The topic for my next random table was kind of a user request. My approach usually is, to give GMs just a bit of inspiration to create their own things. This is what I tried to achieve here as well. You can roll three dice, to get the full scope of something that is trapped and the solution on how to avoid this trap. You can also just roll two dice to see what is trapped, assuming the trap can be easily disarmed without solving a puzzle. Or maybe your players approach something, that is only accessible by solving a puzzle, but it isn’t trapped. Everything in this table is intentionally vague, so you can fill the gaps with your imagination, and tailor everything to suit your games. In the Dungeon Master’s Guide, both the 5e and the 5.5e version, you can find guidance on how much damage a trap should do to characters of certain levels. I left all of this out on purpose, so you can always use this table in your games. Have fun with it.

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You can find a downloadable PDF for free on my Patreon.

Random Traps & Puzzles

d20	Trap	What	Puzzle
1	Collapsing	Door	Find and press a button.
2	Falling	Room	Answer a riddle.
3	Fire-Spitting	Window	Offer something of value.
4	Dart-Shooting	Statue	Balance weights.
5	Poisoning	Walls	Follow light beams.
6	Snapping	Floor	Find an item only shown in a mirror.
7	Alarming	Lever	Activate orbs with the right elemental energy.
8	Netting	Roof	Find the fake statue.
9	Dropping	Pillar	Set lanterns in the right order.
10	Sleep-Inducing	Chest	Use the right lever.

This week I created a new adventure idea out of my Travel Encounters table. I think it turned out pretty good, let me know what you think. A campsite full of corpses, and a wanted poster bearing the face of one of your own party members. What begins as an unsettling discovery quickly turns into a morally grey situation with no easy answers. And the more the party learns about the people involved, the more difficult it becomes to decide who’s side to pick. A flexible travel encounter designed for easy integration into any campaign.

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You can find a downloadable PDF for free on my Patreon.

Adventure Idea

This adventure idea can be played during travel and focuses on social interaction and roleplaying , with some potential for combat, and is suitable for any Tier party. It intentionally contains no location names and can be placed in any game.

Situation

Carly Longsail, a pirate who lost his crew, his ship, and something very valuable to him, is wanted for murder. While he was trying to retrieve the medallion his grandmother gave him before she died, he got caught, and in a messy fight for survival, he killed a lot of the people who stole from him — only that those people were Navy forces. A group of bounty hunters found him and brought him in, but he managed to get away again. After stumbling across the group of bounty hunters, who were making camp in the area, he had to fight them, killed all of them, and is now on the run.

Hook

As the party travels to the next city, they discover an abandoned campsite full of corpses. After investigating the place for a while, they find an old wanted poster depicting the face of one of the party members. In this moment of irritation, Vendis Rightgart, a member of the city watch, shows up and orders the party to give up. If the characters are compliant, Vendis is easy to convince that they are not who he is looking for. The arms of the pirate he is after are covered in tattoos, and if the party member whose face is on the poster shows their arms, Vendis turns friendly towards the party and tells them what happened.

Conclusion

Bring in the Bounty. If the party decides to bring in Carly, he will resist with all that is left within him. He will fight to death if necessary. If they bring him in alive, he will be put in a cell, and the characters will be rewarded with gold. The amount is up to the GMs discretion to be easily adjusted to the current level of the characters. If he is brought in dead, or if they bring proof of his death, Vendis will not be as satisfied, but he will still reward the players with gold. Free the Prisoner. If the party decides to let Carly go and help him cover his tracks, they will not suffer any consequences from the city watch. Vendis is going to send more guards after Carly and thank the characters anyways. Carly gave the characters all he has (besides the medallion), which will roughly be half of the amount of gold that Vendis would have rewarded. Most of that money was on the bounty hunters.

If the characters brought Carly in alive and you are playing a longer campaign, he might show up at a later point in that campaign again. He might have fled imprisonment and now is hostile towards the party. If they helped him get away, he might show up again as well, but now is friendly towards the party and he might even return the favour and help them out.

My games mostly play in urban environments, which is probably why my first random table was the Urban Adventure Ideas. Second to urban environments is probably coastal areas, so I decided to give this a try as well. When creating random tables, I don’t focus on potential combat encounters. My focus goes to story ideas, which don’t necessarily need to be played as they are written, but should just serve you as a game master to get enough ideas in your head to run your own stories. This is why I split my random tables into three categories. If you read each line, it sounds relatively standard. But if you mix different items from the different categories together, things start to become weird, sometimes they won’t even fit properly. But this is, where I see the strength in my tables. Anyways, you can find a free PDF on my Patreon.

d20	Who	What	Where
1	A stranded person…	…lying in the sand, unconscious…	…along the coastline.
2	Smugglers…	…unloading crates…	…at a sea cave.
3	A wounded Merfolk Wavebender…	…dragging itself to a safe space…	…on the beach.
4	Two Cyclopse Sentries…	…arguing about possible future events…	…at a lighthouse.
5	A Sea Hag…	…trading fish with villagers and discussing the price…	…at a towns market.
6	Sailors…	…brawling over unpaid wages…	…at the docks.
7	A Pseudodragon…	…hunting for Giant Crabs…	…along rugged cliffs.
8	A group of Harpies…	…surrounding a lonely child…	…in a dead end.
9	A Bronze Dragon…	…trying to repair a stranded ship…	…between dunes.
10	Fisherman…	…arguing over a strange creature in their net…	…in a coastal village.