Oracular exercise: Fallen starship in the Sargasso Sea

Benign Brown Beast posted The Minideck, a wonderful 18-card set with all kinds of themes combined on a single card. Let's see how it fares when used as a spark/inspirational tool for gaming content creation!

Here's a quick adventure location, generated based on the following draw of three cards:

Fallen starship in the Sargasso Sea

·       Cigar-shaped shining metal vessel, at 45 degree angle, half of it waterlogged

·       Residual cosmic radiation caused mutations in local flora & fauna:

o   Kelp monsters

o   Fire-vomiting seagulls

o   Sentient krill swarms

o   Seaweed which accelerates healing when applied as bandages + causes weird plant-based mutations

·       Inhabitants: Pike-people from Beyond the Dog-Star

o   Elongated silvery bodies, fluid movements, naga-style, four upper appendages

§  weaponry: anchor-guns and boarding hooks

o   Actually fear saline water

o   They kidnapped 6 people from the planet, who are now in suspended animation in the waterlogged area

o   Want to repair their ship and leave the planet

This took me about 5 minutes. Weird nautical adventuring is GO!

[Secret Santicorn!!] A second, more serious oracle for character simulation: The Methodical Oracle

As promised, a more serious offering for Kirt Dankmeyr, based on his request of a "A small oracle for solo OSR play oriented toward simulating party members and not the GM. Tho bonus points for a GM replacement oracle that dovetails with the first one".

The Methodical Oracle!

The point of this small oracle is to aid the solo GM in "in-character" decision making.

Create a Profile for each player character in the party by assigning one of the five Methods to each slot:

Profile types:

Balanced	Focused	Hyperfocused	Method slots
2-3	2	2	Rare
4-5	3-5	3-4	Secondary
6-8	6-8	5-9	Main
9-10	9-11	10-11	Secondary
11-12	12	12	Rare

The five Methods:

Violence	Direct confrontation, brute-forcing
Diplomacy	Smooth-talking, bartering, calling in other parties (e.g. NPCs)
Knowledge	Monster lore, survivalism, arts & crafts, history & politics
Trickery	Exploitation of the space, devices, creative use of objects, falsehoods
Magic	Spell-slinging, prayer to higher forces, decipherment of arcane clues, activation of weird objects

The Procedure:

At any decision point, pick or randomize a lead character. Then roll 2d6 and consult the character’s Profile to see which Method they offer.

To make things more interesting, pick or randomize a second character and cross-check their Method using the same roll result as the lead’s (so if you rolled 6 for the lead, check what’s a 6 on the second character’s Profile). Describe the conflict or the synthesis of their Methods. You can use a standard Reaction roll to see whether the other character likes or dislikes the alternative proposal.

 

Example Profiles:

Bubba the Wizard

Hyperfocused	Method
2	Violence
3-4	Knowledge
5-9	Magic
10-11	Trickery
12	Diplomacy

 

Morax the Duelist

Focused	Method
2	Knowledge
3-5	Trickery
6-8	Diplomacy
9-11	Violence
12	Magic

 

Example Decisions:

Situation 1.

The party enters a cave, the lair of a dozen goblins. The goblins are surprised. Bubba the Wizard takes the lead, and, after some deliberations (2d6: 11 = Trickery), offers to sneak by them. Morax the Duelist (11 = Violence) might offer to take advantage of the situation and charge the unaware goblins.

Situation 2.

The party is looking for their patron’s stolen ring in the big city. Morax the Duelist takes the lead and comes up with the ingenious plan (2d6: 5 = Trickery) to create a fake ring. Bubba the Wizard (5 = Magic, Reaction roll: 9 = Positive) agrees and checks his books for an illusion spell to help with the plan.

[Secret Santicorn!!] Player simulation oracle for solo games

It's Santicorn-time on the OSR discord server!

Kirt Dankmyer requested "A small oracle for solo OSR play oriented toward simulating party members and not the GM. Tho bonus points for a GM replacement oracle that dovetails with the first one."

Okay, my entry here is a bit of a stretch... But to truly replicate the OSR (and RPG...) experience, you need to account for the whims of the players themselves! So, you, as the solo DM, present the situation, then roll to see just how you, the solo player, are interested in this stuff...

THE PLAYER REACTION CHART (2D6)

		Sample quip (1d5)
2	deal with it begrudgingly	1.    “Mehh, I think riddles are stupid” 2.    “Sure, although this is not how Jeff runs it” 3.    “This fight is a slog, I stab myself” 4.    “Ugh, not *another* ‘you start in a tavern’ session” 5.    “This goes against all established lore though”
3-5	scatterbrain	1.    “Sorry, I thought this was still Elsa’s turn” 2.    “Remind me, who is this guy again” 3.    “Wait, what do I roll for that?” 4.    “Yeah, it’s on my character sheet. Or this piece of scratch paper. I just can’t read it” 5.    “Can I borrow your dice?”
6-8	acknowledge & participate	1.    “Yes, this is all part of the game” 2.    “Fair enough, I hit it with my sword” 3.    “I ask the wizard if he knows the location of Castle whatsitsname” 4.    “My thief checks the lock for traps” 5.    “We ascend the stairs”
9-11	honest interest	1.    “Oh, I have this in my notes!” 2.    “Let’s try and befriend these goblins, we need allies against the Fish Lords” 3.    “That blacksmith is quite a character, I’m sure we can ask about her battlescars AFTER we are done with what we had planned” 4.    “What a quirky trap! We reset it to lure the next monster into it” 5.    “And I have just the spell we need!”
12	HYPERFIXATE	1.    “OMG so adorable let’s adopt this random gnome fighter” 2.    “We could make so much money by bottling the healing water from this random pool! Leave dungeon crawling behind” 3.    “I check for secret doors and traps every 5’ instead of 10’. There MUST be something here” 4.    “No, these broken chairs cannot simply be dungeon dressing. The GM mentioned them for a reason” 5.    “Okay, I examine the next book. And the next. The next one too…”

  

[Dungeon] Oracle of the Laughing Prophet - a small OSR location

I ran my procedurally-generated science fantasy hexcrawl over the weekend. The party happened upon a cave in a jungle hex, surrounded by psychic echoes, so we took a small break and I came up with a dungeon. Now I'm sharing it with y'all.

So if you need a small 6-room lair to put down in your hexcrawl, feel free to use this! It has a mad prophet and a Green Dragon in it...

Download PDF!

Anecdote: we had a near-TPK (3 dead, 1 unconscious), because they made too much noise and the Dragon woke up... So the group continued the game playing as the Deep Ones, and eventually managed to leave with the loot!

 

Lenormand deck content generation

When you are a DM, everything is a random generator... Oracular/divinatory tools are a great source of inspiration, because they are full of flavor, they tap into archetypes, and so on. I've experimented with a couple of Tarot-based generators. In this post, I'm just going with something rather simple: drawing three cards from a Lenormand deck, and coming up with an encounter, scenario, or situation based on them.

Oh, and a cool thing about the Lenormand deck: it contains 36 cards... so you can roll that with a d66 or put it on a 6x6 matrix if you don't have your deck at hand!

	1	2	3	4	5	6
1	Heart	House	Letter	Mice	Mountain	Ship
2	Tower	Whip	Cross	Coffin	Child	Bouquet
3	Bear	Clouds	Fox	Dog	Stork	Clover
4	Garden	Snake	Key	Animus	Birds	Fish
5	Anima	Sun	Moon	Scythe	Anchor	Ring
6	Lily	Book	Star	Crossroad	Tree	Rider

Bonus content: Lenormand emoji spark table by Liche's Libram!

Without further ado, six random draws, interpreted:

1. (tower, clover, anchor) - A tower stands in the middle of a clover field. The edifice leans slightly to the east. A large anchor on a chain descends from the topmost window, as if keeping the tower in place.
2. (crossroad, snake, clouds) - A normal crossroads during day, but fog rolls in at night, and a serpent slithers out from the bushes. It grants a wish if it can afterwards switch bodies with a human.
3. (tree, moon, key) - A venerable oak with a keyhole in it. If a silver key is inserted and turned clockwise, the keyhole swallows the key, then expands into a portal. It leads into the Treasure Vault of the Moon Princess.
4. (sun, rider, letter) - Encounter: Messenger of the Sun King, cursing and shouting “clear the road!”, urging the horse to ride faster; but the animal is at its last breath and will soon collapse from sheer exhaustion. The Messenger carries a highly important message.
5. (bouquet, cross, fox) - An old cemetery, moss-covered headstone, overgrown crosses. After the abandonment of the nearby settlement, wild animals reclaimed the land. A fox has dug a deep hole into a mound – and a couple of silver coins shine in the dirt…
6. (fish, moon, house) - A noble estate, the house’s façade reflected in a small pond. The family’s coat-of-arms is a silver crescent on a green field. The eldest son is suffocated by responsibilities; he feels like a fish out of water – but he must take care of his sickly parents.