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Thursday, April 10, 2014

dZocchi Weird Flora

'So I just submitted this madness to the Seventh Order of the Random Generator.

It uses all of the Zocchi dice to make a really weird plant for your game.

EDIT: I forgot that one of its alchemical properties begins with "if consumed whole and through the anus..." so I guess this is apparently NSFW. I made these tables a while ago.

Ok here are the tables it's based off of:

dEverything weird plants

d3 - Attitude
1.      Predatory
2.      Evasive
3.      Defensive
d4 – Growth
1.      Tall
2.      Expansive
3.      Deep
4.      Parasitic
d5 – Appearance
1.      Normal for its type
2.      Brightly coloured, psychedelic
3.      Colourless, appears dead
4.      Particularly lush, damp
5.      Bulbous, sickly
d6 – Mobility
1.      None whatsoever
2.      Creeps slowly, following the sun or moon
3.      Walks
4.      Prehensile leaves/branches
5.      Dances alluringly
6.      Can get up and fucking run
d7 – Senses
1.      Sensitive to light
2.      Sensitive to loud noises
3.      Reacts to being cut or plucked
4.      Enjoys being sung to
5.      Avoids humanoids
6.      Smells magic
7.      Changes its appearance indicating incoming weather patterns
d8 - Plant type
1.      Flower
2.      Tree – desiduous
3.      Tree – fruit-bearing
4.      Tree – evergreen
5.      Moss/lichen
6.      Shrub
7.      Vegetable
8.      Vine
d10 – Smell
1.      Sweet and sugary
2.      Salty and metallic
3.      Like a rotting corpse
4.      Fresh and minty
5.      Musty and wet
6.      Peppery
7.      Slightly sour
8.      Odourless
9.      Reeks of excrement
10.   Savoury, like freshly-cooked meat
d12 – Primary visual aspect (leaves, buds, petals, fruit) shape
1.      Bulbous, bell-shaped
2.      Spade-like
3.      Wet, droopy
4.      Thin, narrow, sharp
5.      Wide, bowl-like
6.      Semitransparent
7.      Round, flat
8.      Square
9.      Spherical
10.   Fan-shaped or conical
11.   Star-shaped with five points
12.   Long, curved
d14 – Texture
1.      Fuzzy
2.      Bumpy
3.      Soft
4.      Solid, brittle
5.      Very solid, hard to break
6.      Fibrous
7.      Rough, like sandpaper
8.      Smooth
9.      Spongy
10.   Covered in tiny, razor-sharp serrations
11.   Large, protruding spikes
12.   Furry and sticks like a burr
13.   Sticky
14.   Dry, bark-like
d16 – Colour/Pattern (Roll for primary colour, and then determine whether there is a pattern (50% chance). If there is, roll a d7 for the pattern and a second time for the secondary colour)
1.      Bright red/polka dots
2.      Dark Green/Stripes
3.      White/Speckles
4.      Silver/Uneven patches
5.      Orange/Cloudy
6.      Yellow/Bumps
7.      Deep red/spots
8.      Dull brown
9.      Lush green
10.   Purple
11.   Deep, rich blue
12.   Pure black, no pattern, do not roll for secondary colour
13.   Creamy golden white
14.   Light green
15.   Bright, neon pink
16.   Sickly greenish yellow
d20 – Locals use it …
1.      For consumption in ceremonial rites
2.      In potpouri
3.      To make tea
4.      to be gathered as part of a coming-of-age ritual
5.      As a staple food
6.      As a delicacy eaten in celebration of the chieftain’s birthday
7.      To fashion bowls and baskets
8.      To show off as a status symbol
9.      To throw at criminals during public humiliations
10.   As a ward against demons/evil spirits/witches
11.   As sacrifice to their god(s)
12.   As currency
13.   To make paints
14.   To decorate their homes
15.   To adorn important religious objects
16.   As a traditional offering of peace after a period of war
17.   To make paper
18.   For its alchemical application
19.   For medical purposes unrelated to its alchemical application; it probably doesn’t work
20.   To flavour their meals
d24 – Alchemical applications
1.      If smoked, it fortifies the spirit against fear and protects it from the touch of incorporeal foes
2.      If drunk in a warm tea, it separates mind from body and allows the user to visit another plane of existence
3.      If burned in incense, it intoxicates forest spirits and draws them near
4.      If mashed into an ointment, its odour drives away the undead
5.      If eaten whole, they who consumed it turns invisible for a time
6.      If flash-heated in water and salt, its otherwise harmless juices become a potent acid that burns through objects as green slime
7.      If strained and rubbed under the nose, the user may see augurs signaling things to come in the next year
8.      If juiced and boiled down, it produces a resin that can be used to stick any two objects together. They will be nearly impossible to separate once it dries
9.      If mixed with another weird plant and mashed into a chunky goop, eating it will cause fiery indigestion that purges the body of disease
10.   If carried as a good luck charm, it the carrier is impervious to illusions until the plant rots
11.   If burned slowly over the course of a few days, the ashes may be spread on one’s body to make oneself invisible to demons
12.   When chopped up it releases a mist, the inhalation of which causes gibbering madness and severe impairment of the motor functions
13.   If consumed whole and through the anus, it provides an exhilarating high that strengthens the muscles and increases stamina
14.   If used to plug one’s ears, mixed with a few sprigs of common grass, the user is immune to mind-control
15.   As long ones chews it, they are capable of speaking the language of snakes
16.   Bottled and buried for a month with a few flakes of gold, it produces a noxious gas the inhalation of which induces a terrible flu
17.   If stuffed into the mouth of a fresh corpse before burial, the body will rise as a zombie
18.   One may anoint oneself with its oils to pass through barriers
19.   If touched, it kills instantly
20.   If cooked into a soup with hot peppers, the eater will excrete pure gold
21.   Objects bathed in a mixture from the plant’s juices become stronger and more solid – it is dangerous for living beings to attempt this as their skeleton will fuse together
22.   If burned, the smoke will change colour when disturbed by the words of a liar
23.   The plant’s seeds may be placed within a small doll to give it life
24.   Its roots hold a record of the past – if these are eaten, one gains some of the plant’s memories
d30 – Special
1.      Its leaves are like swords and it can use them as such
2.      Grabbing and thrashing
3.      It creates seductive displays to attract and trap living pray
4.      It can shoot spines
5.      Its leaves/fruit/branches/chunks of itself can detach and attack you
6.      It is home to an army of killer bees
7.      It’s sentient
8.      It can shimmer hypnotically to hold you in place
9.      It hides underground and jumps up to surprise you
10.   Little humanoids grow from it
11.   It can hyperaccelerate its growth to entrap and overgrow enemies
12.   It fires out seeds – if these make their way into your mouth, they will plant in your brain and begin to grow
13.   It secretes a white, viscous fluid that hardens and sticks rapidly
14.   It secretes toxic gas
15.   It has no special power of its own, but is defended by an extraplanar entity that will manifest when danger is near
16.   It is made by a wizard; its pollen bestows a geas. The plant’s leaves/petals will turn to gold and fall off if the quest is completed
17.   Its bark/surface/patterning rearranges into various magical runes
18.   It releases a cloud of spores that cause living beings to become violent and attack one another
19.   It drops little explosives
20.   It secretes a highly flammable oil and can set off sparks; the plant itself is immune to fire
21.   Its roots dig down and hollow out underground chambers, which acts as pit traps
22.   Rather than releasing carbon at night, it collects it in sacs that grow along its surface. It can pop these when threatened
23.   Just your average, everyday carnivorous plant
24.   Herbivorous plant – its roots dig down and start eating other plants
25.   When the wind blows through its leaves, it sings a magical song
26.   It changes its appearance to predict the weather
27.   It messes with compasses and rearranges plants around it to get travelers lost, then continues to mislead to hide the fact that they are going around in circles
28.   It protects from harm any travelers who camp near it
29.   It lets out innocuous white noise, making it difficult to hear other creatures nearby

30.   The whole plant is actually the elaborate camouflage of some other creature

Saturday, April 5, 2014

DCC Toy: The Monster Cruncher

Introducing the DCC Monster Cruncher

This is an Google Spreadsheets thing I've been playing with for a couple days. I find the DCC Core Book is kind of scant on monsters and it's harder to bullshit stats for that system than in other OSR games. The idea of the Monster Cruncher is a few basic inputs can give you the stats you need to run a monster in combat, and don't need to halt the session to figure out how the thing works.

This page is to give it a permanent home. You can come to this post to access the newest version.

To give it a whirl, click the image below. The version you see will be locked, but you can add a functional copy to your own Google Drive by going to File --> Make A Copy

I have no idea where I even found this image

Things it does

  • Copy/Pastes nicely into Notepad/Word/whatever, so stats are easy to save once generated.
  • Determines Attack Bonus, HD type and saves according to Creature Type (based on Jeremy Deram's excellent DCC Monster Helper PDF)
  • Calculates spellcasting bonuses. These are so simple (HD+Per or Int) that they almost feel redundant and a waste of space. May remove them in future versions.
  • You can input ability scores. Modifiers will be calculated and applied accordingly. 
  • Determines attack damage by weapon type. This includes natural weapons. Damage scales to creature size, although small, medium, and large non-natural weapons all currently give the same result, but my reasons for having done that are making less and less sense, so expect that to change. Weapon damage is scaled as per D&D 3.5. (This was very buggy and hard to implement. Let me know if you run into any trouble with it, it might need some further finessing.)
  • I'd like to say it's mobile compatible but, at least on the iOS google drive app, the drop-down menus don't work and putting in entries manually is kind of sketchy. It's mobile tolerant.
Possible additional functions
  • Concatenated HD output (like, instead of telling you that your HD is a d8, it combines all relevant information into an expression of XdY+Z)
  • I'd like to make an Action Dice calculator, but that feels like more an art than a science. Then again, so does everything in DCC, and that hasn't stopped me so far . Still trying to figure out what kind of parameters this would use. HD certainly, maybe also Creature Type?
  • Critical Hit Die/Table! I just thought of this now. I hate looking that shit up. This'll definitely be added.
  • AC calculator. I'm a little hesitant with this one, mainly because I'd want to put it near the top, which means moving everything down and that fucks up all the functions. But it seem important enough that I'll probably do it fairly soon. There's a great Base AC by Size table in Critters, Creatures and Denizens that I'll probably use for starters. That value will be modified by armor type worn (there'll be a drop-down menu for this) and a generic natural/magical/bullshit AC modifier field you can use to tinker the numbers.
Current Version: 1.2

Monday, February 10, 2014

Stupid Dungeon Trick: The Mirror of Ruinous Disrepute

The Mirror of Ruinous Disrepute

This magical mirror covers most of a 20' long wall. It is covered with a lavish curtain suspended on a rod.

The mirror
At first opportunity, reflections of persons in the mirror will step out and immediately go about ruining their original's life. They have all the abilities of their original, except that they are faster and more nimble. They also know their way around their dungeon of origin, as well as whatever their original knows at the time of duplication. First the reflections will set about having their originals killed. In a dungeon, this means setting off as many alarms, alerting as many guards, and offending as many potentially friendly NPCs as possible. They can predict the moves of their originals and have a 3-in-6 chance of being one step ahead when the party decides to get the hell out of this crazy dungeon.

After leaving the dungeon, the duplicates will set about ruining their original's reputation and legacy. Once they are satisfied that no intelligent being can remember the party without feeling nauseated, they will happily wink out of existence.

The reflections are made for self-preservation and will avoid armed confrontation, although they will fight cleverly should the need arise. They will will avoid being seen anywhere near their originals at all costs.

The reflections may be dispelled at any time by destroying the mirror.


The curtain
The curtain covering the mirror is made of a rich, deep purple fabric. Embroidered in gold thread and other luxuriant materials are images of happy couples frolicking in a field. Upon closer inspection, the couples are always composed of two identical persons, and their expressions betray barely-concealed hatred. The craftsmanship of the object is exquisite and the curtain can be sold for 2000 gp to one who can afford it.

If you are especially mean, the curtain's opulence is actually an illusion. The effect is dispelled when the curtain is removed from the dungeon, revealing that it is actually but an enormous, tattered rag whose threads barely hold it together, for which no one would pay even a copper. The illusion is tactile as well as visual, but an attentive PC may hear the fabric tearing and fraying as they manipulate the curtain.