Chaotic Shiny is a generator site aimed at people who write, game, or live in fantasy worlds of their own creation. Grappling with writer's block? Need a character on the fly? Party just walked into a tavern and you want it to be a little more exciting than normal? Want to flesh out a setting with some detailed religions? Chaotic Shiny is the site for you.

Generators are divided into rough categories based on what they come up with. Some of them, such as the drink and name generators, are simple, whereas others, such as the civilization and pantheon gens, are much more detailed. If you want a generator that you can't find here, you can make your own with the custom gen builder, or feel free to drop me a line with suggestions or feedback.

Enjoy!

7/6/10: Thanks to an awesome fan, Chaotic Shiny now has an official Facebook fan page! And to help kick it off, I'm donating a prize for its first contest: write a 55 word story based on inspiration from the Tarot gen. If you're on facebook, go check out the fan page, then enter the contest! And speaking of contests, I've added the Monster Contest and Paradox Recycler (newsletter only) contest compilations to the Misc Resources page.

6/26/10: Whew, that was a long break! I'm typing this now from sunny California, so you know my cross-country move was a success. I come back from my hiatus with an awesome new generator, the Tarot Card Generator. I've wanted to do a tarot gen for a long time, but never could quite get it right. I wanted one that blew all the other tarot gens out there out of the water. I think I succeeded - let me know if you agree.

5/9/10: A new silly generator, the Academic Field Generator comes up with disciplines like "Thaumaturgical Hydrocryptology," "Atypical Philosophy," and "Observational Archetypes."
By the way, there may be a brief interruption in service (ie email answering and new generators) as I graduate college, move across the country and start a new job.

4/19/10: A much-requested gen, the Place Name Generator comes up with things like "Scaletorn Grasslands" and "Gravefire Heights" as well as nonsense names. I wonder what's going on in Meatshield Mire?

Also, a new freebie for you over at Chaotic Shiny Productions to celebrate the release of the Treasure Hoard Generator Pack.

Also also, you writerly types might want to enter Nevermet Press's Monster Mashup Contest. Write a 300-word description of the monster, win great prizes and the chance to see your name in print. Everyone who enters gets a coupon regardless, so why not give it a try?

4/10/10: Based on several suggestions, the Zoomorph Generator. Creates animal-human mixes like the ancient Egyptian gods or harpies and centaurs, plus even more exotic ones with parts from many animals. Create specific individuals or generic descriptions of entire species.

By the way, there's a pretty cool mini-contest going on in the newsletter right now. You've missed your chance for this one if you haven't already signed up, but don't worry - I run mini-contests pretty regularly, so go ahead and sign up.

Also check out the new freebie over at Chaotic Shiny Productions.

3/26/10: A fun new free standalone mini-generator, the Damager rolls dice for you, then describes your attack. It's a tiny .exe file (no installation required!) that should work wherever .NET does: Windows, and Macs and *nix boxes running emulators like Mono or Wine. Go check it out!

3/16/10: A little late for pi day, the Spaceship Generator gives you names, ID codes, and stats for space ships. Now you've got someplace to put all those spare parts.

2/25/10: I really don't have enough sci-fi generators, do I? Based on a suggestion, the Futuristic Spare Part Generator lets you tell the mechanic to repair the triple kith nucleus of the laser grappler, and make sure the ionic phase gauntlet is in full working order. And gods help you if the delta redundant binding in the secondary shielding grid fails you in the middle of a battle.

2/16/10: For all you art lovers and art looters, here's the Art Object Generator. Paintings, drawings, sculptures, and what have you. Decorate the duke's summer room, stock a dragon's horde, or figure out what's up for auction.

2/3/10: Finally bringing a generator off the unfinished page, and giving hope to all of you who are waiting on the myth and dungeon gens: the Superstition Generator is complete at last. I ended up rebuilding it from scratch. Generates minor superstitions like "Encountering a toad during the harvest can portend a death" and "Never turn widdershins in abandoned ruins or you might encounter a secret."

1/27/10: A new mix of old things and some not-so-old things, the Mashup Mashup Generator. For all your kitchen-sink gaming and absurd writing needs. Oh, and check out Chaotic Shiny Productions later tonight for some exciting news.

1/21/10: Starting out the new year with something new and different! Check out the Pantheon Generator Portable. It's a standalone version of the very popular Pantheon Generator that lets you edit results, print them, or save them to a file. It should work on all versions of Windows and some *nix boxes, and it's totally free.

I'm going to make some generator packs in the future - combinations of similar, popular gens, and possibly including a new generator or two. The generator packs will be a couple of bucks each. What gens would you like to see combined? Let me know. And by the way, this doesn't mean I'll stop creating new free generators to put online - it's just one more thing you'll be able to find here at Chaotic Shiny.

12/31/09: Ending the year by taking care of unfinished business, I have fully updated the D&D 4e Character generator with all the classes, races, paragon paths and epic destinies from the PHB2. It will even count Gnomes and Shifters as monsters if you don't have the PHB2, or standard races if you do. Give it a whirl, and if you find any errors, let me know - this is a huge, complicated generator, so it's very possible I missed something. And also thanks to Matt Rowntree, without whom this update would have taken even longer.

12/24/09: Akin to the Setting Mashup Generator, there is now a Class Mashup Generator. Generates everything from your standard Theobane Warlord, Withering Duelist or Necrobarbarian to the more exotic Rune Monk of Corruption or Raven Scholar of Neutrality and Divinity.

12/6/09: For all you assassins out there, presenting the Poison Generator. Everything from deadly elixers to brews that merely cause distraction.

11/16/09: A brand new generator, the Ballad Generator. Makes everything from bawdy drinking songs to traditional stories of old set to sedate and sophisticated music. But mostly bawdy drinking songs.

11/1/09: Three happy things occur on this date: NaNoWriMo begins, retail stores across America sell half-price Halloween candy, and my first book, Martial Flavor comes out. Go buy it!

In case all that isn't enough for you, there's a new generator: the Gemstone Generator. Make yourself some shinies.

10/23/09: The Monster Contest is finally over, including voting! The winners have been chosen, and they'll be getting their prizes shortly. The compilation of all the entries that were statted for 4e D&D is here, and you can also get to it from the voting results page. Thanks to all who entered, and congrats to all the winners!

10/22/09: With National Novel Writing Month just around the corner, I updated the NaNoWriMo Motivator with some new motivation. If you're doing NaNo this year, you might want to check it out.

10/16/09: Three exciting pieces of news! Voting for monster fluff is over, voting for monster crunch has just begun. Congrats to the winners in the Best Fluff category, and good luck to everyone in Best Crunch!

Secondly, a new generator. More than that; a dozen new generators in one. The Medieval City Map Generator generates a city map in districts, and then a map for each individual district. What I want to know is, why did one city have two pastry shops in the barracks district? Thanks to all the people on the mailing list for their suggestions with this gen; I couldn't have done it without you guys. Want to make sure you have a voice in the next gen I make, and get sneak previews of half-finished gens? Join the mailing list! You also get free stuff.

Finally, some Chaotic Shiny Productions news. I finally have a release date for my first product, Martial Flavor: November 1st. Mark your calendars, then come and buy my book!

10/9/09: Took me a bit longer than I expected, but the Monster Contest results are now up for voting! Go vote for your favourite fluff. You can vote once a day all this week. Next week will be the Crunch voting, and the random drawing winners will also be announced. Go Vote!

9/22/09: A fun, relatively simple gen, the Setting Mashup Generator. It takes time periods, places, and tropes, and mixes them all together. So instead of getting "Near-Future Tokyo and laser guns" like you usually would, you instead get "Alternate history modern Switzerland and velociraptors," or "Colonial Canada, ziggurats and undead."

In other news, I've pushed back the deadline of the Monster Contest by a week so that people have a little bit more time to get in entries. Why haven't you entered yet?

9/11/09: Another character gen at long last, the Simple Character Generator gives very brief descriptions of characters that work in absolutely any genre or setting. For those times when you want an idea or a minor character, without getting bogged down in tons of needless detail. Also, there are now referral links on all the generators, letting you know about other gens you might like.

8/31/09: A new generator up, the Flag Generator. Creates flags for countries, guilds, organizations, what have you. Also, there's now some free stuff that is only available to newsletter subscribers, so if you haven't subscribed already, now's the time.

8/26/09: Moved the monster gen from "People" to "Evil" where it belongs. Oh, and speaking of that..

Like free stuff? Like generators? Like even more free stuff? Announcing Chaotic Shiny's Monster Contest! Make a monster or twenty with the Monster Generator, write up some fluff for it, stat it up 4e D&D style, and send it in for a chance to win some awesome prizes. (Monsters for other games are cool, too, but you'll miss out on some of the prizes.)

Once the contest is over, the entries will be compiled into a free pdf, which will be posted on Chaotic Shiny, available for all. If the contest is a wild success, except it to be the first of many.

Prizes include a year's premium subscription to Dungeon Mastering's DM tools, GM Mastery: Inn Essentials or GM Mastery: Holiday Essentials by Johnn of Roleplaying Tips, The Night Wyrm (12+ pages of badass monster fun) from Unnatural20, and a free copy of ChaoticShiny Productions' Martial Flavor.

The contest starts 8/26 and runs until 9/26. For more details (like how to win!), see the official Monster Contest Rules page. Happy monstering!

8/14/09: A new generator up, the Motto Gen. Creates simple mottos for nations, organizations, or even guilds, families or individuals.

Also, a big thank you to all the people who signed up for the newsletter so far. Knowing that there's people out there using the generators and having fun with them is what keeps me doing all this, and it's great that so many people want to be the first to hear about all the new stuff that's on the way.

8/9/09: A lot of exciting stuff today. Based on a suggestion, the Map Generator is exactly what it sounds like, giving you the layout of an area complete with rivers, mountains, cities and monster lairs.

Also, as you may have noticed there's now a newsletter! What are the advantages of signing up? Well, you'll hear about new gens, but also, free stuff! As a sample, Tavern Tables is a .pdf full of dice tables for generating taverns. It's similar to the tavern gen, but with a lot of new content. In the future, I'll be sending that kind of thing out to the newsletter, instead of posting it up here.

And what do I mean by "product information?" Introducing Chaotic Shiny Productions. That's right - I'm trying my hand at producing game supplements. If you like my gens, you'll probably like my supplements. I have some excerpts of our upcoming first product on the site, so head on over and check them out.

8/6/09: A bunch of great new sites up on the Links page. Look out for some exciting announcements within the next couple of days.

7/25/09: Inspired by a suggestion, the Writing Exercise Generator. Now that I've made it, I can't believe no one suggested it sooner. Generates prompts with subjects and time or word limits.

7/21/09: A relatively simple but (at least for me) very inspiring one, the Charm Generator. Also makes loot for D&D, because why not?

7/5/09: Rearranged a couple of things on the sidebar in a way that makes a little more sense, including moving up the Random Gen link. I'm also thinking of adding descriptions to the generator pages. Yea or nay? Waste of space, or helpful information? Let me know what you think.

7/5/09: I was browsing some productivity blogs today, and it struck me how hard it was to absorb that information all at once. I also remembered how helpful people found my NaNoWriMo Motivator when I created it. I fused the two ideas, and made the Life Motivator, a collection of 100 productivity or lifestyle tips, mostly taken from the Zen Habits blog. Some are instant things to motivate you on a project, while others are lifestyle changes. Click on the motivator, get your one thing to do, and then do it. Simple as that. Now you have no excuse not to finish that novel.

6/27/09: By request, the Musical Instrument Generator. For all you exotic bards and quirky buskers out there. Incidentally, that brings us up to 50 generators, not counting the ones in the Silly category or the Language Mixer, which would make 60.

6/10/09: Work is keeping me busy, but I did get inspired to make the Treasure Trove Generator. It's more along the lines of "what's lying around the old wizard's study" than "you find 1d6 platinum and a +2 flaming sword in the chest." It will probably appeal more to writers than gamers because of that, but there are plenty of gaming-treasure gens out there already.

5/31/09: Spawned by my frustrating attempts to find a decent urban fantasy that wasn't all about a traumatized heroine and the dangerous supernatural man who wants to love her, the Paranormal Romance Generator. (Note: Patricia Briggs gets a pass on this because her books are all awesome. Everyone else, please put little warning labels on your covers.) Not that there's anything wrong with the genre; it's just not my taste. Whether you're a fan of paranormal romances or not, hopefully the gen should entertain you.