30 Day 5 Minute Challenge: Day 4 Fantasy Foods

For this five minute challenge, I'm going to come up with some foods for a fantasy setting.

• Flavor in a magic bubble
• Slime pudding
• Seared Bulette fin
• Deep-fried beholder eyes
• Dragon flame-grilled barbeque
• Giant rat fillet
• Fresh sushi cleric-revived just before serving
• Owlbear jerky
• Polymorph surprise

I actually would like to do a legit fantasy food / cooking table at some point, but this will have to do for now. Some of these are cool (and I'm pretty sure I've seen before), but I think with some more thought (not just a 5 minute challenge) this could be a lot better.

30 Day 5 Minute Challenge: Day 3 Themed Encounter Table

Third day of the challenge. I'm going to try Semiurge's themed encounter table idea, and hopefully it'll be a little more focused than the last challenge which was supposed to be traps and turned into not traps.

• A pack of purple wolf-bees protecting their royal jelly
• Marvel's Purple Man or an equivalent
• A bulbous, glassy, translucent humanoid full of purple liquid, an unstoppable force crashing through walls, chases you through the dungeon
• A wine elemental
• Wrathful grapes (purple mouthing gibbers)
• The witch with lavender potions
• The romantic mind flayer
• The devil in the satin sheets
• Purple-robed Nero-clone humunculi gang

I'm not totally sure what I was going for here, for some reason I just latched on to "Purple" as the theme. All things considered, I don't think this is too bad, actually.

30 Day 5 Minute Challenge: Day 2 Dungeon Gimmicks

So this is day 2 of my 30 day 5 minute challenge, where I spend 5 minutes trying to come up with as many new ideas as I can. I asked for suggestions for categories and Semiurge gave me several, so I'm going to start with traps (mainly because all of his other ones seem really hard). Traps have never been my strong suit, so this'll be interesting...
EDIT: As you can see below, my head immediately veered elsewhere and i just rolled with it, so instead we're doing dungeon gimmicks.

• Monty Hall dungeon: It's a dungeon based on the monty hall problem, but instead of a goat being behind the bad doors, there are men of leng.
  
• Game theory dungeon: When passing through the room, each party member chooses to either take X xp or take 0.5X xp. If all party members take 0.5X xp, they're all good, but if one takes X xp, the others lose 0.5X xp.
  
• Binary tree dungeon: Each room in the dungeon separates into two new rooms, up to some unknown but very deep length, and you are looking for an object in a specific room. If you just search every room, probably you will die before reaching the end. You need to come up with a systematic way to search the dungeon.

Ok, well I only came up with a few ideas, but I think they're pretty cool. They're not traps, but we're going to roll with it. I think the last one speaks to all of the leetcode challenges I've been having to do lately. Seriously binary trees and linked lists are the worst! That being said, even though probably nobody besides programmers will be able to solve them, I might run with the leetcode algorithm challenges as dungeon gimmicks idea in the future...

30 Day 5 Minute Challenge: Day 1

So... We'll see if I actually stay true to this, but I've decided to turn the "5 minute challenge" into 30 day challenge. Every day, I will do at least one 5 minute challenge. Depending on my mood I may make it category-less, or pick a specific category, or if people suggest categories in the comments I'll do that. I'll try not to skip a day but if I do I'll make up for it asap.

In my last 5 minute challenge post I did category-less, worldbuilding, and bestiary. I think I'll start this one off with category-less again, but after that we'll see.

Hopefully I'll be able to make a new "real" post this weekend, but in the mean time... Go!

• A restaurant that serves only foods that are cooked or cut alive at the table
• A flamethrower made from the organs of a dragon
• White blood cell slimes
• Juggling baseball bat energy ball spiking villain / NPC
• A mage spreads life onto new planets from the bacteria on meteors casting meteor bombardment spells
• Optimization function over atom-collisions to reverse engineer a hash function to extract "meaningful" data out of "nothing"
  

I will admit, a couple of these were poorly fleshed out ideas I was already sitting on. Didn't come up with as many as I would have liked, but I think some of these are pretty cool.

5 minute creative challenge

I thought this would be a fun practice to help me get back into the creative swing, and I would be interested to see what others do with this. The 5 minute creative challenge is to come up with as many spontaneous ideas as you can in just 5 minutes. Try not to jot down ideas you've already been thinking about. Allow spontaneity. I think you could do some more focused versions like 5 minute bestiary, 5 minute worldbuilding, etc., but for this first go I'm going to keep it general. Ok... go!

Grim version of the one eyed one horned flying purple people eater

A dog made of rainwater

Pineapple people

intelligent mustache fungus

Mongolian equivalent of ninja turtles

the last human in the future of the x-men

a brain folded in on itself like an ouroborus

a magic wand dildo

squirrel elves

bathing in shooting stars

a flat painting projected three-dimensionally

a species that look like caricature paintings

cat species that stand on their forepaws and have a second mouth where their butts would be, like a cat-gug

crawling skin bag


I had a lot of fun with that first one, even though I feel like 6 months ago I would have been able to do so much better, but anyway I decided to keep this train going. Here's 5 minutes of worldbuilding as well. Ok... go!

Space cowboys herding shooting stars

Poppy planet

LA roads spacetime distortion as being pulled into a black hole like Super Mario Rainbow Road

A world of living prepared foods as the reincarnations of their unprocessed selves

magic space colony


Oof, that one was a lot harder. Those aren't very good :(. Ok last one, 5 minute bestiary challenge, then I think I need to start getting on with my day. Ok... go!

Humanoid species that think in pure jazz

Green fur monkey with spider eyes, rat tail, elephant tusks

Cyborg space whale with the face of a star-nosed mole covered in blue flame

A planet-sized rat king

A double helix dragon

A lobster-like creature wrapped around the spine of a wolf-like creature bound by a cordyceps-like fungus

A humanoid species with a human-like exoskeleton


Hm... I was starting to get into a groove, but it took a while. I think I need more practice, but this has been a fun exercise.

Half-formed ideas from the onenote

Still figuring out the best way to be creatively active and also live my new life. I have a lot of ideas building up, but am definitely out of practice and don't have the time to flesh them all out. I want to do some more appreciation posts, keep building up some prose for Aquarian Dawn, eventually come back to World of Wonders, I've had some more thoughts for Second Exodus, and also more tables. For now, here are some half-formed ideas I'm sitting on.


Undead dreams


A "monk/psionic"-like class based on principles of massage therapy, reiki, and reflexology.


Ceramic-tech (toiletpunk?)
Microbiome / pathogenic / pheremonal communication network
Internet sewer / plumbing network


Cajun Mardi Gras mask tengu


Something with hell ants / vampire ants


Niobids as a fantasy species


German Drak fey-dragon (type of kobold?)


Crustaceans are arthropods but so different looking compared to other arthropods. What about other kinds of animals as arthropods (e.g.arthropod birds, horses, dogs)

"spider-monkey". Spider excretes a fluid that breaks down aether metal, which they weave into armor which allows them to grow much larger and still carry themselves and jump and climb. Eventually evolve into a monkey-like niche


Other elements of salamanders


Tarantula tarantism


Melting moon


Tree of life as Platonic, fractal dimensional representation of the universe; fractal geometry more common in nature than Euclidean.


Siren/mermaid is 100% fish, it's human-like appearance is just to lure humans


Copper-preserved mummies


Play on kubire-oni (hanging suicide oni)


Destrehan (near New Orleans) unsuccessful slave revolt. Slaves heads were put on pikes. Dracula analog with social commentary?


Norcini wandering mystic butchers. Sing in verse to cover the sounds of snapping bones. Combine dambe (Hausa butchers, Nigerian boxing)?


OSR class The Pervert. Deals in sexuality, sexual taboo, sexual imagery. Scarlet letter. Flamboyancy. Bondage gimp. Society begrudgingly tolerates them as a way of defining their social mores by being the exceptions.


Holy War Droid: A droid powered by the blood of soul-bearing life forms or celestial creatures.


A species that exists in the upper atmosphere or in space orbiting the planet that drop to the planet to feed and mate


Awkward/cringe as social horror. Folk monster out of that?


Whale wave-mancers


Black desert
actually singing dunes
sand moving at fast-speed like the sea
silver ants evolve to fill various ecological niches


The demon who doesn't think it's a demon


Magic "fishing" rod to fish out magical items, magical beings, demons, etc.


Dogu "Second City". Believed to be the original heart of the dogu kingdom, back when the positronic city was inhabited by its creators (or some other people).


Broken Node in the meridian system.


Culture which draws misplaced or misshapen facial features on themselves.


Scarring / mutilation as ritualistic worship


Rapa nui Easter island


Tenrec weird vibrating back quills


Taste/flavor-based creatures or species subtypes


Play on radiated tortoise, either “irradiated”, or something fractal or in some other way geometric or extra-dimensional.


Sea Sapphire-based creature. Glows, semi-translucent, can make itself ultraviolet (and effectively invisible).


Click beetle, railroad worm, and bioluminescent fungi.


An actual rain-forest


Barnacle goose myth / bird metamorphosis


SatPunk: An alternate universe where the internet was never invented and satellite TV technology advances accordingly, a la steampunk
CRTPunk?

Aquarian Dawn: Death Metal Crow

When she comes, first you hear a deep and rhythmic rumbling of thunder. Then, you hear a tinny wail that sends a tingle down your spine. A little closer and you see flashes of light glinting off black metal through a foggy film of crackling ozone and noxious fumes. Closer still, and you see a goblin channeling lightning from a magic rod. The current transmits directly into the impossibly loud metal instrument of the Death Metal Bard, strumming away furiously. The so called music is frightening in the basest sense, as much arousing as disturbing. Accompanying this show, you see a small army of goblins and hobs on black horses in black and crimson leather and spiky metal armor carrying clubs and swords and spears.

Then, she races ahead, the Death Metal Crow. The largest hob you've ever seen, covered from head to toe in black metal armor; a long, crimson, beak-like visor obscuring her face. She rides a beast thrice the size of a horse, with a scaly gray hide like a metal lizard covered in jewels, and a girthy horn longer than any man. She carries a metal compound bow as long as she is tall, and the metal string screeches and rends on each draw. Her metal bolts pierce the air, shrieking in absolute dissonance with the pounding music. Two massive blades protrude from both sides of her beast, the metal stained crimson from the fields of meat and blood left in their wake. It is said that at the end of battle, she draws these blades and effortlessly eviscerates every bit of dead meat into a single lump of pinkish pudding.

When total annihilation is not her aim, instead she sends her elites, the Crows. They are goblins and hobs, the most highly trained redcaps, greencaps, and blackcaps. They wear black leather outfits and spiked bracelets and plague masks, and wield metal claws on their hands and feet. They silently leap along trees and rooftops and glide from kites. Some have had their bones hollowed and granted true flight from gryphon wings grafted to their backs. Quietly and efficiently, they eliminate or remove anyone not on the guest list. When all is in place, the remainder of her elites, the Mosh, crash down from the sky, launched from blackcap rockets strapped to their backs. Heavy metal wings serve to adjust an unstable trajectory, shield from explosive detritus, and buffer their landing. They toss glass bottles of explosive and noxious black liquids, of gold-colored dust producing blinding flashes of rainbow or white light, and pulsing black boxes filled with metal discs encoded with the music of the Death Metal Bard. In this violent pit of sounds and sights, and smells and tastes, they slam and slash and shoot until no foe is left standing. With the remaining witnesses, those not on the guest list, stunned or otherwise overloaded and deprived of their senses, the Crows methodically and with extraordinary speed gather their belongings, cleanse all evidence, and exit stage left. If you were fortunate enough to be left off the guest list, you will come to with ringing ears, a pounding headache, a few bruises, and scattered memories.