The cave murmurs and sighs. A slow, cycling breath that carries no warmth and no explanation. Deeper within, water chooses to occasionally drip. The dark is total beyond the reach of any flame. Somewhere above, or perhaps below, something shifts in the stone. This cave is not empty. It is never empty. And it is never full.
Simple Cave
This is the ninth entry in our all-in-one encounter generator series. These generators give GMs an [almost] instant tool to create a complex encounter or even an adventure starter. This tool is for anyone needing ideas quickly or just want something to build their original ideas off from.
I really recommend checking out Ben Milton’s Knave 2e and Kevin Crawford’s Without Number series; they were the primary inspiration for these articles. They are brilliant for both worldbuilding and encounter ideas!
How It Works
The process is simple: pick up a d20, d12, d10, d8, d6, and a d4. Roll everything at once. Then, look up the results on the tables below. Combine results where it makes sense to. The tables go from atmosphere (d4 environment, d6 aspects) to scene (d10 features, d20 creatures); narrative developments (d8 complications, d12 secrets) come last.
Of course, there is always the option to pick and choose results as you like; do whatever suits your creative flow. More complex encounters can come from multiple rolls (or picks) and linking them together. To reiterate, do not feel you must link every result into one encounter. Ideas may play out better as separate events rather than a contrived mess.
The track for this article is Simple Cave. It’s available on the MGS store here. Alternatively, it comes as part of the 50 track album RPG Ambiences Vol. 4 which you can find here.
Here is the generator:
Simple Cave Roll Tables
d4 – The Environment
1. Breathing – the cave’s wind is slow, rhythmic, sourceless. Not unpleasant at first, but then it begins to feel deliberate. Almost aware.
2. Deep cold – the temperature drops with each step inward. Breath mists. Torches burn lower. It’s like something is feeding on your heat.
3. The living dark – light sources move unnaturally. Shadows lean the wrong way. Flames bend toward something. It watches.
4. Resonance – sound here amplifies and distorts unpredictably. Whispers carry far further than they should. Sounds from somewhere else bleed through the stones. Voices, they are voices.
d6 – Simple Cave Aspects
1. Murmuring walls – the airflow carries almost-words. Different listeners hear different things. Combining what each hears produces something disturbing. And perhaps coherent.
2. Crystal record – amazing mineral formations resonate with the cave’s breath in harmonics. They also record. Everything said near them has always been recorded.
3. Dark river – an underground waterway flows through the cave. No audible current or visible ripple. And yet, things float past occasionally. The water is bitingly cold and ravenously deep.
4. Bone geography – the floor is deep with bones of creatures that came here to die. Or were brought. The oldest bones are enormous.
5. Fae marks – spirals, knots, and symbols etched into the cave walls at intervals. Some are ancient. Some are fresh. They are not decorative. They are instructions.
6. The colony – hundreds if not thousands of bats roost in the upper dark. Usually motionless, when they stir, it is sudden and total. Something is triggering them.
d10 – Simple Cave Features
1. The echo chamber – a natural depression where sound behaves oddly. Standing in the right place replays conversations years old. Someone learned this before the party.
2. The crack – a fissure, too narrow to enter, too deep to see the bottom. A wind originates from it. So does a smell that makes the stomach hunger.
3. Painted wall – cave art of unknown age. Animals, figures, a hunt. At the centre, something the artists feared, drawn over and over in increasingly frantic strokes.
4. Still pool – perfectly clear but with no visible bottom. The reflections have a delay. They show what happened 24 hours before.
5. The bridge – a natural stone arch over a lightless drop. The wind is dangerously strong here and seems to get stronger with any noise.
6. Offering shelf – a wide ledge covered in votive objects left across the centuries: coins, clothing, tools, weapons, bones. Arranged by type, not age, someone has been maintaining it.
7. Interior mouth – a second opening inside the cave. Smaller, artificially carved, and there’s the faint shimmer of the fae.
8. Fungal cathedral – giant bioluminescent mushrooms in a high chamber. Beautiful and hallucinogenic in concentration. The spores are ready to spread.
9. Carving gallery – names and dates carved into one long wall, going back centuries. All in the same handwriting. The last entry is today.
10. The silence room – the wind stops entirely here. There is no water dripping. No bat squeaks. No resonance. Something lives here and even the cave dares not make a sound around it.
d20 – The Creature(s)
1. The hollow voice – muttering an incomplete equation. Sound only, no source. Asks questions, analyses answers. Searching.
2. Hermit – nibbling lichen. Has made peace with the cave monster. Won’t say the cost. Serene.
3. Cartographer – drawing a map. The map is wrong in ways they cannot explain. Obsessive precision frustrated.
4. Fae exile – humming a rhyme. Banished here. Knows every passage. Dangerous company. Careful.
5. Wounded mercenary – searching for rest of company. In the dark too long. Hears murmurs, starting to believe. Fragile.
6. Grief-stricken pilgrim – trying to contact the dead. Looking for reagents. Desperate.
7. Geologist – cataloguing formations enthusiastically. Unbothered by the atmosphere. Cheerful.
8. Bat speaker – tending bats. A druid, the bats tell them things. Worried and watchful.
9. Stone cultist – making offerings. Believes the cave is a god awakening. Welcoming and unsettling.
10. Trapped spirit – calling for help. Pitiable and, depending on any requests, dangerous.
11. Cave fisher – hunting in the river. Pulls up things other than fish. Angry.
12. Child’s ghost – laughing at their own joke. Not malevolent, but not at peace. Yearning.
13. Scout – prospecting. Seeks gold, comfortable leaving bodies. Happy to trade information. Pragmatic.
14. Fae courier – rushing on a job. Late, the cave wants to stop them. Very tense.
15. Ritual survivor – weeping. The rest are dead. The invoked creature stalked off. Despondent.
16. Ambitious mage – studying the cave. Will harness the cave’s energies without consideration for the cave. Reckless.
17. Young initiate – whispering a prayer. Sent here as a test. Barely passing. Wants company, but won’t admit it. Terrified.
18. Warden – patrolling. Neither fully fae or material. Here for centuries but forgotten their goal. Absent-minded.
19. Mirror stranger – waving to a PC. Identical to them. Here the whole time. Doesn’t accept the impossibility. Calm.
20. Sleeper – snoring. Half-buried. Ancient, enormous. Dangerously naive.
d8 – The Complications
1. The wind turns. Strengthens, pulling everything deeper into the cave.
2. Collapse. A passage seals. A way back opens up, releasing a hungry entity.
3. Resolution. The cave’s murmur suddenly achieves perfect clarity. In that instant, a secret from a PC or the world gets revealed.
4. Bats drop. Every bat roosting in the system drops at once. They are fleeing, not attacking.
5. Missing. A NPC is missing (a messenger alerts the party if one isn’t on hand). The cave has them. The party must decide how badly they want them back.
6. Divergence. Any reflective surface (water, polished armour or blade) no longer shows things as they are. It shows how the cave sees them.
7. A door. Artificial and unmistakenly old. It is slightly ajar and opens to another realm.
8. Offerings disturbed. Whatever arrangement was there has been disturbed. Ancient patience ends. Violence is coming.
d12 – The Secrets
1. Wedged in a crack, a sealed iron box. Rusted shut and yet only a week old.
2. Behind wafer thin limestone, a canvas painting. Old and of great value to local leaders and historians.
3. At the bottom of a still pool, a wooden door. Hinged, air bubbles rising from water-breathing waterweed within.
4. In a blood-splashed backpack thrown on the ground, a powerful healing potion. The other contents are violently smashed.
5. On an offering shelf, a magic dagger. The gifts are for the dagger itself. It is greedy and has no loyalty to its wielder.
6. Scratched onto the floor in many languages, many of them dead, a message. Translation: It already knows you’re here. One sentence is different to the rest; it shares the thing’s weakness to holy water.
7. Behind a crystal stalagmite, a mage’s journal. Within lies the outline for how to change a spell’s damage type.
8. Wrapped in oilskins, supplies. Rope, rations, and a list of names; all of them crossed out except for the last; it’s someone the party knows.
9. In the middle of a mushroom cluster, a magic giant mushroom. Touching it shows visions of what has happened in the cave system (where the roots stretch).
10. Carved into an underground bridge, coordinates, date, and time. They reveal the place and time a mystical dimensional portal opens.
11. Above the bat roosts, red handprints. Thousands of them covering the cave ceiling. All the left hand. All the same same. The index finger is missing on all of them.
12. Mounted in two sconces, two magic torches. While near to each other, they never go out. However, this attracts the undead from the world around.
Example Encounter for Simple Cave
Roll Results:
d4: 1 – The breath
d6: 1 – Murmuring walls
d10: 9 – Carving gallery
d20: 6 – Grief-stricken pilgrim
d8: 3 – Resolution
d12: 4 – Healing potion
My Idea:
The cave murmurs and sighs. A slow, cycling breath that carries no warmth and no explanation. Deeper within, water chooses to occasionally drip. The dark is total beyond the reach of any flame. Somewhere above, or perhaps below, something shifts in the stone. This cave is not empty. It is never empty. And it is never full.
By the carving gallery, a woman sits. She has been here long enough that wax has pooled and reset several times. She is copying ingredients from the wall into a small book. Her daughter’s name is also there, she says without prompting. Third column, two-thirds down. Dated four months ago. The cave put her name here before anything happened. She pleads for the party’s help.
Searching the cave system will find the backpack with the healing potion, surrounded by mauled bodies. In that moment, the cave’s whispers become clear. They are the cries of the pilgrim’s daughter and her friends. They were running from the creature the pilgrim invoked.
The pilgrim seeks reagents to banish the thing, not bring her daughter back. The cave, however, has not forgotten her actions. It will not forget, and neither will the thing.
Using These Tables
A couple of tips when using these tables:
– Try using awkward results before tossing them away. Often it’s the unexpected combinations that build the most memorable stories.
– Modify the tables as you like. Change them; add to them; mix them up. GMs will know what will work best for their own group.
Finally, if you’re curious about the other generators, here is a list with links:
Treant Forest
Bazaar
Baroque Noble Party
Old Fort
Temple of the Stars
Ship in Blizzard
Snowing
Forest River
Have a lovely day!
