The 15 Inktober 2019 prompt was 'legend", so I reached back and drew on the legendary journeys of Hercules, who looked blind so I fixed him…

Nelson’s word is ‘bed’. Legendary Bed?! 8-P Strongman hero finds a bed on the road, by the road? I’m watching the dungeon dudes talking about how to start an adventure and this is intriguing. An old woman and a baby are in a bed abandoned by the road. Why? Who and where? What are the players going to do about it?

Maybe it’s about the past and the future, maybe slavers robbed a family on the road and abandoned the old woman and the baby in the bed… which is weird because beds are very valuable and the young bravo who showed a little mercy screwed this up. The boss is on his way back with the beat up bravo and some men to get the bed and will attack if the players dither!

This is the classic ‘Trouble On The Road’ inciting incident or adventure hook. A good GM should have more than one so that he or she is not left scrambling, much, when the players turn down the adventure the GM actually had planned. If the players are heartless bastards, what is another option? Perhaps the players actually made short work of it and left the old woman and the baby at the next little village, along with a little silver and some locals hired to get the families back? Yeah, neither one sounds heroic, do they? Railroading sucks coming and going sometimes.

1. Trouble On The Road
2. Disaster Strikes!
3. Call To Adventure!
4. Prison Break!
5. The Wide World Scenario is the grab bag, sort of all of the above

Another roleplaying thing is sometimes you need to randomly decide something, need an oracle of some sort, just a suggestion, really. So roll a die, or have the page/cell do it for you. Percentiles is good, because it’s fairly easy to understand the percentages. Suppose we have some factions. How much of the local population is with one or another? The most vocal, visible faction has 57% of the population, but 67% are a little lukewarm about it. About 28% of the remainder oppose the majority but are little lukewarm as well, only 27% are hardcore. This means that only about a quarter of the populace are ready to throw down and the rest of them are getting pretty sick of their bullshit…

We can randomly change percentages over time, lowering it if you roll under the percentage by averaging the two numbers, and increasing it by also averaging them, as well. How do you feel about X? Perhaps you hate them pretty strongly, 65%, or love them by the same percentage. This is how likely you are to do something because you hate them or love them. You love the lovable little brotherly player character, but the wizard is annoyed by them, not hate, just inconvenienced?

The usual trick for building a party is to have the players think up reasons they know each other, and would work together, despite maybe a little friction. You might decide that each player must have some link to two of the other players (obviously there are three or more players). Perhaps two things they like about other PCs and one thing they don’t? Like a family where a little brother resents his bossy big sister.

Creating a City or Settlement

1. Why does it exist? Supply, manufacturing, midpoint, defense

2. What are it’s local resources?

3. Who runs things and how?

4. When was it established, and where is it?

5. Wealth of the place and an Oddity