Tuesday, March 7, 2017

15 Encounter Seeds and a Goblin Generator

Since I'm still in the process of cleaning, I've found quite a few pieces of weird OSR stuff. This piece is slightly more recent, and seems to be something I wrote down when I should have been paying attention in class. The front half of the page contains a list of 15 encounter ideas for a goblin-based dungeon (I recall I recently had watched the Del Toro version of Don't be Afraid of the Dark when I made this), drawing off of the concept of goblins being fey creatures.

The back side of the paper is a very brief description of goblins, a quick sketch, some combat statistics for Basic Fantasy RPG, and a short d8 table for goblin characteristics.

First, here are what the encounters were, my notes from now are in italics.

  1. Basement of the Osgoods. A hole has been dug through the wall. It appears this dungeon is built beneath the basement of some family called the Osgoods. There were no other pages to this manuscript, so I'm not sure the specifics, but I recall them being somewhat wealthy.
  2. This room is full of mushrooms. Some goblins are hiding here. 
  3. A severed human hand is clutching a candle.
  4. Blood from the hand leads here to Gary Osgood's corpse. He is stripped of all valuables except for his iron crucifix necklace. Based on the necklace, it looks like this dungeon is intended to be set in the real world, or at least something similar to it.
  5. A pile of bleached white children's bones reach up to the ceiling.
  6. Something skitters away when the players approach. A broken doll lies on the floor. I notice there are a lot of atmospheric encounters here.
  7. Goblins will jump from the ceiling.
  8. Goblins are having a sickening feast. I'm not entirely sure what this means. Is the food disgusting? Do goblins have bad eating habits?
  9. Stolen trinkets piled here. 
  10. A circle of mushrooms is in the center of the room. Pale moonlight shines from a crack in the ceiling. It is day when the adventurer's entered the basement. Okay I have to hand it to me, this one is pretty neat.
  11. A spider with the face of Abigail Osgood spins a web in the room, Abigail's faceless body twitches in the corner.
  12. A pool contains children's teeth and glows. If any teeth are retrieved, skeletons erupt from the walls, encrusted with filth and roots, and attack.
  13. A cockroach of human flesh asks a riddle. If the answer is wrong, he disappears, and swarms of cockroaches erupt from the walls. If answered correctly, he collapses into a pile of skin. A lot of these encounter ideas are quite surreal.
  14. A golden ring sits on a pedestal. If removed, an axe comes down from the ceiling and severed the thief's hand.
  15. The goblin king and his servants are turning Mary Osgood into a goblin. 
These ideas are really hit or miss, with some being profoundly disturbing while others seem lazy. However, there is still the back side of the page to be explored.

Goblin
AC: 14
HD: 1
ATK: 1 bite or by weapon 
DMG: 1d4 or by weapon
Special: 1 in 10 goblins can cast spells as a third level magic-user

Goblins have a variety of physical forms, but are all mischievous, short, and evil. They come from the Faerie realm, and steal children to make into their own. Elves and Dwarves fled from Faerie because of these foul beasts.

Goblin Feature Generator

          Head           Skin           Extra
  1. Insect          Slimy         Wings
  2. Human        Dry             Horns
  3. Skull           Scaly          Antennae
  4. Rat-like      Hairy           Extra Eyes
  5. Frog            Diseased     Second Mouth
  6. Bird            Burnt          No eyes
  7. Goat            Bark           Spikes
  8. Mushroom  Carapace    Tail
I'm not sure how entirely useful this will be to any of you, but I personally might be using a variant of this table in the future for goblin tribes to develop their physical features. In addition, some of those encounter ideas are actually usable, I must try and make an adventure out of them someday...

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