6 Comments
User's avatar
Bardic Bonsai's avatar

How do you come up with the subjects, and do you just leave the d6 table as is (peril, threat, etc.) or customize each table by a subject?

Murkdice's avatar

For subjects I lean on naturalistic dungeon design! I’ll consider the inhabitants of a location or region carefully and work out what their aims would be and work from there :)

Bardic Bonsai's avatar

Does each sparks table revolve around the same subject? In your example about the wolf, you’ve got wolf-themed sparks in, I guess, the same table.

Murkdice's avatar

I’d focus each sequence around a subject, though I might bring other subjects into some encounters in the sequence to create meetings of different subjects!

I Roll Alone's avatar

How do you handle escalation in this. At least randomized. From vibe to threat makes total sense but escalation from being threatened by a direwolf to finding it wounded isn't or is it more like if I handle it then it's done.

Murkdice's avatar

So in my case this is an intentional subversion. To me not every encounter sequences has to encode escalation. It can be really interesting when something that was initially a dire threat turns into an opportunity! This keeps things fresh and avoids being tied into a particular narrative flow for me!