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RANDOM TABLES

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300+ Unique Roll Tables to Enhance Your Worldbuilding, Storytelling,

Locations, Magic and More for 5th Edition RPG Adventures
ben egloff
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ASTONISHING
RANDOM TABLES

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contents

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04 06 80
Foreword | Introduction Session Building
Random Encounters pg. 81
08 Chase Complications pg. 106
Worldbuilding
Building a Pantheon
Defining Magic
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pg. 12
Side Quests
Skill Challenges
Environmental Hazards
pg. 116
pg. 120
pg. 130
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Building a Planet pg. 14 Travel Complications pg. 150
Building a Realm pg. 20
Forms of Government pg. 22 152
Population Type pg. 32 Magic & Miscellany
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Building a Population pg. 34 Spell scrolls and their functions, potions and their
Creating an Economy pg. 40 possibilities, magical prisoners, multiple mutations,
blessings and boons, curses and charms, reincarnation
Creating Customs, Laws results, the contents of a person’s pocket or their dreams
and Their Consequences pg. 46 and hundreds of other interesting ideas all contained in
a somewhat organized section.
Establishing Beliefs pg. 48
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Businesses pg. 50 Spell Scrolls

Scrolls by Level pg. 153
Guilds and Unions pg. 62 Unexpected Spell Scroll Results pg. 156
Local Color pg. 68 Transmuted Damage Types pg. 157

Positive & Negative Potions

Potion Type pg. 158
Beneficial Potions & Elixirs pg. 158
Detrimental Potions & Elixirs pg. 162
Mixed Potion Interactions pg. 167

Items With Personality

Good Sentient Magic Item Personalities pg. 168
Evil Sentient Magic Item Personalities pg. 169
 Drinking, Carousing
Personalities in Items and Consequences
Object Occupants (Dead) pg. 170 Ballads, Ditties & Songs pg. 211
Object Occupants (Living) pg. 171 Drink Name Generator pg. 213

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One Good Time Too Many pg. 214
Teleportation Gone Wrong pg. 172 Unintended Criminal Acts pg. 215

Variant Wild Magic pg. 176 Ships and Shipwrecks

Strange Things in a Shipwreck pg. 216

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Pickpocketing pg. 180 Ship Name Generator pg. 216

Gifts & Curses The Weird, the Wild and the Random
Divine Blessings pg. 182 Weirdos, Hermits & Wanderers pg. 218
Boons pg. 183 NPC Primary Motivation pg. 219
Curses pg. 184 Rumors on the Street pg. 219
Charms pg. 186 Hags & Their Lairs pg. 220
Common Magic Items pg. 189 I Wouldn’t Touch That pg. 220
Gelatinous Cubes pg. 222
Dreams
Nightmarish Dreams
Pleasant Dreams

Prophecy
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pg. 194
Atmosphere Enhancement
Demonic Demands
Giants & Their Things
Gnomish Inventors
Hallucinations
pg. 222
pg. 223
pg. 223
pg. 224
pg. 225
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Constellations & Heavenly Portents pg. 196 Useless(?) Junk pg. 226
Soothsayers and Fortune Tellers pg. 197 Portals to the Unknown pg. 226
Ghosts pg. 228
Reincarnation Gravestones pg. 228
Reincarnation Results &
Unexpected Side Effects pg. 198

Strange Mutations
230
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pg. 200

Tools of the Trade

Spellbook Appearance pg. 202 One-Shot Adventures
Arcane Focus Appearance pg. 202
Never Tell Me the Odds pg. 232
Druidic Focus Appearance pg. 203
Holy Symbol Appearance pg. 203 Animated Defense pg. 248
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Heraldry & Crests pg. 204 Things Are Not What

pg. 264
They Seem
Books
Contents of an Ancient Grimoire pg. 206
Book Titles pg. 207 280
Art Objects pg. 208 Index
Wares That May Not
Strictly Be Legal pg. 210

Location Upkeep pg. 210

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“Nearly every off-the-cuff question that has ever stumped me as a GM,

large or small, could’ve been resolved in a dice roll or two with this
book. There are lots of random tables out there, but few as creative and
comprehensive as these!”
- Ginny Di
youtuber, tabletop gamer, singer and cosplayer
ginnydi.com
 Foreword
“WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO GM?!”
“Hmm? What’s that, again?” I say, looking up into the
eyes of the hopeful young man with the Welsh accent.
It’s early 2022 and I’m in the UK. As a veteran voice
actor in video games, anime and animation, I’m often
at comic cons like this on the weekends. These days, I’m
busier than ever, because I’ve just finished my nearly
year-long run on the hit D&D live-play shows Exandria
Unlimited and Critical Role, thrusting me into the
TTRPG world as well. Meeting fans from around the
globe is perhaps the best part of my job. I can answer
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most questions about any show or game I’ve ever
worked on, but this one catches me a bit off-guard.
“I loved you at the table!” he exclaims. “You’re such an
interesting player, I’d be excited to see what you could
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come up with as a Game Master!”
“Oh,” I reply, a bit timid. Not wanting to disappoint him,
I give a noncommittal answer. “Well, it sounds like fun,
but I’ve only just learned to play. I don’t think I have the
skills yet….”
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“Ha!” he playfully scoffs with a friendly smile, “I GMed
the third game I ever played!”
We laugh, have a quick d20 roll-off (he won) and off
he goes, disappearing into the sea of con-goers, not
knowing he had sparked an idea in my mind. Many
others would come to nurture this thought with their
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good-natured tales of the magical experience of running
a gaming session and inspire me to one day do the same.
Now, let me be clear as to why I was so hesitant to
answer his question and potentially GM a game of
my own. As a new player (and a person who tends to
overthink almost everything), I’d always been consumed
by the “how” of it. Sure, I get the concept. I can imagine
Wishing you well,
Robbie Daymond
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myself at the head of a TTRPG table, weaving tales and
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leading combat, but I wasn’t quite sure where to actually
start. After all, my first GMs were literal masters: Matt
Mercer and Aabria Iyengar. To me, what they do is
almost mystical; balancing plot, pace, characters and
gameplay. I might be able to convince myself that
someone like me, a relative newbie, could have the
vision to take my friends on a fantastical adventure, but
did I have the tools to execute a single session, much
less a long-running campaign?
Thankfully, as time passed after my initial run as a
player on EXU and CR, the TTRPG community has
graciously opened its arms to me and shown me a
massive new world of resource books; compendiums;
reference guides; and original, playable stories that span
millions of words beyond the official material. This book,
the very same one you are about to enjoy, is one of the
finest such guides.
This vast tome contains an impossibly broad spectrum of
creative ideas in an easily consumable format that even a
novice like me can make sense of. The form and function
of how these ideas are presented and the versatility
with which they can be implemented should also keep
the most experienced GMs happy for campaigns to
come. I can only give my highest praise to the team that
put The Game Master’s Book of Astonishing Random
Tables together. Also, the one-shots by Ben, Jim and the
Forbecks look so fun I hope someday to find myself in
one of their exploits.
So, whether you’re the new kid behind the screen or the
king of the quest, this book has a little something for
everyone. Even me. I’m sure when I run my first session,
I’ll be pulling some tips and tricks from this book and
many of the others in the series. Perhaps, someday, I’ll
let you know how it goes….
The Game Master’s Book of Astonishing Random Tables 5
 Introduction
Welcome to The Game Master’s
Book of Astonishing Random Tables...
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t’s happened to the best of us. You’ve lured your
party into an untenable situation and they’re on
the run from the dual threat of notorious hag
Granny Mu’Pau and the implacable mechanical
army of Dr. Orryn Belanteraith (in league with
the Duke, which means the law is decidedly not on
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their side). They’ve managed to piss off the Honorable
Purveyors of Rest and Respite, so finding a place to sleep
is a quest unto itself. And that’s when they have a brilliant
idea. “What if we just leave this city altogether?” says the
druid. “Let’s just steal a wagon and head for the next town
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over.” “Why stop there?” asks the bard. “Why don’t we go
to another country? I could parlay with local leaders and
we could build an alliance and maybe lead a rebellion.”
“That’s OK,” you think as you rub your temples and
consider your next move. “I’ll get them at the border.”
“I can drive a boat!” shouts the fighter, who has never
once used his background as a sailor.
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It’s fine. They’ll never be able to commandeer a
ship, gather a crew and master the waves. And yet, a
few Charisma checks later, the party is setting sail in a
stolen vessel with a crew of 35 easily persuaded goblins,
steered with all the wind they could need courtesy of
the druid’s ability to spam gust all afternoon. They’re
fleeing the places you spent hours preparing, en route to
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a continent you’ve not yet imagined, all because you told
them “This is an open world, explore it as you see fit.”
Why do we do this? Why not just play Monopoly?!
It’s a question that’s come up for most Game Masters
at some point or another, and the answer is always the
same: the story. The story is what everyone—you, your
players, perhaps even an audience—cares about. As the
Game Master, you act as the facilitator of the story and
its setting, bringing to life a world rich with opportunity,
intrigue, magic, danger, dungeons and perhaps a dragon
or two. You create a universe where you and your friends
collaboratively conjure tales together. You must also
answer questions about how that world looks, feels
and influences the narrative. Every detail you provide
about your world is a snare that can capture the players’
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imaginations, providing set pieces for gripping combat
or narrative encounters and the context that ensures
those scenes have meaningful stakes, which is why you
might invest hours of your time developing a place for
them to explore. To which your players will inevitably
respond, “Where else can we go?” It’s a lot of work.
Luckily, this book is a tool and, in some ways, an
automaton, created to take some of that work off your
hands. Whether you’re an old hand or you’re GMing your
first game, the tables presented throughout this book
are designed to generate content on your behalf or spark
new ideas within you. These tables were created to help
you focus your attention on the things you care about
so that when your players ask about things you haven't
considered (“What’s in his pocket?” or “What’s the name
of the trappers guild?” or “What’s on the menu?”) you
not only have an answer—you have a potential hook for
another chapter in your ongoing adventure.
What This Book Is
The Game Master’s Book of Astonishing Random
Tables is many things, but first and foremost, it is a
spark. It’s here to help you take the inner workings of
your creative mind and put them on display for those
around you. It’ll do some of the work for you so you can
focus on creating epic stories with your players.
It is, at its core, exactly what it’s called: a book
of (astonishing) random tables. These tables add
spontaneity to your sessions, a bit of tension to already
tense situations and a touch of chaos—whether by your
hand or the hands of your players—based on the will of
the dice. If they didn’t, they’d be called predictable tables.
It is also a fully functional campaign generator. It
will take you through the steps of creating a setting and
filling that setting with interesting places and people
and the governments that rule them: the motivations
behind leaders of powerful guilds, nefarious cults and
secret societies—some hoping to change the world for
the better, others not so much. It will help challenge your
players through social interaction and fierce combat,