Moon Post-Mortem

So I'm close to finishing a campaign, which is good. That doesn't really happen.

It was set on the moon of my usual group's setting, for the moon of Oris is quite special.

It's basically a big mirror. It reflects and interacts with both the the sun and the planet itself, but also the things on the planet, specifically magic. And moons are always magical, they transform werewolves, vampires can't cross a stream full of moonlight, chunks of astral debris are used in all kinds of magic shit, etc.

Many, many, years ago, in a more enlightened age, some wizards sought sanctuary on the moon, a place to practice their craft in peace. And they noticed these strange phenomenons, and utilized them. For every spell or magical act on Oris, a small portion of that was stolen, and reflected on the moon.

As I've said in other posts, magic is everywhere and in everything, so a few refugee wizards soon created a great and powerful society by using the moon as a siphon. They had infinite power, food, materials. Nobody went without and the grandest experiments could be conducted with ease. There were biomes, generations of culture and history, a shining city on a floating hill. It was rumored they could alter the fabric of reality itself, grant wishes like gods.

But something went wrong. Probably greed, that's what the elves would say (but there were wizard elves up there too). The civilization is all gone, some catastrophic event.

The devices of the moon still work, still suck up power. Even after all the cities and experiments have crumbled and fallen apart. There is nothing left but twisted experiments, overgrown ruins, and a metric fuckton of arcane radiation.

The moon is still taking a little share of magic. But as things go wrong, more than just the arcane energy is taken. People are taken, things and creatures are taken. Enter your party. Trapped on the moon in a variety of ways (magical mishaps, one-way portals, dimensional fuckery, random happenstance, you name it.) they must overcome the ravenous hordes of mutants, insane survivors, and dangerous leftovers of a civilization that advanced too far.

 And perhaps, if they venture far enough, they could unlock the Moon's power for themselves, and grant their own wish...

This was post 1 out of ??? and I kinda wanna set it up as a primer for a setting as well as a reflective. The moon became a sandbox where I could get a little more hardcore and weirder than normal. My group was ready for some greater risks and to bring the R to the OS. The lovely bit was is that pretty much anything could happen, so I sprinkled a bit of everything. I learned a lot, and  My main influences were games like LISA, Earthbound, and stuff like Mad Max and Fist of the North Star. Next time I'll get into the nitty-gritty of some places, items, treasure, and THE WARLORDS OF THE MOON.

Bards, HYPE, and More

Bards

have always intrigued me. Not necessarily as a class, but the idea that magic can come from music is a concept I feel can be played with. While it depends on the setting, magic coming from "the power of music" is strange. In Oris, magic is inherent in everything, music included, and Bards just draw from that. If the denizens of the planet are magical, all they do must be magical. How they talk to each other, how they create things, how they shit. If everything has an art to it, (and i believe that) therefore everything and therefore everything can be manipulated by magical means. Wizards spend their life mastering magic and how to manipulate the world, Bards spend their life mastering the world and thus manipulate magic.

Fuck the"bard who just toots a flute makes lightning come out"- that's boring.

Bards should bleed emotion through onto a miniature canvas, washing their foes out with a desire for death that the thunderclouds above cannot help but be overcome.

Pollack would be a very dangerous man

A Bard's song or oration should overcome a crowd with a hatred for the party's foes so crushing that spiders physically manifest ready to devour the foe.

I had a bard npc try to do this to my players. They crushed him with a boulder.

A bard's power comes from their passion, their audience (which is not always people), and their creations. To me, a bard can be anything that creates and puts emotion in what they make. The traditional lute playing bard is 100% fine, but if you wanted to make a bard who just really takes pride in how he lays a brick wall, I'm totally down with that. Get ready for some sweet wall based abilities, maybe graffiti summons? That's for another post.

The Hype Meter

I had a player who was having trouble playing a bard, a character who was far more a lover than a fighter, but still wanted to assist in combat. I had a lot of solutions, some of them were pretty bad. (One involved a rod of wonder, see the before mentioned boulder crushing incident). But for larger fights and big set piece moments, I came up with the Hype Meter, and I think it's pretty good. 

The Hype Meter is a measurement of how much the "crowd" is excited, pumped, full of bloodlust, horny, whatever. If there are people who are watching a barfight, the hype meter is how much they're cheering, drinking, and getting involved themselves. In a war situation, it's how inspired your fellow soldiers are. Whenever I do a big fight with a lot of people who can be watching, I employ a big hype meter. From a game sense, the higher the crowd's HYPE, the more stuff you roll on random tables. The random tables choose what events alter combat in some way, interfering with the enemies, changing the environment, or aiding the players. Depending on the crowd, the effects may not always be 100% good for the players.  A rowdy group of fish-men sailors may put a harpoon in your back as much as the drunks you're brawling with, for instance.

Players can act in certain ways to influence the HYPE, Bards especially. Manipulation of emotion, excitement, and entertainment should be what they do. 

I recommend having a physical representation for the hype meter somewhere everyone can see, it makes it fun. As the meter gets more and more full, the higher the frequency you roll on your random event table, or you expand the table outward, rolling a d20 instead of a d10, and so on. How often you want to roll is up to the intensity of the combat and the scenario.

I like this, the HYPE starts at one die, a d6, every round or so, on a 6, roll on the Random Table. The higher the HYPE, the more d6's you add.
In a situation where morale may tip in different directions, (ie, a battle of the bands with two opposing groups of fans versus a just a neutral bar fight) give the opponent their own HYPE meter and table.

Examples:
Location: A underground combat arena.
Crowd: Nobles and Criminals watching the fights for sport or betting, other fighters around the arena.
Ways to impact HYPE: Grandstanding to the crowd. Executing enemies in creative ways. General show-boating.

Random Combat Events:

1. Garbage is tossed at a random opponent, probably one who isn't contributing much to the HYPE. Reflex or be denied your dex bonus for the rest of the round.
2. Weapons get tossed into the arena.
3. Over excited noble hops down into the fray, with no weapons and no levels.
4. Some drunken reveler presses the "traps" button, spikes shoot out of everything, acid pits open up, etc.
5. The animal cages get opened, 1d4 Lions, Tooth Beasts, or Feral Zamboni's spill onto the stage.
6. Someone has gotten into the rigging over the arena, reflex saves to dodge sandbags, lighting equipment, and stagehands.

Location: A large scale military engagement on an open field.
Crowd: Your fellow soldiers.
Ways to Impact HYPE: Slaying commanders, playing bugles, waving banners, general rallying and goings on.

1. A few troops pause in the battlefield to suppress an opponent with crossbow bolts.
2. Siege weapon fires smack down into the middle of the player's fight.
3. Combat Mages, heal a party member, or get a downed ally out of the fray for ya.
4. Reinforcements push through to your part of the fight.
5. A battle cry or song rises up through the ranks. Panic sweeps the foe, enemy must will save or act cowardly for the next round.
6. A officer from your side joins the fray, or a important figure from the enemy side becomes vulnerable.

These are pretty basic, but you get the drill. I've had cows stampede through a small town, a big barrel of oil get knocked out of a rack and spill all over the inn, snipers set up on an opposing roof. All the works.

New Bard Spells/Items

Bottled Party Ghosts:  Party loving spirits who were contained in a special jar to keep the jams going forever. When smashed allow the Bard to utilize the hype meter in an area where a crowd may not be available. Rolls on the HYPE table will taken on more spectral and probably incorporeal motifs.
Once released will fly off and probably go bother the local villages for wine and party snacks.

Center Focus (Lvl 1???) Magically draws attention to the bard, and any successful performance checks they make add double the amount of dice to the HYPE meter.

Demand Focus (Lvl 3???) As above, but effects allies within 60ft.

Summon Crowd (Lvl 1-5) Calls out to the surroundings to draw a crowd able to get the HYPE meter going, or whatever else you'd need a crowd for. The crowd varies depending on location and DM discretion. If an area doesn't have anyone around, a crowd may not be able to form. The higher level the spell, bigger and crazier the crowd (and the cooler shit you can add to the HYPE table)
Examples:
Level 1: A few villagers/some interested woodland spirits/a few above-average intelligence birds/a squad from a nearby trench pokes their heads out of hiding
Level 5: The whole fucking village/A small army of wasted barbarians/a mass of spirits from the old battlefield awaken/Savage Party Demons from The Party Dimension

"But Mr. Apathy"
I can hear you saying. "This isn't very serious! How is any of this useful for my GRIM and DARK game?"
First of all , it's General Apathy to you, soldier.

I will admit to a certain amount of silliness to this system, but I like a bit of silly. Silly is never bad, even in the most depressing scenario, I always bring in a bit of brevity. It is a game after all.

Second, the Hype meter doesn't just have to turn every fight you use it into a wild college rager. If that was the case then historical cases of combat instrument players shouldn't exist. Sure, they were often used to send messages over long distances and over the roar of combat. But you can't deny the effectiveness as morale boosting and rallying weapon. The Hype meter can and should be used to represent the level of energy an army.

Horrendous colonialism aside, watch this

That's two opposing uses of hype.

What is the Hype Meter good for:

It makes combat more hectic.

That's not always a good thing, but when you need it, accept no substitutes. HYPE keeps things interesting for the bored DM, and makes the environment feel more real. There is a world moving and reacting to the players, so it grounds the story more.

It rewards descriptive players and interesting actions. 

If you have trouble with your players just saying, "i hit the bastard with my sword", you can create a tactile and fairly reasonable way to get them saying shit like "I cleave the bastard in two, and then spin around and chop his head off, then raise it up to the crowd, roaring out insults." That's a bit better, yeah?

It gives players something to do.

The cleric is out of spells or something? He can now start appealing, swinging a banner around or coming up with some kind of "Remember the Alamo" style catch phrase. Most fights have somebody shining through, this spreads the spotlight around a bit. 

That bard I made this gimmick for? He stopped playing pretty soon after. Nobody in my group has made a bard since.

Oh well. 

Quirky Dungeon Generator

Tables, tables are good, let's do some tables for a Dungeon. This is silly but my games are all kinda silly and abstract. I have an image to keep up.
You could roll these all together and have some really wack results, I might expand on my own rolls later. Feel free to pick and choose what you like, as I know that's what you'll do anyway.

The Dungeon Theme

1. Fire/Water/Earth/Sauce Elemental Gimmick: Predictable, but predictable can be good, having an obvious theme lets your players prepare.

2. Sound/Music Dungeon: Entire rooms are musical instruments (great idea for a giant bell trap). Sound Elementals, manic bards blasting avant-garde music, normal monsters but also screaming.

3. Wizard Brothel Dungeon: Clouds of perfume, pillows all over everything.Wizards can live a long time, get ready for very esoteric fetishes. Including your standard dungeon perils.

4. Living dungeon: Maybe it's trying to eat you, maybe it's a big magic snake that you need to cure of food poisoning. Lots of acid damage, shifting rooms, and parasites that serve as random encounters.

5. Advanced Technology Dungeon: Goblins have found plasma weapons, giant "strange iron golems" that are totally not robots, extremely valuable and fragile machinery lying about everywhere. Terrible super weapons are released on the world via tempting control consoles and buttons.

6. Manlove Dungeon: A chapel dedicated to all things physically fit and beautiful, in the Ancient Greek sense. Arm wrestling tournaments for loot, sentient mirror doors complement your built glutes. Animate muscular statues ignore the player with the most STR and CHA to motivate the others to get in shape. There's a post coming about The Church of Manlove, they deserve one.

7. A Vein To The Wood Mines: Deep roots of a massive tree or underground plant are harvested here. Fight the Shepard Dorfs and their metal flocks. St. C'thpert leads the wood mining orphans in prayers and stranger lynching. The rocks are saturated with life-essence, and they have needs. Weird, eldritch, unterdark stuff goes here.

8. Warehouse Dungeon: Storage for something, lots of crates full of basically anything. Go buck wild with random tables. Stored exotic foods have spoiled and created mini ecosystems in different aisles.

9. Prison Dungeon: Something's locked up here, the lame choice is demons. The cool choice is imprisoned ideas, or something strange like thousands of locked up pigeons. Who locked up all these pigeons? Why? Should they be released? No matter what, expect giant construct wardens and panopticons.

10. Lush and living forest-y dungeon. Massive trees, ferns, or mushrooms. Colorful megafauna or maybe just a bunch of weird flightless birds. Terrible, terrible diseases, rotting your flesh as soon as a wound opens. Ticks that bite through plate armor and dig in deep, towards the vital organs. Mind controlling fungus spores.

11. Flavor-cultist dungeon. Is it too early for me to be making call backs to earlier ideas? Probably. Mounds of leftovers come to life. Demons demand to know where you put the hell-lamb sauce. Enslaved interns need help with dishes, as their taste buds have been excised.

Salvador Dali

12.  Surrealist Dungeon: Every dimension has been twisted wrong, including the 4th. Walking on the floor feels like purple. Play with stuff like synesthesia: When your players enter a room, give them a flavor of something instead of a description. Perhaps time doesn't flow right here, start the party at the end of the dungeon, and make them trace their way back. Perhaps the entire dungeon is the psyche of the players, and they must fight their own existential dreads made malleable.

The Dungeon's Gimmick

1. It's relatively safe when you go in, just full of clues of what's going on. But when you find the treasure/ancient evil/terrible secret, escaping becomes super dangerous (all the traps/monsters/waterwheels activate)

2. There's a terrible nigh-invincible monstrosity roaming around, but there's probably a secret to beating it somewhere inside.

3. There's a power source running throughout the place, it can be dangerous (electrocution, magical radiation, burns) but manipulating it can open new areas or frag monsters.

4. The dungeon has a time limit. Maybe it floods during high tide, maybe it's slowly dissolving you, or the entrance/exit is only open during the total eclipse.

5. Environmental requirements on equipment. The laser traps won't activate if your head is covered, the ghosts accept anyone who is well dressed enough for their dinner party. Pacifism fields will not allow anyone to enter who is carrying a weapon.

6. Parts of the dungeon move, either as part of a puzzle, to help you progress, or just to make things really complicated.

7. There are competing factions, races, or ecosystems in the dungeon, that can be pitted against each other, or may have thing that are needed to fully explore.

8. Everything in the dungeon is some kind of imitation. If it's full of life, everything is actually mechanics or clockwork. Or the stone ruins are all fleshy and living underneath.


Dungeon Entrance:

1. The foot of a carved mountain. Ancient, blocky gods carved out of stone watch your passage. Ghosts speak violence through water filled gullies.

2. Underwater cavern, in a lake or ocean. I don't care which. Underwater caves scare the shit out of me.

3. A door on the flat side of a very high plateau. There are no stairs and very scarce footholds. Scaffolding, anyone?

4. There is a secret door into the dungeon via the wizard's bookshelf. The secret switch is in his bathtub.

5. The passage way into the dungeon only exists as a small drawing, which must be found and drawn accurately on a wall to form an actual door.

6. A trapdoor buried in the sand on a beach somewhere.

7. A door in the mouth of a sentient tree. It needs to be convinced of a good reason to let you into what it thinks is a home for someone (it's not sure who). Unless you give a good reason (door to door salesmen, traveling preachers of a nature god, an invitation etc.) it will loudly tell everyone in the dungeon you are arriving, what you look like, and some guess on what you'll do. The tree is a great judge of character and has a pretty sound understanding of adventurer tactics.

8. Bottom of a well in the middle of a small village. The townspeople know about it, and they don't want you fucking around with it. You could fuck up the water supply or bring what is ever down there, up here.

9. A cave inside a massive, floating iceberg. It can be used by the inhabitants as means of defense (for obvious reasons), or perhaps it acts like a giant floating fortress, raiding islands, ships, and coastal towns as it drifts by them.

10.The entrance is only made manifest after completing a list of strange and dangerous actions all across the city. Murder someone, leave a piece of fruit by the noble's bed table, carve a obscene gesture into the wall of the church, etc. etc. Once you are finished, there will be a building in town that was never there before, but nobody seems to notice.

11. They thirteenth grave in the unmarked beggar's lot holds the secret. Be buried inside and wake up inside the dungeon. After you suffocate to death first.

12. An eternal flame, as large as a bonfire, rests by an old road. It is a shrine to some nameless saint. Passing through the fire will teleport you inside.

Dungeon Shape:

1. Standard branched paths to explore, like tree roots or a mine.
2. Tessellating geometry.
3. A biiiig circle, or better yet, a Lemniscate (basically a long repeating hallway, perhaps it keeps generating encounters? )
4. A rough spiral. Perhaps it branches off into more spirals?
5. Open floor plan dungeon. Lots of non-permanent barriers to divide rooms. You can see bad stuff from far away, but they can usually see you. Fashionable.
6. Large, 3D shape, a floating globe to explore, or maybe a pyramid of some kind. Usually pretty big, but the shape usually helps with finding your direction.

Strange Rooms/Random Oddities:
1. The Living Paintings: Works of art come alive, landscapes change the terrain, portraits try to drag you in, abstract pieces pull and cut you apart, their lines becoming sharp. They want you to add a piece to the collection, an easy way to escape, but you've given them a new weapon to use against their next victims.
2. A shrine to the God of Cool Bugs. Offerings of rad bugs hiding throughout the place will yield boons and blessings.

3. The room of expectation. A massive black obelisk door sealed with chains. It will be locked shut, unless the door hears speculation on what is behind it. Whatever is speculated will be made true. Vague guesses like "great treasure" will come back to bite them in the ass. Forcing the door will only lead to more locked doors.

4. A large circular room or set of rooms, a trail of blood and conflict is rife throughout all of them. A talented investigator loops through this area, following the trail. It is his own trail however, he is stuck in an temporal loop. He is brilliant and a good conversationalist, but has no clue what is happening to him.

5. A vending machine which sells rations, refreshments, and some potions and other goodies. It doesn't take your coins, however, only a specific currency only found around the dungeon.

6.A simple stone controller panel attached to the wall. It lets you control a large metal golem somewhere else in the dungeon. But there's no way to see the golem from the room with the controller.

7. A pizza oven, lit, with an assortment of toppings to put on some ready made dough. No tricks to this one. Just pizza role-play, if the adventurers are hungry and trusting enough.

8. Stone portcullis that enchants those who cross it with color-blindness. The only way to break the spell is to rub a purple rose upon your eyes. The following room is full of different color roses.


Unique Treasure: 
1. Skin Needle, when you sew your clothes with it, it pulls your skin apart to use as thread. It deals 1d6 damage to you, leaving uncomfortable cuts around your fingers. However, clothing sewn with this will spring back with hot blood-wire the first time it is struck, dealing 1d6 to a melee attacker. If it is a ranged attacker, the torn skin sews up your own wound, healing for 1d4. You will need to re-sew the clothes after every use.

2. A revolver, loaded with 6 different bullets. They all look the same, and the only way to tell what each one does is to fire it:
[1] Where ever it hits creates a 30' square of noxious gas. Fort save or spend the next turn retching and puking. [2] A BANG flag comes out of the gun cartoon-style. [3] The bullet is alive, dealing normal damage on impact, but begins tearing into the flesh, doing an additional 1d6 every turn on  a living target until it is dug out. [4] The bullet is coated in an old, very deadly disease. It's so old people aren't really immune to it anymore, so it's probably gonna spread. [5] The bullet flops out of the gun, right in front of you. Inside is a small note with a encouraging message. [6] The bullet disappears after being fired, but will return in a moment of need for the owner of the gun, saving their life by hitting someone/or something relevant.

3. A large book, sections of stoneware bottles are hidden in cut out compartments inside. The bottles are filled with deadly poisons. Previously owned by a famous assassin.

5. Scroll of Make Bananas Immovable. (Ala immovable rod)

6. A drinking horn of "infinite wine", covered in painted pictures of thieves. The horn actually pulls wine from the stockades of the great barbarian warlord HAUL-THE-DEAD, and he will be very unhappy when he finds out about it.


Other Explorers:
1. Mike Windfield: a level 1 bard. Dirty clothes, dirty blond hair, dirty mind. Cheery and kind of an idiot, with an almost suicidal tendency to get in trouble. Wields a guitar with a very dangerous version of a rod of wonder attached to it. Carrying expensive food rations but precious little other survival gear. He's looking for babes. If you are kind to him at all he'll follow you around making too much noise and touching everything. If you are mean to him he'll do the same.

2. Benné Craywcth'ta: Level 2 fighter, leather armor, calm demeanor. Looking for work and a wife. Is very tall and wields a large long sword. He carries an old but technically advanced revolver, but it has no ammunition.  If he likes ya he'll share jokes and advice about the area, if you piss him off probably just tell you to "cool it".

3. Jebirdiah Zha: Level 1 wizard. Wears merchant class business clothes. Alcoholic. Came here looking for ancient secrets, lost her group, now just wants a drink. Always had more charisma than innate talent. Suave and friendly, but otherwise pretty useless now. Carries three random wands, and full bartender's set, with a few bottles of expensive liquor.

4. LOSE-THE-FRIENDS: Level 5 ork barbarian. Last of member of a very cruel tribe, but that tribe was wiped out, and LOSE-THE-FRIENDS was raised by decent people instead. Wears bear furs. Very friendly, but not too bright. Cries when he fights, and hates violence, though he is quiet good at it. Wields a massive stone table, treat as a great hammer in his hands. Is looking for another ork, as he has never seen one yet. Carries fresh meat, some javelins, and a stuffed animal.

5. Simiale, a sentient suit of armor, patrols these halls. It wields a matching sword and shield to its shiny brass armor. Very polite, and speaks in a manner that is hard to place. Distressed, and asks you to confirm if it really is a floating suit of armor (it already knows, but keeps asking people out of  desperate denial). Looking for a way to end its' curse, or even just answers about its past. It remembers a knight who wore the armor that it now is, but cannot remember if it was the knight put into the armor, or the armor itself come alive. Carries little but a locket with a portrait inside, but the face has been rubbed away.

6. Veddrick Balentine: Slick black hair, and noble robes. Insists on you calling him "Veddy". Terrible person who is looking to rob you as soon as he can. Carries a slick black knife of +1, a crossbow with 20 bolts, and a vial of paralyzing poison. Has little food or gold and is becoming desperate. Runs away after being hit once, but will guerilla you for the rest of the dungeon, and maybe even further after that, if you are wealthy enough.

Apocalyptic Time

The title sounds cooler than what this post is about. This post is about how people in your setting might think. Really quick food-for-thought-type-shit.

Back in real-life medieval times, time had a different meaning for most, if not all, of the population. Nowadays, in our books and in our minds time works like this:

Simple shit, right? Time moves forward, we progress as a society, we save up money/knowledge/other shit, give it to our youth and so on. Things get better, technology and our understanding of the world advances. It's what makes modern times "modern." 

But what if you're a dirt poor serf who has been making food on his lord's land for the past eight generations? You don't have anything to look forward to. Your average medieval family will never move on past their little square of dirt that they don't actually own. You're just waiting around until whatever god decides it's time for the apocalypse. You try to be a faithful, decent, person have a family, and then die. Money cannot be saved up for very long. Modern science, modern philosophy, modern medicine, the fucking concept of modernity doesn't exist. You don't keep history books because it's been basically the same for the last hundred years, and there is no reason for anything to change for the next one hundred. 

Your time looks like this. 

I was a history major, not an art major, okay?

In our world's medieval Europe, it was the peasants waiting for the second coming.

The majority of the populace in my setting, Oris, mostly think this way. Most cannot even conceive of anything else.  You are waiting until death, or the church tells everyone it's time for everyone to finally "go home".

 There are wizards, of course, there are always wizards. And kings, rulers, and wealthy people who have grander designs for their heirs. The Game is still played, of course. But do these people really think in straight lines, moving forward?
On Oris it's not a game of who will win the right to the future, it's who will be remembered at the end.
And the end is fucking coming.
The gods are disappearing from the sky, and religions without pantheons are springing up. Nobody knows where these people get their powers from, and one church has taken over a third of the continent within 300 years. It's scaring the shit out of everyone else.

The Magus-King of the Magi Lamentorious wants to be there to see it.
So does The Last Empress, but she toils in spite of it all, against the Militant-Corporations who hope enough gold will shield them when the final day is here.
This is The Game, the war for the right to exists until the end (and maybe claim what is left after.) Sometimes its about achieving immortality, sure, but other times its the about preserving an idea, a family name, or a purpose.
The Game deserves its own post, so I'll stop there. I guess the point I wanted to make is: how we think about the future and where society is headed is a relativity new concept in the history of man. So take that and run with it.

THE CLOUD THE CLOUD THE CLOUD

Before every session,

I like to ask my players a character building question or two, something inane and innocuous to get them in the right frame of mind. (also as a way to buy time while I do last minute prep) Simple stuff like "what's your favorite color?" or "if you could write a letter to someone right now, who would it be?"
It gets them in the mood to play their characters and gives the GM a little extra information.
This is an old left over from my acting days, and while I forget sometimes, I find my players like it.
 I cannot recommend it enough.

Always keep notes when they answer. Occasionally have them write it down and pass it in as a note, if it involves a secret the others don't know. Keep these secrets, they are useful.
Make sure one is "what was the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you?"
I will explain later.

After you collect these little snippets, sit on them.  Wait until your players have almost forgotten which particular answers you asked.
Then use it on them!
It doesn't have to be just used against them, you don't want them feeling punished for sharing more about their character. A pen pal uncle, or a fear of spiders, can be a exploited for weakness, sure, but can also provide opportunity for grounding the players in the world.
Surprise them with a handwritten letter (with a little bit of gold) from Uncle Grumsbludd a year after they told you about him. It's much easier than getting them to write out an introduction for each character, especially if your game is higher on mortality.

Anyway, here's a monster/trap that does the opposite. Remember that "most embarrassing thing" question?

The Sensitive Know-Mound 
It looks like a large spider that has just shed its exoskeleton, but jellied and fleshy.
 It stirs a bit in the stale air, was that a breeze, or is it breathing?
In the dark corner of a cave or tomb, it can almost seem alive.
 But it is not exactly a monster, as anyone attempting an attack will find out.
 Any weapon or spell easily tears into its odd flesh, and if they do a cloud of spores pour out from the damaged fungal sac.

The spores are the real enemy, it floats in the air and sends small electrical signals to function together like a neural hub, and while unable to defend themselves in any physical way, they can read minds really fucking well. (Say a 30ft radius) With this information, it can make faint images appear within it.
It starts out by just driving you away, showing things you don't want to see, foggy images of embarrassing moments that you haven't shared with everyone. (Hence why you asked the embarrassment question.)
 This alone won't deter players though, so the spore cloud gets creative. It starts with embarrassing truths, but then jumps to incriminating lies. It will single out whoever the group suspects the most, as the cloud can tell. The cleric whose religion kinda sketches everyone out? The cloud shows them drowning babies. Images of the roguish type robbing allies. That kind of stuff.

Local legend says its a hallucinogen that shows only the ugly truth, and it's led to quite a few mob justice executions.

Lighting it on fire triggers its reproduction cycle, and it will grow and stick on your clothes, forming lumpy fungal mounds, and can easily suffocate a grown man.  The cloud of spores can be blown away with a strong wind, and water makes it clump together into a heavier solid form, thereby drowning it.



Warning: This is good for creating a little bit of party tension, but I never find two players killing each other to be very fun.

Be careful with this unless you can trust your players to not fuck it up. Its a challenge where the answer is trusting your pals or figuring out the spore cloud's lies. This bad boy works great against hirelings too, forcing morale checks and sowing distrust, especially since the players likely won't know them as well.

THE CRUMB GOLEMS OF THE FLAVOR DIMENSION

The flavor dimension is the little subsection of hell where the horrors of gluttony intermingle with the sins of pride and vanity. This is what the Church says, but it may just be demons who like to cook.

It is certainly more about pride than gluttony, at the very least.

It is the art of cooking turned pure obsession, flavor, presentation, service, all taken and perverted by the Things In The Dark. You will never summon a demon from this dimension with just a large and wasteful amount of bland food. You must make art. The human version of foie gras? A start.
The creature who looks back in your summoning pot? You WILL call him chef. And you will learn. You will scour the earth for ingredients, form a sous-cult with those who follow you.
Your cheese will weep tears of maggots. Your drinks will squirm and crawl in the gut.
Your meals will almost always be poisoned, as the guests who have died in the ecstasy of one dinner will become the cooking-stock for the next.
You will get used to the smell of durians.

I've had an idea for a Chef-cultist class, something like a Rogue/Cleric hybrid where they get their version of a sneak attack after using spells and items to "season" the enemy. It goes something like this:

Hit die: d8,
Weapon/Armor Proficiencies as Rogue plus special culinary tools (can add "Seasoning" effect)
Skills as Cleric, replace religious knowledge with culinary knowledge.
Level 1: Fillet: 1d4 damage for each instance of Seasoning applied to the foe. Spells as Cleric level 1.
 Spell "Flavor imbue": a cook a meal with at least an hour prep time, and anyone who eats even a bit of it counts as one instance of Seasoned
Level 2: spells as  Cleric level 2
Level 3: Fillet 1d6 per seasoning stack
Level 4: Spells as Cleric level 3
Level 5: Fillet 1d8, and something else special.

I like that, just need to add extra spells and fluff. Here are some ideas:

Fried Golems:
Made from when the sizzling fat that gets scraped away from the pan and collected. Always cooking and spraying burning juices. Always screaming, if they are given a mouth.
3 HD, 10 STR 12 CON
Sizzle: Whenever the Fried Golem is struck with a blunt weapon, it sprays its juices in a 10ft area around itself, reflex or take 1d6 fire damage. They can activate this ability themselves by spending a turn to wring themselves out.

Crumb Golems
Bread-y scraps of dough, flour, and crust formed together. Stronger and more reliable than the Fried Golems. Vulnerable to pigeons.
Small 3 HD, 1d6 Slam, Large 5 HD, Colossal 10 HD 1d12 Slam
Doughy: immune to piercing weapons. When hit with more than 1/3rd HD of fire damage, burns and inflates to uselessness.

Wicked Meat Injector:

Like this but designed for melee combat

Damage and stats as a rapier,  Strength check to discharge its contents into a struck foe, dealing 1d4 CON damage. If appropriate ingredients are injected, will count as a Seasoning stack. Secondary injections deal no CON damage but allow for more Seasoning stacks, if the injected ingredients are different.
 It may do more damage/have other effects depending on what you fill the injector with. Failing the strength check discharges the contents with no effect. Must be reloaded after each injection, taking a full round action.
Seasoned livers from poisoned victims: add a fort save for poisons used.
Mutagen blood pudding: roll on your favorite mutation table. (I will make one eventually)
Boiled Razor Urchins: 1d4 Bleed effect.
Salt: That's pretty fucked, I'd say like a flat -2 to rolls due to the pain.
Perhaps an arrow/bolt version that only deals 1 CON damage on a failed save, but still adds the "seasoned" effect?

Psychic Boil Aura
Level 3 enchantment. Duration: Permanent  Range: 30ft radius. Causes the brain to cook in the head by use of psychic damage, causing wisdom damage for all those not chosen for protection by the caster. Deals 1d4 damage every hour, and must be centered on a foci dedicated to the Flavor Dimension. Brains of those who die from such an effect are, naturally, quiet a delicacy.

Nine Useless Spells

A wizard is at his best when he is most prepared. But preparation takes work, and who's gonna sit down and prepare a bunch of fireball spells on the way to the grocery store?
Here's a list of mundane and combat-ineffective spells I made. Replace a few of these on a wizard's spell list when the party catches them off guard. Also good to slip these in found spell-books for a few laughs.

Level 1 Spells/Cantrip-ish spells

Erazma's Efficient Bed-making
Makes a bed so nice you could bounce a silver piece off of it. In combat: pretty useless, but in rooms covered in sheets and pillows it can act as Entangle. Perfect for when the prostitute turns out to be an assassin.

Mersault's Salivating Seasoning
Enchantment. Makes bad things taste better. Impress guests.  Helps you quaff the shitty tasting potion.

Attentiveness 
Enchantment, Self or Ally. 6 hours. Prevents drowsiness and keeps the mind focused. Good for long study sessions as well as long meetings. Useful in the field for remembering parts of dungeons, or that important persons name. Couple with the gracefulness spell below for Wizards who dump charisma.

Illusory Clothing
Always walk around naked.  You're a wizard. You don't need to wear clothes! Can turn into a perfect replica of any outfit that you know fairly well. Great for disguises and such. Realize in horror that the supermarket has an anti-illusion field and that you can never return there.

Percy's Protection from Rain
Like an umbrella, but instead a haughty abuse of the mystical powers. In combat: there are plenty of things that work just like rain but are far more lethal.

Brett's Bubble Bath 
Relax in any body of water with a rejuvenating and magically infused soap/bath salt enchantment. In a water environment can act as a bubbly Fog Cloud with a reflex save to get soap in their eyes, blinding them until they can wash it out.

Level 2-3 Spells

Dust Barrier
Enchantment. self or area, Pushes dust out of a fixed domicile, making housekeeping problems into grounds-keeping problems. Lasts for a week. In combat: could be a fast way to defend against assholes who throw sand. Can be used to clean out sections of a dungeon if you're worried about fires and sneezing.

Gracefulness
Enchantment, self or ally. Calms the nerves and works to prevent tripping and other cases of spaghetti spilling. +2 Bonus to diplomacy check to not make a fool of yourself. In combat: would give +4 bonus when dealing with difficult terrains or slippery shit. How many important wizards use this spell daily? More than you'd think.

Bug Zapper
Enchantment. Self or ally. 1d4 Electric damage to any small creatures that come in contact with you like the modern invention. Won't hurt anything  larger than a humming bird. Good for fending off malaria, great for giving you immunity to insect swarms.

These are dumb and probably covered by better spells in whatever game you're playing. But I like to use stuff like this to remind the everyone that the arch-lich hates spiders just as much as everyone else.

Wrath in Silence

Spiteful Mockingweed

In case you haven't seen evil tumbleweed before.

They say when a songbird becomes too jealous of its own sibling's voices, it will murder them right in their nest. This bloodied home of feathers, bone, and twigs will become a Spiteful Mockingweed. 

It's a dark, brackish, and dried up ball of sponge-like pores and spider-like hairs. It looks sort of like a large and evil tumbleweed, and it mostly acts just like one. But there is purpose in its  journey. It is constantly breathing and exhaling, separating these jobs between each half of its pours. This allows it to both make noise and to propel itself in a poor form of levitation. It drifts lazily through its home forest in large, sweeping circles.

It is trying to murder all those who would match its song.

 It is always singing.
The song is not heard until it attacks. It is a whisper of The Spiteful Mockingweed's surroundings reflected back hatefully. Any living creature that is near the Mockingweed and makes a noise gets that noise repeated back in its own ears almost instantaneously. This is a difficult thing for the average brain to process. The Mockingweed prevents most speech and gives a feeling of disorientation and anxiety.
After confusing the "offenders", it murders them by turning up its volume to intense decibels directly into the ear.  It targets one victim at a time, as any other creatures can only stumble around unable to even scream for help. Most animals flee this unnatural hate-bush if they can, but birds cannot time their wing movements well with the sound distorted. Mammals run in circles as one of their senses betray their instincts, every footstep sounding like the wrong direction. The would kill whole forests worth of life, but it is only driven by a vague wrath , moving slowly and only attacking out of opportunity, never perusing very far.
For defense, it can rapidly exhale to dodge attacks, with startling bursts of speed. Also the "body" of the creature is rather irritating when it comes into contact with skin.

Stats:
Hit Dice 3 AC 16
Str  4 Dex 18 Con 8
Size: Small or Medium (+1 HD)
Movement: Drifts lazily at 10'
Silent Scream: Like a jet engine sneaking up on you and blaring in your ear. 1d6+4  sonic damage.  Fort save to be deafened for 1d4+1 rounds. (This deafening doesn't block out the song, but all other noise)
Hateful Feedback Song:  The Spiteful Mockingweed's song plays constantly in an 100ft circle centered around itself. Any creature that has functioning eardrums or ears not completely sealed off from the environment are effected.  Effected creatures cannot speak normally, their words come out as stutter-y gibberish. Any spells with verbal components cannot be cast. 20% chance of a random spell that the caster knows being fired off instead should the poor sod be unaware of the song. Also, Will save or be Confused for as long as they are in the radius of the song. Creatures who save cannot be effected again for 24 hours. Should a creature who suffers from having a stutter enter the zone of the song for the first time, they are unaffected and instead are permanently cured of their speech disorder.
Itchy Fur-Brambles: The Spiteful Mockingweed is made up of a stiff, hairy, nest-like exterior. Melee attacks on the creature risk being covered in dried hairs like an itching powder, and must make a fortitude save or suffer -2 to all rolls until they can wash it off. This dry body also makes the Mockingweed vulnerable to fire attacks, such attacks doing double damage as it immolates like dry timber.

Treasure: Gems, coins, and other shiny trinkets that collect as it rolls and floats about, as well as left-over from when it was a nest. 70% chance assortment of 2d20 worn silver coins, 20% chance uncut garnet or sapphire, 10% chance random, small magical trinket, from your favorite table of such. (I promise to make one eventually)
The body could also be made as a effective itching powder, fort save 15 or as the Mockingweed's Bramble effect.

Dusty Blowgun
If the remains are well intact, the branches could be made into an weapon of sorts, firing sonic attacks as normal arrow (1d6). Dex to aim, doesn't require ammo but is much louder than a solid projectile. Deafens on a natural 20. 50ft range.

The Mockingweed is more of a hazard than a true monster, but is a mean surprise in a random encounter. It is not always alone, however. Despite its contempt, it can (albeit unknowingly) play well with others. It is a favorite weapon of certain Inquisitors of the Burning Dove, who dumb and deafen themselves to hunt blasphemer-mages and avoid blasphemy themselves. They keep them in big baskets on their back when they hunt in isolated areas.

The Silent Kelphit, cursed sprites of the forest who are completely soundless, they follow Spiteful Mockingbirds as they drift along, feasting on their victims, setting traps and even aiding the creature in its indiscriminate hunt.

Silent Kelphit
HD: 1
Size: Tiny
Str 8 Dex 18 Int 14
Movement: Flies, 60'
Tiny Bows and Arrows: 1d4 Damage
Curse of Quiet As long as a Silent Kelphit remains focused on an individual and can see them, that creature is effected by a curse of total quiet. They can only hear the gurgles and squelches of their own organs and, of course, anything that happens to be whispering directly in their ear.
When a creature is effected by the Curse of Quiet they fail all saves against the Spiteful Mockingweed's song or sonic attack.