Orrex's page

I just checked out the 'Net Libram of Random Magical Effects';

An entertaining and humorous read, but entirely impractical and useless as a game tool, due to the number of obviously game-irrelevant entries; it would be annoying to have to re-roll results every third or fourth time I used it.

Well, I'm sorry that you don't think that the list is useful, but I appreciate your feedback. At least you found it entertaining!

I have to dispute your assertion that every third or fourth result would need to be rerolled, though. After all, that would mean that 25% - 33% of the list (5000 to 6667 results!) is useless, which I honestly don't think to be the case. To test this, I just pulled 500 results at random (via MS Excel), of which only one was really questionable: Caster owns two long-range, solar-powered walkie-talkies I grant that this may be off-tone for the average campaign world, but come on! A reroll rate of 1 in 500, or one-fifth of one percent, doesn't seem unreasonable to me. Heck, even a 1% reroll rate shouldn't be a big deal, but of course YMMV.

I wonder if anyone has ever tried to extract the more game-relevant results into a separate list and left out the summoned wide-screen TVs and supernovas... Now THAT list I would use.

If someone cares to undertake such a project, they are welcome to do so as long as they give proper credit for the source material. However, I'll wager that it would take far greater effort to sift through 20,000 lines than it would take to reroll your 4d10 once in a while.

Thanks for your comments at any rate!

Orrex

There/Not There was also a great spell (if I remember correctly that being a Wild Mage spell).

You are correct, and it was a favorite of mine. I don't own any 3rd ed stuff, so I'm sorry to learn that they got rid of that spell.

It pleased me greatly that the material component was a tuft of black cat's fur, a la Schroedinger. Very clever!

Orrex

question, do you use the old chart from tome of magic for the plusses and negatives to effects or?

Actually, I never even thought about it. As I mentioned, we did the "DM rolls d20, player rolls d20," but we just used the player's roll and consulted the chart in the ToM. Maybe I should tweak it and include the tweak in V3.0

Orrex

yes please post it. Ive seen others links posted.

I do wish there was a system set up for PMs
that would help some.

Okay, here it is.

There's not much to the page, but it contains the 10K list (v1.20) and the 20K list (v2.0), both in pdf format. Feedback is welcome and much appreciated. I'm also happy to field questions about the adjudication of surges and that sort of thing.

Please feel free to repost it elsewhere, as long as proper credit is given.

One note for the future: I have it in mind to put out a 30K list so that there are 10K results each for the caster, the target, and miscellaneous. No idea of a timeframe, but just be aware that it's on the drawing board.

Orrex

yes I would, thanks!

oh and i was talking to our old DM and Id forgotten the way he started doing the "do you get a wild surge or not" thing was when the mage rolled his D20 the Dm rolled one aswell and if they rolled the same number then "boom" wildsurge.

Surprisingly, that's how we did it in my campaign, too! It added an extra element of fun and randomness.

What's the policy on posting links? I don't want to commit a faux pas...

Orrex

i found it

WOW that's a huge list
i may make my own smaller list or maybe a couple
the sun going supernova is kinda harsh especially for a mage casting mend on a tear in his robe
lol

Well, not if it's a really big tear. Of course, that's the lesson--if you can accomplish a task without resorting to magic, maybe you should consider breaking out the needle and thread first!

FWIW, I'm the author of that little bit of silliness, and if you're interested I can let you know where the current list of 20,000 can be found.

Let me know.

Orrex