Thursday, August 9, 2018

Rolling on every table in the D30 Sandbox Companion (part 1)


Of late I've started to get frustrated with my tsundoku ways. Time to put my barely picked up copy of the D30 Sandbox Companion to work. I picked it up and rolled on every page with a table. Well, a few of them today at least.

P10 Adventure Generator I
Results: Manuscript, solve mystery--theft, perform ritual, outpost, machine/clockwork

My interpretation: A manuscript has been mysteriously stolen at the Mechanist outpost. Mechanists are anti-luddite religious fanatics known for their high quality clocks, which caravans still make the arduous journey to obtain by trade. The Mechanists perform a certain ritual each year at a very precise time, but the head priest recently died and the stolen manuscript has key details of the ritual. Find it or bad things happen.

P11 Oh shit this is a continuation of the last table.
Results: Energy drain (HP), eliminate species, mask, glory, ranger/dwarf

Interpretation: Okay, I'll just go full bore at the Thief Metal Age rip-off now. The Mechanists have a spell that can sap people of their energy, making them docile servitors. The servitors wear special masks that keep them in a slave-trance, utilizing gasses that if released into an area with plant life will cause a chain reaction that will bring about a biological apocalypse.  The dwarven ranger has caught wind of this loathsome practice (but doesn't know how the masks work) and has stolen the manuscript, thinking it the key to the servitor secret, but the Mechanists are actually keeping something at bay with their axiomatic machines and slaves and rituals. The dwarven ranger has made a small bandit group of rescued-deprogrammed servitors, and they plan for a glorious razing of the Mechanists soon. If the Mechanists should survive, one of their number will probably decide to bring about the mask-enabled end-times.

P12-13 Weather (you want to or not)
Results: I think I got III on the next page then rolled a single-cell storm. I think the temp is 30 degrees; this wasn't the most intuitive table, and weather? Ug. I guess there is a chance I could have rolled a tornado or something and that chance is cool, but I dunno if I even want to leave weather up to dice.

P14 Off Course
Results:  174 degrees off course. This is for ships, which was not obvious at first. I would still use it in a land hexcrawl I think.

P15 Foraging and Hunting
Results (foraging, temperate, winter, in the hills): Got 1 ration. It's not toxic. This takes 20 mins. (Hunting with three hunters): Nat 1 means we definitely find the thing which is (rolls) a large beast as long as we have the right weapons for the job. After like way too long, I also determined that of the 1 to 2 beasts we saw, we caught 1 one of them and used up like 12 ammo. To be honest, this got super confusing at the end. I guess it saves the time of having the players roll to hit though. We could play the encounter out with the 60 foot range I determined.

p16-17 terrain phenomena with descriptors
Results (determined that we were in the hills again randomly; let's just say it's temperate hills in winter for the rest of this post): No phenomena (only 6 in 30 chance). Boring? Rolls: It was a crag. We saw a crag.

Nah, this table isn't bad though. I'd roll a result without chances wherever the players happen to be just so I can set the scene and get the coveted cuesta with a cliff.

P18 Settlements
Results (for an unsettled hex square): No residents because I rolled a town result (impossible to have a town in an unsettled area). But maybe this would indicate ruins instead, so I roll at the bottom of the page and I guess we have an abandoned nomad camp.

P19 Actual Ruins
This page doesn't worry about population.
Results: A tower. Moderately collapsed. Infested with insects. Giant wasps, maybe.

I like this page a lot. Simple, fast and evocative.

P20 Temples
Results: A mound with timber structures and 1d6 rooms. It has 8 columns on the front and back faces.

P21 Cults!
Results: Unity; the oracle; beholder worshiped; death to monarchs!; they sleep on beds of rocks.
The Unity of the Oracle was determined to --of course-- want to conquer the world some day.

P22 Magical Places
Results: Cavern, of dreams. Short one, but fun page.

P23 Pilgrim groups
Results: Lawful/good (paladins?), 60 in number and mounted, six 2nd level clerics, four 4th level, and one 6th level, the chance that there were fighters/thieves in the group was rolled at/under when the die said there were 8 of the former and 2 of the latter, so I guess we do have paladins.  

So there you have a few pages tested. Some of them were like remembering the steps to do a math proof for me, but there are some pages I would pull out in a pinch for quick table play.


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