Thinking about Special Rooms (Notes made during Meetings)

Yeah, I wrote these notes when I should have been being professional. It’s rough, ephemeral, unimpressive content and non-exhaustive but I was surprised by how little content for Special rooms is out there when I (blind, clueless) went looking for it. For me, SPECIAL means the room is/contains neither a trap, monster, treasure, nor is it ‘empty’ (though empty never truly means empty and there can be a grey zone between Empty and Special). Therefore there’s a huge range of possibilities of what a Special room can be. This spectacular range of potentialities is merely touched upon, as my (perhaps limited) imagination has rendered some rather basic ideas from such a fertile concept and there are some duplicates. Working to a concept would render more specific or nuanced special rooms. My sole purpose in writing these notes is trying to prime my brain (small, calcified) for designing more dungeons and quicker. These are the sort of notes that I could keep adding to indefinitely but I've been a little more inactive than usual so I'm sharing them. Hopefully, as a rough and ready resource it’ll be of some use to peo(ns)ple like yourself and drive some thought.

I have since found the following posts, they are very good and more polished than my stream of consciousness style. I have resisted going back to add to this post based on their wisdom, so you’ll have to check them out. If you have any other SPECIAL room resources (as I am sure you do), please link to them in the comments section.

"Special" Rooms on 3d6 (Or Maybe 4) by Clerics Wear Ringmail

The 10 types of special rooms by Traipse 

Combine these two resources together and you’ll be unstoppable. 

Special Rooms:

• Illusory room
• Drowning woman/Imperiled NPC ‘trap’ (it’s not a trap if it’s just a waste of time! It’s called a TRICK)
• Dangerous terrain/creature/trap
• Treasure (combine with something else fun to make not disappointing)
• The room conforms to a scene from a PC’s past, the DM asking the player a question ‘Tell me about a time your character…(almost drowned/was scared as a child/first killed someone, etc)’ and then the room appears as the event in question.
•  
• A room that talks; 
• A head that tells you rumours from around the world/dungeon if you feed it treasure/bodies
• Mocks, jokes with or curses (non-magical curses but the party don’t need to know that.)
• Asks a riddle, correct answers may open hidden doors or reveal important information.
• A room where magic always fails/is twice as powerful (but possibly at a cost)
• Similar room with violence - heightened damage, attack-rolls, critical hit chance.
• Anything really, terrible saves, everyone has 20 in a given stat.
• No violent act can be committed/no magic can be cast.
• A dungeon control room with levers and pulleys and buttons {in another language?}
• Blows up another room, floods it with gas/fire/snakes/spiders/water - freezes it.
• Changes the configuration of the map - moves a corridor, swaps two rooms.
• Moves the entire dungeon somewhere else on the worldmap/multiverse.
• A scrying room that allows remote viewing of a different section/room/character in the dungeon or elsewhere in the world (a deep dungeon NPC that is obsessed with a familiar character in the town, like the barkeep, and has a room dedicated to magically spying on them.) 
• A room that reveals the location of every vampire/troll/giant shrew in the dungeon.
• A summoning room
• Magical - like a portal that spits out a creature based on a sigil you press.
• Chemical - press a button to birth a vat-thing or combine two elements to make an alchemical golem or a player cloning machine
• Or via some vector that attracts a specific monster (bell, food stuff, mineral (like those elephants that go in the cave to lick salty rocks), anything pavlovian)
• A divination room that allows for viewing of, or information about, future events or the answering of lore questions - answers often cryptic
• cloud watching room
• A haruspicy room full of pigs or similar beasts
• Huge candle on a pivot to be poured into a pool of water or crucible of molten metal for divinatory purposes.
• Room secretes entheogenic slime that when licked grants and immediate and long lasting sleep filled with cryptic visions of future events. Or maybe  the room is filled with slick toads that die when licked like bees deprived of their stings.
• A magic altar, a classic, so many directions. But for substance, you can have any other SPECIAL room type of this list projected or encapsulated in/via the altar, it can essentially have any property. 
• I feel altars are just things that can go in any type of room, treasure, trap, empty, whatever. 
• Statues, like altars have many uses and functions. Totem poles too.
• A flashback room (play as NPC's, stats and all, recreating a short event from the past)
• Room affected by some substance - mundane, alchemical or magical. Sticky, frictionless, very hot/cold stuff or more unique or magical properties, reanimates the dead.
• Take any trap and make it so obvious that it ceases to be a trap. If too subtle the room may qualify as Empty. 'traps' like this may be: 
• Just a room full of fire
• Room one big pit trap or the floor is 1000ft below, it's not a trap, it's obvious. 
• A bridge over a bottomless pit, large powerful fans make the crossing precarious
• A room where the floor is literally ‘thin ice’
• A big blade that spins round the room.
• Obvious and constant blade pendulums. 
• Room slants precipitously, the floor greased, towards a wall of spikes
• A room full of in-built bear traps
• The ceiling is held up by something very fragile, if disturbed the room collapses.
• Likewise, any type of trap that isn't functioning properly but remains dangerous could count as SPECIAl, eg a room with two walls smashing into each other over and over again, a room constantly flooding with poisonous gas, an adventurers corpse being charred by a flame spout trap. Rooms like this can telegraph similar traps elsewhere in the dungeon - (surely, this is SPECIAL and not a trap as the trap does not function as a trap should?)
• Dangerous terrain - slime all over the floor, lava flow, a chasm that keeps yawning open and closed, geysers that erupt periodically with whatever substance you please, a miniature volcano.
• Machinery 
• Factory floor with conveyor belts.
• A machine that is/can mass produce something (that isn’t treasure). 
• Room of gears - could possibly be the gears that work some other thing in the dungeon - jamming the gears could disable a trap, open an inaccessible pathway or weaken an automaton boss monster.
• The room is a carousel or contains bumper cars.
• Anomalies, this list could go on forever, it’s inexplicable and magic and it does something interesting.
• Death as a biological function does not exist in this room.
• Iron (or any other material) becomes red hot, freezing cold, frictionless, vibrates, shrinks, expands, turns to slime/bugs/rose petals
• A part or item in the room is strongly magnetic/repellent to a particular material. 
• Room filled with invisible webs, walls, tentacles.
• Room has affect on character's emotions - this needs to have a real mechanical effect or it is essentially worthless.
• Room with specialist nature;
• Trash compactor
• Incinerator
• Alchemical machine that turns one substance into another
• A sleeping room that is both magically silent and magically soundproof. 
• An observatory (though the lens might be worth some money)
• A Dagobah style vision-cave
• Sweat lodge 
• A Sauna, Spa, Mudbath 
• The room is an oven with a temperature control just outside, like an oven or freezer room.
• Built in torture chamber
• Brainwashing room
• Cinema
• Photography booth
• A refinery like in Dwimmermount with Azoth, a laboratory would probably count as treasure.
• A special projection room that plays ‘holocron’ things, like vinyls, that can be collected in the dungeon 
• Perhaps controversial, NPC's who are not ‘monsters’ or monsters with no ability to act/agency.
• A wounded NPC adventuring party
• Ghostly presence or scene
• Helpless NPC/Monster(s) captive in some kind of confinement, a peasant in a pit or a demon in a summoning circle, a mammoth frozen deep in ice. 
• A puppy (players will not trust)
• Creatures to catch or not, a pool of large but harmless crayfish, koi (non-valuable), rookery, a large (harmless) bat roost, a large colony of birds, a regular sized termite nest. 
• Room that produces something, item or substance 
• Room that produces art but it’s not very good + worthless (AI, haha 😐)
• Factory production line that produces broken items
• A goo room that produces goo
• A room that manufactures the local weather and has a control panel.
• A weird way of ascending or descending dungeon floors (self-immolation to travel to any level of the dungeon, a lift that must be hand operated by a left behind character, a slide, false quicksand, )
• Room that changes the player(s) - positive changes must be the result of clever play or sacrifice. Can combine with any other special room type for something interesting.
• Alignment and stat changes are common, (why not religion?)
• Change characters backstory.
• Mutations. Players don't like being mutated. Telegraph your mutations and give them some predictability if you want more engagement.
• Grants a spell to be cast once per day as a magical ability. 
• ‘Device’ that shaves your head, stains you blue, turns you into an elf/goblin/vampire, replaces a limb with a cyborg part, makes you taller/younger/blind/not blind, cures your diseases, inoculates you against future diseases.
• Exchange stats, wowie
• A portal or equivalent that leads to another part of the dungeon/world/multiverse/timestream. 
• Chessboard style map of the campaign world with pieces representing the different factions at play. Any moves the players make influence the moves the factions will make. Perhaps limit these moves to one per player. 
• As above but with a blue painted canvas and natural-coloured paints (greens, tans, greys and browns). Whatever the party paint appears as an island off the coast. 
• Similar things can be done with books and are much freer. Books can be about anything. 
• An architect's lectern with a map of part of the dungeon. Players can make a single change (per in-game week/month?) to the layout that will instantly be reflected in reality. 
• Something, something Clay. Reshape a type of monster or the dungeon boss. Something Promethean to this. 
• Room that steals a spell from a party member and grants the ability to cast it to some other thing or things in the dungeon - this could be via another special room like spell transference chambers.
• Weird time/space room
• Anti-gravity
• Hyper-gravity
• Reversed gravity
• Time does not move outside the room/moves twice as fast
• Accelerated aging - 10 minute equals 1 month - hair and fingernails grow
• A gambling room, slot machine, wheel of fortune, magical dice, pachinko, pinball machine, goblin poker, blink dog greyhound racing - bonus for real minigames or meta twist. 
• Gladiatorial arena, magical and mundane, NPC vs NPC. Does this count as a ‘monster’ type room?
• Sacrificial room, give something up to receive a blessing (or a curse!)
• Wishing well, pond, pool or fountain
• Altar [see altar entry above]
• Prayer space, give up time for a blessing
• A statue you have to tell a joke to in exchange for a blessing/info. Make the actual DM laugh. 
• Big hungry beast, god-mouth, demon hiding in a hole - give it food for secret lore, a blessing, a clue, hint or curse on your enemies. 
• Some sort of personality test wherein whatever you give up renders a different ‘reward’ and possibly a quote, ie giving the personality test room a sword would give a character a +4 to-hit bonus but reduces their HD to d4’s/d2’s and says the quote ‘live by the sword, die by the sword’.
• Sacrifice time in a meditation zone for some benefit. 
• A food resource - replenishing feast table, tree with strange but otherwise ok fruit (should have some effect, perhaps it makes you feel sad to eat or jittery), a termite nest, an overgrown garden, a mouldy cornucopia, an meal-in-a-pill machine, a mushroom patch where as soon as one mushroom is picked another instantly grows up in its place, a fruiting topiary hydra that grows two fruit heads whenever one is loped off. 
• Novelty and Games Rooms, this can be closely related to the gambling rooms.
• Game room with chessboard flooring
• Novelty can mean a lot of things - everyone in this room turns into a random animal for a certain period of time or is reduced in size, in this room players can only communicate in in-character dialogue and stage-directions. 
• The room’s flooring functions like a seesaw, perhaps with dangerous things at either end - shark tank, acid vat, spikes etc. 
• A really comfy room, bonus to resting here if you can keep the monsters out. 
• A room that rotates, goes up and down or swaps with another room in the dungeon/world somehow. 
• Consider Tricks and pranks, not traps, just a little irritating jokes such as:
• Infinitely long corridor, reverse escalator stairs
• Pull my finger statue
• Sphere of annihilation mouth (haha, so funny)
• False doors
• Corridor with false perspective that quickly shrinks to a small door at the end.
• ‘Choose your door’ rooms
• In a more humorous than creepy fashion, statues or suits of armour that follow you about the room but won’t attack.
• Baby monsters, the infamous goblin babies. I don’t think this counts as a real capital M, Monster, room unless there is an adult in the room - watch out - eggs and some young creatures may count as treasure such as in the case of dragon eggs, like infant giant beavers, weird. 
• Room that swaps character’s minds (ie pass character sheet’s clockwise round the table).
• Examination room - physical, academic, guilt/sin, psychological, etc. Pronouncement renders different boons/maluses. Could make the players do a real test. Intelligence modifier could give a % bonus to the final score, +1 =10% bonus and so on. 
• Fun but otherwise mechanically and monetarily unimportant (and not dangerous) (do these count as ‘empty’ rooms? I think they might):
• An automated orchestra playing a single song on repeat. 
• An enchanted puppet or stage show. 
• Room contains the aura borealis
•  Room has piano flooring and does something if you play the right tune.
• A big boulder rolls slowly about the room.
• Room wherein everyone appears as their true-selves. 
• A large collection of effectively worthless objects, WOW, (empty?) (Kind of similar to the room filled with a flock of nesting birds, bats, etc.)
• 10,000 sacks of flour
• A thousand barrels of Mind-Flayer vomit
• A million baby teeth
• Room is waist deep in oil
• Ruined books (a real library would count as treasure)
• Stuffed (to the point it is difficult to move) with rotting mannequins. That will freak players out. 
• A vast space, stretching the definitions of a room, such as an ocean to sail over with islands that function as other dungeon rooms, that could function as a Special room.
• Perfectly safe room, free from wandering monsters, the room has features to indicate as such - may only be perfectly safe with some kind of cost. 
• PUZZLE ROOMS (that don’t (or maybe do) give up treasure upon being solved (but could bestow some other blessing) - I’M NOT SMART ENOUGH TO COME UP WITH D100 PUZZLE ROOMS FOR NO REASON. 
• Use rooms that best support Theme. Horror dungeons should have gruesome special rooms, just be wary that they don't act like traps. P

The Lost Books of Appendix N

Pushed into motion by the Appendix N Jam (find my entry here) I have engaged in an intensive, rigourous (and two-fisted) period of study, research and legwork looking into the early literary inspirations of D&D and have discovered a veritable corpus of lost works of fantasy fiction. A protracted campaign of beatings, blackmail and bribery has revealed the following titles were excluded, for mysterious reasons, from AD&D's Appendix N:

1. The Cruel Curse of Tzan-Tzeng
2. Through the Ghost-Field
3. Night of the Spine-Beast
4. Invaders, Ironclad... Invincible!
5. The Ghoul Machine
6. The Siege of Stinghollow
7. Across Broadsword Lake
8. To Duel the Devil's Daughter
9. Swords Against Prophecy
10. Lo, Death-Lords!
11. Against the Marquis of Madness
12. Sphere of the Godlings
13. Beyond the Impenetrable Darkness
14. Amazons, Charge!
15. The Twelve Tales of Tlalaklax
16. Into the Veridian Pit
17. Locked In Silver Shackles
18. Empire of the Eternity-Bomb
19. Adrift on Typhon's Trireme
20. Beware the Wizard's Eye
21. Die, Demon, Die!
22. A Vision of Burning Spires
23. The Beetling Bastion of Emperor Bhzz'tl
24. Mozag-Shah's Mountain of Power
25. Curses Upon Carloman 
26. The Gilt Death of Loquacious Grey
27. Not for All the Gold in Hell
28. Bathed in Troll Blood
29. Rise and Ride Again!
30. The Amphibane Cycle 
31. Flight from Castle Cromlech
32. Belburbug's Bloody Playthings
33. Damocles, Draw Thy Sword!
34. The Saga of Sigurd Silver-Eye
35. Ixø - City of the Witches
36. Beneath Foreign Planets
37. The Fiendish Company
38. In League with the Lizardmen
39. Sir John Sneak - The Rat with Twin Daggers
40. The Ringamble Series, particularly Ringamble the Crypt-King, Ringamble the Revolutionary and Ringamble - Upon a Backwards Horse

Also check out my module title generator.

THE SELV

Hwæt! This tale begins in those earliest days when the Elves first awoke, when the world was not, and all things were beautiful. And the elves, whose fascinations were infinite, came to gather around those things most worthy of their admiration - the glimmer of the newborn stars, the newly shifting arms of clear, unfurling nebulae, the song of the cosmic breath as it passed over the flowering expanse, the glittering gemstones that scattered the twilight meadows and the mysteries of those magical processes by which creation unfolded before them. And through these gatherings, the first communities came to be and all was fair, equal and just, for all were lords and ladies of their own commonwealths of universal wonderment and splendour.

That is, save for One, HE, who was above others and whose name, now unspoken, once meant 'Most Beauteous of Creation'. HE became as a great king, HE who was the fairest of these beings, without blemish, without trace of weakness of limb or mind, vitality or song and whose grace and glory were unmatched. HE, who had come to master all of these elven fascinations, came to gather around HIM many fellow elves who basked in HIS perfection and supplicated themselves to HIS will. In turn, HE was their champion. For it was HE who slew those unknown horrors that slobbered and clawed their way from the world before. And as HE stood, victorious in battle, over their manyfold dead, HE was among the first created to feel disgust - dread. Yet further pained, HE pondered; do putrid beings foretell of what was to become of MY new world?

From then on, HE sought ways to preserve the purity and perfection of the starry, flowering realm. For it was HE who was the first to entreat the gods and HE sang of an end to the unfolding creation - that peaceful perfection abounded, and that beauty could be preserved, should but Creation cease. These songs went into the starry void without answer, nor echo. And so, HE looked with disdain at the first dawn of the neonate sun, and to HIM, the arrival of the unpocked moon was a blot on the glimmering meadows of the sky. And soon fear and malice formed in his ageless heart. So, with the wilting of the first flower and as fresh maladies first sapped the limbs of elves - with the appearance of beasts, bristling and chitinous, teeming in the roiling mud and the apes that gibbered in swelling trees - HE knew what fate HE must pursue. Such creations, both tangible and intangible, would serve only to corrupt HIS beauteous visage and pockmark HIS perfect earthly realm. And so, claiming HIS beauty as HIS right to command Elvenkind, HE proclaimed this curse to freshly afeared elves; 

“Woe unto the Creator’s creation! Woe unto the scabrous beasts that mar its face! Once pure, now befouled with crawling, hideous life - scarred and made unclean by prankish entropy! My realm shall be untainted and unmarred! Therefore, I, who am more splendid than the Sun, nobler than the Moon, fairer than the fairest star, shall be the hand to hold back the loom of Creation and by my will shall the march of time be stayed, and beauty live eternal!”

And upon swearing this terrible oath, HIS followers leapt straightway to HIS side and took the selfsame vow together, striking down any who refused. And red with spilt elven blood shone their drawn swords in the glare of the weeping, child sun. Quickly, then, they did away, down into the heart of the world. Down HE led HIS followers, deep within, and under the earth where reality remains strange, and where time itself might be kept at bay. There, in the abyss, HE wove HIS own realm, one preserved from Creation, touched only by the decay of his own heart and shaped by HIS deranged will and unspooled mind. So it was, and as strange aeons ebbed and flowed, HE and HIS followers basked in their endless spiralling beautification. There, in the deepest of all places, they preened and warped themselves beyond elvenkind, seeking to surpass the beauty that, in elder days, they had once found sacred. For they are now the Selv, starry and strange - scintillating, stelliferous entities of an eerie, alien fairness - cold, cruel and desirous.

So, it would remain, but unfurling creation could not be hidden from forever. Save for the Creator, the weird ways of the deep earth know few masters, and so, after untold Ages, the underworld's groping tendrils - its dungeons and dark places - have begun to pierce the Selv's uncanny garden-realm. Now, up through the earth; by secret fae-paths, forgotten ways and hidden elven-doors, do the Selv slink furtively to the subterranean fringes of our mortal world. Ancient folk emerging into an Age of dearth and misrule - knowing only deep magic, and the lore of the earliest dawns, the Selv know little of our myth-removed Age. Truly, their imperious sneers survey all Creation with disgust and curiosity - for you should consider yourself accursed the Selv know you not. For the keen fascination of their elven forebears beats still in the Selv’s wicked hearts, yet their study is born of self-superiority and is filled with malice and revulsion. 

And those first men to behold the Selv, to be held tranfixt upon their cruel and sickly-beauteous, shimmering forms and meet with terror their gaze, glowing with the light of underworld stars. With piercing eyes that burn darkly with contempt that wrinkles not their statue faces. 

For the Selv, mortal men are as insects before a collector’s pin, as boils before a studying surgeon or yet, with greater terror - impure clay before a master sculptor.  For many warped men, uncanny and statue-faced, with the light of the heavens springing from their mindless eyes, do lope and lunge and tear and toil at a world they now reckon as odious and unworthy. No creature, high or low, shall escape their desire - for even bats of strange angles that carry the glimmer of stars, do flutter on gossamer wings from the constellation-lit caves of the Selv.

HE lives still! Brooding against an ugly reality, in the impossible depths of the living earth within his shrinking realm, scheming. HIS goals are many; to learn of the created world and the lengths of its completion, its nature, and the nature of its inhabitants and how they may be best made beautiful or excised as a gardener might snails. Whispered voices, in deep tombs, hiss in slender tones of a great ‘War of Disgust’ against reality, when the Selv have found some means to bleach back Creation and start afresh. And yet, a needling thought, spry against the vastness of his ancient memory does pain HIM, quietly - are the Selv, his children, those ancient abominations that he did HE slay at the dawn of all things?

The Selv

Stats as Elves, (though something more special may be in order) adjust HD depending on the age of the particular Selv (HE would have the stats of something from Deities and Demigods). Selv differ from Elves in the following regards:

• In combat, they always target the ugliest thing first, who they will usually attempt to slay. 

• They speak to Elven PC’s before all others. 

• They will attempt to capture and study those they do not exterminate.

• They glow a cold white light and their weird and stunning beauty means the Selv always surprise their opponents. They are as swift and light footed and can almost always cover a great distance before being spotted. 

• They inhale and exhale but once a day, they do not blink, nor sleep. They are sustained by very little, often eating a single petal per day. 

The Beautified:

The uncanny and ethereal workhorses of the Selv. The Beautified can use the stats of any creature, save that they gain +1 to ALL rolls and are unable to use any mental, spell-casting or force of personality unless instructed by a Selv to do so. 

Any creature can be beautified by the Selv using a ritualised version of a modified Polymorph Other spell. This usually takes place after an intense and unpleasant period of examination. The Beautified are always under the thrall of the Selv as a race.   

Some notes on the Selv as a faction:

• The Selv are a faction designed to be able to be placed into any deep corner of any underground dungeon or adventure site. Their Selv-ways may even connect several distant dungeons across your campaign map.

• Lacking the numbers to wage direct war on reality the Selv do begrudgingly seek non-Selv allies, promising beauty, exquisite gems and deep lore in exchange for favours or artefacts of great power that may aid them in the destruction of reality.

• Their hierarchy is organised by most to least fair though these miniscule differences are not noticeable to non-Selv. The Beautified are essentially lobotomised works of uncanny valley art and are the lowest rung of Selv society. 

• The Selv hate disease and are easily disgusted to the point of violence.  

• For naming conventions take typical Tolkienesque elven names and ‘extend’ them by duplicating vowels and or consonants in weird ways. 

Myself and an elite cadre of skellington appreciators and OSR bloggers coalesced in the spirit of this spooky season to gift each other content. This was organised by Empedocles of Elemental Reductions. And glad I was to accept the call to write archaic, ape-tolkienesque nonsense in very long and unwieldy sentences! OK, my actual prompts were:

• The Fall of a Great King

• Beauty Rotten from the Inside

• The Curse of Being Forgotten

And the format was: Faction. So, I attempted to do all three. I hope you are pleased, anonymous friend!

I am also submitting this to the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by the great Tim Brannon of The Other Side blog - the theme HORROR AND FANTASY.

The Onomasticon Quernorum

Or; On the Names of the Quernfolk

A Wennish penny pamphlet pithily titled 'an unbelievable account of the atrocious apparitional attack on a sleeping and sickly Miss Dyedred by the headless bear demon 'Old Bossbelow' and her noble defense by Mistress Sharpday, Miss Arena Palatine, Jonwith Middlestone, Harque the Younger, Master Winwalloe and the Magic-User Lakelie'  

Above is the Onomasticon Quernorum; On the Names of the Quernfolk. Contained within are over 900 names and they are presented without any expository information. 

Recently, I have had names on the brain. In my post morpheme+word+epithet, (which has proved quite popular) I shared the eponymous formula for making an interesting name. This specific method works well for individuals but what if I need a great many names to build out a specific culture? 

I have previously written how understanding of the cultures of your setting can be impressed on, and implied to, players via the personal trinkets and pocket loot of NPCs that belong to those cultures. I used my personal setting of The Querns to explore this idea and did some implied world-building by detailing several cultures in this way. In this post, I have given names to the owners of those pockets. With the names themselves and the contents of their pockets, the reader should have a good feeling for these cultures already. Implication builds interesting settings that engage the imagination.

In the Onomasticon Quernorum I have given names to six, mostly distinct, cultures. In addition to this list I had a whole spiel written explaining my thought processes and inspiration for each of the culture's naming styles. I cut it all down and it still wasn't 'working' so I have slung it in a doc you can find here. I also recommend this post by Empedocles the Wizard of Elemental Reductions for some more lucid and interesting commentary on their naming process.

But, what do you do? What are your thoughts on creating names for RPG characters? Please let me know in the comments as I really enjoy this stuff.

Another Wennish penny pamphlet titled 'The Mightily True Report of Sergeant Bov Pangweather's victory over the hulking Aldish Birch-Crone known as Jennie Snatchelflynda and her dread-familiar who some call Black Froggebighter'. 

This post was written for Words! Linguistics, Etymology and Onomatology for July's RPG Blog Carnival. 

Name Generator: Morpheme+Word+Epithet

Who are these fellas and what are their names? Groupe de sorciers by Lucas Roussel

Millions of names!

Each name is made of three parts. A made-up morpheme, an English word and an epithet or honorific. The names are drawn from lists I wrote; there are 335 morphemes, 345 words and 311 epithets/honorifics. I use words rather than another set of immediately meaningless morphemes for a few reasons: 

• Words colour the name, if the name has ‘cruel’ in it, the name instantly gives a hint to the character (but sometimes it just gives an interesting sound) in a very pulpy way that should be embraced.  

• Words make the name a little quicker to read, the brain picks out the second word; so ‘Zhongcried’ is that much quicker to read and then physically pronounce than a random collection of phonemes like ‘Ibquneche’.

• Along with epithets, words add a touch more memorability to a name for your players. If you generate something alliterative or with some assonance, all the better!

Of course, not all characters should have a name that fits these conventions, though these  principles can be quite effective. If a name is generated and the 'epithet' is in brackets it is an honorific and should be read before the name, not after. For example 'Ozdog (Master)' should be read as Master Ozdog.

Thanks to Paper Elemental for their clever html generator generator which I used for this post and for the Archons March On blog whose many numerous generators inspired me to give it a go myself. 

Click Generate for your name:

Click for the raw lists

Experimental Meta-Weather Rules

Weather. I've wanted a weather system that possesses the following qualities: is simple enough to be memorable, allows for the weather to be naturally and randomly changeable AND stay the same for long stretches, to show weather patterns/trends within a season and most importantly allow for the weather to become 'weird' so that the players can experience wild or dramatic weather phenomena (but not too often) and to try to do all this with as little die rolling as possible. With these criteria in mind, I tried to make a weather system that could achieve them. I don't feel entirely satisfied or successful with the result, the system is more complicated than I would like and janky at times. I am sharing for posterity as I think it's kind of interesting and for the RPG Blog Carnival. I'd love suggestions on how to make the idea that little bit more workable while retaining those design goals. There is a summary of the system at the end of this post.

(All shall be explained)

Find the other season lists here

The system works off of seasonal weather lists. They are 2.?D as opposed to hex-flower weather systems that are 6D.  This system is both more and less predictable than hex-flower weather systems. The weathers are arranged on the table from colder and wetter weathers to hotter and dryer ones. In hot/dry seasons like summer, the wet/cold weathers may not be particularly wet or cold and vice versa. Each weather should logically flow into the next, and the most common weathers will be found in the middle of the table. I have not strived for realism. Adjacent to each weather is a type of weird weather phenomena that could reasonably emerge from the mundane weather it is twinned with.

But how does it work? Place a marker on the current weather in your game (I used a matchstick) and, when you are asked to make a weather check, roll a d12. There are a number of possible results. On a result of 1-2 or 11-12 the current weather will remain the same. On a roll of  3, 4, 5 or 6 the weather will move one increment toward the wetter/colder end of the table, moving from a 10 to a 9 for instance. On a roll of 7, 8, 9 or 10, the opposite effect will occur and the current weather will move one step toward the warmer/dryer end of the table, IE from a 7 to an 8. If the weather cannot move up or down, i.e. is at 3 or 10, then the weather remains the same. 

Should the number that matches the current in-game weather be rolled, it indicates a sudden change. Roll the d12 again and change the weather to that result. If the new roll results in either 1, 2, 11 or 12 OR the same number as the current weather, then the weather will become weird. If the weather becomes weird, move the marker on the current weather one column to the right onto its matching weird weather. Once the weather becomes weird, roll weather checks as normal. Rolls of 1, 2, 11 and 12 results continue the weird weather. Weird weather is detailed a little more later in the post. 

But wait! There's more! In real life, over the course of a season there can be several periods of high and low temperature and dry/wet humidity. In order to replicate these kinds of weather trends I have once again gone META or more accurately (I think) extra-diegetic. Real world weather is taken into account when making weather checks using this system. The real-world weather the day of your game is used to modify the results of your in-game weather checks. The wetter, hotter, dryer or colder a day is compared to the average day of the season you are in, the wetter, hotter, dryer or colder your in-game weather will become. If a weather the day of your game is wetter/colder than usual; apply a -1 or -2 to your weather check, if the day is hotter/dryer than usual apply a +1 or +2. These positive/negative modifiers give the feeling of weather patterns. As a reminder, unmodified rolls of 1, 2, 11 or 12 always result in the weather remaining the same, but rolls that are modified into these ranges do not cause the weather to remain the same, simply changing one step in the relevant direction. Optionally, such rolls can cause the weather to change by 2 steps in the relevant direction. If the campaign is happening during the winter but being played in summer, this is fine. You can have hotter/dryer spells and wetter/colder spells relative to whatever season you are in in-game. 

But, what happens on game days where the weather is weird? When you have sessions on during heatwaves, cold snaps, hail, Saharan dust clouds, unexpected snow, eclipses? On such days the the probability of your in-game weather becoming weird increases dramatically. On 'weird' days, (until a weird weather results is procured) weather checks have the following results - on the roll of d12, a 1, 2, 11 and 12 do not result in the weather remaining the same but becoming weird, as does rolling the number that matches the current weather. As above, when making weather weird, move from the current weather to the right, onto the matching weird weather phenomena. On 'weird' days, the chance of the weather becoming wild or weird becomes 5/12. On normal days it is something like 5/144 (but I'm really not sure about the math for this). Once the weather has become weird, make weather checks as normal and is detailed above. 

How does weather stop being weird? Whenever the weather changes - moves up or down as a result of 3-6 or 7-10. Usually, the weather moves diagonally, up or down, to the mundane weather column. Many weird weathers will have lasting after-effects - such as flooding and wildfires.

I think that's everything. Here are the example seasonal weather tables. I haven't come up with mechanical effects for the different weathers as I am not sure of the viability of this system yet. I have rolled up a month's worth of summer weather using real-world weather data. I assumed one game session a week, rolling for three in-game days of weather per session. As you can see there are three different trends in this 30 period, a warm beginning followed by hot and humid weather in the middle of the month and then a dramatic week of thunderstorms. The bold days are when the weather changed as a result of a reroll and the Lightning Storm phenomena came about as the result of the influence of real world weird weather. 

Summer:

Here are some additional thoughts and optional rules:

• Seasonal weather tables can easily be turned into regional weather tables. Weather might be worse in the mountains, very different in a coastal deserts and rather peculiar in the worm-wastes.  
• It may be worth having a 'weather-master' or 'forecaster' player who is responsible for the tracking and rolling for the weather, just as you might have a mapper and caller. This would help to reduce your mental load. Some players enjoy such rolls and are all are motivated by a 100xp reward for doing them. It would also encourage the players to learn the weather system and become more experienced at forecasting like their characters would. 
• Mundanity is often necessary in fantasy role-playing games. Nothing seems as weird or special if the everyday baseline is already so foreign and removed from the player's lived experience. This applies to weather. Instead of a sun, having a neon-pink, glowing ball of tendrils might sound cool, but unless you mention it a tedious amount your players will forget about it. If the sun turns into something abominable for a week, that's cool and memorable. As a player, one of my best and most evocative memories of weather was when the party got lost in heavy rain in the middle of the night without any shelter. 
• Being very experimental, I would consider a weather phase during combat. Just as some rules have phases for magic, missiles, movement and melee there could be a phase for weather. This phase would see combatants deal with the weather and allow for the weather to act on and in the scene. For example; repeatedly prompting saves against heat exhaustion, seeing snow devils move around the combat map, see if a rain shower starts, how high the flood waters rise or where the lightning strikes. There are many options for weather to take more of an active and present role in combat encounters and the game as a whole.
• When to roll weather checks? That is up to you. Some roll them once per day, others integrate it into their wilderness encounter rolls/checks. I would have weather checks made at regularly times of the day - dawn, midday and dusk and once per day during downtime.
• The 'meta' aspect need not be limited to how hot/dry or wet/cold a day was. It can be linked to anything; windiness, amount of bugs you saw, how well you are feeling, how cloudy the day was. Having it solely based on comparative temperature/humidity limits excludes game-masters who live in equatorial countries. 
• These weather lists make for good rumour and spell fodder.

Summary:

Weather check:

• Roll a d12, considering the real-world weather, if hotter/dryer than usual add +1 or +2 to the result, if colder/wetter than usual -1 or -2 to the result. 
• Unmodified results of 1, 2, 11 or 12 result in the weather remaining the same. If modified into these ranges, treat the result as below;
• If the roll results in 6 or less the current weather decreases by 1 step. 
• If the roll results in 7 or more the current weather increases by 1 step.
• If the weather cannot move up or down, then it will remain the same.  
• If the roll results in a roll matching the current weather, roll the d12 again: 
• If 1, 2, 11 or 12 the weather stays the same.
• If the roll matches the current weather a second time then that weather becomes weird, moving to the right onto the adjacent weather on weird weather column. 
• If the d12 results in any other number, the current weather changes to the weather that matches that number.
• Once 'weird', the weather remains weird until a weather check moves the weather up or down the table. At which point the weather moves diagonally left, up or down, onto the mundane weather column. 

If the current real-world weather is unusual:

• Roll a weather check as normal. Results of 1, 2, 11 or 12 do not result in the weather remaining the same but becoming instantly weird. Likewise, rolling the number of the current weather causes it to become instantly weird.
• Once the weather has become weird, make all subsequent weather checks as is detailed above, even if the weather in the real world remains unusual. 

EXAMPLE SEASONS HERE