d23's done!

I finally finished my d23 on the 20th, then took a break to let it rest and consider what I want to do with it (and also just to take a break). Like I said in my post from july, I'm not sure how seriously I want to publish this. I wrote it for me, but I do want to show it off. I worked hard on it for over a year and it's good.

Right now my plan is to release a plaintext ashcan with pictures of the hand drawn maps. Nothing fancy, just a serviceable document. Maybe with some notes to explain any quirks or missing info (artifacts of having written it for my use, there are things I didn't write down because they're so ingrained in my GMing that I didn't need to).

I'm also thinking about writing some posts on the process of making it. Why I started, how I got my ideas, how they developed over time, how I decided what to keep, actually doing the work, all that. I was planning on doing posts about how I write, game, and GM too (because self-reflection is important), so there'll be a lot of looking at how the sausage gets made next year.

1d100 Vehicles and Mounts

1 VW bug

2 Subcompact (1 AMC Gremlin, 2 Fiat 500, 3 Mini Cooper, 4 Ford Pinto, 5 Chevy Vega, 6 Oldsmobile Starfire)

3 Sedan

4 Wood-paneled station wagon

5 Pickup truck (1 rusted out, 2 vintage, 3 actual work vehicle, 4 shamefully spotless)

6 SUV

7 Panel van (1 contractor's - full of tools, 2 wizard mural, 3 converted to camper, 4 minivan - full of kids' sports equipment)

8 Sports car (1 convertible, 2 vintage muscle car, 3 F1 racecar, 4 supercar)

9 Limousine

10 RV

11 Bus (1 school, 2 city, 3 greyhound, 4 converted to RV)

12 Train 

13 U-Haul (1 8', 2 10', 3 15', 4 22')

14 Semi (1 cab only, 2 short trailer, 3 long trailer, 4 flatbed, 5 refrigerated, 6 converted to a mobile lab)

15 Road train

16 Tanker truck (1 water, 2 petrochemicals, 3 compressed gas, 4 liquid nitrogen, 5 milk, 6 raw sewage)

17 Dump truck

18 Cement truck

19 Bulldozer

20 Backhoe (1 compact, 2 amphibious, 3 long reach, 4 walking)

21 Steamroller

22 Skid loader

23 Forklift

24 Snowcat

25 Snowplow

26 Tow truck

27 Garbage truck

28 Mail truck

29 Food truck

30 Ice cream truck

31 Monster truck

32 Hovercraft

33 Ambulance

34 Fire engine

35 Police car

36 Armored car

37 Technical

38 Armored personnel carrier

39 Tank

40 Lawn mower

41 Tractor

42 Combine harvester

43 Golf cart

44 ATV

45 Snowmobile

46 Sleigh (1 horse, 2 dog, 3 troika, 4 reindeer)

47 Carriage

48 Stagecoach

49 Covered wagon

50 Hot air balloon

51 Glider (1 hang glider, 2 paraglider, 3 airframe, 4 motorglider)

52 Cessna

53 Helicopter

54 Private jet

55 747

56 Biplane

57 Bushplane

58 Seaplane

59 Blimp

60 Aerosub

61 Submarine

62 Aircraft carrier

63 Oil tanker

64 Container ship

65 Cruiseship

66 Superyacht

67 Paddle steamer

68 Tugboat

69 Sailboat (1 catamaran, 2 tall ship, 3 motorsailer, 4 skipjack)

70 Houseboat

71 Hydrofoil

72 Speedboat

73 Bass boat

74 Fanboat

75 Zodiac

76 Jetski

77 Sailboard

78 Kayak

79 Canoe

80 Bicycle (1 mountain, 2 moped, 3 vintage 10-speed, 4 recumbent)

81 Dirt bike

82 Motorcycle

83 Scooter

84 Skateboard

85 Unicycle

86 Tricycle

87 Pennyfarthing

88 Monocycle

89 Horse

90 Donkey

91 Mule

92 Hinny

93 Ox

94 Yak

95 Reindeer

96 Camel

97 Elephant

98 Ostrich

99 Zebra

100 UFO

1d60 Gas Station Purchases

1 Gas
2 Diesel
3 Windshield washer fluid
4 Motor oil
5 Air fresheners
6 Propane tank
7 Firewood
8 Charcoal briquettes
9 Lighter fluid
10 Marshmallows
11 Cigarettes
12 Cigars
13 Chewing tobacco
14 Ibuprofen
15 Dubious stimulants
16 Liquor
17 Wine
18 Beer
19 Coffee
20 Energy drinks
21 Pop
22 Lotto tickets
23 Newspaper (1 local, 2 regional, 3 national, 4 business)
24 Magazine (1 sports, 2 tabloid, 3 bizarrely niche, 4 porn)
25 Candy
26 Gum
27 Jerky
28 Cookies
29 Chips
30 Salsa
31 Ice cream
32 Hot dogs
33 Pretzels
34 Frozen breakfast burrito
35 Fried chicken
36 Sandwiches
37 Sushi
38 Cheese curds
39 Milk
40 Slushies
41 Ice
42 Bait
43 Bucket hat
44 Baseball hat
45 Souvenir t-shirt
46 Sunglasses
47 Headphones
48 Charger
49 Disposable camera
50 Lighters (1 opaque plastic, 2 metal with a picture of a wizard, 3 plastic with a picture of an eagle and flag, 4 USB-powered arc lighter, 5 extra large, 6 long gooseneck)
51 Glowsticks
52 Knife (1 rainbow anodized, 2 tacticool, 3 sensible folding pocketknife, 4 machete, 5 too spiky and curved to actually use, 6 antler-hilted hunting knife painted with a leaping trout)
53 Umbrella
54 Sunscreen
55 Chapstick
56 Shampoo
57 Soap
58 Toothbrush
59 Deodorant
60 Tampons

1d30 Things Lost by the Roadside

1 Couch

2 Mattress
3 A shoe (1 sneaker, 2 flip-flop, 3 croc, 4 cowboy boot, 5 rollerskate, 6 baby's)
4 5-gallon bucket (1 empty, 2 with a lid, 3 cracked, 4 half full of cement)
5 Ladder (1 aluminum, 2 wood, 3 step, 4 two-story extending)
6 Fridge (1 mini, 2 full, 3 vintage 50's, 4 chest freezer)
7 Towel
8 Stuffed animal (1 rag doll, 2 bear, 3 shark, 4 licensed character)
9 Travel mug
10 Chair (1 dining room, 2 office, 3 plastic deck, 4 steel folding, 5 adirondak, 6 bar stool, 7 car seat, 8 wheelchair)
11 Recliner
12 TV
13 Game console
14 VCR
15 Livestock (1 chickens, 2 ducks, 3 turkeys, 4 emu, 5 sheep, 6 goat, 7 pig, 8 llama, 9 alpaca, 10 bull)
16 Shovel (1 snow, 2 gardening, 3 entrenching tool, 4 plastic beach toy)
17 Trash can
18 Jewelry (1 ring, 2 gold chain, 3 watch, 4 tennis bracelet)
19 Houseplant (1 marigolds, 2 cactus, 3 ficus, 4 porthos, 5 monstera, 6 tillandsia, 7 lithops, 8 weed)
20 Chainsaw
21 Gascan
22 20lbs of potatoes
23 Bike
24 Quilt (1 handmade, 2 utility, 3 comforter, 4 polar fleece blanket, 5 baby blanket, 6 mylar emergency blanket)
25 Tarp
26 Paint cans
27 Rubber waders
28 Canoe
29 Bounce house
30 Gym bag full of cash

1d20 Travelers on the Road

1 Shepherd. Driving their flock back from pasture with the help of two dogs. The sheep fill the lane and move at a relaxed amble.

2 Peddler. A traveling merchant with a stock of general and small luxury goods. They also have tools to mend items for a fee.

3 Itinerant Teacher. A traveling scholar who offers classes and letter-writing services. They have a small library in their wagon and will deliver messages if the destination is on their route, but no guarantees.

4 Mercenaries. A small company of soldiers for hire looking for their next job. They'll offer their services as protection until you reach town, or propose to travel together for mutual protection if you don't have the money.

5 Hunters. Locals returning home hauling their kill on a travois. It takes three of them to pull the sled.

6 Lone Horseman. A solitary rider racing along the road at a desperate gallop as if pursued.

7 Postman. Following their route on horseback with a pack mule carrying correspondence and parcels. They're unable to open the mail bags outside of town, it's against regulations.

8 Tax Collector. Momentarily separated from their guards and vulnerable.

9 Bandits. Waiting to ambush a bigger target than you. Politely indicate you should get lost immediately.

10 Lumberjacks. A team of foresters hauling freshly-felled logs back to town on a big-wheel cart.

11 Old Woman. A lone granny walking back from the market with a basket and a big stick. Unafraid and formidable.

12 Mushroom Hunter. Returning from the woods with a basket full of truffles. Won't say where they harvested them but will happily sell some for a good price.

13 Lost Dog. Scruffy and thin with burrs in its matted fur, but happy to see you.

14 Traveling Doctor. A skilled physician making their rounds through the local villages. They might not have official credentials but they do have a stethoscope.

15 Lost Child. Dirty, hungry, cold, and wandering on the side of the road. Wary of adults but won't run unless startled.

16 Ghost. A figure standing in the woods on the edge of the road. Turns and walks through the gate of an overgrown cemetery before vanishing.

17 Folklorists. A group of researchers looking for the local legendary monster. If it's real they're probably scaring it off with all the noise they're making.

18 Family. Three sisters, their spouses, children, and a few stray cousins moving their households to a new town. They have wagons full of furniture and are driving livestock along with them.

19 Old Soldier. A long-retired veteran traveling the world in their old age. Has a plethora of tales of their many and varied exploits.

20 Midwife. Called out in a hurry to attend an early birth. She'll enlist you to help with the emergency if you're foolish enough to look useful.

1d12 Roadside Shrines

1 A round brick pillar with worn and faded inscriptions around the base

2 A hawthorn tree with multicolored rags and ribbons tied into its branches

3 A tiny wooden cabinet protecting a painting of a holy beast

4 A roughly-shaped stone statue, weathered and hung with strands of glass beads

5 A single-room chapel with an altar and a little blue stained glass window

6 A beech tree with a sprawling canopy and eyes carved into its trunk

7 A hexagonal cairn of white stones raised in memory of a folk hero

8 A niche cut in the bole of an oak holding a porcelain icon, framed by a wreath of wheat sheaves tied with red string

9 A simple stone table piled high with food offerings and candles

10 A holy well hewn out of solid rock, fed by a spring above the carved basin 

11 An intricately-carved wood idol of a young woman, offerings of flowers and bread placed at her feet

12 A stout ash pole erected at a crossroads with nails hammered into every inch of its surface

1d10 Detour-Causing Problems

1 Barricade of fallen trees across the road

2 Bridge is closed for construction

3 Overturned gravel cart's spilled debris everywhere

4 Road's been washed away by a flood

5 Road's blocked by a battalion of tractors

6 Wagon with a broken axle blocking traffic

7 Herd of livestock refusing to move

8 Massive multiple-cart pile-up and traffic jam

9 Giant sinkhole that wasn't there yesterday

10 A lone, intensely menacing, aggressive deer

1d8 Roadside Attractions

1 Dino-Land! Huge brightly-painted plaster and wood statues are posed in dioramas throughout the woods in the park. They're roughly made and not completely accurate, but charming. The park was inspired by fossils found on the property.

2 The Bottle House. A sprawling, castle-like building constructed entirely out of glass bottles mortared together like bricks. It's the life's work of three brothers who wanted to see if they could. The bottom two floors and one of the spiral towers are open for public tours.

3 The Biggest Ball of String. The Ball is almost 20' in diameter, perfectly spherical, and protected from the elements inside a greenhouse-like glass and wood dome. It's ringed by a metal guardrail covered in "DO NOT TOUCH" signs. If pressured the staff will nervously confide that some visitors who've touched The Ball were drawn in and didn't reemerge.

4 The Museum of the Incredible! An old house converted into a showcase for a giant collection of curios, taxidermied animals, and unusual art pieces. Admission is surprisingly affordable for the quality of items on display.

5 The Towers. A collection of sculptural wood spires built by the proprietor over decades. The second-highest tower is over 100' tall with an inner spiral staircase and viewing platform at the top. Tickets are inexpensive and visitors are welcome at all hours, though climbing at night is discouraged. The tallest tower supports the proprietor's home atop it and rises well above the viewing tower. There's no door or staircase up.

6 Ultra-Fun Alpine Slide! A mile-long dished stone track running in switchback curves down a steep hillside meadow. Visitors can rent single-person wheeled sleds and ride down after a scenic hike to the top. Children must be accompanied by adults and riders must sign all seven liability waivers before renting a sled.

7 Jackalope Petting Zoo. A fenced but otherwise open forest park with a population of several hundred jackalopes. Visitors can walk the property, interact freely with the antlered hares, and buy cones of feed from the souvenir shop. The park closes in spring when the jackalopes get aggressive.

8 Tortoise World. A gigantic herpetarium built in the shape of a grazing tortoise and home to hundreds of species of turtle, including some that were previously extinct. In addition to educational programs there are several turtle races each day. When the track isn't in use, visitors have the opportunity to ride in traditional tortoise-drawn chariots.

1d6 Motels With Vacancies

1 Shady Cedars Auto Campground

A quiet, secluded campground tucked away in a pocket of mature cedar forest. Has 12 campsites, each with a picnic table, fire circle, wooden tent platform, and parking spaces for 2 cars. The sites are far enough apart to be private, connected by narrow dirt drives to the main road. Has communal bathrooms, a small convenience store, sand volleyball court, and a caretaker's cabin. No electricity. Bears.

2 The Old Bunker Inn at -132 Cactus Circle (off County Road 27)
A decommissioned missile silo that's been converted into a novelty hotel. Only visible from the road because of its Googie neon sign and domed blast doors. The area open to guests has 7 suites with their own bathrooms and kitchenettes, a common rec room, cafe, and bar. The comms equipment and munitions the military left are all deactivated and inert. Absolutely harmless, nothing to worry about. Check-in, housekeeping, and all amenities are completely self-serve.

3 Blue Skies Motor Court
A two-level aging motel a mile outside of town in a cornfield off the highway. Has 18 mostly-clean rooms, 5 with long-term residents. The office is open 24/7 and there's a combinations gas station truck stop across the parking lot. Pool's closed for maintenance, dry with mysterious stains. All the cars in the lot are parked nose-out.

4 Pinecone Place
A row of 8 modest log cabins facing onto a wooded yard. They're cute but extremely dated, built decades ago and still decorated in the style of the day. Cabins 1 and 2 have hot tubs, the rest have screened-in back porches. A wide gravel walk leads from the parking lot past each cabin to the owner's house on the back of the property. There are 5 cars in the lot, all have out of state plates and 3 look like they haven't moved in years.

5 Farfield House Bed and Breakfast
A 200 year old farmhouse renovated and updated to have modern conveniences like indoor plumbing, electricity, and air conditioning. The proprietors are a charming retired couple from the city. They live on the third floor and manage the property as a working farm as well as a B&B, raising heritage breed livestock and vegetables. Guests are welcome to help with the everyday chores for a taste of farm life. Has 4 guest rooms, a barn, gazebo by the duck pond, and an unusual number of pigs for a farm its size. They range freely at night, the proprietors strongly recommend guests be inside before sunset.

6 Starfield Ranch
Called "The Domes" by locals. A collection of 6 concrete geodesic domes in a hexagon around a central dirt parking lot, built miles out in the open prairie away from the cities' light pollution. The domes are open floor plan with art deco interiors and powerful AC. Each has a stargazing guide and schedule of upcoming meteor showers in the bedside table instead of a bible. The grounds are minimally kept with wildflower gardens. The office and a small diner are a short way down the private drive in a building shaped like a vintage rocket. It's open 24/7 but doesn't have windows to preserve the dark. Folks in town warn everyone traveling through about the strange lights in the sky and disappearances.

1d4 Fast Food Chains

1 Pizzeria Famiglia

'Anything for Family'
Serves pizza by the slice or whole and garlic bread. The flagship store offers an extended menu of whatever traditional recipes Nonna decided to cook that day.
$8/plate
Discontinued: Calamari

2 Clucker's
'It's finger-suckin' good!'
Changed their name and slogan to Chicken Hut and 'Feeling peckish?' in an attempt to rebrand, but it hasn't worked. Serves chicken in all its forms, potatoes in myriad fried guises, cole slaw, and biscuits. Offers an egg-centric breakfast menu until 10am.
$5/plate
Discontinued: Balut

3 Mr. Grill
'Hear the sizzle, taste the smoke.'
Started as an average drive-in diner but changed focus to meat. Serves burgers, hot dogs, ribs, steak, anything that comes from an animal and can be slapped on a grill. Their signature root beer and floats are the only holdovers from the original menu. Orders are still brought out by carhops on roller skates.
$14/plate
Discontinued: Eel donburi

4 Taco Fresca
'Que sabor!'
Serves mexican food, supposedly. It's the opposite of authentic but it's tasty, cheap, and there's a lot of it. Open 24/7. Has exclusive pop flavors that rotate each month.
$3/plate
Discontinued: Pizza, cuy

Folk of the Trails

Vaquero
A vaquero's life is spent on the trails, shepherding others through the trackless wilds. Terrain most people would consider unnavigable. You've never had trouble finding your way and you've always made sure everyone depending on you got where they're going safe and sound.

Possessions:
Lasso
Guitar
Dented coffee pot
Duster (as light Armor)
Twin pearl-handled revolvers (Damage as Pistolets)
Iconic hat

Advanced Skills:
3 Ridin'
3 Ropin'
2 Quickdraw
1 Campfire cookery
-1 Instrumentation

Special:
Horses love you.
Non-euclidean spaces stabilize around you and anyone with you.



Bounty Hunter
It's your job to find people. sometimes they're wanted, sometimes they're missing, and sometimes they haven't done anything at all. You fetch them and get paid. You're not popular, but you're very good at your job.

Possessions:
Binoculars
Dartgun (Damage as Fusil, non-lethal, paralyzes and knocks target unconscious after 5 minutes)
Beat-up laptop
Bag of burner phones
Portable cassette player and headphones

Advanced Skills:
3 Sharpshooting
2 Awareness
2 Investigating
2 Stakeouts
1 Music trivia
1 Wrestling
-2 Philosophy

Special:
You can sense where anyone is in The Trails or on The Road as long as you know their full name and something personal about them.



Wanderer
It's not always a good idea to use the main roads. Not safe to be out under the eyes of other travelers and the CC TVs. Better to stay out of sight and make your own way.

Possessions:
Patch-encrusted jean jacket
Worn boots
Walking stick (Damage as Polearm)
Rainbow-anodized gas station knife
Gym bag (Slots as 2 Backpacks)
Cigarillos

Advanced Skills:
3 OpSec
3 Temerity
2 Making friends
2 Orienteering
2 Scrounging
-1 Relaxing
-1 Trusting

Special:
You can find lost trails and forgotten roads or forge new ones to go wherever you want.

Folk of The Road

Hitchiker

You love the road and The Road loves you. It's your one true and constant companion in a life on the move. People always tell you it's dangerous and that you shouldn't travel alone but they don't know what they're talking about. You're never alone.

Possessions:
Towel
6-Pack
Harmonica
Hatchet
Notebook of viscerally terrible poetry

Advanced Skills:
3 Companionable silence
3 Menacing silence
3 Navigation
2 Spirit communication
2 Trekking

Special:
You can always find someone or something to give you a ride.
You can call on The Road to give you something you need (shelter/defense/resources fallen off a truck) once a day.



Longhauler
Sometimes it gets boring driving the same routes over and over, but at least the places they send you are interesting. You even like some of them. By now you know the way well enough that the distances all meld together into a single fleeting moment of Travel. You always make excellent time.

Possessions:
Sleeper cab
Mesh snapback
Paper maps
Audiobooks on CD
Sack of beef jerky and dubious stimulants
4d6 empty bottles
Cargo*

Advanced Skills:
3 Driving
3 Spatial awareness
2 Logistics
2 Shortwave radio
1 Chain-smoking
-1 Karaoke

Special:
You can move freely along The Road, shortening travel time to destinations you've already visited. Trips that'd normally be longer than 30 minutes take 15 for you and trips that'd be longer than an hour only take 1 hour.
You always have a Cargo. What it is, how much it weighs, and what it's worth changes with each stop you make but it's always at least 600 lbs and 10,000 SP. It takes 1d3 hours to unload and take on new Cargo at a stop.



Tourist
Traveling is wonderful. You get to see new places, try new things, meet new people, and everyone's always so nice. It's a shame you can never stay as long as you'd like, just a few days before you've got to move on again.

Possessions:
Elaborate camera
Flamingo-print bucket hat
2d6 Guidebooks to cities you've visisted
"100 Most Haunted Houses" paperback, heavily annotated
A disorganized wad of visitors' pamphlets for local attractions and restaurants rubber banded together

Advanced Skills:
4 Curiosity
2 Confidence
2 Improvising
2 Making reservations
1 Forensics
-1 Local customs

Special:
You can learn the history of any place within 100' of a road just by focusing on it. The events of the past play back for you as visions. It takes 3 minutes of still, silent mediation to look back over a year and no limit to how far back you can go except for your endurance. After you spend 3 days in one place your visions start randomly appearing to others.

The Road

Roads siphon a little life from everything that travels over them. In time they become living entities themselves, a network of semi-dormant creature-consciousness that spans entire continents, practically a god. That emergent entity is The Road. It's been with us for as long as we've made paths to follow and only grows stronger as we build more.

All roads are part of The Road, whether it's a tiny footpath, dirt two-track, or six-lane highway. All roads that join and carry people build the pattern that is The Road. The older a road is the more powerfully it's woven into the network, a foundation that descendant roads mimic. The larger a road is the more traffic it carries and energy it gathers to feed The Road. "Arterial road" isn't just a metaphor.

On the fringes of The Road are The Trails. Indefinite sub-networks of unset ways. Desire paths, forgotten streets, areas that are off the map. They cling to The Road as parasites, drawing energy from it to sustain their own shifting paths. If you know a Trailhead or want to find one badly enough, you'll slip through.

The longer you spend on The Road the more familiar it gets and the more likely it'll respond. The more often you hit The Trails the better you get at finding your way and the easier it is to get in.

Safe travels.

Travel Dice Set

I usually carry dice on me. Not because I want to be ready to play at all times, but because I like dice and it's nice to have some on hand. For my everyday carry I pick three polyhedral 7-sets and swap them out depending on what color or style appeals to me at the moment. If I'm going to a game I'll bring a bigger bag of ten or twelve sets, because why not? I won't use them all, but it's fun.

If I'm going on a trip though, I'll take the travel set.

The travel set is put together with utility in mind. It's a bag of dice I can throw in my backpack and not worry about that'll let me play pretty much any game I might run into.

It's a polyhedral 7-set, a 10d10 set, and three d6s all in Chessex Opaque Pink w/White. (I considered adding a second d20, but it's not really necessary.)

I picked that color, style, and combination of dice for a few practical reasons:

• Opaque dice are inexpensive and easy to replace, so if they get lost it's not a big deal it's just disappointing.
• The pink that Chessex uses is extremely bright, so it's easy to find any dice that fall on the floor.
• One unified, eye-searing color means it's easy to tell which ones are mine on the table.
• It's the minimum number of dice you need to conveniently play most d6, d10, d100, d20-based games so I can pack lighter.

It works great. The only way it'd be better is if I could get the same combo in 12mm mini dice to make it even more compact.

1d100 Swords

1 Sword

2 Sword
3 Sword
4 Sword
5 Sword
6 Sword
7 Sword
8 Sword
9 Sword
10 Sword
11 Sword
12 Sword
13 Sword
14 Sword
15 Sword
16 Sword
17 Sword
18 Sword
19 Sword
20 Sword
21 Sword
22 Sword
23 Sword
24 Sword
25 Sword
26 Sword
27 Sword
28 Sword
29 Sword
30 Sword
31 Sword
32 Sword
33 Sword
34 Sword
35 Sword
36 Sword
37 Sword
38 Sword
39 Sword
40 Sword
41 Sword
42 Sword
43 Sword
44 Sword
45 Sword
46 Sword
47 Sword
48 Sword
49 Sword
50 Sword
51 Sword
52 Sword
53 Sword
54 Sword
55 Sword
56 Sword
57 Sword
58 Sword
59 Sword
60 Sword
61 Sword
62 Sword
63 Sword
64 Sword
65 Sword
66 Sword
67 Sword
68 Sword
69 Sword
70 Sword
71 Sword
72 Sword
73 Sword
74 Sword
75 Sword
76 Sword
77 Sword
78 Sword
79 Sword
80 Sword
81 Sword
82 Sword
83 Sword
84 Sword
85 Sword
86 Sword
87 Sword
88 Sword
89 Sword
90 Sword
91 Sword
92 Sword
93 Sword
94 Sword
95 Sword
96 Sword
97 Sword
98 Sword
99 Sword
100 Sword

d100 Things the Crows Brought You

1 A penny (shiny and new)

2 A silver half-dollar
3 Roll of quarters
4 Liberty head dollar coin (solid gold, minted 1832)
5 Dollar bill (crumpled and torn)
6 $5 bill (crisp)
7 $20 bill (worn and folded in fourths)
8 $50 bill (folded into an origami crab)
9 $100 bill (disconcerting stains and a few tiny dots of blue dye)
10 Pizza crust
11 Slice of pizza (half-eaten)
12 Slice of pizza (whole, still hot)
13 A whole pizza
14 Broken lightbulb
15 LEDs
16 Seaglass
17 Aluminum roofing nails
18 Steel hex nut
19 Twist of copper wire
20 Marbles
21 Acorns
22 Bones
23 A tiny skull
24 An earring
25 Mood ring
26 Diamond ring
27 Dayglo paper clips
28 Broken zipper pull (bright blue enamel)
29 A molar
30 Foam earplugs (neon orange)
31 Glass beads
32 Shell buttons
33 Smooth river rocks
34 Keys
35 Car keys (remote fob works)
36 Car air freshener (mountain pine)
37 Plastic toy horse
38 Tiny glass bottle of colored sand
39 .38 snub-nose revolver
40 Lotto tickets
41 Sunglasses
42 A fifth of whiskey
43 Bucket hat
44 Blue tie-dyed banadana
45 Bouncy ball
46 A tiny stuffed bear
47 Kid's sneaker
48 Shoelaces
49 Bottlecaps
50 Hotwheels car
51 Prism
52 Snail shells
53 Black pearl
54 The "friends" half of a best friends necklace
55 Silk ribbons
56 Artificial flowers
57 Chicken nuggets
58 Mozzarella sticks (still hot, in a paper take-out box)
59 Werther's originals
60 Dead mice
61 Coupons
62 Fishing lures and bobbins
63 A 10" long curly fry
64 Grasshoppers
65 Rolex (fake)
66 Rolex (real)
67 Jingle bell
68 Cornhusk doll
69 Magnet (neodymium, extremely strong)
70 Silk handkerchief (has your monogram)
71 Silver bangle
72 Bullet casings
73 Bullets
74 Dice
75 Miniature pumpkin (4" wide, adorable)
76 Pinecones
77 Fresh flowers
78 Crayfish claws (blue)
79 Waffle fries
80 Half a donut
81 Batteries
82 Ceramic resistors
83 Vacuum tube (new and unused)
84 An eye
85 Desiccated treefrog
86 Spiders
87 Cigarettes
88 A cigar
89 An ounce of weed
90 Doll head (porcelain, staring)
91 Lego blocks
92 Tiny springs
93 Baby snake (live)
94 Peanuts
95 Candied almonds
96 Switchblade
97 Keychain swiss army knife
98 a gold chain
99 A ruby (pigeon's blood, 17ct)
100 A crow chick

d100 Things in the Witch's Cottage

1 700lb of confectioner's sugar

2 Black iron cauldron (person-sized)
3 Black iron cauldron (5qt, travel-size)
4 An elaborate wood-fired pizza oven
5 Black iron kettle
6 Silver tea service
7 Bone china painted with birdhouses and daisies (place settings for 6)
8 Fire spirit bound to the hearth grate (burns toast but makes life-changing omelets)
9 Novelty apron (reads "Smokin' Hot" surrounded by flame patterns)
10 A fully-stocked pantry, larder, and icebox
11 Freshly-brewed tea and cakes
12 Homemade moonshine and a still out back
13 Dried herbs
14 A worrying number of succulents and cacti
15 Mushrooms (fresh, dried, growing everywhere)
16 Cookie jar of molasses chews (delicious)
17 Cookie tin of gingerbread men (alive, desperate, delicious)
18 Cookie tin of sewing supplies
19 Golden stork embroidery scissors
20 Silver sewing shears
21 A book of bone needles
22 Spools of nettle thread
23 Hanks of spidersilk floss
24 Skeins of human hair
25 Spinning wheel (ancient, wooden)
26 Spindle (solid gold)
27 Distaff and bales of flax
28 A pretty linen tablecloth embroidered with one of every flower
29 Hand-tatted lace doilies
30 Button eyes
31 An extensive collection of dolls and poppets
32 Marionettes hanging from every inch of the ceiling
33 Nesting dolls (sing when open and beg not to be closed)
34 Extremely detailed anatomical models
35 Skulls
36 A disordered heap of bones
37 Several articulated skeletons
38 Box of teeth
39 Assorted dried hearts
40 Jar of fresh eyeballs
41 A butchered unicorn
42 Dragon's teeth in a wormhide sack
43 Mummified swallows hung as a garland
44 A perfectly normal chicken
45 A kid goat (black, adorable, troublesome)
46 Bats
47 Rats (ensorcelled and acting as servants)
48 Rats (ensorcelled transmuted people)
49 A cat
50 Two cats
51 Three cats
52 1d6+3 cats
53 A cat-sized bullfrog named Jeb (breaks things when he croaks)
54 A bullfrog-sized horsefly named Reggie (can talk, extremely fond of tropical fruit)
55 A vivarium of newts
56 Two obnoxious kids who refuse to leave
57 A tiny elder tree
58 Billhook (rusty, ivory-handled)
59 Iron tongs
60 Blacksmith's hammer
61 Copper nails
62 Scythe (The Scythe, yes that one)
63 Broom (handmade from yew boughs)
64 Broom (refuses to clean and will buck any unworthy rider)
65 Sealskin coat
66 Swanskin cloak
67 Sturdy boots (muddy)
68 Sensible flats (cute)
69 Thigh-high leather platform boots (black)
70 Pointy hat (black)
71 Cloak (enveloping, black, billows dramatically at exactly the right moments)
72 Wardrobe of fine clothes in all shades of black
73 Souvenir t-shirt (reads "I killed the Witchfinder General and all I got was this lousy t-shirt")
74 A copy of the Malleus Maleficarum (margins full of scathing annotations in perfect handwriting)
75 Magic mirror (talking)
76 Scrying sunglasses
77 Crystal ball (sometimes gets bad reception but usually reliable)
78 Crystals (purely ornamental)
79 Piles of scrolls (disorganized)
80 Shed iron teeth
81 Playing cards with sexy wizards on them
82 Oversized birdcage (empty)
83 Candles (a fire hazard worth)
84 Chessboard with talking pieces
85 Unnecessarily complex brass scales
86 Doctor's bag
87 Weird fossils (some move on their own)
88 Chest of pearls (each has a soul bound to it)
89 Jewelry box (carved with trees, cedar, screams when you open it)
90 A delicate cobalt glass vase (turns any flowers put in it blood red)
91 Ivory comb inlaid with amber crosses
92 21 years of National Hexographic back issues
93 Shelves of research notes on the variations in structures of mutated snail shells
94 An orrery of the solar system showing three planets and nineteen moons you didn't know existed
95 An armoire full of borrowed shadows
96 Some really good cigars
97 Bundles of letters from your parents (from before you were born, tied in green ribbon)
98 Dozens of multicolored glass witchballs (were gag gifts, but she likes them)
99 A pleasantly fat toad
100 The witch's body (unoccupied)

d100 Places to Find Items

1 Encapsulated in an adobe wall
2 Strapped to the undercarriage of a car
3 In the glove box
4 Resting inside the exploded ribcage of an adventurer's corpse
5 At the bottom of a well
6 In a time capsule
7 In a riderless horse's saddlebags
8 Bricked inside a section of masonry
9 Held in a statue's hands
10 Sealed inside a giant's false tooth
11 In a troll's pocket
12 Strapped to the cathedral bell's clapper
13 In the cold remains of campsite's fire circle
14 Jammed in a crevice in a cliff
15 In an eagle's aerie
16 Embedded in the wall of a wasp's nest
17 Encapsulated in honeycomb
18 Beneath a loose floorboard
19 Under the bed
20 Inside the mattress
21 In a dead adventurer's pack
22 At the bottom of a glacial crevasse
23 In the middle of an abandoned camp, no signs of a struggle
24 In a cache hidden beneath a loose flagstone
25 Sunk in a bog
26 In the hulk of a shipwreck
27 Among the ashes of a burned-out house
28 In a kid's toy chest
29 In a wall safe concealed behind a painting
30 In a metal box mounted inside the chimney
31 Buried with its owner
32 Caught in a storm drain
33 Buried at the foot of a lightning-blasted oak
34 In the pantry tucked behind cans of soup
35 Sitting in plain view on a bookshelf
36 In the freezer
37 In a cockatrice's gizzard
38 In a pile of dragonshit
39 Lying completely unprotected in the middle of the floor
40 Next to the spare tire in the trunk
41 In your pack, no clue how it got there
42 Waiting at the foot of your bed
43 Tucked into a hollow tree trunk
44 Glued to a giant tortoise's shell
45 Mixed in the ship's ballast
46 Buried 100' north of where the map says it should be
47 In the bargain bin at a thrift store
48 In a steamer trunk in the attic
49 In a hollowed-out book
50 In a snake's stomach
51 Bolted to a weathervane
52 Implanted in a wizard's eye socket
53 In a wandering llama's pack
54 Suspended in giant spider webs
55 Inside a cocoon
56 In a safe deposit box
57 In plain view in a shop's case
58 Inside a chained coffin
59 Sealed in a weighted pot at the bottom of a lake
60 Engulfed by a coral reef
61 Suspended on silver chains in the center of the room
62 Sitting on top of a pressure plate
63 In pride of place as the banquet's centerpiece
64 Tucked in a brigand's boot
65 Concealed in a bale of hay
66 Accidentally dropped in the latrine
67 Lying undamaged in an active forge
68 Lodged in a gargoyle's throat
69 Hovering 6' off the floor
70 Lying inside a salt circle
71 Enshrined on the altar
72 Contained inside a curtain of running water
73 Sealed inside a lead-lined box
74 Decohered into a laser signal and bouncing through a ring of mirrors
75 Encoded into an earworm stuck in a sphinx's head
76 Built into a golem's chassis
77 Floating in a jar of pickled eggs
78 At the end of the rainbow
79 A the bottom of a hiberniculum
80 Hanging over a bottomless pit
81 Floating in a hot spring
82 Tied to a duck's foot
83 In a shoebox at the back of the closet
84 In an old cookie tin
85 Mildly unstuck in time and space, 10" and 20 seconds from where it appears to be
86 Clipped to a cat's collar
87 In a swan's nest
88 In a thicket of poison ivy
89 Transformed into a treefrog
90 Fused to an unconscious adventurer's face and breathing for them
91 In a giant chrysalis
92 Among the goods left in an overturned wagon
93 In the ruins of an abandoned cottage
94 Tied inside a wiggling sack
95 Lost in a gutter
96 In the lost and found
97 In an abandoned storage unit
98 Sitting in line with six identical forgeries
99 Fused to your left hand
100 In evidence lockup

Dungeon Gifts

The Dungeon loves you. It wants you to feel safe, at home in the depths. It wants you to stay.

The Dungeon understands the unknown is scary, so it'll give you new eyes to see it. It'll tell you about itself, pouring the information into your head as gently as it can so you won't be afraid. It wants you to understand it, but it knows these things take time. It's patient.

The Acclimation Process

The more time you spend in the Dungeon the more influence it gains. The effects are well-documented and cumulative so experienced delvers often wear stopwatches or other timers as dosimeters to track their exposure. A normal progression of symptoms is:

Stage 1: Loss of anxiety and fear in total darkness. (Develops after 1 month of cumulative exposure.) [1]

Stage 2: Gain dimvision at 5, 10, 15, 30, 60, and finally 120'. (Each increase in distance takes an additional 2 weeks of exposure to develop after the onset of Stage 1. Total exposure time at the end of Stage 2: 4 months.) [2-7]

Stage 3: Gain darkvision at 5, 10, 15, 30, 60, and finally 120'. (Each increase in distance takes an additional 2 weeks of exposure to develop after the end of Stage 2. Total exposure time at the end of Stage 3: 7 months.) [8-13]

Stage 4: Gain an improved sense of direction. (You always know where north is and don't get turned around or lost in the Dungeon's halls. Develops with 1 week of exposure after the end of Stage 3. Total exposure time at the end of Stage 4: 7 months, 1 week.) [14]

Stage 5: Gain an instinctive partial awareness of the floor plan. (You know where specific locations are in relation to yourself but not the exact path to get there, only the general direction you need to travel. You know even if you've never been to the location before. Develops 1 week after the onset of Stage 4. Total exposure time at the end of Stage 5: 7 months, 2 weeks.) [15]

Stage 6: Gain an instinctive awareness of the area around you to 30, 60, 90, and finally 120'. (You know the surrounding halls, corridor branches, and rooms. Each increase in distance takes an additional week to develop after the onset of Stage 5. Total exposure time at the end of Stage 6: 8 months, 2 weeks.) [16-19]

Stage 7: Gain an instinctive awareness of the contents of rooms and the locations of the creatures around you to 10, 15, 30, 60, and finally 90'. (You know where everything in range is before you see it, including traps. Each increase in distance takes an additional 3 days of exposure to develop after the end of Stage 6. Total exposure time at the end of Stage 7: 9 months, 1 day.) [20-24]

Stage 8: Begin seeing secrets. (You automatically know where secret doors and room are, included magically-concealed features. Develops with 3 days exposure after the end of Stage 7. Total exposure time at the end of Stage 8: 9 months, 4 days.) [25]

Stage 9: Instinctively know the full exact floor plan of the level you're on, then the levels above and below you, and finally the adjacent levels 2 deep. (Each increase in distance takes an additional day to develop after the onset of Stage 8. Total exposure time at the end of Stage 9: 9 months, 1 week.) [26-28]

Stage 10: Instinctively know the full exact floor plan of the entire Dungeon. (You have complete awareness of all the Dungeon's architectural details, even ones you haven't explored yet. Develops 1 day after the end of Stage 9. Total exposure time at the end of Stage 10: 9 months, 1 week, 1 day.) [29]

Stage 11: Lose any desire to leave the Dungeon. You're home. (You live here now. Switch to a tower defense game protecting the Dungeon. Develops 1 day after the onset of Stage 10. Total exposure time at the end of Stage 11: 9 months, 1 week, 2 days.) [30]

This is only an average timeline for Acclimation. The exact speed of the progression varies between individuals, sometimes dragging on or leaping ahead unexpectedly. If you haven't been tracking exposure or lose count of how long you've been under, roll d30 to see how affected you are.

Progression can also shift dramatically based on your experiences in the Dungeon, ebbing and flowing like any other relationship. Roll d30 every time you:

- Are in total darkness
- Are injured
- Spring a trap
- Are ambushed
- Flee
- Have a near-death experience
- Watch something die
- Go without seeing the sun for 3 days
- Make a friend or alliance
- Discover something wondrous or beautiful
- Learn something about the Dungeon
- Find treasure
- Find shelter
- Eat a meal
- Sit by a fire

If the result is 5 more/less than your current exposure level, go up/down 1 step within your current Stage. If the result is 10 more/less, go up/down 1 full Stage.

The Dungeon's effects are reversible up to Stage 10, but recovery takes time. Remaining above ground with daily exposure to the sun and sky is key to undoing the changes caused by the Dungeon. If your goal is to recover you must not reenter the Dungeon before the sun's finished its work.

Reversing your exposure is literal. The effects of the most advanced stages burn away first followed by the Dungeon's earlier gifts in order.

- Knowledge of the Dungeon's levels and floor plan fades after 6 months above ground. (Stages 10-9)
- Specific awareness of Dungeon features subsides after another 3 months. (Stages 8-5)
- Direction sense disappears after another month. (Stage 4)
- Vision returns to normal in 2 weeks. (Stages 3-2)
- Anxiety in the dark returns after a solid week above ground. (Stage 1)

If you reenter the Dungeon before recovering completely you'll begin accumulating exposure again starting from the last Stage you healed to.

Once Stage 11 symptoms appear recovery is impossible.

d23 Retrospective

I haven't been talking about it much, but I've been steadily working on my d23 project since December. (I'm using a hobonichi weeks planner and it starts in December '22, so there's a level 0 in my dungeon.) Up until this month I've mostly kept on track writing one room a day and if I fell behind it was only for a day or two and easy to catch up. Now I think I'm going to change my approach.

At the end of June I took a short break to look back on what I'd done and consider what to do going forward because I was starting to flag.

I work best when I can completely focus on a project, get it done, then move on to the next thing that inspires me. A year-long ongoing project like d23 is the exact opposite of that and after six months it was wearing on me. Having something unfinished for that long got stressful (mildly, but still noticeable) and worse, it split my focus and distracted me from other projects.

I also discovered, after writing every day for six months, that writing every day is not ideal for me. It's good practice for some folks, but I need stretches of time where I don't write and let ideas percolate. I knew that before, but hadn't realized how much I needed that fermentation time.

So with that in mind I've decided to stop slowly grinding away at d23. The one room a day schedule isn't working for me, so I'm not going to stick to it. I'm just going to finish the whole thing now. This isn't a marathon anymore, it's a sprint and I think it'll be fun as hell.

I've actually been having fun doing d23. Despite my brain's complaining it's been a blast and I'm genuinely proud of everything I've made so far. It's been excellent practice for drawing maps and creating concrete-feeling physical spaces, both things I've historically struggled with, and it's made me seriously think about how a dungeon goes together. I know how to organize rooms, add stairs/exits/loops, and why Jaquaysing is important. Even so, actually doing the work and making decisions about where things go on the map made me examine those internalized concepts and refine them. I'm definitely better at this now than I was back in December. I also probably wouldn't have started a project this size at all if not for d23.

It's also been nice having a project that's just for me. I started this with no intention of publishing it. d23 is for me. My dungeon for my table to be run by me. I might share it as an ashcan eventually, but that'd be it.

So the plan going forward: Write the last five levels.

My method from the beginning was to get a concept of what I wanted the level to be, draw the whole map, and make an outline of all the rooms at the start of the month. Then I'd write the rooms in detail each day and make a d30 encounter list (or two/three) at the end of the month once I was sure what lived there. It's a solid system so the only thing that's going to change is the speed I work.

I've already got the ideas for what I want to do on the remaining levels laid out, so now I just need to map and write.

Making Traps Fun

Traps are a dungeon crawling staple and honestly, usually not very fun. Your classic traps like poison needles, spikes, swinging blades, and pits are iconic but serve a very specific purpose of forcing the party to be cautious as the explore. They deal damage and your reward for foiling them is that you're not maimed or dead.

That's boring.

Pain is fleeting and uninteresting. Obstacles are engaging. Instead of just doing damage traps should change the game by altering how the players can interact with an area. They should do something beyond grinding the party down.

When you write traps try creating ones that:

• Have a reward beyond survival. If you manage to not die you can find bits of loot and interesting things left by or on previous victims, or the parts of the trap itself might be useful (or valuable).
• Add structural interest to the dungeon. Let traps act as new paths or access points for secret areas once they're tripped. (Ex: Pit traps that have an access door at the bottom for cleaning crews to enter. Deadfall traps that have something behind them in the space where the "fall" material came from. Arrow slits and murder holes that you can see through once you find and deactivate them.)
• Move the party unexpectedly to another section of the dungeon. Elevator rooms that drop you down levels, stairs that turn into chutes and slides, and walls that drop to split the party are classic examples. These introduce the same "will we have enough resources?" tension as a damage-dealing trap, but are more interesting because they create a new situation instead of just pain.
• Can be reset and used against enemies or have an interesting effect the party can play with. (Ex: Gravity tricks with a magic fall-up pit trap.)
• Confine but don't injure the person who trips them. (Ex: Falling cages or barred gates over doorways.) The party's unharmed but now they have a new problem to solve.
• Sound alarms (either audible and obvious or silent) and alert the dungeon inhabitants to the party's presence.
• Are clearly telegraphed as dangerous, but exactly what they do is unclear so the party goes "What the hell is that?" and has a chance to figure it out.
• Have bizarre effects like teleporting victims away or forcibly astral projecting them. Something that's just part of the dungeon's tech and is only dangerous because the party's not trained to use it.

There's so much potential for adventuring shenanigans with unorthodox traps. Embrace it. Make them entertaining to interact with and figure out. Make them cause unexpected, unpredictable, immediate problems to deal with beyond massive bodily trauma. (Unless you're Luke Gearing, then keep doing what you're doing. That hallway is beautiful.) Have fun.

1d20 Troublesome Inheritances

1 A crumbling secluded estate

2 A business in truly staggering debt
3 An extremely remote private island
4 A ship known to and wanted by several governments as a pirate vessel
5 A hippo farm
6 A funhouse dungeon, no documentation on how to find or disarm the traps
7 Custodianship of an arch-demon trapped in suspended animation
8 Legal guardianship of your distant cousin's baby
9 A golem with unknown instructions
10 The first truly sentient AI
11 A nuclear stockpile
12 A small private army
13 700 millions gold and 6 copper
14 An accurate map to a famous, massive treasure hoard
15 An intensely haunted doll
16 An overzealous dragon's protection
17 Three favors from a fae who wants to be free of their debt as soon as possible
18 All your parents' enemies
19 The family curse
20 A loud and willful terrier

Everyday Obstacles

The things that hold you up on an adventure aren't always the standard adventuring fare like monsters, traps, and harsh conditions. Sometimes it's mundane, patience-grinding little things that can still cause snags.

No matter how powerful and renowned the party is, have them:

- Wait in line
- Deal with red tape and petty bureaucrats
- Run into rude people
- End up in a place where no one's heard of them

Any scenario where the normal methods of sword, sneaking, and social cachet are less effective than usual.

Sight Hounds

Sight hounds are artificial creatures created through a combination of obscure but well-documented alchemic processes. Their exact appearance varies between manufacturers and depends on the mix of sample tissues used in growing them, but most sight hounds look like mid-sized dogs with pointy ears, fluffy coats, curled tails, and large blocky heads. The common feature they all have is the villi array.

The top of a sight hound's head and neck from the top of their muzzle to their withers is covered in a dense pelt of sensory tentacles and villi that let them see and track energy fields and abstract concepts. They have rudimentary eyes at the ends of the stalks to avoid running into obstacles, but most of their vision isn't aimed at the physical world.

Making sight hounds is cheap, but training them is difficult and expensive. It takes a skilled trainer to teach a hound to recognize what a lie looks like, the exact shades of different types of magic, or the nuances of the electromagnetic spectrum. The best of them graft on a rudimentary villi array of their own, replacing an eye and section of skull with the new sensory organ to better understand what their charges see.

Emotion is the one thing all sight hounds instinctively understand. When you're happy, they know. When you're scared, they know. And when you say they're good, they know you mean it.

1d30 Reasons you shouldn't enter the city

1 Outstanding warrants

2 There's a bounty on you
3 There's a ridiculously gigantic bounty on you
4 You were exiled on pain of death
5 You faked your death
6 You pissed off the mob
7 You pissed off the guilds
8 You pissed off the city guard
9 You pissed off the church
10 6, 7, 8, and 9 all at once, outstanding
11 The longstanding grudge between your family and the ruling House
12 The Mayor hasn't forgotten you destroyed their statue and still thinks you instigated the riots
13 An old personal enemy holds considerable power there
14 Your ex still lives there
15 You broke your betrothal and there's a shotgun wedding waiting
16 Your parents live there and you're not ready for that right now
17 Your mentor lives there and you're not ready to face them yet
18 Your family is there, don't want to make them a target
19 Your dog is there, don't want to come back just to leave them again
20 Your fan club's HQ is there and it's incredibly uncomfortable
21 Don't want to get conscripted
22 You're banned for life after the last time
23 You definitely can't afford the bribes
24 You'll be expected to attend Society functions and make endless formal visits so as to not give Offense
25 The Steward will insist you take up your duties of state
26 You'll spark another succession war
27 You'd make a valuable hostage
28 Extra-planar travel makes you nauseous
29 It's not safe to be that close to your phylactery
30 The wards would incinerate you

What's this ominous pile of stacked bones? (d30)

1 A warning

2 A welcome
3 Evidence
4 A warding
5 A boundary marker
6 A trail marker
7 A midden
8 Aftermath of a hunt
9 Aftermath of a ritual
10 An art project
11 A scarecrow
12 A deactivated golem
13 An armored necromancer (just vibing)
14 A napping skeleton (let them sleep, they look like they need it)
15 A pile of sleeping skeletons (adorable)
16 An open-air ossuary
17 A memorial
18 A trophy
19 A sacrifice
20 A saintly relic
21 A roadside chapel
22 A replacement for the menhir that once stood there
23 A nest
24 A hive
25 A home
26 A throne
27 An oracle
28 An inactive portal
29 Aftermath of a spell
30 Aftermath of a miscast spell

Alectile Dysfunction

Sometimes you try to roll a die and it just falls onto the table with a disappointing flop. Sometimes you get too eager and it goes shooting off the table and gets lost on the floor. Don't worry, it happens to a lot of people. But if it's happening often enough that it causes problems in your gaming there are a few things you can try to make your rolls more reliable.

Note: "Problems" means wasting time looking for lost dice on the floor or having to ask "should I reroll that?" It doesn't mean cheating and has nothing to do with the actual numbers you roll. This is about the physics of rolling dice and getting you back to playing the game. It's also about you. If someone else at your table is flinging dice around to the point that it impacts everyone's enjoyment of the game, talk to them about it.

The goal of rolling is to get a randomized number by having the die tumble several times before it comes to rest. There are a few variables involved in that:

• The shape of the die. A die's center of gravity changes with its shape. More ball-shaped sizes (d12, 20, 30) take less force to roll than pointier dice with pronounced edges (d4, 6, 8).
• The surface it's rolled on. There needs to be enough friction between the die and the rolling surface that the die's edges catch and it tumbles instead of just sliding along.
• The space it's rolled in. There needs to be enough of an open area that the die can roll and tumble a few times before it hits an obstacle.
• The force used to roll.
• The angle of the throw. A die thrown at a low angle to the table will travel farther than one thrown from a high angle.

If you have the right mix, the physics work in your favor and you get a nice, satisfying roll. If any of the variables are too far off, you run into problems. Start troubleshooting your dice rolling by thinking about your:

1 Force used

This is the simplest one. Are you throwing the dice hard enough? Too hard? Think about the times you've had an issue with the dice and try to see if there's a pattern. (Do pointier shapes flop more often? Try rolling those harder. Do rounder shapes go flying? Ease up on those.) Go get your dice and roll a bit, refresh your memory. It might be as simple as building a new muscle memory of how to throw each die shape. You might also just need to chill and stop chucking the d20 across the room.

2 Throw angle

You probably don't think about it, but what angle are you throwing your dice at? It does make a difference. The angle a die hits the table at determines the path it'll roll. A low-angle throw will travel farther along the table than a high-angle one and high-angle throws are more likely to bounce. Paying attention to the angle you throw at lets you predict how it'll behave.

Rolls off the table are more likely when you have a low angle and a lot of force. Flops are more common when you have a high angle and not much force. Slides happen when you have a low angle throw with force on a smooth surface, because there's not enough friction to make the die actually roll.

Try changing the angle of your throw. It's another facet of building new muscle memory and may help.

3 The space

Is your table cluttered? Be honest. If it's crowded on the table, organize it enough that you've got an open space to roll in. You don't have to clear it off completely, just make an open area that everyone can reach to roll in and make sure it stays clear. Aim for a 1' x 2' clear space and see if having that obstacle-free zone helps.

4 Rolling surface

If the table you play on is smooth, try putting something over it. Test roll on a tablecloth, piece of construction paper, sheet of craft felt, maybe even a carpet sample square. Anything with a rougher surface texture than your usual rolling surface. See if it makes a difference in how much the die tumbles and if it stops before falling off the edge of the table.


Try those changes individually and in combinations. If you still don't see an improvement in your rolls you might want to try some gaming equipment:

Dice trays

These provide a guaranteed clear space to roll in with walls to keep your dice from flying around. The walls also create a backstop for the dice to bounce off of and randomize more. I'd suggest getting a tray with a rougher inner surface like velour, felt, or suede leather so your rolls won't slide.

Dice cups

These are great for playing when there's not much room. Use the cup to shake the dice, then turn it over and reveal them like in Liar's Dice. It reduces the area needed to roll to a spot the size of the cup's mouth and randomizing by shaking inside the cup eliminates problems with the force and angle of throws. I'd suggest getting one made of leather or that has thick padding on the inside to cut down on noise while shaking since plastic can be loud.

A shot glass

Hear me out, it works. Get a shot glass. You want one wide enough that a d20 can sit in the bottom and not touch the sides. To roll this way just drop your die in the glass, it'll bounce around the inside and randomize just as well as it would with a good roll on the table. It also works with a lowball/old fashioned glass. The key is to have a glass surface for the plastic die to ricochet off. The drawback with this method is you can't roll multiple dice at once. The upside is it's ultra-compact and only takes up a shot glass worth of table space.

Dice towers

There are lots of styles, but the core principle is you drop a die in at the top and it randomizes by bouncing through a series of baffles inside the tower before rolling out at the bottom. It does all the work of rolling for you and conserves table space by using a vertical axis to reduce your rolling area to the footprint of the tower.


They're all good choices and there are plenty of styles available if you want to try them. Like anything else: Expensive doesn't mean better, look for good craftsmanship and quality materials, and consider how you'll store the thing once you've got it. (I try to look for equipment that disassembles or folds flat for easy transport and storage.)

Hopefully some of these suggestions will be useful and help you cut down on chaotic rolls so you can spend your game time playing, not hunting for lost dice. Give them a shot and see how it goes. Good luck!

Alternate Dice Interactions

I like playing around with dice. Figuring out probabilities and how they'll change in different circumstances is fun. It's one of the reasons I used to write systems, they let me implement my weird dice ideas and see how they worked. I'm more focused on writing content these days, so I figured I'd share the interactions I haven't gotten around to using yet. They might as well see the light of day now and instead of waiting for some nebulous future game.

Dice interactions are rules that directly interact with the math of a die roll to alter the outcome in some way. Some common ones most folks are familiar with are:

- Being able to reroll
- Replacing a roll result with a pre-rolled value
- Bonuses and maluses
- Advantage and disadvantage

Anything that modifies the dice rolled or the roll's result counts.

Here are some interactions I'd like to see used widely one day:

Step Up/Down

Alter what size die gets used in a roll. Make an ally's d4 roll a d6, or an enemy's roll use a d12 instead of a d20. (This one's already used regularly, but not enough that I'd call it common. I want to see it used even more often.)

Twin

Add a second die of the same size to a roll, turning the linear probability into a triangular distribution. There are already spells and abilities that let you add a specific die size to your rolls to give a variable bonus, but this is more about creating the curve probability than just providing a boost to the roll's result. It lets the player choose to avoid the risk of rolling very low or high and increase the probability of mid-range values. A play it safe strategy.

Pool

Add multiple dice of the same size and turn a single-die roll into a pool. Exactly how many dice are in the pool could be determined based on level, abilities, spell effects, whatever. It's not important. What's more interesting is how to resolve a roll like this. A number of successes-based threshold doesn't make sense for a roll that likely originally had a target number to beat for resolution. The two options that make the most sense to me are:

1) The result is the total of the dice. So a pooled skill check would (likely) have you rolling Xd20 and a pooled damage roll would be Xd[damage die]. It could easily end up being overwhelmingly powerful. It would also have the same mid-range stabilizing effect as Twin since it introduces a bell curve. The more dice you add, the more centralized the curve.

2) The result is one value chosen out of the separate rolled values. So if you roll a pool of 3d20 and get 2, 14, 9, only one of those is your result. There are a few ways you could decide which of the values is chosen. The most obvious is to pick highest or lowest, but that would just make this Advantage/Disadvantage with more dice. That's boring. The better option is that the player chooses which of the values they want to use.

Bulk

Replace the lowest value on a die with the highest so the highest value's probability is doubled. (Ex: On a d4 you'd replace the 1 with a 4 so your possible outcomes are 2, 3, 4, 4.)

Sap

Replace the highest value on a die with the lowest so the lowest value's probability is doubled. (Ex: On a d4 you'd replace the 4 with a 1 so your possible outcomes are 1, 1, 2, 3.)

* The probabilities for Bulk/Sap are different from Advantage/Disadvantage. The -vantage rolls are independent, meaning you still have a 1/X chance of each possible outcome in each roll. For Bulk/Sap the highest/lowest value has a 2/X chance of occurring. The significance of the 2/X probability also changes with the die size and has a much more dramatic effect on smaller dice.

Cycle

Rolls don't have a set die they use. Instead you cycle through the dice in a standard set, either stepping up or down with each new roll. So if you start a session rolling a d20, your next roll will use a d12, then a d10, a d8, d6, then after you roll a d4 you cycle back to a d20.

You can alter the direction of the cycle at any point with abilities/spells/etc to do things like making an enemy go 8-6-4 then reverse direction to 6-8-10 order instead of looping around to 20, or timing it beneficially for an ally.

Spiral

For enemies only. Each time they succeed add a die to their rolls so they have an ever-growing dice pool. The more they succeed, the more likely they are to succeed in the future in a self-sustaining spiral and get more dangerous as time goes on.

1d12 Guardian Beasts

1 Little girl in a pristine, frilly white dress. Happy to see you. Hands dripping red.

2 The combined spirits of eight thousand and one crows. Yoked together into a single body and mission but able to split apart into a cloud of beaks and claws.

3 You. Not a doppelganger, not a clone or shadow-self. It's actually you.

4 Ancient warrior's ghost, bound to his duty forever. Very friendly and understanding if you take a minute to stop and talk.

5 Your parents. They love you and are so proud of you, but they won't play favorites.

6 Five-legged horse made of fingernails with dog's teeth and dozens of tiny glowing eyes.

7 Many-tendrilled beast of shadows. A zone of hungry darkness, fuzzy at the margins until it strikes with razor edges.

8 Giant moss-furred hound made of black soil with bog iron bones, teeth, and claws. Melds into and erupts from the earth at will.

9 Lurid fungal bloom encrusting several rooms. Easy to pass. Releases spores that make interlopers want nothing more than to stay and protect the place.

10 Worms. Hundreds of thousands of worms, attracted by sound and working together to undermine the ground below intruders. Devour anything organic that falls through to them.

11 Sturgeon made of luminous plasma, swimming placidly through the air and unaware of its surroundings. Arcs of electricity leap from its spines to any conductive objects or creatures nearby.

12 Nimble eight-legged construct of prisms and lenses mounted on a titanium armature. Can direct rays of focused light to blind and incinerate by repositioning its body segments, using the pieces like burning glasses.

Experiment: The Voice of the City

This is an idea I've had for a while about how players could communicate with an abstract entity that's influencing large numbers of people, like the tutelary spirit of a city, or something less benevolent. It's not a situation where solid rules would be useful, instead it'd rely entirely on good descriptions of the phenomenon to convey what's happening and how potentially unsettling it is.

The kind of entity I'm envisioning could be sentient or not, relatable or utterly alien, but it has to be incorporeal. There's no physical manifestation of it. No avatar or possessed medium or interpreting oracle that comes to speak directly to the players. It also has to have a subtle influence over a lot of people, on the scale of a metropolis. Possibly even a small country.

If the players want to speak to it, they just need to talk within earshot of any of its people and it will hear.

If it wants to speak to the players, it subtly directs the normal conversations of people within its domain so certain words occur in a distinct pattern or are emphasized. If you listen to the general hubbub and background noise of the city its messages are clear in the overlapping, overheard snippets of dozens of unrelated everyday conversations going on around you.

(You could easily have an antagonist who's using some flavor of mass mind control do this to talk to and taunt the players, but I prefer it as the work of a semi-scrutable intelligence.)

I'll try it out next chance I get and report back.

1d8 Weird Woods Encounters

1 A trail you've never noticed before appears. It connects to a trail you're familiar with and it's old, made of cracked concrete partially covered with washed-out dirt and gravel instead of the mulched woodchips the other trails use. You don't know where it goes.

2 The 'trail closed' barriers are up. They usually only close that section of the park off in the winter. What's happening back there to make them barricade those trails in the middle of summer?

3 A wooden foot bridge across the river that's been swept from its moorings and pulled several feet downstream. It's stable, embedded in the stream bank now, but noticeably skewed.

4 A secluded section of trail looks down from a bluff over the river. On the far bank someone's built a conical lean-to around the base of a tree. There's a clear path down to the river bank and a fallen log you could use as a bridge if you wanted to look closer.

5 The trails you walked and the park maps don't match. The map says there's a single mile-long loop trail in the area you were and doesn't show any hint of the switchbacks, connectors, and forks you found. It took you almost an hour to get back to trails you recognized. Whatever's on the map, it's not where you were.

6 That deer was too calm. The others in the herd ran off when they heard you coming and all you saw were tails and glimpses through the trees. That one though, it just stood there watching you. Or watching behind you? What was it looking at?

7 An overgrown footpath off the official trail leads into a secluded clearing that's too perfect. Just enough shade, no bugs, and a circle of stones all exactly the right size and shape to sit comfortably on arranged around a pile of mushroom-covered logs. It's dead silent.

8 The park's property used to belong to a family. Along one of the trails is a small private graveyard with six stone markers. Each is engraved with the names, dates, and kind epitaphs for the family's departed dogs.

True Name Variations

The idea of names having power is ancient and mythic and practically universal across cultures. A magical name that describes the essence of a thing and gives the Namer control over it is a classic, and of course it seems like hubris when the Namee is more powerful than the Namer. I love it and thought I'd play around with some twists on the old mainstay:

0) If you know something's True Name you don't gain power over it. It gains awareness of you and starts taking an interest.
Whatever primal force you're trying to contact goes "Hey, who are you and how do you know my name?" Like if a frog suddenly called you by name you would probably pay attention and engage with it at least a little, even if you could just walk away.

1) A True Name is accumulated, not a single thing.
You're not born with a True Name and not everybody has one. You end up with one as you gain nicknames, epithets, aliases, and titles throughout your life. Once you hit a threshold of Names the collection of all of them becomes your True Name. Reciting all of someone's Names in sequence is what has power, and it does require all of the Names, including private pet names and what their parents called them when they were little.

2) True Names change frequently depending on where someone is and what they're doing at the moment.
Only one Name out of an entity's collection is the True Name, but which one it is changes with the aspect of their persona they're expressing. If you want to get the attention of The Charnel-Daubed Lady of War when she's at home with her family, you need to summon "Mom." 

3) There's only one True Name out of an entity's collection of Names, and it's the one they like best and think describes them the most accurately.
Their True Name will change over time. To summon them you need to know them well enough to correctly choose the current True Name from their entire collection of Names.

* Giving people and entities new Names can alter them, but also protect them by increasing the size of their collection of names. While they don't have any power to control, Names definitely have the ability to influence their bearers.

Things to do at sea

Back in 2019 I was running a campaign that involved a lot of traveling. It wasn't a full-blown hexcrawl, but tracking time and managing supplies while on the road was an important element of the game. Eventually the party ended up on the coast. And went to sea.

One of the common problems of trying to run a game on the ocean is that there's not much to do aboard a sailing ship. There'll be external events like encounters and occasionally places to go ashore, but on the ship itself? Not as much. It's just you on your little boat, isolated in the vast expanse of water.

You could handwave the days and weeks of sea travel by saying the party boards a ship in port A then land two weeks later in port B and never actually interact with the ocean at all, but if you want there to be some adventuring done at sea then dealing with the shipboard downtime can be tough. I wanted to try it, so I came up with this subsystem to handle the lulls between bouts of extreme aquatic danger and mystery:

Each player can pick 3 things to do each normal, uneventful day.

They can't pick an activity more than once in the same day.

Doing something once gains them a little insight and grants a small, one-time bonus to a related task later.

Doing the same thing 3 times or more counts as light training and gains them a permanent bonus or specialty to the related skill.


Things to do aboard ship

• Mend sails/ropes and repair the ship: Hone crafting skills, learn about ship construction.
• Practice tying knots: Bonuses to using ropes and rigging.
• Whittle or scrimshaw: Hone crafting skills, specialty in jewelry/sculpting/decorative details. Might end up with something you can sell.
• Fish: Get food, learn about ocean creatures and marine survival skills.
• Gamble: Build ties with the crew, no gambling for money at sea.
• Tell stories: Build ties with the crew. Hear rumor, gossip, and legends about the sea.
• Practice sparring: Get better at fighting on moving and uncertain footing.
• Climb around in the rigging: Hone climbing skills, acrobatic or athletic. Get a head for heights.
• Hang out with the Navigator: Learn to read maps, predict the weather, and interpret the stars.
• Help in the galley: Build ties with the crew, hone cooking skills.
• Befriend the ship's cat, teach it tricks: Adorable. Hone skill with animals.
• Wakeboard behind the ship (tied on so you won't be left if you fall): Because.

1d20 Cave Wonders

1 Bioluminescent [1 worms, 2 fungi, 3 jellyfish, 4 coral]

2 Giant crystal chamber
3 Massive geodes
4 Stalactite cathedral
5 Crystal pool
6 Bottomless spring (1 healing, 2 resurrecting, 3 cursed, 4 really cold)
7 Sourceless river
8 Towering waterfall (1 boiling, 2 curtain, 3 lava, 4 frozen solid)
9 Hot springs
10 Lava tube maze
11 Hallucinogenic gases that make you see god(s)
12 Vast dome miles across
13 Underground forest fed by shafts that let in sunlight
14 Vivid paintings
15 Exquisite bas reliefs
16 Hall full of statues
17 Ancient lost city (1 cyclopean masonry, 2 rock-cut, 3 ivory and bone, 4 crystal)
18 Ancient necropolis (1 ruined, 2 sealed, 3 sunken, 4 extremely haunted)
19 Dirt whale
20 Immortal naked mole rat colony

1d20 Cave Hazards

1 Random hole (1 vertical, 2 steep-sided, 3 giant cenote, 4 ankle-breaker)

2 Chasm (1 deceptively wide, 2 jumpable(?), 3 narrow, 4 bottomless)
3 Sheer cliffs
4 Undermined passage
5 Narrow squeeze
6 Dead end
7 Lost mineshaft
8 Flooded passage
9 Flash flood
10 Rockfall
11 Earthquake
12 Bad air (1 blackdamp (CO_2), 2 whitedamp (CO), 3 stinkdamp (H_2S), 4 afterdamp (CO +))
13 Firedamp
14 Radioactive ores and irradiated stone
15 Guano and ammonia fumes
16 Toxic mold and spores
17 Hot springs and vents
18 Ant hive (1 stinging, 2 biting, 3 stinging and biting, 4 harmless but gross)
19 Giant ant hive
20 Carnivorous naked mole rat colony

(This list is included in Red Solstice vol. 2, available now from Spear Witch!)

Making Magic Items

Creating new magic items is easy. Would one of your players like something specific for their character? Do you just want to make something new and fun? Go for it. Magic items are an exercise in creativity more than anything else. Ignore balance and write something cool. (Seriously, don't waste time worrying about whether an item will be overpowered or game-breaking. That's not actually an issue and if you do run into a problem, talk to your friends and sort it out like adults.)

Magic items all have three basic parts: What it is, what it does, and a name.

What it is

The physical description of the item. The materials, quality and workmanship, design, decorative features, and what type of object it is (a hat, weapon, scepter, etc).

There are endless options here. Literally. The only limit on what form an item takes is your imagination.

A few considerations while writing:

• Do you want it to be flashy and ostentatious or misleadingly mundane-looking? Some magic items obviously look magic, ornate and impressive in a form of arcane aposematism, but simple enchanted items are a staple of folklore and fairy tales. A worn cloak, old boots, a simple wooden staff, or bone flute; things that don't look impressive but are powerful nonetheless.
• Do you want it to be thematically appropriate? Since the item can be made of any material and crafted in any shape, do you want it to have symbolic references to what it does worked into the design? Puns or ironic references too. Shoes of Waterwalking that are cement clogs would be hilarious and you know it.
• Do you want form to be related to function? What the item is doesn't have to reflect what it does at all. This is related to how much symbolism is in an item, but more prosaic. It's the choice between earrings that let you eavesdrop, a drinking glass that does the same thing when its mouth is pressed to a solid surface, or a silk shirt with a gaudy ear pattern that lets you hear better. They all technically do the same thing, and all have related symbolism, but are each increasingly removed from the actual ears they augment. This is magic, form doesn't have to follow function if you don't want it to.

The description is the most important of the three parts because it's what makes the item memorable. With the description to bring it to life it's a magical item of power. Without that description to highlight it in the player's minds it's just another line on the character sheet and might as well be a feat instead of a distinct object existing on its own.

What it does

The item's power and anything special it grants the user. Also curses.

Magic items have traditionally been a form of horizontal character advancement and growth. A way for characters to gain abilities that are unrelated to their classes, like a feat but transferable to whoever holds the item (unless it's cursed). Also a way for characters to get better at what they already do of course, but the weird abilities are more fun.

Some considerations:

• How strong is it? Is this the magical equivalent of a disposable lighter, useful in several small ways but mostly a convenience, or is it a significant and extremely potent object? This isn't a question of whether the item is overpowered, it's the decision of where it lies along the spectrum of "trinket" to "reality-ending folly."
• Are there any requirements or consequences to using it? You might want to make it consumable or only usable at certain times or under specific conditions. Maybe there's a terrible side effect or cumulative cost. If you add restrictions do it in a way that enhances the flavor of the item. That makes it feel more like a real, organic creation than if you only try to constrain it out of fear that it's OP.
• How closely does it interact with the rules of the game? Do you want the item to do something directly related to the rules like giving bonuses to rolls or extra attacks in combat, or do you want its powers to be more freeform and able to be used creatively. Where does it fall on the scale from a +1 sword (rule-affecting) to spiderclimb boots (freeform)?

A name

A distinctive name is almost as important as a good description. You want the magic item to be special and stand out from the character's mundane equipment, and a name that sparks the players' imaginations will do that. Your players don't need to know the name as soon as they find the item, but you should know it and they should find out eventually.

Some considerations:

• How much do you want the name to reveal about the item? You could choose a descriptive name like the classic [Item] of [Effect] formula that reveals its function or be more circumspect. Give a name that describes the physical properties of the item or is an oblique reference to what it does. What are Moonsilk Gloves? Who knows! Your players will want to find out though. (They let the wearer phase their hands through solid objects and are invisible except under moonlight. You don't want to meet the spiders the silk comes from or the witches who knit it.)
• How much does the name reveal about the game's world? Names referring to an item's place of origin, past owners, and notable events they were involved in (ex: dragonslaying) reveal as much about the setting as they do about the item itself.
• How much do you want to reference real-world mythology? Including items from or inspired by mythology is an RPG staple, but think carefully about how common you make them and how you present them. Are they the literal tools and gifts of the gods lying around in the mortal realm? Is it just a name that a mortal creator bestowed on the item because they were feeling inspired? A coincidence? There are plenty of ways to work mythology in. (I like the idea of an Excalibur that has nothing to do with kingship and whose only special ability is that it always cuts cheese into exactly equal portions.)

That's all there is to making magic items. Be creative, write something you think would be fun, and run with it. I believe in you.