How I use sparks tables

and the May production update.

May 06, 2025

Over the last year I have published several products that included a Sparks Table, and these tables have been the number one source of questions that I have received from players. In this Ink & Dice, I will explain my thinking behind using Sparks Tables…with examples!

I’ve also got some updates on crowdfunding projects and the May production update.

Special note: Welcome to everyone that backed In Ruins, and thank you for your support! If you elected to sign up for my newsletter while filling out your BackerKit survey, this is it.

Inside

Sparks Tables
Crowdfunding Updates
May Production Update

Sparks Tables

I still consider myself fairly new to the world of TTRPGs, and I first encountered a Sparks Table when I read the Mothership module Thousand Empty Light by Alfred Valley last year. I ended up using that Sparks Table (the Combined Systems Semiotic Standard) to guide my solo play-through of Chris Air’s The Graveyard of the Armored Hearts. I published that play-through here on Ink & Dice, and that is the best place to see a Sparks Table in action.

Just so that we are all on the same page, the tables below are what I am talking about when I say “Sparks Table”:

Yes, those are just big lists of words. Ideally, they are words that are vaguely related to the theme of the game that you are playing, for instance:

The table from Captain & Crew has pirate words like Mast, Cannon, and Shark
The In Ruins table has fantasy castle words like Crumbled, Portcullis, and Mortar
The Combined Systems Semiotic Standard has space words like Airlock, Alien, and Cryogenic

When it comes to how to use these lists of words, the idea is that they are designed to spark your imagination, so you can reference them whenever you need a little inspiration for the story that you are telling. I know of a couple different ways to apply these tables to actual gameplay.

1. Answering specific questions.

This is probably the way these tables are intended to be used. When a specific question comes up during play, the table inspires the answer. This will apply mostly to solo games (like Thousand Empty Light) and GMless games (like In Ruins), because in other types of games, a GM will usually answer specific questions on their own.

Pirate Borg example:

My character, Meathook, breaks open the locked chest in the captain’s quarters.

Question: What do they find?

Roll d66 —> 16 (Shoot, Blade, Cursed)

This table is set up with 3 words per entry, with the general pattern of Verb - Noun - Adjective. My question was asking about a thing, so I would use Blade and continue:

Meathook pulls out a short blade in a sheath from the chest.

In this situation, since this was in a locked chest in a difficult-to-reach location, I would probably decide that the blade is either enchanted, cursed, or valuable, depending on what I already know about this captain. However, I could use the Sparks table again to further describe the item.

Roll d66 —> 12 (Tie, Ship, Spectral)

Here, I would go with the adjective, Spectral:

Meathook unsheathes the weapon, and finds that blade is not made of metal. Rather, the spectral outline of a dagger extends from the handle, glowing softly in the darkness of the room.

Now I would create stats for the item, which would lean into this description:

Wraithblade d6
Enemies gain no benefit from the Ethereal trait.

With that settled, I would move forward with the story.

In Ruins Example

I play a Nine to add a Medium Room to the map. I draw the room next to the Library and decide that it will be a Study. I now need to describe the room’s Special Object.

Roll d66 —> 64 (Curse, Wound, Alone, Door, Mystical, Crumbled)

This table is set up with the following scheme: Verb - Noun - Adjective - Object - Fantasy Term - Castle Term. Choosing the Object word, the Special Object in this room is a Door. If that is not quite enough inspiration for me, I could roll again for an Adjective or Fantasy Term, but I already see the words Mystical and Crumbled in this cell of the table. These words spark an idea for the special object as follows:

There is a door freestanding in the center of the Study. It was once set into the outer wall of the castle, but that wall has long since crumbled and been removed and expanded upon. The door itself was never removed, for the original builder of the castle had it enchanted so that it could only be opened by them. It seems the door will stand in the center of this room forever.

That’s more than enough for a Special Object, so with those details recorded, the game would proceed to the next player.

2. Inspiring future action.

When I play solo TTRPGs, such as the 5 Million Worlds RPG play-throughs documented here and here, I tend to use the Sparks table in a different way. Instead of asking many specific questions and rolling on the Sparks table for each answer, I like to roll on the Sparks table preemptively, and then keep those words in my mind as I play. Once I have found a place to use them, I roll for new Sparks.

Pirate Borg Example

Roll d66 —> 26 (Board, Shark, Lucrative)

With these terms in my mind, the story continues until I see an opportunity to use one of them.

Meathook hangs the Wraithblade from his belt and heads out of the captain’s cabin. Before he even opens the door, gunfire erupts outside. Meathook ducks down and peers through the glass windows of the cabin to see that some rival pirate has caught this ship unaware in the dark of night, and they were able to board and attack while the crew slept.

Now that I have used Board, I would roll again on the Sparks table, and keep those words in mind as Meathook formulated his escape plan.

These are the two main ways that I use Sparks Tables. Hopefully this is helpful, since I do like including these tables with my solo toolsets (spoiler alert: there is a Sparks table in the Alone in the Dark solo toolset included with Liminal Grimoire).

Crowdfunding Updates

In Ruins

Fulfillment of In Ruins is >85% complete. Packages to the UK and EU will be shipping out from my fulfillment partner (Peregrine Coast Press) this week, so those of you in those regions should not have much longer to wait.

Liminal Grimoire

The BackerKit campaign for Liminal Grimoire is still going strong! If you haven’t checked it out yet, here’s what you can find in this pamphlet box set for Liminal Horror:

If Liminal Horror is your jam, don’t forget to check out the Liminal Horror: Deluxe Edition campaign and my collab campaign with STATIONS: I Don’t Belong Here (for which I wrote a solo adventure and several tables of Liminal Horror content).

May Production Update

No huge changes this month, just steady progress on projects that are nearing completion.

In Ruins has been fulfilled and will be moving to retailers soon.
Liminal Grimoire is funded, and the components for that project are 80-90% complete. Once the campaign ends, I will move forward to get things printed as soon as I can manage.
Most of the writing that I have been doing recently is setting material for the
Pandion Games
project Midnight Muscadines, which is also funding on BackerKit right now.

I’ve got probably another month or two of wrapping things up before I’ll be picking my next project to focus on, but you’ll see it here as soon as I decide!

Thank you!

Thanks for reading to the end. I’ll admit that it’s been a bit of a slog with these two crowdfunding campaigns running back-to-back, and the stress of producing Liminal Grimoire in the current manufacturing environment is not small. I hope to finalize production partners shortly after the campaign ends, at which point I will be able to solidify the production timeline. Fingers crossed there are no more nasty surprises.

— MAH