My super advanced mapmaking technique – a handful of dice makes the map nice
interesting method
My question is do the die affect topography any or just set the borders?
I imagine it’s up to the person making the map. But maybe the more dice in a single spot, the more mountainous or forested the area. Maybe choose a few dice to be deemed cities, and some dice for ruins.
Maybe let the dice choose, like a nat 20 would be the world capital, and 10’s would be mountains or something like that.
1-5: Plains and fields
6-8: Forests
9-11: Mountains
12-14: Tundras and snow covered lands
15-17: Farms and towns
18-19: Larger cities
20: Capitals and castles
what would happing if all the dice landed on a 20?
then you have a very busy continent
not all of those are d20s though, so you’d have to come up with another method for the other ones
Adjusted for all dice you might have
D20
1-5: Plains and fields
6-8: Forests
9-11: Mountains
12-14: Tundras and snow covered lands
15-17: Farms and towns
18-19: Larger cities
20: Capitals and castles
D12
1-3: Plains and fields
4-6: Forests
7-8: Mountains
9-10: Tundras and snow covered lands
11: Farms and towns
12: Larger cities
D10
1-3: Plains and fields
4-6: Forests
7-8: Mountains
9: Tundras and snow covered lands
10: Farms and towns
D8
1-4: Plains and fields
5-6: Forests
7: Mountains
8: Tundras and snow covered lands
D6
1-3: Plains and fields
4: Forests
5-6: Mountains
D4
1-2: Plains and fields
3: Forests
4: Mountains
Holy shit. Definitely using this.
I swore at how simple this motherfucking thing is. You’re all bastards and i love you.
there’s a lot of evidence that the iliad and the odyssey were actually composed by a variety of poets through an oral tradition rather than just by one poet, so what if the homeric texts are actually just a very long game of D&D
homer, the dm: okay achilles, agamemnon has just taken away your war prize, what do you want to do achilles’ player: i roll to have a diplomatic conversation with agamemnon achilles’ player: *rolls a 1* homer: you throw the staff of speaking at agamemnon’s face and storm off to sulk with your boyfriend
Homer, the DM: Your beautiful Patroclus is dead. What do you do? Achilles’ player: I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: You can’t fight everyone. How would you even– Achilles’ player: *rolls a 20* I fight everyone. Homer, the DM: *sighs* Fine. You cut a path through the Trojan army, enemy dead strewn in your wake. Achilles’ player: How many? Homer, the DM: …lots. Enough to clog the friggin’ river with bodies. Achilles’ player: I fight the river. Homer, the DM: You. can. not. fight. the. river. Achilles’ player: *reaches for dice*
Homer, the DM: Okay guys, so the war’s over, you had a bunch of losses but you won in the end. Time to go home, let’s roll to see who gets there firs—
Odysseus’s player: I got a critical failure.
Homer, the DM; “Ok seriously guys they’re not going to fall for the giant horse.”
Odysseus’ player; “I just rolled a nat 20 on my deception check.”
So I made a VERY TINY D&D ZINE very last minute for SPX (like I stayed up all Friday night finishing it and we drove to a kinko’s the morning of the con and printed it and i was binding them at the table) and I figured, hey, why not throw it up here for you all to see!
I do want to try and do a second edition at some point where I have a mini strip for EVERY roll 1 through 20, but for now I think it turned out pretty cute~
aries: i very flirtatiously hit it with my warhammer
taurus:
and instead of using castor sugar like i normally would, i went with uuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰʰ splenda
gemini:
PERCEPTION CHECK i want to see if he wet his pants
cancer:
no dogs are allowed on the moon. they just run right off the goddamn thing
leo: “the second ruffian –” “give them names.” “
–……..craigory”
virgo:
it covers all of his essential, uh, oils, but it does say “juicy” where his butt would be
libra:
“and when i take my hand away, i’ve stuck a ‘kick me’ sign on his back” ”i kick him”
scorpio:
i need to do a check to see if him being on fire gives me the idea for spicy food
saggitarius:
somewhere in the distance, ludacris smiles
capricorn: “you run up and tear the box open, it explodes, you die. no, you tear the box open, it DOESN’T explode, you DON’T die –” “i’m fine either way.”
aquarius: abracafuck you!
pisces: the three of you walk into this room singing showtunes, and everyone inside this building looks at you, and kills you
It’s universally agreed that the mimic, a monster that impersonates a treasure chest and eats you if to try to open it, is the sort of conceptually ridiculous threat that could only come from old-school Dungeons & Dragons, but I suspect that a lot of folks who got into the game post-2000 – or who’ve only heard about it second hand – don’t realise just how representative it really is of the kind of dungeon-dwelling bullshit we had to put up with back in the day.
I’ve got a copy of the Monstrous Manual for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition (pub. 1993) in front of me, and in this book alone you’ll find:
A shapeshifting subterranean predator that impersonates doorways
A monster that looks like a cloak, and when you put it on it eats you
A giant – as in 20 feet across – flying manta ray that looks like the ceiling*
At least three unrelated beasties that impersonate decorative statues
A flesh-eating ooze that looks like a rock formation
A flesh-eating ooze that looks like a pool of water
A flesh-eating ooze that looks like a brick wall (you may have noticed that flesh-eating oozes are something of a theme)
An undead critter that also looks like a brick wall (the explanation for how it pulls this off is like half a page long)
A tentacled whatsit that impersonates a pile of trash
A snail-like critter that disguises itself as a stalactite, then falls on your head when you walk underneath it
A monster that looks like a stalagmite (can’t have one without the other, right?) that grabs you with sticky tentacles when you walk past
A monster that looks like a tree, and when you walk beneath its branches it sneakily places a noose-like vine around your neck and hangs you
A flying mushroom that looks like a different monster, except when you attack it, it explodes and infects you with poisonous spores
* Interestingly, there are no less than three apparently totally unrelated
species of giant flying mantra rays in this book, though only one of them
impersonates architecture.
And that’s just in the core rules for that particular edition. Various supplements for this and previous editions have included carnivorous floors, undead clothing, malevolent furniture, and – I swear I’m not making this up – a beastie that looks like a tree stump with a rabbit standing on it, and attacks you if you try to catch the rabbit (which is actually an anglerfish-like lure).
Basically, there are two things you should take away from this:
1. The variant mimics you see on Tumblr are no more ridiculous than what you’ll find in the actual source material; and
2. In old-school Dungeons & Dragon, literally everything is trying to kill you.
Let’s not forget the Bag of Devouring, which is a beastie pretending to be the most useful/neccasarry item in the game (bag of holding) and doesn’t even reveal itself until after it has eaten all your stuff and part of your arm
Ah, yes – the Bag of Devouring. The perfect intersection between “disguised monsters that want to kill you in ways that make no sense” and “seemingly helpful magic items that want to kill you in ways that make no sense” – that latter could be a whole post on its own!
(I’m like 99% convinced that the entire SCP Foundation universe is just somebody’s “D&D Modern” AU.)
Okay, I’ve gotten multiple requests for the “seemingly helpful magic items that want to kill you in ways that make no sense”
post, so here goes. Again, I am literally just reading out of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition Dungeon Master’s Guide – this isn’t like a “best of” compilation spanning the game’s entire product line or anything, it’s all right there in the core rules.
Notable entries include:
A magic ring that causes the wearer to become deluded that the ring has some useful magical power. (Its only real power is to delude the wearer into thinking it has powers.)
A magic ring that legitimately has some useful magical power, but also renders the wearer psychologically incapable of agreeing with any spoken statement.
The aforementioned bag of devouring, which impersonates a bag of holding (i.e., a bag that’s larger on the inside than the outside), but is actually a feeding orifice of some nasty extradimensional critter.
A different screw-you variation on the bag of holding that randomly transmutes precious metals placed inside into base metals, and destroys magic items.
An enchanted bowl that every test indicates will summon friendly water elementals with a suitable ritual. When the ritual is actually performed, however, it shrinks the user to the size of an ant and drowns her. (Also, any deaths caused by this bowl explicitly resist all normal methods of resurrection, for no obvious reason other than fuck you.)
An enchanted bell that seems to have the power to open locked doors, and actually does so the first few times it’s used. After several uses, however, it suddenly switches to causing everyone who hears it to become ravenously hungry, to the point that they’ll try to kill and eat each other if no other obvious food sources are available.
A cloak that kills you when you put it on. That’s it. That’s all it does.
A pair of glasses that turn you to stone when you put them on. Again, that’s their sole function.
A pair of boots that perfectly duplicate the functions of some other,
actually useful type of magic boots; as soon as the wearer enters
combat, however, their useful property vanishes and they start dancing.
A magic drum that permanently deafens the user and anyone else within seventy feet when struck.
A broom that is “identical to a broom of flying to all tests”, except when you actually try to use it to fly, it comes to life and starts swatting you in the face instead.
A pair of gloves that seem to give you super-strength, but the first time you encounter a “life and death situation”, their effect switches to rendering you supernaturally clumsy instead. Once the curse activates they can’t be removed without magical aid.
A hat that makes you stupid.
A harp whose music is so supernaturally bad that everyone within earshot is driven to attack the player in a mindless rage.
A carpet that rolls you up inside it and suffocates you if you sit on it.
A spear that functions normally at first, but has a small random chance to curl around and stab you in the back each time you use it.
That’s by no means exhaustive, but I’m going to have to stop there because there are just so darned many of the things.
Steel Phoenix Studios 