Recently I started working on my SF campaign setting again, and came up with a tool that will help me flesh out historical events. I converted it to my Middle Lands fantasy setting, and thought it might be useful for everyone.
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 my Far Jewel universe. And then I promptly forgot about it…
And 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 improved some, and that is what I did.
What It Does
So what does it do now? Well, the Far Jewel one can be found in Tools section. It is pretty easy to use–just go to the page 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 are looking at a historical event for a kingdom. "faction conflict #ally #hardship #kingdom #benefit #any costs or loss recovered #ongoing" might be taken as some faction in the kingdom had a conflict with a (now former) ally, which caused a number of deaths or economic loss. These losses were recouped because they came out on top, and recruitment more than made up for the losses.
Another example might be "ancient relics discovered #ally #conflict #kingdom #benefit #change loss increased #ended." In this case, some ancient magic item is discovered, which causes a political crisis with a neighboring kingdom. The magical artifact curses the local king, leading to any benefit from the item to be outweighed by the loss of stability in the region. The king eventually dies, and a once promising realm is left to flounder on the brink of disaster.
The goal here is to take the line from the generator, and find a way to creatively spin it in interesting and new ways–creating historical events that help bring life to your setting.
What Does That Mean For You?
Well, I took that tool and brought it over to this website, and it can be found in Tools section as well. I changed the events and tags to suit a fantasy setting–it should be generic enough for any fantasy setting, not just the Middle Lands.
I will probably add more events and tags over time, to make the tool be more useful.
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 middle-lands.com, on 6/12/2020. I edited the article slightly to make the links work with this site.)
