+5 Spring of Disgust

I'm still trying to pin down the final format for this blog. I'm not sure I have the motivation to make a post every day. But I do like talking about table top games, and it isn't like I'm going to run out of things to talk about. I'm also considering the idea of doing different segments on different days. Something like Homebrew Tuesdays, and Silly Fridays. That feels like it might be crazy confining though.

So maybe I'll just make up segment names as I go along, and throw them around like a child throwing glitter.

Yeah. That sounds like it will work.

In the meantime, my friend Sam Mameli made a post about six hexes that you would find in his game. It reminded me of one of my favorite things. It's the Weird Shit Fantasy Generator!

Take this for example: A square of frayed silk cloth found in a long abandoned journal. The square has the power to grant inter-dimensional translocation, but it spreads disease. Oh, and according to the generator, it forgives too? So... I guess we can make it a square of fabric sliced from the robes of a plague god. It does allow you to teleport across dimensions (alternate reality style, not plane-hop style), but whenever it vanishes from a reality a plague takes its place and begins to spread. Finding the square is the only way for a fallen paladin or cleric of the plague god to regain their powers - which they do by giving the fabric back to the god from whence it came.

That's almost an adventure right there! Let's try this again!

(Warning, this one is a bit... gross!) This spring comes from a distant meteor and is made of feces. It grows larger when living beings voluntarily sacrifice to it. It creates insects. It echoes and baits.

First reaction, ew! But it came from the generator. So let's work with this weird thing. My first reaction is that a magical spring is a super odd thing to work into a game. We aren't taking water spring here, but a slinky like spring. That grows larger by accepting willing sacrifices? That's made out of poop?!

But this is my take on it, and I think it works! The spring travels on a meteor, all that is left of a distant machine planet. The meteor is full of these magitech nanobots, and all they want is to reach perfection. But they are bound by holy magic to never hurt a living being. So when the meteor crashes into the world (a disaster with plot points all on its own), the nanobots start to explore. They take the shape of insects - millions of them - that start to swarm across the world.

The insect magitech bots find a town full of people. The people could be used as raw resources to help build THE SPRING, the perfect shape that spirals endlessly around reality. But they can't actively hurt the townsfolk. So instead they bait the town to pick up a new religion. Eventually the entire town is following this made up religion, and it all culminates in a Jones Town-esque scene where almost everyone kills themselves in the name of their new deity.

The insects devour everything, and stream back to the meteor. The crawl all over the spring, and as they expel their biomass it turns into adamentium, making THE SPRING ever larger.

There! I did it! That's another adventure, and it isn't even all that gross!

The point is - I love this ridiculous generator. I've never actually used it for a game, but I can't count the number of crazy things I've generated just because. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.