Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Whimsical Wednesday: April Fools' Edition

Every Wednesday, I’ll roll on the table below, and then on the indicated Whimsey Table, and share the exact wording found in my very crude often ridiculous 25 year old handwritten notes from the early 80’s.

Random Whimsey Determination Table (2d6)

2-4 Basic Whimsey Chart (d00)
5-7 New Whimsey Chart (d00)
8-10 Nyark Ripplesnap’s Whimsey Channel (d00)
11 Gorfaxio Gondoro’s Whimsey Table #1 (d20)
12 Gorfaxio Gondoro’s Whimsey Table #2 (d20)


Today’s Roll: In observation of April Fools' Day, I'm going to transcribe one of the more ludicrous examples my early 80's zany young teen creativity. As with this entire series, I often cringe when I copy those original notes. It is against my better judgment to reveal such silliness from a bygone era. But here goes.

"The target goes under a strange transformation, his hands become duck feet, his feet become snapping crocodile heads, his butt becomes a fat man's face, his eyes are attached to springs, his lips turn black, in his mouth is a mechanical set of chattering teeth, his nose turns into a bright red blinking light bulb, a loudspeaker appears on his head, and all of his items become Lawfully Good aligned. Then, the crocodiles, the man, and the loudspeaker begin shouting out: "Orcus, Demogorgon, Hastur, Cthulhu, Arioch, Xiombarg!" They continue in that manner until someone appears, then they shout "I want to have your Baby!" Then the target is instantly teleported to safety, where the process happens again, but this time, instead of saying all the names, he only says the one of which appeared. If he appears again, they will shout out the afflicted's true name, and then the insult, and then teleport to safety, this time the target returns to normal, all except for his nose."

I'm fairly sure this whimsey was never rolled in play. It's the 20 result from Gorfaxio Gondoro’s Whimsey Table #2. It was the last whimsey I wrote way back when. It definitely needs to be filed in the WTF Where You Thinking category. Ah well, luckily not everything I wrote back then has become useless.

With that I will prematurely end the current Whimsical Wednesday series approach and begin constructing a new 20 or more result Whimsey Table for use in my modern games. Future Whimsical Wednesdays will feature these until the final table may be presented.

Have a Whimsical Wednesday!

~Sham, Quixotic Referee

2 comments:

Max said...

To tell you the truth, Sham, I'm hoping you'll someday compile your whimsy charts into a text file so I can see them in all their majesty.

Sham aka Dave said...

It's probably another project worth pursuing, Max. Most are fairly short, unlike yesterday's example. I'm torn between transposing as is, and editing.

I've got the old dog-eared folder sitting on my desk as a constant reminder.