Uploaded February 2021 | Updated September 2026, 9 hours ago
This talk is from the 2016 Roguelike Celebration: roguelike.club/event.html, re-uploaded 2021.
Markov text generators are hilarious, poetic, and surprisingly creative. But they haven't found much of a home in games. In this talk, Jason Grinblat teaches you to build your own Markov text generator. He then walks through a design experiment in which he uses Markov text to procedurally generate in-game lore books for his roguelike/RPG, Caves of Qud. He explains how he moves beyond "just a generator" and weaves a game mechanic around the text generation: players can research generated books at an in-game library and learn meaningful secrets that they can act upon in the game world.
Jason Grinblat is co-founder, designer, writer, and gameplay programmer for Freehold Games, the tiny studio behind Sproggiwood and Caves of Qud. Their mission is to build imaginative games that involve offbeat settings, interesting tactical situations, and a whole lot of emergence in the tradition of the roguelike genre.
This talk is from the 2016 Roguelike Celebration: roguelike.club/event.html, re-uploaded 2021.
Markov text generators are hilarious, poetic, and surprisingly creative. But they haven't found much of a home in games. In this talk, Jason Grinblat teaches you to build your own Markov text generator. He then walks through a design experiment in which he uses Markov text to procedurally generate in-game lore books for his roguelike/RPG, Caves of Qud. He explains how he moves beyond "just a generator" and weaves a game mechanic around the text generation: players can research generated books at an in-game library and learn meaningful secrets that they can act upon in the game world.
Jason Grinblat is co-founder, designer, writer, and gameplay programmer for Freehold Games, the tiny studio behind Sproggiwood and Caves of Qud. Their mission is to build imaginative games that involve offbeat settings, interesting tactical situations, and a whole lot of emergence in the tradition of the roguelike genre.
