The Skull In The Tree
I was chatting with @Kodia Tomekeeper in the #tiny-prep-daily channel. She’s embedding a skull in a tree in her campaign.
That reminded me of faces carved into certain trees in some campgrounds around here. They look amazing.
Faces are powerful. They symbolize and communicate.
My favourite example would be the Magic Mouth spell. A friend in school took magic mouths to an extreme by making them permanent and able to talk with each other.
I remember one room was a long puzzle sequence. Each mouth gave you a clue and a riddle. The clue was for a different mouth’s riddle.
In another room of his weird castle he had a thousand magic mouths yelling back at a gibbering mouther chained to the middle of the room. Pandemonium. And many sanity checks.
Today’s GM tip is to add face(s) to your next encounter.
d6 Ideas For Adding Disembodied Faces
- Skull in a Tree
- AI/Ghost
- Mirrors
- Mosaic Floor
- Forms in Smoke
- Living Spell
d6 Disembodied Face Motives
- Pass on a Warning
- Deliver a Villain’s Threat
- Smear a Notable NPC
- Jump Scares
- Detect Lies
- Waiting For a Prophecy
d6 Disembodied Face Personalities
- Mossy, Muffled, Forgetful
- Jagged, Booming, Arrogant
- Charred, Rasping, Vengeful
- Metallic, Echoing, Judgmental
- Fungal, Hissing, Paranoid
- Bloated, Gurgling, Gluttonous
d6 Disembodied Face Puzzles
- A Riddle
- Password that Can Be Deduced/Discovered
- Two Truths and a Lie
- Return a Missing Component (e.g., Re-Attach a Nose)
- Tell it a Terrible Secret to Get Something Back
- Speaks in Code/Strange Language/Poems
Ok, we faced a silly topic today. A bit tongue-in-cheek. To save face, I shall end it here. See you in the next one!
Cheers,
Johnn
roleplayingtips.com
https://discord.gg/6MxTRAqQ76
Have more fun at every game!
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