Introduction to '100 Oddities for a Dungeon'

This post contains the introduction to Skirmisher Publishing’s recently-released “100 Oddities for a Dungeon,” so if you have not already checked out this terrific system-free sourcebook then this is the perfect way to see what it is all about! “100 Oddities for a Dungeon” is available for just $1.99 from both the Skirmisher Shop and DriveThruRPG.

Welcome to “100 Oddities for a Dungeon,” the sixteenth entry in Skirmisher Publishing’s popular and bestselling line of system-free sourcebooks designed to make any areas or encounters taking place in them more fun and interesting! This supplement is dedicated to dungeons in the classic sense of places used to confine and punish people, including prisons, jails, oubliettes, and torture chambers; as described in the works of authors like Edgar Allan Poe (e.g., The Pit and the Pendulum), Alexandre Dumas (e.g., The Man in the Iron Mask), and the Marquis de Sade (e.g., Justine); and as presented in cinematic works ranging from those of Hammer Films to the entries of the “Saw” franchise. They range from famous historic sites like the Bastille in Paris to the hidden cells maintained by a disproportionate number of villains.

Oddities are designed to help storytellers make places in their scenarios as memorable as those that have appeared in innumerable sources like those mentioned above and to fascinate and engage characters and prompt them to ask questions like “Why is this thing here?”, “What is that for?”, or “Who would do something like this?” They are intended to aid creativity, to turn possibly bland areas or encounters into something more, and to take your imagination in directions it might not otherwise have gone.

Without excessive prompting, for example, few characters are likely to be particularly intrigued by the presence of a waste bucket, a rat, or a spider in a prison cell. If that bucket has laying in it a stone etched with occult runes, the rat has a note tied around its neck, or the spider appears to be a master of prestidigitation and starts to rant about an escape plan, however, they are all much more likely to be seen as noteworthy.

Using This Book

As with other “Oddities” volumes, all of the entries in this book can be used separately or in conjunction with one another to add evocative details to any sort of appropriate area or encounter and in any manner that suits the needs of a particular storyteller.

One way is simply to roll d100 to generate a single result for purposes of adding a bit of color to an area that might be lacking in detail but which you want to feel somewhat more relevant to characters (freely discarding results that do not serve your needs).

Our development group, for example, recently ran a party through an updated version of the classic D&D adventure “The Keep on the Borderlands” and — as the group included someone who had played that scenario some years back — decided to use the table in this book to punch up the torture chamber in the Hobgoblin lair. We got the following:

83: “A restrained prisoner hangs from the wall by his wrists and ankles. Instead of being bound by chains, however, he is entangled in vines and stinging nettles that have been magically enticed to grow from the rough stonework of the dungeon walls. A maddening rash slowly spreads across the prisoner’s body from each point of restraint.”

This worked pretty well for us in a number of ways, especially as the description for this area already mentioned a number of prisoners, one of which we simply coopted for use with this detail. It also not just evoked any number of questions from the players, it also prompted the storyteller to add a few Druid spells to the repertoire of an otherwise standard Hobgoblin priest that the characters would be meeting later in the adventure.

Two or three oddities can also be generated and used together, possibly transforming their basic meanings in the style of Tarot cards when considered relative to one another. This can be especially useful in cases when a storyteller is not quite as prepared as he or she might want to be, or when characters are operating in a sandbox environment or go somewhere the storyteller did not expect them to.

In another recent scenario, for example, characters searching for a missing companion stumbled across a hidden “black site” prison being run by a unit of Spartan secret police but the storyteller did not have much more than the idea of it developed. Telling everyone it was a good time for them to take a short break, he rolled d100 twice to determine some key characteristics of the place, which he thought would be more interesting than simply having the party fight a bunch of guards. He got the following:

50: “A noble wails in agony upon the rack as 1d4 guards perform different tortures upon his person and, between screams, laughs hysterically. This noble is not a prisoner, however, he is actually a tourist with very specific vices that the dungeon is well-equipped to fulfill and who has paid the warden handsomely for the experience.”

55: “A very finely-appointed chamber, although still obviously a cell in the dungeon, with velvet pillows on a large soft bed, rich tapestries covering the walls, and a side-table stocked with fine wines and sweetmeats. A mask of steel hangs from one wall like a decoration. On closer inspection, it will become apparent that the bed is fitted with very heavy chains.”

Our storyteller quickly determined that the secret entrance the characters found would lead into the finely-appointed chamber and that this area would keep the characters occupied sufficiently long for him to pull together any materials he would need for the guards, their leaders, and the dogs he decided they should have. He then decided that the noble mentioned in the other detail was actually the commander of the secret police force, that he stayed in the sumptuous chamber when he visited the site, and that he always wore a mask so that no one but the warden would know his true identity. So, with two minutes of effort, what might have otherwise just been a simple combat encounter was transformed into something much more interesting, and one that might have implications later on in the campaign.

An individual storyteller might similarly decide to create on-the-fly a scenario of the sort described above using three or more entries, determine there is a 50% chance any one oddity might be present in each main area of a prison, or anything else that suits their needs. And, of course, this book can simply be read for fun or for general inspiration that goes beyond the specific methods described here.

Other Pertinent Sourcebooks

If this is your first experience with one of our “Oddities” universal supplements then we hope you will find it to be enjoyable and useful and be prompted to check out other volumes in the series, which include “100 Oddities for” a Creepy Old House, a Thieves’ Guild, a Wizard’s Library, a Graveyard, a Wizard’s Tower, a Wasteland, a Found Car, an Enchanted Forest, a Treasure Hoard, a Viking Encounter, a Sewer, an Egyptian Tomb, a Chaotic Mutation, and a Pilgrimage Trail (there is also one for a Hung Stocking that we only make available during the holiday season). And, if you go to our affiliated d-Infinity Online game magazine and search for “Oddities,” then about two-dozen more lists that we have not yet finalized for publication will pop up.

For those interested in using places of incarceration in their scenarios for various reasons, a number of locales of this sort also turn up in some of Skirmisher Publishing’s universal sourcebooks and can be easily incorporated into almost any settings. These include entries for Jails, Prisons, Slave Pens, and Workhouses in our bestselling and popular City Builder: A Guide to Designing Communities; entries for Kos Municipal Jail and the Tarterus Cove island prison in our detailed Swords of Kos Fantasy Campaign Setting; and Nafplion Rural Prison, which appears in our In the Footsteps of Hercules. All of the places mentioned above have one to three adventure hooks associated with them and can be used by themselves or in conjunction with “100 Oddities for a Dungeon.”

Exploding Dice

“100 Oddities for a Dungeon” employs a dice rolling sub-system often referred to as “Exploding Dice” that should be applied anytime a lower case “x” appears after a die notation in this book (e.g., “2d8x”). In this sub-system, a die that rolls the maximum value possible — e.g., an 8 on a d8 — is rolled again, and the new value is added to the previous total. This continues until a value other than the maximum is rolled. So, for example, you might roll a 2d8 and get an 8, then roll that die again and get another 8, and then, rolling it a third time, get a 3. You would then stop and total the results, in this case a 19 (8+8+3). This can allow for fun and unpredictably open-ended results in cases where it is applied.

In Memoriam

In 2014, writer Clint Staples, a valued and prolific member of the Skirmisher Game Development Group, conceived of the “100 Oddities” concept and co-authored most of the entries in the series. This is the first volume that we have released since he died in February 2020 but did not want to let it go without noting that he co-authored it as well and that we are pleased to have some of his keen wit live on in it.

It also bears mentioning that the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons creator Gary Gygax was with us when we were developing this sourcebook and that it manifests itself most conspicuously in our multiple uses of the words “gaol” and “gaoler.” These archaic terms for “jail” and “jailer” are, of course, all but unknown to the modern public at large but are fairly well known in the gaming community at least in part because of Gary’s prolific use of them. He did not play a direct role in the development of any “Oddities” books but was a friend of our venture and involved with a number of our early titles and has been missed by us since his death in March 2008.

That should be averything you need to know! We sincerely hope you will enjoy and be able to make good use of “100 Oddities for a Dungeon” and that your experience with it will prompt you to check out any other volumes in the series and our library of sourcebooks overall that you might not yet already be familiar with.