I've been playing around with spark tables; a concept taken from Chris McDowall. The concept is quite simple: given two numbered tables/lists of evocative words, roll on both, and use the words together to spark an idea.

This is lovely... but I wanted to create tables specific to my games/worlds, and was struggling to come up with evocative words. THUS, a spark table to generate spark tables was born!

INSTRUCTIONS

  1. Roll 2d6: the die landing closest to you (real dice) or leftmost (dice bot) is the first digit (10s); the other die is the second digit (1s)
  2. If you roll doubles, roll again and use both results
  3. Use the result(s) to think of a spark word
  4. Record each word on a similarly numbered d66 table (or as many as you want)
  5. If stuck, roll for another spark, or re-roll until you spark something
  6. Once you have your own spark tables, roll 2d6 on each and mash the two words together to generate ideas

HINT: if using the doubles rule (#2), make sure those words are fairly generic as to mash well with others.

D66 SPARK TABLE GENERATOR

11 smell
12 size/importance
13 condition
14 worth/merit
15 atmospheric condition
16 crop
21 emotion
22 object
23 food
24 profession
25 sound
26 feeling
31 happy word
32 liquid
33 color
34 constructed landmark
35 natural landmark
36 lifestyle quality
41 made from
42 meaning of life
43 crime
44 organization
45 body shape/type/size
46 element
51 problem
52 building
53 scary word
54 furniture
55 group(ing)
56 event
61 attraction
62 art
63 economic issue/boon
64 animal
65 cloud description
66 mystical

Examples

11. spirit       pirates      head          fluffy
12. roadrunner   orgy         mob           sugar
13. drought      caustic      dance         egg
14. soil         dungeon      bubbles       boom
15. desk         festivities  poison        lake
16. barrow       sulfur       table         bounty
21. toxic        taco         luxury        rainbow
22. kiva         perfume      brimstone     monastery
23. thunder      scared       bounty-hunter guards
24. library      blood        arroyo        bacon
25. bridge       iron         chocolate     kidnap
26. haze         badger       fire          missing
31. hanging-tree dark         graveyard     runes
32. tavern       dreams       vagrant       happy
33. rascal       rumble       concert       sick
34. temple       shadows      anger         mine
35. burning      shaken       poor          meat
36. crushed      cairn        brain         paper
41. horn         frozen       gateway       balloons
42. tower        pig          finger        copper
43. mundane      joyful       theft         tattoo
44. hunched      stretched    cat           alchemist
45. cooks        ice          balmy         love
46. vast         embezzlement explosion     famous
51. law          statue       abandoned     relic
52. gods         hate         destitute     inoperable
53. expanding    kitten       atomic        skeletons
54. peyote       ghostly      affluent      erupting
55. shortage     grand        priest        fundraiser
56. silver       lanky        hostile       victory
61. crystal      numb         water         virtuous
62. mill         fountain     music         drunk
63. opulent      gold         infestation   glowing
64. cult         broken       treasure      cave
65. long         silk         blight        stable
66. sunny        death        soft          birth

#spark #tools #ttrpg