d20 Gameable Ideas from a 12th-Century Travelogue
The Itinerarium Cambriae (“The Journey Through Wales”) is an account of a 1188 trip through Wales by the clergyman Gerald of Wales. It’s a brisk and entertaining hodgepodge of history, local folklore, theology and charmingly wrongheaded natural philosophy. I love medieval whimsy, so I loved this. The text is available on Project Gutenberg, though I can’t vouch for the particular translation.
A lot of the legends and superstitions Gerald describes are great fodder for RPGs, especially for a faery-tinged setting like Dolmenwood. With that in mind, here’s a d20 list of the ones that struck me as most gameable. Some of these entries can serve as sparks for locations, creatures or items; others are fun local color.
- On the night of the king’s death, the fish of a lake fight one another so vigorously that it draws a crowd. By morning most of the fish are dead.
- A boy attempts to steal pigeons from a church. His hand becomes stuck to the church’s stone and is released after three days of fasting and prayer. An impression of the hand remains in the stone.
- A book that tears out the eyes of the reader.
- Buildings, gardens and orchards that sometimes manifest on the surface of a lake.
- Longbowmen so powerful that their arrows penetrate heavy oaken doors and pin riders to their saddles.
- A man trysts with a shaggy creature disguised as the woman of his affections. After the encounter, the man sees devils. He can point to false men and false writing (though he cannot read) because the devils point these out to him. They dance on the tongue of a person speaking a lie. They tell him predictions of future events which are more reliable the nearer they are (both in time and place).
- Incubi visit the people of a land before a war or some other great calamity.
- A cracked rock by the sea. From the crack emerges the sound of blacksmiths at work, blowing bellows, the grinding of metal.
- A king known for kindness to his hounds is captured. The local pack of dogs orchestrate his release by ranging the surrounding lands, and systematically attacking the men, herds and flocks of the captors.
- A tunnel that leads to a sunless but pastoral underground land inhabited by tiny people and their king. They live on dairy, ride greyhound-sized horses and have ample gold. They accommodate respectful guests but resent human vices.
- Spirits throw trash around the homes they haunt, and rip and cut holes in the clothes of the inhabitants. Other spirits constantly try to argue with people. If the people don’t indulge them, the spirits announce all of their misdeeds and dirty little secrets in the town square.
- A devil possesses a woman. It speaks through her mouth, engaging in intelligent disputes. If a Gospel or saintly relic is placed on a part of the woman’s body, the devil moves to a different part, and that part of the body swells and moves convulsively.
- A spirit takes the form of a confident young man and sets itself up in a home as steward and administrator. It knows all the secrets of its master and mistress, all their material desires, and fulfills them all, even when they are frivolous, or the owners would decide against them, or are trying to save money.
- A river runs under a slab of marble polished by the feet of the innumerable people who have walked across it. Down its middle runs a crack from when it burst into speech in protest of a corpse being carried across it.
- A boy who has fallen ill is beset by toads. All of the local toad population flocks to him. Toads come from all directions. His friends kill innumerable toads, but the toads keep coming. They hoist the boy into a tree to protect him, but the toads climb the tree and eat the boy, leaving only his skeleton.
- A small island inhabited by some devout monks. On the island, people only ever die of extreme old age. Many saints are buried there.
- A small island inhabited by hermits. When they quarrel, a plague of mice overtakes them and consumes all of their food. When they resolve their quarrels, the mice retreat again.
- A mountain lake has a floating island on it continually driven across the water by violent, unceasing winds. Shepherds struggle to retrieve flocks that have moved onto the island when it is up against the lake’s shore.
- A lake that hosts an abundance of different kinds of fish, all of them missing their left eye.
- A spring that alternately runs hot and cold in the night and the day.