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HMS Apollyon Carousing Tables

Overview

This module turns downtime into a high-variance risk engine. Characters spend money between expeditions, try to convert that spending into experience, and then roll on one of three vice-specific tables: debauchery, lust, or violence.

The important design choice is that each track produces different kinds of campaign fallout. The procedure does not just say "bad things happen after carousing." It says what kind of bad or useful things happen depending on the vice pursued.

Core Procedure

  1. A scavenger spends up to level x 100 GP on carousing.
  2. The player chooses a vice track: debauchery, lust, or violence.
  3. The character saves versus poison.
  4. On a success, the character gains XP equal to the GP spent.
  5. On a failure, the character gains no XP.
  6. Regardless of success or failure, the player rolls d20 on the chosen vice table.

This creates a clean split between reward and complication. A character can gain XP and still suffer consequences, or fail to gain XP and still pick up trouble, windfalls, faction shifts, or lasting conditions.

Structure Of The Three Tables

Debauchery

The debauchery table emphasizes intoxication, bodily harm, magical side effects, money swings, and reputation changes.

Common outcome families include:

  • temporary penalties such as hangovers, blindness, or initiative loss
  • addictions and escalating upkeep burdens
  • strange bodily change, including stat swaps
  • windfalls, gambling losses, and muggings
  • faction reputation changes
  • minor magical gains or occult revelations

This track is the most chemically and supernaturally unstable of the three.

Lust

The lust table emphasizes relationships, entanglement, jealousy, gifts, disease, and social obligations.

Common outcome families include:

  • lovers, spouses, or patrons with upkeep demands
  • social disease and long-tail bodily consequences
  • information gained through seduction or courtship
  • enemies, rivals, and jealous paramours
  • gifts, cameos, and minor magical items
  • euphoric boons balanced by emotional instability

This track is best read as a relationship generator with real maintenance cost.

Violence

The violence table emphasizes scars, gangs, curses, pit-fight culture, violent patrons, and status gained through brutality.

Common outcome families include:

  • injuries, scars, and temporary combat penalties
  • gang membership and follower access
  • trophies, special weapons, and fighting mentors
  • lycanthropy, possession, and other violent supernatural fallout
  • faction reputation movement
  • moral or psychological aftereffects tied to killing

This table does the most direct work translating downtime into next-session combat tone.

What Makes It Distinct

Most carousing procedures are generic consequence tables with flavor dressing. HMS Apollyon's version is more deliberately segmented.

  • Vice choice is meaningful before the roll.
  • XP gain is separated from consequence generation.
  • Many results add continuing upkeep, obligations, or repeat-session effects.
  • Several entries feed faction reputation, jail pressure, new contacts, or magical oddities.

That makes the module useful for campaigns where town play should produce persistent mess rather than a single joke scene.

Comparison Hooks

Compared to more generic carousing tables, this module is stronger when you want:

  • different downtime risk profiles chosen by player intent
  • more campaign-specific grime and grotesquerie
  • mechanical aftermath that persists into the next expedition
  • a city or station with enough factions and weirdness to absorb the fallout

It is weaker if you want a short universal table that can be dropped into any settlement with minimal adaptation.

Referee Use

Use this module when downtime should:

  • burn excess expedition cash
  • generate new enemies, lovers, obligations, and faction heat
  • reinforce urban decadence and scavenger fatalism
  • alter next-session capabilities through injuries, boons, or social complications

If the settlement cannot support recurring NPCs, faction reputation, jail, debt, vice markets, and magical weirdness, the table will underperform.

See Also

Sources

  • https://dungeonofsigns.blogspot.com/2014/11/carousing-tables-hms-apollyon-players.html