Showing posts with label Generator. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Generator. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 27, 2023

More oracles for solo play: Things, Places, Abstractions

 More oracles!  2 years after my last post on the subject, I finally made more oracles that follow the same pattern of *The Verbing Noun*.  I find this format to be highly evocative.  As before, I've included some vocabulary words from biology.  If you don't recognize a word just go to your favorite search engine and search for the word followed by "meaning biology"

These oracle results are meant to spark your creativity.  They can be interpreted as literally or metaphorically as you want. 

Place (natural) 

For when you need a non-constructed significant location

Place (constructed)

For locations constructed by some intelligent creature

Object (Macguffin)

For when you need a quest object, magic item, or other significant object.  Mainly focused on things that the character could carry around, or would want to possess

Thing (other)

For generally weird and significant things, not limited to quest objects.  For answering questions like "what odd thing do we see in this room"

Abstraction

For more conceptual stuff.  For answering questions like: what problem does this person/kingdom/group have?  What significant thing has been happening lately?

Tuesday, March 9, 2021

New Oracles for Solo Play: People and Creatures

A key part of Solitaire RPG play is the use of oracles, nonsense phrase generators that provide inspiration for what comes next in the game.  When I play solitaire games, I use the Mythic Oracle to answer questions such as "What is that person doing?" "What is going on here?". However, the Mythic Oracle is designed to inspire more mundane ideas, to move the story forward as rapidly as possible. So, I created a second set of oracles, designed for rapid, weird worldbuilding. I've included them below, with examples of what kind of questions they are designed to answer. Some of the words are drawn from biology or from non-english languages. If you see a word you don't recognize, just type it into Wikipedia and all will become clear.

~Content Note: These oracles contain references to slavery and violence.  Each can produce 10000 different phrases.  Some may be disturbing in ways I have not yet forseen.

The Interpersonal Drama Oracle takes the form of  an interpersonal/feeling verb followed by person-related noun:

It answers questions such as: Who is that person and what are they doing? What gossip did you just hear?

The Interpersonal Violence Oracle takes the form of a violence/movement/theft related verb followed by a person-related noun:

It answers questions such as: What kind of violent and dramatic shenanigans are going on here?

The Weird Creature Oracle takes the form of a practical/intellectual/weird verb followed by a random/weird creature-related noun:

The Dangerous Creature Oracle takes the form of a violence/movement/theft related verb followed by a random/weird creature-related noun

They are both designed to answer questions such as: What is that weird creature you just saw?  What is that dangerous creature you just saw?  What is chasing you down the dungeon corridor?  What did you see out of the corner of your eye?

pls enjoy

There is some duplication between these oracles.  That is because I insisted in making sure that each list was exactly 100 words each, so I can eventually produce a pdf version with D100 tables. 

Please do tell me if you end up using this for anything and how it turns out.

An exercise in taking ability scores literally

Many games use 3d6 to decide character stats. Zedeck Siew posted an interesting discussion regarding how to interpret ability scores.  Thi...