Who's at home? Domain play with an overloaded random encounter table

Adapting Prismatic Wasteland's overloaded random encounter table for domain play.

New York Parcel Dispatch Company, Charles Martin and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (all CC0).

Last December I read The Mirror and the Light, the last of Hilary Mantel's books on the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, advisor to Henry VIII. Whenever Cromwell returns from court or business to his own home of Austin Friars, some combination of the same familiar faces will be there with news or developments. These are mainly courtiers we have seen Cromwell bring up through his ascendance to power- his nephew, diplomats, a protégé of his rival, his servant. The world of Tudor England is richly conjured in these books, and an element of this is in how alive and busy his household is. I wanted to evoke this at my table and an opportunity to do so has recently presented itself.

In my long-running 5e game, the players have in the last few sessions deposed the ruling council, taken over the military, and achieved control of a major city. Their recently acquired titles include Commander of the Fleet and Highmaster of the only major university in the campaign region. They still have major issues to deal with outside of their new administrative responsibilities- the remaining councillors are going ahead with world-ending schemes, a foreign power is on the cusp of invasion, and the capital city is not yet under their control. They're also stuck in a time loop. I therefore don't see us transitioning to full-on domain play, but I would like to simulate somewhat the fun parts of dominion. In particular, I'd like to emulate the feeling in Hilary Mantel's books of a busy administrative centre, with the same recurring characters bringing news or complications to the players' attention.

To do so, I have adapted Prismatic Wasteland's excellent overloaded random encounter table to determine who's around when the PCs return to their base of operations and what news they bring. The overloaded encounter table procedure, briefly, is to roll 3d6: the sum determines the encounter, the median determines the reaction/demeanour, and doubles/triples determine distance and surprise. This results in a dense table where these variables are somewhat dependent. I've made two fairly cosmetic changes to the procedure besides context.

Median roll determines how good the news is. Replace the reaction table with the following:

The two other dice are other NPCs who are there, but not with news. This means you have to additionally prepare a 1 and 2 result. This should help the players' base feel busy and alive.

Right now, I don't have anything in mind for doubles or triples, so am just using the same far, near and surprise framework as in the original post. For a couple of entries, I specify some particular meaning for 'near' and 'far'. However, there is probably room for this variable to be used in a more relevant or interesting way throughout the whole table.

As an example, here's the current table I'll use once my player's break out of the time loop. The descriptions are fairly sparse, but the result can be fleshed out using context or a spark table for the different locales. The list of NPCs directly reporting to them is currently quite short, but as they have to deal with more factions I'll change some of the entries for greater variation. For entries with multiple NPCs, I'll select one randomly and cross them off.

This example was made for my home game, so might be hard to make sense of. For context: the party are called The Union (for short); Grilda is their main administrative minister; Miffy is an important noble and friend to the party; the Tidesmen are the army who swore an oath to Miffy's mother; Stirrup, Mosca, Borin & Cil are the Union's deputies in the university's newly developing army; Ung, Elga and Law are the party's spies in the undercity; Alina and Moss are students who helped the party take control of the university with their secret society Drnan Al; Aunstrom is the city they control and Nenrth is the capital.

Who's at home?

1. Grilda
2. Miffy
3. Tape Measure Halfling, a new surprise design for the Union
4. Stirrup, Mosca, Borin, Cil, level up
5. Alina or Moss, update about a teacher
6. Elga, information about the Undercity more broadly
7. Aunstrom townsperson, with some petition or problem
8. Stirrup, Mosca, Borin, Cil, them and a person in their barracks
9. Miffy, Tidesmen leadership
10. Grilda, University news
11. Law, Ung, Elga, synod leadership update
12. Stirrup, Mosca, Borin, Cil, between each other (near) or two in their barracks (far)
13. Refugees from Nenrth, current state of affairs there
14. Belg the Wizard, plane shifting the Union to the Tidesmen demiplane
15. Law, there has been a defection to the synod (far) or Law has defected (near)
16. Drnan Al member is missing
17. Mob of angry townspeople
18. A letter from Blue-Jon, he's kidnapped [d6]