Editorial standards
How we make this
Every generator here rolls from a fixed list written for this site, and every guide is an argument someone can be wrong about. This page says who that someone is, what the tools are actually doing behind the button, and what happens when something on the site turns out to be wrong.
Where the words and the word lists come from
All of it is written for this site. The motives, flaws, schemes, lairs, quirks, voice cues, foe roles, and terrain hooks in the generators are fixed entries in a plain list, drafted and edited before they went in rather than pulled off another site. The names and epithets are invented. Nothing in a result is lifted from a published adventure, bestiary, or setting book.
The guides are built the same way. They collect the shortcuts a Game Master ends up using when the table is moving faster than the notes: want and wound for people, action economy and terrain for fights, visible method for a scheme. Before a guide goes up it has to clear three checks:
- It has to work without a specific rulebook. If advice only holds under one edition of one game, it does not belong here.
- It cannot reproduce anyone's rules. No stat blocks, no spell text, no monster entries, no tables copied out of a book.
- A reader has to be able to test it in one session. If a claim cannot be checked at your own table, it gets cut rather than hedged.
Each guide carries the date it was published, and an updated date once it has been revised. Those dates are not decoration. The updated date moves only when the text actually changed. Guides get re-read when a reader flags something and on a rolling pass at least once a year, so a page that has been sitting untouched for years does not quietly pretend to be current.
What the generators are doing, and what they cannot do
There is no server. Every generator on this site is JavaScript running inside the page you are looking at. Nothing you roll is sent anywhere, nothing is stored, and once the page has loaded the tools keep working with the connection off.
The villain and NPC generators pick one entry per line from those fixed lists, filtered by the tone you choose. That is the whole mechanism. The encounter builder does slightly more: it turns party size, average level, and target difficulty into a threat budget using a fixed multiplier table, then spends that budget across foe roles with per-role caps, and adds a terrain hook, an objective, and an escape valve.
- The threat budget is a shape, not a ruling. It is not calibrated against any publisher's challenge rating, experience budget, or encounter table, and it will not match them. Check the foe counts against the system you actually run.
- The lists are finite, so repeats happen. Rerolling is expected, not a bug.
- The tools have no memory of your campaign, your party, or your last roll. They cannot tell you whether a fight is safe for your specific table.
- A result is a starting point written to be rewritten. It is scaffolding, not a finished antagonist.
Who writes this
Everything on the site is published under one byline: the Sinister 6 desk. That is a working name for the writing and editing behind this site, not a person. There is no invented biography here, no list of credentials, no stock photograph of an author who does not exist. In the structured data on every page, authorship is credited to the site itself rather than to a made-up individual, because that is the true answer.
A single byline is a deliberate choice. It means the site cannot lean on a famous name or a track record, so anything it claims has to stand on whether it works at your table. If the desk ever becomes named people, this page will say so before any byline changes.
When something here is wrong
Email [email protected]. Include the page address and quote the line, because that is the fastest route to a fix.
- Factual errors get corrected. The line is fixed and the updated date on that page moves, so the change is visible rather than silent.
- Judgement calls get an answer. If a heuristic is a matter of taste and the desk disagrees with you, you get a reply saying so instead of a quiet edit or no reply at all.
- Substantial rewrites are noted on the page. If a guide's advice reverses, the page says what changed rather than pretending it always said the new thing.
This is a small project. Replies are not instant and there is no queue system behind them, but messages are read by a person and corrections are the ones that get handled first.
Who pays for this
Out of pocket. Sinister 6 is a static site on cheap hosting, funded by the person who runs it. There are no ads, no affiliate links, no sponsored placements, no paid reviews, no newsletter list, no accounts, and nothing to buy. Nobody has paid to be mentioned here, and nothing on the site is ranked, recommended, or omitted because of money.
The site uses aggregate, cookie-free analytics to see which pages get used. That is the only measurement running, and the privacy policy covers it in full.
If Sinister 6 ever takes money from anyone, this page changes first and the arrangement gets labelled on every page it touches. The one thing that is not on the table is a paid placement dressed up as a recommendation.
Trademarks and what "works with your system" actually means
Sinister 6 is independent. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or connected to any game publisher. Dungeons & Dragons is a trademark of Wizards of the Coast. Pathfinder is a trademark of Paizo. Those names appear here only to say which games Game Masters are running when they use these tools, which is nominative use and nothing more.
When a page says a result works with your system, it means something narrow and checkable: the output carries no numbers. No armour class, no hit points, no challenge rating, no spell list, no rules text. You get a person with a motive, or a fight with a shape, and you supply the statistics from whatever game you run. That is why the same seed drops into D&D, Pathfinder, or homebrew without a rules argument, and it is also why the tools will never hand you a ready-to-run stat block.
Anything you generate is yours to use, rewrite, and run. If a rights holder believes something here crosses a line, write to [email protected] and it gets looked at properly.