My Solo Resources
Oracles, Tables, and Other Content Generators
Doug's Note: I tend to like things that give broad, generalized ideas with a splash of specifics when needed and the following list reflects that.
This is a non-exhaustive list of the books and tools I use for their tables, oracles, and other content generation systems. This is not necessarily the RPG-systems I use to play the games (though some do cross-over and serve double purpose).
I am give a frequency score of 0-2 stars which is not a rating but a frequency of use.
Everything on this list is recommended for use and gets my approval, just the more frequent stuff tends to fit with my mode of play the best.
★★ (2-stars) = (nearly) Automatic usage with most games. I keep these nearby for almost every game even if just to bring in a few pieces. Even when not actively using them, they are probably "present" somewhere in the concept of how I play.
★½ (1.5-stars) = Semi-automatic usage with a lot of games. These are not "always present" choices but I still regularly keep theme in mind to bring into the fold and sometimes will use ideas from it. Stuff I've used a good bit and really like but will tend to grab after I got through the ★★ options.
★ (1-star) = Occasional usage with a several games, sometimes in novel or interesting ways. Some pieces in this category were highly influential at one stage of my play.
(0-star) = More Limited usage. This means I have used and generally like it but it is more of a one-off type tool or one that is used for a very specific way in a campaign suited to it.
I'll start out with the ★★ 2-star tools and work through to ★ 1-star tools, etc. Until we get to the 0-star stuff, things are generally in order of frequency and preference.
★★★ Just Making It Up
This first one is a bit "cheeky" but at the core of my play is just going with whatever ideas bubble up in my head. A lot of my play style involves just riffing out a name, circumstance, or character reaction as makes sense at the time. Then, I try my best to make-it-canon. Sometimes this riff doesn't work. A lot of times figuring out what past-Doug meant writing down something like, "The room felt like tooth-ache," is part of the fun.
A more regulated methods I use would be "just {roll a dice | pull a card } and say something" or "find something on your desk, in a book, etc and shove it into the world". I generally go for "odds = no, evens = yes" or "bigger is better for the characters" as the baselines. I also make a lot of quick { d2 | d3 | d4 | d6 | d8 } tables that say something like { north | west | south | east | here | unknown } and just roll on those with the appropriate sized dice (or next most appropriate sized one). Sometimes I just grab an email or a book or a receipt and snatch a number or phrase off it and figure out how it fits.
I frequently like to use the "roll twice and combine" method. For yes | no I sometimes go for 3 dice at once and use a method kind of based off the I Ching to read them.
★★ Mythic Gamemaster Emulator (2nd Edition) by Tana Pigeon
Wordmill Games Site | DriveThruRPG page | Itch page | Patreon
I am one of those solo roleplayers who considers Mythic to be a major part of the experience. Even when I am not using the fairly substantial tools for generating lists, determining scenes, and testing expectations, I still tend to use the Meaning Lists and advice from the long running Mythic Magazine to handle situations. It is not always the base-line oracle for my games, but it frequently is in the genetic code of my games in some way or another.
★★ Tricube Tales by Richard Woolcock
Zadmar's Game Stuff (blog) | DriveThruRPG page | Itch page
Tricube Tales and its many products are absolutely my favorite lightweight game system. It has been a frequent aspect of this blog, all the way back to the first campaign: The Bloody Hands. I've posted hacks about it, have tweaked it heavily in later games, and still start with a default, "I can do this in Tricube!," mindset while mapping out possible campaigns and arcs. It can be played by roleplayers of any experience level and pretty endlessly tweaked to fit what you need.
A big bonus for me that directly contributed to shifting how I play is that the one-sheets have a row of 36 (d66) image icons taken from Game-Icons.Net meant to be sparks and inspirations. A significant percentage of all of my playthroughs have used these icons to generate at least some elements and a lot of major moments have come from them. I use them so much I made a page to collect my favorite sets of these Image Oracles so I have them on hand to reference.
★★ Random Realities (Revelations for the Roving Raconteur) by Cesar Capacle
My absolute favorite "one-stop shop" generator for all sorts of little bits and details for my content. I wrote a post/review of Random Realities early in the days of this blog. It gets used so much, in some many "little" ways, that it gets auto-added to nearly every credits section of my actual play posts because I assume it could show up somewhere. I do not tend to use it "correctly," where you would look up specific segments across the page, but instead I like to roll 2-3 times and then pick stuff that jumps off at me.
There is now an online version of Random Realities released CC-BY if you want to look but I highly recommend you buy your own copy and support Cesar in his work.
★★ Sine Nomine's { Worlds | Stars | Cities | Ashes } ...without Number-line, Scarlet Heroes, and Silent Legions by Kevin Crawford
Sine Nomine's Website | DriveThruRPG page
Don't let the genre-specific elements fool you, Kevin Crawford's books are amazingly helpful for generating lots of content. There are "one roll" crafters (note that "one roll" actually tends to mean rolling multiple dice at one time and then reading different tables based on die size), many other tables for making other content, and lots of advice. My favorite tables and my most used element are the various Tags ("Settlements", "Ruins", "Adventure", many more). Each tag is based on common and interesting tropes with some sugggestions for content based on those tropes and then sub-elements like friends, enemies, things, places, and complications (each with a few suggestions). You can essentially roll two or three tags (and mix and match), and come up with a fairly extensive place or adventure in a short time and then use all the suggestions to pull in more things or just come up with your own take.
On top of that, Scarlet Heroes has a highly usable solo-character mode and advice for solo play.
★★ Various Book of Random Tables by Matt (& Erin) Davids, aka Dicegeeks
Dicegeeks website | DriveThruRPG page
This might be a deep cut but Dicegeeks (aka Matt (& Erin) Davids) is the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics for RPG tables. There are a lot of books and each book has a lot of random tables and each table tends to have a lot of random elements. Elf names. Things found in crashed planes. Band names from certain decades. Stuff found in a dead orc's pocket. Stacks and stacks of quests based on type or types of locations (including fake out quests). The Great Book of Random Tables (which is fantasy themed) was one of my very first tools, maybe even before I got into Mythic. I have a lot of these books, some in print, and I use them kind of often. The major big downside is that there are so many tables that you might have to search through two or three books to figure out which one would possibly cover your exact need (and you might take a while to build up a proper stack of them). I think its worth it. If you are new to them, maybe start with the handful of Great Book of Random Tables books: { the un-subtitled fantasy one above | Quests | Science Fiction | The World Between Wars }. Those collect multiple previous books under one cover and expand and add to them.
★½ Knave (2nd Edition) by Ben Milton
Questing Beast page | DriveThruRPG page
There are so many tables in Knave, covering themes all the way from "Color" to "Symbols" to "Delve Shifts" and "Mechanisms," that it can almost be easy to overlook there is a decently compact RPG right in the middle. These tables are broad enough that you can often use them outside of fantasy and fantasy-adjacent genres with some interpretation, but really you are probably going to get the most use of them from the fantasy side of things. Can take little experience to get used to flipping through pages about combat to find a table about "Scents" but the tables are grouped around their important use in game. Has a nice little mechanic where some results tell you to check other results on another table which is a nice way to generate a little weirdness.
★½ SoloDark (Volume 1) by Kelsey Dionne
After a combination of Mythic and "just roll a die and figure it out" style oracles, SoloDark is my third most used { yes | no | but } generator. Prompt table is really useful and can do a lot of work. The core results are potentially a little too "...but" heavy (every odd number except 1).
There's a slight glitch where if you roll at advantage (roll twice, take highest) or disadvantage (roll twice, take lowest) you can get a result that is technically worse or better, respectively. To explain, roll 2d20. Take the lowest because it is unlikely. You get a 7 and an 8. The 7 means "No, but..." which is less a "No" than the 8. You get the idea. Not hard to work around and just say "go with the worst/best outcome, not die roll value."
To add to this recommendation, Shadowdark, itself, has a good number of tables that can be helpful to generate all sorts of fantasy content (or general dungeon delving even if not in the fantasy genre).
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