Mad Libs

West of Loathing uses various text generation templates to make randomly generated descriptions, item names, responses, etc. Commonly, these are made using a Mad Lib-inspired system of templates and categories.

Example case
For example, an object name might use the data table below with the a [COLOR] [OBJECT] formula, where the words in brackets are replaced by an entry picked randomly from the buckets (lists) of words. This could result in items such as a Red Sphere, or Blue Cone. Some bucket entries can include other buckets, or even themselves. In this case, a [COLOR] entry could be replaced by [COLOR] and [COLOR], and both of those colors replaced by real colors (or rarely, further recursion), giving for example, a Red and Blue Cube.


 * {| class="wikitable mw-collapsible" style="width:90%;"

! Bucket ! Results
 * [OBJECT]
 * Cube
 * Sphere
 * Cone
 * [COLOR]
 * Red
 * Green
 * Blue
 * [COLOR] and [COLOR]
 * }
 * Green
 * Blue
 * [COLOR] and [COLOR]
 * }

Occurrences

 * Your Family Farm: Reading books from your bookshelf
 * Your Family Farm: Reading books from your brother's bookshelf
 * Boring Springs Saloon: Crazy Pete says all kinds of crazy stuff
 * The Jewel Saloon: Rules of poker
 * Fort Alldead: Gross foods
 * Railroad Camp (East): Locomotive names
 * Ol' Granddad: Potion ingredients

Reckonin' at Gun Manor:
 * Gun Manor Library: Definitions of words that don't exist
 * Gun Manor Guest Room 1: Self-help book titles