1. Your mother calls your cell phone
2. Your cell phone battery dies
3. Your credit cards demagnetize
4. You realize you forgot your keys
5. The power goes out
6. The Internet is down
7. Your/a nearby car backfires
8. Your love interest changes their Relationship Status
9. A parade comes through
10. A drunk person enters
11. There’s construction down your next path
12. Your shoelace is untied
13. There’s a fire in the building
14. Building evacuated due to a bomb threat
15. Police enter and mistake you for someone else
16. Your car is stolen
17. Step in gum/feces/puddle of mysterious provenance
18. You forgot your phone/laptop charger
19. You discover blood on your clothes
20. You left the car lights on, battery is low or dead
21. Significant other won’t return calls/texts/etc.
22. Someone important to you unfriended you
23. Endless email barrage, so you phone won’t stop going off
24. You have a sneezing fit
25. You have a flat tire
26. Money is missing from your wallet
27. You’re hungry
28. Traffic is backed up because of a sporting event
29. Your house/car has been broken into
30. Your computer/phone reboots for no clear reason
31. You find mouse droppings in salt shaker
32. You find out the school teacher really is the witch you thought she was
33. Something is leaking (car, toilet, ceiling, tanker truck in front of you, etc.)
34. No cell service
35. Your favorite band breaks up
36. Someone forgot to put their cell on vibrate and now everyone hears “It’s Raining Men” at top volume.
37. Automatic doors refuse to recognize you
38. A cockroach scuttles across the floor.
39. An emergency vehicle goes by, sirens blaring
40. Kindergarten field trip goes walking by
41. Awkward run in with ex
42. Appetizer feeds one more person than your party.
43. A panhandler asks you for spare change.
44. Animal escapes from the zoo
45. A bus unloads a group of foreign tourists
46. You completely blank on the name of the person you’re talking to
47. You scratch your head, and when you take your hand away, some hair comes with it
48. Wind blows smoke from nearby factory in
49. You feel a food coma coming on
50. Flashmob begins…

As a refresher on how to use the chart if you haven’t used it recently or before, you roll 1d20 once for each reward type. The table assumes a 5-person party, so if you have a different party size, subtract 2 for each person under 5 and add 2 for each person over 5. If you roll a 20 on any field, always take the best result regardless of the party size modifier. Personally, I also modify gold rewards by d%, but that’s because I find round amounts of gold a bit silly.

I’ve transcribed the chart to a Google Document at http://bit.ly/zf1S48 for your pleasure. (There’s two sheets on this document: the first one should be readable on your monitor, the second is larger and should print to exactly one full page.) If you enjoy it, consider picking up the Essentials Dungeon Master’s Kit. The smaller form factor book is easy to carry around, and its comes with other useful tools and tokens.

Lastly, I cannot post one useful chart without referencing what many of us agree to be the penultimate Useful 4th Ed Chart: Sly Flourish’s Master DM Cheat Sheet. It contains standard DCs, damages, defenses, HPs and attack rolls for every level and is invaluable for those of us who make on-the-fly decisions in the game. You can access the PDF at Sly’s website at http://slyflourish.com by selecting “dm cheat sheet” from the right side column.

The first list are simply types of rooms you might find in a large home, lair, fortress or complex. If the result does not make sense for your current location, you can roll again, but sometimes the fun is coming up with an explanation to why this odd room is present. Your players will often do the same. Feel free to accept whatever theory you like best.

The second list is of specific objects, events or environmental effects you might find in a room. Most of these are purposefully a little odd or curious. Use them for red herrings, on the fly plot hooks, or just to keep things interested.

Big List of Rooms

1. Ready Room
2. Foyer
3. Closet
4. Armory
5. Abattoir
6. Lavatory
7. Laboratory
8. Forge
9. Catacombs/Crypt
10. Master Bedroom
11. Sleeping Chambers
12. Barracks
13. Training Ground
14. Treasure Room
15. Prison Cell
16. Torture Chamber
17. Kitchen
18. Circle of Evil
19. Arcane Testing Chamber
20. Study
21. Library
22. Guard Room
23. Tower
24. Fletcher
25. Jeweler
26. Storehouse
27. Tannery
28. Food Pens
29. Great Hall
30. Throne Room
31. Meeting Area
32. Portal Room
33. Fungus Growing Room
34. Empty Room
35. Clothier
36. Maid’s Chambers
37. Water Supply (well, stream access, etc)
38. Little Hall
39. Confectionery
40. Ball Pitt
41. Sewer
42. Larder
43. Food Service/Lounge
44. Room Under Construction
45. Temple/Chapel
46. Sacrifice Chambers
47. Room full of statues that speak in riddle
48. Amphitheater
49. Waiting Room
50. Stables
51. Docks
52. Stairwell
53. Wine Cellar
54. Office
55. Dressing Room
56. Tinkerer Workshop
57. Gallery
58. Galley
59. Greenhouse
60. War Room

Big List of Room Features

1. The floor slopes down to a drain in one corner of the room.
2. Orange curtains
3. Strange Draft
4. Window with a wall behind it
5. Knuckle bone from a human on the floor
6. Loose rock in the threshold
7. Stained glass windows
8. Large animal droppings
9. Central Fire Pit
10. Expensive Looking Chairs
11. Bottle of Cheap Perfume
12. Sports a collection of Wigs
13. Series of numbers written in the wall in draconic
14. Smells of horses
15. Open Book
16. Candles still burning
17. Smells of Roses
18. Strangely Cold
19. Glowing moss
20. Contains various shapes not square or round
21. Odd death related paintings
22. Wind chimes made of marrowless human finger bones.
23. Small domestic animal
24. A thick layer of dust, recently disturbed.
25. Walls, floor, and ceiling all covered with one particular shade of paint.
26. Manacles and chains
27. Indecipherable whispering
28. Distant muffled noises
29. The sound of a girl crying
30. Temperature change with no obvious source.
31. A rack of exotic weapons
32. A burnt book.
33. A trapped creature.
34. Scattered rat droppings
35. An odd bit of slime on one wall
36. A nail attached to the wall with Sovereign Glue.
37. An opening in the floor leads to darkness
38. An opening in the floor leads to lava
39. An opening in the wall that opens onto an opening in the opposite wall. You see the back of your head.
40. A grate
41. Arrowheads
42. A fake tiara
43. A bag of women’s laundry
44. A plate of cheese and bread, gone stale
45. A keg of dwarven ale
46. A small shiny disc, made of something light and hard, but not metal
47. Potted vegetables
48. A framed portrait of the current local ruler
49. Carvings on the wall
50. Tribal symbols
51. A bust of a saint
52. A family tree tapestry
53. A sword embedded in the floor/wall.
54. Filled with insects
55. Holy Symbols
56. An animal carved of marble
57. A painted underwater scene on one wall
58. Star chart of ceiling
59. Sleeping child
60. Fresh Paint

What do you think is missing from our lists?

Sure, any setting will have monsters, but what about the all-too-intelligent enemies you might face?

Bandits

'TCP Zombie 3' by Jeff Preston (CC-BY-3.0)

Bandits cling together to get safety in numbers.

The most feared group of bandits in the Valley are those led by a mysterious, cloaked and masked man known only as Dreadnought.

Dreadnought, Bandit Captain

'TCP Scary 4' by Jeff Preston (CC-BY-3.0)

Little is known of Dreadnought. He’s a smart bandit leader, but is generally brutal and bloodthirsty in battle.

Tomas the Warlord

'TCP Dwarf 3' by Jeff Preston (CC-BY-3.0)

Tomas united the people of his kingdom, Stronghold, with the promise of safety. He’s mostly made good on that promise, but life in Stronghold is hard.

Tomas sees the world in black and white terms: wizards are unnatural and should be killed.

Shedra the Sorceress

'TCP Elf 2' by Jeff Preston (CC-BY-3.0)

Shedra is rarely seen, even inside her own domain of Sanctuary. She usually sends her priestesses to collect supplies for her strange rituals.

In persona, Shedra is calm and mysterious, always seeking her own ends.

The face of the world has irrevocably changed, three generations after the end. The landscape is divided neatly between vast swathes of desolate waste and gigantic, ancient forests. Arable land that has not become completely overgrown is an incredible rarity in the world, and all of that has long since been claimed by the warlords or the sorcerer-kings. Many of the remaining cities have been built within the crumbling remains of those left from before the end, crowding along the coasts of rivers, lakes, and oceans. These are almost invariably held under sway by the ineffable whims of the Priesthood. Wherever one can gain a fleeting sense of security, one also must have to sacrifice liberty.

Magic seems to have not only returned to humankind. The forests are, perhaps, the most dangerous place in the world. Technology begins to inexplicably break down and malfunction, the further one strays from civilization, but there is nowhere worse than deep within the forests, where technology just doesn’t work at all. Even more primitive implements such as compasses can often lead one astray; the magic imbuing the place seems to disrupt natural as well as artificial magnetic fields. This may also contribute to some of the more subjective experiences, deep in the woods; spending too much time in the wilds can lead to dizziness, confusion, exhaustion, and anxiety. These effects seem to be particularly bad to those with natural magical talent of their own; not only does magic frequently misfire or go astray, but but it is more exhausting for the caster to carry through. Worse, it seems that many flora and fauna within the forests and jungles seem naturally attracted to magic, zeroing in on the errant caster, often ignoring their companions completely.

Very few animals still dwell within the forests, and those that do are monstrous. The plants themselves, it seems, have become the chief predators, preying both upon each other, and anything else that wanders too far in whether for folly or for food. Many have changed into things unrecognizable from what they may once have been, developing bulbous, tuberous, vining, sticking, and piercing structures to assist in their predations. Nearly every predatory plant can exhibit short bursts of incredible growth, draining storage organs and shrivelling pseudobulbs in order to achieve these wild grasps. Roots, stems, and even flowers are often covered in minute hairs, which sense something brushing against them, or even walking over the ground above, and stimulate the plant to strike. These hairs can also serve another purpose as well; many are packed full of potent crystallized toxins, causing skin that brushes against them to burn, scab, or even necrotize. Many pollens serve a double-duty as soporific agents, lulling the breathers into a narcotic sleep. Spines and mucilaginous glands along the leaves and stems further serve to deliver the plants’ predatory payloads to their unsuspecting victims. Once bound by rapidly-growing vines, disabled by poison or injury, or simply exhausted from fighting back cruel nature, the plants slowly grow over their victims. Adventitious roots pour out of any part of the plant and dive into the flesh, drawing out nutrients as they exude enzymes that breaks down the tissue. Even calcium is drawn out from the bones, eventually, leaving nothing as evidence after only a couple weeks.

People venturing into the forests, whether for adventure or for forage, often do not return. Rescue parties are a rare sight; usually once someone has been attacked, there is very little chance of survival. Nevertheless, the sight of a scarred, scabbed individual is not an uncommon one within the settlements nearest to the forests. Some are even permanently disfigured from their experiences in the wild. It is sheer folly to venture within the woods alone, so oftentimes a member of an adventuring group will take a misstep and be attacked by feral foliage, and for the rest of their lives bear the marks of the encounter. Yet the incredible bounty promised within the forests continues to draw the brave and the desperate; despite all of the deadliness, there is also an abundance of edible fruits, roots, and fungus. Many nomadic groups travel from forest to forest, foraging and scavenging within for items of subsistence and trade, as well as for the components of valuable medicines which they can produce. It is unreasonable, therefore, to make any sort of attempt to destroy the forests wholesale, despite the threat they present, because it is counterbalanced by their incredible fecundity of natural resources.

They say it is Shedra’s magic that keeps the beasts out of the rolling hills and valleys of Sanctuary, and brings the rains in spring. Sanctuary is, indeed, a strange place. It is more…vibrant than most, more full of life. Life in Sanctuary is peaceful, and her people have full bellies.

The Priestesses of Shedra

Those full bellies come at a price: total obedience to the priestesses of Shedra. Her robed priestesses roam the streets on inscrutable errands. They occasionally commandeer people and supplies. No reason is given, but rarely is a reason asked. That is the price.

Priestesses are chosen from among the populace of Sanctuary. Priestesses will simply show up at a family’s house when the girl reaches about twelve years of age, and take her away. She will be gone for years. Those priestesses who appear in public are always at least sixteen years old, and display the uniformly dispassionate personality of a priestess of Shedra.

Priestesses wear long, grey cloaks that hide black leather-and-cloth armor. Every priestess has a symbol tattooed on her forehead; more complex symbols indicate higher rank within the priesthood.

The Kingdom of Sanctuary

Sanctuary is made up of about two dozen towns and villages, nearly all of them farming communities cobbled together from old-world technology. This is amazing in itself; little of new earth’s soil is capable of farming. Strange, twisted things come from this earth, but it’s edible, and there’s a lot of it.

Tower, the Capital

The only non-farming town is Tower, a massive mining complex in the mountains and Shedra’s home. This is a dark place. Though it employs hundreds of people, the only ones who ever leave are Shedra’s priestesses. Here, Shedra performs powerful magic in the dark passages of the complex she carved from the living rock of the mountain. Moans and screams can sometimes be heard from within.

Who Is Shedra?

The truth: Shedra is a necromancer. She spends most of her time creating undead, for the gray area between life and death fascinates her. She has released so much life energy from her unfortunate test subjects that it has seeped into the lands around her, giving it the strangely powerful life her subjects depend on.

Shedra will undoubtedly become a lich someday. Perhaps she already is, and uses a glamour of beauty to hide her true self.

Shedra is not particularly concerned with the rest of the world, but is smart enough to understand the danger of external threats. Tomas, in particulary, worries her, as her magic does indeed protect against monsters and beasts, but not against sentient people. Tomas could lead an army into Sanctuary, and while he undoubtedly could not kill Shedra herself, he could destroy her lands and priestesses, cutting off Shedra’s supply of experimental subjects.

Borderline Biennale 2011 by Abode of Chaos on Flickr

This article is part of 3 Generations After The End, a post-apocalyptic setting suitable for any role-playing system.

3 Generations After The End (3GATE) is designed to be a primarily human-centric setting. That’s great in a lot of ways. Humans are the dominant race in most RPG settings, and are certainly the stars of most modern media. It’s easy for us to relate on a common level with them, as well as imagining them competing in a fantastic world.

However, many systems also support the idea of multiple player races and 3GATE is easily expanded to include those.

After humans, the Beastmen are the most prominent race. Created by the early wizards after the great apocalypse, the beastmen are powerful men and women infused with bestiality of nature. Some are still under the control of wizards but many still escaped to the wilderness, forming their own tribes. Many races are naturally suited for beastmen as they already represent creatures who are part man, part animal. Minotaurs, lizardfolk, shifters, and thri-keen are all excellent choices. If you want to get creative, take a good look at the mechanics for the race and re-skin for different animals as needed. Gnolls are an excellent template race when playing D&D 4E. They get bonuses for hunting in groups, and their feats allow them to become excellent trackers or gain a natural claw weapon. These traits could be used to represent any number of animals in the world.

Beastmen are also naturally suited to working in a mixed party. Some are already allied with the wizards, while others have a natural reason to oppose them, so humans from either area could find reasons to work with them. They’re less naturally suited to the cities of the techno-priests, but in fantasy your characters are already exceptional. They could be converts, prisoners working toward release, or maybe they were an experiment left behind and freed by the priests.

Hayden Panettiere is a Cyborg by J (mtonic.com) on Flickr

Depending on the level of artifact technology you want to play with, the techno-priests offer another great race idea, that of the robot, cyborg, or android. The warforged of D&D, the gearforged of Midgard, and the giant robot of Big Eyes, Small Mouth are all great mechanics to use for these races. You could be a new creation, an experiment of the techno-priests and the ultimate representation of man’s worship of technology. Perhaps you were found and only recently reactivated. Many high tech labs would be outside of the city and in secret locations, leaving you to ally with the first willing humanoids you can find. You may even have been around since the apocalypse, remembering the old world. Talk to your GM about this option first. Many things from the past may need to be a secret to allow proper exploration and discovery. Maybe your character was a simple worker drone before, and never learned of life outside a three block radius, or it could be that years of poor maintenance have ruined your memory, giving you glimpses of the past in short, confusing bursts, making you a modern oracle.

Finally there are the deepest areas of the wild, where technology ceases to function, and the beastmen roam with unforgiving savagery. Few dare to tread here, and even fewer return to speak its tales. Since magic returned with the apocalypse, the secrets held here could be the source of the most fantastic racial options. Perhaps technology doesn’t function here because of magic’s rich veins. Fey lines could emanate from these zones, and perhaps their hearts are portals to other planes. One might stumble into cities of humanity’s mythic past: the mines of dwarves and gnomes, tree-top elven villages, or roaming tribes of goblins and giants. Like humans, members of these races may feel compelled to brave the unknown and explore the wastes outside their hidden sanctuaries. What happens when they leave, though? Does their magic change? Do they themselves become warped by the apocalypse? What grand creations might come into being if dwarven master craftsman were to work with the techno-priests?

Whatever you decide, use it to build the lore of your world, and have a grand adventure.

Here’s what I’ve come up with, focused on the systems most useful for a post-apocalyptic setting:

A few notes:

• Apocalypse World attributes aren’t equivalent to D&D‘s, so they’re listed separately.
• Combat-related rows are colored differently, to make them a little easier to see.
• Rows that start with ♣ are attacks; rows that start with ♥ are skills.
• Any elements specific to one system are listed in their own rows at the bottom of the stat block.

If you want to use this stat block yourself, or modify it for your own uses, go ahead.

Comments? Post ‘em below! Thanks for reading.