Historical Events - Settlement Level

Monthly Events are events that take place on the settlement level. That is the village or town.  Everyone in the settlement is probably aware of the events. Whenever reasonably possible the GM should try to link the events to Kingdom Events and Seasonal Events and/or reorder them to make sense.

• Roll 1d4 to determine how many events occur each season.

Then for each event:

1. Roll 1d4 to determine the season
2. Roll 1d8 on the Event table
3. Roll1d6 on the Table the corresponds to the result of Event table.

Table 1: Events Table

1d8	Event
01	Arrival
02	Departure
03	Conflict
04	Conflict
05	Guards/Nobles/Gov
06	Guards/Nobles/Gov
07	Other
08	Other

Table 2: Arrival/Departure

1d6	Event
01	Ambassador/Emmisary
02	Bard
03	Caravan
04	High Level Cleric
05	Specialist
06	Tax Collector

 

Table 3: Conflict

1d6	Event
01	Noble Feud
02	Guild War
03	Social Clash
04	Religious Clash
05	Thieves War
06	Wizard's War

Table 3: Guards/Nobles/Gov

1d6	Event
01	Alcoholic
02	Hunting Accident
03	Missing Patrol
04	Patrol Accident
05	Rivalry
06	Training Accident

Table 4: Other

1d6	Event
01	Crimewave
02	Disease/Sickness
03	Holy Man Emerges
04	Livestock Rustlers
05	Founding of Chantry/School/Order
06	Fire

Unfinished Business
Some events, if not dealt with, could/should lead to events the following year at the GM's discretion.

Historical Events - Seasonal Events

Seasonal Events are events that take place on the provincial level. That is the Shire or County.  Everyone in the realm is probably aware of the events, and neighboring realms if the Shire or County shares a border as well. Whenever reasonably possible the GM should try to link the events to Kingdom Events or other Seasonal Events and/or reorder them to make sense. If there is no war that year and war results on the province level it's a local issue.

• Roll 1d4 to determine how many events occur each season.

Then for each event:

1. Roll 1d4 to determine the season
2. Roll 1d8 on the Event table
3. Roll1d6 on the Table the corresponds to the result of Event table.

Table 1: Events Table

1d8	Event
01	Other
02	Other
03	Natural Events
04	Natural Events
05	Visitation
06	Visitation
07	War
08	War

Table 2: Other

1d6	Event
01	Accident
02	Baby Boom
03	Birth
04	Corruption
05	Death
06	Haunting

 

Table 3: Natural Events

1d6	Event
01	Bad Harvest
02	Bad Weather
03	Excess Taxes
04	Flooding
05	Injustice
06	Landslide

Table 4: Visitation

1d6	Event
01	Bandits
02	Famous Person
03	Monster/Maneater
04	Notorious Criminal
05	Vengeful stranger
06	VIP visit

Table 5: War

1d6	Event
01	Major Incursion
02	Minor Incursion
03	Major Battle
04	Recruiting
05	Troop Movements
06	Uprising

Historical Events - Yearly Events

When creating a sandbox the GM should create some history to make the place real. The color that makes things a bit more believable, that is where Historical Events come in. I would recommend going back at least 5 years to detail history and forward one year. Going forward?

Yes, going forward. The GM knowing what's going to happen in the near future means they can have oracles predict the future, or foreshadow events to create a build-up as the historic event gets closer and closer. Events for the future, if appropriate, should be written up as Events. That is temporary changes to all of the encounter tables including possible associated adventure hooks. This might be part of the foreshadowing, maybe the characters will notice.

Of course not ever Event will change the encounter tables and the GM should be flexible to take character actions into account. If the characters do something that might change or kill the event the GM should do just that no matter how much work went into preparing the thing.

These following tables assumes a 12 month calendar with four seasons of three months each. You can make a more alien world but it's really not worth the bother, even Tolkien used the well known months in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.

Yearly Events
Yearly Events are events that take place on the national level. That is the kingdom, emperor or whatever.  Everyone in the realm, and in the neighboring realms as well. Whenever reasonably possible the GM should try to link the events and/or reorder them to make sense.

• Roll 1d4 to determine how many events occur each year.

Then for each event:

1. Roll 1d12 to determine which month
2. Roll 1d8 on the Event table
3. Roll1d6 on the Table the corresponds to the result of Event table.

Table 1: Events Table

1d8	Event
01	Noble Business
02	Natural Disaster
03	Peace
04	Peace
05	Religious
06	War
07	War
08	War

Table 2: Noble Business

1d6	Event
01	Birth
02	Death
03	Feud
04	Marriage
05	Scandal
06	Visitation

 

Table 3: Natural Disaster

1d6	Event
01	Earthquake
02	Famine
03	Fire
04	Heat Wave
05	Plague
06	Storms

Table 3: Peace

1d6	Event
01	Nothing Happens
02	Nothing Happens
03	Nothing Happens
04	Ruins Discovered
05	Fashion Trend sweeps the nation
06	Trade Route Opens

Table 3: Religious Events

1d6	Event
01	Major Celebration
02	Minor Celebration
03	Inquisition
04	New Leader
05	Heretical Leader
06	Purge/Schism

Table 4: War

1d6	Event
01	Civil War (Nobles fighting)
02	Dynastic War (Royals fighting)
03	Holy War (Recruiting/Crusade)
04	Peasant Revolt/Uprising
05	War, invading other
06	War, Invaded by others

When creating a bunch of events it helps if the GM has a list of names appropriate for nobles as well as the name of the realm, Shire/County/ and settlement.

Best of the Web - Dave's Maps, Bookmarks, and Random Caves

Dave's Mapper
I've never really liked the examples I've seen because they always create a hodge-podge of maps made from different artists, I have no imagination that way, but Dave's mapper has a button in which you can create a map only by a select artists. Of course they had that feature, I just didn't look. It's pretty awesome. I'm a fan now.

Bookmark Map?
Dungeoneering has an interesting idea in the post Bookmark Dungeon: Shrine of Odolric the Cruel.
A dungeon map on a standard 2"x6" bookmark. In this format you can move the card to wherever you have the appropriate room descriptions.
Instead of having a removable cover with map the way they did it in the old days. I guess any size printout map could work the same way but this seems extra cool to me for some reason although the shape would be a challenge.

Random Cave Maps
Delta's D&D Hotspot has an interesting post called Cave Dice on using 6-sided die to generate simple caves.

I like this as it allows a GM to rapidly create a small cave lair in the wilderness.

I ran across something I thought would help make a slightly larger system. Brialle pips. In most cases the pips indicate  tunnels/corridors but as in Delta's Cave dice a group of four (as in g and q) indicate a chamber.

Roll 1d4 to determine how many braille letters to use, then roll 1d20 that many times to determine which letters.

Table 1: Braille Caves

1d20	Braille Letter
01	a
02	b
03	d
04	e
05	f
06	g
07	h
08	i
09	j
10	l
11	n
12	o
13	p
14	q
15	r
16	s
17	t
18	v
19	w
20	y

Lastly roll 1d4 to determine the vertical connections between the letters:

Table 2: New letter is...

1d4	Above/Same
01	Same level
02	Same level
03	Below
04	Below

And roll 1d4 to determine the nature of any vertical differences:

Table 3: Connection is...

1d4	Above/Same
01	Hole in the floor/roof
02	Drop/cliff
03	Steep but navigable slope
04	Shallow slope

Best of the Web: Old Persons Game, Selling Dragons, and Monty Pythons Goblins

Old Person's Game
Dragons Are Real has an RPGaDay post called Evolve that ends with "I wonder where this will lead us in the next 45 years…I may not be around to see that but I think the hobby is save and will continue to evolve."  I've thought about this subject for some time and it will be interesting in the coming decade or two as the original grognards who started playing in college or younger start to retire and suddenly find they have lots of free time again.

I think a large part of the OSR has been the cultural divide between the young (who Wizards courted with increased complexity in 3e and 4e) and the old as grognards who have hit a spot in their careers that allowed for more home life and a returned to the hobby (they wanted to play what they knew instead of starting over). The number of new gamers will just increase, possibly ten-fold, as old timers start to retire.

I suspect the number of players will increase as well. Folks in a retirement home are less concerned with looking cool than they were back in high school, they might be a lot more willing to give the game a go.

Selling Dragons
Dungeon Fantastic has a post called Selling Dragons - did it come up in your game? in which he talks briefly about just that. I've never had players try to subdue a dragon but then the opportunities have been few and far between as I have always preferred low level play. Still the post got me thinking about how much fun it could be to have a campaign in which the characters go out and acquire rare beasts and monsters for the arena, or for the Wizards school, or whatever. They could be told where the things are by experts, and be provided with an appropriate cage and some bits of knowledge (some accurate, some sketchy), and then off. They have to track, capture/subdue the thing and get it back to get paid. And of course there are those that would want to kill the beast in revenge, and other groups interested in the cash to complicate things even further. Could be lots of fun.

Monty Pythons Goblins
I was reading through blogs and some commenter posted some images from the East German version of the Hobbit. The images were drawn by Klaus Ensinkat and I find them a fascinating as they were created before Rankin Bass and the Brothers Hildebrandt and Peter Jackson solidified the images of different creatures into our collective memories. The first are the three trolls.

The second are Orcs (or Goblins) in pseudo-Samurai gear.

I find these illustrations captivating for some reason and thought i'd post them somewhere that I can find them again.