inspiration – Rollplay Sidekick

Rolling Word Play – 48

Creating Roleplay ideas based on randomly generated words. Today, it’s Sci-fi! Discover more about Permitting Afternoon Someone, Blinked Enzymes Resold, and Microwaves Chickens Mounds.

Permitting Afternoon Someone
In the big city the ever-increasing use of technology and working from home gave one entrepreneur the idea to create Afternoon Tea with Someone. This fashionable restaurant (that spawned a new culture of tea dates) takes bookings for individuals and pairs them up with other individuals, so each trip is a new social experience. They say that many lonely souls grow a little after each trip.

What chance encounter might a player have in such a place? Or could there be a murder or blackmail plot based around fixing the meeting between two people?

Blinked Enzymes Resold
In this futuristic world, enzymes are provided to clients seeking to lose weight fast. It reacts with the digestive system, speeding up the breakdown of foods by up to 10 times. There are also rogue sellers and one such enzyme manufacturer created enzymes that can hide their true intentions and look and act like any dietary aid. When they blink back into their main programme however, they can mutate the host by unwinding the DNA coils and changing the information before copying them.

What is the rogue manufacturer’s intentions? How severe are the mutations?

Microwaves Chickens Mounds
Habishabi is a land owner, but the land he owns has been severally polluted with waste, which is why he was able to buy it for next to nothing! In the piles of debris and old produce, he has created a unique garden of his own. Behind a wall of masonry and metal pots is a tranquil amphitheatre with potted plants and animals. Sitting in the middle is a fountain made of bicycle parts, his living quarters is a shelter made of metal sheets and cupboards but is quite cosy inside. At the other end of the amphitheatre is a large pile of carefully arranged microwaves inhabited by a colony of chickens. Each microwave sits a little back from the one below and the ramps Habishabi installed allow the chickens to meander between each level all the way to the ground floor.

Habishabi is a very amenable sort, but he is also a man of trade. He can mend, custom design and provide information. In return, he often takes other items if he thinks they might come in handy. A very useful guy to know.

Rolling Word Play – 47

Creating Roleplay ideas based on randomly generated words. Here’s today’s selection. Discover more about Rattle Swaps Fully, Lengthy Articulate Occurs, and Stone Paradise Smoked.

Rattle Swaps Fully
The Kimaran is one of the most feared shape changers known. They start life as snakes with a large vibrating tale that rattles wherever it moves. The legend goes that they are a god’s way of punishing idiocy. Certainly, those who are foolish or unlucky enough to run into these loud serpents and are swallowed whole suffer a terrible fate. The creature that emerges from the digesting snake looks the same as the prey, but this is in fact the Kimaran. The mind of the digested creature now inhabits a smaller version of the Kimaran’s body and must start its new life, looking for similarly slow or gullible victims.

Lengthy Articulate Occurs
The case of the Drip is one that holds the city in its grasp. It started with one individual who seemed to hear the dripping sound clearly above all others. But soon, more and more beings heard it, and slowly it drew them mad as at ever more frequent intervals they would absent-mindedly stop and call out the sound they heard: “drip, drip, drip”.

Can the players intervene and find the source of this cursed sound? What does it portend, or is the device causing it already having the effect its designer wished? If investigating, the players will need to make sure they themselves do not lose their minds.

Stone Paradise Smoked
The inside of a volcano isn’t the idea of many creatures’ paradise, but for the Lizard folk or Arlatla, it provides them with perfect slopes to soak in the sun’s rays and also the heat to keep warm in all seasons. Situated between the dry plains and the moist jungle, the sacred volcano or Arn provides all this and more besides. The lizard folk have installed several sheltered rooms under the active hill. Each room also has warm air circulating through vents from the magma pools below, providing plenty of good heat. They have created a large green house, which uses the moisture of the jungle and heat from Arn to grow their own foods. The Red Hall is an area where only the elite are allowed. This includes a doughnut-shaped enclosure with a warm pool in the middle, allowing the lizards to enjoy heat, light and water all day long.

Rolling Word Play – 46

Creating Roleplay ideas based on randomly generated words. Here’s today’s selection. Discover more about Resolve Transcript Proceeds, Glosses Gratitude Shimmered, and Prune Ogre Fluffy.

Resolve Transcript Proceeds
The Arch Fey Andruin has the ability create creatures by writing them into the world with his feathered quill and silky parchment. Not just happy simply to create, he often writes a script for his subjects. The latest episode has him unsure of what to do however, as some of his creations have encountered each other. Should he side with the two-headed troll, the 9 foot dryad or the giant snake with the bear’s head?

If the players enter this scene, how will Andruin react? Will his creations gang up on them? He has been known to give his favoured creatures advantages, such as finding useful items or gaining extra muscles they didn’t have before. Will he take a liking to the PCs, or erase them from his story?

Glosses Gratitude Shimmered
The source of all glamour comes from Eirlattan Falls. It flows into an underground cave where each water droplet’s brief appearance is dazzling! The water here is remarkably powerful and any Arch Fey that has fallen on hard times or any foolhardy and ambitious fey creature craves a visit to boost their powers of manipulation and influence. However, the water also hides many dangerous and evil entities that are disguised by the glamour they wear. Super-charged sprites, giant insects and other even greater dangers lurk in the caverns surrounding the Eirlattan Falls.

What reason might the players have to visit the falls? Do they seek power, treasure, or are they helping to revive a fey who claims they will reward them? Tread carefully, for many in the fey wilds cannot be trusted.

Prune Ogre Fluffy
Old Ravvak is a solitary creature who dwells in his hilltop cave. With the winds the way they are, his hair is useful. As he has aged, his hair became white until he began looking more and more like a yeti. Unfortunately for Ravvak, a myth has developed that underneath all his hair, he has a tattoo of the map where he vanquished and buried his old foe, Gurlich the Fierce. The myth goes that he hated but respected the eight-foot tall war boss, so buried him with all his possessions. It is this last part that has spread through the towns and taverns nearby.

Will the adventurers attempt to shave Ravvak’s white fur in the hopes of uncovering the burial ground of Gurlich the Fierce? Will Ravvak be communicative or uncooperative? If they succeed, will the myth of the map be true, or just another far-fetched tail in the bardic song repertoire?

Rolling Word Play – 40

Creating Roleplay ideas based on randomly generated words. Here’s today’s selection. Discover more about Wriggled Remembers Salvage, Slippery Dearly Muddle and Whisper Crafted Meatball.

Wriggled Remembers Salvage
Perhaps the strangest partnership in the known worlds if of Grelven and his wriggly, giant animal companion. Grelven once rescued a giant purple worm as it was still growing from a mine cave-in. It had been abandoned by its mother, and grew attached to Grelven. Since then, it has more than paid back the life debt it owed him. They are inseparable and together they roam the plains and desert landscapes. Their ability to dig up gold is unparalleled.

Slippery Dearly Muddle
A witch known of Geldred was once conned out of her finest potions when a knight said he would pay her handsomely for them. He gave her fake coins however, worthless to anyone less naïve. Furious, she gathered all the real gold coins she had and set a trap for the knight, planting the coins in various places in the forest and beside the bridal pathways. She cursed each coin with a potent spell of her own, and was delighted when she spyed the knight picking one up and dying in the attempt. The curse for the coins sends the creature that picks them up into the ground where a boggy, suffocating death awaits. She decided to leave the other coins for others who might be as greedy and conniving as the knight was.

Whisper Crafted Meatball
Perhaps the most disturbing food on offer is the Whispering Meatballs of Mef. No-one but the chefs know how they are made or what they contain, but the original tale doesn’t inspire confidence. Mef was a priest whose piety knew no bounds. The story goes that he warned a greedy baron to share the crops of his land lest they go to waste. When the baron continued to ignore his warnings, Mef confronted him and rather than imprisoning him or running him through, kept him alive as he crafted and skinned him into tiny pieces. With these, he created a large pot of meatball stew, which he served to the villagers on the baron’s land.

Mef’s Whispering Meatballs are still served today in a few special locations. The meatballs seem to whisper incoherently as if talking with their last breath. Sometimes the diners swear they can hear what they are saying. Are these creatures skinned alive by the cook, or a culinary trick using trapped air? No-one knows for certain.

Rolling Word Play – 39

Creating Roleplay ideas based on randomly generated words. Here’s today’s selection. Discover more about Natives Renovating Blockages, Blackbird Colleague Apply and Swaps Resurfaced Speculative.

Natives Renovating Blockages
A Frogperson runs into the village seeking help from an unknown terror that lurks in the river. It gets worse for the inhabitants of the village; upstream, the frogfolk have been decimated in recent wars with other tribes but also from a bestial threat that lurks in the waters. They are unable to repair the vine walls that hold back the tide during the rainy seasons and these are about to begin.

A fun but dangerous adventure awaits. One that would involve working with the Frogfolk, fighting a beast in flowing water whilst the rain lashes down from the sky. What is the terror that the frogfolk are unable to identify or defeat?

Blackbird Colleague Apply
Not a person can forget the face of Evwin. The intelligence is keen, the sincerity good, the stature upright and yet for the citizens who saw Evwin, their brains could only compute ‘bird’. And so it was that although he came from this kingdom, was raised in a village near here, he was considered an outsider. …This is where the story gets dark, for if they are unable to embrace Evwin as one of their own, he will turn against them. Drow have not been seen on the surface for decades, but have already identified Evwin as not only intelligent but suitable spy material. They have met a few times, and if unchecked, will lead the Drow to topple the rulers of the city.

Will the adventurers be able to read the signs of the upcoming war, and will Evwin be prevented from spilling any more intelligence to the Drow?

Swaps Resurfaced Speculative
Poor Dunfern. This city has suffered much from shapeshifters and now secrecy and security are high. There is talk that the shapeshifters have regrouped and are again plotting to take control of the office of power. It got so bad last time that golums were bought at great expense to spot those who were disguised as another. But automatons can only be looking in one place at a time and they can even be reprogrammed. And so the office of power, headed by Chief Lioron is under high alert.

This is a perfect opportunity for adventurers to help prevent paranoia, or be the cause of it. Once checked by a golum to ensure they are not shapeshifting fiends, there will be shapeshifters to hunt and identities to protect. Who will the shapeshifters be disguised as, and how far up the ladder of power have they got? Or is the whole thing a lie; a scheme to instil fear and control over their subjects?

Rolling Word Play – 3

The Inspiration of Chance and Improvisation – Word Play

I’m starting a series where I generate Roleplay ideas based on random words. Let’s see what words I get to play with today:

Massive Analyst
This is a pill taken by a creature that is desperate for an answer that they cannot yet grasp. Many of those that have taken the pill take a long time to re-emerge from their semi-comatose state. Some never return, lost in the midst of a mental or spiritual maze. For most, they have returned profoundly shaken and many are never the same again. The epiphanies they bring with them are often not simple and take events in a completely different direction.

Here is a way of playing out the effects of a Massive Analyst on a d10 die roll:

1 – Utterly lost. Re-roll again the following day to see what happens next. Add a mental quirk to your character sheet from this life-altering experience.

2-3 – Confused in the unconscious realm. You re-emerge 1d10 days later, but have lost some of your mental sharpness. Add a condition to your character sheet to reflect this.

4-5 – You return quickly but altered by the experience. Add a mental quirk to your character.

6-7 – You were unaffected by the experience and were able to return quickly. You will gain +1 to the die roll if you ever decide to retake this pill.

8-9 – You found an answer to the question. Check with the GM to see what wisdom you gained.

10 – You had a profound epiphany. It is greater than you could have possibly imagined! Check with the GM for details.

Activate Understanding
A scene of devastation. Zombie roam across an area known as the Death Zone. They are surprisingly fast and aggressive, attacking living organisms, which either bleed out or become animated undead husks like themselves.

The source of the trouble is in a grave. A powerful magical ring was left with the corpse of an elderly lady who died a few years ago. She carved it and used her magics to prolong her life. As her own energy drained away, the ring’s stored energy was still working. As the flimsy wooden coffin in which she was buried deteriorated, the ring’s influence tainted the soil and cause an un-life in the corpses of those in the graveyard.

The town records and library will have information on an old woman who dodged death for so long (she was over 140 years old) and where she was buried. There is also information about how to use witchcraft to change the energy flow in an item. Using a ritual and a few key ingredients, the ring’s energy can be changed to generate a flow of peace and rest. This is a way to finally end the reign of un-life.

Sorry Accept Patience
A society run by a zealous religious faction expects their citizens to report their own sins and the sins of others. For those who are brought to receive their punishments, they must first ask for repentance (Sorry), accept they are wrong and sign a confession (Accept). Having signed, they must then await punishment, which will be delivered when the religious faction deem it appropriate (Patience). This can sometimes take several years and can even be provided in smaller installments. The faction controls the populous in this way, with fear of punishment and of being reported for sins.

Rolling Word Play – 2

The Inspiration of Chance and Improvisation – Word Play

I’m starting a series where I generate Roleplay ideas based on random words. Let’s see what words I get to play with today:

Drag Intention
A tactic used by a Gillatora; a long, spikey creature with 2 tentacles and a powerful beak. It deliberately weakens its enemies by stunning them with its beak before grappling them and dragging them along the ground where rocks and other debris can cause further damage. If the ground is smooth, it can also drag their victims along its spike-covered back.

Judge Cook
All societies have their own system of justice, on which they promote fairness and deter selfish, harmful actions. In one particular society, the judge and the cook is one in the same. Those who are found to be corrupt and selfish are prepared a complex and tasty food dish. They then must replicate the meal and dedicate several hours and days (depending on the severity of the crime) to perfecting it. If they are able to consistently impress the judge (often the same person who served them the original dish) then they are allowed to dedicate time to improve the dish. This is not only a good way to improve recipes but a way of focussing the mind of the criminal. This new dish becomes the ex-criminal’s new speciality dish. One day, they too might become a judge-cook for other wayward citizens.

Basic Desperate Relationship
In a dystopian future, relationships are seen as essential. Everyone must buddy up as single individuals have been found to be most likely to resort to terrorism and episodes of violence in this dark future. Where the relationship has started to breakdown, there is a certain amount of help provided to by the state. The relationship states are as follows:

Blissfully Operating (BO) Essential Functioning (EF) Basic Working Relationship (BWR) ….. Basic Desperate Relationship (BDR) Advanced Desperate Relationship (ADR) Failing Relationship (FR) Deadly Relationship (DR)

Those below the dotted line are considered a risk and a potential burden on society. A BDR is usually because one partner raises complaints or their working efficiency is down below acceptable standards. BDR provides credit to attend talks on relationship issues and attending a check-in (compulsory attendance by both partners to agree on ways to improve their relationship) once a week.

Advanced (ADR) includes counselling sessions and even starts with credit for a short holiday for first time offenders. Failing and Deadly are a concern to the society at large. Those caught before they do anything fatal result either in divorce of partners or a clean slate (memory wipe).

Rolling Word Play – 1

The Inspiration of Chance and Improvisation – Word Play

I’m starting a series where I generate Roleplay ideas based on random words. Let’s see what words I get to play with today:

Relevant Salmon
A group of salmon who are dependent on a single entity for their survival. Like a hive mind, they collect their intelligence and ‘pool’ it together into one fish, who leads the others; hopefully to salvation and safe spawning grounds.

There have been instances where a salmon has been caught and all other salmon have attacked the unsuspecting fisherperson until they dropped their catch. Unfortunately a myth has grown up that killing the one, relevant salmon will grant you wishes. There is no record of this being confirmed, but there are records of a single salmon being speared and the entire group instantly dying.

Drafty Chocolate
Made from cocoa beans grown in the harsh tropical caves of Hinreln, the taste mentally transports the user to those harsh, windy conditions. The shock can be good or bad depending on the creature, but it has been proven to lower the body temperature significantly and is highly sought after by those in hot, desert climates.

Suspicious Negotiation
A term that can be applied to many situations, but the particular story to earn this title is a play, very popular in rural towns in which royalty do not reside. The story starts with a king who rules over a peaceful nation. In the story he sees a fey creature (the sort of creature varies with each telling) imprisoned in his city. Fascinated, he ignores his advisors and buys the creature for himself. The king asks it questions and using its charms and illusory powers the fey creature convinces the king that it can see into the future. For each question the fey creature conjures up a dystopian vision which in turn feeds the king’s growing concerns. As the story goes on, the visions get worse and the king’s paranoia alienates him from everyone around him. The story ends with the fey creature tricking the king into being released. It then kills then king and assumes his form.