"Ok. Do I still get the experience?"
BORING
And perhaps a little contrived, but whatever, my point still stands. A bar fight? How do you know? Black-out drunk, wake up with bruises on your face and shin, a fistful of someone else's hair in your mouth, and the other guy is in the cell over trying to pick your pocket through the bars.
Now that's what I call Carousing. Sure, if you narrate it well it can be interesting. But players and DM-alike get all the information at once, and there's an easy temptation for it to just... slide away. Excellent and impactful Carousing mishaps should be something you can't just ignore. Here's my take: until you know exactly what happened, is it safe to ignore it? Sure, it might've just been a bar-fight... but who with? Where? What happened? Enter, stage left - What the Fuck Did I Do Last Night?
Rather than dictating exactly what happened, the results are both concrete and freeform. You may never know exactly what happened, but you're very unlikely to get out of it scot-free! Roll each of the following questions in order, but only when the character has a moment to take stock of the situation. Assuming you failed a Constitution roll to end up in this situation, make a note of the value. Some of entries have two options (odds is left, evens right)
Where am I?
- In a gutter
- A closet
- On someone else's floor
- In the lockup
- Still at the bar
- Rolled up in a rug
- In a sewer
- A gibbet / the stocks
- In the dark
- In a wizards tower
- In a nice bed
- In a palatial suite
- Falling down a large hole
- The top of a building
- The cupboards of a busy tavern
- In a sack, carried
- A wagon of vegetables heading out of town
- The middle of the street
- On a stage, about to give a speech
- An operating theatre
What am I wearing?
- No pants
- One shoe, not yours
- Socks bearing strange formulae
- A suspiciously damp shirt
- A beard
- Painful bruises everywhere
- Lash marks
- A helmet, horns optional
- Blood, probably not yours
- Wizard hat, nothing else
- The tanned hide of a bear
- A crown
- A sword in an ill-fitting sheathe
- 1d20 copper coins in odd and uncomfortable places. Very uncomfortable, in some cases
- Dapper suit
- Peanut butter
- Children's clothes
- Ballet slippers
- Mascot costume
- Toga
Who am I with?
- Two clowns
- A gorilla / a sleeping tiger
- A pile of spiders / a snake
- An attractive woman/man
- Your lawyer
- Someone's wife/husband
- A rival adventurer
- A mercenary/bandit (hard to tell)
- Four dwarves in various states of inebriation
- A half-elf with a frightening mohawk
- A notably rich merchant
- An heir/ess with a contagious disease
- A different party member
- A talking skull/book
- A hidden voice
- Three slaves, chains broken
- An apprentice wizard, in the middle of casting a spell
- An inebriated paladin
- Someone who looks suspiciously like you
- Nobody. You can’t find anyone at all…
To demonstrate, I kludged this out of my list to HTML translator. However, for maximum enjoyment I would recommend that the DM roll on the d20 table only when the player actually asks the question. Embrace contradictions wholeheartedly and with enthusiasm.
Do you mind if I ask how you coded that autogenerator? I'm sure there are templates out there I could find, but did you use one or write it up from scratch? I have a tiny bit of experience with HTML but I've been meaning to learn more, and doing something like that was one of the things I wanted to learn how to do!
ReplyDeleteOne of the other posts on his blog here provides a generator for just this!
DeleteWhoops, forgot to link that, should be there now.
DeleteForgot to check the box to get emails to comment responses haha, only seeing this now, thanks!
Delete