D12: Devil’s Night

No, not the rap album. I tricked you!

The d12 is an extremely cool die that I find very satisfying to roll and extremely pleasing to look at. Naturally, this means it needs more jobs to do. To that end, this article – filled with tables and gimmicks – and my solemn pledge to write future d12 tables and gimmicks befitting this champion of the common polygons.

1d12 City Encounters

Roll	Encounters in Cities Large and Small
1	Veteran of a forgotten war, drunk on brandy, grumbles about the pale children in the trees at night.
2	A farmer on his way to market with a bushel of wildly oversized fruits larger than an orc’s head.
3	An aqueduct has cracked and water is flooding the paving stones.
4	A troubadour has perched atop a fountain and is reciting a scandalous poem of courtly gossip.
5	Lyubomir the miner is storming through the streets in a fury, searching for his son.
6	Two buskers perform juggling and tumbling antics while a third of their troupe circulates a hat for donations.
7	A local official is accosted by a crowd of youths demanding he change the new curfew.
8	A runaway horse careens through a packed street with a message painted on its side.
9	Old man Mors stridently proclaims the coming apocalypse loudly from the cobblestones of the town square.
10	A wanted poster flaps about in the breeze and lands underfoot.
11	A small parade of soldiers in archaic dress marches through the city to the sound of drums and trumpets.
12	A door clatters open and the limp body of a man is tossed onto the hard street.

1d12 Miscast Results

Roll	Magical Whoopsies and Fumbles
1	The cosmos turns your left eye into a croaking frog mouth, lasting one day per level of failed spell cast.
2	Agonizing sores cover your back, rendering you unable to carry a pack for 1d6 days.
3	Your magical weave instead instills a nearby pebble with sentience, and it wails as it learns the secret of being.
4	Your favored hand changes. You can do everything just the same, but with the other side, and it feels weird.
5	Your garment unravels spontaneously. Doesn’t work on fur.
6	For the next 1d4 hours, you can read a single rare language of the referee’s selection. That one only.
7	All rations in the room are changed to gruel. Hope they’re in containers!
8	A hole in space opens up nearby, wide enough for a hand to fit into. On the other side: a modern supermarket.
9	A dizzying array of colored lights blink and flash, following the caster for one turn per caster level.
10	Spectral gong sounds seem to echo in the distance. What do they portend?
11	In a 10′ radius, the floor or ground is covered in thousands – millions – of writhing millipedes.
12	The closest party member at the time of casting now clucks every time they try to speak for the next 1d4 hours.

1d12 Menu Items at Varne’s Cup & Hearth Inn

Roll	Scrumptious Foods and Drinks at Varne’s Cup & Hearth Inn
1	Varne’s mom’s special venison pie with gravy, a stout and filling meal with local root vegetables besides.
2	A competent and unimaginative mushroom stew, with huge chunks of a fibrous fungus called Pigwort.
3	A special fit for a king! Roast duck, with fiddleheads and savory millet porridge.
4	Fatty mackerel with rye bread; includes also a draft mug of locally-brewed small beer.
5	One bowl of oatmeal with stewed red apple and honey.
6	The proprietor’s favorite: two kippered herrings, crusty bread, one fat dollop of the day’s butter.
7	Aged sharp cheese, one cut of pork with its rind intact, and a baked yam charred on the outside.
8	Peppered mushroom steak; cut from the stem of a great forest toadstool as tall as a man’s shoulder.
9	Stew of beef with turnips and onion, two slices of the morning’s bread freshly toasted anew by the fire.
10	Herbaceous, flowering greens blanched and salted, served atop broad round of bread, with one cup grog.
11	Varne’s family recipe for black pudding, of lamb’s blood, onion, and oats; served with a tall drink of stout ale.
12	Beans cooked with salt-pork, walnuts, molasses. Two slices of crusty bread and a pat of fresh butter.

*#5 is especially satisfying in the autumn months (above)*

1d12 Wands of Deviltry

Roll	Beguiling and Enchanted Wands Found in the Provisions of Witches and Their Lairs
1	Forked as a serpent’s tongue; 1d12 charges remaining of Speak With Lizardkind
2	Smells of sulfur. Banishes demonic entities of 4HD or less (save vs spell) 1d4 times before becoming ash.
3	Poorly balanced, as if the weight is opposite to its taper. Briefly flips gravity for the user 1d6+1 times.
4	Gilded leg bone of a wading bird. If snapped, the user is teleported to a disused vizier’s study in a warm locale.
5	Dowsing rod. Can point the user toward fresh water once per day.
6	Twig of yew. Inked with illegible script. Casts Hold Portal 1d12 times before cracking in half suddenly.
7	Short stick, wrapped with 1d4 uses of fine red thread. Thread will bind fairy creatures as if iron chain.
8	Brass rod, surrounded by faint motes of light arranged in constellations. Casts Light 1d12 times before dimming forever.
9	Phallic dowel, decorated with satyrs. Casts Polymorph Other 1d12 times, but only into satyrs; ignores HD rule.
10	Constantly humming. Casts Cure Disease 1d12 times. Each use, it gets quieter and quieter.
11	Translucent stone rod. Can Detect Magic 1d12 times. Becomes cloudier with each use until it is mundane granite.
12	Ashen switch. Belches black smoke periodically. May cast Wall of Fire 1d12 times. Never stops belching though.

#8 might also *be useful for navigation and Pink Floyd laser shows (above)*

1d12 Frontier Rumors

Roll	Gossip and Happenings
1	Some say there is a band of brigands kidnapping travelers on the Narrow Pass, and they speak a foreign tongue.
2	It is said the host of the nearby caravanserai has been turned to stone in the night.
3	Local boys say they heard the beating of drums in the woods to the east, and cannot play there any more.
4	A miller believes divine punishment dried the river that once powered his water wheel.
5	The baker was caught with the vizier’s son, and has been jailed leading up to the son’s arranged wedding.
6	The street girls say the Witchburner passed through, headed to a riverside town in the west, south of the big city.
7	One of the drunkards claims he awoke to a brilliant light – and saw slender, silvery men with great glassy eyes.
8	The monastery some miles away burned down, and now the refugees fear a curse follows them.
9	Travelers quarrel over the identity of the mysterious trio holed up by the bridge – starving deserters, or something worse?
10	Many claim Afiz the tinsmith is engaged in dark dealings, consorting with witches and demons in the woodgrove.
11	Hushed whispers claim the lady of the manor on the hill has gone mad and calls the names of those soon to die.
12	A man rode into town this morning saying the High Executioner’s great caravan was on its way to town.

1d12 Found Items

Roll	Rediscovered and Redistributed Objects of Varying Value
1	A chirurgeon’s tool roll. Contains only forceps clamped to a molar much too large to have come from a human.
2	Map fragment dated over a century ago. Seems to be local to the area, with an obvious landmark scrawled.
3	A fan of great eagle feathers stitched together. It still bears the scent of sweet floral perfume.
4	Waterlogged ledger. Much of the ink is illegible, but what remains suggests a local merchant is deeply in debt.
5	A whittled figurine carved from ivory or bone in the shape of a girl riding upon a goat.
6	Chicken skeleton, picked clean by scavengers and insects.
7	A good luck charm, being the index finger of a monk painted with lacquer.
8	Necklace of coarse wooden beads painted to show the circle of life. Begins with a fly and ends with a mammoth.
9	A linen sachet, bound with waxed cordage, containing numerous dried flowers which smell pleasant and dusty.
10	Parched and cracking goatskin mashk, bearing on its surface a three-fingered handprint in red paint.
11	One dozen seashells pierced and threaded onto a string as a noise-making warning device.
12	An edible dried pear. Mostly pale purple fading to a mottled ivory color. Its flesh is mealy but sweet.

*#1 is giving more questions than answers at the moment (above)*

I wrote these mostly as a means of warming up some of the atrophied creative muscles I’ve ignored this past year. Though they were intended as flavor for your own game, I’m not sure all of these are terribly useful. Though, reading back through them, I suppose there’s a semblance of a setting spread out through these tables if you take them all, inclusive, at face value. I think I’ll leave it up to you whether or not the threads are pieced back together.

If you use any of these, or reconstruct your own vision of whatever scant implied setting these may call home, I’d love to know about it! Contact me in the comments below, or scoot on over to Twitter and say hello there!

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One comment on “D12: Devil’s Night”

taichara Commented on: November 18, 2021
I like these a bunch, especially the city encounters and the menu items :3
d12 has definitely turned into my favorite die size to make tables with/for over the last stretch; it just feels like the perfect size, not too short, not too long. (aside from my occasional d66 tables that is)
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