Revised: 11/22/2011
Chris at Hill Cantons recently announced another one of his famous contests. It was about cobbling together a random adventure, and it sounded like fun, so we entered the contest.
First we rolled on the cliche-driven Old School Module-Naming Tables at Hill Cantons and came up with the result: 'Tomb of the Forgotten Toad-People.'
Not too shabby. Nothing to necessarily get too excited about, but a nice start.
So then we rolled on Raggi's Weird Fantasy Module-Naming Table and produced the following result: 'Planet of the Nameless Grimoire.'
Mashing those two titles together we have 'The Tomb of the Forgotten Toad-People from the Planet of the Nameless Grimoire.'
According to the rules set forth at the Hill Cantons blog (see THIS post), we kept things to one page and we decided to use the free Swords & Wizardry (White Box) set of retro-clone rules for this particular experiment.
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| Our Adventure won the contest! |
First we rolled on the cliche-driven Old School Module-Naming Tables at Hill Cantons and came up with the result: 'Tomb of the Forgotten Toad-People.'
Not too shabby. Nothing to necessarily get too excited about, but a nice start.
So then we rolled on Raggi's Weird Fantasy Module-Naming Table and produced the following result: 'Planet of the Nameless Grimoire.'
Mashing those two titles together we have 'The Tomb of the Forgotten Toad-People from the Planet of the Nameless Grimoire.'
According to the rules set forth at the Hill Cantons blog (see THIS post), we kept things to one page and we decided to use the free Swords & Wizardry (White Box) set of retro-clone rules for this particular experiment.
- Just to keep it interesting, we incorporated a random sentence from the Random Sentence Generator that Porky mentioned in THIS post.
- Since this adventure called for a Nameless Grimoire we incorporated the Nameless Tome from Old School Heretic as both an encounter and a possible treasure.
- Since we rolled the 'Toad' result the first time out, we took it as a favorable omen and incorporated a faded-out version of our own little Toader-dude illustration into the background of the One Page Adventure.
Wow. Now that's fast, especially for such a nice little one-shot.
ReplyDeleteBig shiny bonus star for incorporating "useful chalk" of all things into the design.
Now I'm inspired to somehow incorporate the first one I generated from Porky's link into Mountain of the Dog Demon: "The hero reconciles a precise economy."
Just might work...
Wow, that's really cool. It's amazing what can come out of just a few random die rolls. I like it!
ReplyDeleteFast and inspired. The random line adds another focal point too, another element to riff off. I might still go In Search of the City the Serpent Queen, but you've staked out a high standard.
ReplyDelete@ckutalik: Not really. Walter B. Gibson would have knocked it out in about half an hour.
ReplyDeleteIt was an interesting challenge. It would be interesting to see how you incorporate the random sentence. The act of 'reconciling a precise economy' could mean a lot of different things...especially when one must do so heroically.
You should do one off of Raggi's table, and he should do one from yours. That would be interesting...
@Bard: Not so random. There are only so many options possible within the parameters established by the table-creators and most of the choices available have at least some sort of resonance. To really randomize things one might derive their table entries from a random perusal of different thesauri, dictionaries, etc. but then you'd get results like 'The Frenzied Circumlocution to the Ermine Cabana of the Mauve Penguins of Cleveland.' or something likewise as daft and non-resonant as that.
ReplyDeleteAs it stands, these tables are fine examples of a structured sarcastic reaction to the contrived restrictions of the old days and a wonderfully iconoclastic approach to clearing away the dead wood of stale assumptions that no longer need to be held onto nor adhered to quite so rigorously as they have been of late.
Or maybe it was just fun to mock the older approach to naming modules based upon the best 80's marketing wisdom or maybe they were just aiming for a cheap laugh by going to all the effort of assembling those tables as exercises in grammatical erudition...
We just saw it as a challenge to make something out of the pattern that either of the tables presented and we just did it on a lark, with no premeditation, almost like a call-and-response form of automatism. It was quite fun, actually.
@Porky: Thanks! This was a fun experiment in creating something based on the work-order established by rolling on those two tables and seeing what we could string together in a short amount of time based on those results. Kind of like crafting a very short Pulp one-pager based off of a vague premise and the need to incorporate a few required items...all determined off of random tables.
ReplyDeleteWe're looking forward to what other people produce in response to this challenge. Especially since they are taking a lot more time to do their thing...