I Could Not Foretell the Use of the Word Oracle

 In Season 3, Episode 16 of the Lair of Secrets podcast, the topic confused the heck of me so much, I thought I might have been suffering a stroke or aneurysm and couldn't comprehend the English language. 

The entire episode was about oracles, yet I did not hear anything resembling a powerful influencer or charlatan in Delphi.  Rather, they used it as a term to describe random generation tables for the role-playing side of the game, popularized in some circles in the Ironsworn RPG.  Ken and David covered the full gamut of properly using those charts throughout the history of D&D and beyond, but seeing a different podcast do a reinterpretation of the term sandbox which is the complete opposite of its origins, I still twitch at the terminology used.  

I was a huge fan of the random dungeon, terrain, and NPC personality generators in the appendices of the 1st Edition Dungeon Master's Handbook. It matches the direction of Ironsworn's mechancis: producing a random result that needs to be interpreted, whether it's a campaign world, or a new perspective on a character's backstory.  

With the short and fluid nature of my Monday Night games, I tend to rely more on online generators to give me some inspiration, or just a name.  

The sites I've used for motivation, inspiration, or to prevent perspiration if I'm stuck, in order:

1. Fantasy Name Generators - I've used even prior to online gaming.  Lots of real and fictional name generators
2. Gamma World/MCC Tables
3. Tormentor's Virtual Wasteland - Gamma World stuff and a whole lot more.

The greatest repository of similar charts that I used in face-to-face play is the entire Hackmaster GameMaster's Shield.  With numerous fold-outs, flip ups, and pages, most of the useful GM charts from the Hackmaster books were placed inside. 

Funny thing is, I routinely use some of the charts for Gamma World, Gulluvia, heck even Star Wars D6!  Not a month goes by and the crew/party/wild troupe of male exotic dancers don't force me to at least use table 12Y:  Random Bar Name Generator, then perhaps the random Bartender generator.