Last night when I came home there was a dead snake on the sidewalk with no visible reason why it was dead. As I walked it back to the woods to throw it away I came across a baby bird in the middle of the backyard. It opened its beak when I got near it, but otherwise it wouldn’t move.
This all got me to thinking about omens, so I thought I should put up a chart of random omens. Maybe you’re foretelling some event and some of these omens will fit or maybe you have some other reason describe them in an adventure. Or maybe you just want to add one randomly to throw the players off track or to describe something that happened on an otherwise uneventful day.
Notes:
As always, these random charts present ideas in a quick way that allows for random determination. But if you want to pick one that best fits the situation or if the random result isn’t appropriate, go ahead and pick an option or adjust the random result.
I’d love to get to 20 event types, so if you have suggestions for more, please post.
The dead snake is odd, but the baby bird would have given me the creeps – birds scare me normally, but the image of a gangly baby avian giving me the bug eye with an open toothless maw is not pleasant.
Anyway, here a couple of additional events; feel free to add them if they pass muster:
1. Clouds take the shape of (d6: 1-2 a familiar profile; 3-4 [animal]; 5 weapon; 6 a map)
2. Voices heard in the wind; language spoken is native to wherever characters need to go next
3. Character drops every coin or gem handed to him for an entire day
4. Three strangers address the character by the same wrong name
5. The character hears the name of an unknown place in three separate, unrelated conversations
Thanks. I probably will add a couple of those in a later revision. I love the first one especially!
Animals born with two heads.
Animals born with characteristics of different animals.
Sweating blood.
How do I upload an image? There is a famous old painting of all these things happening with two comets overhead (or one comet seen going and then coming).
No way for non-admins to upload. Sorry. But thanks for the ideas!
The dead snake is odd, but the baby bird would have given me the creeps – birds scare me normally, but the image of a gangly baby avian giving me the bug eye with an open toothless maw is not pleasant.
Anyway, here a couple of additional events; feel free to add them if they pass muster:
1. Clouds take the shape of (d6: 1-2 a familiar profile; 3-4 [animal]; 5 weapon; 6 a map)
2. Voices heard in the wind; language spoken is native to wherever characters need to go next
3. Character drops every coin or gem handed to him for an entire day
4. Three strangers address the character by the same wrong name
5. The character hears the name of an unknown place in three separate, unrelated conversations
Thanks. I probably will add a couple of those in a later revision. I love the first one especially!
Animals born with two heads.
Animals born with characteristics of different animals.
Sweating blood.
How do I upload an image? There is a famous old painting of all these things happening with two comets overhead (or one comet seen going and then coming).
No way for non-admins to upload. Sorry. But thanks for the ideas!