Carousing - Paramour Table

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CapnZapp
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Joined: Wed Nov 17, 2021 2:00 am
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Carousing - Paramour Table

Post by CapnZapp »

Well, I'm finally done. I've made a carousing table that attempts to answer not the question "what happens?" but "who do you meet?"

I'm calling this party goer a "paramour".

Personally, I've always thought that carousing tables that offer generic, non-specific outcomes like "You meet a companion for the night" defeats the purpose of using carousing tables in the first place. Why? Because I find it bloodless and uninspiring. What fires up my imagination is specifics! I want carousing tables that give me details about the person my hero meets! (I can always change these details, but only if I have some in the first place)

This table is intended to be a companion table to whatever carousing table you and your group prefers. First you roll on your regular carousing table, then you may roll on this table to generate a "partner in crime" (or wine, as it were). This tells you what happens, and who it happens with.

I should tell you up front that these tables are probably rated Mature Adult. My Sword & Sorcery games are about heroes and heroines that live life to the fullest!

I might add that, no, while you might think this is a list of buxom serving wenches, that is not all. In fact, I have created three columns, so each player can always choose to randomize a male paramour, a female paramour, or a paramour that is sexless, of a neutral or unknowable gender, or simply a paramour whose gender can be chosen by the player (or left unspecified, if that floats your boat). In my world - as per my inspirations - gender is an important decided of stereotypes ("men are from Mars, women are from Venus"). Do feel free to ignore any or all of this! For instance, go right ahead and roll on the male table but make the paramour female anyway if you like a female paramour that acts in a stereotypically masculine fashion. And so on.

As always, if a player gets a result that would kill off his or her enthusiasm, choose or roll another result, or carouse with no paramour at all! Nothing is worth ruining a player's fun. That said, this table *is* written in the OSR mindset where players actively like "things happening" to their characters - good things, silly things as well as upsetting things! :D

I've already mentioned the primary purpose of using this table - to give specific details about who you carouse with for the night (or week!). A secondary, but still important, purpose, is to supplant or even replace the need for handing out Luck points at the end of adventures. In other words, many results here grant a Luck point.

Specific instructions:
1) first roll on your regular carousing table
Here's a good collection of carousing events written specifically for DCC:
https://goodman-games.com/forums/viewto ... 72&t=47405
I'm personally fond of the Knights of the North set of four carousing tables for general use, or arcane research, larcenous behavior, or devoted prayer (i.e. the Warrior, Wizard, Thief, and Cleric tables), and you can consider the combination of those four with this one playtested :)
2) now to randomize a Paramour for that carousing event. Choose a column: "male", "???" or "female". "???" can mean a monstrous encounter, or it can simply mean the paramour is entirely human but described in gender-neutral language. Either way, you get to choose yourself. I guess you can call it a clumsy way of offering more than your regular bigendered options.
3) roll d30, adding your Personality modifier. If your regular carousing table indicated an especially successful or up-scale carousing event, roll d20+10. If your regular carousing table indicated an especially unfortunate or low-brow carousing event, roll d20.
3) apply results, meaning it is now up to the Judge and player to tell a story that marries the Paramour to the carousing event in a satisfactory manner.

Welp, that's it. I welcome any feedback - from misspellings to suggestions that clarify results.

Enjoy,
Zapp
Attachments
Carousing Table – Paramour.zip
"Carousing Table - Paramour" PDF, by Zapp, for DCC RPG
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Last edited by CapnZapp on Sat Sep 17, 2022 1:32 am, edited 1 time in total.
CapnZapp
Hard-Bitten Adventurer
Posts: 173
Joined: Wed Nov 17, 2021 2:00 am
FLGS: Book

Re: Carousing - Paramour Table

Post by CapnZapp »

Let's create an example, in practice.

Sue and her friends have just finished a brutal dungeon where they hauled away 200 gold each. She decides her character, Korgoth of Barberia, wants to spend his ill-gotten gains on, what else but the classic: Wine, women and song!

So she decides to roll on the Warrior/General carousing table, and also that Korgoth is on the look-out for a female Paramour for a weekend of fun! (Sue did not HAVE to roll on the Paramour table; she could have decided to only roll on the general table, or indeed not to carouse at all)

She starts by rolling a d4: 4. This means his carousing will cost him 4x60 gold, leaving Korgoth with 300-240=60 gold. He also gains 4 XP.

Then Sue rolls a 6 on her D30 and with Korgoth's Luck modifier being -1, she gets the carousing event Mouth For War. "Involved in an intoxicated brawl," it states. "Roll a DC 13 Ref save or start the next session with a black eye and lacking 1d4 HP. However, gain 1 XP." Not a great result, but it sure could be worse.

Okay, so whatever the results of the brawl, the Judge decides this is a relatively poor, or low-brow, carousing result, and Sue has to agree. Korgoth is not likely to meet the noblesse this week.

So when Sue is to roll on the Paramour carousing table to find a (female) companion for Korgoth's brawl, she doesn't get to roll a d30. She has to settle for a d20. She rolls a 11. Normally you'd add your Personality modifier (and Korgoth's is -1) but in my campaign I allow characters to use Strength in place of Personality when it comes to influence females, so Sue can add Korgoth's Strength modifier instead (which is +2). Her result, therefore, is 13, and looking at the "Female" column, we get:

"1d3 tavern wenches or maids; for each one there's a one-in-five you make her pregnant; gain 1 Luck if you give the mother of your unborn child a treasure or magic item as a token of your affection."

Sue thinks Korgoth will be very pleased with this result. Not only did he get away with trashing a tavern, he also got to bring home two of its bar maids, partly because he knocked one out by mistake! Since one of them got pregnant (Sue rolled a d5 for each maid), and partly because he feels guilty he punched a girl, Sue decides Korgoth does the right thing. Not marrying the maid (Korgoth loves adventuring too much to settle down), but giving her a valuable treasure he found during the last adventure, a silver belt set with gleaming emeralds (valued at 75 gold). Compared to the bronze coins this hapless maid usually sees this is a veritable fortune, money that definitely will allow the mother to live a decent life and support Korgoth's child!

The total rewards for this particular carousing event were: Korgoth got +1 XP and +1 Luck. Meagre perhaps, but not bad.

Now then - there's always the prospect of having these newly introduced NPCs return later. I tell my players "NPCs without names fade out of the story", meaning that by giving an NPC a name, a player is indicating interest in possibly keeping that NPC around. Sue names Korgoth's paramours Sue and Ellen, and Korgoth vows to return to Ellen (from now on known as "Black-Eye" ;) in a year's time to ensure the well-being of the baby.

Of course, by that time, Korgoth could be lying dead in a dungeon, or have become Sorcerer-King of a completely different city, so no promises.

This ends this example. Compared to many of the encounters my players have rolled up in my campaign, it is rather simple and straight-forward. There are many possible combinations of carousing events and paramours that get much more intricate than this...! 8)
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