HYPERBOREA » Making stuff up on the spot

gizmomathboy · 4/30/2018 8:50 am

Always fun to read your notes for a room and it's:

temple, columns hide temple relics, dais has god
written on doors, "evil, don't enter"

Initially had the statue be Kthulu...read the gazetteer quickly and changed it to Thaumagorga.

Now the entry has the following added:

Statue of Thaumagorga
First statue on the left as you enter the room has a relic of a flaming sword (metal sword with copper to make it look like it's on fire)
Third column on the left, razor used in bloodletting
Third column on the right, copper bowl 2 foot wide, 8 inches deep. Reddish brown stain on the interior (old blood)
Last column on the left. Set of manacles with spikes on the interior

When they cast detect magic I just have the area appear to be consecrated and the relics "more" consecrated. Unlike the temple to MANN YOOD SUSUSHAI that was magical and had avatars of MANA jump out of the walls from the murals of MANA whenever they removed a ring or jeweled eye from the statues of MANA.

So of course they decided to pry the ruby eyes out of the statue. They did decide to leave the relics where they found them.

I love my reckless players so much. :-)

Last edited by gizmomathboy (4/30/2018 8:52 am)

mabon5127 · 4/30/2018 9:02 am

The title of your post reminded me of the last adventure in our campaign...

The characters found a scroll that teleported them to Underborea!

I then suddenly had to decide what Underborea was going to be?
What creatures would they meet?
How would they have any chance of getting out?
Where and how does the underworld connect to the surface world?

Talk about having to make stuff up in an eye-blink.

Its fun to see notes turn into full fledged adventures!

mavfire · 4/30/2018 2:29 pm

I am reminded of a few of the Charnel Crypt games run at conventions, I had a small notebook with 12 things written on it that could happen at any of the slow places in the session just for filler. One of them was a small (read; normal sized) scorpion skitters across the floor, stops before you as you converse, darts its tail at you and then skitters through a small opening in the stones.

One party spent the better part of 30 min discussing where the scorpion came from, where it went, and had even contemplated trying to bash in the walls to follow it. What started as an "astmospheric" distraction ended up eating some valuable time. I was close to just telling them that it was a random event that didnt have much bearing on the greater goal, but then they decided to move on.

Didnt matter though they all died in the end anyway.

I love it when such mundane things are tossed out spur of the moment in a game and the party thinks it has more meaning than it really does, it then challenges the DM to improvise, which can be a very fun divergence for the DM!

Sort of the rabbit hole effect!

Iron Ranger · 4/30/2018 3:01 pm

mavfire wrote:
I am reminded of a few of the Charnel Crypt games run at conventions, I had a small notebook with 12 things written on it that could happen at any of the slow places in the session just for filler. One of them was a small (read; normal sized) scorpion skitters across the floor, stops before you as you converse, darts its tail at you and then skitters through a small opening in the stones.

One party spent the better part of 30 min discussing where the scorpion came from, where it went, and had even contemplated trying to bash in the walls to follow it. What started as an "astmospheric" distraction ended up eating some valuable time. I was close to just telling them that it was a random event that didnt have much bearing on the greater goal, but then they decided to move on.

Didnt matter though they all died in the end anyway.

I love it when such mundane things are tossed out spur of the moment in a game and the party thinks it has more meaning than it really does, it then challenges the DM to improvise, which can be a very fun divergence for the DM!

Sort of the rabbit hole effect!

Love this stuff though! Can be more fun than the planned out dungeon itself.

gizmomathboy · 4/30/2018 3:45 pm

I'm not sure I could do a "made up on the spot" dungeon for very long.

I did however do "random monster safari" a lot for one campaign. That was mostly because the party wanted to go from point A to very distant point B. Just used random encounter tables and ran it from there.

Brock Savage · 4/30/2018 8:12 pm

gizmomathboy wrote:
I'm not sure I could do a "made up on the spot" dungeon for very long.

I did however do "random monster safari" a lot for one campaign. That was mostly because the party wanted to go from point A to very distant point B. Just used random encounter tables and ran it from there.

I'm the same way. I can run a game indefinitely with some terse notes, 3x5 cards with monster stats, decent random tables, and engaged players. I find 100% "made up on the spot" improvisation exhausting because my alcohol-soaked brain only has so much bandwidth.

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4/30/2018 8:50 am #1

Making stuff up on the spot

4/30/2018 9:02 am #2

Re: Making stuff up on the spot

4/30/2018 2:29 pm #3

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4/30/2018 3:01 pm #4

Re: Making stuff up on the spot

mavfire wrote:

4/30/2018 3:45 pm #5

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4/30/2018 8:12 pm #6

Re: Making stuff up on the spot

gizmomathboy wrote:

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