7d6, split between two attributes

On 20 Feb 2020, PlanetNiles (Ey/Em) NB on the workshop channel of the OSR Discord asked¹:

7d6, split between two attributes

What values are even possible?

One way to think about this is not in terms of the values themselves, but in terms of the difference between the two paired attributes. The maximum difference is when all dice are allocated to one attribute, leaving the other empty. This is then equivalent to the sum of the dice.

The minimum difference between the two is a form of the well-studied partition problem: given a set of numbers, can it be split into two sub-sets with equal sums? A heuristic method that can usually² find the smallest difference between our two subsets (and therefore if they can be equal or not) is called the Karmarkar-Karp method, which works as follows:

1. Take the two largest numbers in the set. Assume that these will go in opposite partitions.
2. Because they will go in opposite partitions, we subtract them from each other.
3. Instead of now deciding which partitions they will go in, we return the difference between them to the set. This is effectively deferring that decision until later.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 until there are only two numbers left. The difference of these last two numbers is the smallest difference we can make with this set.

Note that we didn't actually find what the partitions are, only what the difference between them is here. I hope this is clear enough, but I'm also sure that clearer explanations can be found with minimal searching.

With some wrangling, we can produce this lovely chart, where a heavier hexagon is a more likely pairing.

Hexagons are elegant, as odd/even combinations that cannot occur are skipped naturally.

From this, it looks like the system gives a lot of flexibility in assigning scores to your attributes.

What Values are Likely?

I have a concern about this mechanic though: if you give someone a range of numbers, and tell them to pick one, they will tend to pick in the middle³. If a player is dead-set on being boring, how boring can they be?

It might not be exactly true, but we can show the distribution of all the high stats and all the low stats together, and then compare them to the distribution of 7d6 literally divided in half (which is approximately normal).

This doesn't look great, but PlanetNiles has actually already got us covered here:

Of course. I'd further consider including subsystems where the difference between attributes had some sort of effect. So favouring one over the other would prove beneficial in some way, or at least open up different options.

The strength of this mechanic then will rely on the strength of the system. Given the range of the first figure though, I have confidence that an interesting system could be built here.

What about other mechanics?

Suppose we were looking for a similar mechanic, except that it would force a difference between the attributes where possible. We might expect intuitively, that fewer dice and larger dice are harder to partition effectively. This table gives the probability of a forced difference (although does not consider the size of that difference).

From this table, I thought I would look at 3d20, because it forces a difference the most often. The figures below have the same interpretations as the similar ones above, but for 3d20 instead of 7d6.

Python

This was my first project using Python, and I think it's an all right language. It'll probably displace Octave in my repertoire, but I'm sure I'll be right back at Perl if I start doing string stuff again. The code's a bit janky, but you can take a look here.

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1 “Asked” a little more directly this time, if only because I asked first.^back

2 According to Wikipedia, this method is “bad for instances where the numbers are exponential in the size of the set,” so like, probably fine?^back

3 I only know this anecdotally: if you tell a plant operator to keep some process temperature between a high limit and a low limit, without fail they will control it to the middle of the two. It makes sense to a person, but the optimal temperature is provably at one of the two extremes. Possibly, this is an extension of the anchoring effect.^back

5d6 but only count straights and matching

On 7 Feb 2020, diregrizzlybear on the GLOG channel of the OSR Discord asked¹:

5d6 but only count straights and matching.

One solution might be to list all the rolls and score each one. This is probably feasible with a script. Instead, I enumerated the “hands”, and then found the probabilities of each of those.

Hands with No Degrees of Freedom

Run of Five

There are only two runs of five: ⚀⚁⚂⚃⚄ and ⚁⚂⚃⚄⚅. There is only one way to “make” each of these hands (“Count”), but because each die has a different face, there are 5!=120 possible orderings of each hand (Permutations).

Hand	Score	Count	Permutations	Odds
⚀⚁⚂⚃⚄	15	1	120	120
⚁⚂⚃⚄⚅	20	1	120	120

Quintuple

There are six possible quintuples, and again, there is only one way to construct each one. While there are 5! possible orderings of five dice, because five of them are interchangeable, there is only one possible ordering of a quintuple (5!/5!=1), which makes a quintuple much less likely than a run of five.

If this seems counter-intuitive, consider rolling one die five times in order. If your first roll is a ⚀, to eventually score quintuples, the next roll must also be a ⚀ (1/6 odds). To eventually score a run of five, the next roll must only be not ⚅ or ⚀ (4/6 odds).

Hand	Score	Count	Permutations	Odds
⚀⚀⚀⚀⚀	5	1	1	1
⚁⚁⚁⚁⚁	10	1	1	1
⚂⚂⚂⚂⚂	15	1	1	1
⚃⚃⚃⚃⚃	20	1	1	1
⚄⚄⚄⚄⚄	25	1	1	1
⚅⚅⚅⚅⚅	30	1	1	1

Run of Three + Double

There are 24 ways to score a run of three + double: 4 runs of three and 6 doubles. Depending on the doubled number, it may be possible to score this as other hands (run of four, triple), but this is never advantageous.

Because of the doubled number, there will be fewer ways to order this hand than a run of five, but more than a quintuple. If the doubled number is in the run, there are 5!/3!=20 possible orderings, and if it is not, then there are 5!2!=60.

Hand	Score	Count	Permutations	Odds
⚀⚁⚂⚀⚀	8	1	20	20
⚀⚁⚂⚁⚁	10	1	20	20
⚀⚁⚂⚂⚂	12	1	20	20
⚀⚁⚂⚃⚃	14	1	60	60
⚀⚁⚂⚄⚄	16	1	60	60
⚀⚁⚂⚅⚅	18	1	60	60
⚁⚂⚃⚀⚀	11	1	60	60
⚁⚂⚃⚁⚁	13	1	20	20
⚁⚂⚃⚂⚂	15	1	20	20
⚁⚂⚃⚃⚃	17	1	20	20
⚁⚂⚃⚄⚄	19	1	60	60
⚁⚂⚃⚅⚅	21	1	60	60
⚂⚃⚄⚀⚀	14	1	60	60
⚂⚃⚄⚁⚁	16	1	60	60
⚂⚃⚄⚂⚂	18	1	20	20
⚂⚃⚄⚃⚃	20	1	20	20
⚂⚃⚄⚄⚄	22	1	20	20
⚂⚃⚄⚅⚅	24	1	60	60
⚃⚄⚅⚀⚀	17	1	60	60
⚃⚄⚅⚁⚁	19	1	60	60
⚃⚄⚅⚂⚂	21	1	60	60
⚃⚄⚅⚃⚃	23	1	20	20
⚃⚄⚅⚄⚄	25	1	20	20
⚃⚄⚅⚅⚅	27	1	20	20

Triple + Double

There are 30 ways to score a triple + double: 6 ways to score one and then 5 remaining ways to score the other (to exclude quintuples, which are already accounted for). As with run of three + double, we must account for duplicated numbers when counting orderings. There are then 5!/(3!*2!)=10 permutations of each.

Hand	Score	Count	Permutations	Odds
⚀⚀⚀⚁⚁	7	1	10	10
⚀⚀⚀⚂⚂	9	1	10	10
⚀⚀⚀⚃⚃	11	1	10	10
⚀⚀⚀⚄⚄	13	1	10	10
⚀⚀⚀⚅⚅	15	1	10	10
⚁⚁⚁⚀⚀	8	1	10	10
⚁⚁⚁⚂⚂	12	1	10	10
⚁⚁⚁⚃⚃	14	1	10	10
⚁⚁⚁⚄⚄	16	1	10	10
⚁⚁⚁⚅⚅	18	1	10	10
⚂⚂⚂⚀⚀	11	1	10	10
⚂⚂⚂⚁⚁	13	1	10	10
⚂⚂⚂⚃⚃	17	1	10	10
⚂⚂⚂⚄⚄	19	1	10	10
⚂⚂⚂⚅⚅	21	1	10	10
⚃⚃⚃⚀⚀	14	1	10	10
⚃⚃⚃⚁⚁	16	1	10	10
⚃⚃⚃⚂⚂	18	1	10	10
⚃⚃⚃⚄⚄	22	1	10	10
⚃⚃⚃⚅⚅	24	1	10	10
⚄⚄⚄⚀⚀	17	1	10	10
⚄⚄⚄⚁⚁	19	1	10	10
⚄⚄⚄⚂⚂	21	1	10	10
⚄⚄⚄⚃⚃	23	1	10	10
⚄⚄⚄⚅⚅	27	1	10	10
⚅⚅⚅⚀⚀	20	1	10	10
⚅⚅⚅⚁⚁	22	1	10	10
⚅⚅⚅⚂⚂	24	1	10	10
⚅⚅⚅⚃⚃	26	1	10	10
⚅⚅⚅⚄⚄	28	1	10	10

Hands with One Degree of Freedom

Run of Four

There are three possible runs of four: ⚀⚁⚂⚃x, ⚁⚂⚃⚄x, ⚂⚃⚄⚅x, where x is our “unfixed” die (our degree of freedom). If x is equal to either the highest or lowest element of the run, then we instead have a run of three + double. If it is equal to a number after either end of the run, then we instead have a run of five. So for ⚀⚁⚂⚃x and ⚂⚃⚄⚅x, x has three possible values, and for ⚁⚂⚃⚄x, x has two possible values. We will also consider the cases where x is “inside” the run and “outside” the run separately, as the number of permutations is different.

Hand	Score	Count	Permutations	Odds
⚀⚁⚂⚃x;x∈{⚁,⚂}	10	2	60	120
⚀⚁⚂⚃x;x=⚅	10	1	120	120
⚁⚂⚃⚄x;x∈{⚂,⚃}	14	2	60	120
⚂⚃⚄⚅x;x∈{⚃,⚄}	18	2	60	120
⚂⚃⚄⚅x;x=1	18	1	120	120

Quadruple

There are 6 possible quadruples, with 5 ways to construct each one (again, to exclude quintuples). There are 5!/4!=5 permutations of a quadruple.

Hand	Score	Count	Permutations	Odds
⚀⚀⚀⚀x	4	5	5	25
⚁⚁⚁⚁x	8	5	5	25
⚂⚂⚂⚂x	12	5	5	25
⚃⚃⚃⚃x	16	5	5	25
⚄⚄⚄⚄x	20	5	5	25
⚅⚅⚅⚅x	24	5	5	25

Two Doubles

There are 15 ways to score two doubles (half as many as triple + double, because it doesn't matter which number is the first multiple and which number is the second). The unfixed die (x) can take any of the four remaining values². A hand of two doubles has 120!/(2!*2!)=30 permutations.

Hand	Score	Count	Permutations	Odds
⚀⚀⚁⚁x	6	4	30	120
⚀⚀⚂⚂x	8	4	30	120
⚀⚀⚃⚃x	10	4	30	120
⚀⚀⚄⚄x	12	4	30	120
⚀⚀⚅⚅x	14	4	30	120
⚁⚁⚂⚂x	10	4	30	120
⚁⚁⚃⚃x	12	4	30	120
⚁⚁⚄⚄x	14	4	30	120
⚁⚁⚅⚅x	16	4	30	120
⚂⚂⚃⚃x	14	4	30	120
⚂⚂⚄⚄x	16	4	30	120
⚂⚂⚅⚅x	18	4	30	120
⚃⚃⚄⚄x	18	4	30	120
⚃⚃⚅⚅x	20	4	30	120
⚄⚄⚅⚅x	22	4	30	120

Hands with Two Degrees of Freedom

Run of Three

There are 4 runs of three: ⚀⚁⚂xy, ⚁⚂⚃xy, ⚂⚃⚄xy, ⚃⚄⚅xy. However, x cannot equal y (else we have run of three + doubles), x and y cannot both equal numbers in the run (else we have two doubles), and neither of x and y can equal a fourth part in the run (else we have a run of four).

For a run of three with no duplicates (for example, ⚀⚁⚂⚄⚅), there are 5!=120 permutations. For a run of three with one duplicate, there are 5!/2!=60 permutations.

Hand	Score	Count	Permutations	Odds
⚀⚁⚂xy;x∈{⚀⚁⚂},y∈{⚄⚅}	6	6	60	360
⚀⚁⚂xy;(x,y)=(⚄,⚅)	6	1	120	120
⚁⚂⚃xy;x∈{⚁⚂⚃},y=⚅	9	3	60	180
⚂⚃⚄xy;x∈{⚂⚃⚄},y=⚀	12	3	60	180
⚃⚄⚅xy;x∈{⚃⚄⚅},y∈{⚀⚁}	15	6	60	360
⚃⚄⚅xy;(x,y)=(⚀,⚁)	15	1	120	120

Triple

There are six possible triples, each with two degrees of freedom (x,y). x cannot equal y, neither of x and y can equal the tripled number, and x and y cannot form a run of three with the tripled number. There are then (5²-5)/2-R=10-R ways to make each triple, where R is the number of runs of three containing the tripled number.

Hand	Score	Count	Permutations	Odds
⚀⚀⚀xy	3	9	20	180
⚁⚁⚁xy	6	8	20	160
⚂⚂⚂xy	9	7	20	140
⚃⚃⚃xy	12	7	20	140
⚄⚄⚄xy	15	8	20	160
⚅⚅⚅xy	18	9	20	180

Hands with Three Degrees of Freedom

Doubles

There are six possible doubles, each with three degrees of freedom (x,y,z). None of x, y, and z can equal each other, none of x, y, and z can equal the doubled number, and x, y, and z cannot form a run with the tripled number. There are then 5!/(3!*(5-3)!)-R1-R2 =10-R1-R2 ways to make each double, where R1 is the number of runs of three (4) and R2 is the number of runs of four containing the doubled number.

Hand	Score	Count	Permutations	Odds
⚀⚀xyz	2	5	60	300
⚁⚁xyz	4	4	60	240
⚂⚂xyz	6	3	60	180
⚃⚃xyz	8	3	60	180
⚄⚄xyz	10	4	60	240
⚅⚅xyz	12	5	60	300

Other Hands

Other hands are not possible with 5 dice, but I did not bother to prove this more formally. Instead, I can show that all hands are accounted for: there are 6^5=7776 possible rolls (in order), and the sum of all the “Odds” of the above hands is 7776.

Results

Now we can sum the odds by score (instead of by hand) and normalize them. This gives us the following distribution.

Score	Odds
1	0
2	300
3	180
4	265
5	1
6	940
7	10
8	355
9	330
10	741
11	80
12	915
13	40
14	620
15	791
16	405
17	100
18	760
19	140
20	296
21	140
22	160
23	30
24	105
25	21
26	10
27	30
28	10
29	0
30	1

The minimum score is 2, maximum 30, mean ~12.4, median 11, and mode 6. My spreadsheet is a bit messy, but you can see it here. Let me know if anything here seems off.

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1 “Asked” is a strong word. Nobody asked for this.^back

2 In the case of ⚀⚀⚁⚁⚂, both run of three and two doubles would score 6. For convenience, we will consider it as two doubles, because restrictions to exclude it are already part of the math for a run of three.^back

Discourse & Discord

“The Discourse”

I can't keep up with The Discourse. There's always something happening, and I mostly don't care. But I try to be a good person and also to not support shitty people, so I have to care a little.

I stopped using the "OSR" tag on this blog, because it has been associated with a lot of terrible people, and also it seemed unnecessary¹. This was an imperfect solution because "OSR" has a defined sensibility that it was useful to have a name for. (*DREAM is a cool group, but I think it's turning into something different—compare a game like Songbirds V2 with a game like Bastionland.)

Then Zedeck had a thread and pointed out that it was selfish to continue playing in the space but to disown the label. I still respect people who used to be "OSR" and then decided that it didn't actually describe the games they enjoy, or that it wasn't worth dealing with the people. But I'll try to use the "OSR" tag for my stuff where it seems relevant, and also to be a decent person.

Discord

Where is the OSR community now? As far as I engage with it: mostly Discord. Many Discord servers are runaway reactors of creativity. Unfortunately, they're also transient, and brief conversations get lost. Here's some things to come of them that I hope others might find useful.

Troika! Backgrounds Jam

I may never play Troika! proper, but it's an infectious idea. Similarly, I don't know if I'll ever sell my games, but itch.io seems to be where the cool games are these days. The Troika! Backgrounds Jam was apparently the push I needed to throw something together and put it on itch². The jam is over, but this clip of how-to seems worth keeping:

(Instructions from Jared Sinclair, used by permission.)

And here is my entry, loosely inspired by Dial H:

I went ahead and put Bloodring up there too:

Alternate Beholders

Something about a beholder demands an answer. "Dungeons and Dragons" is nominally about dragons, but you know you're really playing D&D when you see a beholder. The 5e Monster Manual has three or four variant beholders. The AD&D Monstrous Manual has twelve. Everyone wants to do their own take³.

So the OSR Discord server was brainstorming alternative "beholders": burning wheels of eyes, disco-laser robots, etc. And I had what I thought was a pretty good idea, and now a bona fide meme: An Octopus with Too Many Wands. Now that we've survived one in Spwack's game, I thought I'd take the opportunity to share the idea here for posterity. It's a great monster: it's weird, it's dangerous, it's intuitive, and it makes its own treasure.

(Art from Nate Treme, used by permission.)

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1 I call all the games I play "D&D" in speech, even things like Mothership. It's just easier sometimes.^back

2 Looking back at my blogging, I find I am unexpectedly motivated by challenges and competitions, even though I am not a competitive person by nature.^back

3 What I can find on short notice includes:

• The Panopticium
• The Lookyloo
• The Ones Left Behind
• Improved Beholders

But there are many many more, I'm sure.^back

Black Ships and Bad Hydrodynamics

I was going to make a quick fun game about boats. Treasure Island, The Odyssey, One Piece. I wasn't going to get caught up in the details of how boats work. I told myself this at the outset, and believed it. I was going to borrow liberally from other, nicer rulesets, and not worry about realism. Now I'm writing about boat hydrodynamics.

When Viking explorers found new lands, they were usually about a week's sailing away. More distant lands were reached by following a chain of smaller stops. This is because they could survive for about two weeks at sea, so one week was the point of no return¹. Rather than start with existing historic boats, we can take this type of exploration as our goal, and then work out how best achieve it.

Some Rules

I haven't playtested these, they're just draft rules.

• Every week, the crew² rolls against mishaps. An undercrewed ship rolls with disadvantage.
• An overburdened ship moves at half speed.
• When there are fewer sacks³ of supplies than people, the ship is at half rations. At half rations, all ability checks are rolled at disadvantage. For each additional week at half rations, an additional die is added to the disadvantage (e.g. on two weeks of half rations, an ability check is the worst result of three dice). This assumes some kind of subsistence fishing, scavenging, rationing, etc. This doesn't kill you directly, but you're going to die.

Mishaps

1. 1d4 sacks of supplies lost or spoiled
2. ship damaged - move at half speed (rigging, rudder, etc.)
3. you are lost
4. injury among the crew
5. disease among the crew
6. stowaway found
7. becalmed for 1d6 days
8. ill omen - next mishap check at disadvantage unless the crew makes appropriate supplication

Encounters

Encounters at sea are never by surprise excepting with beasts, and evasion is down to chance (1d4 to evade: on a 1, success, on a 2, success but off-course or lost day).

1. Global Faction
2. Local Faction
3. Foreign Faction
4. Unaffiliated
5. Wild
6. Flotsam or sign

Exploration Sailing

Going back to "islands are a week away", we can interpret this two ways, which I will call the "dense ocean" assumption and the "sparse ocean" assumption. Given the distances and speeds involved, the classical 6-mile hex quickly becomes more hindrance than help, and instead everything is worked out in points and lines. Obviously all these assumptions are different for large ships with large crews, but I don't think those are conducive to the game I'm trying to make here. It's also worth noting that I'm explicitly fitting the geography to the type of game I want to run here, not to any kind of reality.

Visibility

A person can see d km away on a clear day at sea, where:

$$d=\sqrt{13h}$$

and:
d is distance seen (km) and
h is the height above sea level (m).

This means:

• A 2-meter person standing at roughly sea level can see 5 km.
• A person standing atop a 30 m crow's nest can see 20 km.
• In ideal conditions, smoke rises to a mixing height of 518 m, so can be seen from 82 km away.
• A bird flying at 4000 m can see and be seen from 228 km.

The Dense Ocean

On average, there is an island one week's travel in any direction.

This means that each day of exploration, there is a 1-in-7 chance of finding an island. Call it 1-in-8 and be done with it.

The Sparse Ocean

On average, the nearest island is 1 week away.

This means that in a circle of radius one week's travel, there will be an expected two islands (start and destination). Here I will make a series of poor assumptions which allow me to simplify my calculations: Assume that the ship will sail in a straight line each day in one of eight directions, and that it will see everything there is to see in that direction. The area seen in one day is then:

$$A_{\mathit{day}}=\frac{1}{8}\pi {(\frac{1}{7}r)}^2$$

where:
A_day is the area of ocean seen in one day, and
r is the distance traveled in one week.

Then the probability of finding an island in a week is roughly:

$$P_{\mathit{week}}=2\times \frac{7(\frac{1}{8}\ast \pi {(\frac{1}{7}r)}^2)}{\pi r^2}=\frac{1}{28}$$

and the probability of finding an island on any given day is:

$$P_{\mathit{day}}=\frac{1}{7}\times \frac{1}{28}=\frac{1}{196}$$

Exploration sailing is terrible using a sparse ocean.

What about Vikings?

The Draken Harald Hårfagre has a top speed of 14 knots or 25.928 km/hr. If the crew never rests, then the ship could travel 4356 km in a week. If they use birds to find land, then they explore a swath of ocean 4356 km x 2(228) km in one week. The probability of finding an island is then:

$$P_{\mathit{week}}=2\times \frac{2d\times r}{\pi r^2}=2\times \frac{2(228)\times 4356}{\pi {(4356)}^2}=\frac{912}{4356\pi }\approx 0.0666$$

and

$$P_{\mathit{day}}=\frac{1}{7}{P}_{\mathit{week}}\approx 0.01$$

This is about twice as good odds as with worse assumptions, but still doesn't seem great. I'm sure that realistic exploration sailing had any number of other factors going for it and the math here is all wrong, but for my purposes the Dense Ocean seems more fun anyway.

How Much?

Assume a party of 5 people. We'll say that a week's supplies for one person is a sack, and in addition each person has a sack of tools and gear. So our small ship must now carry 20 sacks of weight (5 people, 10 supplies, 5 gear).

Old ships are measured in tonnage⁴, the number of tun-casks the ship could fit. From this random image I found, a tun cask takes four people to carry, so is equivalent to 4 sacks. Therefore our small ship is 5 tons.

How Fast?

An early limitation on ship speed is the "hull speed", where:

$$V_{\mathit{hull}}=1.34\sqrt{L_{\mathit{WL}}}$$

and:
V_hull is the hull speed (knots), and
L_WL is the length of the ship measured at the waterline (ft).
Strictly speaking this isn't a "limitation", but I must stress that we're talking about terrible boats here.

From the tonnage, we can back-calculate the length of the ship using the Builder's Old Measurement:

$$T=\frac{(L_{\mathit{OA}}-\frac{3}{5}b)\times b\times \frac{b}{2}}{94}$$

where:
T is the tonnage (tons burden),
L_OA is the over-all length of the ship (from stem to sternpost, ft), and
b is the beam, or width of the ship (ft)
and also using a random rule-of-thumb found on Wikipedia somewhere:

$$b=\sqrt[3]{L_{\mathit{OA}}^2}+1$$

(L_OA and b in ft.) Finally, we must assume that, for our purposes, the waterline length is equal to the overall length. This isn't a great assumption, but it's not terrible if our boat is built more like a bathtub than a canoe.

With all of this, I wrote a quick ocatve script to generate the following table:

T (tons)	LOA (ft)	Vhull (knots)
1	9.5255	4.1357
2	12.837	4.8011
3	15.294	5.2404
4	17.319	5.5766
5	19.074	5.8523
6	20.639	6.0876
7	22.061	6.2939
8	23.372	6.4782
9	24.593	6.6453
10	25.739	6.7983

At this point, I started to think I might have lost track of where I started, so I stopped. When someone asked "how fast do boats go" on a Discord server, I just pointed them at this table from Labyrinth Lord:

Underdark-Ocean Island Generator

One more in a continuing series.

Where to get it

The Manse

What is it

Six tables, d6-d12, giving approach, material, monster, hazards, treasures, and inhabitants (1-in-6).

Sample Output

Island 1

• Well developed. Tons of range markers, buoys, shark nets and docks. If the island is inhabited, there is a steep dock fee. If the island is uninhabited, then this place is long abandoned.
• Island of bones and insect shells; discarded for centuries as flotsam.
• Dark-Elf Spellcaster. Very powerful, but water burns her like acid.
• Glass Dog. It's lonely, but every time it jumps or licks you it deals 1 damage cause it's made of glass. If you managed to catch it and bring it to the mage's guild you'll get a hefty reward.
• Pearl & Diamond Earring. The matching pair is lost at sea. Worth a few thousand gold.
• Uninhabited

Island 2

• Unnaturally calm. Feeling of dread. Roll a random encounter.
• Island of bones and insect shells; discarded for centuries as flotsam.
• Ogre Zombie, dressed head to toe in very thick armor. There's actually 1d8+1 of them, they're just all identically dressed, so rumors only ever speak of one.
• There is a fairy grove on this island, unsual mushroom and lichen instead of trees and grass. But the fairies still play tricks on you, steal your map, make time pass faster, etc.
• Magic warning sign. If a creature can read any language, then reading this sign forces them to make a morale check to proceed if they aren't in combat or chasing you or something.
• Uninhabited

Island 3

• Filled with dark, spooky seaweed. If you fall overboard, they pull you down and drown you.
• Standard rocky island affair. Mushroom forest and lichen bog; very verdant for a place in the underdark. Elves probably lived here once.
• Dark-Elf Spellcaster. Very powerful, but water burns her like acid.
• Poisonous berries and fruits, tainted fresh water. No chance for resupply.
• Bag of a hundred silver coins. If you spend an exploration turn tapping coins, you have a 1 in 6 chance to find a fake coin that's actually gold underneath a silver paint. About 20 of them are fake.
• Uninhabited

Notes

I like these ones, they're detailed and evocative. They're definitely tied to a setting, and they might be just specific enough that it's weird to re-use one on a second island. I also think that only 1-in-6 islands being inhabited means the inhabitants table doesn't get enough use, similar to the "exotic materials" table on other generators.

---

1 This is what the tour guides of The Draken Harald Hårfagre told me, but I might be misremembering.^back

2 Following from UVG, a "group" check rotates throughout the crew.^back

3 Sacks are another useful abstraction from UVG. A sack is: as much as one person can carry unencumbered; all of a person's prefessional gear; one unconscious human; one unit of trade goods; or enough food, water, and consumables for one person to survive for one week.^back

4 These are tons burden (a volume measurement), as opposed to tons displacement (a weight measurement). As an engineer, it distresses me the number of meanings that "ton" can take, but here it is unavoidable.^back

The Mummy (1999) as Dungeon

The Mummy (1999) is not a good movie, and I rewatched it about a week ago. Although it is not good, it has some elements of a good dungeon in it. Here I have outlined what I can recall, at least without having to do any further research, and with some interjections.

"*" denotes elements drawn from The Mummy Returns (2001), which was also not a good movie.

Getting There

• Map to dungeon inside Puzzle Box. (meh)
• Condemned man also knows the way. (cool)
• Path illuminated by a mirage at sunrise. (meh)

There

• Front door unlocked by Puzzle Box. (cool)
• Stone tablet that says:
  • the Book of Life is below the statue of Anubis.
  • the Book of Death is below the status of Toth.
• The Book of Life is below the statue of Toth. (nice)
• The Cursed Box is below the statue of Anubis.
• Imhotep is trapped and inanimate in a sarcophagus.
• Dormant mummies entombed behind figures on the walls.
• Jewels set in the walls are actually flesh-eating scarabs.
• The river of death flows through the lowest level.
• A Sacrificial Altar next to the river of death.
• A treasure room containing lots of stuff and also the Rod of Osiris. Except for the trouble of hauling it, it is unprotected.
• A big crocodile-headed self-destruct lever closes off all exits and sinks the dungeon into the sand.
• Location in the desert makes hauling loot inconvenient.

Items

Puzzle Box

• contains the map.
• opens the front door.
• opens the Book of Death. (meh)

Cursed Box

• curse is written on it, roughly:
  1. If you open the box
  2. And Imhotep wakes up & is free
  3. He will kill you and maybe take your organs
  4. And cause bad things like plagues.
• contains Book of Death and Canopic Jars.

Book of Life

• made of gold.
• incantation 1: control mummies (not Imhotep).
• incantation 2: make Imhotep mortal.

Book of Death

• locked, key is Puzzle Box. (lame)
• incantation 1: raise Imhotep.
• incantation 2: reincarnate Imhotep's lover.

Canopic Jars

• gold.
• contain organs of Imhotep's lover.

Rod of Osiris*

• a golden scepter.
• becomes a spear.
• the only weapon capable of killing Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in his final form.

Imhotep

Imhotep's Goals

1. Kill all who opened the cursed box. Take organs as needed.
2. Reincarnate his lover. Requires:
   • a woman sacrifice.
   • the Book of Death.
   • the Sacrificial Altar.
   • the Canopic Jars.
3. Bad things?
4. Hates and fears cats. Will flee in their presence.

Imhotep's Abilities

• Assimilate organs
• Cause plagues (blood, frogs, gnats, beasts, pestilence, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, death of firstborn)
• Summon meteors
• Turn into sand
• Command undead
• Wall of Sand with his face on it. He looks really dumb while doing it. Also works with water.*
• Speak Ancient Egyptian and Hebrew (after taking a tongue).
• Rally a mob of locals.
• Immortality, more or less.

Factions

• Americans—basically a rival adventuring party.
• Magi—honor bound to keep Imhotep dead. Apparently Muslim?
• Locals—probably want to be left alone, but also apparently love Imhotep.

Summary

There are really only two ways to mess this up: self-destruct the dungeon or awaken Imhotep. Awakening Imhotep requires (1) opening his sarcophagus, and (2) reading from the book of death. This means that if it were run straight, paranoid players might not even interact with most of the stuff outlined in the movie, and instead they'd just haul off as much treasure as possible. This need not be disappointing: the mummy is bound to hunt those who opened the Cursed Box, a likely occurrence when looting. So if some scholar somewhere reads from the Book of Death (having been sold), and some archaeologist later opens up the sarcophagus (having been made aware of its location), then the mummy will start hunting the players. Alternatively, the mummy will just start messing stuff up on a regional scale via plagues. To force interactivity while the party is in the dungeon, just have the Americans make poor decisions while the party is there I guess.

Quick "Trainstorm"

Skerples proposes a collaborative dimension-hopping train. This is a quick brainstorm about trains, to help myself and others get started.

Image Source

Plan

1. Listen to Steve Reich.
2. Read Wikipedia.
3. Discuss on Chris McDowall's OSR Discord server.

Types of Railcar

and maybe some thoughts about how they exist in an interdimensional infinite train that never stops (unless it does sometimes).

• Refrigerator cars. Unirionically called "reefers".
• Various maintenance cars. The clean the ballast, rearrange the ballast, clear the snow, distribute lubricant and herbicide, and measure the track geometry. Consider how these tasks change when the ground underneath the ballast is unknown and can change suddenly.
• Rail ambulances. Provide services to remote areas, but on an endless non-stop train, they more likely act as hospitals.
• Specialized cargo cars. Coil cars are designed specifically to carry rolled-up sheet metal. Slate waggons are designed specifically to carry slate. On a train that could be carrying any kind of exotic material, what considerations would the car carrying it need?
• Stock cars. Carrying a bunch of exotic animals across dimensions doesn't really need much explanation I think. It raises the same questions as all cargo does, but is more immediately gameable. Possibly it would act more like a zoo or a farm though, given the circumstances.
• Schnabel cars. The cargo forms an integral part of these cars, without it they're just "ends". Use this as an excuse to make the middle of a car be anything you want.
• There are all kinds of tanks and hoppers and boxcars for general cargo. Other than the futility of regularly transporting cargo on the Indefinite Express, I'm not sure what to do with these. I guess instead of regular shipping from one location to another, you might have powerful dimensional merchants who trade their wares as they can, possibly lording over several cars just for cargo. This all presupposes that the train will make stops though.
• Railroad cranes. Ostensibly used for maintenance, these ones could easily be used to snatch interesting things while thundering past them.
• Mail cars. I did not realize that the mail is actively sorted while in transit, so that it's ready to ship out when it arrives. I don't know what to do with this though.
• Dining cars. Probably more like farms or shopping malls here.
• Sleeping cars. Where people live? Possibly unremarkable.

See Also

• The Great Train Robbery
• Other Train Robberies
• The Pullman Strike
• Other Train Strikes
• Hobos

I would like to be sure that nobody thinks this is final in any way. I'm just trying to pretend that my Wikipedia binge was useful. I would hate for my interpretation of something to step on the toes of anyone else's great idea.

The Frenchman's Curse

A parasitic spell for LotFP or similar.

The death of a Frenchman, if not "the Frenchman" of my notes.

When the Frenchman dies, all who witness his dying breath save or catch the curse.

Spellcasters

The curse lives in a spell slot. It prefers high-level spell slots, but can be persuaded to take a lower-level slot temporarily. You cannot cast the curse, it just lives there.

When another spellcaster witnesses you casting a spell, they must save or catch the curse also. This is how the curse "reproduces". If you are cunning, you may be able to coax the curse onto a scroll, or convince it to allow itself to be "cast" into another host (without leaving a copy behind). It knows that the target will get a save in both of these cases, so it needs to be a good deal.

When you die, the curse dies with you.

Others

The curse cannot "reproduce" properly if you can't cast spells, so instead it seeks out spellcasters. Intermediate hosts have disadvantage on saves vs. magic, and their skin is covered in crawling tattoos that are offensive, enraging, insulting, confusing, distracting, and profane. Fortunately, these tattoos are only visible to Read Magic, True Seeing, or those with second sight.

"The Op Tattoo", Robert Williams, 1993 (not public domain or anything like that)

On a 1-in-6, the intermediate host has some innate magical potential, and instead carries the curse asymptomatically.

When you die, the curse will pass into all who witness your death. If you manage to otherwise rid yourself of the curse, it will leave behind an empty spell slot.

References

Talking to your spells:

• Spell Consultation
• "It's still magic even if you know how it's done"

Parasites with intermediate hosts:

• Toxoplasmosis in Rodents

Memetic diseases:

• The Gardens of Ynn, probably

Miscellaneous Mechanics & Ideas

I haven't had a whole lot of time recently, but there's still some ideas kicking around in my head.

For making an alien in Samurai Jack:
Roll 1d6 for number of eyes.

For characters from large families:
Roll 2d12:

• The higher number is the number of children.
• The lower number is your birth order.

For halflings, use 2d20.

For steel-boned corsets:
Use AC as splinted mail, with a bonus to Cha, and penalties to Dex.

Tell me these are really so different.

For patent medicines:
I saw "Dead-Sea Moisturizing Face Serum" at Ocean State Job Lots. Not only does this sound truly terrifying, but it's fodder if I ever revisit my generator.

For a wierd nightscape:
Consider a pitcher plant that catches moths using an anglerfish's bait. It obviously grows on trees. Possibly consider fat squirrels with anglerfish-bait-tails filling a similar niche.

Dream fragments:

• Babylonian guardian demons that take the form of either giant awakened naked mole rats or riderless motorcycles. They enforce the rule that "nothing is free".
• Helium jellyfish that float around like plastic bags roost in trees. They have a complex lifecycle. Possibly they have propellers.
• Staircases that are difficult to use the other direction. They require a will save to go the "wrong" direction. They aren't railroads, but make circular navigation necessary.