Interview with Cory of 7Tools

...eventually I was like "what if i made a goal generator", and it just kept going like that, and I kept making things purely out of my own personal need for my own games, or because it sounded fun as a development challenge.

A text interview with the Cory, creator of 7Tools, which has several rpg generators. Divided under headings "Tiny Generators" and "Combination Generators"

The cover image is from the NPC Generator.

Q&A with Creator of 7Tools

How did you get into creating random generators?

Primarily out of my own need/my own curiosity.

I wanted to learn web development, I work in game development for my day job and otherwise, and wanted to learn something new. I had an idea for a monster generator that could be good for a project to learn, where i could just smash together a bunch of traits and things from different monsters to make something unique, so some friends who were more experienced with web dev helped me learn a lot of the basics.

I got that up and running, and eventually I was like "what if i made a goal generator", and it just kept going like that, and I kept making things purely out of my own personal need for my own games, or because it sounded fun as a development challenge.

What generators are you most proud of creating and why?

I think I'm really happy with any of my larger combination generators, like the NPC generator, or the building generator.

It's really fun to see how all the tiny generators I made before can come together and combine into a much more complex creation.

Like the building generator uses the npc generator, the item generator, and then the npc generator from there uses the goal, flaw, secret, fear, appearance, and voice generator. Seeing all of those combine into one thing is very satisfying for me.

What is the most fun thing about creating generators?

I just really like to watch creating all the sub components combine into a unique creation.

I try very hard specifically to make sure things generated will be unique. It's not just picking from a list of things I thought of, its going through a specific process of picking a subject, and then randomly selecting something else that branches off from that, and the more options I add, the more exponentially higher the options become.

So every once in a while I'll be like "oh what if I add a sailor for an option for generated people types" and that increases all of the generators options using that (which is a lot of them, they're very interconnected).

What are the most biggest challenges of creating generators?

For me its a lot of development stuff, I am still very new to a lot of web development and so figuring out how to handle things correctly can sometimes be tricky for me.

Dealing with stuff in TypeScript that confuses me can be a large hassle when it would be something I would do simply in C# (the language I primarily work in on a day-to-day basis

How do you use random generators yourself?

I use them for my own games pretty often at this point.

If there's a random NPC I either need, or in the middle of the game need to improv an NPC, I'll quickly generate one so I have a quick idea of stuff like a voice, appearance, and then if they speak more all the other aspects like a goal etc.

Or if my players are deciding they want to go to a specific shop type that i hadn't made, I can generate that and get an idea of prices and items they'd have in stock.

What is the most interesting generator or tool you've seen?

I really love Eigengraus' Generator, it's really cool and provides a lot of fun interconnected options, NPCs, etc. It does a lot of things I strive to do with my own generators in the future.

What are your next big projects (generators or otherwise) that you can talk about?

I do a lot of projects just in general, I have a 2D platformer game I'm planning to release to Steam probably around June called Luminus I've been working on for a bit.

In regards to my generators specifically I have a bunch of little plans for them, I keep a "Planned Features" list on the site. The big one I eventually want to hit is the town generator, which will further combine the building generator, npc generator, organization generator, etc. I want to create a very interconnected scene where you can see relations between different NPCs on a town basis that can get very involved, I think that would be fun.

I generally post to things on my Twitter, that has further links to anything else I'm on for the most part.