Help:Contents

How Do I Use Abulafia?

Abulafia exists to give you cool ideas. Sometimes you need something as simple as a Fantasy Name. Maybe you need a whole Tavern. Maybe you need interesting Treasure. Abulafia wants to help.

Step 1: Find a Generator

You need to find the page on Abulafia that can give you what you want. You can browse down from the list on the Main Page, try the Search box on the left, or browse the Full List of available random generators. If you didn't find what you were looking for, maybe you can help create it (See below!).

Step 2: Get Results

Most pages on Abulafia are random generators; they will give you new results from their seed ideas every time you refresh them. So, once you find a random generator that can give you what you're looking for, open up a text file and copy/paste interesting results you get from Abulafia into it (you'll want them later for whatever fiction you're working on). Hit the 'Refresh' button in your browser and you'll get a whole new set of results from the same generator.

That's it! Go play with Abulafia!

How Do I Help Abulafia?

You help Abulafia when you contribute little bits of your ideas as fodder for Abulafia's random generators. Because Abulafia is a type of wiki, anyone may edit the pages here to contribute ideas, or create new random generators to serve your needs.

Signing Up

Abulafia requires editors to have an account as an anti-spam measure, nothing more. Abulafia does not use your email address for anything other than password reminders, and your information won't be sold, rented, loaned, pimped, or abused.

The first time you try to edit a page (by clicking on the edit tab at the top of the page), Abulafia will prompt you to login or create an account. Once you have an account, you'll be allowed to edit pages and contribute to Abulafia.

Adding to an Existing Generator

Abulafia has lots of generators, but most of them are the work of only one or two authors, and that limits their imagination. Lucky you came along! Behind the edit button, generators on Abulafia are mostly just lists consisting of a relative probability and a possible result. Take, for example, part of the MonsterParts tables that lists possible preservation substances:

;PreservationSubstance
5,brine
5,alcohol
5,oil
2,salt packing
2,pickling fluid
2,clear gelatin
2,clear syrup
1,ether

So, brine, alcohol, and oil are the most likely substances you'll find your Monster Parts preserved in. But lets say you want to add 'formaldehyde' to the list. You click 'edit', then just add it in the list with its own relative probability:

;PreservationSubstance
5,brine
5,alcohol
5,oil
2,salt packing
2,pickling fluid
2,clear gelatin
2,clear syrup
1,ether
1,formaldehyde

Click the 'Save Page' button at the bottom, and you're done. It's now part of the possibilities for that generator. You might not see it for a while, even clicking refresh as fast as the page reloads - some generators have millions of total possibilities and part of the fun is seeing what comes up each time, even if it doesn't include the options you just added. Eventually, it'll be selected as part of a result.

So, find a generator that you think you might be able to contribute some new ideas to, click 'edit', and start adding your ideas to the lists there. Be courteous and try to respect the original intent of the generator by keeping your relative probabilities reasonable and your contributions on-topic.

That's the simplest way to contribute to Abulafia. There's lots more, but that'll get you started.

Calling Subtables

For most generators, you will have several subtables. For example, many name generators consist of lists of male first names, female first names, and surnames. A main table may have occasion to include results called from one of its own subtables. This is done by putting the subtable name in square brackets, like [subtable]. For example:

;main
1,[malefirst] [surname]
1,[femalefirst] [surname]

;malefirst
1,John
1,Paul
1,George
1,Ringo

;femalefirst
1,Juana
1,Paulina
1,Georgia
1,Yoko

;surname
1,Lennon
1,McCartney
1,Harrison
1,Starr
1,Ono

Results from the called table take the place of the tablename itself, but other formatting, such as the space between tablenames, will continue to be present in the final results.

Additionally, generators on Abulafia are able to incorporate results from any subtable on ANY generator. This is done using the format [Page Name.subtable]. Here is my Psuedo-Beatle Names main table, substituting in results from the first names available on SGNP cowboys, but keeping the surnames table as above:

;main
1,[SGNP cowboys.malefirst] [surname]
1,[SGNP cowboys.femalefirst] [surname]


Easy, right? If you don't know the names of the subtables on a page you're hoping to incorporate, go to the page, 'Edit', and see what they're called.

Modifying output

Sometimes, when output is used in a phrase, the stock output may need to be modified. For example, if an output from a table is used at the beginning of a sentence and inside a sentence, one would need to be capitalized and one not. For these situations, the solution is a MediaWiki extension, the ParserFunctions. This page shows all the options available for this extension. Most commonly will likely be the ucfirst command, which when used like {{ucfirst:aardvark}}, produces Aardvark.

More advanced functions, like choosing the proper article ('a' vs. 'an' based on the string following it), and plural-izing a string, custom Templates are needed. See Template:Plural and Template:Article for use of these Templates.

If you would like to design your own advanced templates to handle these or other text-manipulations, the doumentation here on the extended ParserFunctions may be useful.