Hello friends, and thank you for your support. This month we have Table Cat Games in the Spotlight as a result of our Patreons’ vote. If you’re a Patreon, then we’ve a new shortlist for you to decide from.
Your Adventure Awaits
Join Geek Native's patrons and become a hero in your own randomly generated story.
We’ve also made it to August, which is festival season here in Edinburgh, and once we’re through Gen Con, Geek Native slows down for a bit as the core team spend every waking moment as arts and culture journalists.
This month we offer thanks to; Chip Mosher, Sean P Kelley, Philippe Marcil, Adept Icarus, Noril of Cold River, R Waibel, Allen Varney, Kate, Paul Wilson, and Heike.
Patrons need only visit this private poll to vote. We appreciate each one.
Here are your choices for next month’s RPG Publisher Spotlight:
To cast your vote, visit this patrons-only page. You star.
Festival and other generators
Back in 2021, and as part of a blog carnival, Geek Native published a fantasy festival generator. You press a button, and the code generates a random festival for you. I’m no programmer,, and it was basic JavaScript, but even after I upgraded it, the page doesn’t get the attention it once had.
“Generators” as a concept was once a big part of TTRPG sites. There are still lots of great sites packed with individually made little scripts designed to help GMs out. These days I suspect AIs have eaten all the traffic and probably do a better (though less energy-efficient and ethical) job at giving a busy GM help and inspiration.
Other generators on Geek Native include;
- Random potion (with a twist) generator.
- Random prophecy generator(the most popular).
- Random merchant wagon complete with inventory (an ambitious and not solely successful project).
- Random secret society generator (was going to be part of a larger NPC generator).
- Random fantasy tavern generator (everyone has these).
I fell in love with random generators back in the days of MUSH RPGs, where I’d use [first{shuffle(’thing 1’,’thing 2’,’thing 3’))] scripts as an easy way to make shops and street descriptions a bit more interesting. You don’t need to be a programmer to see how that works; the ‘shuffle’ part switches up the order the ‘things’ are listed in, and the ‘first’ command picks the one now first in the list.
As team Zebra Eclipse (that’s us) ready up for the Edinburgh festival season, I’ll draw your attention to my attempt to present and, that’s right, provide a random show selector for one of the free fringe groups in the city. Don’t know which show to see? I’ve a random generator for that too!
