…

…I am totally gonna try this.

By the way, Ed Greenwood was right about that 3.0 FR book; independently from his claim, I actually tried that one night, only I used the map instead. And I DID come up with a one-player campaign for my wife.

Well, actually, she was my girlfriend then.

For modern day games, I like setting my games in other cities, then using context free newspaper articles to create opponents and motivations. What happens when you combine a mall renovation and a murder?

As for needing a system to generate random settings, I’d say “need” is much too strong a term. For me, the more arrows I have in my GMing quiver (up to a point), the better.

This process involves putting your creative muscles to use in what can be a pretty unusual way, and it has the potential to produce unexpecedtly enjoyable results. Generating the basics also takes so little time (for this post, about 2 minutes) that it’s useful just as a creative exercise.

Need, no. Enjoy and get some mileage out of, hopefully.

But do you really have so many gaming opportunities that you need a system to make up a random campaign setting?
As a GM, I only run games in one setting these days – of course, I’m lucky to play once every two months.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes (since it’s a popular choice)
“Take it at read it to me, for I have neither the strength nor the courage to do it myself.”

Last, but not least, The Shadow of Ararat, by Thomas Harlan.
“She is swift, like the wind over the water, and light, like a young girl dancing.”

Possibilities.

The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire: Volume 3

“His prophecy was soon verified; the death of Palaeologus devolved the command on several chiefs, alike eminent in rank, alike defective in military talents; the Greeks were oppressed by land and sea; and a captive remnant, that escaped the swords of the Normans and Saracens, abjured all future hostility against the person or dominions of their conqueror.”

A long sentence, but meaty.

The Atlas of Early Man

(I skipped the first page where I landed on an explanation of the use of doric columns in architecture.)

“These tombs had well-constructed revetment walls and cult pillars which stood outside in the ritual enclosures.”

Cult pillars? Cool!

Ulysses

“This is the very worst hour of the day. Vitality. Dull, gloomy; hate this hour. Feel as if I had been eaten and spewed.”

Huh.

One more for good measure.

The Great Automatic Grammatisator from The Roald Dahl Omnibus

“In three minutes, it can produce a calculation that by hand (if it were possible) would fill half a million sheets of foolscrap paper.”

An era setting, perhaps early steampunk for fantasy, or early 20th century for a more realistic approach.

Very cool. I’ll have to let this stew a bit before I can figure out how it all might fit together.

Books: Anna Karenina, The Annotated Sherlock Holmes vol. I, and a volume of the Talmud.

Passage 1:

“Alexi Alexandrovich had forgotten Countess Lydia Ivanovna, but she had not forgotten him.”

Ooh, promising.

Passage 2:

“Well, Watson, we shall see who will win in the long run.”

Looks nice with the other.

Passage 3:

“Or alternatively, if the creditor claimed the deed was lost, he should have arrained for the creditor to write another deed for the land, indicating that the deed now belonged to the debtor.”

Ooh, that’s nice. A noble robbed another of her ancestral home, and did it so long ago that he’s forgotten — but she hasn’t! She’s plotting her revenge, even now…

GREAT idea, Martin!

T