The request I got:

Dear Secret Santicore…
I’d like a table or set of tables for generating weird cults.
Thanks!

And here it is.

(Use with caution. Service all parts every 30 days.)

Roll 10d10 and consult the tables in order.

Or, roll d10 for the number of tables to consult (let N be this number), and then roll Nd10 to decide which tables to consult and another Nd10 to determine the operative values.

Never, ever, roll on the animal table unless explicitly directed to by another table. Otherwise, bad things will happen. We don’t talk about what happened to those who used MARK I. Just be glad you got MARK II.

1. The idea of progress
2. A demon lord
3. The jealous, forgotten god of the chosen people
4. Prince of animals (roll on animal table)
5. The lord of Nod, the land of sleep and hallucination
6. Deposed deified emperor from 1000 years ago (“Dark Augustus”)
7. The universal life-force
8. The new prophet
9. Overlord of a rival state
10. An ancient machine

TABLE II: What is their identifier?

1. Animal tattoo on their back (roll on animal table)
2. Fine silver ring, allowed to tarnish
3. Ritual cross-hatch scars on upper arms
4. Glass eye
5. Secret handshake
6. Green blood
7. Nictitating eyelid
8. Sharp teeth (either sharpened or naturally sharp)
9. Hairless
10. Verbal prayers of thanks to the patron upon any success

TABLE III: What is their ultimate goal?

1. Extinction, but they want to take as many others with them as possible
2. Accumulate souls for their account in hell
3. To take back the underworld — men belong underground, monsters above
4. Prepare the world for the ancient masters from the stars
5. Immortality; each cell has part of the recipe, they seek each other out
6. Enlightenment through extreme experiences
7. Reforesting the great waste known as civilization
8. Yellow is the sacred color, as much of the world as possible must be in this hue
9. The end of warfare
10. Reuniting two sundered worlds

TABLE IV: Who is in charge?

1. Mad charismatic crackpot
2. Demon, fae, or otherworldly being in human guise
3. Explorer who found the fountain of youth
4. Swindler, bilking the credulous
5. Swindler, bilking the credulous, unaware that his teachings are true
6. Ancient underground machine
7. Prince of animals (roll on animal table for type)
8. One of the PCs in a past life or before the amnesia
9. An animate painting
10. A telepathic idol of the ancients

TABLE V: What is their taboo?

1. Must not eat vegetables
2. Will not shake hands (it is polluting)
3. If you meet their eyes, you will learn one of their secrets
4. They must wash skin that sunlight touches
5. Dead cultists must be ritually separated in buried in 6 different locations
6. Must not start a fire
7. Sexual abstinence
8. Will eat nothing cooked
9. Must not lie
10. Must always have a clear mind; no intoxicants

TABLE VI: What is their secret power?

1. Start and control fires — pyrokinesis
2. Corpses speak to cultists
3. Discipline of the body — ancient martial arts
4. Preserve corpses indefinitely, either magically or scientifically
5. None, though they believe they can summon demons
6. Rust metal by touch
7. Mind meld — they can read thoughts by touch
8. Fertile — crops tended yield 2 to 3 times normal bounty
9. Sympathetic magic — voodoo that works
10. Influence animals (like the cleric’s turn undead ability)

TABLE VII: What is their ritual garb?

1. Yellow robes
2. Full armor with helm (antiques valued)
3. Official magistrates — they actually run the 
4. Wizard robes, full on stars and moons and pointy hats (they believe they are magic-users)
5. Finely scented loin cloth
6. Black tunic and sandals
7. Masquerade masks
8. Business formal — suit and tie or equivalent for time period
9. Paramilitary uniforms
10. Shape-changers — lycanthropes or other, ritual “garb” is their non-human form

TABLE VIII: What do their nameless rituals entail?

1. Eating live animals (roll on animal table for type)
2. Recitation of ancient sutras
3. Silent meditation
4. Ritual combat
5. Human sacrifice
6. Animal sacrifice (roll on animal table)
7. Burning the sacred texts of rival cults
8. Riddles
9. Summoning
10. Believer suicides

TABLE IX: Where do they hold their nameless rituals?

1. Center for performing arts (amphitheater, boxing ring, etc)
2. Ancient stone circle
3. Fake ancient stone circle (they set it up)
4. Ancient unearthed vessel
5. Town hall — they run the place
6. The home of a ritually slain family
7. A natural glade under an overcast sky
8. By running water to protect from hostile spirits
9. Another religion’s holy sanctum
10. In the northeast of any habitation

TABLE X: How old is the sect?

1. Just founded last week
2. Before any known civilization
3. Was loosed on the world by something let out of a dungeon by PCs
4. During the founding of the current dynasty (or political order)
5. The previous dynasty (cult is all that remains)
6. Cult is a cyclical plague unleashed to punish decadent societies
7. Originally founded by a demigod during the creation wars
8. Older than written history (all cult records are oral)
9. It was born with the leader and will die with the leader
10. Founded based on some past innocuous PC action

1. Mantis
2. Turtle
3. Ram
4. Wasp
5. Ox
6. Peryton
7. Worm
8. Cat
9. Lizard
10. Centipede

Assume for the moment that you like playing with skills and feats. Why do first level characters get skills and feats? Video games rarely introduce all their mechanics at once; why should tabletop RPGs? Why not start accumulating skills & feats at second level rather than first? There is nothing special about second level of course, other than that it is not first level. This has a number of benefits:

1. Character generation is simpler and faster.
2. Players will be less likely to take skills or feats that are not useful in the particular campaign.
3. Character concept will be clearer once the character has had some play time.
4. Getting skills and feats is always a reward rather than an entitlement, and so will be appreciated more.
5. Character building becomes less of a self-contained pre-game.
6. Basic knowledge required to start playing is decreased.
7. Skills & feats become more about character development.
8. The principle of definition through play is strengthened.

Some might argue that the same problem applies to magic-user and cleric spells. I would respond that the cleric did not originally gain a spell at first level (a design choice I am coming to increasingly appreciate, for a number of reasons). The design of the magic-user is indeed vulnerable to this critique, but it is only one of several classes, and so is a form of opt-in complexity. Further, there are a number of methods for randomly determining spells known, so though it might take some time, it does not necessarily require any choice.

I bet 50% of characters played never reach second level. Why is the common case (first level) made nearly as complex as the rare case? What percentage of games start at first level? (My guess is the vast majority.) What is the average level a campaign reaches before petering out or being ended? These are interesting empirical questions that have potentially important implications for game design.

In fact, I think this principle can be applied in general. Why not make players earn their rules complexity? This is one of the reasons why a long list of powers for every class (I’m looking at you, Fourth Edition) does not work very well. This character generation rules proliferation is a side-effect of trying to stretch the “sweet spot” of D&D play over all 30 levels (an explicit design goal of 4E).

Or, to put it another way, why not back-load the complexity?

25 December 2011 edit: Jeffro wrote a great post about applying a similar idea to magic users (described below in the comments) by only starting them out with read magic, so that all spells are introduced through play. Go read it, because it’s a great post, and something I’m definitely going to try myself.

Rolling two dice and taking the highest (2DTH from here on) is one of my favorite recent discoveries. I never saw this back in my Second Edition days. The first place I came across it was probably at Grognardia, perhaps one of the Dwimmermount session reports. I would be interested in knowing the ultimate provenance though. Is 2DTH a recent innovation, or can it be found in any of the classic writings? Philotomy has a similar rule in his OD&D musings, so maybe that is where it came from.

I like 2DTH so much because it allows you to skew probabilities in a particular direction without introducing bonuses or eliminating any possibilities. Also, though you are literally rolling more dice, it still feels like a single roll, and thus does not seem to bog pacing down as something like an additional attack roll might. Other editions have addressed similar problems by adding bonuses (the Third Edition family and Second Edition to a slightly lesser degree) or eliminating randomness altogether (such as HP in Fourth Edition).

Places where I think this mechanic is appropriate:

• Damage: two-handed weapons or dual-wielding
• First level HP

I’m sure there are many more as well.

The d4 is the simplest interesting case (the curve shift is not as obvious with a d2).

• 7 in 16 chance of a 4 (~ 44%)
• 5 in 16 chance of a 3 (~ 31%)
• 3 in 16 chance of a 2 (~ 19%)
• 1 in 16 chance of a 1 (~ 6%)

Obviously, two dice take lowest (2DTL) can also be used to skew the probability curve in the other direction, though I have found less use for this. Perhaps for situational modifiers.

I just finally got around to reading Calibrating Your Expectations, a very influential article about D&D power levels by Justin Alexander. To summarize, the argument is that D&D (specifically the third edition) can accurately model both characters compatible with real life (from first through approximately fourth or fifth level) and fantastic characters up to demigods. Einstein is rated a fifth level physicist. Aragorn is analyzed and measured also as a fifth level 3.5 edition character. The interesting thing, from my point of view, is how this measurement is done. It is mostly not done by looking at class features, spells, or hit points (though they do factor in), but rather by skills and the difficulty classes needed to accomplish certain tasks.

E6 works off a similar premise that the diversity of power levels that a D&D game progresses through when taken from first to twentieth level (to continue to stick with d20 D&D for explanatory purposes) is not actually what most players are interested in. They don’t want to play either a weak first level nobody or a demigod. They want to play Conan or Elric, and by the “Calibrating” argument, those characters occupy a limited sweet spot in the D&D level progression. E6 thus caps level advancement at sixth and then only allows limited feat acquisition after that.

I’ve also been reading this excellent recent series of skill posts. And it got me thinking that a good part of the power bloat of version 3 comes from the way tasks are modeled with skills. I think this is a good argument to minimize (though maybe not totally remove) skill mechanics from the game. With the exception of magic items and spell selection (the Monty Haul campaign), I just don’t see this problem occurring in a classic D&D variant. And those two areas (magic items & spells) are under the control of the referee. Personally, I also like restricting the spell selection as done in 1974 D&D (the highest level magic-user spells are sixth), to manage power level. That seems to follow a logic similar to E6.

(Note: I’m travelling and this post was entirely written on my iPad, so apologies in advance for the limited editing. I’ll clean it up later.)