Chart Granularity

I've mentioned before that I love using and perusing some of the great random charts created by the OSR. I've also pondered on the blog about the OSR paradox of do-it-yourself versus using all these cool things people in the community make and share. My solution was to try and split the difference, to make more abstracted DM "Spurs" that could help each of us do-it-ourself, but also function as an aid that, like old school play, allows complexity to emerge from randomness.

Also, keep in mind that I have settled on the idea of using Grim's Roll All the Dice method, because it is elegant and a fun game-like way to involve players in a lot of these randomization discoveries. I don't want to stop during play and consult a book of charts, or at least if we must the book should have the fewest possible charts to work elegantly and still be fun.

So, the problem seems to be how granular do you make these spurs. If we would like a magic item generator do we separate out the "Item" part from the "Magical Effect" part?

I think so. An Item Spur can have lots of important info including Size, Function and Material in addition to item type that is hard to squeeze into a spur that is also concerned with Duration, Range, Charges etc. of magical effects.

But even there, how granular do we make the Item Type? Think of jewellery. We could have a spur that would determine item type solely by the location on the body it is worn:

• Head = Tiara
• Neck = Necklace
• Arm = Armlet
• Wrist = Bracelet
• Hand = Ring

That works well, and we could probably fit clothing and armor to the same system. So, you might have one die determining Location (arm, neck etc.) and the other Item Type (jewellery, armor etc). Fine, simple, compact, functional. But . . . it loses all the cool flavor, the details, that I would want to have if I were the player receiving treasure. This system will give you a Ring result, but what about pillbox rings, or gimmal rings, or signet rings? If you try to include each of these interesting real world examples, our elegant spur will turn into a multi-page chart very quickly.

I think one possible solution is to have a Function category, so, if a random roll indicates that an item Depicts, Commemorates, Hides, Stores something, the our spur might be able to produce something similar to real world examples.

Take a look at this cool object that I'd never heard of before yesterday:


It's a Golden Hat which, aside from the fact that it is shaped like no other hat I've seen, apparently has solar and lunar Calendar data recorded on it.

This is a kind of touchstone. I want any Spur I create to be of the right granularity to be able to produce a result such that we might say "Aha, it's like a Golden Hat."

That would be cool.