Denizens of the Dying World (abbreviated from now on to DDW), by Brian Yaksha, is a small character generator, ostensibly designed for the dark TTRPG system ‘Mork Borg.’ Brian is a game designer who both writes his own games and works on others’, as well as blogging at https://www.rakehellzine.com/.
DDW is written using Perchance, and the great thing about Perchance is that anyone can look under the hood of its generators by pressing the ‘edit’ button in the top right.
On the left you can see the ‘grammar’ – the rules by which the generator is governed. It’s actually extremely simple, outputting a [name], a [surname], a [type], a [want], and a [vibe], followed by some [combat] stats. However, by avoiding overly complex grammatical rules and focusing on highly specific list entries, the generator can produce consistent-feeling characters, with a few surprises.
Above are just five of the generator’s 100 types (100 is apparently a good number). The types follow a consistent grammatical rhythm of four (sometimes five) clauses, which create a sense of past and present, and contrast description with action. This approach is highly reminiscent of Adam Saltsman’s ‘couplet’ technique in Overland, where he paired a past biographical detail with an intention for the future.
The [want] is the only rigid selector in the generator: ‘they know of [placetype] [placename].’ Perhaps it is unfinished?
Takeaways
- Lots of options make for better-feeling randomness (100 is a good number)
- Specific and highly differentiated options make for better world- and story-feel
- Contrasting couplets create drama
With regards to writing stories, of course, I can’t rely on such consistency in player action, and will need to account for players missing beats or skipping through text entirely. By making unskippable intros and outros to each level that tie into the environment or set up the next one, I ought to be able to ensure a sense of continuity; any middle story beats (say, contained in a pickup or interactable) should probably be general enough to apply to any level (unless I can magic up another month to work on this!).
Personally, I am interested in digging further into grammatical rules. The generator I am currently working on – Sad NPCs – has a grammatical system predicated on prepositions. If it chooses ‘by’, for example, then both the [verb] and the [influence] can select from only the [by] pool. This also works for genders. Obviously, the combinatorial issues are fairly serious, but I prefer the potential for structural surprise! I can already see that creating a deep-feeling generator is not the work of days or weeks, but months and maybe even years…