I tend to GM campaigns where players travel a lot. Whether it is through D&D planes or in a space-opera setting, they are bound to visit a lot of very different and varied places. And I have to admit that after a while, I start to run out of ideas.
Therefore, I am looking for a system allowing me to easily create towns, countries, or even planets. I have several requirements though:
- Setting-agnostic. I need something that can be used in space-opera, D&D, L5R, and so on. I can ignore the non-relevant results if necessary.
- Scalable. Ideally, it would be possible to use it on towns, planets, and everything in between.
- Some randomness. My issue being that I am running out of ideas, I would prefer a system that generates ideas for me.
- Not too specific. Most city generators I find actually generate too much. I don't want a system that generates the population size, race proportions, number of inns, and so on. I just want some guidelines and I will fill the blanks.
- Different government results. I would like a system resulting in different political systems, such as democracy, monarchy, communism, theocracy, and so on.
For example, the output I would ideally have from the system would be along the lines of "Science: 1, Religion: 5, Education: 2, Wealth: 0, Government: Military, Special: Food Taboo" (values and categories are totally arbitrary).
Diaspora cluster generation system is a really good start, but is unfortunately too specific to solar systems. I tried the "other kinds of clusters" suggestion, but with no success (not very scalable, have to design and balance the tables myself, still quite setting-specific). An adaptation of this system to make it more general could work.
Pathfinder settlements are a surprisingly good fit, and a random settlement generation system could fit what I need.