Tabula Mortis

I made another weird little game add-on for you.

It's filled with a dozen random tables that detail horrific scenes of murder, mayhem, and death.

You'll love it. It's right up your alley.

Stars (Promptober 2025 #14)

Comet at Sunset.

People look up and see a sky full of stars at night all the time. But how do people react to a star growing hair? How about one with a long tail?

Hairy stars or comets on Earth were treated as anomalies sent from the gods as some sort of omen, either good or ill. With science and observation, we now know that comets appear with regular frequency in predictable parts of the sky. But in a fantasy world, maybe it has a more direct effect on anyone who observe it.

I seem to be on a random table kick lately, so let's make another one for mystical effects of observing a comet. You can use this in several ways:

1. Roll once per comet, and the effects persist for 2d4 days.
2. Roll every night the comet is visible in the sky. Effects fade the next morning.
3. Roll every time someone sees the comet. Effects last for 1d4 hours.

Similarly, you can vary the area of effect from individual characters to everyone who sees it. These minor effects shouldn't break your game, except perhaps the Royal Death result for PCs with noble backgrounds or titles. Alternatively, you can use these as quick fortune telling or other omen results when appropriate.

Abandoned Locations - Derelicts (Promptober 2025 #13)

A roadside derelict.

What happens when you roll a random encounter while your party travels? Do you just wing something? Do you want a little more meat for your idea generation? What about exploring a derelict?

As long as other people have passed this way before, derelicts are surprisingly common in rarely-traveled areas. They work in all genres and all settings, from ruined carts on a roadside to hollowed-out buildings in the aftermath of war, and from abandoned caves used by hunters to hulking starships floating powerless through space.

But what will your party find when they explore this derelict?

Liminal Space (Promptober 2025 #12)

Both Eerie and Hopeful.

Liminal spaces lie suspended between the past and the future, between purpose and uselessness, between despair and hope, between what was and what could be. They show us beauty in their utter banality. They speak of lost intent and the transience of all things. They purposefully avoid any sense of personality with a careful indifference to identifying marks. They exist in constant impermanence at the threshold of anywhen that's not right now.

They excel as a metaphor for dying player characters.

What does the waiting room to the afterlife look like? It needs to cater to every faith, nationality, and belief system. Even if life simply ends, you still need a holding pen for those beings stuck in the last glimmers of their consciousness. What better location than a liminal space?

So what can we do to make this anonymous between space interesting?

Secrets - Fountain of Secrets (Promptober 2025 #7)

Fountain of Secrets

This weather-stained stone goat face spews water into a basin underneath it. It sits next to a fine house away from the town's center, aa aging high-end private water supply for a well-to-do family. If you whisper to a copper coin and toss it in the basin, sometimes the goat's head will whisper a secret to you. If you bend down and put your ear to its mouth, the water will stop long enough for it to whisper softly, then resume spraying directly into your ear.

The secret might not have any relevance or context, and it may be hundreds of years old, but it is always true. It may promise treasure or threaten the reputation of someone in town. The goat may be old, but he still has an endless pile of secrets left to tell the world.

The fountain gives tantalizing almost-specific hints to something that may have happened in the past or a clue as to something that happened recently. It's an oracle spewing random truths with even more obfuscation than usual.

Crashing Your Grav Scooter

When you fail an air/raft roll to pilot a grav scooter, things get ugly in a hurry. Given the grav scooter’s design, you will probably be thrown from the vehicle and suffer significant trauma. The grav scooter will coast to a stop and lose altitude until it hovers 10 cm off the ground, unless programmed to act differently by the pilot.

To determine damage sustained, divide speed (in kph) by 10.

Add a modifier based on your armor (a vacc suit counts as cloth).

Armor	Nothing	Jack	Mesh	Cloth	Reflec	Ablat	Battle
Modifier	+2	0	-1	-4	+1	-2	-7

Referee may add or subtract the result of 1D as appropriate for circumstances, preparation, or luck. Result is the number of dice damage inflicted from the crash. Generally 15D damage or more is instantly fatal.

Example: Roddy loses control of a grav scooter travelling 200 kph. Roddy wears Battle Dress and has tethered the scooter to the armor (Referee rules this preparation is worth a DM of -4). Roddy will suffer 20 (speed) -7 (Battle Dress) -4 (tethering), or 9D damage. Survivablility is 50/50 for an average character, and it will most likely inflict a serious wound.