1d20 Ways to get the demon's attention


1 Call their name three times

2 Say their name

3 Think their name

4 Look in a mirror, any mirror

5 Compliment them out loud

6 Insult them out loud

7 Go on down to the crossroads and make your presence known

8 Talk to the doll they gave you

9 Write your request on an offering and burn it

10 Submit a request for audience in triplicate via courier imp

11 Turn around

12 Close your eyes

13 Go to sleep

14 Pour a drink

15 Put out a plate of cookies

16 Call them up, they've got a cellphone

17 They prefer texts

18 Email works best

19 Just talk to them, they're accompanying you on your journey

20 No need, they're always watching

Message for you

Message is a classic spell, one of the oldest and most useful out there. Here are some variations on it for when you want to play with magical telephony.


Black Fax
Duration:  3*[caster's level] minutes
Components: Your best imitation of a dial tone

Instead of conveying information this spell fills the target's head with darkness and static. Thought and movement is impossible for the duration of the spell while they receive the warped message. When it ends the target knows exactly who cast the spell. The target can't respond to anything happening around them, but can choose to make an INT or WIS save. On a success the spell only lasts half its normal duration, on a fail the duration doubles.


Spam
Components: A list of strangers' names and a shard of your soul

Sends an identical message to every intelligent creature within 1000'. They can't respond or tell who sent it. The spam message preempts or interrupts any other communication a target might receive. Spam can be cast as a cantrip to send 1 message, or with a spell slot to send [spell level] messages in sequence.

The message's subject is:

  1. Advertisements
  2. Unsound medical advice
  3. Sketchy pharmaceuticals 
  4. Celebrity gossip
  5. Risky financial advice
  6. Thinly-veiled wire fraud
  7. Opinion poll
  8. Gambling
  9. Religious screed
  10. Vampire transformation testimonials


Party Wire
Components: 1 SP

Sends the same message to up to 10 targets the caster chooses. Each recipient can respond, but their return messages will get garbled if they try to reply at the same time and talk over each other. After the caster sends their message and hears all the responses roll even or odd. On even only the chosen targets got the message. Odd, the caster accidentally connected another person into the spell and they heard everything. GM decides who the extra person is.


Landline
Duration: Up to 10 minutes
Components: A little bit of your dignity

Lay face-down on the ground with your forehead pressed into bare soil. While in that position you can speak to 1 target and carry on a normal two-way conversation with them no matter where they are as long as their feet are touching the ground.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: May

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"winding trails, disorientation, and the scent of flowers"

Getting lost in the woods is a peculiar feeling. It quietly picks at something superstitious in the back of your head. The absence of people, places, even background noise you could use to orient yourself gets to you in a way that just 'not knowing where you are' doesn't match. It's easy to get turned around, even when you're on a trail, and if you can't find a blaze or marker to get your bearings you have to look for landmarks. A distinctive tree, a big rock you passed, the sound of a stream, anything that might cement where you are. I used to use the smell of honeysuckle. Most of the parks around here have their parking lots and trail heads in meadow areas where they grow; so smelling honeysuckle meant I was on the path back to the car.

How are the guards tonight?


Unless you invested in perimeter golems, guards are people. They have off days, get distracted, and are people. It's unlikely that every guard you meet will be completely on top of things all the time, so roll for their mood when you come up to a guard post. This doesn't replace a reaction roll.


The guards are... (1d8)

  1. Attentive - On guard, doing a good job
  2. Nervous - On guard, overly attentive and jumpy
  3. Distracted - Focused elsewhere (weird noise, disturbing thoughts, personal problems, daydreaming)
  4. Bored - Inattentive, lost in thought, maybe dozing
  5. Grumbling - "Why are we even out here?"
  6. Asleep - Physically there but unconscious
  7. Patrolling - Roll again and they're mobile
  8. Missing

Tiny Coffins Challenge: April

 Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"waking, hunger, and iron determination"

Early spring is a hard time in nature. The hopeful associations with renewal are something that we attached to the season. Yes, the snow's melting and it's warming up, but there's not much food yet. The winter forage is mostly gone, new plants haven't grown in yet, and most of the small prey is still dormant. The creatures that are active are running on the fumes of their winter stores and have to hold out until there's something to eat. One of the few things that thrives is skunk cabbage. It generates its own heat to melt through the snow and start growing weeks before other plants even sprout. It can survive frosts and drinks in the weak sun like nothing's wrong. The sheer moxie of this plant is breathtaking.

Spell Reeds


Magic is inimical to human life. It consumes the unwary and eventually burns out even the most judicious mage. If overused or worked without proper shielding raw magic will taint its surroundings, rendering the land toxic and unusable for generations. There are several species of plant known to withstand the noxious effects of magic-poisoned soil. Some, such as common spell reed (Phragmites incantus), even thrive and can be employed to reclaim land in the wake of magical disasters or pollution from long-term arcane discharge.

Spell reed is a hyperaccumulator that, when planted in tainted soil, absorbs and condenses any magical residue present. Research shows they are effective in mitigating all forms of arcane phenomena, including even well-contained spellwork such as ancestral curses or enchantments that some may consider beneficial. The condensed mystic power is sequestered within the plant's tissues and may be harvested for proper containment and disposal. As with any such project, the speed at which territory can be rendered safe for habitation varies depending on the severity of the contamination and the number of reeds planted. If following best practices, it is usually possible to reclaim up to an acre of land within 1 to 2 months, though heavily tainted soil may require years of effort.

It is possible to use specially processed spell reed in crafting magical objects or to augment spellwork, but such practices are dangerous and release the concentrated magical energy stored inside the plant. As such, they negate the environmental benefits of cultivating spell reed and are not advised.

-------------------------

Spell reeds:

  • Absorb and condense the latent magic in the soil they're planted in.
  • Process absorbed magic into pure arcane power regardless of what the original flavor was. (Ex: necromantic, illusion, transmutation, etc.)
  • Take 1 to 2 months to grow to maturity and be ready to harvest. (1d30+30 days)
  • Will absorb any magic. Can be used to break enchantments and curses on land. Takes 1 crop of 1000 reeds per level of the spell being broken. (Ex: a 7th level spell can be broken in 1 to 2 months by raising a crop of 7000 reeds, and be broken in 7 to 14 months by raising 7 crops of 1000 reeds)


The refined ashes can be:

  • Used as a power source when enchanting normal items or crafting magical ones. Cut crafting time by 1/2 for every 100 reeds worth of ashes used. (200 reeds cuts time to 1/4, 300 reeds cuts to 1/8, etc.)
  • Ingested, usually as a pill or snorted, to restore expended spells once per day. (Requires 25 reeds worth of ash/level)

Ash abuse is dangerous. If you consume ash more than once a day, for each extra use roll over 50+(# of extra uses * 10) on a d%. On a fail cast fireball on yourself as the stored magical energy breaks free.


If planted in a dead wizard's skull or brain, it will absorb the spells they had memorized at the moment of their death.

  • Slit the harvested reed open, press it flat, and dry it to make a papyrus-like strip with the spell encoded in the ridges of pith. It can be used like a scroll but not copied.
  • Burn the dried reed and consume the ashes to gain the spell directly. It can be copied into a spellbook, but has a 30% chance of being involuntarily cast immediately.


Tiny Coffins Challenge: March

This month's prompt is:

"volatility, predictions, and the slow grind of change"

March might technically be spring, but around here it's still very much winter. The snow's only barely begun to melt, the weather changes by the hour, and the days aren't getting noticeably longer yet. It can be demoralizing, even when you know the season is turning and you just need to be patient. The best sign of change is the birds. When the robins start building nests and the goldfinches turn yellow again you know spring is actually on the way.


d10 Unsettling Natural Phenomena


1 Moss Mist - Opaque green fog banks that carry microscopic fibers and spores of moss in their droplets. Occurs regularly in the spring when the bankmoss reproduces. Homes near where it grows are protected with airtight seals and fine filter meshes. It's safe to go out in it as long as you wear a properly-fitted filter mask, but DO NOT BREATHE IT.

2 Talking Storms - Occur in high winds near certain honeycombed and eroded sandstone canyons. The wind running over and through the rock cavities doesn't just sound like voices, it produces actual human speech. The words are distinct and range anywhere from beautiful choral concerts to horrible things whispered directly into your ears.

3 Inky Rain - These organic deluges happen in late spring when driftcap mushrooms sprout. These inkycap relatives grow lighter-than-air fruiting bodies that break free from their stalks and float on the wind in clouds of thousands. They begin to melt within hours of takeoff, dropping inches of self-digesting spore-bearing black fluid as they go.

4 Giant Lamprey Migration - In mid-autumn the lamprey swim inland from the ocean to spawn, choking waterways of all sizes with their 12'-long squirming grey-white bodies. They're delicious if you can catch one, but DO NOT GO IN THE WATER.

5 Mirror Sky - Occur on warm days over low rolling hills and plains. The still air creates a mirage of the ground below, a perfect reflection complete with exact copies of all the local places and people. If you look straight up, you can see yourself staring back. It feels as if there's a second planet hanging directly overhead, even if you know what's going on.

6 Night Tide - Schools of impenetrably black microscopic diatoms that drink in all light, casting the areas around them into constant night. The schools can be miles wide and come into the shallow waters in high summer, blanketing swathes of coastline in darkness. A tide usually lasts for about a week before the school disperses. The longest on record lasted almost five months.

7 Companion Halos - On cloudy days distinct rings of indigo-violet light form in the sky directly over thinking creatures. Each individual attracts a single halo that follows them perfectly, staying exactly overhead and visible for miles. The halos' size and intensity occasionally change, no one knows why.

8 Sibling Suns - Instead of setting the sun diffracts into many much smaller suns, each a different color. Together they shine their single-hued lights in overlapping cones, casting bizarre vibrant shadows and filtering the world into zones of monochrome. Events occur more frequently the farther north or south you go.

9 Return Frost - In late autumn before the ground freezes extreme overnight cold snaps cause frost heaving so intense it churns the soil and unearths recently-buried corpses. Morning finds the land encrusted in feathery rime and the exhumed bodies impaled on thousands of needle-fine shafts of ice. Areas with frequent return frosts usually create the dead, so bodies found after a frost are deeply suspect.

10 Coffin Rain - Torrential freezing rains that occur in high winter. The water falls and freezes fast enough to trap anything caught outside in a shell of ice a few inches to feet thick. Seek shelter immediately! Buildings in areas that experience regular coffin rains have extremely wide eaves that curve downwards to protect exterior walls from ice buildup.

Fire Tyrant

A massive salamander with the ability to control fire. These intelligent creatures cause chaos by entering a settlement, extinguishing all fires, and refusing to allow new fires to kindle until their demands are met.

Their demands are often strange and inscrutable, running the gamut from strenuous quests (like retrieving a rare food or treasure) to simple favors (like giving a good back scratch).

Aside from their ability to shut down all civilization in a 50 mile radius, Fire Tyrants are usually nonviolent and willing to negotiate, but they're stubborn.

HP: 12d12+12    AC: 19

Resistance: Magic, acid, poison, cold, physical weapons

Immune: Fire


Extinguish - Magically douses as many fires within a 50 mile radius as it wishes. Fires can't be relit without its permission. Affects magical fires.

Flare - Reignites as many fires as it wishes within a 50 mile radius. They suddenly explode causing damage as a fireball spell.

Gentle Smile - Just a big old goofy salamander smile. Gives +7 to its CHA and CHA-based skill checks. Any character with proficiency in Animal Handling who sees the smile must pass a DC 14 WIS save or fall under a Charm Person spell.


Tiny Coffins Challenge: February

Welcome back! This month's prompt is:

"bonds and letting go"

We usually think of bonds in the context of connections to people and not the connections we have to places, objects, and times past. Things that shaped us or anchor us back through time with memories. Your childhood home, the park you used to hang out in, the small collection of cool rocks you picked up over the years, your pet's old collar kept as a memento. What do we draw from those bonds and what happens when we decide it's time to let them fall away?

Have at and have fun!

Tiny Coffins Challenge: January

 Welcome back and happy new year! This month's prompt is:

"waiting, sleep, and the in-between"

I'm all about liminal spaces and states. We're in the heart of winter now, here in the north. It's a time of thresholds and change according to the calendar; but outside most everything is dead or dormant, on pause until the snow melts. Winter is a season-long liminal state while we look forward to spring and a static silent time all its own. Plenty of time to think about all the changes that happen even when things are supposed to be still.

Have at and have fun!

Midwestern Magic

The midwest is goofy. I won't deny it. Revel in it instead. Here are a few midwestern stereotypes and customs boiled down into magic items and a spell.

Bag of Bags
A plastic shopping bag that's always half-full of something you can't quite see. Incredibly lightweight. Anyone can reach into the bag and pull out another plastic shopping bag. The bags are always intact, clean, and from a local store. When a bag is pulled out it might be rolled into a ball, folded into a neat geometric packet, or just kinda wadded up. There are always bags ready to be reused.

Road Map
A detailed map of the local counties printed on durable waterproof paper and folded haphazardly. The locations and roads on it are positioned to show how much time it takes to travel between them instead of accurate distances. It the travel time changes (due to weather, traffic, or other obstacles) the map updates itself to show the new estimates.

Ice Scraper
A 3' long metal handle with a heavy-duty plastic blade set on one end and a combination plastic brush and squeegee attached perpendicularly at the other. Lets the wielder effortlessly clear away ice and snow. Using the scraper for any length of time makes your hands go numb, even if you wore gloves.

Ope!
A versatile spell. It can only be cast as a reaction to something else and the caster has to say "Ope!" out loud for it to work. When you cast it choose one:

  • Smooth over a faux pas. Any rolls related to apologizing get +5 and advantage as you try to excuse yourself.
  • Undo a mistake. Restore an item you broke, un-press a button, un-stub your toe, etc. Only fixes problems the caster caused.
  • Move freely across an area. For one turn get unlimited movement through any type of terrain and occupied spaces without slowing or provoking attacks. To use this effect you have to say "Lemme slip on by ya there." along with the "Ope!" when you cast.

Anyone can learn Ope!

Project Ampersand 2: A Learning Tool

The first thing I noticed about the original text is how focused it is on teaching new players everything. Not just the rules but also the basics of roleplaying. Absolutely basic things like "pick a name for your character" and "your character can have their own personality traits." I suppose I just ignored it before, but looking at it under a microscope like this really drives home how aggressively the publisher was trying to expand their market.

Normally I wouldn't mind. Introducing new people to RPGs is a good thing. Doing it like this though? It's not elegant. If someone is interested enough to get the book and sit down to read it, you've already got their attention. They're putting in the effort to learn, so give them something clear and straightforward to read. The amount of guidance in the original text feels excessive, borderline insulting even.

Players are smart. New players are smart. They don't need a shepherding authority to guide them through a book. They just need a set of rules to work with and the author's trust that, however they end up implementing those rules, they'll do it in a way that's fun.

New players especially do just fine with minimal guidance and bring a staggering level of creativity to the game. They tend to go with what seems like the most fun and consistently knock it out of the park. GMing for newbie players is a blast.

With that in mind I'm cutting out all the text that feels condescending or covers things you could understand by looking at the character sheet for a few seconds. If something is actually necessary to play the game I'll rewrite it to be concise.