benevolentgm / bladesinthedarkgenerators

A couple of simple generators I built for Blades in the Dark using the tables in the back of the book.

BladesInTheDarkGenerators

A couple of generators I built for Blades in the Dark using the tables in the back of the book. The primary intent is speed of use and simplicity of operation in order to minimize narrative disruptions caused by complex rolls across multiple tables. Ideally this makes your narrative seamless during the occasions where a GM needs something on the fly.

The generator outputs are loosely inspired from Dwarf Fortress's presentation when describing procedurally generated content. Due to tense, plurality, and other issues of language, sentences may sometimes still require a bit of creative interpretation.

Feel free to make suggestions or report errors!

Stand-alone Instructions: The easiest way to use these generators is via it's discord bot implementation, Sparkwright. Type "!help" to get started. There are several forks that use their own implementations like a web interface or .exe with gui. If you want to use this program as-is you'll need python. See instructions below.

Python instructions: This project was built in python and can be run from the .py files in the "src" folder if you have python installed. Just double-click the doskvolMasterGenerator.py file in the "src" folder to launch it.

General Operation Info:

If you're running the Master Generator, just enter the number associated with the desired option to get an automatically generated description for that menu item. If you have pyperclip installed, the description will automatically be copied to your clipboard for easy pasting into a VTT, chat, or your notes. The Master Generator will also print your generated descriptions to a text file log.

Each generator exists as individual module that can be run from a terminal instance. A few have optional arguments that can be given.

For ease of modification of the various table contents, each table from the book is its own .json file which gets imported as a python list.

If the table options had more than one option for a given roll, they were split out so each is its own entry.

Due to inconsistency on the tables, sometimes the output is imperfect in terms of case/tense/pronoun/etc.

Streets: Get a random street description using the information from page 300 of the Blades in the Dark sourcebook.

Buildings: Get a random building description using the information from page 301. Optionally accepts the argument of "rare" or "common" during instantiation.

People: Get a random NPC from the data on pages 302 and 303. Optionally accepts the arguments "rare" or "common" for the profession argument and will also accept a heritage argument during instantiation.

Demons: Creates a random demon out of the data on page 304.

Ghosts: Creates a random ghost using the ghost tables on page 304. Also uses the names/aliases from page 303 to give a name to the ghost.

Cults: Create a cult to a random forgotten god and assign a random religious practice to it using data on page 305.

Scores: Create a random score using the data for pages 306 and 307. Optionally accepts target and client arguments during instantiation.

Leviathans: Uses the Leviathan Song supplement, available free here, to create leviathans and spawn. Optionally accepts an argument for activity which should be "banal" or "surreal" to decide the leviathan's initial activity. Also optionally accepts a size and treasure index value to define the number of regions on the leviathan and amount of treasure items, respectively, during instantiation.