Shesha

A tool for quickly building random generators. (Still pretty rough, but working.)

Command Line Quickstart

For the command line interface, do this:

npm install -g shesha
shesha "Shesha is [!c /cool/nice/great/sssuper/]!"

If you're intrigued, read on...

Web Version

Even if you want to use Shesha mainly on the command line, it's easier to play around with the commands at first in the web version.

To use the web version, go here or check out the git repo and start an HTTP server.

The left pane is code, and after every keypress the right pane is updated.

The code in the left pane is divided into blocks separated by blank lines. There are three kinds of blocks.

deck and die create random sources you can use in the generator. They both have this format, using deck as an example:

deck my deck name goes here
entry 1
entry 2
entry 3

A few things to note:

• no quotes are needed anywhere
• spaces in the name of the source are OK
• each possible random value goes on its own line

The difference between a die and a deck is that a die can repeat values in one run of the generator, while a deck can not.

generator is the command that builds the widget. There are a lot of commands you can use inside it.

• new-row: make a new row in the generator.
• print: make a new cell in the row, and put text inside it. Terms inside [brackets] are taken to be the names of sources (dice or decks set before). Brackets can be nested.
• image: like print, but it expects to get an image url. Any text after the url becomes a caption.
• style: set the CSS attribute of the current row. Ex: style height 200px
• roll: roll dice. Takes three values: number of dice to roll, sides per die, and bonus to apply. Ex: 2d6 + 1 → roll 2 6 1
• col-widths: set widths of elements in the current row by ratio (uses flexbox).
• save: saves the result of a template to a source with the given name. This is useful when you need to repeat the output of a template. This is a bit complicated, so here's an example:

    deck people
    Alice
    Bob

    generator
    save first [people]
    save second [people]
    print [first] said to [second] "Hello [second]"

There are also embedded commands that can go in text passed to print and the like. They work by starting the label inside brackets with an exclamation point. Currently there are just two:

• roll: Roll dice in-line. Ex: print HP: [!r 1] (rolls 1d6) print STR: [!r 3 6 2] (rolls 3d6+2)
• choose: Choose from an in-line list. The first non-whitespace character is used as the delimiter. Ex: print You see a [!c /wizard/fighter/thief/]

Command Line Features

You can pass in the path of json files like so:

shesha -d file.json -c file2.json -t file3.shesha "print this"

JSON files are assumed to be flat objects with keys that contain lists. To treat every key as a die use -d for Dice, to treat as a deck use -c for Cards, to read a template file using the same syntax as the web editor use -t (the generator function will be ignored). If you have the same key in multiple files, the contents of the key will be appended.

Arguments without a prefix are assumed to be templates for rendering and will be printed after interpolation.

Related Work / Similar Projects

• Tracery
• Perchance ⚄︎
• RiTa Context Free Grammars
• The Seventh Order of the Random Generator
• Abulafia Random Generators
• RandomGen
• Ink

License

WTFPL, do as you please.