A complete "random" world. Forked Thread: On the Value of Uncertainty

[Reynard]

For those who are interested in having a plot alongside this method, I think that could be done.

Say there is a plot - the party is looking for the MacGuffin, say. The DM has an idea of where it is, and several tables for rumors regarding it (a set of minor rumors, a set of medium rumors, a set of major rumors, a set of false rumors, etc). Setting up the tables might require some planning, since you might want to avoid the PCs putting things together too quickly.

Entering a new town? Randomly determine if someone here knows what's going on. PCs talk to that someone? Randomly determine what they know. Bam, now the players have another piece of the puzzle, along with whatever randomness is happening in town.

In this case, you might want to use a deck of cards instead of a table. that way, the players can collect clues and rumors and you wouldn't either end up repeating yourself via the NPCs or failing to roll one really important piece. As PCs explore and investigate, they'd get clues in a random order but they'd slowly be able to put it together. Eventually, they'd either have all the clues or they'd figure it out before then.

Oooh -- fun thought: use a jigsaw puzzle. pick something appropriately fantastic. When the PCs enter the Tomb of Badness, they are set upon by the Shambling Zombie Guardians of the Whatsit. Each one is animated by a piece of the Whatsit, represented by a puzzle piece. As the PCs defeat their foes, the players get a puzzle piece for every one they kill. When they get all the pieces and put the puzzle together, the characters are able to retrieve the Whatsit. (Of course, that's when the real baddie comes out, but that's neither here nore there).

 

[Novem5er]

I've actually been considering this sort of game for my fiancee and I. We have a young daughter (too young to play), and we are both college students, so our time is limited. While my fiancee loves fantasy stories, she's not too into "roleplaying" by herself, and if we only have an hour to play at a time, it sucks to waste that time talking back and forth two much.

She wants to roll some dice.

I hate to say it, but I've been trying to find a way to turn 4e into more of an MMO. *cringe* MMOs are easy to play because they hand-hold the player. Go to the guy with the ! over his head, get a quest, and then hack your way through a series of monsters until you get X and return it to Y. Obviously this would get stale, but throwing some randomness into it might liven it up (for me as well).

Instead of charts, I'm thinking about going with Cards. I liked the idea of Quest Cards, so why not make those random? The Quest Card would have the main objective, the XP and treasure reward, and probably would link to a special Encounter Card for the climax (see below).

For the actual adventure, I'd use pre-generated Encounter Cards. 4e is great for designing interesting encounters for a varity of levels and purposes. Each Encounter Card would have a group of monsters on it and I might even group the stat blocks on a matching document so that I wouldn't have to open the MM at all. The Climax Card (from the Quest) would be shuffled in there somewhere, so that the group will encounter the climax after X encounters.

I would also create Treasure Cards. The DMG already has Treasure Parcels laid out for each level, so I could easily put those on separate cards.

I've even throught about creating a series of Area Cards, which basically describe the combate area and the terrain. I've got a bunch of Dungeon Tiles, so I might use sticky tape to "build" several scenes ahead of time and then design Area Cards to match, which would also give all the crunch for interesting terrain.

So a quest would go something like this:
-Quest Card - "Kill Gaptooth the Bugbear Bandit"
---- Shuffle the Climax Card into the Encounter Deck.

First Encounter
-Area Card - "Light Woods - trees count as cover"
-Encounter Card - "Goblin Ambush - 2 Gob Warriors, 1 Gob Sharpshooter"
-Treasure Card - "Parcel 3 - 60 GP"

Second Encounter, Third, Etc, Etc, until the Climax Card is drawn.

I could limit each Quest to an Encounter Deck of 5 cards. I could even through in some Skill Challenges into the encounter mix by making it another card. The only thing it's missing is something to tie it all together. Maybe tie the Climax in with a special Area card instead of an Encounter card... so a quest is tied to a "place" and not a random encounter.

Ideas?

 

[Ranger REG]

Could D&D on the dice like this work? Has anyone tried it? Would it lead to more headaches (nonsensical monster encounters, overpowered treasure) or less (freedom from PCs trampling or otherwise screwing up plots and such?)

If you want the added headache, more power to you.

Personally, it's okay, I just don't think it should be convoluted or silly, like rolling one day for a season (winter, fall, spring, summer) and roll again for the next day. There are some that prefer a bit of pattern, like the waxing and waning of the moon, or tracing one's ancestor race or ethnic migration.

 

[Irda Ranger]

I'm glad my post got someone to ask some interesting questions.

Could D&D on the dice like this work? Has anyone tried it? Would it lead to more headaches (nonsensical monster encounters, overpowered treasure) or less (freedom from PCs trampling or otherwise screwing up plots and such?)

Yes, to a point. As others have said, you just painted a good picture of 1E. It's also a good picture of my gaming table, to a point.

Since my post generated the topic, I'll just talk a little bit about how I run my game and why I don't go further down the road of "procedural everything."

First though, I need to make the difference clear between the terms "procedural generation" and "random generation." PG using a chart and a d20 (or d100) to generate attributes of an entity (town, guild, person, whatever), but the charts are not random. For my worlds, I write these charts and determine the odds of any given result. For 1E, Gary provided this service. It's very important to understand that you are making editorial decisions when you draw up your charts; what monsters are on it? what are the odds of meeting them? races? is "tudor mansion" a possible result? The world is not random; it's procedural. You (as the DM) don't know what's over the next hill any more than the PCs do, but you wrote the chart that gives the answer, so you're still responsible for the results.

As for my campaign, I like to draw maps (it's a hobby), but I also borrow liberally from history and present-day. I've got a map of 12th century France I've been dying to use, but I just haven't had a chance yet. What goes on the map though is procedural - towns, guilds, forms of government, local religions, etc. are all procedurally generated. I keep lists of NPC names (organized by gender and culture) and just go down the list of people as I need to drop of name.

PC: "Who's the Duke of Gheldaneth?"
Me: <glances down>"Sucount Meros Ur."

I keep a person wiki to keep them all straight.

There's no meta-plot or story that I am seeking to "tell" to my players. I ask my players (at character generation) for their character's motives, preferences, interests and friends. I then (creatively, not procedurally) think of "bangs" to get the story rolling immediately. This is important because I want my players to actually care about the events that are unfolding. I need to link the events and what's going on to their stated interests so that they have a motive (other than payment).

I also then (creatively, not procedurally) decide a few things about the "bang" and why it happened. I have already created (procedurally) a world to inhabit, but events within the world are not random - there must be plausible cause and effect at the micro-scale, or players quickly lose interest.

As an example, I just started a new 4E Forgotten Realms campaign in Gheldaneth, the largest city of High Imaskar. Session 1 the PCs are sitting around a table at the Inn (they're all friends before play starts, I required this) and a messenger runs in, grabs one, and says "Your father's shop was just robbed in broad daylight! They didn't take any money from the till, but they grabbed something from the back room where your father keeps his most valuable possessions! He has asked for you to come immediately."

Bang. And we're off.

In my experience, there are certain things players will accept if procedurally generated, and others that will not be:

Things you can procedurally generate:
1. The motives and personal appearance of a given NPC they have never met before.
2. The monstrous inhabitants of a cave they've never been to before.
3. The political structure of a town they've not been to before.
4. Cash & non-magical treasure.
5. The race of a thief in a given large city.
etc.

Do you see the pattern? If the PCs have not encountered a given thing before, they'll believe anything within reason. As long as your charts only given reasonable answers, you're golden.

But your players expect cause-and-effect. If the main church of a theocratic city-state is devoted to a Lawful Good deity of justice, they just won't believe that city's mayor a Chaotic Evil mindflayer. That's an extreme example, but you get the idea. The more the world is fleshed out, the less often you can accept the answers your charts give you. Since they create path dependencies, the charts become less reliable every time you use them.

 

[chriton227]

I found a game on RPG Now called Mythic that is designed to allow no-GM play using what they call a "Game Master Emulator", either with their system or as an add on to other RPG systems (they offer the Game Master Emulator separately in case you don't want their system). From what I can tell, the GME is basically a just random generator. I purchased it on a whim, but haven't had a chance to actually read it yet.

http://www.mythic.wordpr.com/
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=16173&it=1

 

[Reynard]

snip

Excellent post and a really important distinction between "procedural" and "random". Even with something as simple as a wandering monster table, there's a degree of intent and consistency that goes into its creation, starting with something as basic as the terrain and climate type. Roll up a Frost Worm while the PCs are travelling through a saharan desert and you've just blown their suspension of disbelief (or you better have something cool up your sleeve).

If I create a random encounter chart and put orcs on it, say, I usually take the time to add a sub table -- maybe just a d6 roll -- to determine which orc warband/tribe/whatever they are from. Having different orc groups fleshes out the world a little bit, which is good, but it also also suggestive during play. If the same group keeps coming up, it suggests that this group is strong and maybe even making incursions into the area. if a different group comes up every time, it suggests maybe an alliance or perhaps even an area contested by orcs. Why would different orc tribes want this rotten stretch of badlands? The wheels start turning and it doesn't take long for an idea to drop out of the sky that leads to a whole adventure, perhaps even an entire campaign. That idea isn't random, but it was inspired by random events and therefore not likely to have occurred to me if I just sat down and tried to think up adventure ideas.

This is why I like a strong element of the random in play: simple inspiration, not just for me but for the players too. In the above example, it would be just as likely that a player would be the first one to say, "Why do all these orc tribes want this stretch of dirt?" And if they say it and I run with it, they feel like they've either a) figured it out (if my sleight of hand about random rolls was good enough) or b) that they have added to the compaign in a significant way because I ran with something they thought up. Both immerse and invest the players in the campaign far more than any predetermined order of events ever could.

 

[Simm]

Does anyonr here remeber Warhammer Quest? It was esentially an dungeon crawl without a DM.

Each player takes a hero, the basic game came with 5 (elf, dwarf, wizard, barbarian, and troll slayer), you could buy others individually.
Roll a die to generate obvjective room (fighting pit, mystic fountain, Idol statue, fire chasm, lost tomb, and one other I can't remember right now). Each roll had a table for determining your quest, the boss monster, and the reward. Shuffle that card in with the rest of the dungeon deck.

To play you fliped the first dungeon card, each card had a dungeon room or corridor with what exits the room had. If you fliped a room card draw an encouter card to determine what's in it. After you beat the monsters draw a tresure card to determine what you find.

After you beat the adventure a set of random tables determined what you encountered on the way back to town. Once in town you could buy gear or train to the next level pr go to the inn and get drunk, there was a seperate table for that (you could pass out and wake up haveing gotten a tatoo).

 

[Reynard]

Does anyonr here remeber Warhammer Quest? It was esentially an dungeon crawl without a DM.

I bought it. I played it once or twice, but I have used the plastic minis it came with for years.

 

[Irda Ranger]

The wheels start turning and ...

After "Removing personal bias from decision-making", this is the #2 benefit of using generator tables. I've gotten way more quest ideas from combining two roll results than I've ever gotten from "pure brain-storming" or what have you.

 

[Remathilis]

For example, the PCs decide to ride out to the next town, which the DM rolls is two days away. They go to the local shop (which might be named via generator) and talk with the shop keeper. Since the shop keeper is impressed by their diplomacy check (moving his initial attitude from indifferent to friendly), he tells the PCs a rumor off the random-rumor chart. Seems its rumored their is an old mine not two days travel from here, and strange sounds come from it at night (true). The PCs decide to investigate. After two days of traveling in rain (randomly generated weather) and meeting and defeating some local bandits (random encounter) they make it to the old mine. Inside, they face some randomly determined foes from a chart of appropriate CR foes (carefully watching for nonsensical results, re-rolling or having no encounter as appropriate) they reach the end and find a powerful foe (randomly determined?) guarding a magical sword (+4, which is powerful but the dice were favorable). However, along the way the dwarf died in combat (critical hit) and now the group go back to town to see if there is a high-enough level cleric in town (random town population) to cast raise dead, perhaps trading that +4 sword for the favor...

I wanted to re-emphasize the bolded element, since this kinda seems like what Irda was talking about.

You wouldn't randomly roll to encounter Type 1 demons in a 1st level adventure, the DM still has the roll of keeping challenges withing the EL span (-4 to +4, probably constructing several "encounters before hand and randomly placing them along the route) and similarly, the treasure would generated off the appropriate tables (minor, medium etc) but basically, the idea is what Irda said: unless its completely nonsensical (a sunny summer day give way to a blizzard at night) the DM keeps the roll.

As others have said though, it would be major undertaking just do to the amount of work generated on the fly, but it might be an interesting way of playing.

Lastly, until Novem5ber's post I didn't think it would be possible to do in 4e (since 4e lacks loads of random tables) but his "card/quest" idea might work even better than the tables.

Anyway's its something to think about, at least...