Player Race/Class: Muppet

[found years later in drafts, presented as unfinished]

Lisa Simpson: Dad, what's a Muppet? 
Homer Simpson: Well, it's not quite a mop, and it's not quite a puppet, but maaaan! (laughs) So to answer your question, I don't know.

You are a fuzzy puppet creature.
(HD, saves, weapon/armor proficiencies and to-hit as thief/rogue/specialist)

Free Henchman / Muppet logic
You start with a Level 0 henchman, your puppeteer. He is an affable sort, maybe a bit world-weary. The important thing to remember is that he is your henchman, you, the muppet, are in control and they are just helping. If your helper is killed, you will have to engage in complex meditations for a week or spend (10 x henchman level) gp to instantly perform the binding ritual with a new helper.

Your muppet body is resilient to physical damage but vulnerable to fire. It can be repaired using sewing equipment, felt, fabric, and stuffing or makeshift materials even. If your helper is incapacitated or killed, however, you become a floppy, nearly immmobile doll. A fellow party-member can puppet you during this time, but all of your attacks and actions will be taken at disadvantage.

Muppet Paths
There are two types of muppet. Most muppets are very happy with their felt and wire construction, seeking as they adventure to perfect their abilities and become ever more muppet-y. A minority of muppets, however, is dissatisfied with their being, they wish to become flesh and blood and bone. Some see this as abomination and corruption, others as a fancy or a perhaps-distasteful choice. These latter muppets will use sorceries and horrible alchemies to graft flesh and skin to themselves.

At third level, choose whether you wish to remain a muppet or embark on the path to fleshood.



Muppet Aspects - randomly gain a new aspect on leveling up
1. Cookie Monster
Automatically save once vs poison from something you eat today. Additionally, if you have cookies you can frenziedly eat them to gain HP equivalent to a health potion.
2. Bunsen & Beaker
You can spend an hour to craft a potion of cure wounds or a vial of poison.
3. Kermit
Dressed in a reporter's trench coat, you can make a gather information check with advantage / a +4 bonus
4. Elmo
Once per day you can cast charm person / monster at a level equal to your character level.
5. Gonzo (the great)
At level one gain 1 skill point in "inhuman stunts" A successful save means you take no damage from doing something really stupid (eat a car tire, shoot yourself out of a cannon, high-dive into a thimble of water.)
6. Animal
You can rage like a barbarian, a number of times per day equal to half your level (minimum one)
7. Count von Count
You can discover (count) how many HP a creature has at-will. You are compelled to proclaim this number aloud. You generally get a bit obsessed with numbers.
8. Snuffalupagus
You get an extra helper
9. Oscar the Grouch
You love trash, gain resistance to disease/poison
10. Stadler and Waldorf
Once per day you can make a cutting remark that will completely demoralize its target.

Tailing mechanic

My players recently decided to tail a henchman for one of the local gangs through the city hoping to figure out the location of the gang's hideout. I came up with this (fairly simple) mechanic on the fly:

1. Players tell the DM if they're tailing the mark up close, nearby or at a distance. 
2. Each 'round', roll two d6'es - one to see if the mark spots the tail and the other to see if the party loses the mark in a crowd.

	Close	Nearby	At a Distance
Did we lose em?	6	4-5+	2-3+
Did they see us?	2-3+	4-5+	6

This would probably do better as a d10 or larger die to give a different distribution but for now it is what it is.

Players can take steps to improve their odds through concealment, use of terrain, crowds or other artifice. If the mark spots the tail, then you can run it as a chase or a fight, and if the tail loses the mark, well, better luck next time.

The Hoedowners - A Dumb Gang

Fighting Strength: 104  members

Leadership: "Mad Tex" Callahan, a warlord of the hootenany, completely chaotic and generally unhinged in disposition.

Their tactics tend towards: rowdy frontal assault, close enough quarters to get to stomping. All members wear hobnail studded boots, often with blades in the toe as well. Go to battle with a troupe of musicians to keep time and throw them into dancing frenzy. Wise members will shout out "Calls" to dancers to perform certain steps, imbuing them with magical potency.

Favored armaments: Lassos, pistols, afforementioned boots, 
Colors: gingham and/or polka dots. Fashion tends to look like outragious charicatures of western wear. 

Many prefer elaborate tattoos of complex dance  step-diagrams


They love DANCING. THEY FUCKING LOVE IT. But they HATE sailors, who they believe make a mockery of a good dance with their shanties and jigs.

The Silver Men

You may find standing, on one of the busy corners of New Croton, a strange statue, glittering in silver and completely motionless. No one ever sees a silver man coming or going, only standing in a place as if they were always already there, though they may not have been just that morning.

Deposit a silver or gold piece in the hat or case before them and they spring to motion, performing strange motions and gesticulations. Hours and days might go by, were you to stand and watch, and the silver man would remain motionless, without food or drink, until precisely the moment a token was put before them.


Attacking a silver man is a crime and considered abhorrent behavior, however it is also taboo to provide them with any support or engage with them beyond giving them coin (many would look down on this practice as well).


Rumors

• No one has ever heard a silver man speak, but were they to do so they would always speak prophetic truths.
• Some believe that the coin they collect is used not for material support of their activities, but in the creation of new silver men through alchemical or magical means. The proponents of this belief will share stories of silver men resembling missing friends and relatives 
• The motions of silver men are actually miracles, blessings and curses apportioned to someone, somewhere. It is even less certain whether proper offerings can allow the donor to wish for specific things.
• The silver men all worship the great rider of waves, and they have trained themselves to be in stasis that they may last until his return at the end of the world.
• The silver men are not and never were human beings, they are mechanical in nature, constructs whose original purpose is not known. Giving coins triggers some aspect of their long-lost programming
• A silver man is created when a miser dies, painfully fused with the coin they avariciously coveted.
• There are also gold and copper men.

Some Viziers

Viziers. Ministers, functionaries, political flunkies and advisors. In my campaign city I think they're probably the functional unit of governance and administration. Also the nonfunctional element. Some of them might be good quest-givers, others might make good nemeses, yet more might just add color every time the party runs up against the law or the civil administration of your fantasy city. All will send you on pointless and probably painful errands.

Power, corruption and lies For each vizier, roll d6 twice: The first represents how powerful the vizier is, the second how powerful they purport to be. Such a scale looks something like this:
1. Just a humble civil servant (important only in their own mind)
2. Can help or hinder (No real power other than a stranglehold on some bureaucratic choke point)
3. Influential (lots of soft but little hard power)
4. Mover and Shaker
5. Controls a substantial sect, institution, or force
6. Wields near-despotic power(You could also just do a scale of 1-10 with d10s)
I'd assume they're all almost all corrupt if the price is right.

d20 Personality Traits. This vizier is:

1. Friendly, hyperintelligent, specialist in contact medicines/poisons. Impossible to know if they're angry with you until they poison you.
2. Spends nights dressed in plainclothes wandering the streets of the city exploring and carousing with the locals. May find himself in trouble, and will reward assistance handsomely once he returns to his palace
3. Eccentric, officiates constantly-changing sumptuary laws with extreme punctilio.
4. Cruel and imperious. Enjoys the suffering of others. Requires respectful treatment.
5. Obscure and ineffable. Speaks in dreamlike meanderings and riddles. Will eagerly trade for bizarre and seemingly useless items. Never provides and direct solutions or assistance.
6. Bureaucratic with gusto. Knows every bit of paperwork and procedure in the realm. Refuses to take or allow shortcuts to bureaucracy, will always take or advise the most paperwork fraught paths.
7. Missing. Their excellency has not been seen in some years, but is probably still around. Obscure hints and traces abound that the vizier actually does exist, but nothing provable.
8. Hapless, harried demeanor. Constantly operating one step ahead of a monumental cascade of failure. Receptive to assistance. Will destroy or bring ruin to most everything they touch or gets involved in.
9. Profligate. Money is no object, budgets no concern. Will spend freely on allies as well as directing substantial sums against enemies.
10. Monstrous. Is actually a monster, probably a large one with lots of HD. Maybe a gelatinous cube or something, even. Intelligence is not increased simply because of political station. Other advisors are sure that there is a good reason for this appointment but cannot or will not identify it; the upshot is that there are probably consequences for killing it.
11. Trigger Happy. Shoot first, ask questions later, violence is the best answer to any particularly nuanced political problem or diplomatic issue.
12. An incorporeal cloud of woody smelling smoke that communicates through seemingly inscrutable telepathy. You seem to be the only ones who don't understand, which is embarrassing, assuming you didn't already disperse his/her/its excellency which is a grievous breach of protocol.
13. A djinn, largely unconcerned with mortal affairs but bound to the work at hand via someone with a lamp. Will look for opportunities to bind others to drudgery, looks favorably on sanctioned shirking.
14. A child. While ministerial positions are generally not hereditary, either clerical error, prophecy or similar SNAFU has placed a child in charge of a portion of the political apparatus. Small chance that the child is actually fit for the position. Regardless, will be capricious and whimsical in both deed and judgment.
15. A perennial schemer seeking to supplant, assassinate and ruin the careers or rivals. Driven by ruthless self-interest and a desire to increase personal standing and power.
16. A philanderer and lecher, either more concerned with the pleasures of the flesh than good governance, or firmly convinced that the body and body politic are united by their carnal appetites.
17. A ghul, litch or other undead, reanimated for service or chosen because of their long institutional memory. Archivist and antiquarian in nature, they will constantly lament nostalgically about the good old days.
18. Filibustering bloviator. Wants to be listened to interminably. If Silence or similar spells are cast on him he either hulks out, explodes or both.
19. A blackmailer of some skill and completely paranoid, driven to believe that others are obsessed with spying and blackmail as they are.
20. Fair, efficient, entirely reasonable. They can't all be weirdos. This is likely such a bizarre anomaly that this vizier will not be trusted.

d12 This vizier is in charge of:
1. The ministry of animals smaller than breadboxes
2. Brain freeze, funny bone injuries and other peculiar and fleeting pains.
3. Smells. Ensuring the proper balance of smells in the city, taxation of odors based on how pleasant they are.
4. Transformation, mutation and other morphological affairs
5. Bridges and other non-earthbound means of conveyance
6. Parties lasting longer than three days
7. Ropes, tentacles, noodles, vines and similar objects
8. Pugilism, duels and other organized fights
9. Joke religions which should nonetheless be taken seriously
10. Some wheels*
11. Non-representational art
12. Poems that bring the audience to tears
* BUT NOT OTHERS

Dice Drop the Block

I usually run a very hasty and sketchily drawn city using the rules from Vornheim for sketching streets and then just generally hand-waving or rolling for individual buildings and the like as the players ask questions or as the scene dictates. However, a recent scenario had the Party preparing for an Italian Job style heist in the middle of a crowded district, so I wanted to figure out a way to somewhat quickly generate a few city blocks with terrain and maybe a few other doodads.

Here's what I came up with, two dice drops: the first to determine the buildings/streets, the second to figure out connections, feature and terrain. Larger dice lead to larger buildings and more varied terrain. I think it still needs work but maybe it'd be useful

First Drop - Buildings are centered on dice. For overlaps, assume tiered or wedding cake style buildings.
Dice size - Number of Stories
Dice number - Building Footprint
Draw streets in between buildings. Streets and alleyways can cut through buildings (arcades, passageways, etc) at your discretion.

Second Drop -
Dice number - Complications and Terrain Features (getting up, down and around)
1 - Bridge
2 - Balcony
3 - Stairs
4 - Ladder
—————————————————
5 - Residence
6 - Residence
—————————————————
7 - Shop
8 - Shop
—————————————————
9 - Entrance to Sewers/Below
10 - Alleyway or (Secret) passage
—————————————————
11 - Market
12 - Random Crowd
—————————————————
13 - Elevator, pulleys or other instant conveyance from street to roof
14 - Courtyard/Garden
15 - Spire/Minaret (d6 stories taller than adjacent building)
16 - Pile of garbage/waste (sentient at your discretion)
17 - Thieves’ trap
18 - Police/Guards
19 - Fountain
20 - Special (flammable or explosive goods, something mechanically salient)

New 5e Character Race: Totem Pole Trench

You are two to three children in a trenchcoat and a fedora.

Ability Score Increase: +2 Dexterity (it takes a lot of skill to pull this off), +1 Charisma (you're not fooling anyone yet somehow you are). Your lowest score has to be strength.
Age: You are several children. You may use individual age or combined age where advantageous.
Alignment: You're probably chaotic
Size: between 6-8' tall depending on how many of you there are in there.
Speed: 25' on tiny legs
Languages: You start off knowing two languages, but can learn languages twice as fast as grown-ups. You're not very good at reading and writing but you get an A for effort.
.

Safety First: Because you are children you are not allowed to play with knives. You cannot use bladed weapons or any weapon with the "heavy" characteristic
Convincing Disguise: You get to double your proficiency bonus when making deception, disguise and persuasion checks.
Some assembly required: When standing up from prone make a DC 20 DEX save. Failure means you comically tumble back down to the ground.
Mysterious resilience: Opponents who attack you will be baffled when a seemingly lethal blow fails to cause damage. They do not know that this is because they are attacking several children hiding under a trenchcoat. You gain the "Lucky" feat even if you are not using feats.