My relationship with tables is complicated: sometimes I would get so lost in making them that they were hardly worth rolling on. To really use this table as presented takes an indeterminate number of die rolls and a piece of note paper and a minute or two. It’s clearly too much work for too little benefit during play, but if you take the time during prep then it may not even come up! Maybe this is an example of complexity that some automation could save us from? So I’m taking liberties with this revisit to include the generator that it took me eight years to write, because I really do like the texture it can add to a game.
Recovered: Snake Oil
I don’t have a campaign running at the moment, but I’m considering something Wampus-y for the future. I’ve devised a table of names for things that might be found in a Wampus Country medicine cabinet, sold by shady street vendors or sworn-by by old farm-hands. Most things generated are probably just alcohol, but some of them are possibly admixtures of unrelated potions, and some of them might even be good as actual potions, expertly brewed.
Click the advert to see the tables!
A half-dozen samples:
- Master Totenkinder’s Carbonated Tablets
- Señor Edward’s Syrup of Magic
- Mistress Turner’s Original Tincture
- Doctor Paracelsus’ Krynoid-ash Embrocation
- Madame Gingery’s Tablets
- Doctor Wace’s Peculiar Pills
The column “Quaffable” is an alternative to “Substance” if you’d prefer that all your things be potions. The columns “Adjective” and “Descriptor” each appear with 50% probability. The first 10 items in the “Animal” column correspond to the “Setting Specific” columns.
Automated
“Doc, get me some more of that bottle…”
This post was first shared on August 2, 2012. Erik Jensen himself commented on it, which still warms my heart. The generator was first shared on August 16, 2020, and here re-built with the most recent version of Spwack’s generator generator. The illustration was taken from the Library of Congress.