Mad Libs
Both West of Loathing and Shadows over Loathing use various text generation templates to make randomly generated descriptions, item names, responses, etc. Commonly, these are made using a Mad Lib-inspired system of templates and categories.
Example case
For example, an object name might use the data table below with the a [COLOR] [OBJECT] formula, where the words in brackets are replaced by an entry picked randomly from the buckets (lists) of words. This could result in items such as a Red Sphere, or Blue Cone. Some bucket entries can include other buckets, or even themselves. In this case, a [COLOR] entry could be replaced by [COLOR] and [COLOR], and both of those colors replaced by real colors (or rarely, further recursion), giving for example, a Red and Blue Cube.
Bucket Results [OBJECT] - Cube
- Sphere
- Cone
[COLOR] - Red
- Green
- Blue
- [COLOR] and [COLOR]
Occurrences
- Your Family Farm: Reading books from your bookshelf
- Your Family Farm: Reading books from your brother's bookshelf
- Boring Springs Saloon: Crazy Pete says all kinds of crazy stuff
- The Jewel Saloon: Rules of poker
- Fort Alldead: Gross foods
- Railroad Camp (East): Locomotive names
- Ol' Granddad: Potion ingredients
- Gun Manor Library: Definitions of words that don't exist
- Gun Manor Guest Room 1: Self-help book titles
- Farmer Chekov's House: Pretend to farm
- Monster Shack: Adventure novel titles
- Fishman Casino: Poker games
- An Exceptionally Fitful Dream: cafeteria food