Random Encounter Generation: Random Nouns

Wherein Lies a Description of a Method To Populate Random Encounter Tables Via Word Association

Oily Marsh, Unpopulated with Encounters

Step The First: Select a Location. Oily Marsh.

Step the Second: Choose a source of random nouns. This may be a book, flipped to a random page and pointed at, an online generator, whatever is handy. Here, Pythagoras chooses this random noun generator.

Step the Third: Generate a set of random nouns. With the Location in mind, choose one noun from this set as a Theme. Given this set:
  • media
  • finding
  • alcohol
  • possibility
  • sympathy
  • student
  • idea
  • leader
  • energy
  • debt
Pythagoras has chosen ‘alcohol’ as the Theme.

Step the Fourth: With the Location and Theme in mind, use each of the words in the set of nouns to come up with an Encounter. Look up archaic definitions or etymologies of words for additional inspiration. Combine these results with your usual 'monster' encounter tables.

Oily Marsh Encounters (theme: alcohol)

  1. Media (as the plural of “medium”): A slow-moving wagon struggles along a slate track. A low-lever fighter drives the horses. Three passengers are on their way to a graveyard, where they intend to toast a deceased hero.
  2. Finding: Ruined papers are scattered in a large area, stained with oil. Written in the common tongue, ten minutes' search and examination will collect enough of them to realize they are are part of a land survey commissioned by a merchant house in the nearest city. There is evidence of a valuable discovery southwest of a vineyard at the edge of the marsh. Should the party report to the merchants or investigate themselves?
  3. Alcohol: A still, surrounded on three sides by rock formations. A 50% chance each moonlit night that 1-3 moonshiners show up to operate it.
  4. Possibility: A geyser of tar bubbles out of the ground here. Every ten minutes, something of potential interest is ejected from it. Roll random mundane and treasure tables (max rolls always advance to the next higher table), but the value of the thing ejected is 1%-5% of the value rolled. 50% chance some residents of the swamp are sitting around near here waiting for something interesting. There's usually only combat here when newcomers enter the area. Groups get tired of cleaning tar off of things of negligible value, and older things eventually fall back into the tar. They tend to leave a lot of junk around.
  5. Sympathy: A merchant wagon sinking into a tar pit. the horses are still alive, but not for long. 100x 1d20gp of goods in the wagon, in the tar.
  6. Student: An apprentice of the wizard below, hiding from the bandits below. He has enough of the wish-giving liquor to grant a limited wish on his person.
  7. Idea: A mid-level wizard and gang of bodyguards and apprentices is operating a distillery, pulling oil from the marsh. This produces a lot of burnable fuel and gas, but the real products of value are Essences of Earth and Fire (attracts elementals) and a liquor that, if perfected, can duplicate the wish-granting powers of an efreet.
  8. Leader: Perpetually drunken bandit lair. 5 - 15 bandits with a Captain Jack Sparrow-ish leader. They do more hunting and trading than banditry, but they are all outlaws.
  9. Energy: Will-O-Wisps haunt the area at dusk and dawn, accompanied by bolts of lightning. Tar pits, quicksand.
  10. Debt: In place of a treasure worth x, a I.O.U. worth 100x is discovered. (A creature that would have 15gp normally has an I.O.U. for 1500gp instead.) The handwriting is awful, the writer was drunk at the time. The 1d6th tavern in which the I.O.U. is asked about will lead to the author. 90% they happily pay up, 50% chance they have an interesting story that explains the circumstances of the I.O.U.

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