Potoo Island's building blocks

I am taking a break from drawing to work a bit on Potoo’s Island.

So this project is partly based on a joke and on a dream, I don’t really know where I want to go with this, I only know that I love potoo birds and that I want to craft something fun and strange based on them.

So I did some researches on the potoos and I took a good quantity of notes. I want to do something with the legend about the potoo being the spirit of a woman who fell from the moon and who call her moon husband at night.

Since I have no clear directions, I will begin by generating encounters to populate the island and then I will try to make sense of what will emerge. I will try to use the monsters building blocks method I posted earlier.

My building blocks will be things related to the potoo and the island.

Building blocks (d8)

1. Potoo bird 
2. Bugs (beetles, moths, grasshoppers and termites) (preys) 
3. Small birds (preys that potoo swallow whole!) 
4. Falcon (predators) 
5. Monkey (predators) 
6. Shipwrecked humans (who probably messed up the balance or ecology of the island) 
7. Rotting wood, tree stumps and mushrooms (thing that potoo camouflage as) 
8. Something fallen from the moon or the sky (reference to the legend) 

I also wrote some monsters archetypes to combine with the building blocks.

Encounter types (d12)

1. Sentient humanoids 
2. Mutated specialist function 
3. Strange chimera and hybrids 
4. Wild or primordial beasts (ancient ones may speak) 
5. Spirits (linked to a element or concept) 
6. Guardians (linked to a special location, gain advantage or power from it) 
7. Corrupted, cursed or undead 
8. Monstrous hoarder (accumulate stuff) 
9. Mimics, shapeshifters 
10. Deforestation, destruction of the environment 
11. Influenced or affected by a other building block (like falcons trained by humans or a ancient potoo spirit who hate humans) (Roll a d10 on this table to determine archetype and d8 on the building blocs table to determine relation) 
12. Roll two d10 on this table and mix the results, double result give a unique champion encounter with +1HD) 

I also crafted a random table that spotlight traits or aspects of the potoos. I will roll on this table when I need inspiration.

Potoo's aspects (d10)

1. Big eyes 
2. Big mouth, eat things whole 
3. Eerie call, induce fear or sadness 
4. Camouflage 
5. Stillness (or the need to avoid movements) 
6. Nocturnal, sleepy or lazy during day 
7. Eat insects and small birds 
8. Don’t hunt on the ground, mob defense 
9. Mate for life and lay a single egg, camouflaged hidden egg. 
10. Can be cartoony or spooky

I will probably start by generating creatures for each Hit Die I want to feature on the island. Then I will assign HD to areas of the island and craft random tables around these.

My template will probably be something like:

Area HD (d6)

1. Encounter from area’s HD 
2. Encounter from area’s HD 
3. Encounter from area’s HD 
4. Encounter from lower HD 
5. Encounter from +1 HD 
6. Encounter from +2 HD 

I will post next what I will have generated with these tables.

(cartoony)

(spooky)