Picture Pong with Semiurge #4

Semiurge has sent me this picture, in order that I might explain it to him, "if [I'm] so great." You see, we have this humorous rapport where I write droning articles about mythology or GMing and he cuts me down to size with a hip Epstein reference before launching into media-relevant fiction and worldbuilding. There's nothing left to do now, except play my part.  

 Giorgio de Chirico

Look at these things. These people with towns for torsos. Puts one in mind of the cover of Leviathan or other depictions of social organism. In the context of roleplaying games, they also remind me of a useful lesson:

Apply Existing Tools in Creative Ways

Think of these giants on a random encounter table. Suddenly, you get to use any rules or preparations you made for shops, rumors, and other town matters at the drop of a hat. Now you have access to more of the procedures you wrote, allowing you to fill time as you desperately come up with something interesting in the meantime.

Use random loot tables as random room tables, and to determine what loot the the trap you rolled on your random trap table looks like. Use random encounter tables as reaction roll tables. Figure out how to repurpose procedures, maybe swapping which attribute gives a bonus to the odd roll. I once tried to use an existing d12 astrological sign table as a reaction roll table. That failed, but hell if it wasn't a good instinct. You can take the instinct too far, but think of the elegance of how D&D likes to define one magical effect by analogy to a well-known spell.

And if all your campaign-specific tables and procedures reinforce your campaign-specific themes (as they should), repurposing them will maintain whatever themes you're shooting for in the first place. I wish I had written urban encounters for my weekly Okucenza game, but by reinterpreting the wilderness encounters it means I can still hit on miraculous phenomena, religious figures, and the legacies of war I'm trying to hit on.

Just my thoughts, Semiurge:

Religious Schism Generator

 Automating Dan's adaption of religion in Crusader Kings, with some tweaks, to randomly generate faiths for fantasy settings. Each faith will have several "heresies", a broad term including varying degrees of difference between different groups. These different groups have a small chance of treating the same generator results as differences, in which case it is the DM's job to explain how our way of accepting witchcraft is superior to their way of accepting witchcraft.

Picture Pong with Semiurge #3

 Semiurge (which is the name of a blogger, not just the feeling you get when your cousin eats a banana) has sent me this picture, in order that I might explain it to him. 

Scantly and meagre are provisions on the stilt-houses of the lake Pelimer, and little better is the provender found in the forests of the Freeborn Men. But the fruitful border between, for the border between two ecologies always exceeds either exclusively, must always remain undeveloped. For it is a liminal space upon a liminal space. It is where the lake meets the forest meets the mountains meets some otherwhere.

Pantry fare is a serious business, and outsiders may well notice that the floors of the pantries, kitchens, and fanes of both the stilt-houses and the Freesteads are of a different grain from the rest of the communities, which are liable to be cut from the standard oak of the forests, at least half an acre away from the lake. If you ask why, most will offer some hollow excuse, but children will offer their guesses and thereby the truth. It is because the border trees respect each other's domain, and will not harm each other, even when one is turned into boards. So by using the wood of border trees to protect food for the living and the dead, they can avoid the fate that befell the Pelimer bog wizards.

Chantry business is beyond the concern of most, and the esoteric reasons that the Wizarding Circle of St. Bheumes to locate itself in a marsh were never shared with the layfolk. In that bog, where border trees mingle near-indistinguishable from dead wood, the litany of prayers were constant, begging the Adversary to relinquish the immortal soul of Bheumes from his imprisonment. Looking into the burst and overgrown chantry-hall and the submerged chambers beneath, one wonders if the wizards should have spared a prayer for themselves.

Gantry-builders bustle in from the capital with each dry season and with each monarch's accession. In each case, the aim is to make a vantage point from which to spot forest fires. It is said the border trees don't grow from the ground but merely slide further out, like a worm from the mud. They lay themselves in whatever pattern may serve their caprices, and the histories of Very Serious Statesmen claim that the trees have extended as far as the capital to fight for claimants and cessionaries.

Polyandry, it is believed, was practiced by the Kodyad trees who granted their branches as wands to the first alewives and their fruits to the spawn of gods. The men they took as husbands offered their own flesh and blood as dowry, and became border trees. Since the Kodyads were cut down to burn witches by the churches, folk have said the miserable loneliness of their widowers has caused the animosity between these border trees and common folk. To this, abbots ask how this can be, when new border trees are sometimes formed along the lake? Surely they cannot have married a Kodyad after they were all exterminated? In any case, these impious tales will have their end when the Circle of St. Derugwhen finally perfects their breeding of the Gemabore Moth to kill those freak trees without getting too close to them.

Your turn, Semiurge. This is your assignment. Let's see if you can churn out another miracle from this:

Picture Pong with Semiurge #2

 Semiurge has sent me this picture, in order that I might explain it to him. 

(Note the two figures in the bottom-right. This warrior is big.)

When the Titanomachy came, when Ulasth and Samyazaz and all the giants of the world were slain, enslaved, or degraded, it was not the end of giants. Those giant men sometimes born among us mortals are not half the height nor the tyranny of their atavis. 

Yet, some true titans remain. Prometheus, Enoc, and Cyclops have been spared imprisonment by virtue of their collaboration, transformation, or nepotism, respectively. And the children of each, nearly-titanous, stride across the lands humans traffic with the same reckless daring that they stride through the places where we dare not tread. They perform deeds of service to the gods, in the hopes that they will win freedom for their suffering uncles and aunts in Tartarus.

A premise: your adventuring party wants to rob a dragon of its hoard, but fear its retribution. You know that an Ettin-Paladin is on its way to slay the beast, which you could not do yourselves. When it succeeds, it will seize the hoard for its own as a tithe to the gods, and so you must thread the needle, robbing the dragon's followers at about the same time that the giant arrives. Naturally, if their battle spills into the section you are raiding it will be twice as dangerous as the mere presence of a dragon or giant, for neither care to spare your life and both wield terrible powers.

A premise: you have been sent with tribute, to beseech the Ettercap-Charlemagne of Adder Hill for aid. This requires you to carry an arc across miles of rotting demons strung up and filled with terrible maggots, through the boneyards of vanquished evils, and around the ancient traps of shattered dark towers.

A premise: you have been tasked by an angel with arresting one of these godlings. Good luck.

Your turn, Semiurge. This is your assignment:

Picture Pong with Semiurge #1

Semiurge has sent me this picture, in order that I might explain it to him. 

A Request Unseen

You hear a voice in crowded spaces,
tinged tenebral with lack of light.
It asks for "a blade, something sharp please."
Its pleading's too piteous to shirk from its plight.
You try the glimpse the unseen creature
but its shrinks back, light and small it seems,
inspecting the shearing knife you offer.
"That's okay, but might you sharpen it please?"

As you drag the heavy metal
'cross the stone with your naked hand
you glimpse its white-stone cope and pelage
as it cranes to appraise the brand.
Shaking as the thing emerges,
you offer the blade, acute as hell.
Embarrassed by the ache of its keen desire,
it takes the knife. "This will do well."

And with a hungry, easy gesture,
It begins to carve the flesh away
Until the web of its living gristle
is bared to the frame in strange display.
Where the giblets are discarded
maggots many marble the meat
"Stranger for your honest kindness,
I offer a fate as free and sweet."

Timid Gore-Ladden
HD 1. Sneaky and indistinct. Prone to grudges and gratitudes. Consuming its blood causes flesh to fall from it, and it uses this to punish those who have wronged it. If granted its wish of a truly sharp implement, it will shed its flesh. Any who have helped it will be granted a boon: they ignore the negative effects of parasites and their skeleton will hatch out of them upon their death. Flesh-denuded Timids gain +1 HD. If multiple are encountered, consider rolling some variations with this table.

Your turn, Semiurge. This is your assignment: