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Using Story Templates to Create Random Stories

Using Story Templates to Create Random Stories

Introduction

A Story template is a special kind of record that can generate new story records from other information in the same campaign. They can be used for any number of purposes to generate descriptions of places, npcs, items or indeed anything pertinent to the campaign.

To access the list of Templates in the campaign click on the "Templates" button in the Story records campaign list. New story records can be generated from the template by clicking on the "Generate" button at the bottom of the story template record window.

As part of the generation of the new story record, the template will look for special text information that it will generate replacements for. The new story record will be placed into the current campaign story listing, and the story record will be displayed.

Template Example

To illustrate the potential of this new feature let us walk through an example. We'll create a Template which we can use any number of times to generate a general store that the PCs might visit during their travels. We want it to have a name, a brief description of the proprietor and the building and also we want a list of goods that are for sale. We could also place a limit on the number of gold pieces that the store might have available to buy surplus gear from the party and also work out how expensive the goods are in the shop.

Preparation

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In order to achieve all of this we are going to need a large number of tables that our template will use to generate our story entry. We want a table for the first and last name of the business and one each for the exterior and interior description. We'll also need some tables to describe the proprietor and a few more tables from which we can generate stock. The graphic on the right shows some of the tables that I created for this example.

As you can see most of them are straightforward and very simple tables. Note, however he Magic Item Stock table. This one rolls a random number of times on a table from the Dungeon Master's Guide. In order for the Template to work this module will need to be open in the Library. For more information on creating tables see the tables article.

Getting Started

Once you have all of your resources in place you can start building your template. Click on Story from the menu down the right hand side and then on the 'Templates' button on the top of the window that opens to create a new, blank, template.

A Template is very like a normal story entry in many respects and so it will accept formatted text including headings, bold, italic, tables, lists and speech bubbles. So let's give the Template a name 'The Village Store'.

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First up we want to give the store a description including a name. So we can create a new heading 'Building' and under that we can start creating the template. Type in 'Name:' and then after it put the name of the tables we will be using for the shop's name; so we end up with:

Name: [Name One] [Name Two]

When you generate the story from this template it will print out 'Name:' onto the story and it will then call the table [Name One] where it will roll a random entry from that table and place it in the story replacing [Name One]. It will then do the same for [Name Two]. What you end up with then is something like 'Name: Bob's Shop'. Anywhere that you want the template to access a table and get a result from that table you enclose the table name in the template with square brackets [ ].

So go ahead and fill out the first part of the Template with the description of the building and the proprietor. If you then click on the 'Generate' button at the bottom of your template a new story will be created and, if all has gone well, it will have filled in the table names with the results of rolling on those tables. You should end up with something approaching the graphic ion the right.