Recently I started working on my Far Jewel campaign setting again. Part of that work included writing up historical events for various parts of the setting. Here is a tool I created that helps do just that.
How This All Started
The genesis of this tool was an article by Johnn Four on RoleplayingTips.com. It talked about using a deck of cards to generate keywords or ideas for historical events in fantasy worldbuilding.
It was pretty nifty, and determined whether the event was beneficial or not, depending on the suit of the card drawn, as well as what the kernel of the event was. It also used cards to determine some additional info about the event, from the scope to additional info about benefits/losses and if it had ended or was ongoing.
I took that and converted it to use with a science fiction setting, and used it for various parts of the Far Jewel universe. And then promptly forgot about it… Then I recently started working on the Far Jewel setting again, and picked that tool back up. I thought–hey, this would be easy to automate! As I started working on it, though, I saw where it could be tweaked and tinkered with, and that is just what I did.
What It Does
So what does it do now? Well, it can be found at Tools. It is pretty easy to use–just go to the page, pick a setting and see what it spits out. If you want more events, just reload the page.
What it provides is a number of random events, with a series of keywords or phrases that can be used to help shape the event. The original generator had one basic tag that went along with some of the events, so I started playing with that concept. I ended up with choosing to have all keywords or phrases be added like Twitter-style #hashtags.
These #hashtags can be used to help interpret the event in different or unexpected ways. Not all of them will make sense, but try to use them anyway. Be creative–see what you can come up with!
For example, say you wanted a history event for a policorp or megacorporation. "expansion conflict #enemy #hardship #system #loss #change loss minimized #ongoing" might mean that the corporation was trying to expand their markets, and had setback. They had a conflict with a rival corporation in one star system, and ended up losing control of that system to the enemy. The conflict is still ongoing, but they were able to minimize the loss somehow–maybe gaining an advantage in another system.
Another example might be "bioweapon escapes #accident #diplomacy #regional #benefit #reputation increase minimized #ended". On one planet, a bioweapon accidentally escaped a lab, resulting in a hit to the corporations reputation. Still, they managed to get some good data on the weapon, even though they had a public downturn.
The point is to try to take the line and come up with a creative history event. And if it makes absolutely no sense at all–ditch it and use another one!
What Next?
I’m not really sure. I plan to take this over to my fantasy setting website, middle-lands.com. I’ll see what I can come up with there.
The only real thing I can do to take it further is to add more base events or tags to go with them. That is pretty easy to do–it just takes time and imagination! As for coding, I’m not sure there is much more to add to it.
But what do you all think? Are there any other things I could do to make it more useful to you? Think about it, and let me know in the comments below!
Marko ∞
(Originally published on farjewel.com, 6/12/2020. I did copy it over to the fantasy website, and have now folded it back here.)
