Free tables Improv — towns and taverns

Random Street Events — d100 Table for Towns and Cities

A free d100 table of things happening in the street, for when the party wanders somewhere you didn't plan.

The party has left the scene you prepared and is walking down a street you haven't thought about. A street with nothing happening in it is a street they'll walk straight through, and a street with one small thing happening is where the evening goes next.

Roll d100. Every result has someone doing something, which gives a player something to react to. Most are harmless, some are hooks, and a few are trouble. Skip any that don't fit your town; the table is a prompt, not a ruling.

The table

100 results. Roll d100.

d100	In the street
1	A cart has lost a wheel mid-street, and the driver offers a silver to anyone who'll hold up the axle.
2	Two children are selling "genuine dragon scales" that are painted fish scales.
3	A crier announces a curfew nobody has heard of, and won't say who ordered it.
4	A goat has got into the bakery, and the baker is chasing it out with a broom.
5	A funeral procession passes. The mourners are hired, and one of them winks at the party.
6	A pickpocket brushes past, then turns round and hands back what they took, looking frightened.
7	A preacher on a crate insists the bells rang thirteen times last night.
8	Guards are nailing up a wanted poster. The face looks a lot like one of the party.
9	A scruffy dog starts following the party and will not be shaken off.
10	A fishmonger and a spice merchant are fighting over a pitch, and the crowd is taking sides.
11	A woman leans from an upstairs window and asks the party to catch the key she's about to drop.
12	Someone has chalked the same strange symbol on every third door along the street.
13	A tax collector works the stalls, and the traders are packing up faster than he can reach them.
14	A puppet show is mocking a real local noble, and not kindly.
15	A horse bolts down the street dragging an empty saddle.
16	A lamplighter is lighting the lamps in broad daylight. He says he was paid to.
17	A boy runs up to one of the party, says "She says it's tonight," and runs off.
18	Apprentices are painting over a mural while an old man weeps in front of it.
19	A bell-ringer falls from the chapel tower and catches a gutter, shouting for help.
20	A merchant sells maps to a dungeon "only three days' ride" at five gold each, and has plenty.
21	A drunk knight in rusty armour challenges the biggest of the party to a duel over nothing.
22	A cat saunters past with an expensive-looking ring in its mouth.
23	Two guards are quietly shaking down a flower seller.
24	A carriage with drawn curtains stops beside the party, waits a moment, and drives on.
25	A woman is asking door to door after her husband, who went out for bread four days ago.
26	A wedding spills out of a temple, and the bride throws her bouquet straight at the party.
27	A notice on the well reads DO NOT DRINK. Nobody seems to have noticed it.
28	A man with a whole stolen ham is running straight at the party, the butcher close behind.
29	A street musician plays a tune one of the party knows from a childhood far from here.
30	Road-menders digging up the street have struck something made of worked stone.
31	A trained bear dances for coins, and its handler looks terrified of it.
32	Two rival guildsmen are loudly pretending to be friends for a watching crowd.
33	A dray of barrels bursts open: apples, apples, apples — and one full of sand.
34	A healer offers free treatment, and the queue is long and suspiciously well-dressed.
35	Someone drops a purse, and three people dive for it at once.
36	A young noble is carried past in a sedan chair. One of the bearers mouths "help".
37	A shopkeeper is boarding up his windows, though no storm is coming.
38	An old soldier hands out leaflets about a war that ended forty years ago.
39	Smoke rises from the chimney of a house everyone says is empty.
40	A hawker sells knotted strings of "luck", and buyers do seem luckier for an hour.
41	A surveyor is measuring the street with a knotted rope and keeps getting different answers.
42	Every pigeon in the square takes off at once, and every head turns the same way.
43	A cooper has lost control of a barrel rolling down the hill.
44	A beggar greets one of the party by their full name.
45	A crowd watches a man try to lift a boulder he says a giant dropped.
46	Guards escort a prisoner who calmly insists that he is the magistrate.
47	A boy sells a single handwritten news-sheet. Today's story is about the party.
48	Washing strung across the street includes a shirt soaked with blood.
49	Actors are recruiting for tonight's play because two of them went missing this morning.
50	A bird lands on one of the party and won't leave. It has a tiny ring on its leg.
51	The clock tower chimes, stops, and starts again from the beginning.
52	A tinker offers to sharpen anything for free, if he can tell a story while he works.
53	Two old women on a bench are betting on which passer-by will die first.
54	A fine sword leans against a wall with a note tied to it: "Not mine."
55	A man with a ledger is writing down a description of everyone who walks by.
56	Monks pass in total silence. One drops a folded note.
57	A girl is crying because her kite is stuck on a roof three storeys up.
58	A prison cart rolls by on its way to the mines. A prisoner shouts a name at the party.
59	An egg-seller tells anyone who'll listen that her hens stopped laying after "the thing in the well".
60	A handsome stranger pays for the party's food and is gone before anyone can thank him.
61	A shop sign falls and misses one of the party by a hand's width.
62	Masked revellers dance down the street, though nobody knows of any festival.
63	A courier lies unconscious in the gutter, his satchel still sealed.
64	A baker is giving away bread "in memory of Old Hanner". Nobody knows who that was.
65	Two dockhands come to blows over cards, and a crowd starts taking bets.
66	A blind woman asks the party to read her a letter. It's a love letter, meant for someone else.
67	The smell of burning sugar drifts from an alley, and a pastry cook runs out shouting.
68	An elderly wizard asks for help finding his spectacles, which are on his head.
69	A sergeant teaching a recruit to make an arrest picks one of the party to practise on.
70	An official is counting windows for a new tax, and people are bricking theirs up.
71	A cart of caged songbirds has overturned, and they're loose across the rooftops.
72	Two lovers are breaking up in public, and each wants the party on their side.
73	A priest is blessing everyone's shoes, for reasons he explains at length.
74	A cloudburst from nowhere packs every doorway with sheltering strangers.
75	A carpenter offers the party work: a coffin, urgently, no questions.
76	A dozen rats pour out of a grain store in a straight line, as if fleeing something.
77	Sparks from a knife-grinder's wheel set a thatch smouldering.
78	A girl is selling one left boot and insists it's worth a fortune.
79	A woman predicts who'll next walk round the corner. She's been right twice.
80	A flock of sheep blocks the street; the shepherd is asleep on the lead ram.
81	A guard captain asks the party, very politely, to come and answer a few small questions.
82	A travelling tooth-puller is at work, and the patient is screaming a local lord's name.
83	A man throws a weighted bag into the river, looks round, and walks off quickly.
84	Children playing at being the watch arrest one of the party.
85	A mason carving a hero's statue asks one of the party to hold still: they have the right chin.
86	A water-seller's barrel holds a great deal more coin than water.
87	A cartwright's apprentice says his master has vanished, and the workshop smells of sulphur.
88	Someone is dropping pennies from a high window, one at a time, to a waiting crowd.
89	A herald proclaims a reward for a stolen crown — and it isn't the local lord's crown.
90	Two scholars argue loudly about whether the old bridge is older than the town.
91	A young man proposes in the square. She says no, then yes.
92	A hooded figure is paying street children to follow someone. It's one of the party.
93	A bread riot is brewing outside the granary, and its doors are locked.
94	A juggler fumbles a knife, and it lands point-down between one party member's feet.
95	The chapel bell starts ringing, and there's nobody in the tower.
96	A one-legged old adventurer outside a tavern tells anyone who stops about the dungeon that took his leg.
97	A wagon of timber arrives with a body hidden among the planks. The driver clearly didn't know.
98	An old woman sweeping her step asks the party to take a basket to her sister across town.
99	Soldiers march through toward the road out of town. None of them look happy.
100	Everyone in the street stops, looks up at the sky, then carries on as if nothing happened.

Questions

How often should I roll on this?

Once when the party arrives somewhere new, or whenever the table goes quiet and nobody knows what to do next. Rolling every few minutes turns a town into noise.

What if the result doesn't fit my setting?

Roll again, or keep the shape and change the detail. A goat in the bakery is a lizard in the spice stall somewhere hotter.