A few good monsters can flesh out what a setting looks like better than pages of backstory. These tables are meant to give broad inspiration, you'll have to work out specifics yourself. The first two are more general, the other three are for specific cases.
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| MTG - Chaosphere (Steve Luke) |
Form (1d20. Roll once, or a few times for stages of a "life cycle". Some of these are concrete physical bodies, others are more abstract.)
1. Insubstantial, ghostly entity
2. Self-perpetuating idea or pattern of behavior
3. A disease, infectious or not
4. Like a plant or fungus; doesn't move much, but grows and spreads
5. A swarm of mobile things with a shared consciousness; may or may not have a "queen"
6. A corrupted/undead/mutant human or animal, or several melded together
7. An object of magic power
8. Corpses, body parts, and/or refuse
9. Hallucination or warping of perception
10. Giant monster
11. Shape based off viewer's hopes/fears/beliefs
12. Warping of reality in a particular area
13. Natural disaster or weather event
14. Recurring thought, dream, or nightmare
15. A machine, or part of one
16. Normal-looking person
17. Social institution or tradition
18. Embodiment of a cultural ideal
19. Tiny parasite that controls other creatures
20. Huge structure, natural or artificial
Can use the "Monster Mash" table to get specifics for a creature's appearance
Themes (1d20):
1. Memory or identity, realizations about your true nature
2. Urges or drives
3. Morality/ideals
4. Self-control/ability to control dangerous emotions
5. Belief or certainty
6. Change in personality over time
7. Desires or goals
8. Fear of the unknown
9. Perspective/worldview/relation of self and world
10. Reliability of own senses/knowledge/memories
11. Trust in own reasoning ability
12. Fear of (or drive toward) death/oblivion
13. Personal security, trust of society/friends, fear of betrayal
14. Existential despair, void of meaning in existence
15. Dread/awe of deep time
16. Secrets and lies
17. Hatred, resentment, and revenge
18. Guilt, regret, anxiety about the past
19. Inevitability/fate/powerlessness
20. Animal nature of humanity/cruelty of nature
Spooky effects (1d10, roll if the creature/phenomenon is evil or creepy):
1. Infants are stillborn, the very young and very old sicken and die
2. Swarms of insects devour the crops and livestock and fill the air or carpet the ground
3. Infants are born with hideous mutations, which grow more severe as they get older
4. Fresh corpses mumble incoherent predictions of the future, like they're talking in their sleep
5. Little creeping things crawl out of sewers and cesspits and into the ears of sleeping people
6. In the night, people get up and write disturbing notes to themselves, move things around in their houses, with no memory of it in the morning
7. Children have remarkably similar nightmares about a hell-like place, which they remember vividly when awake
8. Cracks open up in stable walls and foundations, bones are found inside
9. Blood-red parasitic worms lay their eggs everywhere, especially in meat, rising out of corpses fat and swollen
10. In graveyards, the dead rise and stumble to the homes they inhabited in life (all at once or a few each night)
Miraculous abilities (1d12, roll if you want it to have superpowers):
1. Can pluck stars out of the heavens, can bring them down to earth if it wishes
2. Can raise the dead in any of a variety of ways (as creepy ghosts, as living people, or whatever)
3. Knows everyone's darkest secrets
4. Can tumble high mountains and towers with a gesture
5. Can rip great chasms in the earth and release trapped horrors or open gateways to hell
6. Can turn day to night and night to day
7. Can bring down a rain of blood (or other unpleasant things, like fire, severed heads, etc.)
8. Can grant people's deepest wishes (if it chooses, can never be compelled if e.g. a wish would harm it)
9. Can kill any person, anywhere, at will
10. Can birth demons and giants or shape them out of earth
11. Can take any form it wishes, or many at once
12. Can cure any infirmity, curse, or other affliction short of death, additionally mutating and modifying creatures to give them new capacities
Objectives (1d20, roll if it's intelligent):
1. Bring about a mass extinction, clearing the way for its greater plan (roll again)
2. Escape more powerful being pursuing it
3. Amuse self by manipulating people, nations, course of history
4. Construct a stronghold to withstand a coming apocalypse
5. Harvest the world's resources for much larger venture (roll again)
6. Shape civilization into something suitable for its overarching objective (roll again)
7. Hunt down and destroy a dangerous rival or threat, or prevent one from arising
8. Set self up as a god
9. Induct all thinking beings into its own vast consciousness
10. Scout out the planet/solar system/universe for its master/masters
11. Transform into/embody/give birth to/create/be a host for a greater being
12. Construct an immense device on or near the planet as part of a larger plan (roll again)
13. Convert world into a hospitable home or afterlife for another species, possibly its own
14. Birth and nurture its spawn or creations
15. Return to its distant home
16. Track down and acquire a particular object or creature
17. Orchestrate a very specific sequence of events to fit the requirements of a greater plan (roll again)
18. End all sentience/all life/everything
19. Determine the answer to some essential query
20. Create a new, perfect world
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