Poet's Grove

A poet's grove is a graveyard, serene and simple with no stones or markers. Instead of carving monuments to quietly erode over centuries the deceased are interred wrapped in linen with a beechnut embedded in their heart. After a month it sprouts, feeding on the body wrapped around its roots and absorbing the ghost left tethered within the bones, growing into a Verse Tree. Once the tree entirely devours the bones beneath it the magic takes hold and the tree's smooth gray bark begins to crack, etching itself with the deceased's unwritten work. The distinctive voice of each tree makes headstones unnecessary.

The groves are open to all who lived with words and are carefully tended by groundskeeper monks. They meticulously copy the writing from the trunks and branches of each Verse Tree, checking daily for new passages and collecting the ghost-written works into posthumous anthologies that support the perpetual maintenance of the groves. It's an endless duty as prolific ghosts regularly fill their original tree and spread to its saplings, creating entire stands and clearings etched with more works than they ever penned in life.

Note: There are several species of tree and arboreal parasites that mimic the look of a poet's grove but are unrelated. One such species is the carnivorous Glyphic Aspen which grows in large stands on calcium-poor soils. They produce marks on their bark that appear to be writing and often invitations to rest. Don't trust them. They lie. They only want your bones.

Another type of false grove is created by the Ruby Stanza Borer, a species of beetle that has an instinctive grasp of language and rudimentary psi abilities in its larval instar. They replicate the writing effect of true Verse Trees by burrowing through the host-tree's cambium layer in the shape of words, causing the script to appear in scars on the outer bark. This eventually kills the tree. They're generally not skilled writers, producing disjointed hackwork.

A true poet's grove will always have groundsmonks in attendance and a scriptorium situated somewhere on the grounds. Don't be fooled!

d100 Weird Spy Satellite Locations

I love the Weird Spy Satellite bot on twitter. It's delightful. Granted, it's a bot that (I assume) randomly generates the things it includes in each tweet so they're not all gold, but I collected a few of my favorites here. I may flesh them out into hexcrawl locations one day but for now they're just fun to think about.


1 Vault of Home Videos
2 Light Dock
3 Sacred Death Expo
4 Paddock of Ghosts
5 Maw of Bees
6 Moon Simulation
7 Pile of Starfish
8 Haunted Poet Rock
9 Shrine of Dial Tones
10 Magic Radiation Depository
11 Echoes Depot
12 Archive of Mambo
13 Cannabis Mine
14 Fountain of Time
15 Dust Railway
16 200-Year Old Cuttlefish Tank
17 Mysterious Silence
18 Sea of Code
19 Unspeakable Distortion
20 Hidden Maze of Fossils
21 Zombie Launcher
22 Baby Teeth Asylum
23 Fastness of Gravity
24 Tired Radiation Lighthouse
25 Myth Gallery
26 Citadel of Cryptic Milk
27 Cosmic Source of Darkness
28 Temple of Sewage
29 Static Bunker
30 Unmanned Time Loops
31 Interstellar Violin Launch Pads
32 Illicit Well of Molasses
33 Haunted Fungus
34 Dread Storage Facility
35 Meteorite Quay
36 Magic Onions
37 Astromycological Clones
38 Pyramid of Kilns
39 Shrine of Manuscripts
40 Demonic Ash Exhibit
41 Unmanned Reservoir of Fog
42 Parade of Cruise Ships
43 Magic Hallucination Trench
44 Moose Area
45 Mausoleum of Hidden Dice
46 Menacing Shit
47 Grotto of Fungus
48 Cozy Chaos
49 Labyrinth of Torches
50 Office of Ash
51 Emptiness Clearing
52 Prison of Petrified Milk
53 Library of Flames
54 Smoke Corral
55 Death Boardwalk
56 Rabbit Anomaly
57 Stolen Gramophones
58 Temple of Legos
59 Abyss of Tacos
60 Wall of Rhizomes
61 Astral Time Storage Facility
62 Library of Paper
63 Baby Teeth Cemetery
64 Abyss of Sorceries
65 Silent Astrobiologists
66 Hallucination Cathedrals
67 Ziggurat of Paper
68 Epic Elk
69 Office of Wraiths
70 Robot Hospice
71 Weather Corral
72 Cryptic Bluebirds
73 Relic Museum
74 Consciousness Fueling Station
75 Quantum Dice Fabricators
76 Divine Pangolins
77 Organic Beehive Pillars
78 Tower of Stolen Walruses
79 Petrified Hallucinations
80 Old Miasma
81 Infinite Valley of Vinyl
82 Stronghold of Waffles
83 Textbook Gallery
84 Dolphin Swamps
85 Lost Canticles
86 Tower of Puppies
87 Shrine of Vinyl
88 Kitchen Sink Terminal
89 Moon Dust Furnace
90 Cottage of Excess Memories
91 Cosmic Smoke
92 Static Anomaly
93 Data Dome
94 Sand Lighthouse
95 Amethyst Tortoises
96 Unnamable Glooms
97 Organic Stardust Grid
98 Forlorn Moons
99 Jade Radiation Palisade
100 Excess Chaos

Gelatinous Tubes

A domesticated variant of the gelatinous cube selectively bred to have a cylindrical shape. They're commonly raised and trained by plumbers to clear severe clogs and blockages. Fancy varieties are kept as pets in elaborate glass pipe terrariums.

Sometimes they escape down drains into the sewers where they grow unchecked to fit inside the larger diameter pipes. Feral gelatinous tubes are a major source of problems in cities causing damage to infrastructure, flooding, and rat infestations as the rodents flee to the surface to escape.

1d8 Magical Research Projects

 

The burning questions that the local wizard is conducting research on and wants your help with.

1 How do entities like dopplegangers, clones, and evil twins who are ostensibly perfect copies of a subject creature interact with divination done on, for, or about that creature?

2 How does the magical signature and residue of a polymorphed creature differ from that of naturally magical creatures (and can these differences be disguised)?

3 Does greater fluency and understanding of a language increase the potency of glyph-based magic like exploding runes that relies on text?

4 What effect does the imposition of man-made light sources from cities and villages have on owlbear migration patterns?

5 Does the congregation size and magnitude of belief directed at a god have an effect on the power of their clerics' spells and in what way, amplifying or diminishing?

6 What is the extent of the contamination caused by seepage of alchemical effluent from [rival wizard]'s dungeon laboratory into the local rivers and groundwater, and what effects and damage are already occurring in the surrounding environment?

7 How does the signal strength and clarity of communication spells change when transmitting over various ranges or through different materials and how can one mitigate (or induce) any distortions?

8 Confirming the efficacy of their latest elixir of immortality. Is the formula actually bestowing immortality or is it only an extremely powerful restorative potion?

Generating Stats: Fool's Roll

The fastest and simplest way to generate stats, but also the most risky.

Roll 6d20 in order.

That's it.

It's quick, it's easy, and it's a gamble. There's no bell curve buffering to protect you and while you might get a 16 to 20, you stand an equal chance of rolling 1 to 4.

It's stupid and fun. Godspeed.

Generating Stats: Narrow Band

This method of generating stats has a linear probability and uses padding to guarantee the values rolled fall within a smaller range than the normal d6 bell curves would produce. It has two variations for a low band or high band.

Low: Roll 6d8 and add 7 to each value. Produces stats between 8 and 15.

High: Roll 6d8 and add 10 to each value. Produces stats between 11 and 18.

You can fiddle with the die size or number added to shift the band around, but a d8 gives the most interesting spread of values while staying within the common 3 to 18 range for stats.

Generating Stats: d6 Bell Curves

Rolling a handful of d6's to generate stats with probabilities on a normal distribution is the classic method. Effectively the oldest way of rolling stats in RPGs and the most common. What I'm interested in is all the variations on "roll Xd6" that have accumulated over the years.

When you pick up your fistful of dice chances are you're using one or more of these: 3d6, 4d6, drop lowest, drop highest, reroll 1's, in order.

*2d6 is used to generate stats too, but it's not technically a bell curve/normal distribution so I'm not including it.

Stats put a character in context with the game world, so tweaking the probabilities of your stats definitely has an effect on how challenging the game will be. Here's how each of these variations alter where the peak of the bell curve falls:

"In order" doesn't do anything to change probabilities, it just requires you to be more creative(?) about the character you're making. You've got fewer options when the stats you're rolling have to be used in sequence so you either run with it or reroll. It's a purely flavor modifier.

3d6 is the plain standard with the highest probability of rolling a 10 or 11. It's why 'average' in D&D is a 10. 4d6's distribution skews higher, with the highest probability rolls in the 13 to 15 range and a much lower chance of rolling single-digit values.

"Drop lowest" is almost always paired with a 4d6 roll and bumps the peak of the bell curve down a little to the 12 to 15 range. A 3d6 drop lowest has 8 to 10 as its most common rolls. It's not an extreme effect on the basic Xd6 rolls.

"Drop highest" on the other hand… It moves the peak of a 4d6 curve way down to the 7 to 9 range, and a 3d6 curve to 4 to 6. It's merciless. I've never played a character made with drop highest rolls, but it sounds fun.

"Reroll 1's" also has an extreme effect on the roll. It pushes the peak of the curve towards higher numbers. On a 3d6 roll the highest probability becomes 11 to 13, a 4d6 drop lowest is 13 to 15, and a 4d6 is 15 to 17. It does exactly what you'd think it would, just by more than I expected.

With those ranges in mind, the order of common d6 roll combos from average lowest to highest is:

1 3d6 drop highest (4-6)
2 3d6 drop highest, reroll 1's (5-8)
3 4d6 drop highest (7-9)
4 3d6 drop lowest (8-10)
5 3d6 drop lowest, reroll 1's (8-11)
6 4d6 drop highest, reroll 1's (9-11)
7 3d6 (10-11)
8 3d6 reroll 1's (11-13)
9 4d6 drop lowest (12-14)
10 4d6 (13-14)
11 4d6 drop lowest, reroll 1's (13-15)
12 4d6 reroll 1's (15-17)

If you want check out the probabilities, here are the calculations I used on anydice to visualize all this.

For 3d6 calcs y = 2, x = 3. For 4d6 calcs y = 3, x = 4.

Plain:
output xd6

Drop lowest:
output [highest y of xd6]

Drop highest:
output [lowest y of xd6]

Reroll 1's:
output xd{2..6}

Drop lowest, reroll 1's:
output [highest y of xdxd{2..6}]

Drop highest, reroll 1's:
output [lowest y of xd{2..6}]

Matrix Rolling

I've said that rolling stats is an important part of character creation, but the actual process of rolling takes time. Not a lot, but in a high-lethality game where you're regularly making new characters (often mid-session) the time spent rolling stats can become a bottleneck.

I use matrix rolling to avoid that delay.

Normally when creating a character you roll 3d6 or 4d6 six times and move on. With matrix rolling you roll 36 times and place the values in a 6x6 grid (aka a matrix).

This gives you 12 possible stat lines to choose from, 6 vertical and 6 horizontal. Whenever you make a character, pick one of the 12 lines and cross it off. Then, when that character meets their horrible end, go back to the grid and pick one of the remaining lines to use in making your next character.

It takes a little extra time to generate the matrix when you start, but it's worth it to be able to jump back into the game faster after being dispatched messily.

This is what a "roll X in order" matrix looks like:

The inner square (blue) is the pattern to fill the grid in; starting in the upper left and going down, wrapping around to the top of each column until you reach the bottom right. The outer numbers (red) are each of your possible stat lines, and the stat names for keeping track of "in order."

Here's an example of how it plays out. I rolled this grid:

Looking at what I got, I'd start by picking the third horizontal row. Cross that line off and make a beefy fighter, Gerald.

After Gerald's tragic demise (eaten by a grue) I decided to play someone brainier who won't bumble alone into the dark, so I grab the sixth vertical row for my new wizard.

(The last 14 is used by both lines. That's fine. Crossing a line off means you can't use that complete set of 6 numbers again. You can still use the individual numbers where different lines intersect.)

And so it goes until all 12 of your pre-rolled stat lines have been used, then you generate another grid's worth. (And wonder why your game is so incredibly lethal. Maybe it's you.)

Thinking About Stats

Most RPGs use stats. They're usually the first thing you do when creating a character and so common that you don't even think about it. When I stop and consider the role stats play in the fabric of an RPG it breaks down to three main things:

Stats are important as benchmarks.
Stats connect a character to the game's world by providing a context for how their skills and abilities fit into that world. RPGs are about having fun while interacting with a fictional world, and stats are the reference point that helps you determine what shape that interaction takes. They guide how your character might face a problem, what sort of solution they would come up with, and how well it would work.

Stats should be random.
Rolling for your character's stats creates challenges for them and sets them up to develop through play. If you wanted to play a wizard but rolled a low INT you have a choice: Reroll your stats until you get a set of numbers you like, or use the low INT and run with it. Be a sadsack wizard who's questing to become more powerful and focus on raising that stat throughout the game. Those decisions can't really come up if you use a non-random method like point buy to generate your stats. Randomness creates more interesting options to play with.

Higher stats aren't better.
Most folks assume players will choose higher stats for their characters if given the opportunity and that higher equals better, but high stats can be boring. Taking risks is part of playing games and where's the risk when you know your rolls will succeed because of your good stats? It's usually more fun to have a solidly mediocre statline and let RP carry the game, abysmally low stats the require extreme cleverness, or a wildly inconsistent assortment of high and low than it is to have high stats across the board.

Tiny Coffins Challenge: December (bonus!)

 Welcome back! This final prompt is:

"undeniable beauty in desolation"

Ice storms are an annual event around here. They're destructive as hell. Freezing rain that coats everything it touches in a glaze of ice. The extra weight breaks trees and pulls down power lines. The ice covering every flat surface makes roads impassable and footpaths a hazard. But when the sun comes out and sparkles through the branches of the trees that are still standing and makes the world look like it's plated in silver, it's still beautiful.

The Triple Door

Made of solid oak with birdseye maple veneer and patinated copper hardware, the Triple Door is a tasteful addition to any dungeon and the ultimate in discontinuous dimensional transportation. The top and bottom halves of this spatially untethered dutch door open onto different places, and lead to a third location when opened together as a unit.

Call 1-800-FUN-HOUS today to discuss financing and schedule your installation!

Troika! Background-Writing Tips

A while ago on the MAC discord server I shared a list of the things I try to do when writing backgrounds for Troika!. I'm posting it again here in case it might be useful to someone and so it's not lost in the scroll of channels.

The best advice on writing backgrounds comes from page 2 of the core rules: "Balance the enjoyment rather than the numbers."

The most important thing is to try and make something that's fun to play as. Something that will spark a player's imagination and inspire ideas about who this person they've rolled is.

Keeping that in mind, here are the rules of thumb that I try to follow when writing backgrounds:

1 Focus on a specific flavor and write only as much as it takes to convey that flavor.
2 Don't repeat information, unless you specifically want to make the repetition a joke or an important detail.
3 Imply information more than you actually write details.
4 When you do give details make them interesting and something that readers wouldn't automatically assume. (ex: An immortal hero background would obviously have a legendary weapon, so don't list their sword in their possessions. Instead list a battered photo album of their past companions.)
5 Don't go overboard with possessions and skills, only give the key elements of the flavor.
6 Only give a special ability if it's vital to enhancing the flavor.
7 Keep the background open enough that it can apply to multiple sequential characters. It's a background for a group/profession of people, not an individual.

Troika! Lists Reference

Troika! only uses d6's which means most of the lists in the game are numbered in base-6 or base-3 instead of base-10. I was curious and felt like doing some basic math, so here's the most common Troika! lists in ascending order by size with how many entries you'll need to write for each noted in base-10. Lists that generate bell curves/standard distributions are noted, the rest produce linear results.

d6 - 6

3d3 - 7, curve

d33 - 9
2d6 - 11, curve
d26 - 12
3d6 - 16, curve
d36 - 18
d66c - 21*
d333 - 27
d66 - 36
d3333 - 81
d666 - 216
d33333 - 243
d6666 - 1296

*d66c is d66 combo, where the order of the numbers rolled doesn't matter (ex: 12 = 21, 23 = 32, 56 = 65, etc.) It's numbered 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 33, 34, 35, 36, 44, 45, 46, 55, 56, 66.

A few more that I find aesthetically displeasing but do exist:

d222 - 8

d226 - 24

d336 - 54

d266 - 72
d366 - 108

Do not do this to yourself:
d66666 - 7776