List of Kings

While I'm not actually a fan of the notion that you should develop long histories for your fantasy settings, I have to admit, that I like a good map and chronology as much as the next guy.  While trawling some other blogs, I saw the idea of a d12 table for determining what happened to the rule of kings that allows one to create, without the effort really, a chronology not unlike the Appendix A to The Lord of the Rings.  I've decided to bulk up the chart with a few more ideas and make it a d20 table, and make it more fitted to my setting.

The following isn't meant to be canonical, but I decided to use the system to generate a quick and dirty list of kings for Baal Hamazi, starting at year 1 of the A.S. through year 522--45 years before the present time, when the Empire fell into its current state of Balkanized city-states.

How long do rulers rule?  According to the list of Windsor Kings, the longest reigns were 63 years, but most were much shorter.  I've whipped up yet another quick and dirty chart (keep in mind; although a fantasy setting, I don't have any long-lived races like elves or dwarves to contend with.)

Roll	Result
1	d100 weeks
2	d4 years
3	d6+2 years
4	d6+4 years
5	d6+8 years
6	d10+10 years
7	d10+15 years
8	d10+20 years
9	d10+25 years
10	d10+30 years

The cumulative of all of the reigns of all of the rulers I generate needs to add up to 522, so it may require some manual adjustment on at least one or two of the entries (I'm thinking both the first and second will be manual; the rest will be randomly generated.)

The next thing I need is a list of names--Bingo, I've already got one for the Hamazin language, with almost 140 entries on it.  Ideally I'd pick names randomly too, but I'm not going to, just because I don't want to mess around with figuring out a new way to do that with the resources I already have.

And finally, my bulked out "events" table, to give each ruler's reign just a bit of personality:

Roll	Result
1	Ruler is the founder of a new dynasty.
2	Ruler has the same name as a previous ruler.
3	Ruler's reign is marked by political turmoil that itself has been given a name.
4	Ruler was converted to a new religion and made his conversion official for the entire kingdom.
5	Ruler supervised a fundamentalist religious revival.
6	Ruler is known as a political or military reformer.
7	Reign ended with the assassination of the ruler.
8	Ruler founded a cadet branch (or more) via his many children of potential future claimants to the throne.
9	Ruler married into another dynasty, growing the realm via dynastic union.
10	Reign ends in scandal.
11	Reign ends in abdication.
12	Ruler supervised significant growth via conquest or other means of the realm.
13	Ruler supervised significant decline and contraction of the realm.
14	Ruler's reign split by a Usurper or Pretender to the throne.
15	Ruler's reign marked by prolonged warfare.
16	Ruler known by an epithet.
17	Rule was notable for a series of natural (or supernatural) disasters.
18	Ruler was revealed to have been an imposter.
19	Ruler spent the majority of his reign ruling in exile.
20	On ruler's death, the realm was split into multiple kingdoms.