Welcome back to day 6 of RPG a Day 2025. Today’s topic is Motive.
While I had a couple of ideas about what to write about, I just could not decide, so I used the options on the bottom shelf of the graphic above, and the results were: What, Nostalgic, and Accessory. That worked out great!
So, here’s my question for today: What accessory motivated me that I’m nostalgic about?
The answer is easy: the Central Casting books! What was Central Casting? Allow me to tell you.
Central Casting was a series of four books: Central Casting: Heroes of Legend, Heroes of Tomorrow, Heroes Now!, and Dungeons. The last one, as far as I can tell, was written by another author. I intend to write about the first three.
These three supplements were written by the amazing Jennell Jaquays, a gaming luminary known among many other things for her astounding game design and art. Janelle sadly passed away last year; she is sorely missed.
The Central Casting books are system-neutral genre books for fantasy, sci-fi, and modern games, allowing you to roll your character’s background in a series of interconnected random tables with great detail, from birth to just before they began adventuring. In many ways, when I first read it, it reminded me of character creation in Traveller, but you can’t die while you roll up your character’s story.
While generic, there are notes on converting the bonuses, boons, and curses granted by the tables to all the popular systems at the time. The books were published in 1988, 1989, and 1991.
There are some notes in the book that may seem strange to our more modern sensibilities, but I can put them aside, understanding, from an outsider’s perspective, the journey Jennell went through and all she shared with her followers. So, enough said about that.
Allow me to tell you what these excellent books make me nostalgic for! I used books to generate different NPCs for my campaign worlds, drawing inspiration from the events and details of their stories, as well as the adventures and elements of those campaigns. My player used them for their character, and I used some tables to generate random events when I felt uninspired.
The book had advice on using the tables just for that reason, like I said before, notes on converting the bonuses generated through the book into the most popular role-playing games of the day for that genre, rules for using it to create simple backgrounds for NPCs, and a nice piece on character motivations and essays on how to put it all together.
These are my favorite background generator tools for role-playing games. While some people may chafe at the idea of simply randomly rolling for a character’s background, this is more of a mini game unto itself where you put together all these events and details and create your own story. I was a fan back then, and I still am now.
There are random background generators out there, but none have ever captured my imagination quite like these. The tables and tools by Kevinn Crawford in his Without Number series, published under his company, Sine Nomine Publishing, are the only ones that come close in sheer usefulness and value for me.
Sadly, these books are out of print. You can still get them used online. I have mine as they are among my most treasured RPG books. Jennell was working on an updated version of the series before her untimely passing, and her wife, Rebecca Heineman, had mentioned her intention of publishing the project. Still, I have not seen any news on that front. But I understand this; such a project after a significant loss cannot be an easy undertaking. Here is a link to a New York Times article on Jennel’s life where Central Casting is mentioned.
While still saddened by her parting, my life as a gamer, as a creative, and as a person was greatly enriched by Jennel’s work, whether she knew it or not. I’m motivated by the nostalgia for these books, as well as her fantastic work, which has allowed me to continue enjoying this wondrous hobby, of which she was one of the founding figures.
What motivates you, your games, your characters? Are you a fan of Jennell Jaquays’ works? What’s your favorite of her works?
Do you know or recommend any other similar product you think I should check out?
Would you be interested in a post where I generate a character using Central Casting?
I would love to read your feedback and comments here in the blog, or tag me in your replies, wherever you make them. If you choose to join in the conversation, don’t forget to tag your entry with the #RPGaDay2025 hashtag so the community can find your contribution.
