Fun Fact I Never Got To Share On Stream: Tucker Carlson's Most Recent Book Did Not Make The NYT Bestseller

God I fucking hate Olaf the snowman so fucking much holy shit. Holy shit, every frame he's in, every scene, every gif, every jpeg, he's got this painfully vacant, stupid as shit, fuckass look on his stupid lumpy face. Absolutely no part of his ugly as sin piece of shit character design is endearing. His stupid fucking legs? Who the hell makes a snowman with legs. His dumb flaily fucking twig arms? His shitty, lumpy bastard head? The three thousand percent unnecessary dumbass shitass fucking SNOW BUCK TOOTH that no snowman has EVER FUCKING HAD IN tHE HISTORY OF GOD'S GREEN FUCKING EARTH? God, I hate him. I hate him so much. So FUCKING much. Every time I see a stuffed toy Olaf or an Olaf gif or a shitty goddamn commercial, it ignites my primal rage response and I'm overcome by the need to punt this shitty little homunculus into the fucking sun. "Bhurr blur, I'm Olaf the fuckshit snow fucker, I like warm hugs". Fuck you. Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you. You look like Tow Mater summoned a patronus. Your dumb fucking twig hair makes your whole shitty head look like a hairy skin tag. I hate your dumb fucking lumpy carrot nose and your stupid, empty googly eyes and your over-the-top goofy ass upbeat asshole personality. Any scene he's sad it invokes all the wrath and fury of a spoiled child having a meltdown over a chocolate bar in a w*lmart checkout line. And I know its irrational. That's the worst part. I know he's just a shitty fucking side character in a stupid fucking children's movie, I know it doesn't matter, I know I shouldn't care. But that's part of the problem. The part where no matter the might and fury of my hatred, the locus of my homicidal intent is alltogether inconsequential. I find myself laying awake in the dark in the early hours of the morning consumed by the spirit of Wrath itself, all the force and might of a flaming hurricane directed at a bottle of piss in a ditch by the highway. The absurdity of it all burns me to my core. What better things could this energy be directed towards? And yet my disdain for this stupid, useless, insubstantial failure of endearing character design utterly eclipses the intrigue of all other pursuits. I hate him. I hate him on a level of my mind reserved for the worst of the world's array of sinners, and I can't even begin to justify it. Shitstick the snow dick is, for all intents and purposes, the animated corpse of all of humanity's saccharine pretenses- every condescending, passive-aggressive statement of meaningless upper middle class suburban drama distilled into a single, hateable form. The fucking. Fuck. I have no words. There is no cuss or epithet in any language that can encapsulate the height of the emotions I am experiencing. God, I hate him so much. I hate him so, so fucking much. I want to light his ugly little dumpster body on fire. I want to graphically beat him to death with his own stupid fucking nose. I want to punch him to death. You know that weird feeling you get, when you see a picture of something so cute you find yourself overcome with the bizarre, inexplicable urge to squeeze it? It's EXACTLY like that, except instead of cuteness it's disgust. The wordless knowledge that his existence as a fictional work is evidence of all the failures of mankind. I find myself possessed by the will of a Holy Angel gone rogue with the belief that God has made a mistake, and I alone must correct it. This is the trial by which Samael himself fell from grace. This wild, meaningless rage. A thousand blades of shining steel cast with inhuman force in the direction of a plastic grocery bag floating on a breeze. What horrors must I have committed in a past life to be plagued by this torment now? I must Unmake this fictional snowman

Hey all, This is my first Tumblr post ever! I'm pretty new here, but I'm hoping to share some DM techniques, tools and tips and to make some new friends as well! Feel free to send a chat request (an ask[?]) if you're interested!

With that aside, on with the post!

Better and More Meaningful Random Encounters!

Random encounters are a staple of DnD, they are expected to be there during exploration as a way to make the world feel alive, to have it have an aura of adventure and danger, to eat up party resources and put pressure on the PCs to make interesting and important choices, and also as a way for a DM to reasonably 'stall' the party with a quick and easy situation.

Usually, it ends up something like this:

There's just one problem with most random encounter tables though, it's so easy for them to be GOSHDARN BORING! Especially for a newer DM.

Making them interesting becomes gambled improv on the DM's part if they're not used to it, and it's hard to keep track of the important factors that need to be kept in mind

Luckily, I ended up finding a great source for random encounters from 'Dungeon Masterpiece' on YouTube, and I integrated it into my own DMing. I figured that I'd share it here for any that want to work it into their own sessions as well!

After adjustment, a single table can account for multiple entire sessions of in-depth worldbuilding and fun without getting dull!

Sources:

Source 1 (Creating interesting Random Encounter Tables):

Source 2 (Making Random Encounters reflect your Worldbuilding):

There's 4 major methods we can use to improve the Random Encounter table

1. Make the table a straight 1dx roll.

2. Adding 'depth'.

3. Adding meaningful encounters.

4. Prerolling and/or Multirolling.

You can also check out the "Where to Start?" section for some direction to make getting it down and prepped all easy peasy!

1. Straight Roll:

Its enticing to go for 2d6 or the such in order to add non-linearity to the rolls, but these sorts of adjustments only end up making one or two encounters extremely likely and leave all others in the dust, it often ends up defeating it's own purpose of interesting randomness.

In the previous example, it was extremely likely to only get Wolves, Barbarians, Orcs, or Spiders, from a table of 12! A straight roll would serve us much better. The rare rolls are already rare enough as is!

Simply enough, adjusting the original example by replacing the 2d6 with 1d12, it'd become something more like this:

#2. Adding Depth:

We can add more columns in the encounter tables. These columns will represent different aspects about the encounters that we can roll on separately!

Usually it can be difficult as a DM to naturally come up with motives for the encounters, showcase the worldbuilding and have it all come together.

This setup can give you a solid guideline on how the creatures/people think (if any), and also sets up the overall area so that you get an idea of what events tend to occur there as a result of its occupants. 

We want to add 3 more columns to the tables to convey different aspects of the encounter. Fill in these new columns corresponding to the expectations of each encounter.

We'll roll each of these and combine them, then we'll interpret them to make a robust, in-depth random encounter with truly unexpected results!

I recommend rolling alot of complete encounters at once and interpreting the context to the vast general area the party is travelling in.

i. Behaviour: How the creatures act. Are they friendly, scared, aggressive, curious, mischievous?

ii. Complication: Something behind the scenes in the encounter. Do they have sick young? Broken equipment? Are they starving?

iii. Significant Impact: This is a tick box, and will only be present under ONE of the rows. It will be rolled like the other columns, but ONLY once. It signifies which encounter is the Significant Encounter

The Significant Encounter will have its encounter's presence prominent amongst all the other random encounters in the area. There could be burn marks and carcasses from a rampant dragon, or a goblin raid leaving tracks moving through the area. Which is the most impactful of the different encounters?

Adding this to our previous example would expand it to:

Rolling this would give us things like:

Significant encounter: Owlbears

Note that the significant impact shows that the Owlbears are a massive problem in the area. Perhaps the Owlbears are agitated for an unknown reason, and are unnecessarily aggressive.

The significance of Owlbears gives us context to the second one as well! Perhaps the hunters raided an Owlbear den, and adopted an Owlbear cub from there as well.

There could be uneaten carcasses, ravaged trees, less wildlife, etc around these parts.

Note how much sheer CONTEXT these columns add to our encounters. It's invaluable!

3. Adding Meaningful Encounters

Usually random encounters tend to be rather mundane and very one-note.

There's usually some general wildlife and monsters, different disparate factions without any rhyme or reason, and maybe a general non-combat encounter or two, but these don't really tell us about the area or its surroundings at all by themselves.

Instead, we can add in wildlife and monster encounters specific to the biome, non-combat encounters, and encounters of nearby factions and/or settlements to the table, and we can even add environmental encounters in there as well.

Note that we're not tied down to 12 encounters, and can expand it ad infinitum according to our need of diversity in our encounters.

Just add in specification and connection, and suddenly the dominos all fall into place.

Lastly, we'll also be adding in 'DOUBLE TIME' which will let us roll on everything twice, and make it so it's a double encounter!

Thus, the table can instead be adjusted to:

Note how each and everything has its relation in one way or another, but through the sheer variance, they remain truly random and novel.

4. Prerolling and/or Multirolling

Lastly and this is just something that I do, but that I found gamechanging. Be sure to pre-roll 5-7 encounters for each session, for the general area the players are going to be headed in.

Note that you don't need to really prep anything at all, just interpret all of them on a surface level as a buffer.

Also note that you don't need to use all of them if they're not needed. The foreshadowing and signs are worldbuilding and having secrets that the players don't unravel is just as useful as the ones that they do, perhaps even moreso. It adds depth and detail beyond the scope of what the party will encounter

It simply let's you get an idea of the connections between encounters, allows for foreshadowing, and acts as a deterrent to getting caught off guard.

Even if you roll mid-session, I recommend calling for a 5 minute break, rolling 5-7 encounters at the same time and interpreting them and their connections before resuming the session.

It WILL make a difference, trust me

Where to start?

It can be difficult getting inspiration or direction to get started in creating these random encounters, and sometimes you don't want to go through the hassle of thinking them up from nothing

For some great conceptual headstarts and examples for these tables, you can check out 'Worlds Without Number' and it's:

- Page 205 (Great general templates for encounters differentiated by broad creature types such as Beasts and Monsters, Sapient Monsters, and Humans)

- Pages 206-219 (For inspired locations to occasionally run rare encounters or groups of encounters in. This works best with flexible/discovered worldbuilding given the significance of some of these, and you also want to add these in sparingly to keep them significant)

- Pages 246-247 (These pages have great templates for the kinds of encounters and situation to be included in the tables, and it can be expanded vastly, and certain options can be selectively and repeatedly chosen to meet our needs. Mood works well as a complication.)

There might be other pages that are useful as well for these sorts of random encounters in the wilderness that I haven't come across yet. If so, give them a shout out and I'll be sure to add them in. It's worth checking it out in its entirety for some great tips!

Conclusion

Again, credit goes to Dungeon Masterpiece and Worlds Without Number for excellent adjustments. This has been quite long, but I hope you stuck around till the end.

Many a session have been made easy but complex ever since this was introduced and I hope that this helps you out as much as it helped me in my prep and improv!

Feel free to give any advice in formatting on Tumblr, or any feedback on the post itself. It really means a lot to me, thanks!

In my defense my fingies was cold and you are warm and good

I think we all need some soup right now. Reblog to give prev a bowl of their favourite soup.

it's important to me that people know the original "he would not fucking say that" was in response to a tiktok where someone said eric cartman would thank you for asking for his pronouns. Like it just doesn't hit the same without context.

poems I loved in december

Paruyr Sevak, "To Go Mad"

Anne Sexton, "December 18th"

Ted Hughes, "Lovesong"

Chris Abani, "Ritual is Journey"

Franz Wright, "Untitled"

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, "A Prayer"

Willie Perdomo, "Maybe Under Some Other Sky"

Osip Mandelstam,'You took away all the oceans and all the room', (translated by Clarence Brown and W. S. Merwin)

Osip Mandelstam, "Tenderer than tender" transl. D. Smirnov-Sadovsky

Richard Siken, "Litany in Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out"

Michael Miller, "December"

Vladimir Mayakovsky, "A Cloud in Trousers"

Mohja Kahf, “Most Wanted”

Louise Glück, "Winter Recipes from the Collective"

Vladimir Mayakovsky, "Listen"

Fear, Czesław Miłosz, Robert Hass (translator)

Hope, Czesław Miłosz, Robert Hass (translator)

Charles Bukowski, "a vote for the gentle light"

Marina Tsvetaeva, "I Opened My Veins" (translated by Elaine Feinstein)

I read the article, these are all such cool concepts!

I must. I must say @dedalvs got my absolute and utmost attention. I will read this in detail tomorrow morn.

https://fiatlingua.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/fl-000088-00.pdf

and with your help it can rack up 700k notes on tumblr in 2024

no tumblr this doesnt need tags im releasing it into the wild as god intended

this post is not gonna be well put together but i am having feelings

mean girls is trending right now because the musical movie just came out and i feel insane. idk why i do, it was stupid of me to think that most people Got It, no one ever gets it, it was always about the memes and the aesthetic.

the first mean girls movie was based on a nonfiction book called queen bees and wannabes. it interviewed and discussed the social caste system in teen girl friendships. how they hold each other to these insane standards of heternormative femininity out of sheer terror that they won't meet those standards themselves. the way they leverage their relationships for some small degree of power in a world designed to strip them of it, even if it drags other girls down.

the "you can only wear your hair in a ponytail once a week and on wednesdays we wear pink" speech was not an original creation for the script. it's a QUOTE from a real teenage girl. those were REAL RULES.

then the musical came, and it was one step removed from the intended messaging of the film. OG mean girls was not perfect (and was extremely racist), but it said what needed said. the musical leaned on the comedy more, but still left a heartfelt undertone, and still critiqued the systems in place. of course no piece of media is going to be perfect, but it was about the conversation.

then this new movie comes out and it is washed over in the veneer of white hollywood feminism so thick you can't see anymore. the problematic aspects of the original movie are taken out to avoid "offending" when the offense was the point. it becomes toothless, it becomes some other thing entirely. they changed karen's line "i expect to run the world in shoes i cannot walk in" to "watch me as i run the world in shoes i cannot walk in." because choice feminism is in vogue, suddenly this character whose entire point is that she doesn't think deeply about WHY she does anything is suddenly hip to the fact that the world is against her.

i think of sokka losing his misogyny arc in the new atla. i think of the Heathers remake casting the bitchy, identical heathers as queer and hollywood-fat outcasts. as if the story, the meaning, the allegory is hidden in the sets and the jokes and the music. it's a whole new thing now, and it's a thing that means nothing in particular.

the plastics should not wear jeans. they should not have curves. their queerness should be suppressed, painful. their sexuality is not a slay, it's the only thing they think they have of value. the santa dance isn't sexy, it's shocking, it's mortifying - they are children.

they're not mean because "we are all mean." they are mean because they are girls in a world that brutalizes them and crushes them into a standardized shape. they are mean because the world is mean to them. they are mean because it gives them some power back. they are mean because it's the only weapon they have.

the landscape of femininity today has shifted to camera-ready makeup at the age of 10, stringent performative hygiene standards, and avoiding being caught on film while having a genuine emotion. the consumerism, the fatphobia, the racism, the classism, the homophobia remain. We could have had a conversation about that.

I want you to remember:

The fascists hate you too and they just will pretend otherwise until after they've killed the rest of us, before they turn on you.

Dumb NPC ideas to use when your players decide to explore that town you didn't prepare anything for

A scholar that is clearly lost, however you're not sure how he is someone important at all. It even looks like he's glad that he didn't manage to arrive at the event on time.

An old lady (of a race that has a long lifespan), that knows a little way to much about the party's adventure... She doesn't spends much time talking about it though, do you want to buy her pots?

A kid. Just a kid. Make them annoying.

A knight that is very proud about their job and duty, but they just want their shift to end so they can go home to their wife.

A merchant that has a cart in the middle of the fair, however everytime the party goes to another shop or stand he pops up from behind the counter. Turns out the town doesn't receive many merchants so he has to supply all of their needs. He's stressed.

A teen dragon that discovered how to transform into a human, problem is they definitely look 30 but they still are just a teenager, and a moody one.

A shop owner that fucking hates commerce. She's in it because of her family, so she tries to sell the goodies pratically for free and she really wants you to take all of her items. The catch? It's a feather shop. Not magic feathers, not pens, just normal feathers. Probably from a bird that died that morning.

A janitor from a library or big shop that is just too aware of everything. Like, they point out the players class or race without barely batting an eye. They comment on how they "had never seen a chaotic good one in real life". And indirectly disses the players choices they made 2 sessions ago? (Basically a character for the dm to rant a little while not completely breaking the 4th wall)

A woman in her mid-40s (or the equivalent) that is just really excited to meet the party? Her dream was to be an adventurer when she was little so she is definitely asking some weird questions.

A blacksmith that makes weapons purely for the aesthetic. He really doesn't care if it's functional or not, he's just doing cause it looks cool.

A bard that got kicked out of their band or caravan. At first you don't know why but after their 3rd performance of a one-person musical you get it. He wants to stick with the party though. Good luck.

A doggie!! It's cute!! And fluffy!! And it talks!! And it talks? A DOG THAT TALKS!!!!

The most ripped person the party has ever met, they have tons of skulls of big animals on their shoulder. They polish them. They hang them on a wall and start to take notes. They are an archeologist.

A magician that is really not magic at all, he's just so good at card tricks that the town thinks he's a sorcerer. He's freaking out.

A girl that is immune to all kinds of poison, however that is making a little bit hard for her to pursue her cooking career. Apparently poison ivy is not a good seasoning for most people.

An artist that is just really calm and friendly but everyone's afraid of them. The party has no idea why.