Category: Gamemaster’s Hoard

Today in 1922, Howard Carter opened the only (mostly) intact tomb in Egypt’s Valley of Kings, the burial place of the now-famous Tutankhamun. What he found awed him. It has been having a similar effect on other people ever since.

I have something of an obsession with ancient Egypt. Between printed and video material, I could fill a decent-sized bookshelf; I can hardly wait for the “Path of Osiris” dungeon tiles I backed on Kickstarter to arrive; and those of you who remember the old Arcane Alphabets fonts will remember that they included what I believe is the only hieroglyphic font that allowed short characters to be stacked properly. Yeah, definitely an obsession.

So when I started revising the Table Packs, I looked at the original tombs table, which produced little mini-dungeons, and realized that could be converted to an Egyptian-specific one rather easily. That would be quick, no? Well … no. By the time I got done with it, the Egyptian Tombs table described everything from who was buried there to the decorations on the walls. It’s become one of my favorite tables.

Continue reading “Egyptian Tombs”

As everyone who has looked at some of the TableMaster basic tables knows, I’m an invertebrate punster — I’m spinelessly unable to resist a pun. In this case, the Hoard is definitely a Horde, specifically of zombies.

If you’re running a game set during and after a zombie apocalypse, sooner or later the players will ask just what, exactly, those zombies moaning “braaaaaaaains!” outside the walls actually look like. What kind of condition are they in? Who were they, if you can tell?

WARNING: Some of the descriptions produced by the zombie table and listed here are, in a word, gross. If you don’t really want to read that sort of thing, do not continue!

Continue reading “GM Horde: Zombies!”

In a wide-ranging SF campaign, it’s not uncommon for the players to come across a world which has suffered some disaster. It might be home to a few scattered remnants of the original population, or perhaps nothing but enigmatic ruins.

From the Science Fiction Table Pack, here are five such worlds.

Continue reading “GM Hoard: Ruined Worlds”

All too often, it seems like the adventurers are the only people in town. If anyone else exists, it’s only to interact with them, anything from giving them directions to the nearest inn to mugging them in an alley.

But, of course, any urban area is full of people. Those people all have their own lives, and are doing their own things, with no connection to the adventurers at all. The new Fantasy Table Pack 3, which contains all the tables that relate to people, such as names, descriptions, etc., contains a table for that.

Continue reading “GM Hoard: People in a crowd”

A mystical pool or spring might be in the depths of a monster-infested cave, or in a remote valley, or far into a trackless forest. Wherever it is, you know something will happen if you bathe in the water (or, if it’s too small for that, drink some). Just what that thing is, of course, can vary widely.

But the description … oh, the description. You don’t want to have to say “It’s, um, some kind of a pool. It’s got water in it. The water looks kind of magical.”

Continue reading “GM Hoard: Mystical Pools”

Today we move on to the SF Table Pack, and to another brand-new table. This time it’s interstellar mercenaries.

Anyone running an SF campaign knows about groups like Hammer’s Slammers and Falkenberg’s Legion. When you need a bunch of merc companies to throw into a scenario, whether recruiting and hence offering possible employment, or involved in something the players are also involved in, or maybe just there in the background, you need these guys.

Continue reading “GM Hoard: SF Mercenaries”

Today’s Hoard is just a single item, but it’s a long one: a card reading from a stereotypical elderly fortuneteller in a dark little room on a nameless street. This is included in Fantasy Table Pack 2.

After I put together the tarot spread generator that’s part of the basic package, I thought about expanding it with the meanings of the cards, etc. However, I wanted those readings to be more keyed to the needs of a fantasy RPG. This would be problematic with the real tarot because the cards already have meanings — just not necessarily the ones we need.

So, in a burst of insanity, I designed a whole new deck. It has 46 cards, all individual like the Major Arcana, with meanings that can be worked into an RPG campaign. It came out better than I ever hoped; in fact, now I want an artist to draw me the real cards!

Continue reading “GM Hoard: Cartomancy”

I’ve been up to my eyeballs in tables. Upgrading old tables, writing new tables … I think I’ve started dreaming in TBL. Plus several days of code debugging occasioned by finding bugs manifested by some of those tables. The basic package has, at present count, 51 tables, and each of the Table Packs over 30. I’d guesstimate that from the punny Regret-table to the Zombies description table I’ve written at least 40 new tables, maybe more, and substantially many revised others.

To showcase some of the new and upgraded tables, I’ll be doing another batch of Gamemaster’s Hoard posts here on the blog. Just like last time, every day for a week will have a new set. Remember that this is all raw TableMaster output, not prettied up at all.

So the Hoard for today: Isolated Houses from the Zombie Table Pack.

Continue reading “Some new Hoards for the Gamemaster”

Here we have ten years of events, month by month, for a generic fantasy campaign. Something like this can give you a skeleton of future events in the campaign area so that seers have something to foresee and omens have something to om.

Continue reading “GM Hoard: Ten Years of Monthly Events”

Dipping into the Science Fiction Table Pack this time, we have missions that the players can be hired to do (or might need to do on their own). These can make great adventure seeds. Just find one you like, change any elements that don’t fit, and flesh out the details.

Continue reading “GM Hoard: SF Missions”