Great Comet of 1577 (Woodcut by Jiri Daschitzsky)
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:
| d10 |
Event |
| 1 |
Character wakes up with a severed [large animal]‘s head in his bed/bedroll. |
| 2 |
A nearby sea or river turns [color] |
| 3 |
It rains [small animals] |
| 4 |
A [celestial observation] is seen in the sky. |
| 5 |
1d4+1*10 days of [d4: 1 Extreme heat; 2 Rain; 3: Snow; 4: Extreme cold] |
| 6 |
Geological/weather event [1d4: 1 Earthquake; 2: Volcano eruption; 3: Tornado; 4: Hurricane; 5: Tsunami; 6: Blizzard] |
| 7 |
Person is possessed and does [unusual action] |
| 8 |
Statue of a saint/god does [unusual action]. |
| 9 |
1000 entranced [small animals] surround the party. |
| 10 |
[Large animal] is seen following the party but can’t be caught. |
| d6 |
Large Animals |
| 1 |
Horse |
| 2 |
Large Bird (Eagle, Vulture, etc.) |
| 3 |
Deer |
| 4 |
Cow |
| 5 |
Lion |
| 6 |
Bear |
| d6 |
Small Animals |
| 1 |
Snake |
| 2 |
Frog |
| 3 |
Locust |
| 4 |
Small bird (robin, cardinal, blue jay, etc.) |
| 5 |
Bees |
| 6 |
Salamander |
| d6 |
Celestial Events |
| 1 |
Comet |
| 2 |
Eclipse |
| 3 |
Constellation goes missing |
| 4 |
Planet visible by the naked eye |
| 5 |
Meteor shower |
| 6 |
Sun flickers |
| d6 |
Unusual Actions |
| 1 |
Weeping blood |
| 2 |
Speaking in tongues |
| 3 |
Walk on water |
| 4 |
Neck swivels 360 degrees |
| 5 |
Briefly bursts into flames, but the flames are not harmful. |
| 6 |
Eyes go blank, unresponsive, muttering gibberish… or does it mean something? |
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!