Random generation and procedural generation (which is a little more than 'random generation with the crusts cut off') are powerful tools. As GMs and designers we use them to spark inspiration or to populate a game or setting with interesting content. But we use them, or ought to use them, in different ways.
Here's the difference, as I see it.
Random generation
Roll a dice, get an outcome. Or variants thereof.
Random generation is
👉 Extremely quick
👉 An opportunity to use big random tables, which everyone loves
👉 Useful for inspiration by hitting possibilities you wouldn't have thought of, even if you don't use the actual prescribed results
But it may also result in content with major dissonances and peculiarities.
I think a little incongruence is good, but generating too much randomly can create a sort of silly homogeneity where everything is dissonant, nothing quite makes sense, and no world elements are linked or correlated except by accident. You get ooh-so-zany slop.
Over-reliance on randomness thus requires work to repair, which can itself be entertaining, but takes time and effort.
For example, suppose you roll a random encounter across multiple tables, and get: [roll] hundreds of ... [roll] skeletons ... dressed as ... [roll] jesters .... and they're [roll] hauling a cartload of ... [roll] scented soap ... through [roll] a desert in bloom.
It's something you wouldn't have thought of, sure. But it's too dissonant to be usable in most settings. You hear it and maybe an inkling of a consistent narrative jumps to mind, but the designer needs to plaster over the gaps, tweaking or adding things, to actually get there.
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| Zany. Too zany? Image by CDD20, via Pixabay. |
Procedural generation
Technically a subtype of random generation, procedural generation uses a more complex function to go from inputs to results. It uses randomness, but has deliberate human design built in to create plausible outcomes.
This takes longer, both in the up-front design work and the use of it for creation.
Procedural generation...
👉 Both uses and creates interlinked/ordered/self-consistent information
👉 Combined human decisions and design with randomness to spark novelty but to constrain it in certain ways
👉 Results (ideally) in more plausible or verisimilitudinous outcomes
Examples include:
👉 Branching tables and subtables
👉 Little bits of pseudocode for dungeon room generation
👉 Features added to a consistent core, like a themed monster which gets appropriate thematic features generated via branching dice tables or if/thens
One Application
I'm currently working on a zine. Its premise is that wizards are powerful, crazed, unique, and have strange features which align with their individual theme. For me, that means procedural generation.
I'm exploring a process of taking a wiki article from, say, Wikipedia and pulling out a bunch of descriptive phrases. From these, you get semi-structured thematically-coherent content. Then you follow some guided rules to apply them to the underlying core, which is 'a creepy and erratic wizard'.
After enough customisation, you have generated yourself a wizard. The random element of procedural generation means your character has features you wouldn't have thought of yourself. The human-guided element means the wizard should be more plausible, or at least thematically consistent, than pure randomness generally achieves.
(More news on the zine as I progress with this idea!)
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