✨1k subscribers special!✨ - gift inside 🎁

FREE RANDOM TABLES

MurkMail crossed 1k readers this week. One thousand readers!

We wanted to do something special to mark this milestone, so we’re giving away my personal set of random tables that I use for my dark fantasy games.

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If you’re subscribed already, you’ll be receiving a link via email soon. If you aren’t subscribed yet, sign up and get ‘em for free! You also get a pack of ten isometric pointcrawl templates. If you’re new here, we posted a summary of our last 6 months of articles!

But let me tell you about these tables.

Linked tables

I run gloomy, grounded fantasy games. I wanted a set of tables that was concise and easy to use but dynamic.

Max from Oddity Press pointed me to Maze Rats having this neat feature where the tables connect if you roll a maximum result. My tables work like that but go further in terms of connectivity. I call them “Linked Tables”.

I have six d66 tables. On doubles, it sends you to a different table! It’s possible to get to any of the other five tables from the current table, forming a ‘ring’ of tables. On 66, it’s the classic ‘roll twice’ result.

This is great for expanding your creativity, because it gives you prompts outside the realm that you were rolling for. When rolling an environmental descriptor, you could end up getting a mystical effect of some kind! Some may make you work hard and get you thinking outside the box.

I’ve covered what I consider to be essential stuff. It’s easy to expand a set of tables forever, to try to have tables for everything, but it ends up being hard to use and tricky to keep thematically consistent. I’ve have six key tables with three columns each:

• Environments (to develop locations): Natural, buildings, and activity.

• Objects (filling locations with stuff): Functions, looks, and quirks.

• Creatures: Looks, traits, and wants.

• Humanoids: Looks, traits, and wants.

• Phenomena: Natural, mystical, eldritch.

• Details (small stuff to add to anything): Natural, civilised, mystical.

Each table is on a double spread, leaving this booklet at a lean 14 pages (it’s print friendly too and the pdf is hyperlinked for speed of reference). If you want this set of tables and aren’t subscribed yet sign up below!

Examples

I rolled some examples to show you just how fun to use and how evocative these tables are.

I want to make some points of interest for a hexcrawl, so I go to the Environment table and roll on Natural, Buildings, and Activity.

Location 1

I roll d66 three times, giving me 55, 31, and 62. 55 sends me to the Details table. I choose the natural column and roll a 14. This gives me “cracked earth”, “echoing hall”, “unnoticed crime”.

I’m seeing a long forgotten meeting hall set into a cave, with a floor of cracked earth. The hidden crime? Hundreds are buried here. That’s a dark secret, and maybe a powerful place for mystic rituals.

Location 2

I roll 66, 13, and 65. 66 means I roll twice! I get 24 and 55. 55 sends me to the details table (I go for the humanoid column) where (no shit) I roll another 66. That gives me 16 and 22, the 22 sends me to the creatures table. I choose the Trait column and get 14. I end up with: “deep lake”, “enormous eyes”, “imposing tower”, “unending sorrow”.

That was a fun trip through the tables! I told you linked tables would be fun to use (and stretch creativity). Sounds like a tower decorated with enormous eyes fell into the lake long ago. A sorrowful song reaches out from where it lies.

Some Treasure

Let’s make a treasure for this fallen tower using the Objects table. I start with Function, 22 sends me to Humanoids, I roll on the Profession column and get 15, “alchemist”. For the Look column I get a 44 ~how am I rolling so many doubles?!~, so I roll on Environments (I choose the Activity column) and get “heated debate”. Last is the Quirk column, 54, “imparts emotions”.

This sounds like a potion to me, a flask of emotion essences that are in constant conflict with each other. If you drink it, you go through a random cycle of different emotional states. It probably sells well as a narcotic or as a poison.

A monster

Let’s have something lurking in the tower, I’ll use the Creatures table for this. For the Look column I get “warped mutations”, delightful. For the Trait column, I roll “climbing ability”. And for the Want column I get “challengers”.

This sounds like a creature who’s body mutates to allow it to climb different surfaces as needed. It wants challengers, it’s spoiling for a fight, and maybe it’s ability to mutate is improved by it being pushed to survive. It can probably breathe water too.

An NPC

Maybe a person is resting by the lake. I’ll use the Humanoids table for this. For the Look column, I get “feeble”, for the Profession column it's “rider”, and for the Want column it’s “freedom”.

An aged calvary rider who’s fled battle, and hopes to find somewhere to settle down.

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That’s it

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