Golemageddon: Golem Ideas for Your Next Campaign

A couple of quick announcements.

First, I was on the Roleplay Rescue podcast recently with Tiny Prep co-author, Che Webster. It starts off with a question: What would you do if you had a new player to add to your existing roleplaying group? And the convo evolves from there.

Here’s the link to listen.

Second, Platinum Wizards of Adventure, please keep an eye on your inbox this week for your CampaignCraft invitation. You’ll get two invites:

  1. A link to access CampaignCraft at no charge
  2. An invite to the CampaignCraft private community

Dear GM, if you are not yet a Platinum Wizard of Adventure, I’ll have more details about CampaignCraft: From 5 Room Dungeon to Universe later this month or in early June.

However, if you’d like early access to build a campaign starting with a single 5 Room Dungeon, become a Platinum Wizard of Adventure today.

Graphic of section divider

Golemageddon

RPT GM Matt emailed me with the idea of sodium golems.

Talk about pouring salt in the party’s wounds, eh?

I’ve got golems down as a bucket list monster for my CampaignCraft: From 5 Room Dungeon to Universe campaign.

So let’s talk about some ideas for golems I’ve been noodling on. Maybe you’d be interested in scooping them for your own games.

I’ll cover two ideas today, in Part I. The third tip that I wrote wandered into word-building and puzzle-making territory, so I’ll put it on its own in Part 2 later this week.

1. Awakened

I got this idea from a novel about animals gaining intelligence and rebelling. Alas, I cannot recall the title. I was also inspired by the uplifting concept from David Brin’s excellent Uplift Saga.

Awakened golems are like animals becoming sentient and intelligent.

So I ask myself, what if golems got smart, got together, and started scheming? And, what would they want?

Gots me a whole new faction and some potential great gameplay with this idea!

2. Special Material

Matt’s salty comment made me wonder about alternative materials for golems that add more features to the creatures.

For example, a sodium golem could herd cattle. It’s a mobile salt lick.

Ever since I read about the evil draconians in Dragonlance as a boy, I loved the idea of monster variations as distinct foe and skirmish groups. Each has at least one special power or gimmick, like turning to stone vs. exploding upon death.

Here are d6 golem materials I’m thinking about:

  1. Tar. It ignites easily, burns hard and hot, and could garner a tricky attack with fiery, sticky, tar balls.
  2. Clouds. I bet Luke would have loved a water vapour golem to make farming easier. I’m thinking golems need a way to secretly communicate. What if it was via mists and fogs?
  3. Fungi. Been watching The Last of Us recently. Lots of ways to make fungi golems terrifying. Just research mushroom and mould varieties and effects for inspiration. Perhaps a Cordyceps Fungi Golem variant shoots mind-altering spores.
  4. Nitroglycerin. I can’t stop chuckling about the look I imagine will be on the barbarian player’s face when a giant hammer smacks into Nitro Golem’s chest and the whole thing goes kaboom. For fantasy, I might call it a Hellfire Golem or some such.
  5. Glue. Elmer the Golem makes it really tough to fight by pulling weapons out of foe hands. It’s a sticky situation, for sure. A fly trap alchemist experiment gone wrong, then turned horrifying by being Awakened.
  6. Sandpaper. A Sandstone Golem that excels at grappling. Eight long, strong, sinewy arms lash out and grapple opponents up to a polearm’s length away. Bear-hugged foes are then vigorously scraped against the golem’s extremely rough body. Perhaps there’s a broken glass variant out there somewhere — Stop, Drop, and Roll! Roll! Roll!

3. Special Motives & Goals

In my lingo, world puzzles are when the world itself becomes an obstacle or antagonist. These are features of your setting such as geography, weather, magic, history, or even forgotten technology, that conspire against party progress.

For example, a haunted forest that becomes a maze, a city whose laws forbid key gear or skills, or air elementals blowing hard to slow travelers down while fire elementals make it too hot to wear armour.

A puzzle implies a solution. And that solution comes from figuring out what features are creating the obstacle and how. Perhaps a cursed fog, shifting ley lines, and lunar calendar all oppose the PCs.

Once players identify how these pieces fit together, or uncover the root cause, a solution becomes evident. For example, the fog is a side effect of a broken ward. And de-cursing the fog requires tapping ley lines during the full moon by repositioning ancient druidic markers buried in the terrain.

In the case of our sapient golems, the solution comes from understanding their motives and goals.

When we decide The Why we can plot The What and design The How.

For example, let’s say golems want to discover who their ultimate creator is and meet them.

To achieve this goal, they might try making the following moves:

  • Seek out and ask other golems.
  • Quest for golem makers and ask them for answers.
  • Use divination spells to find answers.
  • Quest for divination magic items to find answers.
  • Question seers and wise folk.
  • Ask sorcerers and their fiendish contacts to find answers.
  • Deconstruct one of their own for clues.
  • Pray. Invent. And test ancient rituals.
  • Collect lore. Study historical sources like ruins, art, scrolls.
  • Debate amongst themselves to deduce answers.
  • Find the true essence of each golem ingredient type in the world and investigate that place or pray there. (e.g. Where is the ‘ultimate place’ of salt or tar in your setting?)

Those seem like logical things to do. Smart moves, Awakened.

Now, we translate those moves into actions. But remember, we’re designers. We should always add secrets and twists.

In this case it’s easy because we’ve got NPCs on our hands. We make our NPCs think differently, and that sets up the puzzle.

Golems could have alien minds. Therefore, their approaches for these tasks will be different. That’s, by definition, a different mindset or world view at work. And therefore, a highly engaging player puzzle to solve.

Put another way, we’re crafting a puzzle- or mystery-driven plot thread where Awakened Golems exhibit strange, seemingly nonsensical behaviours in the sandbox.

Each critter action results in a potential encounter where characters witness the golems taking alien actions (e.g., building shrines, stealing books, interrogating seers), without knowing their motivations.

Think of it from a Player Fog of War point of view. Players do not yet grasp golem motives. Players only experience the spear tip here — the odd golem behaviour.

As the PCs investigate, get ambushed, are summoned to intervene, and so on, patterns emerge. Eventually, players can gather enough clues or data points to deduce that the golems have become intelligent and now seek to discover their origin.

Once players uncover this root cause, they can choose how to resolve the conflict: empathy, confrontation, or perhaps deeper exploration. In my Murder Hobos case, likely exploitation, heh.

However, as GMs, we start with Goals & Motivations so that we can create situations and encounters based on downstream moves or actions. That makes it easy for us to prep.

Then we reverse the order to make it fun to play.

Graphic of section divider

Upgrade Your Golems

Golems don’t need to be just big, dumb brutes. With unique materials, awakened minds, and mysterious motivations, they become compelling NPCs, encounter seeds, and world-building engines.

By anchoring their actions in goals and making their behaviour puzzling but logical, you create juicy gameplay that rewards curious players and clever thinking. Salted golems never tasted so good.

Cheers,
Johnn
roleplayingtips.com
https://discord.gg/6MxTRAqQ76
Have more fun at every game!

P.S. When you are ready, here are +4 vorpal ways I can help you with your campaign:

+1 Get My Campaign Logger App Free to Make Prep & GMing Easier
For GMs of any system looking to run deep, detailed, and immersive games, Campaign Logger lets you take session notes at the speed of thought in your unique GMing style while improving your preparation experience so you can focus on the parts of the game you enjoy the most.
Get your free Campaign Logger account here.

+2 Level-Up Your GMing With My Books

+3 Get the Demonplague (with 62 5-Star Ratings so far)
A complete level 1-20 campaign D&D 5E adventure path that offers intense roleplay, sandbox and hexcrawl play, cunning combats, and fiendish monsters.
Click here to see more details and to order.

+4 Get More GM Loot
Visit the Roleplaying Tips DriveThruRPG store, or browse books and courses to level up your GMing at the RoleplayingTips.com store.

Join a private community with Johnn