Went to the art supply store with Stacie a while back; they had a sale on art supplies, but only for a few hours. We got there early to beat the lines, but we had to wait a while for the sale to actually start. Cue the “wandering aimlessly about the store” part of our day. The store in question has a pretty decent selection of art instruction books, especially fantasy drawing. That’s how I found this gem.
Fantasy Genesis is a game and creative tool to spark subject matter ideas. It’s kind of like Manga Matrix, but more structured. The book has a bunch of lists broken down into four major categories (Animal, Vegetable, Elemental, and Tech), each with some subcategories. You take standard D&D dice and roll twice for each category and subcategory, ending up with a list of eight items. You’re also encouraged to customize the lists in the book (I’m considering writing an applet to do this with extensive lists) or just pick items from them rather than rolling the dice.
Once you have your list you pick and choose from it, combining them in whatever combinations you like. You don’t necessarily have to use all of them, and you’re free to add anything else you like. There are a few different “versions” of the game, which determine what you’re doing with the lists. In the “Basic Game,” you have “Major Form” and “Minor Form.” The Object/Weapon game has “Form” and “Surface” or “Major Form” and “Minor Form.” Humanoid adds “Action” and “Emotion,” each with their own lists.
Once you reach that point, you draw a picture. There’s no scoring, just a creative exercise. You can find similar work on Pinterest where someone shows a picture they made of a spaceship based on a vegetable peeler, can opener, or whatever else they had sitting on their desk. It’s a good way to kill an afternoon, and I’m using it to come up with things for my GURPS games.
I highly recommend it for the other creative types out there. There’s no telling what you’ll come up with from where the dice drop you, and who knows if the dice will give you your next Darth Vader or James diGriz. Or that scary-ass critter from Outlander (the science fiction one with the Vikings, not the one about the Englishwoman in Dark Ages Scotland).