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!)