On the Limits of Random Tables

I love random tables. Knowing that I can roll a few dice and get a solid idea to build from gives me confidence when running my games. Sometimes the ideas I get go well beyond what I can come up with on my own in a short time. These are all positive points about tables.

But there's a downside.

Every table has limits. Limits on how many options exist. Limits on the scope of ideas available. Limits on what the table can do for you. Don't get me wrong: A d% or d66 table offers plenty of options. But vanishingly few tables exhaust the limits of options available in reality.

Under some theories, literally anything can happen at any time. The probability of something really weird happening is tiny, but rarely zero. Tables that cover all these extremely remote possibilities quickly become far too cumbersome to use, and they dilute the probability of more likely outcomes.

Shameless Plug: I've recently published Tabula Mortis (available now at itch.io), a one-page trifold collection of tables intended to help detail scenes of carnage and murder. Will it cover every possibility? Absolutely not. You can only fit so many options into a d12 table. Will it get you started in describing what happened and give your players clues to uncover the story behind the scene? Yes, it will. But it's incomplete by design, requiring your creativity to bring its ideas to life.

On Cheating Randomness

I cheated a little when I made Tabula Mortis. Some tables focus on scale rather than exact numbers, like the number of bodies (None? A few? A huge battle?) and how long ago they became deceased (Minutes? Months? Millenia?). I felt it was better to suggest a ballpark amount and let you fill in the details.

The same generality holds for the general scene and cause of death, except these results provide vague categories rather than specifics. Asphyxiation could be caused by strangulation, drowning, or choking on food, so you need to add some details to make the results work for you. And if you happen to have a group of assassins who specialize in making it look like someone choked on their lunch, so much the better. Everybody wins, except, of course, for the assassinated victims.

You can use other design-level cheats to offer low-probability outcomes, like a table hierarchy. One entry on your main random table directs you to roll on the Uncommon Results table. One uncommon entry points you to the Rare Results table, and so on for as many iterations as you want. Will someone use a one-in-a-million result? You know they will. And using an oddball idea is great.

Confession time: I love random tables, but I rarely use them with dice as intended.

To me, random tables provide inspiration and not hard-and-fast direction. Most of the time I read something on a random table which sparks something in my head that sounds off on its own. I can provide my own far-fetched ideas based on something simpler I saw, and I can even modify it during play if my players come up with another explanation that feels better.

Random Limits

It's hard to beat a collection of random tables for the ratio of inspirations per page. Just know that whoever made those random tables has a specific point of view, and the tables will reflect that, mostly through what options are missing. A table for a murder-mystery or espionage game probably won't contain too many "this was an innocent fluke with no negative repercussions" results, for example. I'm sure I've missed a glaringly-obvious cause of death when writing Tabula Mortis, so feel free to berate me roundly in the comments.

So are random tables truly random? Definitely not from a design perspective. Some subjectivity creeps in from an editorial standpoint, as you only have a limited number of options available.

Can random tables inspire? Absolutely, especially when using a table that someone else made that reflect their perspective, biases, and blind spots. Tapping into ideas that didn't spring from your own brain can multiply your creativity. And that makes a better game for everyone at the table.

Roll on, my friends.

(Written for Prismatic Wasteland's RANDOM BLOGWAGON on 12 June 2026.)
(No, I didn't refer to someone else's blog, so please shame me as a bad blogger.)