Tutorial: Tons of Fun

Okay, not a full on tutorial; I can't teach you how to be imaginative. But I can teach you how to brainstorm!

Let's face it. Making a Tons of Fun table is a lot of hard work. What I intend to accomplish here is to show you a few things you can do to make it easier.

First off, some small guidelines:

1) Don't be afraid to recycle ideas, and re-flavor and/or modify them; just because they're the same mechanically doesn't necessarily mean the players will perceive it that way.

2) On the clock? Don't be afraid either to assign one effect to more than one number, and fill in the blanks later.

3) Try and keep an even balance between the different "attitudes" of the effects, as I call them. There are four such attitudes that I can see:

A) Good Stuff! This is a direct bonus to the player(s), though they may not see it that way. These are the things that summon angelic choruses when they realize what it is.

B) Bad Stuff! This either a Munchkin reference, or stuff that directly harms or hinders the players. These are the effects that make the players curse your name for eternity.

C) Ugly Stuff! This is the stuff that may be beneficial, or detrimental, or both, or neither, depending on circumstances. For instance, raining rubber bouncy balls is really irritating when the player's are trying to impress the princess with their dancing skills... but it's REALLY handy when you're trying to outrun the bad guy's henchponies, and you happen to be the only one who can fly over the blatant tripping hazard.

D) Crazy Stuff! This is the stuff that doesn't have any real impact at all, except maybe embarrassment on the part of the victim.

I try and keep an even balance between these. Of course, you're not going to succeed perfectly in that regard, and you're not expected to; it's just a guideline.

Now, the BIG IDEA...

The hardest part of a ToF table is, of course, coming up with ideas. Here is how I do it in this case:

Step 1) Divide it up into small, convenient chunks. I like to have 5 ranges of 20 to start with, and then divide each one up even more as called for.

Step 2) Assign each one a specific category of effects. Not attitude, as mentioned above; categories. For instance:

01-20: Fire

21-40: Water

41-60: Wind

61-80: Earth

81-100: Heart

This is far from original, I know, but that's beside the point; the point is that this way, each category helps provide their own ideas.

I'll fill in examples later... in the meanwhile, what do you think?

Go Planet!....ahem childhood aside, I think it's about time someone came up with a way to do these. Making your own ToF tables can be pretty time consuming. Maybe getting people to share a couple generic, nom-setting specific tables would be a good idea. And I mean non-setting specific; I made a ToF table for Kindgom Pony that's filled with series refs, which really wouldn't work if you were running Ponyformers.

Ooh, I'd like to add my own 2 bits. I heard somewhere that a good Rod of wonder (What Tons of Fun essentially is) has around 50 Positive, 30 Negative, and 20 Neutral effects.

I always felt that tons of fun should have very specific powerful and mostly-good effects, after all it uses a magic point, so it should give you some pretty hefty bonuses or effects. Sure you can have a few negatives, but if you make the effects not at least +10 worthy, then there is little incentive to use this ability from a gamist's point of view.

Personally I think that most of the beneficial stuff should always be temporary or "situational". Same with the harmful stuff. Things like having a pony give you a free picnic basket full of explosive devices, or getting a free use of a single random utility, or having a personal minion to use for 4 hours would be examples of "good" effects. Bad effects could be e.g. having all your speech randomly include profanities (making persuasion risky, at best) for a certain period, or your hooves losing friction, causing you to skid everywhere. Bad effects should never be directly harmful, permanent, dark, or heinous: It is a "tons of fun" effect, after all, so make sure it's "fun" for either the caster or the rest of the party (via shadenfreude), or make it silly /non-threatening enough to have even the "afflicted" players get a laugh from the situation. Adding plain bonuses or purely mechanical effects (e.g. +10 persuasion) should be discouraged: It's better to have the tons of fun table do something that would instead provide a situational bonus (or penalty). Neutral effects should be stuff that can affect both the PCs and NPCs and hostiles with same efficiency (e.g. everything in the room turns into felt).

You can always differ your targeting as well. For instance, having the player who summoned the effect to choose/point their own target/object, having only allies affected (all of them, or a random one, possibly including the caster), having only NPCs affected, having objects nearby affected, or having everything nearby affected. You can also leave the targeting unspecified if the player doesn't wish to choose, or let the player choose how much it affects and adapt accordingly.

For instance, one "bad" effect could have the caster start hallucinating crazy stuff. A "good" effect could be a random (or chosen) ally suddenly have their body turn metallic for 1hr. A neutral effect could be having an NPC/PC turn into a literal "money magnet", causing all money/gold within 500 yards to quickly fly towards him (and very likely bludgeoning them). Another neutral can be, for instance, a room/building/500 foot area filling to the brim with live bunnies.

A good way to gauge a Tons of Fun table:

"Would Pinkie Pie find this 'fun' or 'funny'?" or alternately, "What would Pinkie Pie do?"

Zarhon wrote:Personally I think that most of the beneficial stuff should always be temporary or "situational". Same with the harmful stuff. Things like having a pony give you a free picnic basket full of explosive devices, or getting a free use of a single random utility, or having a personal minion to use for 4 hours would be examples of "good" effects. Bad effects could be e.g. having all your speech randomly include profanities (making persuasion risky, at best) for a certain period, or your hooves losing friction, causing you to skid everywhere. Bad effects should never be directly harmful, permanent, dark, or heinous: It is a "tons of fun" effect, after all, so make sure it's "fun" for either the caster or the rest of the party (via shadenfreude), or make it silly /non-threatening enough to have even the "afflicted" players get a laugh from the situation. Adding plain bonuses or purely mechanical effects (e.g. +10 persuasion) should be discouraged: It's better to have the tons of fun table do something that would instead provide a situational bonus (or penalty). Neutral effects should be stuff that can affect both the PCs and NPCs and hostiles with same efficiency (e.g. everything in the room turns into felt).

You can always differ your targeting as well. For instance, having the player who summoned the effect to choose/point their own target/object, having only allies affected (all of them, or a random one, possibly including the caster), having only NPCs affected, having objects nearby affected, or having everything nearby affected. You can also leave the targeting unspecified if the player doesn't wish to choose, or let the player choose how much it affects and adapt accordingly.

For instance, one "bad" effect could have the caster start hallucinating crazy stuff. A "good" effect could be a random (or chosen) ally suddenly have their body turn metallic for 1hr. A neutral effect could be having an NPC/PC turn into a literal "money magnet", causing all money/gold within 500 yards to quickly fly towards him (and very likely bludgeoning them). Another neutral can be, for instance, a room/building/500 foot area filling to the brim with live bunnies.

Lots of good points here!

Zarhon wrote:
A good way to gauge a Tons of Fun table:

"Would Pinkie Pie find this 'fun' or 'funny'?" or alternately, "What would Pinkie Pie do?"

"You really mean Great Grand Two-Sevenths Uncle Discord, RIGHT?"

"Abomitall! Wrong thread!"

This looks like it could be helpful, as I may need to be making one of my own in the near future. Thanks!