City plague tables

It's the winter months here, and with winter comes cold and flu season.  I've been sick lately, and staying at home.  To keep the time from being a total loss, I thought maybe I could use the illness as a source of inspiration.

This is a series of event and encounter tables for districts of a fantasy city struck by a plague.

Escalation stages

1. Rumours and mutterings.  Ominous omens.  Prophets offering warnings in the market square.
2. Official denials from the government.
3. Theatres and public events closed.  Dusk-to-dawn curfew announced.  Extra guards recruited.
4. The wealthy and well-connected begin sending their families out of town.  Government announces that foreigners or minorities may be carrying a sickness.
5. Martial law.  Markets closed.  24-hour curfew announced.  Travel between districts is suspended.  Gates to the richest and poorest districts are shut and guarded.  Carts travel the streets collecting the dead.
6. Foreigners and minorities are attacked on site by hysterical mobs.  Fires are spreading.  Gangs operate unopposed in all but the richest districts.  The dead lie in the streets.
7. The mobs have run themselves to exhaustion.  The city is silent as people wait out the crisis in their homes.
8. The contagion has burned itself out.  People begin to emerge from their isolation and start putting the city back in order.

Docks

The docks is a place where people are constantly coming and going as ships dock and depart.  There are crowds of day labourers waiting for work carrying goods.  The businesses here are ship outfitters, warehouses and pubs.

Event table:

1. A boat captain and his crew are facing off against a merchant and his men.  The captain is refusing a shipment of pork because it may be infected, the merchant is insisting that he pay for it even if he leaves it on the dock.  Neither side is backing down.
2. A gang of looters armed with clubs is emptying a warehouse while the owner stands helplessly watching, yelling for the city guard or anyone to stop these thieves.
3. A ship is dumping cargo on the docks to make room for passengers who are offering everything they have for transport away from the city.  A group of ragged locals is snatching up all the goods they can carry, and squabbling over the best loot.
4. City guards are 'taxing' anyone who wants to enter or leave the docks.  Several ship crews have gathered in a group to try and push through without paying.  The guards have called for reinforcements.
5. A group of three boats is refusing to dock.  The harbour master is threatening to destroy them with fire arrows if they leave without unloading their cargo.
6. A fight in a dockside pub is spilling out into the road, blocking several streets.

Encounter table:

1. A rich man with his family, his retainers and all his household goods, looking for a boat to hire.
2. 1d4 'sailors' approaching individuals and small groups, promising passage on a boat they have tied up with its lights doused at the end of an unlit jetty.
3. 1d6 stevedores without work, looking for other ways to make some money.  They'll attempt robbery if the odds look good.
4. 2d4 city guards looking for a chance to use their new authority.
5. 2d4 smugglers trying to buy or steal valuable cargoes cheaply.
6. 2d6 angry and aimless sailors whose ship has left without them.

Market square

This is a wide cobbled square near the centre of the city, where the main roads intersect.  There are stalls selling everything from ironmongery to livestock.  Rumours spread quickly and everyone's already on edge, but people still need to buy food and other necessities.

Event table:

1. Someone with an obvious plague-rash collapses, groaning loudly.  People nearby scream and run, fearing infection.
2. A zealot is haranguing the crowd from a platform, telling them the plague is a judgement for their sins.  Some of the crowd are shouting at him to shut up and go away, others are nodding along and yelling encouragement.  There's potential for a riot.
3. A group of stallkeepers are packing up, planning to leave the city.  A group of bullies is telling them to leave their goods if they're going to run like cowards.  So far it's a stand-off.
4. A shout carries through the crowd "It's them!  They brought the plague here!" A group of hysterical townfolk are preparing to stone two foreigners.
5. A delegation of citizens are marching to the government square gates to demand that the city council take action on the plague.  They're followed by a large group of jumpy hangers-on.  City guards are massing at the gate to stop them entering.
6. Squads of guards begin moving through the crowd, arresting anyone who looks foreign, poor or a troublemaker.

Encounter table:

1. A hawker selling miracle cures.  1-in-6 chance they're actual medicine.  2-in-6 chance it's a purgative.
2. Town crier reading out a list of emergency measures the mayor has decreed.  The crowd's mood turns darker.
3. A madman, yelling that the gods will be satisfied and lift the plague if a wicked few will repent and mend their ways.
4. 1d4 town guards using their new authority to extort and pilfer from passersby.
5. 1d6 cultists preparing a ritual to appease the gods and bullying passersby into joining them.
6. 2d4 angry drunks looking for someone to blame for the plague.

Slums

The poorest of the citizens live here.  Guards never travel these streets.  Order is enforced by gangs.  Crime is everywhere.

Event table:

1. Families are barricading the entrance to this street and threatening anyone who approaches the barrier.
2. A gang are taking over a building, boarding up the ground floor entrances and shooting from windows at people who approach.
3. A mob have set fire to a building with several infected people inside.  They have the building surrounded and are throwing stones to keep anyone from escaping.  The fire threatens to spread to nearby buildings.
4. A family of labourers are preparing to publicly hang their landlord.  Passersby seem uninterested in helping him.
5. A man with one eye and a scarred face is handing out stolen liquor to anyone who wants it, making him the hero of the moment.
6. People are killing cats, dogs and rats and throwing their bodies into a bonfire as a preventative measure.

Encounter table:

1. A dead plague victim, lying in the street where they died.
2. A crippled beggar, shouting that the gods will spare those who show charity.
3. 2d4 gang members with rags tied around their faces and hands, extorting money from the healthy and clubbing the infected to death.
4. A hysterical mob of 2d10 + 10 stoning anyone who doesn't look like a slum-dweller.
5. An elderly couple who have been pushed into the street to fend for themselves.
6. 2d6 patrolling vigilantes, interrogating passersby about their business here.

Craft district

The city's middle class.  These streets are made of workshops and courtyards with homes above the shops.  The wealthy are often seen here as customers.

Event table:

1. Several fine riding horses are loose and milling around uncertainly.  They're on edge and ready to spook.
2. Hot metal in an abandoned forge has started a fire in the courtyard.  It's spreading.
3. A group of craftsmen are burning down their guildhall.
4. A group of craftsmen with their families and carts piled high with their belongings are forming a caravan to leave for another city.
5. Workshops all along this street are closing their gates and putting up their shutters.  Several are already abandoned.
6. A craftsman has fired his apprentices.  They have him cornered against a wall, angrily demanding back wages.

Encounter table:

1. Two masons armed with sledgehammers are grimly fighting two city guards with swords.
2. A woman supports a heavily-bleeding man while two young children cry and pull at her skirt.
3. A recently-killed man lies in the bed of a horseless cart.  Around him are cases and chests which have been broken open and tossed aside, empty.
4. 1d4 + 1 apprentices have broken into a cask of wine they were delivering and are laughing and staggering in the street.
5. 1d6 + 2 assorted craftsmen armed with workshop tools are facing off against a gang of 2d4 thieves.
6. A patrol of 2d6 city guards are walking the street, ordering anyone who looks out of place to leave the district.

Wealthy district

Big and luxurious homes with neat gardens and high walls to ensure their privacy.  The residents can afford their own security and city guards are only tolerated here.  The streets are watched and someone will take note of anyone who doesn't look like they belong.

Event table:

1. A burgher is directing his personal guard to prepare a gallows for a servant he suspects of stealing.  They're setting it up in the courtyard of his house.  Several of the city guard are watching but making no attempt to intervene.
2. A group of citizens have gathered outside an unpopular rich man's house, demanding that he come out and face them.  His only reply is to pour water on them from an upstairs window.  The crowd's mood is getting uglier.
3. A party is going on behind a high wall set with spikes along the top.  There's harp music, laughter and the sound of clinking glasses.  The gate has had a carriage overturned behind it to block it completely.
4. A maidservant is banging on a door pleading to be allowed back in.  She shouts that she's not infected because she hasn't been among strangers, but the door stays firmly shut.
5. A crowd of craftsmen, labourers and delivery carters is being pushed out of the district by a laughing mercenary squad, who are telling them they're not wanted here until the plague has run its course.
6. A richly-dressed man is setting his dogs on a shabbily-dressed one, shouting that he'll make an example of any thief he finds.

Encounter table:

1. A luxurious carriage with an armed driver and two crossbowmen on the roof.  Heavy brocade curtains hide the passengers.
2. 1d4 thieves dressed as and pretending to be servants.  They're keen to know the characters' business in case it points them towards a rich target.
3. 2d4 mounted lordlings, the sons of the ultra-rich.  They're armed and arrogant, playing at defending their district from looters and rioters.
4. 2d6 mercenaries patrolling the street.  They order anyone who isn't dressed expensively or as a servant to leave the district.
5. 2d6 city guards patrolling.  If any local citizens are watching, they attempt a show of hustling the characters away from the district.
6. 3d6 assorted citizens in various states of drunkenness, certain the rich are hoarding a cure for the plague, intending to take it for themselves and their families.

Gonzo mansion

Image by David Mark, downloaded from Pixabay

I like the gonzo element of a lot of OSR material.  Of course there's a logical reason the wizard built a maze out of live eels inside a colossal gem suspended within a dead god's eye socket.  But you're under no obligation to explain it to the players -- or even decide what it is in the first place.

And by the same logic I don't need a reason to roll a random selection of mansion rooms from the list provided at  this post on the Unlawful games blog and think up a trap, monster or quirky feature to go inside it.  I just can.

1. Polishing room
A room for polishing the ludicrous amount of silverware a stately home needs to keep it running.  Cutlery, tea sets, serving ware, carving knives, picture frames, knick-knacks by the score.

There may be something about the polish, because the cleaned silverware in this room is unusually lively.  A clucking teapot is chasing the squeaking pieces of a cruet set around the floor.  A dissatisfied cameo frame is looking for something, anything, to fill its centre.  Forks are flinging themselves with careless abandon.  Stats as Rat swarm.

Each round the characters spend in this room they can grab items worth 3d10 SP.  They also roll on the hazard table:
1 - 3: nothing.  Stash that loot safely away.  It goes dormant when removed from the room.
4: Save vs Paralysis or trip on a tea tray and go prone, dropping everything you picked up this round.
5: Save vs Devices or get bludgeoned by a flying sugar bowl for 1d4 HP.  Drop this round's loot.
6: Save vs Breath or be blasted by hot water from a leaping kettle.  Take 1d6 HP burn damage or drop all of your scalding hot loot.

2. Courtyard
An enclosed outdoor area with gravel paths, low hedges and a set of white-painted wrought iron furniture for taking tea on fine afternoons.

There's also a suicide tree intent on collecting more suicides.  It manifests nooses and helpfully drapes them around the neck of anyone unwary who walks the path below its branches, then yanks upwards.

Stats as Treant.  Cannot animate other trees.  Automatically surprises.  First character successfully attacked must save vs Paralysis to get free, 1d4 HP choking damage on each failure.

3. Crypt
The family mausoleum, where earlier generations have been interred one by one as their members succumbed to age, illness, quarrels or bad oysters.

Here you'll find ancient undead being lectured by even more ancient undead about their manners, music, laziness and lack of respect for their elders.  The ancient undead react with the kind of embarrassment teenagers would display when being scolded like children in front of strangers.  No-one's interested in eating, cursing or draining the vitality from the characters.  The ancient undead would like them to go away before they die a second time of humiliation, the more ancient undead want them to agree that children are selfish and stupid and exist only to break their mother's heart.

Don't be fooled though, they'll attack en masse if the characters threaten any of them.  Stats as Zombie.

4. Tack room
Storage for saddles, bridles, stirrups and other implements for operating a horse.

These saddles have been cooped up too long.  They want to be thrown over something and taken for a ride.  The characters will do nicely.  If they fail to fight off the riding equipment's grapple attack, they'll be saddled, tied up with bridles and forced to gallop about on all fours until it's had enough fun and who knows how long that will take.

Stats as Giant centipede (no poison).  Characters are automatically saddled on a hit.  Save vs Device to get free.

5. Porch
There's a swing seat creaking gently in the wind.  It looks so comfortable... so inviting. If anyone sits, the seat launches them towards the treeline.

Anyone who hears it creaking must save vs Magic or be charmed into sitting.  The first character to sit gets launched and takes 2d6 fall damage.

6. Guest house
A self-contained smaller house, for guests.  Smaller guests.  They're all halflings.  They may not have been halflings before they slept here.

Anyone who sleeps in this building becomes a halfling while asleep.  No save.  Each day following they get a save vs Magic and on success transform back again during their next period of sleep.

Oracles and fortune tellers

A house-rule I'm considering for that game I'm eternally planning to run is letting characters consult a fortune teller before leaving on an adventure.  The fortunes would be mostly beneficial to characters, letting them cash in a fortune to gain a one-time mechanical advantage.

But of course it wouldn't be any fun if all the results were advantages, would it?  Characters have to accept the risk that they've consulted a fraud, or the signs were unclear or the oracle didn't think the character's gift was impressive enough to really dig into what the spirits are saying today.

This settlement's oracle is (1d6):

1. A temple sybil, attended by priest-scribes in a high-roofed white room, surrounded by votive fires.
2. A blind madwoman who put out her own eyes to escape the visions, chained to keep her from hurting herself, managed by nurse-guards.
3. A scarred old soldier with a head wound that healed badly, sleeping rough under a bridge and mumbling to himself.
4. A former cleric to a scattered and suppressed cult of a god opposed to one of the characters' gods, living in a slum and selling predictions to earn a living.
5. A foreigner from a despised race, operating a booth in the marketplace and relying on her powers and wits to protect her from the locals' resentment.
6. A senile wizard, diminished in power but still prone to flashes of brilliance and uncannily accurate predictions.

The oracle tells fortunes by (1d6):

1. Drinking ergot mixed with wine and interpreting the visions.
2. Listening to the petitioner describe their dreams and explaining the meaning.
3. Observing the reflections of light on metal.
4. Reading the cards.
5. Staring into a dark glass and watching for portents.
6. Consulting the dead through necromantic ritual.

As payment the oracle asks for (1d6):

1. Gold equal to the price of a sword.
2. A personal item.  Just a trinket, really.  Nothing you'll miss.  Don't worry.
3. A prayer or minor sacrifice on the oracle's behalf.
4. Food, clothing, wine.  The basic necessities.
5. A handshake, a kiss... some kind of personal contact.  No, there's no hidden significance.  Why do you ask?
6. Visit a person the oracle describes and deliver a cryptic message.

In return the petitioner gets (1d10):

1. Character may re-roll one failed save of their choice.
2. False vision.  Character must re-roll one successful save of the GM's choice.
3. At a time of the player's choice the character can pull out the perfect piece of equipment for the situation.  Lose one encumbrance slot until then.
4. Character may retroactively disarm one trap.  Any harm done by it is simply a vision of what would have happened.
5. Incomplete vision. A single danger the character successfully avoids has a second, hidden, danger behind it.
6. The first time the encounter die indicates a wandering monster, the GM informs the player in time to avoid the encounter or gain surprise.
7. The character is made aware of one of the adventure's treasures and the general location it can be found.
8. Tunnel vision.  The character is made aware of one of the adventure's treasures that has a threat linked to it.  There's no mention of the threat.
9. During an encounter of the player's choice, the character is aware of the encountered creature's name.
10. During a hostile encounter of the player's choice, the character knows what tactics the encountered creature will use.

Some of these results would be appropriate to conceal until it's time for them to happen.  Rather than fooling the players, I'd give them something like "all will become clear when the time is right."  These advantages would last until the end of the current adventure.  If not cashed in, well, the fates are ever-changing and man is but a lesser piece on the game table of the gods.

1d6 magic coins

Abelard the Unreliable was a wizard of significant power, but considerably less wisdom.  People suspected he came by his talent through some unconventional parentage -- he was certainly never spotted reading a book or scroll.  He was lazy, dishonest, self-aggrandising and lacked any kind of foresight.  And he was often drunk.  His magical exploits revolved primarily around the enchanting of coins.

1. The Widow's Pension
   A low-denomination coin that, when placed in a purse with other coins, will transform them overnight into coins of the same denomination.  A blessing to someone poor, a curse to someone rich.  Abelard was easily moved to pity by the plight of the needy, but he hated bankers.  (Too many refusals to grant him credit.)
2. Innkeep's bane
   If this coin is used in payment, some time after it's placed in a purse with other coins, it will leap out and roll back to whoever spent it, taking all the other coins with it.  Abelard loved drinking in inns and pubs, but hated innkeepers bothering him for payment.  Why did they have to spoil his evening with their crass demands for sordid specie?  It didn't occur to him until the first time he used it that those rolling coins would function like a big arrow pointing straight at him.  And that there would be a panting innkeeper running after them carrying his barman's friend (a stout club).
3. Beggar's lament
   If given to a beggar or donated in an act of charity, the giver will shortly have a ridiculous encounter that ends with a significant piece of good luck (1d6):
   
   1. Two farmers and their cronies arguing over whose geese are fatter.  They will ask the character who donated the coin to be an impartial judge.  When the selection is made, the loser will stomp off in a bad mood and the winner will insist that the character accept his goose as a reward for letting everyone know Farmer Murphy's fowls are the best.  It's an ordinary, potentially delicious, goose.
   
   2. A richly-dressed man trotting on a fine horse will appear.  When he draws level with the character he will suddenly pause, shout that he is sick and tired of this damned excellent cloak! and throw it at the character's feet before trotting away.  The cloak is of quality cloth, waterproof and warm.
   
   3. An old man in battered armour hails the character.  His daughter married a wealthy merchant and now she's insisting that he move in with them so she can look after him in his sunset years.  He supposes he ought to go, his sight isn't so reliable these days.  But a good sword should never retire!  He offers the character a high-quality and well-maintained blade.
   
   4. A fat, cheerful, drunk man is sitting at the roadside next to a cart with a broken axle.  He can't push it to the cartwright's workshop for repair while it's weighed down by its load of good ale, but wouldn't it be a shame to pour it all out?  He gives the character a full tun of quality ale.  It can be easily rolled.
   
   5. A matronly woman waves the character down.  She's been baking pork pies all morning for her husband's birthday, but now he's sick and can't get out of bed.  It would be an insult to the pig if any of those good pies go to waste.  She gives the character a large, freshly baked pie.  It smells mouth-watering.
   
   6. An attractive young man or woman is travelling to their home town to enter a contest of skill at the village festival.  They're nervous and want to kiss a stranger for good luck (a common superstition in their area).  The character is the one to catch their eye.
   
   The beggar who receives the coin will find it sticks itself to their forehead until they perform a charitable act of their own.  Abelard respected generosity, but he was easily annoyed by beggars.
4. The Price of Silence
   If used in payment for a crime, this coin will sink into the criminal's skin and hide inside their body.  If they ever try to talk about the crime, it will leap into their throat and try to choke them.  Abelard used it to pay a peasant for releasing a greased pig inside a church.  Since that time it's been used in payment for murders, thefts, beatings and frauds.  Abelard would feel bad about that, but probably not for long.
5. The Sure Thing
   If flipped, the symbol on this coin will change to whatever is spoken aloud while it's in the air.  Abelard liked to settle his debts by suggesting a double-or-nothing bet on the flip of a coin.  People were often reluctant to let him flip, but happy enough to let him supply the coin.
6. The Sour Joke
   Abelard created this coin to amuse children with the what's-that-coin-doing-behind-your-ear trick.  If placed behind a child's ear while concealed from view it turns into two coins, of a value to buy a child's treat.  If repeated, four coins, then eight.  Unfortunately, this spell wasn't quite ready.  Each time someone attempts to use it, there's a 1-in-6 chance it will actually get stuck in the child's ear, where it was cause considerable discomfort and require very careful extraction.  Tears are unavoidable.