“Pass the port and owlbear cheese, insect. I’m feeling peckish.”
Continuing our dubiously useful collection of d12 tables, we start with a quick set of strange coincidences…
A Dozen Serving Wenches or Lads whose Names Rhyme with Chicken
It’s occasionally fun to let your players read things into coincidences that just simply aren’t there. Having every barmaid or serving lad have a name that sounds similar is just one puerile way to do so.
Fiery Young Maisy Mikken
Grumpy Peg Picken
Karp ‘Nose’ Pickin
Larrim Licken, the Licken of the Great Kitchen
Loopy Laddie Mabb Itchen
Mary Brikken, Young Stricken Brikken
Ptarmigan Bert Titchen
Sloppy Natt Hiken aka old buttery hands
Sour Bob Bicken
Stogstladt ‘Pickled Egg’ Fikken
Very Violent Lucy Chiffin
Voluptuous Rosie Kiken
A Dozen Peculiar Hymns Heard (whilst passing churches, temples, or places of worship)
Holy places form the backbone of many fantasy campaigns and are a common part of the furniture. How many of the holy order’s hymns are actually recorded or noted, however? Here are a dozen more unusual ones that may be heard or perhaps required to be sung by visiting strangers to local places of worship.
Bad People Be Sorry! The Flange of Doom Approacheth!
Bless this thy holy representation in marzipan of thy sheep, Oh Lord
Eavesdroppers shall be flayed, Great Lord, oh yes, let them fear their listening even now for we can magically know of their sin
Flay the wicked with your tongue of thorny punishments great frog goddess of the night
Keep the pointy owlbear from my door, Oh Lord
Let naughtiness be punished and the spikey stick be readied oh lady of all things
Let thy divine giant gar be unleashed upon the sinners great lady, chomp, chomp, chomp
Obey thy holy hen this day
Oh Hail our Lady of Wool
Rejoice—‘tis the day of holy pickles
Repent! Repent! The Moth of Doom approaches!
Thy wicker man will be ready and strangers shall be fed unto it, oh lady of flame, crackle, crackle, crackle
A Dozen Infamous Local Lords and Ladies
These local gentry might be met on the way to an adventure, form a worrying potential encounter, or just a rumor in the background of your adventuring.
Angry Mildred Millicent Mackerel, the Scald of Howling Manor
Crap Lord Tubbwide; drunk in the morning, drunk by day, drunk by night and always angry
Cross-eyed Wilbert, the Scourge of the Bog, the Whip of the Moors
Greedy Lady Happenwellinghamry, one pie is never enough
His Grace Lord Uppingham Snydly, no lady seen is safe
Lady Screaming, the Mad Monarch of Mickrumb Mire
Lord Happminded, spoilt as a child, a spoilt child as an adult
Lustful Lady Minwell
Mistress Fadd, the Fastidious Frump of Faddmire
Noble Wodd, the drunken sot of Wodd Hall
Scowling Duke Miserly and his beloved mastiff Peasant-biter
Young Master Lordship in Waiting Chyn Crooksmirk, avoid his ire or suffer the consequences
Twelve Local Ales
You can never have too many fantasy ales, in my opinion. Well, you probably can, but here are twelve more anyway just in case.
Ancient Dhobie’s Knee-Decimator
Fertile Fobb’s Foaming Ferret Ale
Grand Sanitation
Hoary Parts
Jack’s Yellow Horror
Mathew Merry’s Mewling Madness-Inducing Mead
Old Ochre Jelly
Olde Q
Stanward’s Bowel Slayer
Tanwell’s Biter
Tom’s Terrible Tankard
Young Darkling Slug
Thirteen Less One Opening Sentences for Adventure Backgrounds or Synopsis
Use these openings to challenge your writing skills, perhaps combining them with our improbable alliances chart to really set yourself a stern test.
Beyond the clouds, high, high in the edges of the thin atmosphere of the sky, brooded the Player of Pipes, her song echoing down to those below with sinewy limbs to bring them up for her kisses…
Unusually for a bugbear, Grorth was an accomplished harpsicord player as well as a wizard…
It had only one thing in mind—removing the church organ without anyone knowing…
It swallowed the ship whole before moving to the calmer waters of the smugglers’ cove…
It was blind, bloated, many headed, floating and hungry…
She had killed for the tenth time that morning…
The ankheg exploded at just before dawn, birthing the appalling children that would eat the locals as it did so…
The creature dragged itself unseen through the village streets by night, a trail of slime left behind for all to see by day…
The goblins gathered silently outside the nunnery, their leader—the thing with an uncountable number of bloated heads—issued the command once more ‘remember, I want all their hair brought to me, every inch, the rest you can do with as you will’…
The spell went badly wrong, and suddenly the world twisted inside out…
Thunder began to be heard within the vast cavern as the storm raged in the deep darkness high above, and there, in its purple-hued horror, squatted…
Unbeknownst to Tam, the thing he was eating would actually begin to consume him from within a few moments later…
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