Roll 2d20 for the primary effect only of the batch of fungus found (side effects are rolled later).

Roll Sell
Price Primary Effect Side Effect (reverse of Primary if blank)

2-3 Roll again twice

4 $ Sharpened hearing Deafness

5 $$$ Become shadowy and hard-to-see; Penalty to being perceived You glow brightly

6 $$$ Mild precognition: Bonus on reaction check and can’t be surprised.

7 $$ Ignore lose all Tack results on your Travel Rolls Double crit fail range for Travel Rolls

8 $ Become lighter, as if in one third normal gravity

9 $$ Rarely need to d4: eat/drink/breathe/sleep

10 $$ Can smell spores: Double Bonus to Foraging

11 $$ You smell like the Down; double Penalty to being tracked

12 $ Sparkling eyes: Bonus to NPC interactions 50% chance for them to flee in horror

13 $ Rarely afraid

14 $$ Become 25% d4: smaller/larger/wider/taller

15 $$ Heightened awareness of detail (Bonus on relevant skill checks) Hallucinations

16 $$ Bonus to a random stat (d6; fixed per batch

17 $ Effects of Exhaustion temporarily halved

18 $$ Minor healing

19 $$ +d4 (d20) or +1 (2d6) per Travel roll

20 $ Mushrations: edible, as 1 ration Terrible nausea: Penalty on all rolls

21 $ Fungwrung: when squeezed, intoxicating liquid comes out …which gets you blackout drunk

22 $$ Highly resistant to d4: fire/cold/poison/magic

23 $ Language-learning booster: with 7 doses and study with a native speaker, learn a new language in a week become violently allergic to the Fuzz

24 $ Fall into a deep sleep and get one normal full rest nightmares & can’t sleep at all: gain 1 point of Exhaustion

25 $$ Recover all spell abilities Using magic triggers unexpected side effects

26 $$ Commanding voice: Bonus to getting people to do what you say. Voice becomes high-pitched and everything is hilarious

27 $$ Beserker: Bonus to all combat rolls. Same, but can’t resist a fight

28 $$ Become repugnant to undead

29 $ Sense nearby danger by touching rock. Frequent nosebleeds

30 $$ Become loved by d4: animals/monsters/people/plants

31 $$$ Major healing

32 $$$ Grippy-hands: move on walls or ceilings at half speed Can’t walk a straight line

33 $ Extreme enthusiasm for everything Lethargy

34 $ See details at a much greater distance Blindness

35 $$ Speak with mushrooms. Mushrooms won’t stop speaking to you

36 $ Skin changes color based on your emotions, like a mood ring You only think you can see this happening and are insufferable about it

37 $$$ No effect but highly prized by collectors. As spicy as the spiciest hot pepper

38 $$ Your left hand can find secret things. Your left hand is now controlled by the player on your left

39-40 Roll again twice




Table of Fungal Names
Pick a word from the left column and a word from the right.

green truffles
black morels
honey buttons
white ladies
purple chanterelles
blood ettinheads
jellied trumpets
mud coral
slime stalks
prickly cups
crunchy angels
sweet tufts
bitter boys
milky puffballs
spongy toadstools
frilly stinkhorns
shaggy sludge
glowing coils
shrieking caps
giant pfifferlings



Side Effects
When you ingest the first dose of a batch of fungus, roll 2d6. For each 1, roll again on the Table of Fungal Effects for a side effect. If none is listed, reverse the row’s primary effect: bonuses become penalties, healing becomes damage, and so on. The side effects of a batch should be marked down along with the its primary effect. Side effects also last around 24 hours, unless you rolled double 1s, in which case both effects last until you can get that looked at by a professional.

You must suffer through the side effects on the first dose of a batch. Subsequently, you can choose to make a saving throw to avoid them. You lose the chance to save if under the influence of multiple fungi at once.

Selling Fungi
A batch or two of unwanted fungi can be sold to an interested buyer for the listed price. If the current volume has a relevant abundance or scarcity, though, that might bump the price up or down. Sellers can often negotiate an improved price if they give an accurate report of the batch’s side effects.

Except for mushrations and fungwrung, which are sold everywhere, vending fungi in larger quantities is a much dicier proposition. The fungal druggist guilds (see next section) exert a tight control on markets throughout the Down, and come after unlicensed peddlers distributing what they demonize as “dangerous, raw, untested, unrefined” mushrooms. The real danger, naturally, is not giving them a cut. If you find a rare seller willing to risk deadly guild reprisals, roll three times on the Table of Fungal Effects to see what’s for sale, and increase the listed price by one $.

The Fungal Druggists
Distilling fungi into more potent medicines (or, let’s be clear: drugs) is among the Down’s most widespread and lucrative economic engines. The druggist guilds have monopolized sales of processed fungi, and their chapters are nearly everywhere: any community of decent size has at least one vendor, regardless of local laws on the matter.

While wild mushrooms are found at random, drugs with specific effects can be purchased, and at greater potency. Users, however, take on a random and unknown risk of addiction.

Buying drugs works like foraging for raw fungi, with the following exceptions:

Customers of a druggist may request a specific Fungal Effect, either a primary or side effect. The GM decides if it’s available, but it usually is.
The given effect is doubled in potency.
d4+ doses are available, at the listed price plus one $
Invent a name and intake method for the batch (intake examples: ingestion, inhalation, skin contact, held under tongue, brewed into tea-potions, etc.)
Drugs have no additional side effects, however…
The GM rolls d20 in secret to determine the batch’s addictiveness.
Addiction
Any time a drug from a particular batch is used, roll percentile. The GM says whether the roll is under the batch’s secret Addictiveness number (between 1 and 20). If it is, you have become addicted to this particular Fungal Effect.

An addict needs to feel this effect each day, or suffer…

Addiction Consequences
When you miss a daily dose of a fungal effect you’re addicted to, make a saving throw. If you fail, gain a point of exhaustion.

When you reach a new level of exhaustion from your addiction for the first time, record a new Addict Behavior on your character sheet and explain how it manifests.

Ideas: an obsession, a compulsion, a fear, a physical tic, an antisocial behavior, a waning interest or relationship, altered perceptions, a loss of focus or passion

When you fail (or complicate) a roll because of addiction exhaustion, ask someone else to choose 1:

They say which of your Addict Behaviors caused you to fumble, and how it hampers you.
They help you succeed anyway, at a cost to them of their own choosing.

Taking a dose of any drug or fungus with this effect immediately recovers all exhaustion gained via any method.

If your addiction pushes you to six points of exhaustion, instead of dying you break the addiction and no longer need this fungal effect. You remain exhausted, but can now recover via normal means (losing one exhaustion point per day of rest).

Addiction can’t be cured by normal healing. It requires something special in the fiction, or at the very least a visit to a druggist who will happily overcharge you for a special Detox drug (itself with its own secret Addictiveness number).




Poison
Drugs intended for other people still offer a risk of addiction to the preparer each time they are deployed: the effects of partial skin contact can be just as seductive as ingestion.




Table of Folk Ideas
Roll d20 and any other die; use the second die to pick the odd or even column.

Odd Even
1 Experts Strange relationship
2 Worship Conceptual opposite
3 Love Trade for/with
4 Need Hate
5 Hunt for/in Disgusted by
6 Protect Perfected survival in/with
7 Create Destroy
8 Known for Can’t come near
9 Searching for the perfect Were once almost destroyed by
10 Evolved to live in/with Exiled from/by
11 Rarely venture far from Escaping
12 Their legends speak of a great Feel superior to
13 Mental/mystical connection to Parasites of
14 Want to improve Only once in their lives do they approach
15 Symbolic affinity Extremists
16 Love/Hate relationship Exploit
For these results, roll connection here instead of via the Table of Folk Idea Connections
17 Made of d4: Machinery, a Primal Element, Hybrid Parts, Dead Pieces Great makers in the domain of d6: War, Work, Food, Infrastructure, Textiles, Art
18 Navel-gazing, devoted to their own d4: Minds, Bodies, Beliefs, Works Code of conduct based around d4: Honor, Truth, Aesthetics, Economics
19 Gender, d8: One, Performative, Three, Changeable, Private, Unimportant, Unequal, Complex Roll again for how they relate to d6: Music, Performance, Sculpture, Painting, Stories, Architecture
20 Reproduction, d4: Egg-laying, Mitosis, Recruitment, Rare Language based on d4: Light, Subsonics, Smell, Movements
Table of Folk Idea Connections
Roll d4.

1 a Terrain
2 a Resource
3 a Volume (in your Guidebook)
4 another Folk (from your Folk Lore)



Table of Folk Appearances
Roll d20 and any other die; use the second die to pick the odd or even column.

Odd Even
1 Huge Large
2 Small Tiny
3 Arms none, many, long, tentacles Nose beak, trunk, sensitive, none
4 Legs one, four, many, long, multi-jointed Face kindly, distorted, more than one, none
5 Eyes strange, enchanted, many, one Sounds noisy, silent, captivating, painful
6 Head enlarged, unusually positioned, multiple, none Smells overpowering, sweet, distinctive, mimicry
7 Hair strange, styled, lots, none Shadows and translucence
8 Stone and earth Heat and flames
9 Gills and scales Claws and teeth
10 Sleek and muscled Antlers or horns
11 Gears and machinery Moss and fungus
12 Wings or feathers Humps and pouches
13 Hybrids and mutants Snouts and tails
14 Bones and rot Squishy or gelatinous
15 Twins or packs Whiskered or bearded
16 Shells or spines Colorful
17 Simple costume rags; monochrome, practical, none Elaborate costume robes, silks, armor, ceremonial
18 Need costume to survive rebreather, armored suit, wheeled tank, magic helm Movement graceful, clumsy, unusual, infrequent
19 Memories short, long, specific, strange Insensate blind, color-blind, deaf, only hear high/low frequencies
20 Mercurial shapeshifters, illusionists, planewalkers, masked Magic potent in, sustained by, withered from, immune to
Rolls with seemingly contradictory results are the best, because they let you stretch your creativity. Got both huge and tiny? Maybe these folk are huge for snails, but tiny for people. Maybe they have huge eyes but tiny teeth. Maybe they’re tiny in reality but use latent mental powers to loom large in the minds of others. Go wild.

Reputation
Roll twice on the Table of Reputations to learn how these Folk are seen by others. Again, you can loosely interpret or discard anything you don’t like, but be open to radical ideas.

Reputation is the way others would describe these folk in a word or two. This is a kind of stereotype, and should be treated as such: a broad generalization at best, slander at worst. Perhaps a folk deliberately chooses to be seen this way to hide a deeper truth, or perhaps only some outsiders think of them like this while others think the opposite. Individuals might have as much or little relation to this as a specific human does to a statement like “All humans are arrogant.” Make this a starting point, not a complete characterization.

Table of Reputations
Roll d20 and any other die; use the second die to pick the odd or even column.

Odd Even
1 Powerful Lazy
2 Mysterious Cheerful
3 Pushovers Inconsequential
4 Respected Superstitious
5 Power-hungry Industrious
6 Fallen Religious
7 Doomed Violent
8 Unpredictable Clumsy
9 Reliable Scary
10 Ingenious Gross
11 Tastemakers Boring
12 Found everywhere Destined for greatness
13 Poor Kindly
14 Ridiculous Stupid
15 Pitiable Introspective
16 Dour Unforgivable
17 Uncivilized Socially invisible
18 Revered Religious
19 Untrustworthy Scatterbrained
20 Decadent Curious
Name
If you haven’t yet, give these folk a name. You can use online fantasy name generators, or find an etymological dictionary and look up real archaic words relating to the folk’s core concepts, but I like to use a quicker method:

Write down the first and most obvious thing that comes to mind. Spider-folk that live in cold caves? Maybe Ice Spiders or Cold Crawlers. If you like what you wrote, just go with it: it’ll be easy for both you and your players to remember.

If you don’t like what you wrote, rearrange the letters until you find a few syllables that sound fantastical and interesting. From the letters in “Ice Spiders” you could get Sedri, Pridic, Redisps, or Dris. Adjust spelling and format as necessary (The Ridisps, Spiders of Driss, the Lost Sedrians).



Table of Volume Themes
Roll 2d8 and read as two numbers, from top to bottom as the dice fell.

1-1 Anarchy 5-1 Mecca
1-2 War Zone 5-2 Lap of Luxury
1-3 Rebellion 5-3 Poverty
1-4 Colony 5-4 Kingdom
1-5 In Decline 5-5 Empire
1-6 Booming 5-6 Gears and mechanisms
1-7 Cultural Upheaval 5-7 Rare Resource
1-8 Radical Lifestyle 5-8 Necropolis
2-1 Failed State 6-1 Great City
2-2 Second Chance 6-2 Scattered Holdfasts
2-3 Exiles 6-3 Lazy Villages
2-4 Isolationist 6-4 Rival Forces
2-5 Forbidden Knowledge 6-5 Dictator
2-6 Impending Doom 6-6 Decadent
2-7 Melting Pot 6-7 Library
2-8 Quarantined 6-8 Prison
3-1 Rare Magic 7-1 Crusaders
3-2 Barely Contained Magic 7-2 Monster City
3-3 Ruined by Magic 7-3 Weird City
3-4 University 7-4 Legendary
3-5 Lair 7-5 Crossroads
3-6 Monumental Project 7-6 Grand Market
3-7 Profoundly Weird 7-7 Utopia
3-8 Last Bastion 7-8 Mining Operation
4-1 Trading Post 8-1 Holy Site
4-2 Wasteland 8-2 Repugnant
For results below, also roll d4: Ruled by, Famous for, Hostile to, Unusual

4-3 Mages                              8-3 Artists
4-4 Farmers 8-4 Undead
4-5 Elementals 8-5 Sages
4-6 Merchants 8-6 Warriors
4-7 Nomads 8-7 Hunters
4-8 Priests 8-8 Makers
2. Terrain
Next, roll twice on the Table of Terrains to establish the general environs of this volume.

Table of Terrains
Roll d100. If your number is 60 or under, get a second word by either reading straight across, or rolling again, swapping digits or rerolling for a result under 60.

1-2 Obsidian Galleries
3-4 Granite Cliffs
5-6 Winding Road
7-8 Fractured Badlands
9-10 Deep Trench
11-12 Narrow Labyrinth
13-14 Spacious Passages
15-16 Vertical Junction
17-18 Steep Causeways
19-20 Flooded Caverns
21-22 Dripping Mines
23-24 Muddy Riverbed
25-26 Sandy Plains
27-28 Crumbling Crypts
29-30 Sulfur Vents
31-32 Ice Caves
33-34 Misty Warrens
35-36 Marshy Meadows
37-38 Artificial Shafts
39-40 Crystal Jumble
41-42 Gem-studded Grottos
43-44 Endless Ruins
45-46 Fungus-choked Crawlways
47-48 Lava Wasteland
49-50 Noxious Tunnels
51-52 Giant’s Halls
53-54 Jagged Canyons
55-56 Ashen Shore
57-58 Steaming Chasms
59-60 Haunted Maze
61 Wormcasts
62 Lava Tubes
63 Vertical Rivers
64 Suspended over dropoff
65 Edge
66 River System
67 Underground Sea
68 Magical Darkness
69 Flowing Magma
70 Wildlife Refuge
71 Limestone Wonderland
72 Ooze
73 Roots of the Earthtree
74 Fungal Jungle
75 Sandstone Arches
76 Boulder Fields and Scree
77 Massive Pillars
78 Seismically Unstable
79 Twisted
80 Mostly Underwater
81 Enchanted
82 Cavern Network
83 Vast Chamber
84 Geysers
85 Sand Dunes
86 Antimagic Zone
87 Veins of Ore
88 Mushroom Forest
89 Rushing Wind
90 Spider Burrows
91 Salt Mines
92 Island
93 Ancient Battlefield
94 Railroad
95 Ossuary
96 Nesting Grounds
97 Hunting Grounds
98 Hot Springs
99 Migration Route
100 Strange Physics
(gravity, motion, time, etc.)
3. Basic Sketch
Let the ideas prompted by your theme and terrain rolls percolate for a minute. Try to reconcile them together into a coherent whole. Once you’ve got the spark of an idea, write it down in sketch of a couple sentences.

4. Give it a name
It’s okay to be obvious: “The Icy Caverns” is fine. If you want to punch it up, troll through your dictionary or thesaurus, especially for synonyms marked “obscure” or “archaic” (“The Rime Grottos,” or “The Burrows of Frigid Winds”).

5. Decide what’s abundant and scarce
Based on your sketch:

Choose one resource from the Table of Resource Types that’s abundant in this volume, and one that’s scarce.
Then roll twice more, and assign one result as a second Abundance, and the other as a second Scarcity.
Flesh out the Abundances and Scarcities with a few clarifying notes, if necessary, and add or remove others if the fiction suggests.

Table of Resource Types
Roll d20 + d10.

2 Privacy
3 Fuzz
4 Harmless Animals
5 Leaders
6 Architecture
7 Defenses
8 Skilled Labor
9 Tack
10 Food
11 Magic
12 Useful Animals
13 Trade
14 Wealth
15 Light
16 Monsters
17 Fungus
18 Water
19 Heat
20 Drugs
21 People
22 Religion
23 Safety
24 Community
25 Art/Culture
26 Patience
27 Medicine/Healing
28 Air
29 Open space
30 Knowledge
6. Inhabitants
Choose two peoples from your Folk Lore that are commonly found here: one Folk the players have encountered before, and one Folk they haven’t. (For your earliest volumes, of course, they’ll both necessarily be new.) What is the relationship in this volume between these two peoples: friendship, subjugation, indifference, uneasy alliance? How do the residents of this volume differ from each Folk’s default norms and reputations?

Alternatively, perhaps this volume is a true melting pot where folk of all kinds can be found, an isolated monoculture where outsiders are rare, or a lonely place with few or no inhabitants.

7. Remoteness
Decide how difficult this volume is to find. This might be implied by the fiction, or you can roll d3.

Well-Known (base 3 difficulty to reach)
Sheltered (base 4 difficulty to reach)
Secret (base 5 difficulty to reach)
8. Create a Touchstone
Each volume has a touchstone, something massively strange and massively wonderful. It might be the coolest thing in the volume, something representative of the place as a whole, the obvious reason for its existence, or something hidden. But it’s definitely something the party will hear about and maybe interact with during their visit. Give the touchstone a short description (a sentence or two).

The touchstone should grow from the ideas you’ve created so far in your volume, so there’s not a table for it: but here’s a few nudges to spark your imagination.

palace, tavern, library, dungeon, festival, university, tower, fortress, curiosities shoppe, ossuary, avenue, speakeasy, specialty market, zoo, monument, haunted battlefield, queen, art gallery, secret garden, arena, exclusive club, salon, bookshop, vista, town square, park, grove, clock, factory, machine, wonder of the Down, map, castle, immortal, pier, ride, train, wall, theater, circus, tomb, portal, pit, temple, graveyard, mystery, competition, phenomenon