Given Troupe style play, has there ever been a big list of Seasonal events that the group could roll on to generate a random event each season ? Something like
d100
1-3: a Moor visits with tales of a magical city in Arabia
4-6 : a visitor (Magi or Mundane) steals a valuable Libram from your Library.
7-9: The local Bishop insists on visiting to inspect for paganism or heresy.
10-13 etc, etc. .....
Thought it might be a quick way to generate events, conflicts and discussions for the group.
Covenant creation should include more general hooks i.e. Warzone, Paganism, Protections, Faerie Landlord, Castle, Road etc. and more general boons: Isolated, Wealthy, Hedge Tradition, Edifices etc.....
These should prompt the SG to the types of story generation that can come up.
Basically, the sorts of stories that arise are at the discretion of the Storyguide. The SG can use die if s/he wants, but the best stories will flow from imaginative and complex preperation.
This would only really work if you were playing a more Player-driven story style. The big benifit of a Covenant-centred game like this is that it allows the SG to more easily accomodate complex schemes and intrigue. So, use your discretion. Have the bishop is in league with a group dedicated to destroying magic, but is ultimately being played by other magi, who are using his visit as cover to steal a major work from the library, though one of them is trapped by a grog, and tells a wonderous tale of the cabal's base in a magical city in Arabia.
The Moore's visit should be at a time that the characters are all there...
The Bishops visit should be when the Pagan/Diedne/Necromancer is at home, so he can catch him at it.....
The library getting cleaned out should be when the librarian isn't there.... What you don't have one?! OOOPS, the book didn't get stolen, it got eaten by moths...or the roof leaked on the book and now the covenant has to repair it....
100: A significant being from one of the Four Realms arrives at your Covenant.
Roll on the Realm Sub-table and then roll on the Lords of the (Insert name here) Realm table.
Lords of the Infernal Realm
100: Satan , on a day pass.
His mere presence causes an Infernal Aura of rank 10 to manifest with a Radius of 666 paces.
:mrgreen:
But possibly this could be done as a Sub Rosa article.
For people who lack inspiration at times (like myself) ,
a Hook , Line and Sinker style number of possible Seasonal Events would be useful.
I was looking for the same thing a month or so back. The 2nd edition Covenants list is pretty bare. Spellbound Kingdoms, Birthright and the Rules Cyclopedia have some good material for creating a chart. I was planning on working on one when my current project quiets down.
If you want it computerised, try using "Table Smith", an excellent freeware program that can be used to do very complex multistage and multilevel dierolls/randomisations.
Not sure I quite agree with you, Urien. I can see that each of those events could be more complex stories if they weren't random and the storyguide for that particular tale could "pounce" on the group with it hand have all the background and contingencies sketched out, but if a troupe wants to include randomness as a way to build in tension and/or a way to keep everyone on thier toes, who are we to judge?
While my preference is for not using a wandering monster table, I can see that some might enjoy it. If it makes the game more fun for them ("Satan on a day pass"? That would be something.), then they ABSOLUTELY should do it. You and I would have the right to politely withdraw from the group.
Come to think of it, there is a Major Hook: Mystic Road and a Minor Hook: Road that fit this style really well. Mystic Road means that random critters show up, Minor Road is for Mundane problems.
Imagine a Covenant at a Cross-Roads of these.... An Archbishop, a Diedne and Satan on a Day pass walk into a Covenant....
Keep in mind that you want to make sure they're challenges within the capacity of the PCs.
Actually, sounds like it could be fun, especially if a troupe gets stuck on a metastory that stumps them.
Random events is a good and enriching thing... and people don't appear just when they could discover something... and I don't see why the bischop couldn't come when the heretic or pagan magus is away...
At home we have a random event file
first stress d10 : politic event (10% : 01-10), mystic event (10% : 11-20) or hermetic event (80% : 20+) so that most events will be "political events" (mundane in fact)
then a stress d10 for events such as
politic : famin, feest, war, inquisition, siege, rumor, satanism...
mystic : dragon, malediction, feeric being, enigma, ghost, invitation, strange visit, foolish lab (expriment that turns strange), demonic attack...
hermetic : red cap, student, quaesitor, strange visit, tribunal, apprentice, strange birth, mage war...
it is nice while the mages are working in their laboratory, small day to day event that can appear (you can roll for exemple once a month or more, or less...) and it could drive the characters to a scenario later...
On a related note, I found something that would certainly assist those campaigns that are more manor-landed noble based. It's a rather complicated mechanism for HarnManor. But if you click through to establish the manor, there is a nice yearly calendar of events. It is not very fantastical (little to no magic) but could provide some nice random encounters.
