What Went Wrong in the Stygian Garden: Plant Life

In the Atrium there are flowers which induce hallucianations. When the characters began suffering the effects, their players immediately pinpointed the cause and – rather stereotypically – set everything on fire.

In hindsight, the flowers were an obvious target; they had been described in more detail than other plant-life. So I began including some form of vegetation in every scene description thereafter.

Tables to the Rescue

These were created after that session; Roll for the shape and one or more of the other details at your discretion, then contextualize.

ShapeColorOdorFeature
1mossgreenammoniadead and decaying
2fernbrownmintyfruit-bearing (50% edible)
3herb/grassyellowfetidinsect-infested
4shrub/bushwhitesweetallergenic
5treeredfreshflowering
6fungusbluesulfurpetrified

Prep Will Set You Free

I pregenerated several in advance of the next session and just used them in order rolled. These paired well with the encounter matrix. For example, a specific scene I narrated was:

In a soft patch of earth, there are deep boot prints. They head to the southwest between two tall bushes with deep red leaves.

  1. two tall bushes with deep red leaves
  2. bed of moss with tiny white flowers
  3. flat oval stone with fossilized leaf imprints
  4. white-leafed hedgerow with dark, inedible, berries
  5. blue-splotched toadstools growing inside a ring of stones
  6. frilly red-and-brown moss climbing a fallen pillar
  7. several small trees with unripe citrus fruit
  8. long yellow grasses that smell of brimstone when stepped on
  9. flowering tree with visible pollen floating around, triggers sneezing
  10. sickly bush with a few brown leaves and a visible hornets nest
  11. small field of reddish grass
  12. old tree with broad leaves, cracked in twain and leaking ammonia-like sap
  13. fetid-smelling mushrooms growing out of a mud puddle
  14. minty herbs in a raised bed
  15. long vine of yellow gourds
  16. petrified logs in a triangle around a single small tree
  17. brown moss being eaten by several large slugs, each longer than your hand
  18. sweet-smelling but non-descript brownish flowers
  19. single very large and greenish mushroom, a full arm-span across
  20. waist-high grass with fat seed-pods spliting open