Juice Oracle - v10 Preview

Here is the preview for v10, and it is crammed full of new stuff!

I still need to do the inside page, and write up instructions for everything, but I have done a pretty good amount of playtesting and tweaking, and I am pretty happy with it so far, so I figured I would put it up here. I'm still tweaking the margins a bit to make sure things aren't cut off when printed and folded.

Most of the instructions for v9 are still applicable, but there are some new things that might not make sense at first:

In general, if a table is not alphabetical, it means that it is specifically ordered to account for rolling with advantage/disadvantage. Some tables even account for using a d6 instead of a d10

In general, if an entry is in italics, it means it is referencing another table somewhere. I find that having a solid set of small, versatile tables that reference each other is much more flexible than a huge collection of unwieldy tables.

The front is the page with the colors. This page is for adding details to just about anything. For property, roll 1d10 and 1d6, to get an "intensity" of that property. For example, 8 and 2 would mean "Minor Style". Use the immersion tables heavily when exploring, I find this makes all the difference for solo play.

The back is the page with the quest, random events, and pay the price. You could make an entire one shot session with just this page by rolling up a quest, building a story around a series of challenges, and detemining the consequence for failing. You can also use the quest table to generate rumors you may overhear from other npcs.

Opening like a book, these two pages essentially have my version of the Mythic system: A fate check, a way to test expectations, NPC behavior, Scene transitions, Meaning tables, and a Name Generator.  

The name generator looks complicated, but it is pretty robust. First, roll for the format. Entries 1-10 are more masculine, 11-20 are more feminine. A roll of 15 says `23-i`, which means "Roll 1d20 on column 2, 1d10 on the lower values of column 3, then append an 'i'". So rolls of (19, 5) would generate the name "Tabari" 

On the inside pages, the far left is the dungeon generator. Dungeon monsters are abstract, combining a description with an ability.

On the NPC page is more advanced behavior options for in and out of combat, and conversation topics.

The dialog grid is new, and based off of "Pettish". Start at "Fact" in the middle, and roll 1d100. The first two rows, in italics, mean that the statement is about the past, while the bottom three rows mean the statement is about the present. The first number selects the direction of travel on the grid, as well as the tone of the NPC. The second number determines the context of the statement. So, for example, if I wanted to know something that an NPC would say, I roll 1d100 and get 60. This means they aggressively requesting an action of us (the party), (like "We need to get going!"). Use that to determine what they say, respond, then roll again to continue the conversation. The next roll of 13 means that they are neutrally asking a question from their perspective in the past (like "What was I supposed to do?"). Its a bit involved, but I treat it like a mini game that helps with my immersion.

The location grid is kinda like a map and a compass combined. If you want to know a direction, roll 1d100. A roll of 2 would mean something is northwest, pretty far away. A roll of 53 means something is east, and close. Alternatively, if you think of the grid as an overlay on a map, you can ask where something is, and get a coordinate.

The Wilderness page is probably the most complicated, but I wanted it to generate weather and monster encounters tailored to the region being explored. First, roll to choose the environment of your starting hex (lets say Swamp). Roll 1dF to select an adjacent Type (+ would be Exotic Swamp). Use the values in those cells to build a dice formula with a d6 (so Exotic Swamp means roll 1d6 with advantage, then add 3. If I rolled 2, and 5, I take the 5, add 3 to get 8, and reference the Weather table. The current weather in the Exotic Swamp is High Winds.

To determine the next hex, roll 1dF and move up or down from the current Environment. A roll of + would mean I would move from the Swamp to Water. I try to "zig-zag" the type and environment, so a smooth transition would be from Exotic Swamp to Exotic Water, but you can also just roll 1dF again for the type, which might yield Sandy Water. These Type-Environment pairs try to roughly map to various biome types, but a bit of creativity is required.

As for monster encounters, look at the line matching your Environment (so for Swamp, it says `+3@+`, which is read (+3 at advantage). Roll the d6 to get the row on the monster encounter table. If I rolled 1 and 4, then I take the 4, add 3 to get 7, and see that I will be encountering some Lizardfolk. On the monster encounter table, roll 1d100. The first number determines the difficulty of the encounter, and the second number is only used to determine if there is a boss. So, a roll of 62 means a medium encounter. When building the encounter, you use the column you rolled AND every column to the left. That means there will be three different monster types in this encounter (the Lizardfolk, a Giant Lizard, and a Lizardfolk Shaman) (and yes, these are all 5e monsters from the 5e Monster Manual...) Next is to determine how much of each monster. Roll 1d6-1 but apply advantage or disadvantage depending on the presence of a +/-. It just so happens that all 3 of these are straight rolls, so rolls of 6, 1, 5 means the random encounter in the Swamp is medium difficulty with 5 Lizardfolk and 4 Lizardfolk Shaman (Because it is 1d6-1, there are 0 Giant Lizards). Depending on my party size and level, I may decide to fight, parley, or flee.

A couple other things on the monster encounter. If doubles are rolled when determining difficulty, add a single boss monster from that row and column. If doubles are rolled when selecting the row (in this example it was rolling the 1d6+3 at advantage), then the encounter is actually bandits, not lizardfolk. Finally, the odd-ball case, if you roll row 6 while in the forest, instead of Kobolds you get Blights.

Yea, its a bit complicated, but it crams a lot of possibilities into a very small space on paper. Of course, you don't need to follow all those rules; you can just roll on the tables however you choose, or just use them as inspiration. There are no hard rules here.

If you stumble upon a dungeon, you can generate a dungeon name with 3d10. (3, 7, 2) would make "The Fortress of the Shattered Blight".

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Whew! So what is next? Well, I plan on filling out the inside page, probably some abstract icons on the right, and more NPC-related tables on the left. In the meantime, you can print whatever you want on the inside/back, so you can have a one page kit customized to your liking! I also want to write out instructions / descriptions / explanations / examples for each table, and include credits to all the sources I used for inspiration during this project. Finally, my plan will be to release all of the sources for this on Github, including all the tables in text and markdown format, and the code I use to generate the PDF, all under CC BY-NC-SA, so people can make their own pocketfolds. This will all take time of course, and I am in no rush.

Anyway, if you decide to use this and have questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them in a comment. Thanks!