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.
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 you3 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
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