Back on with creator interviews with the creator of the Deck of Scattered Inspiration.
Q&A With Creator of Deck of Scattered Inspiration
How did the Deck of Scattered Inspiration come to be?
I wanted to investigate how brainstorming techniques can aid game masters in finding inspiration. I have used many brainstorming methods in a professional context and I know how useful they can be if you accept that they require some practice.
The Deck of Scattered Inspiration is a first step in this direction. I wanted to build a straightforward, instantly usable tool to help GMs come up with ideas for a story or simply flex their creative muscles.
What is the most fun thing about creating generators?
This is only my first one, but I really liked the whole process of going from a blank sheet of paper, where everything is still possible, to the feedback from the first users which makes things tangible and is very encouraging to go further in the project. It's a process I've been through many times in my career, but this is the first time I've done it in an area that is very close to my heart.
But the most fun aspect is to discover how gamemasters and world builders take over the generator and the original creations that come out of it.
What was the biggest challenge with the Deck of Scattered Inspiration?
Selecting hundreds of topics for the cards and producing thousands of images. But it was an exciting challenge that took me through several interesting phases.
For example, I went through dozens of classic D&D modules to extract relevant themes and topics and I’ve made some great discoveries along the way. It's a project that also came out of several months spent learning the tools and methods around stable diffusion models.
I could not have developed the application without the possibility to programmatically create the thousands of images that make it so valuable.
How do you use random generators yourself?
I use them mainly as an inspiration tool during the preparation phase of a game or during writing phases for world building or scenarios. I like to browse different generators to expose myself to various concepts and names and see what my brain can spontaneously come up with.
I also regularly use encounter generators to help me find a good balance in my scenarios and to have some ready to use stats.
What is the most interesting generator or tool you've seen?
I'm a big fan of the one-page-dungeon, and in general of all generators produced by Oleg Dolya, aka watabou. When they are well thought out, and well designed, procedural generations are useful and can be very fun to use.
In a completely different style I was very impressed when I read the Tome of Adventure Design. Just browsing the tables is an endless source of inspiration. The potential for creativity in this book is immense.
I would also like to mention Emily's Fantasy Name Generators. This is clearly the generator I go to most frequently, and I'm certainly not the only one!
What is your next project (generators or otherwise) that you can talk about?
I will continue to find ways to stimulate the creativity of scenario writers or world builders.
For the time being this will still be through the Deck of Scattered Inspiration which will continue to grow in terms of content. Its cards could become more specialized so that the user, if they so choose, can have more control over what they pick.
I also want to add features and content that will help users with proven brainstorming techniques, and others that will allow the Deck to be used differently depending on the context (scenario writing, world building, solo roleplay, etc.).
Where can people find you on social media?
My homepage:
On Twitter:
On Mastodon:
On Linktree:
Is there anything else you would like to talk about?
I think that with the lightning evolution of AI that we are experiencing at the time of this interview, there is a real territory to explore to let roleplayers benefit from this huge potential without sacrificing or delegating their creativity.
Asking an AI to create a scenario for us can certainly help, but wouldn't it be more interesting to write that scenario ourselves using the AI to boost our own creativity?
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