Diary of a Failed Game Designer

 Roll: 1d12 1. The thief's guild travels with a carnival, moving about the lands, welcomed everywhere. Quietly recruiting, quietly taking contracts. setting up tents, selling candy, putting on grease paint, committing murders. 2. The match book is filled with tiny paper scraps. on each scrap a name. Each name is a thief, or a fence, or a mark, or a target. When you enter the guild, you receive a matchbook. The rest is up to you. 3. The rob from the rich and kept it until they got rich, and some-one robbed them. The retired thief wants money back. 4. The brickworks is a sprawling affair. It covers a vast area with it kilns slag piles, quarry, and drying sheds. Home to at least two gangs, when the sun goes down the violence starts. 5. There is a dagger known as "Pseutis" It is said to kill in one blow and seek treasure like a compass. It is also told that, it's pommel contains a small piece of a stone from the shore of the river styx. The dead seek the blade as well as ...

Roll 3d6:  3: Drinks tea, each type of tea gives different visions. Today is Draggling Blossom tea and the visions are of your future travels.  4: Babbi plays a drum, on that drum is the world, with each stroke of the drum the world hops a skitters about, it is the chaos brought about by the steady rhythm of the Drum that balances everything.  5: the litches smile contains a pocket dimension. A whole universe of perfect existence.  6: Art has eaten commerce.. Your parties gold is worthless. They are only worth what they create.  7: The Shattered Altar has been picked over and robbed out by pilgrims. Now the altar wants to be reformed, and the relics of a thousand years are coming to life. 8: The Bards guild has gone on strike. The city has gone quiet. No song, no poets, no stories.  9: Exposure killed the adventurers. The Glacier claimed them. Now the sun has uncovered them, and the curse. 10: Psionic Squids run border crossings in the lamp lit sea. If you ...

(Wait you never asked for random birds? .... shit..) Do you need a random Bird? Of course you do……… Does the party ranger need a new companion? Yes, her normal, boring ass Wolf companion got killed by a manitcore last game. Whoa daddy, I got the charts form you. See below the magical mystical random bird generator! (Much of the info below comes from the CornellLab ornithology website.) There are no system specific stats below. I figure if the reader is in deep enough to be rolling up random bird companions, statting them out for whatever game the reader may play should be a breaze. Step one: Bird body type (Roll 2d12) Auk type (like a loon) Black Bird (tall thin fan tail) Chickadee style (Plump) Crow or Jay style Dove like Duck like Finch Flycatcher (small very aerodynamic) Pheasant like Sea gull shaped Hawk, Eagle, or Falcon Like (Bird of prey) Heron Humming bird King fisher Nuthatch Owl (night time bird of prey) Sea bird (often large like an albatross) Shore bird Sparrow S...

Of villages and Names: Roll 1d30 for the name of the  town then 1d6 for why the town is named in such a manner, or some other  tidbit about the place. Black Wash A silty flood brings black soil to the area every  year. They grow excellent crops. All of the houses are stained a chalky black each spring with a mixture of  melted snow and the winter's ashes, The river runs black once a year and that is the only time a certain breed of  immature eel can be harvested. This  town is known for it's fine ink produced as a bi-product of the ell harvest mentioned in entry 3. There is a legend that this town is where a raven first bathed the darkness out of it's feathers to become a dove. There is still a ceremony held on the spring solstice in which  a raven is caged overnight and when the sun come up the  next day  the village children emerge from their homes to find a white dove in it's place. Gifts are then exchanged.  It is said that a demon w...