Tuesday, December 14, 2010

The Table

One day I will devise The Table.

Point is it will be the only table I--or anyone--will ever need.

You will roll on this table and then the whole adventure will be there. And you'll say "excellent idea, table! Let's roll."

I will never have to do any work ever again.

The details are, as yet, poorly worked out. Some things that I know will have to be worked into the table include:

-Leiber levels.

-Post-Burroughsian neoweird iteration density algorithms.

-Demogorgon.

On-line adventure generators often include some fine and gamable ideas, but somehow do not include the important things I feel are the actual hard part about coming up with an adventure.

Like: a level of aesthetic consistency that makes having 3 minotaurs in one room and a robot with flamethrowers for glands in the next room make perfect sense and feel like a luscious dark bite of a rich and chocolatey gameworld full of mystery and specialness and not just two things you rolled up.

I need a rationale generator. Lots of generators will give you 8 giant rats and a pie trap. I need to know why.

Also I need screwy inventive puzzles or dilemmas that no chart could spit out. Like that. I need a table that can invent that. I need an AI.