It’s a writing day. Roll 5D100 for a word count. There is your writing goal for the day. Good luck!

You walk in for your first day in the new lab. You find that no-one is the lab talks to each other after personal quarrels. It looks like you may become the go-between. What do you do?

You go to an inspiring talk where a professor talks about the highlights of his career. Maybe you can make a difference. You return to lab energized. All damage is healed.

You realize a gigantic flaw in your research approach in the middle of a committee meeting. Roll for initiative.

You have lost countless nights getting this poster together and have made it the conference. Somehow it has gained a massive crease across it and looks terrible. You become Exhausted.

It’s your first conference talk. Roll a D4 for how many presenters will talk before you on the same subject and provide the same background thereby making half your talk redundant and boring your audience.

Critical Hit. Someone emails you out of the blue just to let you know that your research has been immensely useful to them.

The winner of the poster prize had size 8 text on it. And the title was in comic sans. You are Sickened.

It’s lab social night. Roll a D6 for how many other lab mates show up.

Critical Hit. Your reviewer says the paper is very well-written.

You’re talking to a big-name professor in your field and he’s revealing private details about his student’s personal struggles. Do you carefully point out his lack of professionalism or shrug it off?

You’re traveling with research samples. Roll a D20. 10+ the samples arrive unscathed. 5-9 the box is damaged. Roll a Fortitude save to steel yourself for possible lost data. 1-4 the samples go missing indefinitely.

Your collaborators give you a heads-up that another group is going to scoop you soon. Roll a Reflex save to see if you can quickly finish up the paper and get it onto biorxiv before they beat you to it.

You realize that your life has become Lego Grad Student. Roll a Will save to see if you can stop from going mad.

Your first paper receives its first citation. Congratulations! You level up. Pick a new academic trait. Blasé (you gain back half an hour each day from not checking for new citations) or Debate Team (you have a 50% chance of winning an argument with your supervisor).

These results make no sense. They shouldn’t even be possible. You are now Confused. Roll a D100. 1-50 means do nothing. 51-75 means lash out at the nearest lab mate. 76-100 means randomly delete a data point.

Critical Miss. You come in on the weekend to find that your access card doesn’t work on a Saturday. Time to reflect on your poor life choices.

You’re going to try and switch your thesis topic completely. The next roll is going to be tough. Want to use a Hero point?

The conference abstract deadline is approaching. Time to write a guess of what your results might look like in six months. Roll a Linguistics check to see if you can keep things vague but plausible.

You meet a smooth-talking researcher at the conference coffee break. He suggests a collaboration. Roll a Sense Motive check to see if he’s on the level or just trying to get access to your unpublished data.