Often when I read complicated RPG rules I think to myself, "There is no way that this is actually playable at the gaming table. This is aspirational rules design. People will just forget to use most of this, because there's nothing that triggers an RPG rule beyond what people remember."
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Apropos of nothing, RPGNet currently has a thread on "Aria: Canticle of the Monomyth".
"Verbose, obtuse, badly explained, badly organised, repetitive, over-complex, pretentious, but containing one phenomenally good idea. Aria should have been a milestone in the history of roleplaying games. Unfortunately, it has turned out to be a large and expensive doorstop instead. Aria is quite literally unplayable."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aria%3A_Canticle_of_the_Monomyth
I still have it on my bookshelf, because I am a sucker for worldbuilding tools. But I have neither run nor played it.
@juergen_hubert
IMHO, worldbuilding tools belong on computers. But I am very interested in scenario generating tools. This is of course in line with my general unwillingness to invest in a game world beyond the needs of a given scenario.
I dunno, I think there is something magic about a good set of random tables. For me, they really get those creative juices flowing.
I buy pretty much anything from Sine Nomine Publishing, for instance, even though I am not keen on OSR rule systems as such.
@juergen_hubert
Yeah, I like random tables, I just don't want them to generate a world for me.
I have had fun gamemastering the randomly populated wilderness hex crawl "Dark of Hot Springs Island" (2017). And I've signed up to run four sessions with it at cons this spring semester. Maybe this this is what you mean by a world generator?
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First, a disclaimer: I love worldbuilding as an expression of the #ttrpg hobby, and putting a lot of effort into this makes it easier for me to improvise setting details when the PCs go off-script.
For me, random tables are a useful starting point which allow me to break out of my own habits and assumptions, similar to how I assign NPC gender randomly these days.
As an example, let's say I want to add a village to the map. I use the random tables from p. 159 in "Worlds Without End" to get a basic idea of what the village is all about. I get:
Rationale for the Village’s Existence: (8) "A bandit camp that went legitimate"
Who runs it? (8) "A pragmatic warlord"
Significant Locals: (10) "Native hedge mage"
A Current Pressing Problem: (1) "Vital food stores have been lost or stolen"
Local Likely to Interact with Adventurers: (3) "Gentry who wants no local gossip about their need"
Interesting Things the Place Can Offer Heroes: (1) "An unusually large amount of saved coinage"
And within a mere minute or two, I already have a vision of the place and some local flavor which I can use to improvise things when the PCs are poking around the place. And I can build upon these concepts and make the village more fleshed out if the PCs stay there for an extended time. I find this _tremendously_ useful.
@juergen_hubert
I get it!
Rationale for the Village’s Existence: in Scandinavia, Germany and Poland, this is usually up to 3000 years in the past and forgotten. 😄