A while back, Rob Donoghue posted about a game you should play to become better at GMing. Created by HipBone games, it’s inspired by the Glass Bead Game that Hermann Hesse wrote about in his book, Magister Ludi.
In the basic game, two players take turn placing ideas on the board. Whenever they place an idea, they need to state connections between the idea they just placed, and any other ideas connected to that space. Whoever comes up with the most total connections wins.
Played solo, it’s a neat exercise in divergent thinking. But I always hit a block when deciding what to fill each space with. To turn it into a pure divergent thinking exercise, I created a randomizer that fills each space with an icon from Game Icons. I also added the ability to set a seed in the URL, so if you find an interesting layout, you can share it around. Every time you randomize, it updates the URL.