Looking for a random familly event generator

[Alric]

I'm thinking about starting a new fantasy game. One of my ideas was to make it more epic in scope by advanceing time faster than normal. For example I might decide that 5 years have gone by since the last adventure.

 

What I'm looking for is something to help with generating random events for the time period in question. Things like births and deaths, significant familly events, events that effect the rest fo the world (wars, disasters, change in power structure).

 

Ideally this would be useable for a wide variety of genres, but fantasy is most important.

 

I'm not worried about it being for any particular system, I'm looking for generic information.

 

Thanks

[Dino]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

You might want to see if you can track down some of the old Central Casting books. They were devoted to randomizing backgrounds and personal histories for characters in a given genre (I think they had a fantasy book and a sci-fi book). The books were system agnostic and sometimes silly, but you could get some good ideas from them.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

The old AD&D Oriental Adventures book had some event generators like those you're talking about. You should be able to pick up a PDF of it for $5 at RPGNow if you can't find it anywhere else.

[Curufea]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

Also there's a strategic event generator in Rolemaster, and I think there's some in Harn/Harnmaster too (not sure ATM, as I've lent my books out).

[Alric]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

Also there's a strategic event generator in Rolemaster' date=' and I think there's some in Harn/Harnmaster too (not sure ATM, as I've lent my books out).[/quote']

 

Do you remember which rolemaster book?

[AlHazred]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

Central Casting has some nice high-fantasy, epic style character background generators. In some ways, they resemble the character background generators that I loved in Cyberpunk 2020.

 

Pendragon has Family Events that players roll for every Winter Phase (the bookkeeping phase at the end of the session). They're pretty good for a lower-fantasy setting, as they're not dependent on magic.

 

Ideally, I prefer a little player-GM interaction, since random generators usually ignore the foibles of each particular character.

[Curufea]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

Do you remember which rolemaster book?

The Game Master book in the section on running campaigns.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

Just a suggestion: instead of making it random, you might have small brainstorming sessions with the players about it. Have them contribute to the story, or at least give you ideas for starting points. At least for stuff that tends to directly impact the PCs.

 

Good luck!

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

I never like the Central Casting versions -- they were too offbeat to be generally useful.

 

As memory serves there was at least one of this sort of thing in an old Dragon magazine.

 

Traveller had a pretty involved one you had to go thru just to make a character in the first place. The only game Ive ever played where your character can die before the game even starts.

 

and so on....

 

 

But all that aside, random family events rarely work out in my experience -- random generators need to be generic, while peoples families need to be personal and specific (if they are used at all as anything other than a footnote in a background write up).

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

I can agree that in many cases it's much better to tailor a campaign than to randomize it, but I still like having tables. They make a good starting point to brainstorm from, and if the GM is totally stumped as to where to go with the game, he can throw dice at the problem. Plus, sometimes randomizing an event adds something in the way of verisimilitude, by having stuff come out from nowhere (just like in real life). The problems with verisimilitude come in when everything is coming out of nowhere....

 

Just my unsolicited 2 cents.

[Curufea]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

I quite like random event generators - it's good if you want unimportant time fillers, or you're suffering from writers block.

I even wrote one once. For my Farscape Fudge "FUDGEscape" game -

http://www.curufea.dreamhosters.com/fudgescape/farscape_scenario_generator.php

 

Which kinda ended when I lost interest and got sidetracked into other things

[Killer Shrike]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

Im not against random generators -- Ive probably made more than any other person on these boards, and will make more before I die.

 

Im just saying that there are some things that they are not great for, and family events are one of them IMO.

[Alric]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

Just a suggestion: instead of making it random, you might have small brainstorming sessions with the players about it. Have them contribute to the story, or at least give you ideas for starting points. At least for stuff that tends to directly impact the PCs.

 

Good luck!

 

Unfortunetely I know my players, and getting a brainstorming session out of everyone is just this side of impossible. Actually getting everyone together for gaming is like pulling teeth.

 

I came up with the idea of a side game we could play when enough people didn't show up for the main game. I want something that I can throw out with almost no work.

 

I like random events because things can happen that I didn't expect. Of course I often alter rolls and make things up as I go.

[Alric]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

I should note that the most important thing I'm looking for is births and deaths. I invision a campaign where the time scale is multi-generational. Each character will get a few adventures and then retire from old age. The story will be picked up with one of the children and they will continue on.

[Play4Keeps]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

You can wander thru http://www.seventhsanctum.com/ They maybe got something.

[John Desmarais]

Re: Looking for a random familly event generator

 

I never like the Central Casting versions -- they were too offbeat to be generally useful.

 

Using Central Casting was always something of an art form. Take what it gives you, try to tie it together in a cohesive whole, adn use that a source of ides - then throw away the stuff that's just too far "out there".