Core Rules for this system are based on actions/reactions having a "Challenge Level", and rolling at least an equivilant number of winning dice for success. You can use any kind of dice, even coins, as they are individually a win or lose roll. Take a 6 sided dice for example; 1,2,3 would be a lose, and 4,5,6 would be a win. A player will always start off with a base set of 3 dice. Additional dice will be added/removed based on stat scores, skill levels, etc. A "challenge level" is set by the game master. The players must roll winning dice in equal quantity, or greater than, the challenge level to have the action/reaction considered a success. However, failure is not the end, please see the Narrative Failure section below. [need example]
Narrative failure is where a player fails their roll for an action/reaction. The GM then decides if the action/reaction fails outright (uncommon) or if it is successful but not in the way the player intended. [need example]
Where most systems focus on Professions/Classes, the focus here is on the characters stats and the gear you carry. You now have a legitimate reason to quest after "insert magic item here" for your character, or to prevent "X" villian from getting it as well. You can classify your character anything you wish, with DM approval.
Higher than normal stats give you "special abilities". See the special abilities section for additional information.
Modifier keywords are a way of adding a descriptor before a stat to make it more naritive. Instead of saying your strength is a +2. You would say "greater strength"
Considerable, uncommon, vast, great, supreme, tremendous, considerable, , remarkable, incredible, Unusual, exceptional, extraordinary, Noticeable, mighty, huge, immense, enormous, immeasurable, incalculable, incomparable, outstanding,
Lacking, inferior, paltry, Low, Lesser, meager, negligible,
####################################################################################### ## Treasures ## ####################################################################################### Treasure lucky coin, artifact, use luck at will track how often this is used (keep a running total) as if the coin is ever lost or relinquished for any reason, the former owner will now have this many negative luck points and significant rolls or actions will start failing ####################################################################################### ## The Farnam Street Latticework of Mental Models ## ####################################################################################### # The Farnam Street Latticework of Mental Models ## General Thinking Concepts (11) 1. Inversion Otherwise known as thinking through a situation in reverse or thinking “backwards,” inversion is a problem-solving technique. Often by considering what we want to avoid rather than what we want to get, we come up with better solutions. Inversion works not just in mathematics but in nearly every area of life. As the saying goes, “Just tell me where I’m going to die so I can never go there.” 2. Falsification / Confirmation Bias What a man wishes, he also believes. Similarly, what we believe is what we choose to see. This is commonly referred to as the confirmation bias. It is a deeply ingrained mental habit, both energy-conserving and comfortable, to look for confirmations of long-held wisdom rather than violations. Yet the scientific process – including hypothesis generation, blind testing when needed, and objective statistical rigor – is designed to root out precisely the opposite, which is why it works so well when followed. The modern scientific enterprise operates under the principle of falsification: A method is termed scientific if it can be stated in such a way that a certain defined result would cause it to be proved false. Pseudo-knowledge and pseudo-science operate and propagate by being unfalsifiable – as with astrology, we are unable to prove them either correct or incorrect because the conditions under which they would be shown false are never stated. 3. Circle of Competence An idea introduced by Warren Buffett and Charles Munger in relation to investing: each individual tends to have an area or areas in which they really, truly know their stuff, their area of special competence. Areas not inside that circle are problematic because not only are we ignorant about them, but we may also be ignorant of our own ignorance. Thus, when we're making decisions, it becomes important to define and attend to our special circle, so as to act accordingly. 4. The Principle of Parsimony (Occam’s Razor) Named after the friar William of Ockham, Occam’s Razor is a heuristic by which we select among competing explanations. Ockham stated that we should prefer the simplest explanation with the least moving parts: it is easier to falsify (see: Falsification), easier to understand, and more likely, on average, to be correct. This principle is not an iron law but a tendency and a mindset: If all else is equal, it’s more likely that the simple solution suffices. Of course, we also keep in mind Einstein’s famous idea (even if apocryphal) that “an idea should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.” 5. Hanlon's Razor Harder to trace in its origin, Hanlon’s Razor states that we should not attribute to malice that which is more easily explained by stupidity. In a complex world, this principle helps us avoid extreme paranoia and ideology, often very hard to escape from, by not generally assuming that bad results are the fault of a bad actor, although they can be. More likely, a mistake has been made. 6. Second-Order Thinking In all human systems and most complex systems, the second layer of effects often dwarfs the first layer, yet often goes unconsidered. In other words, we must consider that effects have effects. Second-order thinking is best illustrated by the idea of standing on your tiptoes at a parade: Once one person does it, everyone will do it in order to see, thus negating the first tiptoer. Now, however, the whole parade audience suffers on their toes rather than standing firmly on their whole feet. 7. The Map Is Not the Territory The map of reality is not reality itself. If any map were to represent its actual territory with perfect fidelity, it would be the size of the territory itself. Thus, no need for a map! This model tells us that there will always be an imperfect relationship between reality and the models we use to represent and understand it. This imperfection is a necessity in order to simplify. It is all we can do to accept this and act accordingly. 8. Thought Experiments A technique popularized by Einstein, the thought experiment is a way to logically carry out a test in one’s own head that would be very difficult or impossible to perform in real life. With the thought experiment as a tool, we can solve problems with intuition and logic that could not be demonstrated physically, as with Einstein imagining himself traveling on a beam of light in order to solve the problem of relativity. 9. Mr. Market Mr. Market was introduced by the investor Benjamin Graham in his seminal book The Intelligent Investor to represent the vicissitudes of the financial markets. As Graham explains, the markets are a bit like a moody neighbor, sometimes waking up happy and sometimes waking up sad – your job as an investor is to take advantage of him in his bad moods and sell to him in his good moods. This attitude is contrasted to an efficient-market hypothesis in which Mr. Market always wakes up in the middle of the bed, never feeling overly strong in either direction. 10. Probabilistic Thinking (See also: Numeracy/Bayesian Updating) The unknowable human world is dominated by probabilistic outcomes, as distinguished from deterministic ones. Although we cannot predict the future with great certainty, we are wise to ascribe odds to more and less probable events. We do this every day unconsciously as we cross the street and ascribe low, yet not negligible, odds of being hit by a car. 11. Default Status The USCB ecologist/economist Garrett Hardin once said that “The scientific mind is not closed: it is merely well-guarded by a conscientious and seldom sleeping gatekeeper.” The way it does that is with the concept of the default status: The “resting position” of common sense, whereby the burden of proof falls on assertions to the contrary. Given the problem of opportunity costs and limited time and energy, a default status is nearly always necessary to avoid wasting time. Examples include the laws of thermodynamics, the law of natural selection, and the incentive-caused bias. Numeracy (14) 1. Permutations and Combinations The mathematics of permutations and combinations leads us to understand the practical probabilities of the world around us, how things can be ordered, and how we should think about things. 2. Algebraic Equivalence The introduction of algebra allowed us to demonstrate mathematically and abstractly that two seemingly different things could be the same. By manipulating symbols, we can demonstrate equivalence or inequivalence, the use of which led humanity to untold engineering and technical abilities. Knowing at least the basics of algebra can allow us to understand a variety of important results. 3. Randomness Though the human brain has trouble comprehending it, much of the world is composed of random, non-sequential, non-ordered events. We are “fooled” by random effects when we attribute causality to things that are actually outside of our control. If we don’t course-correct for this fooled-by-randomness effect – our faulty sense of pattern-seeking – we will tend to see things as being more predictable than they are and act accordingly. 4. Stochastic Processes (Poisson, Markov, Random Walk) A stochastic process is a random statistical process and encompasses a wide variety of processes in which the movement of an individual variable can be impossible to predict but can be thought through probabilistically. The wide variety of stochastic methods helps us describe systems of variables through probabilities without necessarily being able to determine the position of any individual variable over time. For example, it’s not possible to predict stock prices on a day-to-day basis, but we can describe the probability of various distributions of their movements over time. Obviously, it is much more likely that the stock market (a stochastic process) will be up or down 1% in a day than up or down 10%, even though we can’t predict what tomorrow will bring. 5. Compounding It’s been said that Einstein called compounding a wonder of the world. He probably didn’t, but it is a wonder. Compounding is the process by which we add interest to a fixed sum, which then earns interest on the previous sum and the newly added interest, and then earns interest on that amount, and so on ad infinitum. It is an exponential effect, rather than a linear, or additive, effect. Money is not the only thing that compounds; ideas and relationships do as well. In tangible realms, compounding is always subject to physical limits and diminishing returns; intangibles can compound more freely. Compounding also leads to the time value of money, which underlies all of modern finance. 6. Multiplying by Zero Any reasonably educated person knows that any number multiplied by zero, no matter how large the number, is still zero. This is true in human systems as well as mathematical ones. In some systems, a failure in one area can negate great effort in all other areas. As simple multiplication would show, fixing the “zero” often has a much greater effect than does trying to enlarge the other areas. 7. Churn Insurance companies and subscription services are well aware of the concept of churn – every year, a certain number of customers are lost and must be replaced. Standing still is the equivalent of losing, as seen in the model called the “Red Queen Effect.” Churn is present in many business and human systems: A constant figure is periodically lost and must be replaced before any new figures are added over the top. 8. Law of Large Numbers One of the fundamental underlying assumptions of probability is that as more instances of an event occur, the actual results will converge on the expected ones. For example, if I know that the average man is 5 feet 10 inches tall, I am far more likely to get an average of 5′10″ by selecting 500 men at random than 5 men at random. The opposite of this model is the law of small numbers, which states that small samples can and should be looked at with great skepticism. 9. Bell Curve/Normal Distribution The normal distribution is a statistical process that leads to the well-known graphical representation of a bell curve, with a meaningful central “average” and increasingly rare standard deviations from that average when correctly sampled. (The so-called “central limit” theorem.) Well-known examples include human height and weight, but it’s just as important to note that many common processes, especially in non-tangible systems like social systems, do not follow the normal distribution. 10. Power Laws One of the most common processes that does not fit the normal distribution is that of a power law, whereby one quantity varies with another’s exponent rather than linearly. For example, the Richter scale describes the power of earthquakes on a power-law distribution scale: an 8 is 10x more destructive than a 7, and a 9 is 10x more destructive than an 8. The central limit theorem does not apply and there is thus no “average” earthquake. This is true of all power-law distributions. 11. Fat-Tailed Processes (Extremistan) A process can often look like a normal distribution but have a large “tail” – meaning that seemingly outlier events are far more likely than they are in an actual normal distribution. A strategy or process may be far more risky than a normal distribution is capable of describing if the fat tail is on the negative side, or far more profitable if the fat tail is on the positive side. Much of the human social world is said to be fat-tailed rather than normally distributed. 12. Bayesian Updating The Bayesian method is a method of thought (named for Thomas Bayes) whereby one takes into account all prior relevant probabilities and then incrementally updates them as newer information arrives. This method is especially productive given the fundamentally non-deterministic world we experience: We must use prior odds and new information in combination to arrive at our best decisions. This is not necessarily our intuitive decision-making engine. 13. Regression to the Mean In a normally distributed system, long deviations from the average will tend to return to that average with an increasing number of observations: the so-called Law of Large Numbers. We are often fooled by regression to the mean, as with a sick patient improving spontaneously around the same time they begin taking an herbal remedy, or a poorly performing sports team going on a winning streak. We must be careful not to confuse statistically likely events with causal ones. 14. Order of Magnitude In many, perhaps most, systems, quantitative description down to a precise figure is either impossible or useless (or both). For example, estimating the distance between our galaxy and the next one over is a matter of knowing not the precise number of miles, but how many zeroes are after the 1. Is the distance about 1 million miles or about 1 billion? This thought habit can help us escape useless precision. ## Systems (22) 1. Scale One of the most important principles of systems is that they are sensitive to scale. Properties (or behaviors) tend to change when you scale them up or down. In studying complex systems, we must always be roughly quantifying – in orders of magnitude, at least – the scale at which we are observing, analyzing, or predicting the system. 2. Law of Diminishing Returns Related to scale, most important real-world results are subject to an eventual decrease of incremental value. A good example would be a poor family: Give them enough money to thrive, and they are no longer poor. But after a certain point, additional money will not improve their lot; there is a clear diminishing return of additional dollars at some roughly quantifiable point. Often, the law of diminishing returns veers into negative territory – i.e., receiving too much money could destroy the poor family. 3. Pareto Principle Named for Italian polymath Vilfredo Pareto, who noticed that 80% of Italy’s land was owned by about 20% of its population, the Pareto Principle states that a small amount of some phenomenon causes a disproportionately large effect. The Pareto Principle is an example of a power-law type of statistical distribution – as distinguished from a traditional bell curve – and is demonstrated in various phenomena ranging from wealth to city populations to important human habits. 4. Feedback Loops (and Homeostasis) All complex systems are subject to positive and negative feedback loops whereby A causes B, which in turn influences A (and C), and so on – with higher-order effects frequently resulting from continual movement of the loop. In a homeostatic system, a change in A is often brought back into line by an opposite change in B to maintain the balance of the system, as with the temperature of the human body or the behavior of an organizational culture. Automatic feedback loops maintain a “static” environment unless and until an outside force changes the loop. A “runaway feedback loop” describes a situation in which the output of a reaction becomes its own catalyst (auto-catalysis). 5. Chaos Dynamics (Butterfly Effect)/ (Sensitivity to Initial Conditions) In a world such as ours, governed by chaos dynamics, small changes (perturbations) in initial conditions have massive downstream effects as near-infinite feedback loops occur; this phenomenon is also called the butterfly effect. This means that some aspects of physical systems (like the weather more than a few days from now) as well as social systems (the behavior of a group of human beings over a long period) are fundamentally unpredictable. 6. Preferential Attachment (Cumulative Advantage) A preferential attachment situation occurs when the current leader is given more of the reward than the laggards, thereby tending to preserve or enhance the status of the leader. A strong network effect is a good example of preferential attachment; a market with 10x more buyers and sellers than the next largest market will tend to have a preferential attachment dynamic. 7. Emergence Higher-level behavior tends to emerge from the interaction of lower-order components. The result is frequently not linear – not a matter of simple addition – but rather non-linear, or exponential. An important resulting property of emergent behavior is that it cannot be predicted from simply studying the component parts. 8. Irreducibility We find that in most systems there are irreducible quantitative properties, such as complexity, minimums, time, and length. Below the irreducible level, the desired result simply does not occur. One cannot get several women pregnant to reduce the amount of time needed to have one child, and one cannot reduce a successfully built automobile to a single part. These results are, to a defined point, irreducible. 9. Tragedy of the Commons A concept introduced by the economist and ecologist Garrett Hardin, the Tragedy of the Commons states that in a system where a common resource is shared, with no individual responsible for the wellbeing of the resource, it will tend to be depleted over time. The Tragedy is reducible to incentives: Unless people collaborate, each individual derives more personal benefit than the cost that he or she incurs, and therefore depletes the resource for fear of missing out. 10. Gresham’s Law Gresham’s Law, named for the financier Thomas Gresham, states that in a system of circulating currency, forged currency will tend to drive out real currency, as real currency is hoarded and forged currency is spent. We see a similar result in human systems, as with bad behavior driving out good behavior in a crumbling moral system, or bad practices driving out good practices in a crumbling economic system. Generally, regulation and oversight are required to prevent results that follow Gresham’s Law. 11. Algorithms While hard to precisely define, an algorithm is generally an automated set of rules or a “blueprint” leading a series of steps or actions resulting in a desired outcome, and often stated in the form of a series of “If → Then” statements. Algorithms are best known for their use in modern computing, but are a feature of biological life as well. For example, human DNA contains an algorithm for building a human being. 12. Fragility – Robustness – Antifragility Popularized by Nassim Taleb, the sliding scale of fragility, robustness, and antifragility refers to the responsiveness of a system to incremental negative variability. A fragile system or object is one in which additional negative variability has a disproportionately negative impact, as with a coffee cup shattering from a 6-foot fall, but receiving no damage at all (rather than 1/6th of the damage) from a 1-foot fall. A robust system or object tends to be neutral to the additional negativity variability, and of course, an antifragile system benefits: If there were a cup that got stronger when dropped from 6 feet than when dropped from 1 foot, it would be termed antifragile. 13. Backup Systems/Redundancy A critical model of the engineering profession is that of backup systems. A good engineer never assumes the perfect reliability of the components of the system. He or she builds in redundancy to protect the integrity of the total system. Without the application of this robustness principle, tangible and intangible systems tend to fail over time. 14. Margin of Safety Similarly, engineers have also developed the habit of adding a margin for error into all calculations. In an unknown world, driving a 9,500-pound bus over a bridge built to hold precisely 9,600 pounds is rarely seen as intelligent. Thus, on the whole, few modern bridges ever fail. In practical life outside of physical engineering, we can often profitably give ourselves margins as robust as the bridge system. 15. Criticality A system becomes critical when it is about to jump discretely from one phase to another. The marginal utility of the last unit before the phase change is wildly higher than any unit before it. A frequently cited example is water turning from a liquid to a vapor when heated to a specific temperature. “Critical mass” refers to the mass needed to have the critical event occur, most commonly in a nuclear system. 16. Network Effects A network tends to become more valuable as nodes are added to the network: this is known as the network effect. An easy example is contrasting the development of the electricity system and the telephone system. If only one house has electricity, its inhabitants have gained immense value, but if only one house has a telephone, its inhabitants have gained nothing of use. Only with additional telephones does the phone network gain value. This network effect is widespread in the modern world and creates immense value for organizations and customers alike. 17. Black Swan Also popularized by Nassim Taleb, a Black Swan is a rare and highly consequential event that is invisible to a given observer ahead of time. It is a result of applied epistemology: If you have seen only white swans, you cannot categorically state that there are no black swans, but the inverse is not true: seeing one black swan is enough for you to state that there are black swans. Black Swan events are necessarily unpredictable to the observer (as Taleb likes to say, Thanksgiving is a Black Swan for the turkey, not the butcher) and thus must be dealt with by addressing the fragility-robustness-antifragility spectrum rather than through better methods of prediction. 18. Via Negativa – Omission/Removal/Avoidance of Harm In many systems, improvement is at best, or at times only, a result of removing bad elements rather than of adding good elements. This is a credo built into the modern medical profession: First, do no harm. Similarly, if one has a group of children behaving badly, removal of the instigator is often much more effective than any form of punishment meted out to the whole group. 19. The Lindy Effect The Lindy Effect refers to the life expectancy of a non-perishable object or idea being related to its current lifespan. If an idea or object has lasted for X number of years, it would be expected (on average) to last another X years. Although a human being who is 90 and lives to 95 does not add 5 years to his or her life expectancy, non-perishables lengthen their life expectancy as they continually survive. A classic text is a prime example: if humanity has been reading Shakespeare’s plays for 500 years, it will be expected to read them for another 500. 20. Renormalization Group The renormalization group technique allows us to think about physical and social systems at different scales. An idea from physics, and a complicated one at that, the application of a renormalization group to social systems allows us to understand why a small number of stubborn individuals can have a disproportionate impact if those around them follow suit on increasingly large scales. 21. Spring-loading A system is spring-loaded if it is coiled in a certain direction, positive or negative. Positively spring-loading systems and relationships is important in a fundamentally unpredictable world to help protect us against negative events. The reverse can be very destructive. 22. Complex Adaptive Systems A complex adaptive system, as distinguished from a complex system in general, is one that can understand itself and change based on that understanding. Complex adaptive systems are social systems. The difference is best illustrated by thinking about weather prediction contrasted to stock market prediction. The weather will not change based on an important forecaster’s opinion, but the stock market might. Complex adaptive systems are thus fundamentally not predictable. Physical World (9) 1. Laws of Thermodynamics The laws of thermodynamics describe energy in a closed system. The laws cannot be escaped and underlie the physical world. They describe a world in which useful energy is constantly being lost, and energy cannot be created or destroyed. Applying their lessons to the social world can be a profitable enterprise. 2. Reciprocity If I push on a wall, physics tells me that the wall pushes back with equivalent force. In a biological system, if one individual acts on another, the action will tend to be reciprocated in kind. And of course, human beings act with intense reciprocity demonstrated as well. 3. Velocity Velocity is not equivalent to speed; the two are sometimes confused. Velocity is speed plus vector: how fast something gets somewhere. An object that moves two steps forward and then two steps back has moved at a certain speed but shows no velocity. The addition of the vector, that critical distinction, is what we should consider in practical life. 4. Relativity Relativity has been used in several contexts in the world of physics, but the important aspect to study is the idea that an observer cannot truly understand a system of which he himself is a part. For example, a man inside an airplane does not feel like he is experiencing movement, but an outside observer can see that movement is occurring. This form of relativity tends to affect social systems in a similar way. 5. Activation Energy A fire is not much more than a combination of carbon and oxygen, but the forests and coal mines of the world are not combusting at will because such a chemical reaction requires the input of a critical level of “activation energy” in order to get a reaction started. Two combustible elements alone are not enough. 6. Catalysts A catalyst either kick-starts or maintains a chemical reaction, but isn’t itself a reactant. The reaction may slow or stop without the addition of catalysts. Social systems, of course, take on many similar traits, and we can view catalysts in a similar light. 7. Leverage Most of the engineering marvels of the world have been accomplished with applied leverage. As famously stated by Archimedes, “Give me a lever long enough and I shall move the world.” With a small amount of input force, we can make a great output force through leverage. Understanding where we can apply this model to the human world can be a source of great success. 8. Inertia An object in motion with a certain vector wants to continue moving in that direction unless acted upon. This is a fundamental physical principle of motion; however, individuals, systems, and organizations display the same effect. It allows them to minimize the use of energy, but can cause them to be destroyed or eroded. 9. Alloying When we combine various elements, we create new substances. This is no great surprise, but what can be surprising in the alloying process is that 2+2 can equal not 4 but 6 – the alloy can be far stronger than the simple addition of the underlying elements would lead us to believe. This process leads us to engineering great physical objects, but we understand many intangibles in the same way; a combination of the right elements in social systems or even individuals can create a 2+2=6 effect similar to alloying. The Biological World (15) 1. Incentives All creatures respond to incentives to keep themselves alive. This is the basic insight of biology. Constant incentives will tend to cause a biological entity to have constant behavior, to an extent. Humans are included and are particularly great examples of the incentive-driven nature of biology; however, humans are complicated in that their incentives can be hidden or intangible. The rule of life is to repeat what works and has been rewarded. 2. Cooperation (Including Symbiosis) Competition tends to describe most biological systems, but cooperation at various levels is just as important a dynamic. In fact, the cooperation of a bacterium and a simple cell probably created the first complex cell and all of the life we see around us. Without cooperation, no group survives, and the cooperation of groups gives rise to even more complex versions of organization. Cooperation and competition tend to coexist at multiple levels. 3. Tendency to Minimize Energy Output (Mental & Physical) In a physical world governed by thermodynamics and competition for limited energy and resources, any biological organism that was wasteful with energy would be at a severe disadvantage for survival. Thus, we see in most instances that behavior is governed by a tendency to minimize energy usage when at all possible. 4. Adaptation Species tend to adapt to their surroundings in order to survive, given the combination of their genetics and their environment – an always-unavoidable combination. However, adaptations made in an individual's lifetime are not passed down genetically, as was once thought: Populations of species adapt through the process of evolution by natural selection, as the most-fit examples of the species replicate at an above-average rate. 5. Evolution by Natural Selection Evolution by natural selection was once called “the greatest idea anyone ever had.” In the 19th century, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace simultaneous realized that species evolve through random mutation and differential survival rates. If we call human intervention in animal-breeding an example of “artificial selection,” we can call Mother Nature deciding the success or failure of a particular mutation “natural selection.” Those best suited for survival tend to be preserved. But of course, conditions change. 6. The Red Queen Effect (Co-evolutionary Arms Race) The evolution-by-natural-selection model leads to something of an arms race among species competing for limited resources. When one species evolves an advantageous adaptation, a competing species must respond in kind or fail as a species. Standing pat can mean falling behind. This arms race is called the Red Queen Effect for the character in Alice in Wonderland who said, “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.” 7. Replication A fundamental building block of diverse biological life is high-fidelity replication. The fundamental unit of replication seems to be the DNA molecule, which provides a blueprint for the offspring to be built from physical building blocks. There are a variety of replication methods, but most can be lumped into sexual and asexual. 8. Hierarchical and Other Organizing Instincts Most complex biological organisms have an innate feel for how they should organize. While not all of them end up in hierarchical structures, many do, especially in the animal kingdom. Human beings like to think they are outside of this, but they feel the hierarchical instinct as strongly as any other organism. 9. Self-Preservation Instincts Without a strong self-preservation instinct in an organism’s DNA, it would tend to disappear over time, thus eliminating that DNA. While cooperation is another important model, the self-preservation instinct is strong in all organisms and can cause violent, erratic, and/or destructive behavior for those around them. 10. Simple Physiological Reward-Seeking All organisms feel pleasure and pain from simple chemical processes in their bodies which respond predictably to the outside world. Reward-seeking is an effective survival-promoting technique on average. However, those same pleasure receptors can be co-opted to cause destructive behavior, as with drug abuse. 11. Exaptation Introduced by the biologist Steven Jay Gould, an exaptation refers to a trait developed for one purpose that is later used for another purpose. This is one way to explain the development of complex biological features like an eyeball; in a more primitive form, it may have been used for something else. Once it was there, and once it developed further, 3D sight became possible. 12. Extinction The inability to survive can cause an extinction event, whereby an entire species ceases to compete and replicate effectively. Once its numbers have dwindled to a critically low level, an extinction can be unavoidable (and predictable) given the inability to effectively replicate in large enough numbers. 13. Ecosystems An ecosystem describes any group of organisms coexisting with the natural world. Most ecosystems show diverse forms of life taking on different approaches to survival, with such pressures leading to varying behavior. Social systems can be seen in the same light as the physical ecosystems and many of the same conclusions can be made. 14. Niches Most organisms find a niche: a method of competing and behaving for survival. Usually, a species will select a niche for which it is best adapted. The danger arises when multiple species begin competing for the same niche, which can cause an extinction – there can be only so many species doing the same thing before limited resources give out. 15. Dunbar’s Number The primatologist Robin Dunbar observed through study that the number of individuals a primate can get to know and trust closely is related to the size of its neocortex. Extrapolating from his study of primates, Dunbar theorized that the Dunbar number for a human being is somewhere in the 100–250 range, which is supported by certain studies of human behavior and social networks. Human Nature & Judgment (23) 1. Trust Fundamentally, the modern world operates on trust. Familial trust is generally a given (otherwise we’d have a hell of a time surviving), but we also choose to trust chefs, clerks, drivers, factory workers, executives, and many others. A trusting system is one that tends to work most efficiently; the rewards of trust are extremely high. 2. Bias from Incentives Highly responsive to incentives, humans have perhaps the most varied and hardest to understand set of incentives in the animal kingdom. This causes us to distort our thinking when it is in our own interest to do so. A wonderful example is a salesman truly believing that his product will improve the lives of its users. It’s not merely convenient that he sells the product; the fact of his selling the product causes a very real bias in his own thinking. 3. Pavlovian Association Ivan Pavlov very effectively demonstrated that animals can respond not just to direct incentives but also to associated objects; remember the famous dogs salivating at the ring of a bell. Human beings are much the same and can feel positive and negative emotion towards intangible objects, with the emotion coming from past associations rather than direct effects. 4. Tendency to Feel Envy & Jealousy Humans have a tendency to feel envious of those receiving more than they are, and a desire “get what is theirs” in due course. The tendency towards envy is strong enough to drive otherwise irrational behavior, but is as old as humanity itself. Any system ignorant of envy effects will tend to self-immolate over time. 5. Tendency to Distort Due to Liking/Loving or Disliking/Hating Based on past association, stereotyping, ideology, genetic influence, or direct experience, humans have a tendency to distort their thinking in favor of people or things that they like and against people or things they dislike. This tendency leads to overrating the things we like and underrating or broadly categorizing things we dislike, often missing crucial nuances in the process. 6. Denial Anyone who has been alive long enough realizes that, as the saying goes, “denial is not just a river in Africa.” This is powerfully demonstrated in situations like war or drug abuse, where denial has powerful destructive effects but allows for behavioral inertia. Denying reality can be a coping mechanism, a survival mechanism, or a purposeful tactic. 7. Availability Heuristic One of the most useful findings of modern psychology is what Daniel Kahneman calls the Availability Bias or Heuristic: We tend to most easily recall what is salient, important, frequent, and recent. The brain has its own energy-saving and inertial tendencies that we have little control over – the availability heuristic is likely one of them. Having a truly comprehensive memory would be debilitating. Some sub-examples of the availability heuristic include the Anchoring and Sunk Cost Tendencies. 8. Representativeness Heuristic The three major psychological findings that fall under Representativeness, also defined by Kahneman and his partner Tversky, are: a. Failure to Account for Base Rates An unconscious failure to look at past odds in determining current or future behavior. b. Tendency to Stereotype The tendency to broadly generalize and categorize rather than look for specific nuance. Like availability, this is generally a necessary trait for energy-saving in the brain. c. Failure to See False Conjunctions Most famously demonstrated by the Linda Test, the same two psychologists showed that students chose more vividly described individuals as more likely to fit into a predefined category than individuals with broader, more inclusive, but less vivid descriptions, even if the vivid example was a mere subset of the more inclusive set. These specific examples are seen as more representative of the category than those with the broader but vaguer descriptions, in violation of logic and probability. 9. Social Proof (Safety in Numbers) Human beings are one of many social species, along with bees, ants, and chimps, among many more. We have a DNA-level instinct to seek safety in numbers and will look for social guidance of our behavior. This instinct creates a cohesive sense of cooperation and culture which would not otherwise be possible, but also leads us to do foolish things if our group is doing them as well. 10. Narrative Instinct Human beings have been appropriately called “the storytelling animal” because of our instinct to construct and seek meaning in narrative. It’s likely that long before we developed the ability to write or to create objects, we were telling stories and thinking in stories. Nearly all social organizations, from religious institutions to corporations to nation-states, run on constructions of the narrative instinct. 11. Curiosity Instinct We like to call other species curious, but we are the most curious of all, an instinct which led us out of the savanna and led us to learn a great deal about the world around us, using that information to create the world in our collective minds. The curiosity instinct leads to unique human behavior and forms of organization like the scientific enterprise. Even before there were direct incentives to innovate, humans innovated out of curiosity. 12. Language Instinct The psychologist Steven Pinker calls our DNA-level instinct to learn grammatically constructed language the Language Instinct. The idea that grammatical language is not a simple cultural artifact was first popularized by the linguist Noam Chomsky. As we saw with the narrative instinct, we use these instincts to create shared stories, as well as to gossip, solve problems, and fight, among other things. Grammatically ordered language theoretically carries infinite varying meaning. 13. First-Conclusion Bias As Charlie Munger famously pointed out, the mind works a bit like a sperm and egg: the first idea gets in and then the mind shuts. Like many other tendencies, this is probably an energy-saving device. Our tendency to settle on first conclusions leads us to accept many erroneous results and cease asking questions; it can be countered with some simple and useful mental routines. 14. Tendency to Overgeneralize from Small Samples It’s important for human beings to generalize; we need not see every instance to understand the general rule, and this works to our advantage. With generalizing, however, comes a subset of errors when we forget about the Law of Large Numbers and act as if it does not exist. We take a small number of instances and create a general category, even if we have no statistically sound basis for the conclusion. 15. Relative Satisfaction/Misery Tendencies The envy tendency is probably the most obvious manifestation of the relative satisfaction tendency, but nearly all studies of human happiness show that it is related to the state of the person relative to either their past or their peers, not absolute. These relative tendencies cause us great misery or happiness in a very wide variety of objectively different situations and make us poor predictors of our own behavior and feelings. 16. Commitment & Consistency Bias As psychologists have frequently and famously demonstrated, humans are subject to a bias towards keeping their prior commitments and staying consistent with our prior selves when possible. This trait is necessary for social cohesion: people who often change their conclusions and habits are often distrusted. Yet our bias towards staying consistent can become, as one wag put it, a “hobgoblin of foolish minds” – when it is combined with the first-conclusion bias, we end up landing on poor answers and standing pat in the face of great evidence. 17. Hindsight Bias Once we know the outcome, it’s nearly impossible to turn back the clock mentally. Our narrative instinct leads us to reason that we knew it all along (whatever “it” is), when in fact we are often simply reasoning post-hoc with information not available to us before the event. The hindsight bias explains why it’s wise to keep a journal of important decisions for an unaltered record and to re-examine our beliefs when we convince ourselves that we knew it all along. 18. Sensitivity to Fairness Justice runs deep in our veins. In another illustration of our relative sense of well-being, we are careful arbiters of what is fair. Violations of fairness can be considered grounds for reciprocal action, or at least distrust. Yet fairness itself seems to be a moving target. What is seen as fair and just in one time and place may not be in another. Consider that slavery has been seen as perfectly natural and perfectly unnatural in alternating phases of human existence. 19. Tendency to Overestimate Consistency of Behavior (Fundamental Attribution Error) We tend to over-ascribe the behavior of others to their innate traits rather than to situational factors, leading us to overestimate how consistent that behavior will be in the future. In such a situation, predicting behavior seems not very difficult. Of course, in practice this assumption is consistently demonstrated to be wrong, and we are consequently surprised when others do not act in accordance with the “innate” traits we’ve endowed them with. 20. Influence of Authority The equally famous Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram Experiments demonstrated what humans had learned practically many years before: the human bias towards being influenced by authority. In a dominance hierarchy such as ours, we tend to look to the leader for guidance on behavior, especially in situations of stress or uncertainty. Thus, authority figures have a responsibility to act well, whether they like it or not. 21. Influence of Stress (Including Breaking Points) Stress causes both mental and physiological responses and tends to amplify the other biases. Almost all human mental biases become worse in the face of stress as the body goes into a fight-or-flight response, relying purely on instinct without the emergency brake of Daniel Kahneman’s “System 2” type of reasoning. Stress causes hasty decisions, immediacy, and a fallback to habit, thus giving rise to the elite soldiers’ motto: “In the thick of battle, you will not rise to the level of your expectations, but fall to the level of your training.” 22. Survivorship Bias A major problem with historiography – our interpretation of the past – is that history is famously written by the victors. We do not see what Nassim Taleb calls the “silent grave” – the lottery ticket holders who did not win. Thus, we over-attribute success to things done by the successful agent rather than to randomness or luck, and we often learn false lessons by exclusively studying victors without seeing all of the accompanying losers who acted in the same way but were not lucky enough to succeed. 23. Tendency to Want to Do Something (Fight/Flight, Intervention, Demonstration of Value, etc.) We might term this Boredom Syndrome: Most humans have the tendency to need to act, even when their actions are not needed. We also tend to offer solutions even when we do not enough knowledge to solve the problem. Microeconomics & Strategy (14) 1. Opportunity Costs Doing one thing means not being able to do another. We live in a world of trade-offs, and the concept of opportunity cost rules all. Most aptly summarized as “there is no such thing as a free lunch.” 2. Creative Destruction Coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter, the term “creative destruction” describes the capitalistic process at work in a functioning free-market system. Motivated by personal incentives (including but not limited to financial profit), entrepreneurs will push to best one another in a never-ending game of creative one-upmanship, in the process destroying old ideas and replacing them with newer technology. Beware getting left behind. 3. Comparative Advantage The Scottish economist David Ricardo had an unusual and non-intuitive insight: Two individuals, firms, or countries could benefit from trading with one another even if one of them was better at everything. Comparative advantage is best seen as an applied opportunity cost: If it has the opportunity to trade, an entity gives up free gains in productivity by not focusing on what it does best. 4. Specialization (Pin Factory) Another Scottish economist, Adam Smith, highlighted the advantages gained in a free-market system by specialization. Rather than having a group of workers each producing an entire item from start to finish, Smith explained that it’s usually far more productive to have each of them specialize in one aspect of production. He also cautioned, however, that each worker might not enjoy such a life; this is a trade-off of the specialization model. 5. Seizing the Middle In chess, the winning strategy is usually to seize control of the middle of the board, so as to maximize the potential moves that can be made and control the movement of the maximal number of pieces. The same strategy works profitably in business, as can be demonstrated by John D. Rockefeller’s control of the refinery business in the early days of the oil trade and Microsoft’s control of the operating system in the early days of the software trade. 6. Trademarks, Patents, and Copyrights These three concepts, along with other related ones, protect the creative work produced by enterprising individuals, thus creating additional incentives for creativity and promoting the creative-destruction model of capitalism. Without these protections, information and creative workers have no defense against their work being freely distributed. 7. Double-Entry Bookkeeping One of the marvels of modern capitalism has been the bookkeeping system introduced in Genoa in the 14th century. The double-entry system requires that every entry, such as income, also be entered into another corresponding account. Correct double-entry bookkeeping acts as a check on potential accounting errors and allows for accurate records and thus, more accurate behavior by the owner of a firm. 8. Utility (Marginal, Diminishing, Increasing) The usefulness of additional units of any good tends to vary with scale. Marginal utility allows us to understand the value of one additional unit, and in most practical areas of life, that utility diminishes at some point. On the other hand, in some cases, additional units are subject to a “critical point” where the utility function jumps discretely up or down. As an example, giving water to a thirsty man has diminishing marginal utility with each additional unit, and can eventually kill him with enough units. 9. Bottlenecks A bottleneck describes the place at which a flow (of a tangible or intangible) is stopped, thus holding it back from continuous movement. As with a clogged artery or a blocked drain, a bottleneck in production of any good or service can be small but have a disproportionate impact if it is in the critical path. 10. Prisoner’s Dilemma The Prisoner’s Dilemma is a famous application of game theory in which two prisoners are both better off cooperating with each other, but if one of them cheats, the other is better off cheating. Thus the dilemma. This model shows up in economic life, in war, and in many other areas of practical human life. Though the prisoner’s dilemma theoretically leads to a poor result, in the real world, cooperation is nearly always possible and must be explored. 11. Bribery Often ignored in mainstream economics, the concept of bribery is central to human systems: Given the chance, it is often easier to pay a certain agent to look the other way than to follow the rules. The enforcer of the rules is then neutralized. This principle/agent problem can be seen as a form of arbitrage. 12. Arbitrage Given two markets selling an identical good, an arbitrage exists if the good can profitably be bought in one market and sold at a profit in the other. This model is simple on its face, but can present itself in disguised forms: The only gas station in a 50-mile radius is also an arbitrage as it can buy gasoline and sell it at the desired profit (temporarily) without interference. Nearly all arbitrage situations eventually disappear as they are discovered and exploited. 13. Supply and Demand The basic equation of biological and economic life is one of limited supply of necessary goods and competition for those goods. Just as biological entities compete for limited usable energy, so too do economic entities compete for limited customer wealth and limited demand for their products. The point at which supply and demand for a given good are equal is called an equilibrium; however, in practical life, equilibrium points tend to be dynamic and changing, never static. 14. Scarcity Game theory describes situations of conflict, limited resources, and competition. Given a certain situation and a limited amount of resources and time, what decisions are competitors likely to make, and which should they make? One important note is that traditional game theory may describe humans as more rational than they really are. Game theory is theory, after all. Military & War (5) 1. Seeing the Front One of the most valuable military tactics is the habit of “personally seeing the front” before making decisions – not always relying on advisors, maps, and reports, all of which can be either faulty or biased. The Map/Territory model illustrates the problem with not seeing the front, as does the incentive model. Leaders of any organization can generally benefit from seeing the front, as not only does it provide firsthand information, but it also tends to improve the quality of secondhand information. 2. Asymmetric Warfare The asymmetry model leads to an application in warfare whereby one side seemingly “plays by different rules” than the other side due to circumstance. Generally, this model is applied by an insurgency with limited resources. Unable to out-muscle their opponents, asymmetric fighters use other tactics, as with terrorism creating fear that's disproportionate to their actual destructive ability. 3. Two-Front War The Second World War was a good example of a two-front war. Once Russia and Germany became enemies, Germany was forced to split its troops and send them to separate fronts, weakening their impact on either front. In practical life, opening a two-front war can often be a useful tactic, as can solving a two-front war or avoiding one, as in the example of an organization tamping down internal discord to focus on its competitors. 4. Counterinsurgency Though asymmetric insurgent warfare can be extremely effective, over time competitors have also developed counterinsurgency strategies. Recently and famously, General David Petraeus of the United States led the development of counterinsurgency plans that involved no additional force but substantial additional gains. Tit-for-tat warfare or competition will often lead to a feedback loop that demands insurgency and counterinsurgency. 5. Mutually Assured Destruction Somewhat paradoxically, the stronger two opponents become, the less likely they may be to destroy one another. This process of mutually assured destruction occurs not just in warfare, as with the development of global nuclear warheads, but also in business, as with the avoidance of destructive price wars between competitors. However, in a fat-tailed world, it is also possible that mutually assured destruction scenarios simply make destruction more severe in the event of a mistake (pushing destruction into the “tails” of the distribution). ####################################################################################### ## Creatures ## ####################################################################################### # Creatures This area include all the races of the world. All races are playable, except via DM veto/exclusion. Large creatures: reduce results by 1 or 2 Super Lrg: reduce by 4 or 5 Huge creatures: reduce by 6 1.2.3.5.7.11.13.17.19.23.29. 1,2,3,5,7,11,13 Minimal, Minor, Normal, Significant, Major, Lord, True 0-10 skill rank level for players/npc's # Races ## Surface Dwellers ## Subterrain Dwellers ## Fea \page ### Dryad notes: Fae, tied to a tree, but can reside in this plane or Fae realm Not killable on this plane Banished when their tree is killed Mortals are Compelled to look and have memories stollen and placed in the tree (only SD save to resist looking, no RR for the memory drain) Dryad kiss gives perfect memory, and bound to Dyrad Dryad name allows for control/domination if desired Cannot be forced/compelled to give name. Tricked maybe, but difficult with an imortal ___ ___ > ## Dryad >*Large guy, oedpipal neutral* > ___ > - **Armor Class** 11 > - **Hit Points** 81(1d4 + 5) > - **Speed** 3ft. >___ >|STR|DEX|CON|INT|WIS|CHA| >|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:|:---:| >|16 (+3)|4 (-3)|9 (+0)|5 (-2)|17 (+4)|15 (+3)| >___ > - **Condition Immunities** drunk, weak-kneed, groovy > - **Senses** passive Perception 17 > - **Languages** Jive, Latin > - **Challenge** 11 (2426 XP) > ___ > ***Pack Tactics.*** These guys work together. Like super well, you don't even know. > > ***False Appearance. *** While the armor reamin motionless, it is indistinguishable from a normal suit of armor. > > ***False Appearance. *** While the armor reamin motionless, it is indistinguishable from a normal suit of armor. > > ***False Appearance. *** While the armor reamin motionless, it is indistinguishable from a normal suit of armor. > > ***False Appearance. *** While the armor reamin motionless, it is indistinguishable from a normal suit of armor. > > ***False Appearance. *** While the armor reamin motionless, it is indistinguishable from a normal suit of armor. > ### Actions > ***Airplane Hammer.*** *Melee Weapon Attack:* +4 to hit, reach 5ft., one target. *Hit* 5 (1d6 + 2) > > ***Dual Cobra Wristlock.*** *Melee Weapon Attack:* +4 to hit, reach 5ft., one target. *Hit* 5 (1d6 + 2) > > ***Crossed Splash.*** *Melee Weapon Attack:* +4 to hit, reach 5ft., one target. *Hit* 5 (1d6 + 2) > > ***Corkscrew Strike.*** *Melee Weapon Attack:* +4 to hit, reach 5ft., one target. *Hit* 5 (1d6 + 2) \page ___##### Time to Drop Knowledge Use notes to point out some interesting information. **Tables and lists** both work within a note.\page \page ## Outsiders # Stats # Endurance / Exhaustion ## Calculating Available Exhaustion average 450/30 = 15 450 min = 7.5 hrs walking for 4 hours would use 48 exhaustion points # Healing # Poisons # Disease ####################################################################################### ## Adventure Story ## ####################################################################################### # Adventure Story Epistomological Dilemma: What you know, what you don't know, what you can know. Metaphysics: How did it come to be? What is it? Question of Ethics: What should I do? Existentialism: Why am I here? story = action + conflict + motivation + stakes story =choices + goals + opposition + consequences 1) trouble on the road 2) disaster strikes 3) call to adventure 4) chosen ones 5) the mission briefing 6) the wide world 7) 8) 1. Rags to riches – a steady rise from bad to good fortune 2. Riches to rags – a fall from good to bad, a tragedy 3. Icarus – a rise then a fall in fortune 4. Oedipus – a fall, a rise then a fall again 5. Cinderella – rise, fall, rise 6. Man in a hole – fall, rise 1. Rags to Riches (rise) 2. Riches to Rags (fall) 3. Man in a Hole (fall then rise) 4. Icarus (rise then fall) 5. Cinderella (rise then fall then rise) 6. Oedipus (fall then rise then fall) ## Drama Conflict and resolution ## Basic Story Lines 1) Looming threat 2) abduction of a party member or NPC 3) Competing for resources 4) Theft and recovery 5) Overcoming the monster 6) Voyage and Return 7) explotation of sentient beings for the benifit of society 8) Government overthrough (direct, indirect) 9) Moral imperative (2 choices, easier one is usually more evil, difficult one will have consequences) 10) 11) 12) ## Story line 01 .. Magical element, pregant women placed over element before giving birth, and babies are born with special abilities Positivly , Neutral, and Negativly charged element compitition for "breeding grounds" is a good source of conflict for these enchanted beings ## Story Line 02 .. ## A strange-looking, low-hanging cloud sits over the village. What's really odd is that, despite the wind, the cloud never moves. A local boy has gone missing. His friends had dared him to venture into an old, abandoned cottage in the woods outside town. That was the last they saw of him. The rotting corpse of a giant is found alongside a well-traveled road. The giant looks like it has been dead for weeks, but travelers at a nearby wayside inn swear that it wasn't there when they ventured through yesterday afternoon. Two lovers are having in a very loud spat in the street. Suddenly, one of them falls dead, their face contorted in a look of horror. A strange symbol glows on the side of their neck and slowly begins to fade into nothingness. The animals in the nearby area have been acting strangely. They no longer seem to fear people, and are all suffering an insatiable hunger for meat... even the herbivores. A shopkeeper, while renovating the cellar of his business, discovers a strange, stone door behind a shelf. A small town is unsure of what to do. A small child's voice can be heard from a long-dry well, but no children in the town are missing. What's more concerning is that every person who has ventured into the well in an attempt to rescue the child has not come back. A man in a long black coat and wide-brimmed hat hastily checks out of an inn. As he rushes out the door, a small vial of swirling green liquid falls from his pocket. A farmer rides into town, white as a sheet. He claims his scarecrows have been moving closer to his home each day. This morning they were outside the windows of his house. Is this the work of local pranksters, or something else? A tall, handsome man in fine clothes stands in the center of a crossroads. He seems to know each of the PCs names and says he has information that would be very valuable to them if they choose to return to this spot tonight when the moon is at its apex. The stuffed head of a fantastic beast that adorns a place above the mantle in a popular local tavern suddenly comes to life and screams something in a strange language before bursting into flames. Locals say a star fell from the sky last night and landed somewhere nearby. Every mirror in town ceases to show reflections, but rather gives glimpses into a shadowy keep. The sound of yelling echoes in the night as a band of villagers, armed with torches and pitchforks, gather outside a home, demanding the residents surrender their young daughter. A cloaked man in a dark corner of the tavern tells the party he has work for them but promptly dies, a dagger in his back and a sealed letter in his hand. A concerned father approaches the party at a tavern and asks for their help. His daughter is seeing a man and he doesn't approve. He pleads with the party to end the union. The only catch; the man his daughter has been seeing recently died two years ago. An innkeeper informs the players that a package arrived for them last night. It is a small silver locket with a date engraved on it. The date is one week from today. The caretaker of a local cemetery is screaming that there are people in the mausoleums scratching at the doors. Something big has been attacking Farmer Biden's cows. Whatever it is, it's killed five in the last week, but strangely it hasn't eaten them, only drained them of their blood. Late at night, the sound of far-off drums can be heard in the darkness. War drums, and lots of them. In a large city, to rival street gangs vie for control over a neighborhood, leaving many innocent bystanders dead. The local thieve' guild sits back and waits to endorse the winner. A city official approaches the party discreetly, offering them a fair sum of money to kill her husband. She then reveals her husband died two weeks ago but has been lurking the streets ever since. A new noble from an unknown house arrived in the city last month. Around the same time, several vagrants in the area started to vanish. Someone has hired assassins to eliminate a single member of the party, but who is behind the plot and for what reason? A nomadic barbarian tribe is passing uncomfortably close to town and officials, as well as the citizens, are getting very nervous. A cleric gives the party a list consisting of pieces of monsters from the area that she is looking to acquire for her "work". She offers to pay the party a handsome sum for each piece. A mysterious island suddenly appears off the shore of a stretch of coast or a lake. A mysterious island suddenly appears in the sky over a town or city. A raven flies through an open window and lands on the floor, seemingly dead, with a message attached to its leg. The raven then promptly transforms into a bloodied man. A new brothel opens up nearby, but strangely they charge their patrons nothing. What's the catch? A woman storms up to one of the PCs with a member of the town/city watch, points at them, and yells "That's the one! That's the one that killed my husband!" While laying in bed one night in an inn, one of the PCs hears a small thump under their bed. It seems to be a journal that had somehow been dislodged from its hidden resting place. It details an extensive plot to assassinate a prominent leader in a town three days away. The last date in the journal is two days ago. The owner of a nearby orchard has been complaining that his trees keep changing positions during the night. A young boy approaches a PC and hands them a heavy, leatherbound tome with a heavy lock on it and whispers "I'm sorry" before running off in the other direction. A local baker whose business was failing suddenly manages to turn things around with her new, delicious meat pies. Meanwhile, unattended children have been vanishing at an alarming rate. An old man in a dusty, rough-spun robe claims to be a gold dragon in disguise and offers to lead the party to a great treasure. Kobolds have tunneled into the basement of a nearby temple and refuse to leave. A savage-looking tribe of orcs arrive outside the gates of a small town and offer peace. Is it a trick? The party receives invitations for a formal ball held at a local noble's estate. The invites were sent by a Mr. Dusk. A new drug is running rampant through several cities and is slowly making its way into nearby towns. The drug seems to offer the brief ability to perform minor magical spells, but prolonged use leaves the users withered husks. A prestigious bardic college stands accused of manipulating events to write more interesting stories and songs. A lovelorn man drinks away his sorrows in a tavern because his bride-to-be was kidnapped by bandits along the road after a picnic, and he is too cowardly to rescue her. The players find an abandoned village. Tables are still set with as if for dinner, but with moldering food. Clothes and personal possessions are still found in homes. Even a minstrel's lute can be found leaned against a stool upon a small stage in the tavern. In the center of the village is a well with some rough words scratched into it in elvish ("A price must be paid"). A dragon has been collecting a tribute from a small town once a week for over fifty years. Two weeks ago, the demands stopped and no one has heard anything from the dragon. A local temple employs what is quite possibly the worst cleric ever. It seems that anyone he treats dies. Luckily his church has given him a duty to make up for his perpetual blunders; they've made him an undertaker as well. However, now anyone he treats comes back to life. Some local children come running into the tavern looking for their parents, breathless and gasping about a cave behind a waterfall not far outside of town, and the large, unseen thing the began growling inside of it. While arriving in town, the party sees a wanted poster with pictures of their likenesses drawn upon it. It states that they are wanted for murder, extortion, blackmail, thievery, and arson. They are extremely dangerous and there is a significant reward for their capture... dead or alive. A fire appears in the sky over a town or city. It traces a circle around the perimeter. Then it begins to rain hot pitch. A long abandoned mine suddenly seems to be alive with the sounds of picks and hammers echoing from within... in the middle of the night. An emissary from the elven lands arrives in the city, and suddenly high-ranking government officials begin dropping dead, apparently poisoned. ## The Lone Courier Your players while out on the road find an overturned a cart. The horse in the field nearby and the dead body on the ground imply that he was attacked by bandits who pillaged the aforementioned cart. Upon checking the cart they discover an important letter in need of delivery to a towns nearby mayor. The Champion's Call The heroes are drinking in the tavern when a servant slips them a letter requesting their presence at [town official's place of business]. When they arrive he believes that someone is planning a devious plot at the upcoming banquet he's going to be throwing, and he wants the party there to disrupt whatever plot his rival factions may be planning Falling Stars A vast swathe of stars has disappeared from the sky. Soon after, monsters begin terrorizing the kingdom. Monsters that correspond to the constellations that disappeared. What caused them to fall? How can they be returned? Planebreaker Over the past several months, many planar disturbances have been logged. Analysis suggests planar shockwaves emanating from the Elemental Plane of Water. One night, a Sahuagin army attacks the site of a large magical focusing crystal. The leader raises his trident towards the crystal, and a beam of light shoots into the sky. The sky seems to begin filling with water... Thief A haunted house has appeared near a small village. The ghost inside is wailing about a thief who stole a powerful magical staff from her basement tomb. Invasion of Spiders The party meets a settlement of Dwarves, but strangely, they are living on the surface rather than underground. An army of Drow drove them from their home. The Lost Tomb While traversing a desert, the sand underneath the party begins to swirl. They get sucked into an underground tomb carved from sandstone. The Contract The party has been contracted by a local lord to take care of a rogue warrior who has been raiding his army encampments. The twist: When the party tracks him down, they discover their foe is, in fact, a Paladin of Freedom. Frozen Wastelands A snowstorm has been raging for months, seemingly centered on a certain mountain. Shades of the Past A misfired planar experiment sends the PCs through the Elemental Plane of Time, where they visit significant moments from their own backstories. Alternately: A powerful wizard uses divination and illusion magic to recreate key moments of the PC's backstories and attempts to use them to break them mentally. Magnum Opus An artist would like help creating their masterpiece, requiring a party of adventures to pose with a killed monster. A killing Joke An assassin masquerading as a jester has been killing a nobles every 5 days. Plaguestoppers A disease spreads across the land, the cure is known but difficult to obtain. A Blue moon opening A difficult to join guild is offering an opening. 42 A creature from another plane appears, insults the party, then leaves. Honor in blood A dying warrior desires death by combat. Gallery of Rouges Many of the towns undesirables have been banding together, the local authorities want this stopped. Rubber Economy Demand for rubber has gone through the roof, due to a fashion trend. Free for all A gem mine collapses suspiciously, and its contents have been declared free for all. Gorgonzola Cheese A new type of cheese has been developed, Gourmets would like to know if it is poisonous. ...And the worlds finest wine Rich Nobles want rare liquor from around the kingdom for an upcoming party. Gon' Fishin' The price of fish is up, now is the time to buy a rod. Don't tell anyone (1d4) A rich man is offering a reward on a “personal” item A rich woman is offering a reward on a “personal” letter. A brothel is offering anyone that can “surprise” on of their workers a reward. A competition for "best Lover" is being held. Itemfinder A specific treasure is desired, a local wizard is willing to help discern its location. Not the Bees! A bee keeper is looking for a few new queens. God of colors Dyes are in demand, due to a new religious craze. A sharp order A dragon needs somebody to file down its claws. Gift of the gab Crafting guilds are not cooperating and intermediates can make a lot of money. A hole is a hole You fall into a pitfall trap, something interesting is at the bottom of it. To train them is my cause The barracks need strong fighters to help train troops. I don't remember them You receive a letter claiming a member of the party is owed inheritance. The Ogre and the Goblins Recently a nearby town has lost all contact with the outside world. When the PCs go to investigate they discover that an ogre is holding the town hostage and letting no one leave under any circumstance unless unreasonable demand is met. If the PCs set out into the surrounding woods they can find the ogre's cave. Twist: the ogre doesn't want to do this and has been tricked into terrorizing the town by some goblins who want the town for nefarious purpose. The ogre will help fight the goblins if the PCs try to win it's freedom. 2nd Twist: the ogre is actually highly intelligent and is controlling the goblins. He betrays the PCs at a critical moment during the fight. The RC Knight Upon crossing a bridge, the party encounters a knight dressed in black, challenging them to battle, saying "None shall pass." After the battle begins, every round the party has a chance to notice that the knight is in fact an automaton being controlled by some children hiding in the bushes nearby. Upon being noticed the children have the knight pull the old "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" bit. "Your opponent is over here!", etc. Music Box A demon trapped long ago is nearly free. He's able to rain fireballs onto the local area at random intervals. The heroes investigate the nearby forest for clues and find that the trapping mechanism, an enchanted music box, had fallen off the stand it was on and the lid had closed. The Stubbed Toe One of the members of the party stubs his/her toe. When he or she looks down, they see that they stubbed their toe on another toe! Protruding from the ground is the hard gray foot of a corpse, buried just below the surface. Ghost Busters There's something weird in the neighborhood, and it don't look good. Ghosts have recently been frightening the residents of the neighborhood where the party has been recuperating after their last grand adventure. My Name Is Jonas While at sea, the PCs ship is attacked by a leviathan. The great beast swallows them whole. There is a large bubble of air in the beast's belly, but it smells foul, and it won't last long. Dude, where's my wagon? While partying with the PCs at a festival, a wizard and traveling salesman (of potions, wands, scrolls, and more!) can't figure out what happened to his wagonload of goodies. Will the party help him find it? The Old King is Dead The king has died without an heir. Several distant relatives are claiming the crown. The party is cornered by supporters of one of the claimants, will they support their claim? Immediately following this encounter, the party is cornered by supporters of a rival claimant, what did they promise the first one? Blood, intrigue, and/or chaos ensue. The Tempest The party is shipwrecked on a strange island during a storm. Little do they know that on the island is living one of their former enemies, a sorcerer of terrible power, hell-bent on vengeance. To Know a Bit More A sister of the Storm King's temple meets the party in the village. She asks the party to follow a lead on the present whereabouts of her estranged mother in a town far to the South. If they return with news, she is offering to slip the party into the temple complex's second, secret library to browse the forbidden lore that is held in the texts kept there. the smiling figure In the midst of night the party is arrested and placed in one of 4 cages, each containing 16 people. the cages are surrounding a small clay figure like this one (http://i.imgur.com/3TB3SqI.jpg) they manage to escape yet they are stalked by a shadow. twist time: shadow is the spirit of one of the pc's that is trying to warn the party that whatever came out of the clay figure is controlling his body The Cottage While traveling along the road, the party is caught in a sudden rainstorm. They take shelter in a small abandoned cottage nearby. While they wait out the storm, they discover the cottage is not as abandoned as they thought... Shaggy Dog A wizard with a feud with the party turns the party into dogs. They need to find a way to change back March of the Giants A host of giants marches towards the city. Royal Matchmaker The King enlists adventurer's aid on finding a princess for the prince, who is having trouble approaching the ladies of the court. The King is an old romantic who believes in true love and will not settle for a loveless arranged marriage. Freestyle More and more youth in the city are being drawn to the bard profession. It has become a popular to engage in duels where the only allowed action is viscious mockery until one side collapses. Monsters Wanted A local dungeon has become so nice that the monsters are not leaving it to terrorize the villagers, upsetting the local adventurer's guild who is now out of work. Kittens! A wizard-in-training's psudeodragon familiar has recently given birth to a new litter. He can't keep the baby psuedodragons and hires the party to find a good home for them. He hasn't quite figured out what the father was, but the baby psuedodragons are exhibiting some strange characteristics Spitting Fire Everything in 6ft radius around a Bard catches fire whenever he starts singing. Honor Among Thieves The party encounters a gang of Djinn trying to rob a master thief of his recent score. The Devil's Advocate A Warlock wants to take his patron to court for not fulfilling the terms of their contract. He hires the party as lawyers to defend his case. Evil has a new name A local necromancer wants the party to help change his image. Waterdeep Nine Nine The captain of the guard is low on manpower and hires the PCs as temps. They end up working traffic and making routine house calls. Lost! The party finds a lost dog flyer in the middle of the wilderness. A ranger has lost his wolf companion and is neglecting his watch looking for him. He offers a hefty reward on the poster. When Harry met Saddle A gypsy has put a curse on the party and they keep falling in love with inanimate objects. Big Green Thumbs The Dwarf King wants the party (surface dwellers) to build him a garden for his palace Father and Son A simulacrum hires the party to help him win his creator's love. Blood on Their Hands There is a new fad among the nobility to keep Lycanthropes as pets and slaves. The Emperor wants the party to put a stop to it. Queen's Gambit A prince recruits the party to win back his birthright when the widowed queen marries a knight in her service No Country for Old Elves An ancient elf recruits the party to help him reconnect with all his old human friends. Turns out they have all been dead for centuries and many are the subjects of the epics sung by bards. The Connection A master thief has quit the thieves guild. The city guard wants him to give away the guilds secrets, and are willing to offer amnesty in exchange. Meanwhile, competing thieves guilds see him as a valuable asset and are also trying to recruit him and get an edge on the other thieves guilds. The Sealed Sword Bandits have taken over a local temple and are holding the priests hostage! The leader is trying to attune the sacred weapon kept there to himself. Shadow on the High Seas The party is hired to guard a merchant ship. A mysterious girl is found stowed away. Cultist Pirates attack soon after attempting to capture the girl. She was a former prisoner and they are trying to get her back. The Devil is a good for nothing bum It has been a thousand years and according to a prophecy a demon king is supposed to return to the world. But he has grown tired and lazy and hires the party to terrorize the populace in his stead, but requires all the pomp and circumstance expected of the prophecy. Window of Opportunity The human kingdoms and the orc clans in a joint archaelogical dig have discovered a stone portal to other worlds. The party is hired to explore the worlds through the portal while the orcs and humans play politics in order to control the portal, which they both consider an important military asset. Uncultured The guard arrest a wealthy half-orc for a gory display of butchered animal and human parts on his front lawn. He argues he was just expressing his cultural heritage but no one knows where the human parts came from. Road to Platinum Plateau Several dragons got together and decided to award badges to any party of adventurers who can beat them in combat. Having all 8 badges gives the party a chance to meet Bahamut in battle. Metallic Monster Mischief A band of pixies taking turns casting domination magic have taken control of a copper dragon. No one knows what they're going to use it for, but it must be big. Line in the Sand Two Mummy Lords have awoken at the same time and both are laying claim to the kingdom. Mirror, Mirror One day the party wakes up and finds they have no reflections. Shadow Dancer A fey thief has stolen the PC's shadows and is running away with them. The shadows are only too happy to be free and aid the fey in their escape. Hired Muscle The party is made aware of a Kolyarut is hunting them, although they have no idea what contract they broke What's in a name? Mid level PC's arrive in a village/city that's part of a kingdom they've spent significant time in only to find that instead of a warm welcome they're wanted for a crime they didn't commit. Imposters? Simulacra?! I stepped on what?! While travelling through a forest the players are accosted by druids (or elves?) who accuse them of trampling through a sacred grove and destroying it. As restitution they must plant the seed for a new holy tree in a difficult to reach location. Aren't we supposed to be heroes? After defeating a group ofhave a very angry dragon (too powerful for the PC's to defeat) swoop in on the PC's and demand that they replace the and send them on missions to raid caravans/villages/ships etc. Have a riot forcing them into uncomfortable moral, political, and legal situations in service of their dragon overlord. Have at thee! During a social encounter (ball/banquet/etc) a minor noble approaches one of the PC's and begins loudly demanding recompense for some perceived slight. He challenges the player to a competition (combat/poetry/song/dance). Stalker The PCs get in a fight with a group of bandits who prove to be a little more than the PCs can handle. During the encounter a PC of the DM’s choice is about to be hit by a bandits attack when out of nowhere a masked figure comes out of nowhere to protect him/her. This figure helps the PCs defeat the bandits and then disappears as suddenly as she/he appears. Over the next few weeks the party must occasionally make a DC 15 perception check to notice the figure watching the PC in question from bushes, through tavern windows, etc. This player then starts receiving love letters signed by “Your Secret Admirer.” ”Your Lost Pet” The PCs wake up in the tavern they were sleeping in to find a very disgruntled displacer beast in their room with a note around its neck that reads “I found your lost pet on my doorstep. It’s been awhile since I’ve studied undercommon but I think he belongs to you. - Grimley the Hill Wizard.” On the displacer beast’s collar is written in undercommon: “This displacer beast is the pet of the drow priestess Melina. His name is fluffy and his favorite food is disobedient dwarven slaves. If found please return to the temple at 132, Arachnid Street in the drow metropolis of Rock Gloom.” The Prowler While in a city the PCs notice a number of wanted posters saying “Warning: Masked prowler slaying loyal citizens and raising them as undead.” The posters also have a sketch depicting a figure in a hood and a mask. Various town criers throughout the city can be seen shouting news about him while waving one of these posters. Every 1d10 days the criers will report 1d4 more victims of the the Prowler Family Reunion The party runs into a family member of one of the PCs who tells them that a family reunion is being planned. Slash a Mole The PCs come across a farmer who asks them to get rid of a rabbit infestation that’s running the lettuce crop in exchange for some gold and free lodging. He notes that he has had other adventurers do the same thing but the rabbits keep coming back. If the players help the farmer they eventually find out that the rabbits are undead because the farmer’s daughter is learning necromancy. Stampede A stampede of carnivorous dinosaurs literally appears out of thin air in a rural area that the PCs are going through and starts devouring wild animals, livestock, and their farmers. Witch Trial The players come to a small town on a lake. When they enter a local tavern they find a group of townspeople discussing the recent spike in illness, the recent poisoning of a well, along with strange lights on the lake, and other occurrences that make them think there's a witch in the town. The general topic of conversation is whether or not to try the reclusive herbalist who lives on the other side of the lake as a witch because of it. Cormo’s Elixir While in a town or city the PCs come pass by a halfling named Cormo selling a miracle elixir that he claims can cure any illness. Turns out that the elixir is simply a weak healing potion cut with brandy. But Cormo claims that he isn’t the one to blame. Larcenous Lycanthrope Lunacy The city the PCs are currently in has been dealing with a gang of lycanthropes who have been pulling off surprisingly complex heists including bank robbery, stealing exotic spices off of ships, and even stealing the jewelry out of a noblewoman’s bedroom while she was sleeping. Who wants to be a Lycanthrope? One morning in a town or village a poster is nailed to the door of the town hall that reads “ever want to be a lycanthrope? Ever want to release the beast inside? Well now you can! Simply leave your bedroom window open and leave 150 gold on your nightstand tonight.” Hey Barkeep! The barkeep at a local tavern has simply stopped in his tracks behind the bar and is staring off into the distance muttering something about a slaad in the basement. Wraith Hunters The party gets approached by a group of wraith hunters to destroy a wraith and his specter servants. Grave Robbers The graveyards are being continually raided by a group of grave robbers. In addition, some of the stolen bodies have been seen wandering the countryside as zombies. The players, upon investigating, find that there are actually two groups of grave robbers: One group of necromancers and a group of paladins, clerics, and other undead hunters trying to keep the bodies out of the hands of the first group. Wyvern Riders A reclusive tribe of wyvern riding warriors that live in the mountains has been raiding surrounding villages for food. Slayfest The elves have been having some orc problems as this month is the bi-annual orcish festival of Slayfest. Slayfest is where all the young orcish warriors who have proved themselves over the last two years go out into the elven lands and brazenly challenge elven warriors to one on one combat with the hope of becoming eyes of Gruumsh. In addition, it is traditional to pillage and murder elven villages in order to draw the warriors out. The elven king, not wanting to give the orcs the satisfaction of fighting his elven warriors, has decided to hire out some adventurers both elven and non elven to deal with the orcs. Crash Landing A burning airship is seen wobbling unsteadily through the air on a collision course with the ground. Shortly after it disappears over a nearby hill, a crashing noise is heard and a cloud of smoke can be seen off in the distance. The Sudden Spring A small village in a desert celebrates as a spring has miraculously welled up in the middle of the town square, however now local barons and raiders have begun to take a much bigger interest in this suddenly incredibly valuable town. THE OPTIONAL TWIST: The spring is a portal to the Elemental Plane of Water not far underground, and wild water elementals and sea creatures will begin to cause problems. Mysterious Egg The party has just stumbled on a group of bandits. After beating them, they realize they are poachers, and have an a mysterious egg in their posession. If the party takes the egg, they soon find themselves followed by monsters and poachers alike. What is this thing? The Fiendish Well An well was just dug in the middle of a small town after the old one collapsed. The water smells of brimstone, so the people have refused to drink it... this has not stopped farm animals from drinking it, and transforming into demonic beasts. To save the town, the well has to be purified and the demonic creatures defeated. Missing Mistress Jaelom Harns, promiscuous daughter of a local wealthy merchant, is missing. All twelve of her public suitors have fled town at the same time. Dead Carnies A travelling circus recently left town yesterday after spending two weeks entertaining the townsfolk. This morning, it was discovered in a smoldering ruin barely ten miles outside of town, all the entertainers dead and seemingly burned alive. By Gragnars Hammer Famous Dwarven smith, Gragnar Battlestein, recently did a show-and-tell at his smithy of some of techniques. Mysteriously, only two days later, his hammer went missing. It was probably one of the two hundred attendees, so at least there's a starting point for the investigation! Green Dragon Request A green dragon slowly rising to power hopes to recruit its own adventuring party. The dragon offers a sizable amount of treasure for an oh so small favor. The dragon always has more things that need doing and the rewards begin piling up, but some of the requests start putting the party into moral quandaries. (Note: this would probably work best for trying to mess with a "good" party) The Hand of [Enter PC Name Here] The players learn that undead have been terrorizing a nearby town lately and the culprit is likely residing in the abandoned tomb close by. The players encounter some undead (zombie dogs, mummies, etc.) while traversing the tomb but all they find out is that a lich likely resided there long ago. During the trek, however, one of the players gets bit by a wight and becomes plagued with an affliction. Have a local cleric stop the affliction from spreading, but now the PC's hand is changed forever. Give it some utility features (a minor and major advantage/disadvantage), and continue the story. Unbeknownst to the PCs, the cleric is the culprit and has been secretly researching and practicing necromancy in the tomb. At some point later in the story, have the cleric be revealed as a minor/major BBEG who became obsessed with his research and is after the PCs hand. If you want to increase the stakes, have the removal of the hand cause instant death/drop to zero HP and roll death save, and/or have the cleric confront the PCs because he can take control of the PC. Cult of the Golem The party falls through a sinkhole into an underground cavern. There they find a gnome golem crafter and his golem have been declared as high priest and god, respectively, by a small tribe of Kuo-toa. The golem crafter has been trying to keep up the illusion while looking for a way out of the cavern system, but he needs help... Happy Death-day A retired vampire-slayer and nobleman is holding a birthday party for his 10 year old son. Along with the bevy of guests, a small contingent of vampires have slipped into the party get revenge on the elderly paladin. Optional Twist: The paladin is able to lock himself inside a safe room with a couple of guests, but is separated from his son in the commotion. One of the vampires uses Magic Jar to inhabit the body of the son and tags along with the party until they can open the safe room. The Stolen Statue In the street of a crossroads trading post, a wealthy merchant is heatedly accusing the blacksmith of stealing his silver dragon statue, a priceless family heirloom. The blacksmith protests his innocence, but the statue is definitely gone. A Coup or Two A warlord has been succeeded, not by his son, but by the captain of his guard -- a foreigner who rose to fame as a brilliant tactician and commander, the warlord's right-hand-man and the source of much of his success. Now the warlord's son is fleeing into the hills, and beseeches mercenaries for aid in reclaiming his rightful place. But not all people think the new lord is so bad, and not all people see the prince as favourably as he would like to think... Ward The fortress town of Ward sits on a rocky hill on a wet, windswept coast. There is not much to do in Ward, and most of the populace is in fact in the military, dedicated to protecting the city from the frequent orc raids that come down from the mountains. Recently, contact has been lost with one of the watch posts in the hills meant to warn the city of impending attacks. The Wedding of Starky McFrey The NPC's are invited to the wedding of Starky McFrey. Out of nowhere the wedding guests are attacked and Starky and his wive are the first of the casualty's The wedding of Theon Bara The NPC's are invited to the wedding of Theon Bara. Out of nowhere Theon Bara drops dead from poisoning. You Don't Have to Go Home, But You Can't Stay Here There has been a mass exodus from the city, but it's unclear why. Everyone leaving seems to have perfectly legitimate and unrelated reasons, but everyone is going at once. The Harbinger Trump Word has gotten around that the Harbinger Trump has sounded and forces are gathering in the east to fight for glory! The New Library Crowds are gathered around the gleaming new library. But there's something odd and animated about the new books and it'd better be under control before the ribbon cutting ceremony. A farmer approaches the party and needs help. One of his chickens turns a strange neon green when placed in moonlight, and he needs help figuring out why. Your party finds a list of 10 names including someone they are close to. The first 4 names are crossed out. A courier catches up to the party. They have been left a run down mansion in the will of someone they have never met. The only condition? It be lived in for 5 days. It is of course… Haunted! A well known constellation disappears from sight. The village is divided between people who remember it, and those who don’t. The debates begin to spark an escalating series of feuds and fights. A large river begins to inexplicably stop for 1 hour before sunset. You enter a clearing where 2 duelists lash out at one another. The clearing is in a time loop, repeating the duel over and over again. Rumor reaches your ears of a traveling merchant peddling sets of cursed sewing needles. Old Jeb the farmer claims his sheepdog had puppies, but they all have split tails and he doesn’t know their sire. The sawmill catches fire. The bucket brigade keeps it contained, but it refuses to extinguish after 2 days. For exactly 1 round a day, everyone in town falls sway under the HOLD PERSON spell. Life continues, but everyone is on edge. “Protection” totems begin surfacing in every market shop. Strange, mud-coated animate skeletons have risen in a nearby swamp. They won’t attack unless attacked first and try to speak with anyone nearby, but the coating of mud makes their speech indecipherable. Snowberry bushes only bloom before a blizzard. Collect five snowberry blooms for an alchemist before the storm hits. A suit of enchanted armor with dozens of arms has been razing nearby villages. Watch out, each arm holds a hand crossbow, and each one can attack every turn. A goblin comes running towards you and yells “he’s coming!” and dies. A small pack of wererats have taken up residence in the city sewers, and keep causing trouble for the locals. A farmer says he’s heard strange singing in the night in his corn field, but whenever he goes out to look, he doesn’t find anyone. If that wasn’t strange enough, one morning he found his scarecrows had been moved into a circle. The party is told of a local merchant who specializes in Magical items. The merchant’s name is Foezek and is described as an intelligent, compassionate Shedu. But, when the PCs seek out the shop, they find another being claiming to be Foezek and is more interested in them leaving the shop than dealing with them. In truth, this bandit killed Foezek and is dealing his magical items to an adversary of the DM’s choosing. Foezek’s body can be found in the shop (basement, or behind the counter, etc.). The party is walking through a town when they meet an blind old man who is crawling on the ground looking for his ring. A guard watched him drop it and took it for himself. The party finds a dagger on the body of an enemy that is much heavier than a dagger should be. The party wakes up mixed up in each other’s bodies after night of drinking at an inn. A small chest from the spell Leomund’s Secret Chest falls from the sky. When the party finds a wizard to open the chest is filled with their own equipment, along with a note book keeping track of their actions. The party continues to wake up in the same inn, but different rooms each morning. One of the party members is suddenly extremely allergic to cats, the rest of the party members clothes are suddenly made of cat fur. The change in clothing isn’t immediately noticable. The party is summoned by a king to be his friends for a day. There is a bounty out on the dish breaking bandit. One of the party members suddenly starts to sleepwalk, and breaks dishes in his sleep. An angry gnome tinkers with the sleeping party’s equipment. Everything now has combination locks. Weird noises have been heard at night coming from an older resident’s home in town. When investigated, you discover a worried old man attempting to disguise his worry at your interest in the noise and his business. If convinced that your aid is genuine, or if more discreet measures of observations are taken, you discover his wife is afflicted with lycanthropy despite having no bite marks. The local towns people are complaining about a goblin tribe that has set up camp near by. They are acting strange and have begun constructing statues of a goblin with a pointy hat all over the area. As the party is walking through a road they come across a beggar. He is crippled and asks for some money to help him buy food. As the party continues to walk down the road they find another beggar who looks exactly like the one they just met! When asked he says that he doesn’t have a twin brother or anything of the sort. He doesn’t know what the party is taking about and just wants some coin to buy food. As the party continues to walk they find the same man yet again. He to knows nothing. Upon further investigation they discoverer that the man was once an assistant to a local wizard. And the wizard is an expert in human cloning. The daughter of a local politician/Noble person keeps getting kidnapped by local goblins. The party is hired to solve it once and for all. A horse with no rider, but fully equipped is walking in the opposite direction of the party. There is a note pinned to it’s saddlebags, “send help!” The party takes a shortcut through a friendly looking forest not shown on their map. It seems oddly silent, and soon notice all the wildlife is deep asleep – including insects and even flowers. As their eyes get heavier and heavier a wild man bursts out of the bushes, eyes propped open. Traveling through the forest the party is stopped by the sound of a booming voice nearby “Your Wish has been granted!”. Shortly after they come apon a clearing filled red mist and a goblin holding a brass lamp laughing maniacally. The party now has to deal with what stuipd thing he has wished for. You are confronted by a party of identical adventurers, who seem more surprised than you. They have been tracking you down for a long time, following rumours of a party of adventurers giving them a bad name. Worst of all they seem to have been adventuring longer than you… Construction of a new museum has been halted when its found that all the workers continue to forget what they’re building, could the new exhibit be to blame? You’ve gotten word about a logging village up north that has put up a massive reward for any adventurers willing to travel to the village, investigate the rash of disappearances and locate any of the missing persons: dead or alive. A cranky old man in town complains that his pocket watchers stolen, and he has his suspicions on who the thief is. The townsfolk say that he’s a senile old man who probably lost it. As your party steps through town, you suddenly start to feel the ground shake as a group of Monsterous Centipede’s erupt from the dirt, attacking the party. As they are defeated, it becomes apparent that they were summoned creatures. One of the party’s magical or valued items has been stolen and is now held in a high security bank in a bustling city. The party must now break into the bank to retrieve their items. A farmer asks for help. His crops are constantly getting trashed. He wants the group/player to keep watch over the night. It ends up being that the poor farmers’ trusty scarecrow has been brought to life by dark magic. It is optional to buy or make a new scarecrow. A PC gets bit by a werewolf. There is a cure for it, however they must convince the mad wizard to give it to you. A passing man swears to you that he is a genie who will most definitely grant you three wishes if you return his stolen lamp to him. Every town or settlement the party goes to has an outline of a fish stenciled on a main building. The first one is really big and noticeable; the rest are subtle enough that the party won’t see them unless they announce that they’re examining the place. The town where the quest will happen has the WORD “fish” stenciled on a building. You come across a trail of blood (unicorn) leading to a spooky forest. The party is followed by an owl, hooting softly, eyes glowing the gentle yellow that might be magic or might be simple reflection. Over the next several days more owls join, until when the group sets down to sleep at night all they can see are hundreds of owl eyes staring down at them. Then, one of the owls scratches a message into the dirt, before flying off into the night- FOLLOW. An unknown NPC mage has dimension doored into the middle of a fight, after all healing spells have been used by the team. He/She is on death’s door and carrying a note with his/hers killers name. He says a few words before dying. Graffiti is scrawled on the walls of two buildings in town. It appears to be some sort of code. The messages are marked “1” and “3”. Message “2” is nowhere to be found. A scrap of paper floats on the wind. It glides on the breeze. Eventually in a gust the paper catches on one of the adventures faces. Tearing it off their face, and looking at the parchment they see it is… Gold! Adventure! Fame! Cries an elf on a soap box, “the faint of heart need not apply!” (For adventures who need more than obvious plot hooks.) Looking off to the distance, they can see a flashing light (similar to a signal mirror). Someone is trying to signal far off. Whether it is aide, is indiscernible to the group as the light stops almost as soon as it starts. There is only one way to find out… While passing by a pond, you hear a deep bellowing noise, only to see a fisherman trapped by a giant frog. He calls for help. A paladin with the insignia of a lion’s head on her shield asks you to solve the local pest problem. Turns out the “pests” are full sized orcs. A house outside of town is being circled by hundreds of birds. Upon approaching, the party sees that their beaks are lined with teeth, and the birds are twitching as though trying to escape possession. From the sounds inside, someone is clambering to hide within the building. Kobolds have been attacking the town. All wearing similar regalia and a matching symbol. a raving man claims to have escaped from the kobolds’ lair. He describes a terrible dragon as the source of worship for the kobolds. The dragon is really a pseudodragon with delusions of grandeur, trained in illusion magic and has duped the kobolds into gathering a hoard for him. In a large city, urchins are a regular problem. This trio of kidlets, however, has been luring travelers in to abandoned alleyways, where the deranged doppelganger among them eats the human and the other two children keep what was it his/her pockets. A dryad clad in wooden armor leans against a tree his side torn wide open. He hands the party a pouch full of tiny leaves. Taking a pinch and blowing them into the air will lead the party to an ancient temple entrance almost over grown with vines. When close the pouch of leaves crumbles to dust along with the vines covering then entrance of the temple. You find a small silver coin in the middle of a street and upon picking it up, in your mind you see a small hut deep in the forest. When you come back to reality, only you can see it but a small fae pixie glowing bright blue will show you the way. The party encounters a man running out from the wood-line, coming towards then. He appears to be in shock over what he has seen, and tells the party that he was attacked while hunting. The man directs the party to the spot were he encounter the creature. A local temple has reported strange events in the surrounding area: beasts attacking villagers, bandit lords more closer to the village, and mysterious lights and sounds that can only be observed from within the village. A bounty hunter asks the party if they known any of the names on a list of his. The list contains about 20 names, roll a d20 for the characters knowing any of the names, 1-10 unknown and 11-20 known. The names on the list can be from characters backstory or names of NPCs the party has met throughout the campaign. The bounty hunter will known what each person on the list as done, and how much the reward is for the capture. A seemingly exorbitant amount of gold is offered on the message board to get rid of a ‘house spider’. It turns out that it’s about a spider-like mimic in the shape of a house. The moon stops traveling across the sky, and everyone’s time pieces stop working. Word around the continent is a group of warlocks are attempting to gain power from a new patron – the god of Time More than three people in a given town have all their teeth fall out at the same time A nearby civil war is raging, and one of the high ranking officers of one side or the other holes up in a cave. If approached, they will act incredibly defensive. A child is crying somewhere deeper in the cave, and this person refuses to answer any questions about said child. An allegedly crooked officer of the law is found dead in an alley way and only one person in the whole town seems to care about it at all. The party is on a faire where a magician is performing tricks with a severed head that can talk. Throughout the show the head blinks in weird patterns. The party talks to the head to find out he is kidnapped and begs for help in finding his body back. The party comes across an Inn in the middle of nowhere and they decide to stay. They wake up on the ground where the inn used to be and there’s no sign of any building ever being there. Walking through town, the party suddenly gets surrounded by the city guard. A respected captain was murdered. Witnesses say they saw someone looking similar to one of the party members. Upon looking through their things, said member appears to have lost an item easily traced back to him (one half of a pair of gloves/earrings/daggers, family insignia, one of a kind necklace etc.). Sure enough, said item was found at the scene of the crime. Someone is framing them. Not necessarily a doppelganger. The party stumbles across a dead old man. Amongst his meagre belongings is a thick tome with extensive records about everything they’ve done right up till today, with even more detail than they themselves knew. The party finds various dead animals with missing pieces, almost torn and shred. As they approach the heart of the forest the number of dead creatures increases. Upon investigation they find out it’s the guardian spirit of the forest who has been corrupted and it’s confused. A flyer appears in the sacks of each party member. A mid level demon has opened a store and invites all those with ambitions to visit to make deals. A rumor reaches the party’s ears of a group of brigands hiding out in the woods. They have a code that is the reverse of Robin Hood and his Merry Men: Steal from the poor, and give to the rich. None of the local nobles seem interested in the pillaged goods of their subjects, and are constantly giving back the loot they keep finding on their doorsteps. The local apothecary is desperate due to the sudden absence of all the local medicinal plants in the area. All the groves and clearings appear to have been picked clean, and even the owner’s secret garden is now empty. She had told no one of her hidden garden, and so has no idea who or what could have taken all of the plants in the brief period of time between her most recent check and her previous one. A human peasant and a member of the fey came across each other in the woods and, over the course of multiple moonlit encounters, fell deeply in love. The peasant’s family has a deep-rooted fear of the fey, and is actively trying to put a stop to the pair’s relationship. The family is even more fearful that the peasant will leave for the Feywild and never return, and goes to the party to convince them to help break the two lovers up. The human is in love with the Fey’s otherworldly allure and sharp wit; talking to them makes the peasant feel alive in a way that they’ve never felt before. The Fey was originally only interested in the concept of a secretive human lover, but eventually came to love the peasant’s dedication to their relationship despite the risk of alienating other loved ones. While at the market waiting for another adventurer to arrive, you pass the time by idly counting the number of stone gargoyles mounted on the town hall. There are fourteen, all with a silly grin. While at the blacksmith to repair your armour, you overhear the blacksmith explaining to his apprentice to not stray off to the hills to see his new sweetheart because he heard from the baker’s cousin’s stepmother that there are kobolds about. While waiting patiently for your turn to see the Bishop, you get your ear bent by some local shopkeeper about how the town council is a bunch of idiots, and how they simply wasted all that money on getting 13 gargoyle statues erected on the town hall. Thirteen! That’s an unlucky number! A street urchin attempts to filch your purse, he runs off down an alley. The urchin escapes, but in the alley you found a homeless halfling bum. Clearly dead. Looks like he fell from a great height. The price of that foreign wine you like so much has tripled in price. The barkeep mutters something about pirates. The barkeep explains it’s just a euphemism for the wagoneers guild and their extortionate ways. A dead homeless halfling found in an alley had a small bottle of very cheap whisky. The label has a brand mark you’ve not seen before – 4 vertical slashes and 2 short slashes across the bottom. The pommel of a sword you found on your last adventure rattled loose. Inside you a scrap of parchment with lots of scratchmarks, almost looks like writing. A wanted poster has been nailed up – Wanted: Black Pete, for Brigandry. The scribe you made inquiries with last week has got back to you. She says the Tomb of Three Chieftains can be found outside Millthorp. While at market, you saw three wagons being carefully guarded by scruffy and shifty looking mercenaries. There are barrels of cheap rotgut in the wagon. A pilgrim accosts you in the street. He asks if you’ll be travelling east anytime soon. The bakery has no cake. He explains it’s because there’s a shortage of milk. A patrol of the Kings Guard rode fast down main street. They almost ran you over. There’s a parade of pilgrims on main street, heading for the commons. They appear somber and morose. Southbridge, just outside town, has been closed to traffic due to disrepair. Merchants complain about the 2 hour detour they now incur by first heading east. The town guard are seen practicing new drills on the common. Apparently a local bandit has enlisted a wizard, and so training in avoiding fireballs is called for. The local priesthood is paying gold for water collected from the Opal Caves to treat a spreading fever An apothecary will pay for certain herbs growing in the Frog Marches. The local Stonecutters Guild are not petitioning for work contracts; labourers are grumbling. A frost giant approaches the group. The giant politely asks for help. He lost his pet owlbear and needs help finding it. He promises a very handsome amount of gp as well as “a powerful ally” if you find the creature. A goblin in noble clothes crashes through the window and rolls over the ground. The symbol of the king’s guard is embroidered on his half-cape. As he gets up, he panics and looks around, fixing his eyes upon the party. “The Goat-Riders are coming! Please, hide me!” A large burly man has started a daily ritual of throwing a goat at the side of a local noble’s house. He is not damaging the house, so he is not doing anything that will make the local law enforcement arrest him, but the noble wants him dealt with, and will pay you to get rid of him, however. A sword in the stone can be sensed by all creatures in the land with “Detect Magic” but lately it seems that the presence is becoming overbearing. Magic users are worried that unless the true king draws the sword, proving his lineage, or the spell “Detect Magic” will become obsolete. As the group walks through the forest, one member hears very quiet crying. The crying is coming from a lost juvenile harpy. It is the job of the group to protect this harpy. They can either keep and raise the creature, or return it to its mother. The party finds a smouldering crater containing a metal wreck. Inside, they find an eccentric kobold who insists she has returned from the moon. ####################################################################################### ## bulletjournal ## ####################################################################################### # bulletjournal - •Task - < Scheduled - \> Migrated - X Completed - #### Do's - Seek approval from the RIGHT PEOPLE - Give approval to the right people - Remove everything from your life that is impulsive - Get back to your purpose - Get back to planning and scheming - Make it a game - Make your work play again - Be willing to fail - Enjoy the work and activity in and of itself (not for what it will get you) - Detach from immediate outcomes and refocus on your purpose - Get back to the whimsy and play and fun of life - Allow yourself to embrace the pain of growth and failure - Embrace the curiosity of seeing how far you can go #### Give yourself a 30-day timeline to accomplish something big. - Cut-off everything that’s a “busy” distraction - Stop seeking approval from the wrong people (have some honest conversations, clean out your calendar and life, and focus again on the right people) - Get back to your morning routine where you’re getting energized and focused and clear - Make work play again (it can only be play when you’re making tangible progress toward something that excites you) - You can make something exciting by, 1) making some form of progress, and 2) having something compelling in the near-future to look forward to - Get back to plotting and scheming (literally get a white board and start writing all of your dreams down, and your values, and what you’re grateful for, and what matters most to you) - Get connected again to yourself and what you’re really about - Then sprint toward a vision that you know you can achieve - Most people — even those at “the top of their game” — are a mess right now. The globalized society and the internet has leveled the playing field. If you’re ambitious and willing to fail and respond well to failure — you can easily catapult yourself to the top of your field - Wherever you are, that’s the best place for you to be - It doesn’t get easier the more successful you become, it actually gets harder and more confusing (unless you continually re-invent yourself and never stop failing and remaining humble and grounded) - Remain the underdog by continually failing forward - Give yourself less time at work and more time to play (Shawn White said the reason he has been able to stay at the top of Snowboarding for nearly 20 years is because he spends a lot of time away from the sport — he has a life outside of snowboarding) - Cut yourself off when you need to (if you give yourself shorter timelines, you’ll get more done) — often 80% is sufficient - If you do a morning routine, you’ll focus on the right things while you are working - If you focus on the right things while you’re working, you’ll make progress - If you increase your ambition for what you can be, every step you take forward will be a BOLD step, because you’ll be willing to fail - The more energy you can put into BIG AND BOLD steps, the faster you’ll move beyond those at the top of your field - All the while, you’ll be congruent, because you’ll be putting yourself (and your health) first, so you can be better at your work and with your loved ones ####################################################################################### ## The World ## ####################################################################################### # The World Roughly earth standard in size and gravity 3:20 Social, emotial and glory. 3:50 Use something from their backstory. 5:04 Multiple plot hooks, if the group split up. 7:24 Micro hooking. 9:11 Deny there are a plot hook. 12:18 If the players want to go on thier own route, then play that through! ## Elements and Alloys ### Stones Sandstone Limestone Slate Marble Granite #### Magical Stones: ### Metals Tin Copper Silver Gold Iron Titanium #### Magical Metals: #### Alloys Brass Bronze Steel #### Magical Alloys: Whellum - whote stella metallum - white star metal Chalum - chao metallum - chaos metal Luxum - lux metallum - light metal Tellum - tenebris metallum - dark metal ### Gems Rubies Garnet Diamond #### Magical Gems: patet magicae - clear magic gem viridi magicae - green magic gem hyacintho magicae - blue magic gem ####################################################################################### ## Forbidden Lands ## ####################################################################################### # Forbidden Lands ## Base Will Power Points All characters have a base Will Power Points based on the average of Wits and Empathy. These are used when you have no acculated WP's and still wish to cast spells. It is a something that most casters are not willing to do away from their stronghold. When your base WP's are below their full amount you can not accumulate normal WP's. ####################################################################################### ## Characters ## ####################################################################################### Instead of class abilities, characters get stat abilites as they can increase their stats as they advance levels. +1 nothing as this is more like a normal person with better than average abilities +2 some VERY minor +3 Something worth writing home about +4 plus Note: look are classes and see what stats they use and tailor some of the abilites around those "classes" Empathy - Animal Frienship as BG option - Mind Typing as Ment spell - Emotions as Ment spell - Detect Realm as Detect Channeling but applies to all - Mana Sensing as BG option - Presence/Feel/Mind Store as Ment spell - Location 500' as Open Chan spell - Visions as BG option - Mana Reading as BG option except 50% chance for each ability - Awareness as Ment spell - Neutrlize Curse (1 min per lvl) as Cleric spell - Analysis as Open Ess spell - Transcendence as BG option - Spacial skill as BG option - Detect True as Open Ess spell - Ensorceement Cure as BG option - Power Parasite (make up specs, or use create spell) Intuition - Dream 1 as cleric spell - Divination as skill, 80% chance of success - Direction Sense as BG option - Guess as cleric spell - +50 bonus to skill Spatial Location Awaeness - Intuitive understanding of near future bestows a +10 bonus on all DB's - Awakening as monk spell - Intuitions 5 as cleric spell - Detect Ambush as ranger spell - Channel Opening (10 miles per lvl) as cleric spell - Luck as BG option - Destiny Sense as BG option - Danger Sense as BG option - Fervor: Special tie to diety allows use of Dervish spell Dance of Fervor once per week - Anticipate True as Open Ment spell Presence - Look of Eagles as BG option - Suggestion as Closed Ment spell - Mind Merge as Ment spell - Mind Shield as Open Ment spell - Inner Thoughts as Ment spell - Mind Voice 100' as Ment spell - Look of Terror 1 as warlock spell - Aggression as BG option (all attack rolls) - Inner Wall 5 as Closed Ment spell - Aura as BG option - LifeKeeping (1hr lvl) as cleric spell - Charm Kind as Ment spell, - Hold kind as Ment spell - Inspiration 2 as Paladin spell - Misfeel True as Mystic spell - Control Demon 5 as Evil Mag spell - Master of Kind as Ment spell - Fist of Power (Shock E twice per day), or SHatter Quickness - Fluidity, add +5 to all OB's and non-rear DB's - Lightning Reactions allow the negation of 1 round of surprise or disorientation - Ability to roll with blows subtracts 5 from all crits taken (if aware of the attack) - Efficiency gives an additional 10% activity each round - Ability to change facing in meleeprevents character from being flanked/attacked from the rear by less than 3 opponents (if aware of attackers) - Fluidity, same as above except +10 - Opponenets Quickness or Adrenal defense may be negatited 50% of the time if opponents quickness is below 102 - Preemptive Strike, Character may act one combat phase earlier - Efficiency, same as above except 20% - Fluidity, +15 - Dodging 3, same as Monk spell - Spell Dodge 2, Same as nightblade spell - Efficiency, same as above except 40% Strength - Armor minimum maneuver penalities are halved - Hammerhand as BG option - All missle ranges increase 50% - Crits delivered also yield Unbalancing crit of degrees less - Firm grip allows 2 handed weapons to be weilded one handed at a -25 penality. Two weapon combo is unusable when employing this. - Death grib yields Krush crit the following round after grappeling target - Shocking Blows, all melee striked yield double damage - Bow Tester, All missle strikes yield double samage - Heave-Ho, Throw objects like a giant with a 200' range (skill can be developed) - Bone Breaker, 50% of all strikes made with blunt weapons are "shattering" - Hulking frame yields ability to throw weight into blows inflicting additional impact crits - Items as strong as mithril may be bent/broken if item fials an RR - Ginsu Master, 50% of all strikes made with edged weapons are cleaving Reasoning - Tactician as the BG option - Judge of weaponry as the BG option - Detect Lie (50% per lie) - Observation as the Closed Ment spell - Calculate 2 as the Sage spell - Awareness as the Ment spell - Clever attacking strategies increase effectiveness martial arts attacks/defense by 1 rank/factor - Correlate as Close Ment spell - Detect Illusion as Monk spell - Calculate 3 as Sage spell - Weigh Decision (45% bias) as the Sage spell - Ambush skill rank increases 50% and is 1/2 the cost there after. - Awareness True as Ment spell - Complete understanding of one race allows crits against race to be slaying Memory - Total Recall as Closed Ment spell - All languages learned at half cost and time - Study 1 as Bard spell - Permanent 5% bonus to all earned experience - Procedural Memory allows two chosen skills to be developed at half cost. - Subconcious Discipline as BG option - Spell Store as Closed Ess spell except one additioanl spell may be cast before the stored spell - Permanent 10% bonus to all earned experience - Permanent 15% bonus to all earned experience - Permanent +10 bonus to all actions (must have been previously seen or attempted) Self Discipline - Courage as the Paladin spell - Levitation as Closed Ess spell - Meditation 3 as Shaman spell - Unpain 50% as Open Ment spell - Improved Frenzy, - Iron Will adds +50 to RRs versus mind influcance - Stuns accumulated from each blow taken are reduced by one round - Concentration 2 as monk spell - Unpain 100% as Open Ment spell - Unpresence as Mystic spell - Hyper Frenzy - Mountain Heart 1 as nightblade spell usable 3 times per day - Temporal Skill as BG option - Additional +15 bonus to all RR's that can be activly resisted - Self-Keeping as Monk spell Agility - Natural Facility with Armor as BG option - Body Control as nightblade spell - Landing (10' per lvl) as Closed ment spell - Edgerunning as monk spell - All fumble ranges are halved (round down) - Ambidextrous, - weapon kata, no penality - Directed elemental attack spells may be parried with melee OB and weapon/shield - Agile parrying ability causes opponents to resist vs characters level or be disarmed if the character uses at least half od their OB to parry. - Scope skill as BG option - Penalties for engaging in multiple melee attacks are reduced by 50% - Pinpoint accuracy, all missle, directed spell, or melee criticals delivered increase 1 in severity - Deftness, Open ended high rolls for AG are 91-100 - Sureness, Open ended low rolls for AG are 01-02 Eloquence (Mental Quickness) move Memory and Reasoning together Social Standing, not a stat but should be on the character sheet as it affects NPC interaction - Former Slave - Lower Lower Class (LLC) - Middle Lower CLass (MLC) - Upper Lower Class (ULC) - Lower Middle Class (LMC) - Middle Middle Class (MMC) - Upper Middle Class (UMC) - Lower Upper Class (LUC) - Middle Upper Class (MUC) - Upper Upper Class (UUC) - Royalty https://wrathofzombie.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/the-huge-list-of-random-tables-i-use-in-my-games-so-good-it-makes-you-wanna/ https://autorolltables.github.io/# http://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/recipes/weve-been-making-this-mason-jar-lunch-week-after-week-and-arent-sick-of-it-yet/ar-AApnrRY?ocid=ientp https://www.dafont.com/theme.php?cat=401 Dameage types: Bruised and/or bloodied Core Skills: Parental Unit :: alive / dead present / absent biological / not biological close / distant happy / resentful addiction social class demeanor Income Steemit password P5KT9CiaMo9QnjECiNe7rfJcCf2x73LT2YL4WDmuk5UVf1R5tdug https://www.bustle.com/p/16-best-low-maintenance-dog-breeds-for-people-who-work-full-time-8703948 https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/05/well/move/05EASIER-7MINUTE.html Challenge levels are assigned to any task that has a reasonable chance of failure. The more difficult the task, the higher the CL. These CL ratings are classified as follows: Common Task CL 1 Uncommon Task CL 2 Specialized Task CL 3 Difficult CL 4 Extremely difficult CL 5 Unrealistic CL 6 Virtually Impossible CL 7 Inconceivable CL 8 Block N Dodge Armor does not make you harder to hit. It reduces damage dealt to the wearer. The heavier the armor the greater the damage reduction (generally speaking), but it is heavier and encumbers movement thus reduces the wearers ability to block and dodge an attack. Superior craftsmanship or magical armor can help offset the block-N-dodge penalty of armor. Appearance: Demeanor/Outlook: Habits/Activities: Abilities: stealing of memories Diet: Reproduction: Death: Narrative: Fae women that live in trees, like many Fae they are immortal and can only be killed in the Fae realm. Killing their physical form forces them back into their tree for 1D100 days. Killing/destroying their tree banishes them to the Fae realm and they are unable to return to this plane of existance. Appearance: Demeanor/Outlook: Habits/Activities: Abilities: Diet: Reproduction: Death: Narrative: https://www.getrichslowly.org/financial-rules-of-thumb/ Booklet layout for printing: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff960708.aspx https://wiki.scribus.net/canvas/How_can_I_make_a_booklet_using_Scribus%3F https://adrian17.github.io/Gallifreyan/ Waves and Vibrations: https://msu.edu/~murph250/topics/Waves1.htm https://www.behindthename.com/ https://gamefest.wordpress.com/2012/12/18/mapping-your-world-brush-packs/ https://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Custom_Brushes/ https://www.inc.com/the-muse/signs-great-leader-manager-google-research-study.html ------------------------------------------- circumference 24,901 miles 40074274.9 meters 131,477,280 feet 8 base 8 64 512 4096 32768 262144 2097152 16777216 134217728 feet, circumference of fictional 131477280 feet, circumference of earth -------------------------------------- TurboAppeal makes it much easier for homeowners to challenge the property assessments used to levy property taxes ------------------------------------------ personal motivations ----- basic needs (shelter, water, food, safety) ??intelligent enough to be forward thinking?? ??how far?? evil = gains pleasure @ the suffering of others good=gains pleasure from helping people neutral=will help or hurt if it is positive for them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_and_noble_ranks tribal / nation ----- size defending building up looking at expansion actively expanding aggressively expanding ---------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- house furnace: secure capacitor ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- van, 4x4, talk to bank about financing get prices from dealership get financing options from dealership compare the 2 timeline for delivery/purchase ------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------- Bee boxes calculate width for different dimensional lumber purchase a sample set build a couple of boxes calculate cost per box (materials) Bee Box Covers get sheet of 2" foam get foam floor adhesive create hot wire cutter setup style = telescoping cover ------------------------------------------------- ####################################################################################### ## Active Meditation ## ####################################################################################### # Active Meditation Here is an example of an active meditation: Pick one word from the list below the describes and emotion you would like to feel more of: Joy, Love, Happy, Peace, Calm, Hope. Close your eyes and visualize the word in your head. Pick a color that goes with the word and visualize the word in that color. Fill the background with another color. Now, with your eyes closed and writing in your head, write the word one letter at a time. As you are writing the word, say the letters quietly to yourself in your head. Write the colored word on the colored background over and over in your head while you say the letters quietly to yourself. Set a timer for 10 minutes and keep doing the exercise until the timer goes off. The five habits are: 1. Understand deeply 2. Make mistakes 3. Raise questions 4. Follow the flow of ideas 5. Change 1. Understand Deeply 2. Make Mistakes 3. Raise Questions 4. Follow The Flow Of Ideas 5. Conscientious Change ------ If you seek peace, Be still If you seek wisdom, Be silent If you seek love, Be yourself - Becca Lee ------- Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things, they are transformed. It isn't a change of scenery needed to make life better. Sometimes it simply requires opening your eyes. The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives. Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience. Forgive yourself each night and re-commit each morning In the beginning, Focus. Then let go - let go and let eternity do with you what it will. Sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere, and sometimes, in the middle of nowhere you find yourself. Breath and release everything that does not serve you. Overthinking is the biggest cause of unhappiness. Our greatest weapon against stress is the ability to choose one thought over another. Minfulness Being present, without judgement, in every moment Take time today to be good to you, in thoughts, deeds, and actions. Especially in your thoughts. Gratitude is like a magnet. The more grateful you are, the more you will receive to be grateful for. Humility is about refusing to get all tangled up with yourself. Its about surrender, receptiveness, awareness, simplicity. Breathing in, breathing out. Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. The inspiration you seek is already within you. Be silent and listen. - Rumi If you are always racing to the next moment, what happens to the one you are in? Your calm mind is your ultimate weapon against your challenges. So relax. We have more possibilities available in each moment than we realize. Be happy in the moment, that's enough. Each moment is all we need, not more. - Thich Nhat Hanh You can worry about the future and regret the past, but all that does is take you out of the present. Focus on the present, learn from the past, and the future will take care of itself. The secret of health for both the mind and body is not to mourn the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly. - Buddha Live the actual moment. Only this actual moment is life. - Thich Nhat Hanh Rumi: Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion. Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along. Only from the heart can you touch the sky. When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy. Let the beauty we love be what we do. Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. If you know the candle light is fire, then the meal was cooked a long time ago. ####################################################################################### ## lexicon ## ####################################################################################### ####################################################################################### ## lexicon ## ####################################################################################### ####################################################################################### ## lexicon ## #######################################################################################
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