Little help/inspiration

[SaveVsFail]

So, I've been running a sandbox game and one of the throwaway items the party found has become the focus of one character in particular and I'm kinda at a loss of what to do with it, figured I'd stop by here and see if you folks could lend a hand.

The item in question is a small notebook that is filled with what is obviously a list of some kind, names with 3 digit numbers after each one, some crossed off, most not.

This was an item from a list of 100 things found in dead adventurers pockets that I generated for random interesting bits of trash loot, I never planned on actually doing anything with it.

The character in mind is a rogue who grew up on a turnip farm hearing tales about adventurers and gold and such from his grandfather and decided wandering around the wilderness poking around in ruins was a better life than turnip farming, he's also completely illiterate and is 100% convinced the chalk he found on a dead goblin is magic chalk. So far he's convinced himself the book is also a spellbook.

The first thing that comes to mind is tying the book somehow to the bandits they have been hunting on and off in the region, Im not sure exactly how, maybe the numbers coincide to places on a map, something like that.... as I said Im feeling pretty uninspired but he's keen on pursuing the lead as he sees it and I dont want to just drop the hammer on it.

cheers folks!

[mgtremaine]

Birthday reminder list. The digits are short hand for the birthday date.

-Mike

[Just Jeff]

Perhaps coordinates on a small region of a hex map of where members of an old mercenary company settled down? That would, of course, be a real world translation of what his character sees on the paper.

[clavis123]

The names in the book could be the members of secret society. The members might refer to each other only by a three-digit number in correspondences and during meetings, to maintain anonymity. The book could have belonged to an assassin eliminating members of the society. Perhaps the society possesses a strange artifact that the assassin wants to recover. Perhaps both the secret society and assassin are diabolists, although if contacted, both will pretend that they are the good guys.

[serleran]

Two obvious, boring, options pop immediately:

1) its a "black book" recording the "fun" had with a certain individual(s) on a three digit scale.

2) its a ledger for IOUs, either that the adventurer was acquiring from others or owed

And then we can get into the more involved things such as it being a cipher, the name corresponding to a particular author, the digits being a page/paragraph/word marker, though this would likely only work if said author only has one work of note (or, perhaps, not... that could make it even harder for someone to decrypt it, having to first find the cited work out of many.) It could be, as others suggested, a scale reference in some unit from a known landmark, the first digit corresponding to a particular direction; for example, you could go with something like this....

North = 0
South = 1
East = 2
West = 3
Northeast = 4
Northwest = 5
Southeast = 6
Southwest = 7
Up = 8
Down = 9

Each location could contain another clue, those marked off either undiscovered or, to make it even harder, purposefully crossed off to discourage someone from thinking they are important.

It could serve as some sort of encryption password for a particular place, such as a thieves' guild in one city.

And many other options...

[alcyone]

The book belonged to a very amateur safecracker who was recording his brute force attempts to get at a chest full of gold. Probably his own; devoting an entire book to the numbers he has tried is just because he couldn't be bothered to write down the three numbers of his shiny new gnome-made lock in the first place. He also wasn't bright enough to try them in a sensible order, so every time he tries one, he writes it down. He's pretty sure now he's tried about everything, and it still isn't open and he has this big book of useless numbers, so now he flips around and crosses them off when he tries again.

1-4-1 no, that's not it
1-1-2 hmm, i think I am getting close...
9-3-2 i was sure it was 9-3-2...
...

But, as far as anyone ever knowing what the book is for, they never will, guess they shouldn't have killed him.

[Rikitiki]

The book is from the pocket of a sage/historian and the language is one the thief does not know (yet) - each is a three-digit year (382 for example) from some 'start' or 'zero' date (like our 'AD' designation) and the text states some historical event that happened in that year.
So, as you slowly let him un-code the book, you can give him things like: 138 = "Rotwein the First defeats the lizard king and his army, rendering the Great Swamp no longer a threat".
Note: each historical event can be used to slowly broaden the back history of your game world, giving the players background to how areas developed into what they became, giving you plot-hooks if you ever send them travelling back in time and such, or use the history to lead to current events: "Plodnik the Good and his holy avenger sword buried in the Moldavian foothills". <-- that'd be a draw, I think.

[koralas]

Perhaps the books contents are the names of communities and population. The bandits raided a small caravan and found that it contained the census taker commissioned by the king to catalog his lands. The bandit lord has given a subset of the census to each of his lieutenants, basically a list of communities to plunder. The lieutenants then further divided the list to various gang leaders listing the communities they are to raid, this is the what the players have found. The communities that have been crossed off could either have been attacked already, a fact the characters can learn of quickly. Or, perhaps, they have been marked off because after casing them, they have found them to be well defended/prepared for bandit attacks and not worth the risk. (In the case of the later example, the goblin was hired to do the casing of the towns for the bandits.)

[kenjib]

It's a very elaborate occult spell/ritual. The numbers represent arcane numerological indices of events, celestial phenomenon, and dates. As each combination is reached, the person indicated is abducted and ritually sacrificed in a bone-chilling fashion. When the formula is complete, the Master returns to claim his due...

[zarathustra]

The bandits also run a racketeering scheme, standing over local businesses for "protection" money and mayne even a weak/isolated noble family or two fallen on hard times.

The names are obviously the business owners/noblemen and the 3 digits are the amount in silver/gold collected each (week, month, whatever).

This book can be used to gather info/allies agianst the bandits and/or as evidence against them in trial, should they be brought to justice without wholesale slaughter.

[Just Jeff]

should they be brought to justice without wholesale slaughter.

I understand each word your saying, but when you string them together like that...

[SaveVsFail]

Cheers for the ideas folks I think I've sorted what I'm going to do with the book. Or at least have a plan.

Thankfully it didnt come up in the game this weekend, all they managed to do was get the crap kicked out of one of their rangers (PC) and get their stolen mule and hireling druid eaten in the wilderness. Good times were had by all

[zarathustra]

so what did you do with the book?

[SaveVsFail]

Just saw the question...

I have a series of Old Empire teleportation gates set up all around the wilderness area my sandbox is set in, mostly to hint at the kind of magic that used to be common in the world and mechanically to act as a kind of fast travel system for the players once they figure out where the gates are and how to use them.

Im going to have the notebook be a kind of cipher for activating the different gates. Kinda like the tablets in Stargate, you need to know where you are dialing to, and the gate on the other end has to be active. That means they have to go out and actually activate the gates if they want to fast travel to them. Pretty standard computer/console rpg mechanic.

So far they havent found any of the gates at all, but... they are close. Plus I have seeded a few other items around the region that work with the notebook to explain what is going on with the gates and how they work, if not where they are.

[Arduin]

It is a book makers book. The names are people who placed bets (in G.P.s) and how much the bets are. Tie it to the nearest city. The bookie was a member of the Thieves Guild and that book now represents lost income. If he turns it in to the guild he gets membership...

[TheMetal1]

Here are a couple of ideas...

1. The names are list of sleeper agents that long ago were placed under a geas or suggestion spell, with orders to destory certain persons, places or things once activated (by saying out loud the number combination). Only two books with the activation codes exist. Tensions between the two Kingdoms has been much reduced, but in an effort to start a war (for whatever reason you want) a splinter group stole one of the books and has been actively seeking out these agents (all of them do not even know they were primed to do this, they are simply good citizens of the opposing country), and activating them. The book your players found could be from the splinter group or an agent with the last remaining book. Either way, plenty of opportunity!
(by the way - not an original idea. Got it from a Charles Bronson film called, "Telefon" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefon_(film) )

2. For a more humorous take (again not original, taken from the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy series - where an alien was traveling time intending to insult everyone in the universe in alphabetical order) The book is magical in nature, originally created by a chaotic good outsider who wanted to humble those in power. Anyone who owns it, is compelled to insult everyone on the list - all of whom will be arrogant rulers of a town, a ship, a guild, a business, a family, a kingdom, an army, etc. The number is simply a code for the outsider who has come up with a complex insult level system - it is irrelevant to the book owner. When the owner of the book comes in contact with one of these people on the list, she knows immediately their weakness, fears and insecurities and is compelled to mock them.