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Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Generating Swords & Sorcery Nations

One of the most interesting and flavor-choked character generation elements in first-edition Stormbringer is its character Nationality chart. A single random roll not only tells the player what part of the Young Kingdoms she hails from but has a profound effect on what the character will be. Her range of class backgrounds, magic accessibility, cosmic allegiances, body type even, all hinge on that single roll.

The resultant character positively drips with Moorcockian Swords & Sorcery ambiance--while providing for some really interesting asymmetrical surprises for the player--a hell of a nice hat trick in game design.

Though I have been busy dumping the Young Kingdoms formal dress in my (non-commercial) SB hack for the second Domain Game phase, I am not-surprisingly deeply reluctant to dump those kinds of elements in the mash-up system.

So what's the work around? How do you create something that can hit those notes without being bland as white toast, buying into a big-boy licensing feature, or straight-jacketing co-creation?

Solution A is create a generic, sociological system. Solution B is to tie it around a specific, hardwired setting of my own. Insert the sound of a loud, strident game show “wrong answer” buzz here.

Solution C is to try and play to that strength of that original chart and go even more random—and weird (and tongue-in-cheek). I, of course, voted for that.

Below is part one of my random S&S nationality generator. The first part is more generalized and can be used for nearly any fantasy rpg, the second part will have more mechanical applications to my hack--but should be relatively easy to adapt into other games if desired.

As always eager to hear any feedback.


Swords & Sorcery Nation Generator
Step 1. Roll on Nationality Name. Change or modify results to suit your own taste.
Step 2. Roll on National Features.
Step 3. Based on Step 1 and 2, compute background paths.

Step 1: Nationality Name

Name Structure Chart
Roll d10

1 [Syllable]
2-3 [Syllable] + [Syllable]
4-6 [Syllable] ' or - [Syllable]
7 [Syllable] + [Syllable] + [Syllable]
8 [Place Name] “of” [Descriptor]
9 Color of Your Choice + [Place Name]
10 [Descriptor] [Place Name]

Syllable Table
Roll d100


01-02
Ain
03-05
Ath
05-07
Bai
07-08
Bay
09-10
Be
11-12
Can
13
Dei
14-15
Eo
16-18
Fir
19
For
20
Gur
21-23
Gor
24
Hir
25-27
Hor
28
Jen
29-30
Jor
31-33
Kar
34-35
Kam
26-37
Koz
38-41
Kyr
42-45
Lan
46-49
Mar
50
Mer
51-53
Mir
54-55
Myr
56
No
57
Nok
58
Nuk
59
Oi
60-61
Po
62-64
Rom
65-66
Rat
67-70
Ror
71
Rex
72
Ru
73-74
Tek
75
To
76
Vlk
77-80
Vor
81
Xo
82
Xai
83-84
Xe
85-88
Xoth
90-92
Yani
93-94
Yor
95-96
Zhe
97
Zu
98-00
Roll Twice

Descriptor Chart
Roll d10

1
Sighs/Sighing
2
Whispers/Whispering
3
Howls/Howling
4
Woe/Woeful
5
Dread/Dreadful
6
Fear/Fearful
7
Desolation/Desolate
8
Madness/Mad
9
Endless/With No End
10
[The First Word that Comes Into Your Head]

Place Name Chart
Roll d10

1 Desert/Wastes/Barrens
2 Steppes/Plains
3 Cities/Towns
4 Forest/Woods/Jungles
5 Isles/Islands
6 Mountains/Peaks/Valley
7 Hills
8 Moors/Craters/Broken Lands
9 Swamps/Marshes/Bogs/Mires
10 Ocean/Seas/Gulf/Bay



11 comments:

  1. Nice! I like. You probably need to expand the charts after a while, but that's easy to do, or use larger charts for generating NPC nationalities.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think you chose the right approach. :)

    I'm interested in seeing what you do with the second part.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Works pretty well!

    Gur
    Whispering Wastes
    Marcan
    Moors of Woe
    Xothmerhor
    Mar-Kam
    Hills of Iron
    Horru

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks.

    @Trollsmyth
    Yep it is dire need of a few more descriptors and maybe some more entries on the name structure chart. My mind started to draw a blank.

    @Trey
    Just finishing it and up and formatting. I like the second part even better.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great stuff. This was a timely post. I read it just now while I was taking a break from an on-going project -- converting Matt Finch's awesome Tome of Adventure Design into Inspiration Pad format. It just took me a couple minutes to convert your tables into IP format. I can e-mail the file to you, if you'd like. I added a color list and some other place names ("Chasm, Well, Lagoon"... and how did you forget "Cantons"?) Here's a sample output from IP:

    Ru Lan
    Xai
    Xo Gor-Gur
    Hor'Rat-Mir
    Nuk Xai-Hor
    Ror Xoth-Bai
    Be'Kar-No
    Tek'Oi-Be
    Ath Nok-Kam
    Nok'Dei-Rom
    Koz

    Crater of Sighs
    Obsidian Steppes
    Moors of Desolation
    Brass Ocean
    Maddening Steppes
    Hills of Woe
    Well of Dread
    Ever-Changing Plains
    Valley of Howls
    Coral Valley
    Ivory Isles
    Crystal Steppes
    Cantons of Whispers

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  6. Hey, Inspiration Pad is really good for this easy tables. Fast to create, even faster to generate.

    I rolled up Hills of Fear the old fashioned way bevore reading the comments... ;)

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  7. @Matthew
    Once again you earn a big shiny gold star. Thanks, yes I could definitely use something like that.

    Just added so more tables, any chance they can be a second or related generator?

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  8. And yes how could I miss "Cantons" indeed. I am so going to name any new blog I make, Cantons of Woe.

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  9. Very Cool stuff man! Awesome work!

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  10. This is really great. I worked up an Excel spreadsheet that generates them. One of the pages of the workbook is a printable page with 100 alphabetized nationalities (although it doesn't eliminate duplicates).

    I didn't see part two, I'll see what I can do. Sure, this could be done in perl, but there's something about the spreadsheet that let's you see all the possibilities...

    Here a sample from the 100 it generated just now
    Ainbexoth
    Ainjor
    Craters of Madness
    Dei-ror
    Desolate Mountains
    Endless Isles
    Fearful Plains
    Fir-fir
    Firmarbai
    Glassy Plains
    Mountains of Whispers
    Myreo
    Myrxoth
    Nokvor
    Nuk'tek
    Onyx Mountains
    Rom-ath
    Woeful Hills
    Xothlan-xe

    ReplyDelete