[Random table] A winged amazon with six-shooters riding a pegasus and more sick airbrushed panel van art pieces

Dunno, I guess roll on this when you airbrush your van or get your next tattoo OR JUST RUN A GAME AND GENERATE THE CHARACTERS WITH THIS, GO BIG OR GO HOME.

The Hero is...

	Appearance	Type	Weapon	Mount/Ride
1	buff	amazon	crystal sword	pegasus
2	sexy	barbarian	moon staff	unicorn
3	masked	paladin	lightning wand	Harley Davidson
4	lion-maned	sorceress	machine gun	warhorse
5	winged	wizard	pair of six-shooters	sabretooth tiger
6	golden-skinned	supersoldier	katana	dragon
7	bionic	princess	battle axe	woolly mammoth
8	mighty-thewed	skylord	laser rifle	giant eagle
9	armored	angel	rocket launcher	antigrav skiff
10	chain bikini/loincloth	cyborg	psychic enhancer	nuclear warhead

 

Vanquishing…

	Appearance	Type	Minions	Animals
1	skull-faced	giant	zombies	serpent
2	one-eyed	tyrant	skeletons	vulture
3	undead	high priestess	mutants	scorpion
4	half-*Animal	cult leader	*Animal-men	fish
5	*Animal-headed	lich	harpies	frog
6	oozeified	warlock	mindless fanatics	roach
7	flaming	godling	fungoids	worm
8	cthulhoid	alien	super	spider
9	tentacle	robot	imps	shark
10	serpentine	demon	goblins	bull

 

Against the backdrop…

	Backdrop	Color/Pattern
1	erupting volcano	rainbow-hued
2	jagged rocks	shimmering
3	sunset	orange
4	clouds & mists	purple
5	cosmic vistas	green
6	lush jungle	translucent
7	post-apocalyptic wasteland	aquamarine
8	megapolis skyline	silver
9	ringed planet	black
10	fetid swamp	yellow

 

(Images from Cvlt Nation)

Monster generator spark cards

I made a small 12-card deck monster generator today. Draw two and combine!

The contents as a d12 table:

1.     Ooze	acid, rust, pseudopod, subdividing, natural, lab-grown, medicinal, (a)morphing, mutating
2.     Skeleton	mausoleum, holding shit, bone weapons, femur, teeth, display, pirate, giant, monster, necromancy, skeleton key, grave robbing, tomb
3.     Fungus/Plant	flowers, seeds, pods, tendrils, roots, crawling, stationary, fluorescent, growth, poison, psychoactive
4.     Robot	laser, prosthetic, tracks, lights, hologram, armor, clockwork, steam, replicant, android, mecha, production
5.     Lizard	scales, amphibious, rainbow, reptiloid, swamp gas, thunder, toad, prehistoric, conspiracy, rending claws, running
6.     Ghost	immaterial, haunting, fear, hunger, bound, eerie, screams, want, swamp, chains, murder, fog, treasure
7.     Parasyte	symbiotic, infectious, mind control, autonomous, slow transformation
8.     Octopus	tentacles, floating, sepia, ink cloud, grabbing, reef, alien, weird, unsettling, slimy, suckered, jelly, genius, mastermind
9.     Elemental	air, fire, earth, water, outer planes, transformation, void, harmony, balance, alchemy, philosophy
10. Avian	wing, shriek, egg, flock, claw, migration, dive, beak, nest, sky, plumage, navigation
11. Beast	tail, sentient, cub, mythical, bipedal, fangs, armored, quadraped, uplifted, horns, tribal, magical, camouflage, mutated, hoofs, armed, nocturnal, centaur, cryptid
12. Psychic	mind blast, oracle, clairvoyance, hypnosis, telekinesis, voice, illusion, pyrokinesis, vision

 

Quick examples:

BEAST + ELEMENTAL = a tribe of fire-worshipping pigmen

PSYCHIC + AVIAN = giant bats that navigate using telepathy

OOZE + PARASYTE = jelly that replaces a humanoid’s brain and spinal fluid

FUNGUS/PLANT + OCTOPUS = a tree with lots of grabby roots

GHOST + ROBOT = a malevolent gremlin that possesses machinery

SKELETON + LIZARD = dinosaur on display in museum reanimated

And a drawing by my wife, a PLANT + SKELETON combo which she interpreted as a dried husk of a plant with teeth:

d30 generic items

I have a couple of all-purpose tables. One of them is the Amazing Inspirational Animal List (d30 animals...), which I've written about previously.

Another simple little table I always keep at hand is this list of 30 items.

For those "what's in its pocketses" situations. Players search the room/body/shelf/table, whatever, you just need something quick.

1. Alcohol
2. Blade
3. Book
4. Cards/dice
5. Charm/talisman
6. Coins
7. Cosmetics
8. Creepy
9. Documents
10. Drawing
11. Figurine
12. Fire-making device
13. Food
14. Handkerchief
15. Jewelry
16. Knick-knacks
17. Light source
18. Live creature
19. Medication
20. Mirror
21. Musical instrument
22. Pocket lint
23. Poison
24. Recreational herbs
25. Religious item
26. Sweets/treats
27. Time-keeping device
28. Tool
29. Twine/rope
30. Weird

This is a generic list, usable in any setting. However, it's also a cool exercise to try and come up with setting-specific reskins for all these items.

E.g., in a modern urban fantasy game, you would have

Alcohol → Fairy beer*

Card → The business card of a shady detective

Cosmetics → Vampire-attracting lipstick

...and so on.

* As elaborated during a discord convo, that's a regular IPA, but you burp rainbows after drinking it.

The Science Fantasy Frankentable

The Frankentable is an ever-growing multi-purpose random generator. 11,578 lines as of today. I’ve been maintaining and expanding it since 2020-2021, using Inspiration Pad Pro.

It’s gonzo science fantasy, sort of like Carcosa, but with even more stuff added in. I copied some stuff from my favorite PDFs and blogposts. I added tons of names from ancient civilizations. Lists of random adjectives and nouns... And wrote thousands of lines of custom content.

I love it, because it’s finetuned to how my brain works and always inspires gameable ideas... And it’s just fun adding stuff to it. I used to to run solo hexcrawls (session 1, session 2), then a randomized hexcrawl for my friends, use it all the time when I’m creating dungeons (to come up with fresh ideas), generate settlements. I used it to make pre-gens for a recent pick-up game.

Unfortunately, I cannot share it, sorry! It has copyrighted material in it alongside my own stuff. But I can only recommend creating your own Frankentable! Either as a digital tool, or, who knows, maybe as a bunch of index cards?

 

Just a sampling of raw results:

Seeds:

• regular sisterhood going to polluted inn
• android (Mawia, Sovereign of the baggy Pterodactyl-infested standing stone) telling bad news regarding lucky spaceman
• brigand (Mardonius) and archaeologist (ruby warlock Pro-Consul) searching for runaway lover Pharadates (the vigilante)
• cart-pusher (Urshanabi, Chief of the fountain) going to helipad
• motley cult embarking on expedition to mist-covered stone circle

 

Objects:

• stone flower
• stone staff, imbued with the power to poison
• oversized cape
• fake bottle, rumored to hold the power of invincibility
• glowing pharmacon, imbued with the power to overcome fear

Buildings:

• narrow bakery closed
• ancestral cairn is actually a front for something sinister (connected to hierarchic cult)
• bustling bank under attack from monarchist herald
• stucco-covered bakery rumored to hide secret knowledge
• decrepit carpentry rumored to hold treasure

 

Locations:

• (10 hexes west from here) windswept volcano is the hide-out of militaristic brotherhood
• (11 hexes west from here) poisonous Sabertooth-infested castle infested with vermin
• (14 hexes west from here) otherworldly garrison staked out by chimeric food-seller
• (5 hexes north-west from here) bowl-shaped sierra staked out by Giant Snake
• (3 hexes east from here) pleasent barrow hides buried treasure

 

Random table synergy

Yesterday I had some free time but not much brain power, so pulled out my old random table print-outs and just shuffled through them, browsing, rolling dice or dealing cards now and then.

I got to a couple of hex stocking tables by The Welsh Piper.

On the RUINS generator, I rolled

Temple – Flood – Restoration – Fighter – Hybrids

Good stuff. I can imagine the whole situation right away: a pious knight and their human-animal hybrid companions restoring a flooded temple.

I moved on to the next table on my print-out, LAIRS, and got

Deep Horror – Expanding – Weird Things – Partially Submerged

Now this is good random table synergy! Clearly, this is not a separate lair in a different hex. This is the flooded (“partially submerged”) undercroft of the temple, where a bunch of weird creatures nest. Maybe they seeped in somehow with the tainted groundwater which caused the temple’s ruination?