Conceptual density (or 'What are RPG books *for*, anyway?')
I recently picked up Shadows Over Vathak for free in an online sale (summary: a perfectly good two-page setting document mercilessly stretch...
Perfect.Against the WIcked City said:
I don't think he is being inconsistent at all. An ordinary random table gives you ideas you could have come up with yourself if you had taken the time to do it. A superior table, like a lot of Dungeon Dozen entries, gives you ideas you likely never would have thought of. A designer may have started with the same boring NPC table you use, but has added value by taking the time to interpret that information into an interesting character that you might not have invested yourself. Put 100 of those in a table so you can pull them out on the spot when necessary, and you have a table with high design density (as he is using the phrase).What sticks out to me is that he chastises the old d100 NPC traits tables as being uninspired, as he sees them as "Just enough to distinguish him from the next dwarf, but nothing that's actually particularly meaningful or interesting", yet he goes on to say that what he looks for most boils down to what is essentially just a collection of inspiring bits.
So my question is: how would he feel about a d100 traits table with "meaningful and interesting" entries? I mean, in terms of the density he craves, you can't get much more dense than a tabular format.