Story Generators?

Bill Zebub · Mar 17, 2026

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
I cannot recommend Notorious highly enough. It's Star Wars bounty hunters with the serial numbers filed off, and it has amazing prompts. (Seriously, I would put this book up against any of the stuff Disney+ is putting out right now.)

So I bought the PDF. It's awesome. I have now ordered the book.

(If you still want the expansion book, Outsiders, it looks like it's available in print here: Always Checkers Publishing - TTRPGs by Jason Price)

Whizbang Dustyboots · Mar 17, 2026

Bill Zebub said:
So I bought the PDF. It's awesome. I have now ordered the book.

I love that it's spiral bound. The whole thing is so well designed for table play.

aco175 · Mar 17, 2026

In scouts we played a card game a few times with a pack of playing cards. Pass out all the cards and one person starts a story with one of the cards. "There was once a King that was missing something", and lay down a king card. The next person would add to it. "He was missing his 10 chickens", and lay down a 10 card. The story would go around laying down cards and adding to the story.

It was ok, but made some silly stuff.

I was also thinking of the random dungeons and make the story based on an adventure made.

Bill Zebub · Mar 18, 2026

Update: we used a bunch of the random generators in Shadowdark. We have:

A pit trap that is triggered by closing a door, that somehow blinds its victims
A tar pit with toxic mold and disconcerting sounds
Somebody who tried to plant an object on "you" (the protagonist)
A quest to escort "the killer" in (to? from?) the sorcerer's tower
A location called The Temple of the Dead King
A rumor that there is a Druid who would bless a sword that was used to kill a werewolf. (We debated whether this meant he would bless it in order to kill a werewolf, or would bless it after it had killed a werewolf.)
A wealthy, elderly, chaotic goblin named "Sticks" Razinian who apologizes a lot, is a retired crawler, and somehow is also a beggar.
A wizard's tower in the university district
A wealthy tavern in the same district called "The Demon's Wheel" where they serve griffon eggs and aged royal wine, and that is known for it's drinking games (which makes sense, being in the university district)

We're starting to put these pieces together into a narrative. "The Killer" is a werewolf, currently in human form, terrified of turning again, so hiding from the moon in the old temple, which everybody knows is rife with dangerous traps. The protagonist received a note to meet Sticks at the Demon's Wheel, where he's going to try to pay him to fetch the werewolf and escort him to the wizard's tower nearby, where the wizard might be able to help him. But Sticks isn't really trying to help the werewolf, he has some other (as yet undetermined plan) which is why he slips something into the hero's pouch...

And that's as far as we've gotten.

Whizbang Dustyboots · Mar 18, 2026

That's a lot of good content. That Kelsey knows her stuff.

Bill Zebub · Mar 18, 2026

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
That's a lot of good content. That Kelsey knows her stuff.

It's really helping my son overcome his mental block to writing anything.

Bill Zebub · Thursday at 4:05 PM

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
I cannot recommend Notorious highly enough. It's Star Wars bounty hunters with the serial numbers filed off, and it has amazing prompts. (Seriously, I would put this book up against any of the stuff Disney+ is putting out right now.)

I did an actual play of it here, if you want to see how it runs.

Other solo RPGs are also good for this. Worlds Without Numbers, Thousand Year Old Vampire (probably too adult for your kid, as it's about aging, the loss of memory and death), Be Like a Cat, Be Like a Crow, Colostle, Ironsworn, etc., and many more.

WWN is probably the best all in one product for what your son wants, assuming he's looking for standard fantasy RPG stuff. And the same writer has a bunch of other genre books in case your kid wants to pivot to cyberpunk, post-apocalyptic, space, etc.

Received my hard copy of Notorious (shipped from the UK) today. What a delightful little book! I highly recommend this game.

I'll probably have to buy the expansion now...

Whizbang Dustyboots · Thursday at 4:51 PM

Bill Zebub said:
Received my hard copy of Notorious (shipped from the UK) today. What a delightful little book! I highly recommend this game.

I'll probably have to buy the expansion now...

I love that it's a lay-flat spiralbound book. It's so clearly a product of one designer figuring out what would make it the perfect product for them and then just doing that, rather than having to negotiate with a bunch of committees and managers.