wig and a bottle of poison. (Why does a doppleganger need a wig? I dunno. Maybe they don’t do hair so well. Maybe they need a magic wig? Maybe I made this late at night?). There’s also a secret exit here.

Now the tower isn’t going to have a special room for uninvited doppelgangers, so let’s look  at the other die. It landed on the corner of library, sleeping quarters and is also touching privy, cadaver and parts in drawers (for the clockwork corpse). Let’s forget the parts, but use library and sleeping chambers. Let’s also use sleeping chambers but not for the head necromancer, who is on the top floor. Here’s what we get:

  1. Sleeping quarters. There is a dead body here with a wig, torn clothes and a dresser with a mirror. On the dresser are some coins, which on close inspection turn out to be from a foreign land. In the pricy is a doppelganger who has killed the assistant Igor (in the privy no less) and has just shoved the body down the latrine along with its wig and old clothes. It now looks like Igor and is deciding what to do next. There is a secret exit at the bottom of the privy pit, but the doppelganger doesn’t know. Might be interesting if Igor is just unconscious for a few hours…
  2. Library. There should probably be some scrolls and books here.

Floor 3

  1. The d4 is on Igor’s hex, but he’s indisposed. This is the kitchen, pantry and Igor has a small cot in back. Under his cot is some tasteful woodblock ‘art’, a holy book, and the petty cash for buying household goods. I would suggest swapping this room out with the zombie room below. It’s more likely a servant’s quarters and kitchen are located below, far away from the master’s room.
  2. Naga in tank. This captive naga lives in a large tank. There is a book on a stand near the tank, so it can read. There’s also a painting of a hell-like place, a kaleidoscope which with the book are probably carrots to get the naga to do as it’s asked. Then the sticks are here as well-a harpoon and feeding fish.

Top Floor

  1. This is the necromancer’s quarters. She has sleeping chambers, a privy, a wine ‘cellar’ (let’s say several bottles and some cups), an hour glass, a potion of youth and a cat. There’s also a secret exit here that is most certainly not the privy. Perhaps it is a teleportal to a safe spot a few miles away, designed to allow one person and one cat through before deactivating. Whether she is around is up to you. She could be in the library, zombie room or the basement.

One thing I forgot–where’s the talking head? In the sleeping quarters on the dresser (on a pillow) where Igor sometimes let it nap. It saw the doppelganger kill Igor but played dead.

I hope you find this useful. It was fun to make, as goofy as it is.

Rolang's Necromancer Lab Drop Table

Institute of Deathology v1 (1.8 MB)

 

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Dice Drop Table: Kaotic Cave

February 6, 2012 6:09 pm / 4 Comments /
Example d4 on Kaotic Caves

It’s not often I get to show off how artistically my development is arrested, but here we go…

A multi column dungeon dressings/rooms/accessories table, with columns like ‘natural cave’, ‘necromancy lab’, ‘mine’, ‘underground prisons’, ‘evil temple’ and whatever you feel like including. Oh why am I the 15th!??!

I’m afraid I can’t do this in the format that you requested. Well I could, but I’m not going to. I  understand the OSR fetish for endless tables, tables, tables, but in this case, I wanted to do something different that will hopefully still be useful for you.

Today’s post is the first in a series of drop tables, the Kaotic Cave (2.4 MB file). This is the ‘natural cave’ table. These tables are all hand-crafted with no real artistic skill whatsoever and are not intended to reflect high production values. To wit:

Level 1 of Kaotic Cave

These are the dice dropped on the chart for level 1 of Kaotic Cave

Just grab a handful of dice and drop them on the table to fill several rooms and with trappings and possibly encounters or encounter hooks. Look under each die at every space it touches and arrange the items indicated on your map however you like. Each large hex has a smaller hex in the middle with an encounter. If the inner hex is not touched, have the monsters be away from their lair when the PC’s arrive. Maybe they are wandering, or perhaps they are in a battle with a neighbor. If multiple large hexes are touched, you can optionally include all the encounters together in a large room or hallway, battling it out.

I have tried to arrange these tables so that encounters that have similar window dressing are close to one another. The Kaotic Cave has several humanoid races close to one another with accessories that fit any group.

Example d4 on Kaotic Caves

Smashed shriekers, mound of skulls, troglodyte corpse and garden

For example, the mound of skulls in the troglodyte hex could easily belong to the Kobalds. If I dropped a d4 on that space, as pictured, I would fill a cave chamber with smashed shriekers, a mound of skulls, a troglodyte corpse, a garden and some trogs fighting the kobalds in their home. Why in the Kobald’s home? If I didn’t have a preference, I’d just go where the larger part of the die is. If two dice cover the same large hex, I reroll the one furthest from the center.

I threw several dice with this, so for level one, I have:

  1. a pack of kobalds [sic] defending their home from troglodytes. They were warned by the dying alarm of their shriekers, which were placed to guard their garden (of mushrooms, I suppose) and the shrine built with the skulls of their ancestors.
  2. a room with troll bones,
  3. an ale cellar with a secret door to the outside,
  4. a corpse in the middle of a pentagram (no obvious explanation, perhaps a hook to later encounters),
  5. an owl bear’s nest with owlbear(s) and all the surrounding trappings (worms, bones, beetles, roaches, centipedes and a half-eaten dwarf),
  6. the mushroom mens’ home with its residents plus all the surrounding trappings (dung, glowing fungus, mulch pile, spore pods, guano and a mushroom garden)
  7. a room with rats eating a dead adventuring party.

Another throw for level two gives me:

  1. a room with a brazier and burnt bones,
  2. the lair of the giant spider, where she is hiding, plus all the surrounding trappings (eggs, more bones, small spiders, a giant web, mummified corpses and a secret exit),
  3. a room full of bats
  4. a hallway with a full backpack and shredded ropes and a trap
  5. a nest of flail snails with the snail family plus slime trails, trippy mushrooms, a dead party, a pile of bones, a pond and a bunch of baby flail snails.
  6. a dead, runt adult albino ape, lying on a dung pile, holding a cow femur
  7. a hidden room with weapons, armor and several jewels belonging to human bandits, who are away.
Level 3:
  1. the d4 went off the sheet, so I’ll add one wandering/pursuing monster to this level: It’s a minotaur who wants the dragon’s treasure but will let someone else kill it.
  2. The lair of the trogs, who have their own skull mound, human bones, a cave painting of demons, trippy berries, their own smashed shriekers and a half eaten kobald [still sic]. These would be the weak, young and elderly trogs, since the boys are out fighting. I wonder who started this?
  3. another chamber of bats and guano–the same large chamber as on level 2.
  4. A pool or stream with a secret underwater door, which leads to a lake outside.
  5. an abandoned campsite (formerly belonging to goblins).
  6. A gelatinous cube lurks in this chamber. A smart party will be wary once they find human bones, a map (of what? you decide!), a scroll of spells, a ring, gold coins and some bits of armor.
  7. The dragon’s chamber, complete with dragon, hoard, ceiling exit, eggs, melted armor slag, pieces of armor and a flock of birds that clean parasites from under its scales as it sleeps.

Now this won’t populate your megadungeon, but I think the above isn’t too shabby for a night of adventuring. The die rolls took twelve seconds total, while the typing took twelve minutes.

Here’s the Kaotic Cave as a hi-res jpeg at 2.4 MB. I’ll probably update the images to make them smaller and more readable later this week.

I hope it was worth the wait, Orsobuffo. Tomorrow: The necromancer’s academy.

Kaotic Cave v1 (2.4 MB)

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