OSRBA Random Topics Table

My first act as president of the OSR Blogowners Association is to tackle the problem of stale topics. There are certain topics which get repeated endlessly and regularly, generally every 3 to 6 months. we all know the topics: ascending vs. descending armor class, race as class, skill systems, meaning of hit points, and so on. There’s nothing wrong with rehashing old standards, but they are being rehashed too frequently.

This is a clear indication that we need a central topic authority.

Therefore, as president of the non-rabbit-centric OSRBA, I am instituting a weekly, mandatory Topic Tuesday for all OSR bloggers. Every Tuesday morning, the president will randomly select a topic that everyone must write at least one post about. The topic will be posted here and on Google+, to make it easily available. The procedure will be to roll a d12, d4, and d8 and consult the following table to create a two-word phrase:

roll	d12	d4+d8
1	Creating	(n/a)
2	Exploring	Wilderness
3	Tricking	Traps
4	Fighting	Followers
5	Looting	Villages
6	Studying	Spells
7	Magical	Monsters
8	Hiding	Hoards
9	Negotiating	Nuisances
10	Recovering	Resources
11	Controlling	Artifacts
12	Wandering	Dungeons

Next, the results of the d12 and d8 rolled above will be added and used on the following table to look up a prepositional phrase to modify the main two-word phrase:

d12+d8	of/for/in/with …
2	Weirdness
3	Random Tables
4	Fire
5	Vices
6	Secrets
7	Pleasure
8	Heaven or Hell
9	Gods
10	Robots
11	Disembodied Brains
12	Wood
13	Jokes
14	Fantasy or Illusion
15	Villains
16	Space or the Stars
17	Madness
18	Knighthood
19	Nature
20	Reason

If a rolled topic is a repeat of a topic already used in the last six months, the two-word phrase will be kept, but the d12 and d8 will be re-rolled to select a different prepositional phrase. If the second attempt is also a repeat, a Topic Amnesty Period will be declared, during which anything goes.

All blogowners will have 1d6 days to post something on the randomly selected topic or be fined 3d6 zorkmids.

Written with StackEdit.