Iron Arachne generates whole fantasy families and food for thought

Here’s a good idea, but please let me overthink it for you.

Ben Overmyer’s Iron Arachne is an excellent RPG resource site. It’s a toolkit of generators with RPGs in mind, either generic fantasy or sci-fi, and some specific games in mind like Stars Without Number.

These are not straightforward to build. Sure, Geek Native has some generators and a random JavaScript isn’t complicated, but making anything that’s both coherent and random becomes a challenge.

The Fantasy Family Generator creates whole fantasy families for you and generations of them too! Great-great-great-great-great dwarf grandfathers? No problem.

It’s fantasy because of the species in the system and the associated names. The generator makes dragonborn, dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, halfling, half-orc, and human. You’ll even get mixed marriages.

But, let me overthink what should be an elegant want to procedurally created families. The generator makes families, and always traditional families because the husband and wife are always a husband and wife, and the couple always has taken the same surname.

I mean, if you wanted to mix and match, just press the “Random Seed (and Generate)” button and take bits of both.

If I wanted a family of two dads and adopted children, it takes two button presses, not one, so no hardship. If I wanted a single-parent family (and this generator already procedurally slays some or all parents), I could just discount one name.

There’s also always children. Is the definition of “family” here “parents with kids”? Well, yes.

So, I’m confident Ben Overmyer just wanted to let busy GMs create a bunch of relationships and NPCs with a button press. I doubt there’s any intended commentary on what counts as “family”, but that’s what makes its way into my mind.

I don’t just mean from a “woke” sense (which is no pejorative) but from a “what’s possible with ‘family’ in a fantasy sense” worldbuilding way. A coven of witches? Why not! Time-travelling self-seeding families? Cross-planar families? Families forged from quests, not civil vows? Parents who take the name that their children earn them? Indeed, all possible, just perhaps more than some random code can do.

Creative Commons credit: Cozy Sabbath by IrenHorrors, who has a Society6 page.