Chaos Requests April 8th to April 30th

Ian Reilly has a genie's worth of wishes:

any or all would be much appreciated:

-1d12 encounters: Tolkien creature rejects

-a mechanically simple but interesting object found in the buried space drill ruins

-the aristocrat's hidden room including some disgustingly decadent secret

also i'm working on that dwarf dungeon, still a little ways to go

(Don't threaten me with a good time, Ian.)

Robin Zinc writes very well in his own blood:

"a dungeon outline for the old, sealed-off temple of a forgotten Dwarf god. Monsters, traps, whatever, dungeon stuff. Back story unimportant unless amazing and necessary. My tastes lean towards the weird".



Mathew Adams makes a sacraƒice oƒ himselƒ, to himselƒ:
"This is a randomly generated as you play dungeon thing, using the card game solitiara as the mechanic for the generating. I am busy with other stuff, so if other people wish to give it a crack and release it for free they are quite welcome to"

Click here to download the word document 




Now comes the hard part. Go ƒorth and render onto chaos what belongs to chaos. Multiple conƒlicting incarnations oƒ the same idea pleases Tiamat so don't worry iƒ someone else is doing it too, it'll all be posted up.

Email me at chaosrequestline at geemail dot com! Please present all messages pregnant with Tiamat's seed in the body of the email. Iƒ you really really want to send me an attachment please explain why?

Chris ƒelling on "Things that happen along the way"

A short list of things (d8 maybe) — good, bad, dangerous, or interesting — that can happen on the way from point A to point B.

Point A: The half-sunken remains of a great stone wall at the edge of the Great Swamp, on the edges of the civilized world, the protruding towers of which are inhabited by weary elves who stand guard, lighting campfires close up against the crumbled stone parapets at night....

Point B: The slowly, slowly swirling mud sinkholes at the center of the Great Swamp, beneath which are the stony remains of the huge colosseums, amphitheaters and vomitoria of the bygone Age of Marble.

.....

In rough order of proximity from A to B

1.     A tower on the wall, miles high, collapses backwards into the Great Swamp. Plumes of silt and water burst into the air. The stones of the tower float to the surface, conspicuously stable, and lead like stepping stones to a mud hut. Inside are feral young women. They are illiterate but prodigal magicians. They did this. If taught to write - way easier said than done, - their words could be spirit-consuming limited wishes (save or die, cumulative -1d4 penalty each time).

2.     Beneath the wall, behind a cave-in, lies the service tunnel. The service tunnel. You could walk the whole way to the greatest lost coliseum of all, at the heart of the sinkholes. It is dry, which is nice, apart from concerning drips by buttresses of petrified wood. You will need to travel single file if you use it. Alternate entrances appear at five-mile intervals: ladders leading up submerged stone towers, capped with manhole covers.

3.     A particularly dry and hospitable spit of earth is home to the lean-to of Jim the Elf. He works on the wall. He got a bit lost. He has been here for several centuries, living (poorly) off the land. He seems really good-humored about it. He tells dad jokes. If brought back to his post, the party will perhaps learn that Jim is owed several centuries worth of back pay, and maybe a workelves' compensation claim. The present budget of the guard elves' guild probably can't take the hit. The party might be able to get a cut.

4.     Fires burn green here. No reason. Anyone asked about it will have a theory as to why, but they are wrong. All of the theories sound plausible. Even testable.

5.     In the wetter parts of the swamp, Grandmother Catfish takes an interest in your party and your boat, which she will silently follow for uncomfortably long periods of time. Grandmother Catfish is 50 feet long and dead. She is a catfish. She is also a lich, a necromancer of legendary skill and art. She is very eloquent and a gregarious hostess. She will help you breathe and sleep underwater, if you want to crash. Company is very rare and her children, also dead, do not visit. She will feed you real good (think a Game of Thrones-quality banquet, but consisting of Louisianan comfort food) and not even murder you, because she likes company more than she loathes all living things. She wants someone else dead.

6.     A rotting bridge perches in the swamp like a pier. It comes from and leads to nowhere. The ghost of a gladiator from the Age of Marble waits, as though for a ride. He can see the road. There is no road anywhere. He insists he can see the road.

7.     No dry or even semisolid land for days. Rafting or boating necessary. Shreds of rock rasp holes in party transportation. Leaks perpetual. Restful sleep impossible on account of need for constant bailing, repairs, despair. Consequences of sleep deprivation (1d6):

1.     Unable to memorize spells in the morning, or memorized spells are different/mistaken.

2.     Exhaustion. No HP recovery from resting.

3.     Equipment sodden and ruined. Lose rations. Leather armour rots. Spellbook pages stick together. Scroll ink runs.

4.     Hallucinations.

5.     Hopeless. -2 to saves.

6.     Hopelessly lost and unaware of it. Going in the wrong direction until some landmark sets you straight.

8.     Aqueducts reach out of the swamp overhead. They are crumbling and precarious, slick with algae. Degenerate orcs cling to their undersides like tree sloths covered in war paint. The war paint is mostly for show, since the sloth-orcs are genuinely pretty slothy, but they have bad attitudes and a lot of stick-to-it-iveness. If the party stays near the aqueducts, the sloth-orcs will slowly, slowly advance towards them overnight, traversing the aqueducts upside-down with spears in their teeth and malice in their eyes. They all want their first kill, which would be the first in the history of sloth-orcdom. If they manage it, the party's survivors will see the coronation of the sloth orc king, He (or she) Who Kills First, who will usher in a new age of slow-moving ambition. They will march the next day for the wall, which they have heard about in legend. They may spare the rest of the party in exchange for their services as guides.

Quiet Alec on soulless elves

I'm running a game where elves don't have souls. We've established, though, that they can take souls from the dead, and that this is a big deal for them culturally. My request would be what perks and responsibilities should come with being the only elf in town with a soul? And what sort of minor gameplay perks could this translate to?

Two takes on soulless elves depending on how elves might view other people:

People live sad lives:

The soulless elves have an undeniable sympathy for the short lives of those around them.  Elves, being immortal, have no need for souls.  Unlike the short-lived people of the world, the elves have no need to pass on to an afterworld and so were never gifted with souls.

Instead, they have chosen to use this void to help resolve the wrongs and regrets of the deceased.  By accepting the soul of another into their own body, they become aware of their desires, concerns, and failures of that person.  The elf then takes these facts and seeks to resolve them to the best of their ability.  They will attempt to romance lost loves, amend their misdeeds, help their friends and family left behind, etc.

In society, the elf is expected to follow through on these deeds and do whatever they can to help the troubled soul.  As long as they do so, other elves will attempt to help them on the quest.  They will provide free room and board (or at least discounted) and will attempt to lend travel supplies.

Failing or neglecting these responsibilities, however, may lead to every elf nagging you to no end in being such a dick to the poor soul you brought into your body.

People are books:

The soulless elves harvest the souls of those long dead for knowledge and clarity.  Resurrecting these souls allows the elf to venture back into their lives during meditation, allowing the elf to relive history from their perspective.

An elf rooting through the former life of their adopted soul

In this situation, when the elves meditate, they can experience an equivalent amount of non-consecutive time in the life of the soul inhabiting their body.  This may provide vital information for current circumstances and adventures, or it may provide valuable historic information that can be traded to others, elf and non-elf alike.

However, this fact about elves is widely known amongst the world.  People may attempt to bribe or force you into accepting a soul to reveal hidden knowledge to them (for good or ill).

Quiet Alec on Weird Magic Items

The Ladle of Eternal Heat

A powerful obsessed with have his soup always hot decided the greatest solution was to trap a small fire elemental inside of a soup ladle.  This would allow him to simply leave the ladle on in a pot of soup, keeping it hot.

It can also be used as a melee weapon dealing fire damage equivalent to a dagger.

Walking Stick

This seemingly ordinarily walking stick deals 1d4 damage plus an additional 1d4 damage per Constitution point you’re willing to sacrifice.  These points will regenerate after a long rest, but will typically leave the user weak enough to need to use the walking stick afterwards as support.

The Duelist’s Peacock

A regular sized peacock that prefers to perch upon its owner’s head (requires above average strength).  The Peacock will strike out once per round at any nearby opponent.  When escaping, the Peacock will fan its tail feathers, casting invisibility on the bearer.  It will only stay so long as it is fed well and not harassed.

April 1 and April 8 Chaos Requests

Here are my excuses ƒor dropping the chaos ball ƒor about 2 weeks:

1.

Now to business. Only 3 requests standing. Pretty soon I will be simply plucking things I read people on google+ complaining about or wishing ƒor and turning them into requests and implying that they submitted them personally. The goal there is that anything anyone says out loud might actually become real. Which is pretty good I think, as ƒar as liƒe goes.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Master Dogen is a streetwalking cheetah with a heart ƒull oƒ napalm:

A short list of things (d8 maybe) — good, bad, dangerous, or interesting — that can happen on the way from point A to point B.

Point A: The half-sunken remains of a great stone wall at the edge of the Great Swamp, on the edges of the civilized world, the protruding towers of which are inhabited by weary elves who stand guard, lighting campfires close up against the crumbled stone parapets at night....

Point B: The slowly, slowly swirling mud sinkholes at the center of the Great Swamp, beneath which are the stony remains of the huge colosseums, amphitheaters and vomitoria of the bygone Age of Marble.

Robin Zinc writes very well in his own blood:

"a dungeon outline for the old, sealed-off temple of a forgotten Dwarf god. Monsters, traps, whatever, dungeon stuff. Back story unimportant unless amazing and necessary. My tastes lean towards the weird".



Mathew Adams makes a sacraƒice oƒ himselƒ, to himselƒ:
"This is a randomly generated as you play dungeon thing, using the card game solitiara as the mechanic for the generating. I am busy with other stuff, so if other people wish to give it a crack and release it for free they are quite welcome to"

Click here to download the word document 




Now comes the hard part. Go ƒorth and render onto chaos what belongs to chaos. Multiple conƒlicting incarnations oƒ the same idea pleases Tiamat so don't worry iƒ someone else is doing it too, it'll all be posted up.

Email me at chaosrequestline at geemail dot com! Please present all messages pregnant with Tiamat's seed in the body of the email. Iƒ you really really want to send me an attachment please explain why?

March 25, 2015 Chaos Requests

Ask, and you shall maybe eventually receive something sort oƒ related.

____________________________

Mateo Diaz Torres is throwing open his window and making love to the ƒollowing:

Weird magic weapons, like mirrors, dolls/golems, paper fans, spider-friends, eternal fires, jars, etc

Chris ƒelling carved this into your birthday cake:

I'm running a game where elves don't have souls. We've established, though, that they can take souls from the dead, and that this is a big deal for them culturally. My request would be what perks and responsibilities should come with being the only elf in town with a soul? And what sort of minor gameplay perks could this translate to?

Master Dogen is a streetwalking cheetah with a heart ƒull oƒ napalm:

A short list of things (d8 maybe) — good, bad, dangerous, or interesting — that can happen on the way from point A to point B.

Point A: The half-sunken remains of a great stone wall at the edge of the Great Swamp, on the edges of the civilized world, the protruding towers of which are inhabited by weary elves who stand guard, lighting campfires close up against the crumbled stone parapets at night....

Point B: The slowly, slowly swirling mud sinkholes at the center of the Great Swamp, beneath which are the stony remains of the huge colosseums, amphitheaters and vomitoria of the bygone Age of Marble.

Robin Zinc writes very well in his own blood:

"a dungeon outline for the old, sealed-off temple of a forgotten Dwarf god. Monsters, traps, whatever, dungeon stuff. Back story unimportant unless amazing and necessary. My tastes lean towards the weird".



Mathew Adams makes a sacraƒice oƒ himselƒ, to himselƒ:
"This is a randomly generated as you play dungeon thing, using the card game solitiara as the mechanic for the generating. I am busy with other stuff, so if other people wish to give it a crack and release it for free they are quite welcome to"

Click here to download the word document 




Now comes the hard part. Go ƒorth and render onto chaos what belongs to chaos. Multiple conƒlicting incarnations oƒ the same idea pleases Tiamat so don't worry iƒ someone else is doing it too, it'll all be posted up.

Email me at chaosrequestline at geemail dot com! Please present all messages pregnant with Tiamat's seed in the body of the email. Iƒ you really really want to send me an attachment please explain why?

Ian Reilly on 3 Horrible Consequences oƒ a Time Paradox

1> You stepped on the wrong butterfly.

“…small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time…” -Ray Bradbury

Things have...changed. Biological things. The effects of your actions have rippled out through time like a rumor through a crowd, and now lifeforms are starting to show it. Each day that passes, more flora and fauna begin to show signs that they are now longer what they were. Time’s flow over the course of eons has altered, added whole eras to their ancestry, and yet somehow the same individuals walk around now. It seems interesting at first but it can only get worse from here.
Every day your Paradox Score goes up by one. Roll the nearest size die, rounding up (i.e. on the start of the fifth day, roll 1d6). The GM rolls on the local encounter table that many times. All the creatures that are “encountered” get a mutation (count repeated encounters as multiple mutations). Use whatever table you like, Scrap’s is interesting but more for players, I find this one sufficiently visible. Once a particular species has five or more, swap in another critter, or start on common humanoids. If the GM wishes to be more atmospheric, beginning the changes with more normal animals - horses, dogs, cattle - to set the tone that something is wrong.

If unaddressed, convert the game into Gamma World when the Paradox Score reaches thirty.

2> Object loop

“Eh, what’s the worst that can happen?” -Bender Rodriguez

You lost an item of some significance to you in your time shenanigan adventure and now it’s caught in an unstable time loop. Your family Goathammer that you use to shatter the serpentmen’s tesseract; the last arrow you fired at the Chronokhan to halt his ritual; the shirt button your grandfather ripped off you before you accidentally killed him on the way to first meet your grandmother - it seems to be haunting you, impossibly. And there are more of them.

Roll a d20. This is your Chaos Number. Every time you roll it on ANY die (bad luck if you roll a 2) you are reminded of what happened. Your Paradox Score starts at one, and each time you roll your Chaos Number it increases by one. Immediately that many copies of the object tumble out of some bizarre place nearby, often rather inconveniently. These copies can be used as normal - they are in every way the regular object, just at different times.

Anytime your Chaos Number comes up in a roll to use them, a wormhole sucks you, anyone else involved, and all the copies back to the moment which caused the paradox in the first place. Good luck explaining yourself (and your seventy one pairs of heirloom glasses) to yourself.

3> Other timelines.
“Obviously, the time continuum has been disrupted creating this new temporal event sequence, resulting in this alternate reality.” -Dr. Emmet Brown

While you were mucking around with time, so was another you, in another time. That other you is a little different, maybe married someone else, or has a different job. And there was another you beyond that, but from a different country. And another, who looks like Bruce Willis. Somehow they’re here now. You have to kill them.

All encounter tables now have a 50% chance of running into an alterna-clone instead of whatever you would normally (check for clones before rolling on the table). Use Zac S’s time golem d100 table to generate the details for each encounter, but apply only to those PCs involved in the temporal antics. These clones want to replace you in this timeline and must kill you to make it happen. Each PC tracks their Paradox score differently. Every time a PC runs into one of their clones their Score increase by one. Once their score is equal to their Charisma, each additional encounter requires a save vs. Death to make sure the clone doesn’t sneakily replace you in the confusion.

If you fail, you die and get replaced. Play as the clone from now on. This stops other copies of you from appearing.