Writober! Arcane Library! Shadowdark Post-a-Day In October

This month is Drawtober: 31 drawing prompts related to the Shadowdark RPG, 1 a day, throughout October. But I’m borrowing the prompts for short essays. Today’s prompt is “Arcane Library”.

And this post wraps up Writober!  We made it! A post every day, written on that day throughout the month using the Drawtober prompts.

For Arcane Library, first I want to extend our thanks to The Arcane Library and of course especially creator Kelsey Dionne for creating a fresh approach to D&D 5e that lets you play in an old school way–plus it has a great, simplified layout and approachable text.

Let’s make a book generator for an arcane library! Randomly pick a few of these charts to roll on and combine the results:

More charts:

Even more charts:

Roll a few/several columns and combine them as you see fit.  Drop a couple of the results to find a few that ‘gel’ together.

For example: Anatomy, Devils, Ancient, Crafting, Divine War, Aboleth can be “The Anatomy of Ancient Aboleth” or “Crafting of Devils During the Divine War” or even “Devils and Aboleth in the Divine War.”

Another Example: Pirate Isles, Fall of the Empire, Cooking, The 10 Eyed Oracle, Antiques, The Planes can be “The 10 Eyed Oracle’s Life on the Pirate Isles During the Fall of the Empire” or “Cooking Antiques Recovered from The Planes”

Here are our previous Writober posts so far:

1. Torch – Rules for magic torch items (each is a single use magic effect spell like alarm or detect magic).
2. Skull – Goblin shaman who can turn victims’ skulls into ways to store spells.
3. Fiend – Lists of talents that Devils & Demons typically have for making your own.
4. Shadow – Easy ways to make other creatures into shadows.
5. Contagion – Discussing the purpose of diseases.
6. Valkyrie – A new 3rd party class.
7. Toadstool – A new 3rd party ancestry.
8. Witchlight – Alternate sources of “witchlight”.
9. Luck Token – Alternate ways a GM may allow a luck token to be used.
10. Rage – The signature ability of a Barbarian class.
11. Altars – Ways to amplify priest spells into rituals when using an altar.
12. Pit Trap – Several ideas to spice up the good old pit trap.
13. Death Slug – Looking at the Death Slug’s deadliness and how that’s similar to old-school and low fantasy games.
14. Evil Eye – Various types of “Evil Eyes”: magic items, monsters, or curses.
15. Morzo Moth – A look at the Morzo Moth’s talents/actions makes one see the variety of the Western Reaches book’s monsters.
16. Diamond – Three subtopics: diamonds impacting economy; as spell components for rituals or spells not-yet-accessible; and a enhancements for magic weapons.
17. Slime – Game-able aspects of mundane slime as well as a green slime monster for Shadowdark.
18. Wyrdling – Shows how different and fun Shadowdark can be with this unusual class as an example of how much design freedom a creator of GM has.
19. Stingbat – Renaming (or even not giving creatures names) re-establishes the sense of wonder players had when fantasy was new to them.
20. Poison – A list of how poison is used in the core book, grouped by use & types of effects, plus a few new ideas.
21. Grumby Billows – A tribute to Shadowdarklings, the online free character generator (and more!) for Shadowdark.
22. Blood – Varying & unsual ways to use blood in your game.
23. Green Knight – A look at the Green Knight from King Arthur and how that differs from the one in Western Reaches. Plus stats for the mythic version.
24. Fear – Speculating on new ways to use fear in your game.
25. Drow – A stat block for a level 6 drow fighter.
26. Fireball – How you should allow your players to flavor the world and aspects about their background and abilities–and in Shadowdark that can even include spell effects.
27. Minion – What are minions and several unusual ways to use them.
28. Glass Cannon – What they are and how likely they happen in Shadowdark.
29. Tooth – Magical effects that can be brought about from the tooth of a creature when the tooth is used for a pendant.
30. Dire Wolf – A look at the wolves in the core book and what we can learn from that when designing our own monsters.