I would have sworn I’d posted this before. Ah well.
Random generators are how I compensate for limited imagination.
… okay, turns out I did post about this before. I just couldn’t find the right search terms and missed it when I scanned posts for the last year.
Ah well, in the grand spirit of The Post To End It, let’s look at the topic again. If I were to build a new ‘imagination helper‘, would I see…?
- Implement in a scripting language? I think I would for proof of concept and command line program, at least the first cut. I’m leaning toward Python. I can use the practice but also because it would be easy to integrate into a website.
- I want a GUI involved at some point. I can do this with Python (as calibre can prove), but can consider C#. I need some practice there, too.
- Store table definitions in JSON, I don’t see that changing.
- I see no reason to change my mind about the syntax. I want to use tables encoded in other ways, though. This can be done by having multiple readers, or by having converters from the source formats to the new one.
- My existing random text generator, for sure.
- Steven Savage has opened the sources for his Seventh Sanctum site. I definitely want these to be available for use.
- The Fantasy Adventure Builder incorporates tables from the Tome of Adventure Design. I would never share those tables, but I can see allowing an application to read them.
- … I’m sure there are others.
- Multicolumn tables… I have not decided if I really need this. Sometimes, a multicolumn random table can be treated as a set of single-column random tables, used together. Other times, a multicolumn table actually is used as a complex lookup table. I think I probably do not need multicolumn tables for random generation. I think I will so I can pick different aspects of a random choice.
- A gender table can include multiple columns for the different pronouns. Male, he, him, his; Female, she, her, hers; Plural, they, them, their; etc.
- Actor/role/verb tables can have many columns for different conjugations and purposes. Lurk, lurker, lurks, lurking, lurked.
- The lurker in the woods.
- The one who lurks [in darkness].
- The lurking one.
- The one who lurked.
- Translation table, for things like comparable ranks of nobility in different languages. Though I’m not sure I want to implement it this way. Instead, I can use a double-bind table (randomly select entry on randomly-selected table). It’s something of a kludge, but probably easier than maintaining an ever-widening table.
Okay, feels like I haven’t changed my mind much in the last 11 months. “Refined my thinking” can be a better way of describing it, but no substantive changes.