Ideas for Randoms & Metal!

This post has languished for almost a year (8/20/22). 

Just a little fuel for the imagination.

Fly my little bird, fly!

The lands between Helix and Barrowmaze are gross. A wretched swamp plagued by swarming biting insects with a legacy of corruption that anything could occur. Might as well be Blackmoor.

Anyways. I needed a new random table for the journey back and forth from the Tomb of Tombs. We have exhausted many already. So this time i turned to some of my favourite metal albums (as many have used) and simply pulled things that sounded cool. 

Next step build or reskin creatures, figure how the variable and weird manifest. I like using 2d6 tables as they have enough breadth to easily include three general categories of encounter and proper placement within the bell curve to keep the super wicked/ or special stuff towards the spectrum of lower probability. 

Nothing new. I know. It just works and always has.

A more benevolent DM would have put some mundane right in the middle (normal animals, biting insects, enviro hazard, dancing with fairies).

If we were not in a corrupted swamp I would have likely included at least two and up to four benevolent encounters (e.g. recruitable NPC/ trader/ info source/sign) which has been implemented in the past. This time it would simply be variable possible misery. The party are not green hands many things, mundane things, just don't cross their path anymore (survival of the fittest). 

Looking at the list again, it is clear to me that I have Carcosa fever. The uncontrollable urge to make everything as weird as shit.

1/12 - weird

2/3/10/11 - variable

4 thru 9 - monstrous 

Random encounter table (2d6)

6 – monstrous (*includes extras for replacement purposes)

-       Necrowretch

-       Starspawn

-       Master’s Claw

-    Septic Schizo

-       Starbelly

-       Towering Flesh

-       Locust Furnace*

-    War Squids*

-    Deathcrusher*

-    Moonbelt Immolator*

-    Orbmorphia* 

4 – variable (mini dungeons, reaction/ role-play determinant, interactive)

-       Beneath the Remains

-       Scumdogs of the Universe (aka Death Piggies) 

-       Death Pod/ Scouring the Wreckage

-       The Blind Leading the Blind/ Circle of the Tyrants

2 – weird

-       X-Ray Mirror/ Into My Hypercube/ Nothingface

-       Phobos /Monolith

Or just listen to these Sources of Metal: Necrowretch, Pig Destroyer, Sepultura, Godflesh, Slugdge, Cryptic Shift, Portal, GWAR, 1914, Celtic Frost, Voivod, Cannibal Corpse