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I've been toying with this idea in my head since the day before yesterday.
- Randomly generated NPC personalities, motivations, and descriptions.
- Randomly generated monster encounters.
- Randomly generated world map, with hexes.
- Randomly generated building layouts & dungeons.
- Randomly generated side-quests.
- Randomly generated loot.
- Randomly generated towns and shops.
Perhaps Even
- Randomly generated main campaign plot.
- Randomly generated setting pantheons, with fully fleshed out gods.
- Randomly generated factions.
- Randomly generated kingdoms.
Has anyone tried running a game like this? How did it work out?
I was in a game like this. High fatality character cycling. 5 minute timer for starting a new character, with 3d6 stats play as they lie, anything not on sheet at 5 minutes you didn't have. 300gp starting wealth, and hope there's useful stuff in the bag of holding from the looted bodies of prior party members. There was also a randomly rolled personality quirk or two from the random NPC table for each char.
For continuity, we were the Party of the Black Book. After every session one or more of the players would write up a summary journal entry style, from the character's perspective.
The book made it fun, as well as GM and players creating coherent story lines from the randomness. The person who died the most created the incredibly large and enthusiastic adventuring Vigorhorn family, who kept coming to investigate and avenge the deaths of their relatives. They're now at least a cameo in every game we play.
We were playing in Faerun, so no random world map, but the encounters, dungeons, and most names, in addition to the party, were randomized, so pretty close to what you're talking about.
Has anyone tried running a game like this? How did it work out?
Yes, to a point, though our "randomness" was bounded by previous "randomness", and also we don't generally make real maps, so that part we haven't done. In other words, if we generated characters of roughly level 16, we didn't generate monsters more than six levels different for ease of GM running.
That sounds neat.
I wasn't thinking something with such a high mortality rate though. lol.
Can you point me to any good random generators to help make that work well?
Mostly it's just a matter of looking at the charts, choosing a dice, and running with it, for us.
A really simple but effective "dice" generator (actually just a random number generator) that can create custom "dice" values (random number values) is really useful.
Basically what I do is look at certain areas or locations, depending on what I want to generate, and then use a roughly-appropriate rolling mechanic.
PLAYERS:
level (d20)
epic? y/n (d4 - odd/even) [then I choose a range of numbers and roll]
mythic? y/n (d4 - odd/even) [for both epic and mythic, it's not always "yes/no" as that skews heavily to epic and mythic, but it's an easy way to randomly determine; there's also a d4: 1) 1-20, 2) epic, 3) mythic, 4) epic and mythic]
monster characters? y/n...
And so on.
MONSTERS:
Bestiary CR (d12) [using the actual books, I usually use a modified "d20" with a "20" meaning a roll off - up is "above 20", down is "below 1", and then roll a dice that's similar in scope to the number of options, ignoring those that aren't there]
- then choose the number of creatures in a given CR, and roll a nearly-appropriate dice, re-rolling or choosing other dice to narrow down the field as needed.
Settlements:
Size (d8) [then % of maximum size]
Alignment (2d6: 1d6 (1d3) ethics, 1d6 (1d3) morals)
(any of the following can have the y/n chosen before you roll for it, as desired)
Government (d12 - 12 means that you choose any or none) [I often choose "roll twice and combine" on 12]
Qualities (d62 - 62 means that you choose any or none)
Disadvantages (d20 - 17 means two, 18 means three, 19 means 4, 20 means that you choose any or none)
FACTIONS
Choose various books with various factions in them. (I'm not looking, so these numbers are off - I'm getting kind of tired as I'm not doing this for a current campaign).
FRCS: harpers, red wizards, hathrans, zhets, fire knives, churches, nations, etc
PFFG: church of razmir, ulfen guard, varisian wanderers, etc
Eberron: dragon marked, countries, churches, blah, etc
Roll for a total number of organizations (or, barring that, roll a % for a number from each book).
Roll a number for a book. Roll for a given faction in the book.
- alter alignment
- alter goals
- you're set!
GODS: all the daggum time. There are way, way too many ways of doing this.
Here is a thing I did fairly recently while here is the (very truncated and not-as-fleshed out-as-I-actually-have) result.
The map was a straight port of Golarion because, as I've said, we don't make maps very often.
If you wanted to generate a different one, you could do so by hex by rolling a d12 for the side, then rolling randomly on the environment charts.
You get the basic idea, and can repeat similar steps for pretty much anything you like.
(One other way (of many) of getting gods that just randomly popped into my head now is randomly rolling through portfolio elements listed in the Deities and Demigods book, then assigning domains at random as well.)
One thing to bear in mind, though, is that there is always going to be some amount of arbitration involved (as you're going to have to decide how things function*), and, despite the fact that you're not putting "effort" into purposefully designing the things, the more fine details you leave up to randomness, the longer and slower things are, as you'll have to continuously stop to roll dice.
You'll notice my random stuff usually comes from pre-published sources of some sort or another. That's because it's simple and easy, and I really don't have the time that I used to have for creating worlds whole-cloth.
If you want motivations, there are lots of potential plots around, especially in the old 3.5 books. My wife wrote a nice, relatively simple generator for the characters (including what goal they start out with and how they meet each other or have connections), and I could get her to share it later (or maybe share it myself), if you'd like.
Most of the work of generating randomly comes from counting categories, choosing the dice, and rolling it.
I hope you have fun!
* Otherwise, you'll end up with a boring or nonsensical campaign. I think that's what Level 1 Commoner's problem is with that. He ninja'd me! Dang it! Ninja'd by a commoner! A level one commoner! I suck! :P
:)
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We were using dice and tables. One of the core books had dungeon randomizers, so we'd map as we go.
GM: You come to a (roll) long corridor. You see (roll, roll) no threats.
The corridor is (roll) damp and slimy with mildew.
Us: We move carefully down the hallway, checking for traps (roll).
GM: You make it! At the end it (roll) opens into a large natural cavern.
(Roll) *ominous giggling* Make perception checks.
From the (roll) unlit depths of the room, you hear what sounds like the slow sleepy breathing of an incredibly large beast.
Us: Annoying new rogue, scout it out and we'll give you that dagger you've been eyeing.
Rogue: *grumble* Fine.
GM: Any message spells or the like up? No? Rogue, come with me, bring sheet and dice.
Us: *updating the black book and in character nervous chatter*
Gm and rogue coming back with timer and blank record sheet: You hear a cut off scream and a viscous splash, followed by what could be an enormous crocodile chortling.
Us: scatter and run away! whatever happens make sure the book makes it out intact!!!
Dotting this so much
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@ Level 1 Commoner: It really depends on how the random generators work out, and how well the GM can string all of the things together. But yes, I can see how it could result in completely random illogical nonsense, if steps are not taken to ensure that doesn't happen.
However, I do think random generators could save a great deal of the prep time GMing, while still resulting in a good game.
I don't think I woult want to do it with dice and tables though; I'd want to have my computer doing the hard work for me.
I don't think I woult want to do it with dice and tables though; I'd want to have my computer doing the hard work for me.
Actually, wouldn't it be cool if the GM and the PCs could figuratively 'stack the deck' or even find ways to cheat?
I've done something like this with a couple of friends. Mind you, it was mostly to be able to take very short sessions while writing our master's theses.
We included a random leveling for the PCs, random GM for each 15-30 minutes, and a random genre/theme for the short session (such as: Horror, Hack'n'slash, Film Noir, Romance, Piratey, social realism, Sci-fi).
It made an entertaining game, but not much more than that...
I highly approve of this idea!
I was able to put something like this together at PaizoCon 2010, using the Gamemastery Guide. PCs should be random as well, at least race/class, if not more. Random Insanity adds fun by the way...
Hmm. Yeah, you guys seem to have mostly used it as an amusing minigame. I'm thinking of using it to make up a full blown campaign with a plot.
Did... did you actually read my post? We've created campaigns and even entire campaign settings this way. That's hardly a "minigame"!
Here's a random generator for dungeons, magic shops, NPCs and more for General, Fantasy, AD&D, D20/Fantasy, Microlite20, Pathfinder, 4e, Weird Fiction and Science Fiction rpgs
Nice find, TQbbnBB!
Tactics, he was replying to Haraldklak
Tactics, he was replying to Haraldklak
Ah, got it. Without quotes, it looked like it broadly included all previous poster. I wasn't offended, but I was surprised! :)
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Sorry for the confusion tacticslion.
I admit much of what you threw together seems pretty solid.
I don't think I would want random player characters, but the rest sounds really good.
I think I would want to take the random lists and tables, and put them into a computer program, to speed things up though.
And for now, I could whip out the appropriate book and flip to the page, while, in the future, I could add the things to the program, and have it just show the end results on the screen; or have it save them so I can open the results later, or reroll bits I didn't like that it came up with.
Sorry for the confusion tacticslion.
I admit much of what you threw together seems pretty solid.
I don't think I would want random player characters, but the rest sounds really good.
I think I would want to take the random lists and tables, and put them into a computer program, to speed things up though.
And for now, I could whip out the appropriate book and flip to the page, while, in the future, I could add the things to the program, and have it just show the end results on the screen; or have it save them so I can open the results later, or reroll bits I didn't like that it came up with.
Hey, no problem. Tone and the 'net, eh? But as I said, I wasn't mad so much as just surprised. And while randomized PCs is not something we always do, it's one method of "randomized everything". :)
Would you still be interested in the PC (non-level) chart stuff?