Kovakistani Mountains Die Drop Table

In a guerrilla warfare campaign with a foreign occupying force, the local terrain is going to become the resistance’s greatest weapon. The earliest historical anecdotes I’ve read examples of that statement in were rebellions against Roman Imperial rule, but I’m sure it goes back further than that.

At the end of the first session of my KLA campaign, the PC cell fled the capital city to head into the mountains. Which meant that my prep for episode two basically consisted of making another one of these:



sized to fit in the bottom of a 12 pack of ramen (as all die drop tables should be)

This one’s a little bit different from the two previous ones I posted, partly because of the more realistic genre, but also to account for less extreme weather conditions, variable alertness levels for local units of the occupying force, and human-made infrastructure. The other key difference is that (unless they REALLY fuck up) the PCs will be sticking to the roads, which means that smaller wilderness features won't generally even be noticed, at least not as readily as if the party cell was hiking through the woods. The random alertness (bottom edge) in particular makes traveling more of a hassle by increasing the number of encounters per journey from the standard 1 in 6. It's also helpful when figuring out how any soldiers encountered should behave by default.

Here’s a more legible version:

click here to download pdf

I'd like to say I'll clean this up at some point but that's what I said about the jungle one like a year ago so let's assume I care more about pure functionality with these.

It may just be that my players were really on it, but this worked really well in practice. The random terrain and constantly shifting fog added an element of tactical variety that gave the PCs room to deal with pretty repetitive encounters differently in different situations.

Die-Drop Desert

I finally decided to do another of these things, this time for desert terrain. If you print it out at full size and cut or fold the margins, it'll fit in the bottom of a 12 pack of ramen.

click me for a printable pdf

To summarize the explanation in the older post, the way this table works is you print it out and write a d12 (or whatever) encounter table on it (I didn't want the pdf to be too specific to my campaign). Then, whenever you'd normally make an encounter check, you roll a d6 and a d12 (or whatever) on it.

If the PCs are entering a new sub-hex, the position of the d6 determines the terrain (left column) and a minor feature (top row). This is also the encounter check die. I usually use a 1 or 2 in 6 chance but it's your game.

Regardless of whether the PCs are moving or not, the position of the d12 determines the temperature (bottom row) and wind speed (right column). As I'm sure you've guessed, the d12 determines what the encounter actually is.

The idea is to introduce terrain and minor features that are immediately suggestive of things to do with it, for the most part. Not every time you roll on it, because I wanted to give the desert a more desolate feel than the one I did for jungle terrain. Some of the entries, like the impact crater) are there to give the DM an improvisation prompt, some give the PCs a direct problem to deal with, and a lot of them have the potential to make encounters more interesting, especially with intelligent enemies and ambush predators.

Die-Drop Jungle Terrain

Wilderness exploration can be just as detailed as a dungeon crawl, if you know the terrain well enough to give it a variety of tactically useful features as the DM. Generally speaking, you’ll be interpreting symbols on a map and relating that information to your players. These symbols are general in nature; just knowing that you’re in a forest isn’t as useful or interesting as knowing that you’re on one side of a deep but narrow ravine in a forest. If there happens to be a random encounter, the ravine will probably be tactically important. Even if there isn’t one, this gives players something less abstract to think about than just making wilderness skill rolls.

If you happen to be someone who spends a lot of time out in nature, in a wide variety of climates, and thinking about how to describe what you see, then this kind of improv is easy. You could probably do pretty well faking it if you read enough of the right books, which would probably have to include both fiction and non-fiction. I can’t do it though. I need a prompt.

So I’m making die-drop tables for various terrain types that fold all that into the encounter check roll, starting with jungle because that’s what I’m running at the moment. Pretty basic layout, obviously riffing off the inside cover tables in Vornheim. Whenever the PCs enter a new hex, I roll a d6 and a d12 on this (printable download here).

sized to be cut out and stuffed in the box that a 12 pack of ramen comes in, as all
die-drop tables should be. apologies for the shitty typography. consider this a draft.

The position of the d6 determines the geological terrain (down the left edge) and vegetation (across the top). The position of the d12 determines the temperature (across the bottom) and current precipitation (down the right edge).* So far it seems to still work when I’m drunk but this aspect requires further testing.

An encounter occurs on a 1 in 6 as usual. The d12 is there because I like using d12 encounter tables. If I ever wanted to use a 2d6 or d100 table instead, I would use three different colors of dice and ignore the position of the encounter check die. Or something.

One weakness of this system is somewhat unrealistic weather that doesn’t connect precipitation to temperature shifts, but I really doubt anyone I play with is going to give any shits about that. One strength is that the weather is unrealistic in a way that's kinda crazy and fun. It tends to change, sometimes wildly, every few hours. Most weather results have mechanical effects associated with them, so they’re usually relevant to gameplay and harder to ignore.

Same thing goes for the terrain; some features can be obstacles in and of themselves, some give the players something to explore** or exploit, and others create tactical opportunities. You know that type of tactical thinking where the intrepid dungeon explorers lead the orcs into an ambush that makes use of that pit trap they found? This sort of detail lets the players do the same thing in the great outdoors.

*this layout won’t always apply; when I do one of these for deserts, it’d make more sense to do something for wind speed & direction where precipitation is on this one.

**okay so you’d still have to come up with something to be in the caves they found but that’s something I’m a lot more comfortable making up as I go along.