Deus Ex Verbum: Interesting Religions, Dogmas, Sects and Philosophies via Wiktionary

If a religion is what its followers do, then start with a single verb and extrapolate.

All images from Alphonse Mucha's Slav Epic

Psych, this post isn't about gods at all, it's about their followers. This post is inspired by Mindsorm Press’s Biblically Inaccurate Religions, which I'd recommend reading first. In it, author Ty and an expert friend sketch out believable religions such as the Renunciants (who reject worldliness) and the Testifiers (ecstatic proselytisers). I shall also append James Young's Denialists (nonconformist zealots).

What do all these religions have in common? Their names. Nomen est omen, baby. More specifically, a single verb: to Renounce, to Testify, to Deny. Entire dogmas, religious practices, modes of being and worldviews can flow from a single verb. 

To me, this seems to produce religions that feel more grounded because you're starting with the believer and their character, rather than with gods, cosmologies or surface aesthetics which tend to be noun-based. Just work on stuff the players will have to deal with first - no more moon-worshippers who are notable only for wearing silvery moon robes, who pray to the moon and talk about how great the moon is. 

So, pick a verb (or obtain one at random from Wiktionary) and build a religion's practices, adherents and worldview around that word. 

Now, Wiktionary. Wiktionary is Wikipedia but for words and phrases and it has a rather customisable random page functionality. As of writing, it has 57,476 ‘verb’ pages. Try fitting that on a random table! Some are crude, some are hyper-specific scientific terms, but the breadth is unmatched. Click on the link below three times or less and pick your favourite.

THE STEPS:

1. Obtain a VERB.

2. Agentify the verb (don't fret, this isn't the religion's final name, merely its true, secret, working name. That said, it can serve as a nickname). Add a suffix or similar to the verb such as:

• Verb-ites
• Verb-ists
• Verb-men
• Verb-ers
• Verb-ians
• Verb-istas
• Those who Verb

3. Read the verb’s definition. Imagine a religion whose central virtue, philosophy, dogma or instinctive response to the world is that verb, literally or metaphorically. Extrapolate, free associate. See the prompts below for ideas. 

4. Only once you are satisfied with the behaviour core, you can begin to name holy books, gods, great evils, holy sites. 

5. Optional: To generate a sect, get a random adjective and apply that to your Verb. How does it alter an adherent’s behaviour?

Step 3 Prompts:

*Choose at least 4 of the following. Consider how the verb colours an adherent's:

- Method of Worship

- Relation to the Other (this is a useful one)
- Reaction to good (and/or) bad fortune.
- Day to day life, relationship with the mundane
- Aesthetic and material culture
- Relationship with self
- Relationship with the supernatural 
- Method of Proselytisation (if any)
- Cultural practices not included above
- Taboos (often the inverse of the verb)

RANDOM VERB HERE 

RANDOM ADJECTIVE HERE (for SECT CREATION)

Example Religion and Sect Sketches: 

(Apologies if these examples are a little rough and ready, they are truly sketches, but that’s how most world-building starts, no? They’re also the verbs Wiktionary bequeathed me, no fakery here,)

Toilers
Toil - to labour

Hard work and graft. Wealth obtained by means other than personal labour is deemed unworthy, otherwise wealth is fine. This leads to much flatter hierarchies in Toiler societies (each man is a farmer, warrior-king and priest in his own right) and a persecution of Toilers in societies where the elite see this as a threat. Many a Toiler has turned agrarian revolutionary. Earthy, their hymns are working songs. Their place of worship is wherever a fellow Toiler is working. (You can see I have done some extrapolation here using my LIMITED IMAGINATION)

Taboo: Idleness

Relexicalisians
Relexicalise - to change the lexicon of; to use different words for. To relexicalize a word. 

Mystic-cum-bureaucratic shakers. Seekers of a new divine speak, holy books are new codexes/dictionaries of words. Possible tiered faith as new words are unveiled to them until one is speaking entirely in their holy tongue, like if Scientology was centred around mystic-divine conlang. Their ceremonies are akin to language study groups. Readings are conducted at a level appropriate to each congregation's understanding. Have an academic bend and are knowledgeable of secular tongues. They curse and praise with unintelligible sayings. Sing new songs, write fiction and non-fiction. Utopianists, they question a lot of social assumptions and norms but they have less impact as the wider population don’t understand what they are saying or writing.

 

SECT: The 'evil-tempered' Relexicalisians

Essentially militant religio-linguists. If radical enough, they may form cadres and cells. If large enough, warbands and holy armies with the goal of holy linguistic war. After an attack, strapped to the body of a suicide-knifeman is a missive to terror written in Relexicalisian. They speak their language to spite you for your ignorance and their presence gives orthodox Relexicalisians a hard time. 

Those who 'sky the towel'
Sky the towel - (Australia, slang) To give up; to surrender.

Hippies, pacifistic, ego-death entheogen drinkers. Deferential in any moment of conflict or disagreement (some interpret this as untrustworthiness), possible nudist element, sky burials. They love bunting and flags. When afraid, they endeavour to assume a reclined or fetal position, or they walk away with their hands raised to the heavens. Can often do this when things become difficult and have a reputation for idleness. This is not to say they are inherently pacifistic, I’m sure they’d drop a big rock on someone if it would kill their target instantly. 

Taboo: Conflict or disagreement. 

Hit-rock-bottom Men
Hit Rock Bottom, to reach the lowest possible state in one’s life.

Piety is expressed by the lowness of your station and condition. A faith of squalid hermitage, fasting and barely-productive physical exhaustion. Extremely stoic, verging on self-annihilation. Possible religious experiences akin to voluntary slavery to a church or similar institution with Spartan conditions and long hours. Drinking to oblivion is acceptable, while drinking in moderation is not. If you are having a bad time, a Rock-Bottomer would encourage you to make it worse. When isolated, their communities are utopian, albeit uncomfortable and you might be a little hungry.  

Taboo: Guilt-free indulgence. Moderation. 

The Slurper-Uppers
Slurp up, to consume by slurping.

They listen greedily to holy folk of all types, congregations stampede. They ‘consume’ everything, the psycho-physio-spiritual body will either reject or digest it. Prayers and ceremonies are often said with sacred wines poured onto the ground to be slurped up. They hold drunkardly, feasting debates with much agreement and hassling for the attention of whomever seems to be channeling the most divine wisdom. Believers tend to be more open to new experiences and worldviews and respectful to the point of near-obsession with philosophers, holy or wise-folk of any and all faiths save those they have previously rejected. 

While the slurpers must have a strong figurehead deity, most Slurper Upper communities tend to take on the features of their local dominant Religion. For this reason the religion is not set to last much longer as many 'slurp up' too much of the dogma of other faiths and are readily converted. Even those with the most eclectic of beliefs will in time found their own autonomous sects. 

SECT: Neo-Ottoman Slurper-Uppers

A small bacchanal sect that became obsessed with the 'slurping up' the teaching of philosophers of a long dead empire and by extension, the historic figures of said empire. Their militarism has led to at least some genuine conquests, they have now started militarily slurping up whole peoples and cultures. 

WHY? A Ramble and an ADDENDUM:

If the purpose of a system is what it does, then perhaps a religion is what its followers do? The idea of the post is to consider behaviour and habits first. Actual theological justifications can (and should) come later. That way players will understand a faith through the behaviour of its followers rather than the banners they carry or robes they wear and the DM gains a useful heuristic for predicting how adherents react to the world. There is definitely room for a Noun expansion but this draft has been pawed at for too long. Likewise, you can use this method for generating cultures too.

My love of Wiktionary prompted this post by Archons March On which used my random prefix and suffix links (HE STOLE MY IDEA! IF YOU ARE READING THIS SEMIURGE, YOU’RE DEAD). I’ve more Wiktionary inspired posts on the way! 🙂👍

This post was spurred on by Prismatic Wasteland’s RANDOM blogwagon. There are some pretty good randomisifying resources like dice and playing cards, the flight of birds, the entrails of sacrificial animals, and then there are wikis with a good good random page feature. I strongly encourage you to deep dive Wiktionary. To get your brain cooking here are some raw random links:

VERB:
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:RandomInCategory/English_verbs#English

ADJECTIVE: https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:RandomInCategory/English_adjectives#English 

NOUN:
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Special:RandomInCategory/English_nouns#English 

You can use these as a base to create your own links for any category on Wiktionary, for more specific terms, categories or in other languages. 

Meta Magic - Experimental Extra-Diegetic Spellcasting (an Alternate Magic System plus Oracular Bingo, Sigil Minigames, IRL Material Components and More)

Herein I present a smorgasbord - a spittlesome spitball - of dumb ideas (most half-formed) for meta, extradiegetic gimmicks and novelties relating to magic and spell casting.

[Is this your card?]

META MAGIC:

The more psychic ability you have as a player, the more effective your magic-user 😏.

We will be using James Young’s magic system as a basis* - a Magic-User has mana equal to their level, begins at first level with four or so levelless spells and learns 1 new random spell per level. To safely cast a spell they must expend 1 mana. Spells can be cast without mana though this ranges from taxing, to deadly, to the uncanny and the grotesque. Spellcasting can go wrong via Mishaps - Chaos Bursts or much worse via Cosmic Horror. Let's get psychical;

Each Magic-User player has a deck of cards with the Jokers left in.

To cast a spell, the player declares the spell and whether they are casting with mana or without mana, then - their deck in hand - attempts to predict the next card by naming its rank and suit, then they draw the top card. Compare the prediction vs the drawn card and consult the following:

Casting with Mana:

• If incorrect, lose 1 mana and the spell is cast as normal
• If one card element (numeral/face or suit) is correct, either - cast the spell at 1 level lower but lose no mana or cast the spell as 1 level higher and lose 1 mana.
• If all elements are correct, cast at double your level, gain 1 temporary mana and learn an additional spell upon levelling up (or during the next downtime, it’s up to you as a DM).
• If Joker, experience a Chaos Burst.

 

Casting without Mana:

• If incorrect, lose HP equal to the card’s value and experience a Chaos Burst.
• If one card element (numeral/face or suit) is correct, the spell casts as normal but you lose HP equal to your level.
• If all elements are correct, the spell is cast as normal + regain 1 mana
• If Joker, experience a Cosmic Horror.

One cannot guess ‘Joker’. Not even if your psychic mega-brain knows a Joker is up next, you can only plan accordingly.

Place drawn cards to one side. One can try to count the cards. At the end of the day/session (whichever comes first), the deck must be reshuffled.

There. A wacky, experimental alternate sketch of a magic system. I wouldn’t use it! While psychic powers would be beneficial, I mostly like the probabilities non-psychic players have to deal with on a mathematical level and accurately predicting the card makes you feel like a real bigtime wizard. You can test it online here. What I am most unsure of is how frequently the (non-psychic) player is wrong, it's never nice to feel so wrong. The system could be reversed where you have to guess what the next drawn card isn’t, but that feels worse - clunky, boring. The concept can be taken in other ways. The deck could have 52/54 distinct arcane sigils sharpied on the back of the cards that can be studied, this would aid the players’ guesses and make them feel like they are learning real magic (perhaps these as they are varied and unique enough). OR, one could simplify the guessing by using a single suit - or better yet - just use the face cards. One could also use a tarot deck’s major arcana or those cards used to test for real psychic powers - Zener Cards although these cards lack the concreteness of playing cards. It goes without saying that with any of these changes the prediction-vs-card results would have to be rethought and rebalanced. Perhaps, this line of thought is just an evolutionary dead end.

Frank Frazetta

EVEN MORE META MAGIC:

Oracular Bingo - Player Driven Campaigns via Omens and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies:

Each square on your campaign’s bingo board is an omen, when an omen is observed… something happens. When a row is filled, the prophecy is fulfilled and… something BIG happens! I am a genius! Now there are two options, two paths to take.

• First and more radically, these omens can be written collectively by the party before they embark on a new arc of an already long-running campaign. This is an attempt by the players to predict events, themes, encounters, aesthetics and consequences they feel they may encounter (and to an extent, things they might want to see happen). I imagine this works best in established campaigns where the players know a lot about the world and might be able to make informed predictions or new campaigns but with very thematic worlds. In doing this, I imagine the campaign will take on a very different character. The players will try to fulfill these omens and in doing so steer the campaign - you as a DM can also include some of their ideas. It could be very useful for players who sometimes lack direction.
• Secondly, you the DM may write them. This will likewise inform the trajectory of the campaign. It’s something like in Mythic Bastionland but instead of the Myths being a mystery you give them to your players on a big bingo card right at the start.

Now, what could these BIG and small somethings be? Fulfilling individual squares could result in minor boons or positive changes in the setting, like the waters of the Stinking Bog run clear, the blood-snow stops. Certainly a bingo could result in an instant level up or major positive change in the world.

The direction of the bingo could also matter, a horizontal bingo would be good for the players whereas a vertical bingo could spell some calamity or a boon for (or arrival of) the BBEG.

You can generate some custom bingo cards on osric.com (no relation).

Not this complex

An Even More Half-Baked Idea for a Ritualistic Sigil Drawing Minigame:
One can draw magic symbols, glyphs, sigils and runes on squared or hexagonal paper/whiteboard to cast distinct spells. The complications your character faces (enemies, lack of magical resources/ingredients, character skill, encumbrance, etc) are represented by a number of dice which are rolled on the paper before you draw the glyph. One must attempt to draw the symbol around these dice, intersecting as few as possible. Each die your sigil intersects introduces some chaos to the magic - perhaps it works on a free form, improvisational system. For example, the SERVANT sigil summons an indestructible humanoid golem to perform a single task of the sigil drawer’s command. If the sigil is trisected (drawn over two die complications) the Golem appears but the DM rules that it is 1: hideously terrifying for all to behold, 2: will achieve the command via the most murderous methods possible.

THE SCRABBLE MAGIC OF THE RANDOM CONJURERS:
I can’t stop thinking of dumb stuff. A magic-user can conjure up anything they can spell out using any number of the 7 randomly drawn Scrabble letters they have drawn at the start of a session. They have a pool of tricks equal to their level - they may use these tricks to swap letters and/or draw new replacement letters after using some for a summoning. I currently have no idea how to balance this, a player can summon ‘GOD’ quite easily. The player with the letters should keep them secret, but can show them to the other players for assistance at a cost of 1HP per level. This may work better with Bananagrams letters. The question is, does/can the player build off of words they have already summoned like in the regular Scrabble game? If so, why?

Meta-Material Components:
James Young* has a rule where if he is bought a beverage, the party gains a d30. The d30 can be substituted for any one d20 roll (or use it to increase the die size of any other roll). What if this was extended and taxonomised into a bewildering array of magical nonsense? Bear with me, I think this may actually have the most potential yet. Take your game’s spell list and attach an extradiegetic material component or ritual to each one. Players may prepare these components/rituals ahead of a session for specific spells their character knows. Doing this weird out-of-game/in-game ritual would see the spell massively boosted in scope, power, duration, effect or size. For example, if a player’s Magic-User knows the spell Web, they also know its meta material component/ritual - that player can bring in a piece of real cobweb to a session, burn/singe it before casting Web and see the spell go nuts. Rather than the web blocking a 10 foot cube, they can block an area equal to a 100’ foot cube

ARGHHHHHHH! What a sloppy start to 2026. This spittlesome spitball of a post is actually a thank you gift for Empedocles of Elemental Reductions for organising the OSR Secret Santa. They wanted an Alternate Magic System. Empedocles oversaw a 100% gift rate and put up with my constant demands for blood of non-delivering crooks (see below). Maybe I’ll return to this post and spin something or two out into a workable, playable thing. Probably the Meta-Material Components post.

If you like the Extradiegetic angle, check out my other META posts, I’d recommend one one about drugs and the other about diseases.

*According to Elmcat’s masterpiece blogosphere map, I am one of James Young’s biggest simps.

O Drc - Toki Pona's Evil Twin

 The word for food is slugs.

by Vergvotre

The following is the collated work of the late Emeritus Master and Polar Explorer Wimm Oxwoe, who through some mysterious method (now, perhaps lost forever) had claimed to have reconstructed the ancient language spoken by the thralls of the Dread Hyperborean civilization. Whatever uncanny technique Oxwoe employed, it's efficacy is undeniable. Now, through the language's use, many of the strange arctic hominids who lurk that malignant land can now be communicated with intelligibly. Perhaps unsettlingly, this lends greater weight to the theory that these creatures are indeed descendants of the human slaves of that dread civilisation. 

And what a cruel language it is. Pity those folk who lived in the brutal world to which O Drc alludes - they who knew no other language.

photography by Kjetil Karlson

A Handsome yet Arrogant Author's Thoughts and Design Notes:

It is the dream of all nerds to make a conlang. I'm no nerd, and what's more, I'm barely literate. So, bish bash bosh, I'll just make an entire conlang in 2 weeks, no problem, it'll be great. I cannot deny this isn't anything other than baby's first conlang. I have certainly learnt a lot during the process. But still, I hope I have achieved something interesting. 

O Drc, is inspired by Toki Pona and shares its interest in the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis. Whereas Toki Pona tries to be twee and good spirited, so O Drc will be sinister and cognitively oppressive - like a primordial version of 1984's Newspeak - a small language full of purposeful restrictions, omissions, pointed polysemy and the impoverishment of expression amongst others techniques. Though I do feel I could have pushed this further. 

The phonology of O Drc is deliberately simple and almost overwhelming 'English' and is likewise presented simply. The intention is, while the language may sound alien, I would want it to be easily read by my players. The rules around grammar are a little stranger but still stem from a notion of simplicity. Still, if you are unsure of how to pronounce anything ping me on Discord, I mean it. Furthermore, if you are a real smarty pants conlang or linguistics aficionado (and therefore likely pained by this language) please give me some feedback. 

Generally, using conlangs in roleplaying games is a risky business. Perhaps as a short lived linguistics puzzle you'd be ok, like how I plan to use O Drc - I'm thinking I may include a magic item that automatically transcribes O Drc speech spoken by NPCs to aid in this. If you would like actual, gameable content relating to languages, check the bottom of the post where I have compiled a collection of posts quilled by wiser minds.

A list of just a few of the grammatical terms I did not (and perhaps still do not) know/understand upon creating this conlang:

• Subject
• Object 
• Noun Phrase
• Phonesthemes
• Topicalisation
• Semantic Domain
• Free translation - and the difference between gloss and transliteration. 
• Basically most types of this stuff: accusative? the subjunctive? Huh?
• How to read IPA
• And much more!

I am the Conlang dunce. But if I can make a 'entire' language, so can you. 

It's me

This post was requested by Metasyn of the mainwave OSR discord server for Christmas (I received the spooky, energumeniacal class; The Guided Hand by Katt Kirsch) They wanted a post on Language, I gave a language. Unfortunately, these are not the same things. So here is some more befitting content: 

d13 GREAT OSR POSTS ABOUT LANGUAGE:

1. Blog of Forlorn Encystment's 'On Language' argues for skill based, gradated language, checks to build a more realistic picture of language acquisition and multilingualism
2. Speaking of multilingualism, Lich Van Winkle's post titled A Reality Check for Language Rules in Your Fantasy Game (and rationalizing alignment languages), argues a character's known languages shouldn't be based solely on their Intelligence score but a host of factors such as social class (and much, much more!)
3. Prismatic Wasteland offers a novel method for slot-based languages in Schrödinger’s Chat 2: Amended & Restated Quantum Language Rules. In my opinion, quantum language is 👌 but the memory system presented in the post sets meaningful limits. Personally speaking, I've had a dwarf PC who ended up speaking a huge 16+ different languages including every type of Dwarven dialect and some wacky ones like Western Lowland Gorilla and Martian.
4. Prismatic Wasteland also looks at the implied setting of D&D through the lens of language. What does the existence of 'Common' actually imply? Read The Languages of D&D Imply a Specific Setting to find out.
5. Troy Press wrote Real-world Language Proficiency for Fantasy Games. It introduces us to F.A.C.T - an actual method for appraising the level of a speaker's language proficiency and how this can be applied to games (in a variety of ways).
6. Murkdice asks What did you say?. They demand one should treat language as an ingredient for gameable scenarios and interesting social/textual obstacles to encounter during adventures. They also suggest ways to handle this kind of play.
7. Additionally, Languages and Frictionless Design by Nate Whittington of the Grinning Rat blog builds upon this. They write about language as a wrinkle in play, a problem, a complication. There's also some very interesting thoughts on tying language to faction play.
8. You must read the Onomasticon Quernorum (I must self promote). And is not onomastics (the study of names) not a kind of language we interact with daily? This Adonic author (of a blog too cool for Google to index) suggests the obvious, names are good for implied world building!
9. Rise Up Comus serves up some sizzlingly gameable subversions on classic dnd languages in Lingua Franca.
10. The Benign Brown Beast follows a similar path in Saying Magic Words where in they link languages to spells. How intriguing, how WHIMSICAL.
11. This Benign Brown Beast can't be stopped! In RPG Linguistics they share their thoughts on shrinking the common naturalist take on language with many dozens of racial/geographic dialects to a narrativist approach. It's very thought provoking.
12. Real value for money with this 2-in-1 post (titled Some Thoughts About Languages in RPGs). First, an overview of some excellent scripts for use as ciphers. Then, a brilliant and detailed array of 'The Languages of Generic Vernacular Fantasyland'. A real cracker of a post from Dan.
13. The inimitable Xaosseed ruminates on how the presence of extraordinarily long-lived beings might effect the evolution of language in Your great-grand-elf's elvish: long lives slowing language change.

If you have any other great posts of Language do share them in the comments! 

A tear-jerking reaction to this post (and me and my blog in general) from Diogenes of Dio's Dungeon:

Thinking of lots of Special Rooms at Work

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.
•  Stand/place at item on a plinth in one room and an illusionary double appears somewhere else in the dungeon.
• 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.