Before that, I've posted two let's builds of my own, neither of which has gotten any contributions other than from myself yet, which is really disappointing :(, so please give them a look and share your ideas!!!!
One is loosely inspired by Skerples (Coins & Scrolls) recent post Sci-Fi: Space 1977. It's a micro-settings prompt for settings that diverge from big franchises, like an alternate Star Wars that branches off from Empire Strikes Back, or a Marvel comics that branches off from the Bronze Age.
[Let's Build] d100 Parallel Micro-Settings based on big franchises
An alternate Star Wars universe, if Episode IV hadn't made enough money to do Empire.
The second I unfortunately titled Monster Hunter Special Forces, implying a connection to the Monster Hunter videogame series, but that was not intentional. This list is just a prompt for characters, classes, species, or equipment suited for hunting specific kinds of monsters common in fantasy and tabletop. If anything, it was more so inspired by the Vampire Hunter D novels which I've been working my way through (I'm roughly halfway through the ~30 book series). I'm pretty happy with how my ideas on that table are shaking out so far, but I'd love to see what other people think!
[Let's Build] d100 Monster Hunter Special Forces
Vampire Hunter D!
And here are my contributions to other people's Let's Builds
d100 D&D encounters inspired by art
- I cheated on this one a bit, just linking to my Aquarian Dawn: Whitemare post based on the awesome Vanillamare: YoYo by Mark Akopov.
I would put this vanillamare in every post if I could justify it.
d100 Gribble-worthy fantasy conspiracy theories
While these were supposed to be wacky Dale Gribble (King of the Hill)-style conspiracy theories, I think mine were a little too straight; some of them I think would be cool as actual world concepts and not just conspiracy theories haha.
- The Castle is an illusion created by the Mage Guild. The real "castle" is a subterranean base at a hidden location.
- The Dark Lord is a puppet for the emperor. They pit humans and [orcs / demons / undead / etc.] against each other to keep the peasants from recognizing how they're being exploited by the nobles.
- Zombies are still alive, they've just been fed drugs by a witch doctor that makes them obedient and uncommunicative.
- Demons are hyper-advanced humans from the far future; their infernal plane is just the universe in a highly entropic state, the final flicker before heat-death. For humanity to transcend the universe, they must allow themselves to be consumed by the future. The church is covering it up because they would rather die than admit they were wrong (or maybe they have another plan...).
- Dwarves aren't actually all that good at engineering. They've just gotten good at finding ancient ruins and salvaging them for parts. In fact, probably they're destroying valuable relics that could provide much greater utility, or at least knowledge of the past, if they were maintained and studied carefully.
- Elves claim to be the first race, but this is false. They've been hiding records indicating that elves were actually an offshoot of humanity as a result of an arcane accident long ago.
- Halflings aren't as defenseless and ignorant of the world as they appear. It's all for show. In fact, each halfling is trained from birth to be an elite warrior, spy, and assassin. They're basically an entire race of super-ninja, so competent that they've managed to keep it a secret for all of history.
Dale Gribble of King of the Hill infamy
- Lamentok, Demon Lord of Regret and Recursion. He can only be seen in hindsight, or in daydreams of what could have been. He feeds on parallel timelines, consuming them at the moment of divergence, traced backwards through memories and forwards through daydreams. He encourages poor decision-making, whispering in the ear of the gambler to place a larger bet to recoup his losses, or for the investor to buy into a scheme too good to be true. By consuming the parallel timeline, the memory of regret and the daydream of what could have been, he brings temporary ease of mind, but without the memory, one is prone to making the same mistakes. He'll nest in ones hindsight for their entire life, letting them make the same mistake over and over, never the wiser, until they've run themselves into an early grave, and then he follows the paths of those affected by his host, repeating the cycle.
The anime Kakegurui, about gambling. Haven't seen season 2 yet but I enjoyed season 1 a fair bit. It's about gambling, partially inspired Lamentok.
- Bag of Booze: A drinking competition. The competitors each drink from a bag of holding containing a seemingly infinite quantity of booze. Whoever stops drinking, chokes, or passes out first loses. Loser has to take a swig from the mystery bag...
- Floating Beer Pong: Like regular beer pong, except as a floating 3-dimensional pyramid of cups held in place with magic.
- Karaoke+: It's karaoke, but the bard uses bardic magic to change your voice randomly. You won't know how you sound until you start singing, so you'll need to figure out quickly how to make your new voice work for the song.
- Monster Meal: It's an eating competition where the food bites back! Race to see how many black puddings (or other monsters) you can eat within the time limit, but you've got to defeat them yourself if you want to eat them.
- Prestidigitation Games: Tavern games of skill such as darts or pool, with a twist. Each "athlete" is paired with a "mage", who can use prestidigitation or some other cantrip to assist their athlete or distract / impair the opposing athlete. Each round (one turn for each athlete), the mage can only intervene once, either on their athlete's turn, or the opposing athlete's turn. They can't do anything that damages or physically targets an athlete, nor anything that would make it impossible for the opposing athlete to succeed or that makes it impossible for the mage's athlete to fail. If a mage has not acted yet, they can attempt to counter the actions of the other mage.
Not familiar with the Magic Tavern podcast but I like this image. The Alexandrian has a good Tavern post for things like this as well.
As part of this Let's Build I used my Weapon Hack.
Beauty and the Beast
Beauty
Heavy: 1d8, Two-handed Plastic: Made of hard plastic. Concealable: Can be hidden from view.
Beast
Heavy: 1d8, Two-handed Anthropomorphic: Has features vaguely reminiscent of a humanoid face or humanoid body part. Bonded: Weapon only usable by owner, cannot be removed from person without consent.
Beauty is a sleek, modern staff made from a hard and surprisingly light plastic that can be compacted and stored on a utility belt. It is ornately painted, as much a work of art as a deadly weapon. The Beast is a grotesque organism like a massive human finger, which sprouts from the side of the torso opposite the non-dominant hand. It is bonded to Beauty, and whoever wields Beauty develops a tumor in their side, usually within their kidney, that opens an extra-dimensional portal, sprouting Beast. Because Beauty and Beast are magically connected and Beast extends from the torso, medium sized creatures who would normally not be able to wield two heavy weapons may wield both Beauty and Beast simultaneously. So long as neither Beauty nor Beast are disarmed or disabled, both weapons gain +1. If either weapon is disarmed or disabled, both become inoperable.
Min and Max
Min
Light: 1d4, +1 AB, One-handed, Concealable as free quality Fungal: Made of or contains elements of fungal life or is a living fungus. Elemental (Fire): Has properties related to fire (e.g. produces heat/light, can cause burning).
Max
Medium: 1d6, One-handed Laser: Made of hard light or projects beams of light. Large: Designed for large-sized creatures. Medium-sized creatures take -1 AB, small- creatures cannot use this weapon.
Min is a spade-shaped fungus that oozes a noxious fat that combusts in the air, setting it alight. Max was a spore of Min, which through mysterious circumstances mutated or evolved into a higher life-form of pure energy, and now takes the form of an over-sized lasersword. They are beyond mortal comprehension, but one gets the sense when wielding Min and Max that the pair are having fun and making inside jokes at the wielder's expense.
- The mimic isn't just the treasure chest, the entire dungeon is the mimic, and we're inside it...
- Your warforged companion is actually a mimic (or was replaced by a mimic)
- The "wizard" is a huckster with a mimic wand- the mimic itself is the actual wizard.
- Sometimes the oasis is a mirage, and sometimes it's a mimic...
- The Dark Lord, fully concealed in his full-body black armor, is just a calcified corpse wrapped in a mimic (or maybe the mimic is just his body double...)
There's just something about mimics that I love.
- The party are surrounded; on one side, Tweedle Dee, the unstoppable force, on the other side, Tweedle Dum, the immovable object.
- The party reach a fork in the path, with no obvious indicator of which way leads where. A magical talking cat taunts them, telling them that there's nothing to find and that they should turn back. Whichever path they choose, they reach another fork. At each fork, they hit a monster encounter, and the further they go, the monsters become slightly more powerful, more numerous, and more cunning. After each encounter, the magical cat returns, teasing them and telling them to turn back. In fact, the only way to proceed forward is to turn back (turning back at any stage of the path will take them forward to the next area).
- A massive sleeping ogre blocks the party's path. A man-sized talking caterpillar smoking a magic looking-glass hookah tells the party that the ogre will never move, that it suffered some trauma in childhood and has been completely unmotivated ever since. By smoking the looking-glass hookah, they may enter the ogre's dreams and change his memories. If they can resolve his emotional trauma, he will move. External forces like the ogre right where he is, and will attempt to stop the party both in the real world, and within the dreamworld. Within the dreamworld, the party may encounter additional looking-glass hookahs, and may need to enter other dream-creatures dreams. Within each dreamworld, time moves an order of magnitude slower than in the preceding world, such that a moment of real-time can be like an eternity in a deep enough dreamworld.
- A magical draconic creature, an immortal, unstoppable, nonsensical force of super-nature, the Jabberwocky, has gone on a rampage. The Jabberwocky's wife claims that a woman has stolen her baby and refuses to give it back. The Jabberwocky will go on a rampage until the baby is returned. The woman's husband is a fey protector, magically shielding the baby from any thieves. The only thing that can pierce the shield is the Vorpal Sword, and only by slicing through the baby. If the party threaten to use the Vorpal Sword to fairly split the baby between the Jabberwocky family and the fey family, the true parents will acquiesce to the false parents, whereas the false parents will accept the split (GM can decide who is telling the truth).
- The party find themselves at the table of the Mad Hatter at Tea Time, whom they must appease in order to proceed in their task or get some critical piece of information. The Mad Hatter insists they drink his tea, a necessary component to receive that which they need. The magic mushroom tea warps spacetime, and they "change places" with another character or NPC. No pair can swap bodies more than once, so as per the Futurama Theorem, they must find two more participants who were not present at Tea Time in order to return to their original bodies. These two individuals will inadvertently provide what the party was looking for in the first place.
I took a very Alice in Wonderland approach to my Feywild entries in this Let's Build.
This dimension was generated using the Hubris plane generator. I rolled once on all tables except the type of plane table, which I rolled on twice. I think this plane could use some cleaning up, it's mostly taken as-is from the generator, but I think with a little tweaking it could be really interesting.
The Plane of Chaos and Death
- You emerge from the portal dry, sunburned, dehydrated, and exhausted.
- However, the plane appears to be in Winter.
- Any liquids you are carrying turn to ice (potions receive a save).
- You arrived in an electrical storm that has ravaged a small town.
- The local denizens are creepy living dolls.
- Time functions faster, one hour in this plane is like a minute on your home plane.
- On this plane, the young are revered, and the elders become servants and slaves.
- The entire planet is in a solar eclipse-like state. Creatures that fear and hate the sun now move unimpeded.
- This was the result of the last cataclysm, the plane saved only by the unique planar religion (which is also the basis for the reverence of the young and enslavement of the elderly).
- Because of the solar eclipse, the Six Nightmares have risen to power, bringing death and chaos to the plane. They are opposed by Lucifer, a 20ft glowing orb, a mysterious eldritch being which has become the sole source of divine light remaining on the plane.
- To travel to and from the plane, you must seek forgiveness from someone you've wronged.
Hubris is an excellent world and worldbuilding tool!
No comments:
Post a Comment