OSRIC Spell Tables for Knave(s)

These tables are for generating the spells that a party of Knaves might find in their adventures. The spells are for OSRIC. Once I determine what class the spell is from and what level it is, I roll a d10 to determine which spell it is from the “Spells by Level” section in the Spells chapter of OSRIC.

Spell Type by Class
1d6 Class
1-3 Magic-User
4 Illusionist
5 Cleric
6 Druid
Spell Level
2d6 Percentage Chance Spell Level
2-6 41.67 One
7 16.67 Two
8 13.89 Three
9 11.11 Four
10 8.33 Five
11 5.56 Six
12 2.78 Seven

Random Adventure Generation: The Murderer from PC Connections

I was having trouble trying to come up with the introductory adventure for my Banestorm campaign. More importantly, I was having trouble trying to fit the party together. So I decided that to help cement relations between the party and offload some of the brainstorming process onto other creative minds, I would try out the Connections mechanic from Moment of Truth. In character creation, each player makes two connections involving some event between their character and another PC, and another two with an NPC. There is a table provided to help get the ball rolling, and you can also come up with an event from scratch (which is always preferable but not always easy, especially at the start of a campaign where everything is new and a little awkward). In session 0 we spent nearly three hours establishing connections, and something wonderful happened -- a narrative emerged and I got the seed for the initial adventure for the campaign.
For all but one (or two?) of the connections the players chose to roll for a connection. One of the connections was "Death of a Friend." A short while later, that same connection came up again. The explanation for this became apparent -- a murderer is on the loose! This vile killer had targeted the friends of our protagonists. A number of subsequent events involved tracking down and nearly catching this murderer. Clearly the party is hunting this murderer. I had to goal for my adventure, but I still needed to flesh it out further.

In need of more details for this introductory adventure, I decided to turn to an old resource that has served me well in the past: the AD&D1e Dungeon Master's Design Kit from 1987. It's a very helpful book, even more helpful if you're running AD&D1e and not GURPS. But I've been inspired by its forms, advice, and especially its random adventure generator since my second ever campaign. When my ideas are slow to form, using this tool serves as a great aid for a brainstorming session. I decided that I would showcase this process in the blog to help others judge the merit and worth of the Design Kit or at least to show how I use it.
Since I decided that I would record my thought process in cyberspace, this post will be even more stream-of-consciousness than usual as I go through each result, ruminate and consider. The end of the post will probably have the more cohesive gist of the adventure. This would actually have the entire adventure, however. That's going into a Campaign Document Google Doc, where I will have an Adventure Outline waiting to be filled out. That adventure outline will likely change once it meets the players between sessions. If I am so inclined, I might include the adventure outline, copy/pasted into its own blog post. Applicability for other campaigns may be vary incredibly.

Generation Record

Basic Plot Elements
Theme: Action/Adventure & Mystery

Goals: Clear Name

Hook: Old Enemy

General Setting: On the Sea Lonely Village

Specific Setting I: Ruins

Specific Setting II: Temple/Church

Ally/Neutral: Arrogant Snob

Master Villain: The Destroyer

Minor Villain I: The Corrupted Hero

Minor Villain II: The Hard-Eyed Adviser

Plot: Accumulation of Elements

Climax: Divine Retribution
Optional Plot Elements

Monster Encounter: Nocturnal Predator

Character Encounter: Mean Drunk

Traps: Pit & Pendulum

Special Condition: Magic Doesn't Work Right

Red Herring: Artifact That Doesn't Work

Omens & Prophecies: Innocent Fulfills Prophecy

Moral Quandaries: Respect Quandary

Chases: Horseback

Secret Weakness: Element or Ingredient

Cruel Trick: NPC Turns Traitor

Initial Thoughts

I'm relieved that I did this. I can see the adventure taking shape. The general setting doesn't really fit too well, so I think that I'm going to have the general setting be a newly invented result for the general setting table -- Lonely Village. I should get into this further in. What I really think is going to happen is that the game will open with the PCs hunting down the murderer. They tracked him to this village where the murderer is staying, hiding, and murdering. The murderer may be attempting to stay as a visitor or hiding in the woods, maybe someone's barn. It could be some people are helping him. We'll see; I'll know better once I go through all these features.

I should also note that while i did this, I made the Required Rolls for the Frequencies of Appearance for the PCs. The Patron and the Ally of one PC aren't appearing, though her Duty is. Another PC's Enemy is appearing. I'll be keeping these noted.

Results Examined In Turn

Theme: Irrelevant, obvious. The theme might be a little bit of mystery, as well.

Goal: I already know what the goal of the PC is. Their goal is to stop the murderer and exact revenge for slaying two of their friends. According to the table in The Dungeon Master's Design Kit, this goal would actually be "Encounter Old Villain." "Clear Name" is likely what our murderer is trying to do. The killer may seize on the opportunity by the other killer who's staying in the village. Their blood lust will shatter that chance, however, and the PCs will discover another murder soon after they meet the other killer.

Hook: Encountering an old enemy is kind of the entire idea behind this adventure, so this result is very appropriate -- it's as if the dice gods will it to be so!

General Setting: On the Sea makes no sense at all. I'd had the idea that the adventure would take place near Hidelban to aid with the transition to the Duty-related adventure which transitions with this one.
Specific Setting I: The murderer could be making their home in nearby ruins, or the Arrogant Snob another NPC may suggest to the PCs that they search there for the killer. Since it's Megalos, the ruins are likely an old, abandoned battlement, fort, or castle. It shouldn't be terribly large (to save myself some work), so these ruins may be very old (perhaps dating back to the 12th century).
Specific Setting II: An NPC could inform the PCs in a church -- perhaps the Arrogant Snob is a clergyman. Alternatively, the Church could become a murder scene, where the priest has been savagely murdered in holy ground.
Ally/Neutral: The Arrogant Snob could be someone who aids the PCs, or the one who eventually betrays them. It's probably the landed knight in charge of the village or the unlanded knight errant who is perhaps helping the murderer.
Master Villain: The Destroyer matches very well. He's a fan of destruction, having a lust for blood and a penchant for cruelty. He won't likely be a magic-user, but he will have some supernatural power. Or perhaps he should be a mad wizard. That might help with his having murdered so many people.

Minor Villain I: It might be appropriate if the Corrupted Hero were an errant knight.

Minor Villain II: There's no place for a Hard-Eyed Adviser. What does a wild murderer need a Hard-Eyed Adviser for?

Plot: Perhaps it will be accumulating the clues which could point toward where the murderer is hiding.

Climax: The climax is bringing behave to the murderer. Divine Retribution certainly makes no sense.

Monster Encounter: The Nocturnal predador Is the kobolds vampire. It was made by the vampire Lord Claudius Maskill. He's a rabid, bloodthirsty monster. Along with the primary murderer, this kobold will be responsible for murders in the village. The kobolds will attack the PCs while they're sleeping.

Character Encounter: One of the witnesses of the crimes could be the mean and cruel village drunk. I'll use him for comic relief to pass vague clues. Perhaps I can hint that the murderer has a companion by saying that he saw both of the murderers. I'll leave it in the air whether it's just because he's a drunk who sees double.
Traps: Traps don't really make too much sense in this adventure.

Special Condition: Megalos, where the campaign is mostly set and certainly where this adventure will take place, is a normal mana region. The result "Magic Doesn't Work Right" doesn't exactly make sense here. 
Red Herring: This is not relevant or worth being connected. There aren't artifacts in this adventure.

Omens & Prophecies: There are no omens or prophecies. Prophecies don't really fit Banestorm, in my opinion.

Moral Quandaries: I like the Respect Quandary. I think that it's a great Quandary. It doesn't really fit into this adventure, though.

Chases: If there are going to be chases, I'm going to let them happen organically.
Secret Weaknesses: I don't think any special weaknesses are really useful or appropriate in this adventure. His madness is his weakness.

Cruel Trick: Clearly, the minor villain should be an NPC who the PCs know and who helps them track down the murderer, only to attempt to bring them into an ambush.
Required Rolls

Duty: The Duty to her Patron is sort of hard to fit in here, so I think that I will have it appear at the conclusion of this adventure and have it relate to the PCs travelling to the city/town of Hidelban. The 
Enemy: Let's say that the enemies are stalking the PCs and will strike at their best opportunity.
Concluding Thoughts
This was very helpful. Here's the tentative adventure synopsis: The PCs begin in the village, having tracked the murderer down to this area. They know the murderer is here because the Arrogant Snob, the landed knight who's lord to this land (I gotta figure out who he got the fiefdom from, maybe the Duke himself), is having them help him investigate. There was a murder here that matches with the murders the Party is familiar with. That's the murder that takes place in the church. The Arrogant Snob will be walking the party through the village and detail to them the murders. A landless knight is in the area as well, helping them with the investigation to catch the killers. The Party will search through likely areas with this landless knight and the arrogant, snobbish, landed knight: barns, stables, sheds, a cave each day. Every night there will be death -- a murder of the kind they expect or an exsanguination. During one night the party  will be attacked by the kobold vampire (after this one is slain, the exsanguinations cease). The vampire may disclose the secrets of its sire, or the PCs may not inquire and think this is a random encounter. Tough shit. After this, the landless knight brings them to the ruins, where they have a dope, final showdown and the murderer attempts to ambush them and the landless knight predictably betrays the party.
That's my choochoo train. All these events are probably not going to happen in this order, and may not happen at all. No plan survives contact with clever (or reckless) (or just any) players.

Divine Knaves: Spitball

I've been thinking about how I would handle clerics in Knave. I've decided that a knave could turn undead if they present a holy symbol (in both hands?) and roll Charisma. It could either be a Charisma Save or it could be an opposed roll against the Undead's Charisma/HD DC. To flavor cleric spells, the spell-objects could be religious relics that perform certain miracles, like the femur of a saint which purifies water, or the bile of an anti-saint which animates the dead upon which it's poured.

Angry Goblin-Hating Posse (0-level funnel idea)

This is from 19:06 19 Feb'19 in my little OSR notebook

I just had an idea for a 0-level funnel a la DCC RPG. I'd maybe do GLOG, since it's easy, but DCC seems just as fun. DCC RPG has a lot more rules, and fairly strange and confusing ones, too.
Anyway, in this funnel, the 0-level heroes are a band of heroes who will boldly venture into the goblin lair. The goblins have repeatedly raided the village. The village is part of a crumbling empire and they've gotten no response. Townsmen have banded together to go to the lair and slay them themselves. The players will each have a small group and altogether represent this dour posse. After the dungeon, the survivors will represent the level 1 PCs.
After that, the PCs will go on to do probably adventuring and settling (AKA Dark Dungeons shit) on the frontier-land of the decaying empire. Probably they'll go to wizard school or whatever to gain their 1st level templates and assemble again in town ready to go on new adventures.
Probably the goblins attacks and almost killed a child. That was the last straw, so the posse out for goblin blood.

You should also mark the date whenever you write by hand.

The Goblin Chimera (0.01)

It was bound to happen. I’ve been working on my own house rules for the GLOG. I call them the Chimeric Goblin Laws, since they steal from a bit of all of the Goblin Laws that I’ve seen. I might also call them the Goblin Chimera, because that also sounds pretty cool, at least to me. They’re not completely done yet, and I imagine that, like the GLOG project itself, it will continually be changing in minute ways over time. I’m posting the house rules here as a whole, because... why not? I've already made a page for it which displays the different places to find them: the Google Doc where I wrote it (and will update it) and a PDF. So why not also have a blog post where you can read them? The house rules are fairly short.

Green and Verdant: My Debut Three Hexes

Before I begin, I should explain what the Three Hexes are. I got the idea from Chicago Wiz, who makes (usually) weekly Three Hexes posts. Here is his first post for the idea. A Three Hexes map is a small hex map (usually with 24-mile hexes) which has four hexes of note. One of the hexes, “Hex 0,” is the homebase hex, the location of the (probably frontier) town/village where the PCs resupply and use as their place of respite. The mentioned three other hexes are locations for the PCs to travel to and explore. They are sites with adventure possibilities. Sometimes these sites are wildernesses, full of separate lairs of the various monsters that inhabit the hex. Other times the sites are complete, planned dungeons that is either pulled from something else (a module or something from Dungeon Magazine) or is made from scratch. Sometimes all these hexes are related, and usually that’s for the best. In that case the area helps make for itself a campaign and setting built around a unified idea. A great example of this is Chicago Wiz’s “The World Clock.” Other times the three sites aren’t linked at all, and are, in fact, some areas that the party can visit if they so desire, in the style of a very small hex crawl. Examples include the first two that Chicago Wiz provides in that first post (linked above) and “The Haunted Seas of the Greybeard.” One can even make two 3-Hex Maps, as Chicago Wiz did with the very first of his Three Hexes maps that I’d seen: “Negative Mirror.”

Introduction of the concept finished, I’ll move onto introducing what I’ll be doing with the Three Hexes framework. Well… I may make some Three Hexes maps occasionally. I don’t have the same goal of Chicago Wiz right now of reaching 52 campaign starters. That’s too ambitious for me. Rather, I might wind up making a Three Hexes map whenever the inspiration strikes me. It did when I made this map.

I recently got Hex Kit 2.0, which is what I used to make this map. I decided to test the software by making a map a la Chicago Wiz. So I made this map, not really considering what may be in these hexes beforehand beyond “faeries here, town there, hill there, and swamp here.” Afterward, I began considering what might be taking place in this region.

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Campaign Long ago there was a terrible conflict between the lords of the forest and a sorcerer-king, Ajamar. The sorcerer-king began cutting away at the forest, attempting to deprive the forest-lords their power and their home. A particularly brutal Fey Lord, Torthwgyn, believed malicious by even the other fey, came forward in leading the resistance against this sorcerer-king. Under Torthwgyn’s leadership, the Fey Lords were able to expand the boundaries of their forest even further than before the conflict had begun. Ajamar was slain, buried in a crypt in a hillside by his devoted servants, and forgotten. Without the enemy to unite them, the Fey Lords broke with Torthwgyn, and Torthwgyn was expelled from the feywood to rule over his own section, which he has corrupted into a malevolent swamp.

Today, the forest is full of fey-touched creatures, monsters and animals, which stalk its grounds. The forest grows, but markedly slower than it had generations before. Elders in the growing village in the wood have noticed that strange events seem to be on the rise. Cold winds blow down from the Bare Hills, and those who venture into them looking for the crypt of Ajamar rarely return. Stranger creatures are found further west, where reign the Terrible Fey Lords.

Hex 0 (3.3) Theorinporth Theorinporth is a pleasant, small community. The village grows crops and trades lumber for what else it needs. Though the village has a small lumbering trade, it is carefully done, for fear of retaliation by the fey. This concern has developed some controversy, however, as younger lumberers buck against tradition and a small group of them are convinced that nothing will happen if the village increases its lumbering. Peric, a prominent young lumberjack, strongly believes this, and has been coordinating with the other villagers to begin logging more actively in the forest.

Hex 1 (1.2) The Woods with Eyes Anyone who passes near the feywood gets the sensation of being watched, of never being alone, of something directly behind them (especially when ‘alone’). The Fey Lords live here and make it their home. They rarely go beyond into the rest of the forest, though they claim it as theirs. Fey’s guardians watch those who enter the feywood and may lead adventuring parties or intruders to their individual masters (incidentally getting the party helplessly lost) to be toyed with, punished, aided, or disposed of. The attitudes of the fey range from beneficial to malevolent to both. Nearly all of the fey will want something from an adventuring party, usually to torment them in some contract. Each fey has their own estate, which bends space (and sometimes time). A fey’s estate may hold many acres, though only be contained by a rabbit’s hole within a tree.

The Fey Lords have become worried by the developments in the Bare Hills. Most of them, having betrayed Torthwgyn, don’t believe another alliance with him would be feasible. The affair had also sown more distrust among the fey, further endangering hopes of an alliance among the fey. The Fey Lords are vulnerable outside of their forest. Sending along a group of adventurers might readily appear as an easy, low-risk solution (if they die, it’s no real loss to any faerie, except one they owe something to).

Hex 2 (1.3) The Sunken Forest This swamp is the domain of Torthwgyn. It is full of monsters, fey-touched mutant abominations and monstrous humanoids (mostly goblins and gremlins) who’ve pledged fealty to Torthwgyn (under threat of extinction), and one or two loyal faeries. He slowly builds his forces in preparation for making war against Theorinporth (regardless of how many or few trees they cut), the Fey Lords who’d betrayed him, and to guard himself against the rising threat in the Bare Hills. He only suspects what’s risen in the Bare Hills; he doesn’t know for sure and can’t scry the area. Torthwgyn cares nothing for the Faeries or their dominion over the forest. He desires to extend his own control over the river, the forest, and beyond. His betrayal has increased his brutality and only strengthened his hunger for power and mischief.

Hex 3 (3.1) The Bare Hills The hills are dead. Nothing grows here, except the cold, except the hunger and the rage. In his crypt Ajamar has risen as a mummy, woken by reckless adventurers who’d disturbed his rest. Here he has begun to continue his work, in the crypt built by the loyal servants and commanders who didn’t perish in the final battle. His loyal commanders who’d died in battle with him attend him as wights. The soldiers and long-forgotten dead rise as skeletons and set about collecting the dead. The last remaining goblin tribe (the rest have been wiped out by the newly risen Ajamar) have sworn obedience to Ajamar, though its leader, the bugbear Zerdok, and many goblins resent Ajamar and the position he has been put in. The couple small orcs tribes in the Bare Hills may also be under Ajamar’s control. Those who defy him in life serve him in death. Ajamar is ambivalent to the fate of Theorinporth, but he expects them to side with him against the Fey Lords, alive and willing or as undead minions.

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I participated in the Pamphlet Dungeon Jam and decided to make The Crypt of Ajamar. You can find that listed among the many great Pamphlet Dungeons in the Jam and also here. I also made another version of the map which, instead of 24-mile hexes (which is what I was assuming but you could use whatever you want), I decided measured 8-mile hexes. I made it because I really like the idea of having some wilderness exploration.

If you would like the .map files for any of these, just let me know and I will try and figure out a way of providing them.

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Three Hexes by Michael "Chgowiz" Shorten (chgowiz@gmail.com) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Michael Shorten has not endorsed this in any way. I’m just crediting his work, the framework for this content.

The content built with the Three Hexes framework is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Beacon d20 Resources

I decided that I would take what I have on my resources page and just copy/paste it here. I'm not sure that it is necessary for there to be a page for Beacon Resources when I could just have it be a blog post. I'm not even certain that anyone plays Beacon d20, anyway. The blogger that created it has stopped posting to their blog and I don't really hear or see people talking about playing the game. If you think that it'd make resources for the game easier to find or some other reason, post a comment and I'll consider putting the page back up.

Skumdun: Kobold Vampire of Yrth

I made a kobold vampire because the foe would be both easier for 100-pt characters starting out in the world of Yrth, and also because it's a hilarious concept. It's part minor threat, and part comic relief.

Choice D&D Retroclones

This is, clearly, just a list of retroclones. It's not like the (somewhat out-dated) list of retroclones on the Taxidermic Owlbear, in that it is a comprehensive list of games. It is, rather a list of my own preferred retroclones. These aren't including, of course, games like The Black Hack, Knave, or the Goblin Laws of Gaming, since those are all hacks or mini-systems.

ACKS, Autarch, & Ethical Role-Playing

Months ago I posted a review of the Adventurer Conqueror King System. Since then I’d occasionally have thoughts about it. It seems a little out of place with the rest of the blog. I don’t have any other reviews (besides The Black Hack and the GLOG).

More importantly, the reasoning behind the review's negative conclusion (in that, you should choose another system), seems abrupt in appearance. I don’t actually explain why Alexander Macris is a shitbag, which is certainly something you should do when you call someone a shitbag. The system I recommended to replace it, Basic Fantasy RPG, actually is not the ideal alternative. Finally, I should say that there are a lot of things about ACKS that I like. ACKS is not the worst system and some of its adventures are actually pretty good (see Courtney’s adventure or Dwimmermount, which also has a GURPS version!!). The primary figure within Autarch, nonetheless, by a really shitty person.

I’ll start this with an explanation of what Alexander Macris did to make him a shitty person. There are a number of different things but it boils down to two things. First, there was his involvement with gamergate on The Escapist, allowing it to flourish in its forum. More recently, there was his involvement with Milo Yiannopoulos. This out-shadows the involvement with gamergate, because this is not only a harassment of women encroaching into territory that has historically be reserved for men, but attacks people of color, queer and trans people, as well as women. Further, Yiannopoulos is a fascist – if this is news to you, consider his involvement with fascists and his propagation of fascist ideas. Alexander Macris was the CEO of Milo Inc., whose mission statement was “making the lives of journalists, professors, politicians, feminists, Black Lives Matter activists, and other professional victims a living hell.” Milo Inc. was founded after Yiannopoulos was fired from the fascist propaganda outlet Breitbart due to his remarks on pedophilia (so Macris worked with Yiannopoulos as CEO of his company knowing of these remarks). There have been claims that Macris is not racist; however, this claim is weak when it’s understood that he was CEO of an ideological company which cast activists protesting the proliferation of wrongful deaths/murders of black people by policemen as “professional victims.”

In the time since Yiannopoulos has fallen out of favor and gamergate has dwindled down to its phrenetic core of misogynists, Macris has attempted to downplay his involvement with gamergate. He’s attempted to cast himself as helpless in his involvement with Yiannopoulos and has tried to distance himself as much as he can. The record, nonetheless, remains. He was the will CEO of Milo Inc. He worked for it and went to court for the sake of Milo’s advertising. The stain will remain on Macris’ reputation until he … stops being a shitbag.

Now that that’s covered, we can move on to brighter things. As I said earlier, ACKS has some very neat features. Personally, I appreciate the Proficiency system it has. It also has a few novel and good combat systems (primarily the Cleave mechanic). If you have already bought ACKS, you should absolutely play it and use what material you've already bought. If, on the other hand, you haven't bought ACKS, don't support Autarch while a transphobic racist heads the company. If would like to get a B/X or (more accurately) BECMI game which has rules for domain-level roleplay, then get the Rules Cyclopedia clone Dark Dungeons (if it's just the adventuring, Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Labyrinth Lord, and Basic Fantasy can offer what you're looking for). It's not a strict clone, and many of the rules are cleaned up. Dark Dungeons has detailed rules for high-level play, building & maintaining strongholds, fiefdoms, mass combat. There are also some additional rules for skills in Dark Dungeons (essentially AD&D 2e Non-Weapon Proficiencies). Dark Dungeons is in the public domain (excluding some open game content) and is free to play (there is a PWYW option on DriveThru RPG, if you would like to support the author's labor of love).

Note: The title of this post gave me some pause. I had initially derived the phrase from "ethical consumption." "Ethics" sounds a little elitist, a little high and mighty. Declaring what's ethical sounds pretentious. But there's not really a better way to phrase it. Ethics is determining what's good or bad, what's right or wrong. Knowingly supporting a chauvinistic, transphobic, white supremacist is wrong, unethical.

Random Families

So there I was, making a hook for the beginning of a post-apocalyptic campaign. I needed some families to pose as the maguffin for the start. Rather than intricately detail all of the villagers that my players were frankly not going to give a shit about, I decided that I would randomly generate them. Below is my scheme for how I did that followed by the example families that I had generated.

First, roll the family size (a d8). If the result is 2, check to see if it's just a pairing of two people (two lovers). I had decided that the chances of a single parent might be high, since this was a post-apocalyptic setting. In retrospect, it probably should've been higher. Otherwise, it might be better to have the chance be higher or lower depending on the setting. Perhaps religious controls forbid divorce, but there's always the chance of death in childbirth, war, or freak accidents (how else would a PC's entire family be dead?).

A note on the ages of people: a couple might not have as great an age variance, depending on the mores of the setting. In this case, you can either add a d10 and subtract a d10 ([age]+d10-d10) to find the age of the second person or just decide. Determining the age of adults can vary, of course. It might be better to change what you roll, depending on what age you'd prefer. After finding the age of the parent(s), I would roll the age of each child, progressing down the chart below.

I determined that a group were siblings by the absence of children and determining that the two were not a romantic couple. They could also be cousins.

Family Size 1d8 (3-in-6 chance of a single parent, 2-in-6 chance pairing). Random Age: 10+5d8 adult, 5d3 --> 3d4 --> 2d6 --> d12 --> 1d10 --> 2d4 --> 1d8 --> 2d3 --> 1d6 --> 1d4 child. Sex m-1 f-2. 

Refugee Villagers

Costa Family: Two brothers, 18 and 15.

Derricks Family: Mother and son, 20 and 2.

Durante Family: Husband and wife, 44 and 43. Likely sterile.

Frost Family: husband and pregnant wife, 25 and 23.

Graves Family: Mother & 3 daughters, 24, 8, 6, 3. Father probably died -- that's a nice tragedy and makes for a fierce mother character.

Tasker Family: Two Sisters, 12 & 28.

Thomson Family: Paulo Thomson (scavenger & amateur doctor; 35-jaraĝa viro)

Wetzel Family: Mother (32), father (29), daughter (12), daughter (5), son (3)

Yamasaki Family: Hector (father, 45), Marion (mother, 36), Jonas (10-jaraĝa son), Tandra (6-jaraĝa daughter).

Example of generation process

I roll a d8 to determine family size and the result is 5. I roll a d6 to determine whether it is a single parent, and I get a 2 (so yes, since it's a 1-3 chance out of 6 for a single parent). Ouch, that's four kids for one parent. I roll for the age of the parent, and decide that it might be lower that 10+5d8 so as to provide that it's early in their life. Instead, I roll 18+2d6 and the sum is 26. Next I roll 5d3, 3d4, 2d6, and 1d12 for each of the children. I get, in order of the chart, 10, 10, 10, and 9. How bizarre. I'll say they had triplets (at the age of 16, my God; this is medieval fantasy, for sure) and somehow another one after that. Then, other partner dies to leave four children of more or less the same age to one very very young adult. How terrifying. This is some real life horror. Now I roll sex for each with a d2, starting with the eldest. I roll 2, 1, 2, 2, 2. I'll move that 1 to the 9-year-old. So one single mother with triplet girls and a younger 9-year-old boy.

Going through this process, you might see how I was developing some of the story of this family as I went. The absence of one of the parents I took to mean a tragic death, but it could easily have been abandonment or conscription (the father is still out serving in his lord's rabble). If you're fleshing out a village that's going to be seen quite a lot in your next campaign, this method might help you with that quite a bit.