You could define an RPG as a series of questions and answers from which a story emerges. While the rules themselves cover the basic questions (such as “do I hit this guy with my sword?”), GM’s and modules have to cover the rest. While most GM’s feel perfectly comfortable with simply improvising any answer not covered in their prep or in the module, I personally find some kind of input outside of my own brain to be helpful. When I run a game, I’m trying to be as neutral as possible, but I personally find it difficult to be completely neutral when I improvise mid-session (if left to my own devices I tend to lean too heavily in favor of the players). I also find, when I improvise, that having some kind of creative prompt is very helpful–a useful way to break up your normal thought patterns and come up with something unique.
Oracles are already a very popular solution to this problem in solitaire gaming, especially in the form of random tables. Oracles designed for use in RPGs can be purchased separately or are sometimes included with solitaire rules, but from my experience, solitaire gamers end up using a combination of oracles of their own preference. I believe that an oracle made from found materials or your own design works better than pre-made oracles.
In this post, I’m going to talk about some of the oracles I’ve personally used in role playing games during sessions—a catalog of things you can pick and use, modify to your own use, or abandon. Once you start trying oracles in your game, I’m sure you’ll develop methods all your own.
Method #1: The random table
This is the kind that is used by far the most in RPGs and can encompass many different topics from wandering encounter tables to any number of blogposts—for any situation, there’s a random table for it somewhere in the blog-o-sphere. My personal favorite book of these random tables is The Dungeon Alphabet by Michael Curtis.
I personally prefer more open-ended oracles because pre-made random tables simply can’t accommodate every peculiarity of the world you’re running unless the table was designed for that specific module. There’s also the issue of finding the random table—some tables are for very specific scenarios and it’s always exciting when a situation arises for which you have a particularly bespoke table, but then you’ve got to halt the game to look for that table.
I’ve been burned on more than one occasion when it comes to books of random tables. I have a few books that consist of just one long table for a specific situation—and these books always suck. If a random table has more than 100 entries, you can rest assured that most of the entries will be filler.
I definitely use whatever random table comes with the module and I have a few other tables that I regularly use, but other than those exceptions, I generally prefer the methods described later in this post.
Method #2: Bibliomancy
This idea is taken from the great youtube channel Geek Gamers ( https://youtu.be/9GBPTec5TZA ). The idea with this method is to randomly flip through a book until a passage jumps out at you, forming the answer to your question. This method is great for answers to complex questions. What is the name of the barman? What art is hanging on the wall? What does this magic item do? What does this shady guy behind the tavern want from us?
This method is fairly fast. I find that it takes about 30 seconds to come up with a satisfying answer—although it looks a bit odd when the players ask you about the contents of a room and you start madly flipping through Finnegan’s Wake.
The tricky part for this is finding the right book as you’ll soon find when you start using this method that some books work better than others.Personally, my go-to books are Moby Dick (possibly not surprising given the name of this blog) and Italo Calvino’s Italian Folk Tales. A good book will be one that matches the tone of the campaign you’re going for, has good imagery and an evocative writing style, but doesn’t have a lot of dialogue or characters…you’ll know it when you see it. I’ve used my huge book of the collected works of Shakespeare in the past, for example. I’ve heard that, in the late Renaissance, people used to walk around with copies of Dante’s Inferno to use in divination.
Method #3: Tarot Cards
I always bring a deck of tarot cards with me to the gaming table. They can also be used to answer questions about the world—but I find that they can be a little cryptic if you’re asking the deck anything concrete like “what does this magic item do?” or “what taverns are in the area?” They are much better at generating high-level concepts.
For NPCs, I will use a simple three card layout. The left card represents the character’s past, the middle card represents the character’s appearance or how they “seem” to other people, and the right card represents the character’s motivations. It’s generally important to try to make that character’s motivation something the party would potentially care about.
You can generate some lively encounters just by drawing three cards off the top of the deck and basing the encounter off that. I have to admit that I don’t use this method as much during play since it can take a minute to come up with something and it’s not guaranteed to get something good 100% of the time, but I do find it useful in prepping a game. If you go through a whole 78-card deck, you can get 26 encounters in about two hours of dedicated time sitting with the cards. Of the 26 encounters generated this way, I find that I generally get about 10 really good encounters that are worth fleshing out.
I much, much prefer to use a pre-written module or to prepare a dungeon before a session; however, sometimes life happens and you just don’t have enough time to prepare a dungeon before game time. Sometimes players will move in an unexpected direction and decide to explore an area you haven’t planned out yet. You get the picture–sometimes you need a dungeon STAT. This is probably going to sound like I’m tooting my own horn here, but I have also used The Magic Tree method described in a previous post several times to improvise whole dungeons when the need strikes. The Magic Tree post describes a “pointcrawl” style dungeon, but I have also used Dyson’s Geomorphs for this—lay out a 3x3 grid of geomorph tiles that correspond to the 3x3 grid of Tarot cards. If a die landed on a card, there is an important room that matches the die on the corresponding geomorph tile (just improvise the contents of the other rooms—lightly theming them using the corresponding tarot card. These “extra” rooms should be mostly empty, but of course feel free to make things up as you go along). I hope this makes sense without making a whole separate blog post about it. It seems like you’re having to do a lot of interpreting for this, but you only need to interpret the cards when you get to it. Need an encounter? Just read the top three cards of your 3x3 grid. Need a room? Read the corresponding Tarot card for that section of the dungeon.
With Tarot cards, it’s also important that you get a deck that “resonates” with you. I’ve found that decks with great artwork aren’t necessarily going to be the best decks for these purposes. You want a deck where the cards “talk” to each other—where there’s interesting connections between the cards. I know it sounds a little basic, but the standard Rider-Waite deck by Pamela Smith is a really great deck for this and is probably the one that I personally use the most often.
If you’re finding the deck a little intimidating, I would strongly recommend The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo Calvino. I realize that this is the second time I’ve mentioned Calvino in this post, but he’s really that great. The filmmaker Jodorowsky has his own erm,... idiosyncratic opinion on the tarot, but his film The Holy Mountain is an excellent, symbolic introduction to the Tarot which I would recommend.
Method #4: The one-in-six die roll
This is my go-to method for when a player asks for something that is very favorable to the players and is theoretically possible, but seems unlikely. Are there any glass bottles in this room? Will this wood board support my weight? If I burn this book of evil spells, will it make a noticeable amount of smoke? Tell the player before-hand that there’s a one-in-six chance and let them roll the die. On a 1, the player gets what they want.
It might be tempting to give the players a larger chance than just a one-in-six, but I find that if you give players an inch, they’ll take a mile. Trust me–that 1 will show up plenty.
The advantage of this method is that it is fast and clear. Rolling the die in the open makes it feel fair and transparent to the players. With this method, the GM doesn’t have to feel like the bad GM who always says no or the guy who always gives the players what they want, making the game trivially easy.
Method #5: Pendulum
This is a new one to my “repertoire,” but it’s interesting enough that I thought I would mention it. Jobe Bittman mentions the use of a pendulum in his recent The Book of Antitheses (one of the best books I’ve read in a long time) and I’ve tried it a few times to good effect.
If the session reaches a point where a “yes” or “no” answer is needed, break out your pendulum: if it swings up and down, the answer is yes; if it swings side to side, the answer is no; if it swings clockwise, there is a complication in the party’s favor; if it swings counter-clockwise, there is a complication against the party. This might be a good method for checking for encounters instead of rolling a die, for example.
The pendulum also works great with maps–if you need to know where something is on a map, hold the pendulum on the map and let its weight guide you. At a certain point, the pendulum will circle a specific area or you might feel the pendulum pulling toward a spot like a magnet.
I would love to experiment more with the pendulum. Possibly it could be used to generate monster/creature stats and/or abilities by creating a grid of some kind and allowing the pendulum to pick a spot on that grid?
Since the pendulum is very responsive to small movements in your hand, it’s important to clear your head for the few seconds it takes to get a reading, otherwise you’ll influence the results. Of course, in some ways this is the advantage of using the pendulum—the use of a pendulum allows your subconscious brain (or spirits working through your subconscious brain, if you prefer) to create the story for you.
Method #6: Throwing Bones
If I could be allowed to mention The Book of Antitheses by Jobe Bittman one more time, he describes a method for using trinkets or charms, throwing them at the the table and then using the position of the charms to generate an encounter. The book describes a few more details, but I wouldn’t be comfortable with describing them in more detail since the book is still for sale; however, I did want to mention it as a great option for generating encounters.
I particularly like this method because it easily adapts to the unique situation the players find themselves in. I also find that the bones are much faster to read than Tarot. Tarot tends to come up with more exotic situations, but the bones come up with an encounter that logically fits into the narrative that came before it. I can easily see the bones method becoming my go-to anytime I need an encounter during play.
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