Reading an OSR blog or two, playing Dungeon World and re-reading an old D&D campaign idea  have my head swirling with random encounter tables.  So, here they are.

The barons of the east and the city-states of the west had no idea, no inkling that they were caught in the midst of an inter-planar blood feud between the Ghoul King, exarch of Orcus and the Demon Prince of the Gnolls, Yeenoghu.

Once, long ago, Yeenoghu had held reign over the ghouls but Orcus took the hungry throne for his own exarch, taking the Hungry Legions for his own Abyssal Layers. The only ghouls left in Yeenoghu’s realm are pitiful rabble, masterless rogue packs.

The gnolls invaded the east through gates directly linked to Yeenoghu’s Realm in the abyss. They pour through, hoping to link the gates together and allow one of the rolling fortresses, a rolling city-fort built on blood and murder, into the prime continent.

The ghouls invaded through the White Kingdom, Doresain’s domain in Thanatos, an abyssal kingdom where the cities are all made of white bone and is peopled only with beasts that eat raw flesh.

At first I wanted these tables to be used with a d12 but I think they’ll be better chopped into a few d4 rolls, with 3 things the people want.

Peasant refugees are looking for the following 3 things:

1. Food
2. Shelter
3. Water
4. Their Children

1. Their Lord
2. Their Priest
3. Named Hero (Wizard or Warrior, GM’s choice)
4. Mystical Animal Savior

1. Anyone with a Plan
2. Place to Pray and be heard
3. Place to quietly die together
4. Place to make their final stand.

Low Level Adventurers are looking for the following 3 things:

1. Gnoll Teeth
2. Ghoul Heads
3. Empty castles to plunder
4. Place to set up camp

1. Place to sell loot
2. Other adventurers to mug
3. Place to settle down and retire
4. Specific Temple (GM’s choice)

1. Peasants to keep safe
2. Gnoll Murder Altar to scrub clean and bless
3. Good place to wait in ambush
4. To finish their quest that has nothing to do with this mad war between other-planar armies of Gnolls and Ghouls

High Level Adventurers are looking for the following 3 things:

1. Place to start a legit base of operations
2. Vantage point to watch the gnolls and ghouls war on one another
3. Gate outta here
4. Powerful wizard

1. Library
2. Relatively safe spot to make camp
3. Someone with authority to send them on a high level mission (“That’s what we do, right?”)
4. Their lost Spelljamming ship

1. M.I.A. member of their party (GM’s choice)
2. Biggest, baddest gnoll around
3. Biggest, baddest ghoul around
4. Cache of holy weapons