thinking abt how fucked up steam engine boiler explosions can look. theyre just pipes under there

gives me the idea of a ghost/monster engine that looks normal, albeit a bit battered, only to swing their smokebox door open and a myriad of pipes come bursting out like fucked up tentacles

I think it’s interesting that tabletop warlock bargains generally operate on the idea of eternal servitude or owning your soul or whatever but there is a world of alternatives that range from funny, dramatic, or just plain interesting. Consider:

• Patron was sealed for a long period of time, and more than seeking their revival, they miss the world and its experiences, and thus seek warlocks who are willing to share their senses with their patron and thus ameliorate the loneliness and fatigue of ages
  
  
• Patron likes money and valuables and will bequeath power in exchange for a warlock who will share their adventuring fortunes. 
  
  
• Patron has a chaotic sense of humor and likes fire and explosions; causing spectacular destruction pleases them.
  
  
• Patron is just kind of a (relatively wholesome) frat bro who gave the warlock powers because they decided the warlock was chill and could hang, maintaining powers hinges on navigating said relationship. Patron may manifest physically for the exclusive purpose of fistbumping warlock if they do something really cool.
  
  
• Patron is a foodie and warlock is a chef traveling the world looking for rare ingredients and lost techniques to construct dishes that please their patron’s palate
  
  
• Patron is a literal patron- warlock is an artist of any form and the patron commissions them for works from time to time.
  
  
• Warlock babysits (or performs another service) for patron, who prefers to pay them in dark powers.
  
  
• Variant on above where warlock is occasionally ordered to perform various esoteric tasks such as delivering an object to a site or obtaining something and sending it to their patron- they are simply running their reclusive patron’s errands as the latter would rather not leave home.
  
  
• Patron and warlock promised to be best friends forever when one or both of them was a small child and patron takes that very seriously
  
  
• Patron likes blood but is disinterested in full-body sacrifices as their particular taste means that some people are exceptionally delectable to them, and it seeks to prolong those people’s lives as long as possible in exchange for semi-regular ‘blood donations’
  
  
• Patron was disembodied and in exchange for being allowed to inhabit the warlock’s flesh, is willing to fight to defend the shared body.
  
  
• Patron specifically seeks to cultivate adventurers and support them throughout their career, in a manner similar to a professional wrestler’s manager.
  
  
• Warlock was a child sacrifice, offered live, at a dark altar; patron has an interesting definition of what ‘the child is now mine’ entails.
  
  
• Patron is an alternate timeline ‘potential future’ of the warlock’s who is either trying to influence events to ensure their timeline or prevent it.

The reason tabletop RPGs use polyhedral dice – in spite of them being such an unlikely thing to have on hand in the pre-gaming-store era, and rare even in the roleplaying hobby’s tabletop wargame predecessors – is because there just happened to be an educational supply store where they could easily be sourced near where the designers of Dungeons & Dragons lived.

The reason that D&D dragons are colour-coded is because the game pre-dates the widespread availability of fantasy minifigs, so they represented dragons using plastic dinosaurs from the local five-and-dime, and those are just the colours that the plastic dinosaurs used to represent each type of dragon happened to be.

The reason that iconic D&D monsters like the bulette, the owlbear and the rust monster exist is because one day, a bunch of bootleg Ultraman kaiju figurines just happened to be mixed in with the plastic dinosaurs, and – being unfamiliar with Ultraman, and the bootlegs in question being almost unrecognisably shitty anyway – they statted up what they thought the figurines looked like.

Sometimes I wonder what the history of the tabletop roleplaying hobby would have looked like if any of those coincidences had lined up just a little bit differently.

thinking abt how fucked up steam engine boiler explosions can look. theyre just pipes under there

gives me the idea of a ghost/monster engine that looks normal, albeit a bit battered, only to swing their smokebox door open and a myriad of pipes come bursting out like fucked up tentacles

Him: “…And the three goblins: Snick, Snack, and Snarl.”

Me: “Still great names.”

Him: “I need to figure out what their ‘bizness’ is.”

Me: “Maybe they don’t even know. ‘Bizness is … rats?’”

Him: “Haha yes. ‘Bats?’”

Me: “What if they’re pest control, hunting rats with spears? Oh, they could have a protection racket! If you don’t pay them enough, they introduce rats on your property! That’s business!”

Him: “…Write that down and remind me later.”

thinking abt how fucked up steam engine boiler explosions can look. theyre just pipes under there

gives me the idea of a ghost/monster engine that looks normal, albeit a bit battered, only to swing their smokebox door open and a myriad of pipes come bursting out like fucked up tentacles