Simple Card-Driven Personality Generation

I had need of a quick and simple personality generator that could produce lots of different results and be used procedurally during play. I remembered Tony Bath’s personality generation system from a book of his collected rules and advice for running Ancient (and Hyborian) Wargaming Campaigns. It’s a great book, an insight into early roleplaying and world building and continues to contain useful resources. Here is my altered and simplified rendition of his personality generation system. 

The System

Draw two cards from a standard deck of playing cards (jokers removed) and consult the table below. The first card drawn indicates the adjective - the second indicates the noun. Combine the words to form the character's personality type. 

Card	♦️ Red ♥	♠️ Black ♣️
King	Disloyal/Schemer	Loyal/Companion
Queen	Unhinged/Lunatic	Courageous/Trooper
Jack	Dishonest/Liar	Vengeful/Avenger
Ten	Decadent/Hedonist	Austere/Ascetic
Nine	Humble/Gentleman	Superior/Narcissist
Eight	Cruel/Misanthrope	Affable/Friend
Seven	Charismatic/Charmer	Chivalrous/Cavalier
Six	Lazy/Wastrel	Kind/Comrade
Five	Dithering/Fool	Sly/Rake
Four	Amoral/Rogue	Fearful/Coward
Three	Bad-Tempered/Brute	Calm/Scholar
Two	Zealous/Radical	Ambitious/Aspirant
Ace	Loud/Braggart	Reactionary/Traditionalist

What and Why?

The above table is my general purpose one. It is formed of character traits and types I’m generally more comfortable with. Therefore my table may be missing some personality types you might include instead. It is also slightly more likely to generate ‘negative’ traits and therefore; 'bad' characters. This is fine, the vaguely villainous are usually more interesting to me. Rewrite the table as you see fit. The personalities of your NPCs are very setting specific things and have a huge impact on campaign feel.

Using cards rather than dice means one can go through an entire deck, two cards at a time, to generate a whole host of different characters with less trait repetition.