It’s been a long day. Snow and cold last week, followed by warmer temperatures and a lot of rain and a thunderstorm last night. I only new there was a thunderstorm because I had to get up in the middle of the night, I can sleep through most anything once I get to sleep. That was at 3:30 and the power was out.
I got back to sleep.and was sleeping soundly and dreaming, on the edge of lucid dreaming when I swore someone was pounding on my front door, so I stumble downstairs to see who it was. No one. The dogs in their kennels were all excited and wagging their tails into the sides of the kennels making a load of racket. Did my dreaming translate that into pounding on the door? That was at 5:30 and I couldn’t fall back asleep. At 6:30 the power came back on and the streetlight across the street filled my room with light. (I need blackout curtains.)
At 7:00 my alarm went off, so I grudgingly got up and got ready for work and stopped to get massive amounts of caffeine to help me get through the day. At about 9:30 I dozed at my desk for a bit. Thankfully, it was a relatively slow day at work.
We finally got a CostCo in Kalamazoo, within a couple miles of my work, and just off the way home. My son presented me with a membership card, as he got two with his membership. Since he lives with me, we are in the same household. I made the mistake of shopping while I was hungry, but got things that are healthy…or mostly so. I saw what I consider a good deal on a mini desktop with Win7 Pro. My last desktop got zapped and all I could salvage were the peripherals and the hard drive. My laptop has a failed screen and keeps freezing up and having issues with Google+ Hangouts with the weekly AD&D game I’m in. I do some work for a non-profit, so I need a working PC to keep up. I was on the look out for a good buy.
Did I bury the lede well enough? LOL
My tired brain came up with a name based on some of the OSR and original modules, and I thought I’d write about that tonight.
The Caves of Cavernous Caverns. Awesome, right?
Or, The Caves of Chaotic Caverns.
The Crumbling Caves of Chaotic Caverns.
The Terrifying Terror of The Terrible Trolls.
What this is calling for is a random adventure/module name generator. I recall having read about something like that a couple years ago, there is probably more than one, but I don’t feel like googling for them right now.
Alliteration add punch to it, like : Red River of Raging Ravenous Revenants. Although a horde of raging revenants would be silly without the proper story and narrative elements, psychobabble and circumlocutious obfuscation….
It’s not a complete set of tables to generate a module/adventure/campaign name, since I didn’t put a die and a roll with each table, just something to get started. This is more a placeholder for me to refine my idea and come up with some sort of finished product or PDF to share at some point in the nebulous future. Ah what fun a tired brain can generate! Here is the current PDF.
d3 ARTICLE
1-3 – A/An
4-6 – The
LOCATION
Cave(s)/Cavern(s)
Tomb/Crypt/Vault/Grave
Hill(s)/Knob/Mount/Mountain(s)
Plains/Tundra
River/Lake/Sea/Ocean
Idol/Altar/Shrine/Temple
Pit/Dungeon
Fort/Castle/Fortress
Aerie
Coast
NOUN/ITEM
Secret
Night
Gold
Hoard
Horde
Clan/Tribe
Idol
Deep
Dark
Unholy
ADJECTIVE/DESCRIPTOR
Shiny
Adjective form of the Location
Frightful
Awful
Awe/Awe-full
Dread/Dreadful
Mischievous
Ravenous
Raging
ALIGNMENT (Use Lawful, Good, and Neutral if you want.)
Chaotic
Evil
CLASS (Mix in some of the AD&D Level Titles or find a Thesaurus)
Wizard/Mage/Archmage/Necromancer
Priest/High Priest/Acolyte
Monk
Thief/Rogue
Assassin
Warrior
Ranger
Paladin
COLOR
Black
White
Red
Blue
Green
Yellow
Ochre
Mauve
Taupe
Plaid
WEAPON(s)
Sword
Dagger
Staff
Hammer
Axe
Spear
Bec-de-corbin (not so much….)
Arrow
Club
MONSTER(s)
Kobold
Goblin
Orc
Hobgoblin
Drow
Pirates
Lizard/Lizardmen
Frog
Ogre
Troll
Dragon
Gelatinous jelly of slimy oozing spores (Now I need to stat that out….)
etc.
Curious – why would you differentiate the rolls for “A” and “An” when they’re basically the same, differing only based on the first letter of the next word?
I was tired. You make a good point. I was just thinking back to grade school, a, an, and the, 3 words, so d3, not the language arts discussion of when to use a or an. SMH LOL
All stuff I know, but at a certain level of tiredness it doesn’t all come together. You are the first to point this out, so how many others missed it? LOL
It’s all good, I’m a fan and this is going to work great in my “open table” style campaign.
Cool! I’m glad others are finding this interesting.
As I mentioned, I ran across this on another RPG blog or two a few years back. I think it’s a fun idea. Now to polish it up.
I am reminded of some of the great novel/movie titles, like The Maltese Falcon. That name sounds cool even if you’ve never seen the movie.
It also just occurred to me that a tavern name generator has a lot in common with this generator. But a tavern name should get to the point, no more than two or three words, so it rolls off the tongue.
There’s already enough tavern generators, but some of the words in the tavern generators I have seen are pretty cool.