Friday, March 18, 2022

Quick humanoid lair generator for wilderness stocking

This is a dead simple generator of wilderness lairs. Good for stocking a big hexcrawl map or for on-the-fly use. This is where your tribe of orcs or gobs or human bandits live.

  1. Roll d66 for the Lair location.
  2. Roll d66 twice for some extra Details about the inhabitants of the Lair.

Lair location: 

 

Type

1

2

3

4

5

6

1

Cave

Flooded

Gorge

Grotto

Cave system

Mine

Dungeon

2

3

Camp

No shelter

Lean-to

Tent

Hovel

Military

4

Ruin

Homestead

Tower

Shrine

Manor

Outpost

Settlement

5

6

Structure

For Ruin and Structure, the first die also indicates the overall size of the building (4 – small, 5 – medium, 6 – large).

Details:

 

1

2

3

4

5

6

1

Plague

Curse

Haunting

Inner strife

Leaderless

Starving

2

Recently defeated

Low morale

Fleeing

Lost

Traitor in ranks

No offspring

3

Spring

Stream

Pond

Waterfall

Well

Ample food

4

Valuable resource

Workshop

Prisoners

Traps

Mounts or vehicles

Livestock

5

Co-habit with different type

Talented storyteller

Talented healer

Talented magic-user

Leader of different type

Allied with local faction

6

Superior weaponry

Double treasure

Magic item

Cult idol

Sacrificial altar

Ley-line nexus

 

A couple of examples (for the numbers and the monster types, I just used the wilderness encounter generator from OSE):

  • [55, 16, 66] In the hills, 115 Kobolds occupy in a medium-sized ruined outpost. They are starving, but won't move on because they live atop a sweet ley-line nexus.
  • [11, 13, 26] In the swamps, 25 Trolls live in a flooded cave. At nights, the ghost of a devoured victim haunts them. They do not have children.
  • [45 65, 64] In the forest, 150 Brigands squat in a small ruined outpost. They are actually cultists, and have set up a foul idol and a sacrificial altar to their god Stand-and-Deliver.
  • [62, 35, 46] In the jungle, 85 Elves live in and around a large tower. They dug a deep well in the basement - the only source of clean, germ-free water in the fetid jungle. They have a herd of herbivorous dinosaurs (a source of meat and eggs).

See more fully worked examples under this tag.




10 comments:

  1. Addendum:
    I tried to make the Details tables somewhat organized.
    Rows 1-2: disadvantages/hindrances
    Rows 3-4: resources or similar features
    Row 5: details about the community's social structure and alliances
    Row 6: rare or weird features

    ReplyDelete
  2. So if you want the lair to have a specific thing (like a drawback or a resource), you can just roll a d6 in that row.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A couple more examples (just this table):

    When I use this generator, I just roll six d6s, quickly put them in a row, and read them in pairs...
    2, 5, 1, 6, 4, 3 ->
    25, 16, 43 ->
    The lair is a cave system, the inhabitants are starving and have taken prisoners.
    This combo tells the DM that the players better be quick at mounting a rescue mission, because the inhabitants of the lair might resort to eating the prisoners.

    4, 2, 6, 4, 5, 5 ->
    42, 64, 55 ->
    The lair is a small ruined tower, the inhabitants worship a cult idol, under the leadership of a different creature type.
    So I would roll another encounter to see who is their leader, and then try to fit it all together. Maybe this leader is the one who converted the monster group to the worship of the idol.

    4, 5, 6, 3, 2, 1 ->
    45, 63, 21 ->
    The lair is a small ruined outpost, the inhabitants own a magic item, but despite this, they were recently defeated in battle, so perhaps they don't know how to use that item to their advantage, or it was useless against their enemy.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Would you mind if I used this in a hexcrawl generator, and credited you?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I love your hexcrawl generator and would be happy to be included :) Are you doing an updated version of the automated one you posted recently?
      Yes, please credit me + link to my blog if possible.

      Delete
  5. Will do. Looking at how to improve it. At the very least, I’m hoping to get more variety and specificity. Adding consistent roads, rivers, and mountains may be beyond me, but I’m trying

    ReplyDelete
  6. 5,6,3,3,5,3 33 Goblins living in the ruins of a small town, They stay there because the small pond next to it has healing properties..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh yeah, that's good! I like how you mashed together the two features - "pond" + "talented healer" = healing pond!

      Delete