This is a world-buildng tool that generates names for historical periods in your timeline. It's only a name generator, not a mini-game for generating histories. There are no details: no dates, no durations, no causes, no impacts, no heroes or villains, etc. It simply gives you an era name and then it's up to you to figure out what it means.

It's system-neutral and largely genre-neutral too. You could have the "Regime of Sorrow" or the "Epoch of Nightmares" or the "Week of the Exalted" in your history whether you're doing fantasy, science fiction, or some other genre.

If your setting already has a history laid out with era names and other details, you probably wouldn't have a use for this.

You get a d100 table that chooses the era type (such as Regime, Epoch, or Week as shown above) and two d100 tables for filling in subjects (such as Sorrow, Nightmares, or Exalted).

100 Theme Ideas. Very Simple but it fits perfect for me. Four stars because of missing detailed description to each theme.

Empire Builder Kit - History Generator is a rich, system-neutral resource for creating a realm's history or for creating random realm events as your campaign progresses. You make two or more dice rolls per event to find the overall event type and then to drill down into the particulars.

In general, the events are newsworthy items, the main highlights of any given year. These would be front-page items if your setting had newspapers. They're often not on a grand, epic scale, but they're nationwide events more than personal events.

What you don't get is a system for managing factions, economies, politics, or diplomacy, or for creating an integrated chain of events. If you want something akin to Microscope, Dawn of Worlds, or the old CountryCraft system from Dragon Magazine, this isn't it. That's no problem if you're happy with isolated events and if you're willing to handle continuity yourself. For example, suppose the History Generator tells you construction started a few months ago on a new border wall. It's up to you to remember that, decide the impact, and do something with it. If the realm opened a new spice route and you want to know how the new riches affect the realm, that's all on you. All you'll get from the History Generator (in that example) is the knowledge that a new spice route opened up. There's no calculation of how much it's worth, or what sort of spices they are, or what the market conditions are like.

In addition to creating a realm's history, you could use the tool as an adventure seed generator. The PCs try to stop the event from happening, or they try to make sure it does happen despite opposition. Or the event just happened and the PCs deal with the aftermath. Or the PCs get hired by someone who wants to exploit the evolving situation. And so on. An event could also be the colorful backdrop for an otherwise unrelated adventure, or it could stir player interest if you're in a sandbox campaign.

You could use the History Generator for the backstory of a PC, NPC, or special item. You might generate an event and tell a player, "You were there when it happened. Tell us about your special role in that event, and how the effects are still with you today."

Several table results, but not all of them, assume a fantasy setting. You could apply this tool to other genres, with a few tweaks. You could "choose the next entry" or reroll, as needed. You could redo a few tables to skip over the non-applicable elements. You could reinterpret items for your setting, such as having magic become technology instead.

You might want to doctor some tables anyway, especially the main table (Type of Event), to suit the flavor of your campaign or your realm. For example, suppose the realm engages in annual military campaigns. The chance of starting a full-scale war randomly is only 1 in 400 (0.25%). That's 1 in 20 to get the Combat & Military category, then 1 in 20 to get the "War - Start" result from Combat & Military. With 1d4 events per year, you could easily go a century without seeing that "War - Start" result. (Yep, did the probability calculation.)

You might also want to doctor some tables if certain types of events are over the line in your group. Certain outcomes reference sexual assault and child death, for instance.

Obviously, an alternative to doctoring any tables is to just choose the result you want instead of being ruled by dice. Nothing wrong with that. The tables still give you a rich set of menus to pick from.

The text could use a round of editing. There are spelling mistakes (paryilcyar, assainsnations, alchaholic, alcaholohic), convoluted wording, chopped-off sentences, and so on. But it's not enough to make anything unusable.

I haven't tried drawing rooms using this generator, but the "Room shape" table doesn't have a value for 11 on dice. In the "Quirks" table, 9 corresponds to two entries,there are no entries for 61 and 66. Table "Accessories": Earing – Long, Eyes - Manacle.

In General, the tables for tavern features and NPC secrets are not bad. The appearance tables are sparse and suggest that my female dwarf is equally likely to wear curls and be bald. It's not fun.

I love tables.

I find it very hard to innovate anything [still too new a dm sadly].

These tables really spark my imagination.

I usually end up veering away from the tables themselves as they have given me a really good idea what I was looking for but couldn't put my finger on it.

This particular publisher is quite a prolific tables creator and of the stuff I have bought from them, I have yet to see needless repetition.

Thank you

Although it's part of the "Encounters & Events" series, these tables aren't really encounters and events. They're settings for encounters and events. They're descriptions of planetary features. Some entries are about the physical features of the planet, some about the local species, some about social or political structures, some about the planet's usage, and so on.

Roll up or assign one or two of these for a world you're generating to give the world some character. There's a main table of 100 entries. Most entries include a d6 subtable to provide variations on the main entry.

You won't find single-biome entries like swamp planet or desert world, but you will find entries for single-use worlds, such as Hospital Planet, Grave World, or Rubbish World. Many entries could be used to describe specific regions or sites on the planet, without necessarily describing the planet as a whole, such as Military Outpost or Jump Gate.

Overall, the entries are in the low to medium range of science fiction plausibility. There are no input parameters or modifiers to let you adjust for what you've already established about a world. In effect, the tables assume you're working from a blank slate. A Garden World is as likely as Craters, and the tables don't know or care whether you're rolling up Mercury, Earth, Jupiter, or Pluto (or their equivalents elsewhere). It's fiction first, and then it's up to you to if you want to put some science-y explanations behind the results.

If that's what you're seeking, this is a good tool for the job, offering good variety on various science fiction tropes. If you're seeking a science-based method for establishing a world's characteristics or the development of life or civilizations, this isn't the tool for you.

The described purpose is narrower than it needs to be: "a player or character can’t make it to a session or you need to have a certain character not present at the same location as others for a short time. Where did they go? What are they doing when not in play?"

In our group, when a player misses a session, we play their character for them instead of making up reasons to take the character out of action. That works for us, so we don't need these tables for an absent player. Maybe we'd use them for an extended absence or a temporary retirement, but not for the odd missed session or two.

However, there are other uses for these tables:

• Roll up one to three entries as backstory for a PC or a major NPC. Describe what happened then, and how it still shows its influence today.
• The PCs are looking for a particular NPC. If the NPC isn't available right now, roll on these tables instead of settling for a boring "not available" response.
• If the PCs meet an NPC they've encountered before, you can roll up a result to say what the NPC has been up to since the last time.
• If you need to convey information to the PCs about the setting or current events, roll up a result and use that as the means to convey it, maybe in the form of a news item or a conversation with a nearby NPC.
• Use the result as the means for delivering an adventure hook, instead of yet another rumor in the spaceport bar.
• Do you remember Morn from Deep Space Nine? He never had a speaking part, but the running gag was that other characters would keep referring to his actions that always happened off camera. Roll up an entry to say what your own Morn has been up to. In fact, I now think of these tables as the "Morn Tables."

To get a result, you roll from the main d100 table. Some entries refer you to d20 subtables, Mad Libs-style. Here are some example results, with subtable outcomes in italics: Got into a fight/argument with another in party and stormed off. Attacked by a childhood enemy by mistake and is recuperating at a military starship. Character’s aunt lost their job as a translator and needs help. Is required to do jury service or give reason for exemption in person in nearby friendly planet or moon. An alien culture is after the character's kidneys for use in a mating ritual and they need to hide.

In a d100 table, you're likely to start repeating results as of the 13th roll on the table (that's the Birthday Problem as applied to 100 entries instead of 365). However, replay value should still be good if you pick the next unused item instead of repeating, or if you find ways to make an entry fresh again on a repeated use. By the time I'd use up all 100 entries, I'm sure that a return to a past result wouldn't seem like boring repetition.

Sixteen pages on Breath Weapons for use by dragons and others. There are different kinds of breath weapons, different shapes and attack grids.

For $1.50 it is worth having just to use to modifiy for dragons and other creatures.

i love this generator. One day when my family was waiting i pulled this out on my phone, and my family had fun describing the story that was behind the generated title. My daughter, who loves anime, told me that the third word was the name of the second series - and she would give us both story lines.

Meet the Penultimate Eternity (name came from the name generator) The Penultimate Eternity isn't a secretive cult. Some would say it isn't a cult at all. Its members are clergymen, holy people that worship other gods, who join with the intent of bringing the pantheon together, as one united fellowship rather than multiple disparate religions. To join, you must enter the tomb of their founder (who lived 2000 years ago), take a relic from it, and place a new relic in its place for future cultists. Relics retrieved from below are given to museum creators, who 'purchase' them, providing the cult with any funds that it doesn't get from its members. The Penultimate Eternity has a strange custom of never looking away from a room's occupants when leaving - it is, they claim, a way to acknolwledge that those within exist even as they leave each other's presence, in defiance to the idea of one's world being one's own perception.

Not all of this came from the book. The custom was already there, but I made the reasoning for it myself. The main ritual - taking an artefact - was there, but the placing of a new relic came out naturally from that. That said, most of the details did come from rolling, and any that didn't came from extrapolation from already-rolled values. I would never have thought of the Penultimate Eternity if I hadn't read the book and rolled some dice. The cult I'd originally had in my head was a generic, evil cult. Now, when I present my next cult to the players, they'll get to interact with a strange group of idealists with unsettling rituals, who claim to seek world peace and friendship - which, contrary to common sense, will be absolutely true. This is great.

My only complaint, and it's small enough that it doesn't warrant a rating bump, is that almost every table has 20 (on the d20) be 'something else', which I find somewhat irritating. I'm rolling because I can't think of anything else.

Excellent resource. More than a list of encounters, it is an encounter generator, and open-ended enough to spark the imagination in a multitude of different directions. Easily worth the purchase price, if not more.

This product has a great many professions and accompanying hooks/ideas that provoke creativity to anyone who would use this list. I find that as an inspirational tool it will be useful and the content is good. However the document has a sizable number of grammar related mistakes that take away from this simple product and leaves one with a bad impression due to these mistakes. The layout of the document could use a revision and perhaps the occasional picture of one or some of these professions. However I understand that this is meant to be a short, simple product and for that reason I take no issue with there being minimal art. However, the layout of the tables could flow better and a background to match up with the border would look nice. I suggest a 5e parchment background. Overall I think the ideas are solid and once the spelling mistakes are corrected it will be a fine product considering that it is free.

Provided is a Google Docs link to any mistakes word wise I could find in the document for the Authors use. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EQYHxbcw---vM335BALJ7ImB4xjk7HafgsDOLnjWad4/edit?usp=sharing

The list of professions alone makes this worth it. Recommend this purchase.

The personality table has entries that are similar: Languid, detached, gives up easily, nonchalant... I would have preferred to see fewer entries and more aspects of their personality covered. How do they feel about their job? Their family? The authorities? Still, this is a useful table as a start.

This is as handy as it is colorful. I plan to give some NPCs a favored insult as part of their mannerisms.

My biggest annoyance with this product is that its only 2 pages long but contains more than a dozen spelling errors, missing words, or the wrong word. Just sloppy work. Its just a listing of medival professions, you can find similar via google with minimal effort.