City Events

The City is never dull. When you stagger back to the surface, you enter a chaotic metropolis with all its intrigues, politics, and spectacle.

Before play, the GM should construct a City Events table, detailing potential events that frame the guild’s visit. During this step, the GM draws a major arcana card, consults this table, and interprets the result.

The results need not happen instantly. For example, if the GM draws a rumor on the City Events table, they might have a contract-giver or shopkeeper deliver the rumor to the guild through the course of playing out the City Phase.

The City Events table should have twenty-one entries and follow this formula:

Curiosities (I–V): Curiosities are moments of serendipity. GMs, use these events to inject color into the game. Curiosities create a sense of realness, and are opportunities to demonstrate what kind of City exists in your game. Are curiosity events dark portents like raving madmen calling for repentance under the blood moon or are they bucolic affairs with Punch and Judy puppet shows?

Happenings (VI–X): Happenings are events that frame the lives of the residents of the City. These are the saturnalia, feasts, and holy days that break up the wheel of years. Happenings should make the City Phase feel different to the players.

Visiting the City during a religious festival is much different than visiting during the normal drudge of days. Rumors (XI–XV): Rumors hint at the contents of the Underworld: treasures, monsters, traps, hazards, and history. Rumors are opportunities to tell lore and define the “story” of the dungeon.

Travel events (XVI–XX): Travel events are often things that go wrong in a trip to the City, or a chance to confront the players to make a hard choice.

Signs and Portents (XXI): Signs and portents are special events wherein weirdness has spilled out from the Underworld and complicates life in the City. When drawing this result, the GM looks at the top card of the minor arcana discard pile and then consults the Signs and Portents table (p. 153).

Like the Meatgrinder table, the GM should keep the City Events table tidy and fresh, swapping out used entries with new content (see step 8 on p. 160).

The next page has an example City Events table to serve as a starting point.