Can the same topic come up twice?

Not until the pool behind your filters has run out. Every prompt drawn this session goes into a bag that the next draw holds out, so you see each matching prompt once before any of them returns, and the line under the stage counts what is left. When the pool does run out inside a draw, the unused prompts go out first, the bag starts again from the top of the same order, and the page says so in that line and marks the repeated prompts on the list itself. Changing the category or the audience starts a fresh session, because that is a different pool.

What do the 8 categories mean?

Each one is a different job, which is why they are separate lists rather than labels on one. Debate holds motions with two sides worth arguing. Presentation holds subjects to prepare a short talk on. Impromptu is one minute with no preparation. Discussion holds open questions for a group to chew on. Storytelling asks for something that happened. Writing holds essay and creative prompts for the page rather than the room. Work and study covers meetings, projects and learning. Light is for warming a room up. All categories draws from every one of the 312.

Are these topics suitable for children, a classroom or an adult room?

The Audience control is that judgement, written with each prompt rather than guessed at afterwards. Children holds the prompts written to work with a primary class, Teenagers the ones for a secondary class or a youth group, and Adults the ones for an adult room at work or socially, so choosing Debate with Teenagers leaves 47 debate prompts and nothing written for anybody else. No prompt asks anybody for a private fact: not what they earn, not their health, not what they believe, and nobody is named in one. Nothing needs an answer from a particular person either, so passing is always an option the room can take.

What does the seed do?

It fixes the order. Without a seed each draw is a fresh shuffle from the browser's own generator. Type a seed of up to 40 characters, such as the name of a lesson, and the same seed with the same category and audience produces the same list on any machine, which is how you hand two groups the identical set or come back next week to the same running order. The bag still works down that fixed order, so a draw of 10 is the first two draws of 5 joined together. Change the seed, the category or the audience and the order changes with it.

Can I keep, print or copy the topics?

All three. Keep pins a prompt to a list under the stage that survives the next draw and is remembered in this browser, up to 40 of them, and only prompts from this page can go in it. Copy puts the drawn set on the clipboard as plain text under a heading that names the category, the audience and the seed if you used one. Print lays the same set out as one card each, ready to cut up and hand round, with the kept list printed after it, and the browser's own print command does the same thing.

Where do the topics come from, and is anything collected?

All 312 were written by hand for this tool. No card deck, no other generator's list and no scraped page went into them, and no franchise, brand or real person appears in a prompt. Everything runs in your browser: no account, nothing uploaded, and nothing recorded about what your room said, because the page never asks for it. Asking for more topics than your filters hold is refused with the number that do match rather than padded out from another category. The category, audience, count, seed and kept list are remembered in this browser so the next visit opens where you left it, and if storage is blocked the page still draws.

Random Topic Generator

Press Draw and a set of topics comes up: this generator holds 312 prompts written for this page across 8 categories (Debate, Presentation, Impromptu, Discussion, Storytelling, Writing, Work and study, and Light), and every one of them also carries the audiences it was written to work in front of. That is the difference between this and a page that shuffles one long list at you: a debate motion is not a writing prompt and is not a one minute impromptu, so the category picks the job you are practising, and the audience tag keeps a prompt written for an adult room out of a primary class list, and the other way round. Draw up to 20 at a time, keep the ones you want, and nothing comes round twice until the pool behind your filters has run out, at which point the page says so rather than repeating quietly. A seed is optional: type one and the same filters draw the same list again, on any machine.

No topics yetCategory: All categoriesAudience: Any audienceNo repeats

corpus 312 prompts, taggedpool for this filter 312

Choose a category and an audience, then press Draw.

bag 0 of 312 used this session

Drawn

Common questions

Can the same topic come up twice?: Not until the pool behind your filters has run out. Every prompt drawn this session goes into a bag that the next draw holds out, so you see each matching prompt once before any of them returns, and the line under the stage counts what is left. When the pool does run out inside a draw, the unused prompts go out first, the bag starts again from the top of the same order, and the page says so in that line and marks the repeated prompts on the list itself. Changing the category or the audience starts a fresh session, because that is a different pool.
What do the 8 categories mean?: Each one is a different job, which is why they are separate lists rather than labels on one. Debate holds motions with two sides worth arguing. Presentation holds subjects to prepare a short talk on. Impromptu is one minute with no preparation. Discussion holds open questions for a group to chew on. Storytelling asks for something that happened. Writing holds essay and creative prompts for the page rather than the room. Work and study covers meetings, projects and learning. Light is for warming a room up. All categories draws from every one of the 312.
Are these topics suitable for children, a classroom or an adult room?: The Audience control is that judgement, written with each prompt rather than guessed at afterwards. Children holds the prompts written to work with a primary class, Teenagers the ones for a secondary class or a youth group, and Adults the ones for an adult room at work or socially, so choosing Debate with Teenagers leaves 47 debate prompts and nothing written for anybody else. No prompt asks anybody for a private fact: not what they earn, not their health, not what they believe, and nobody is named in one. Nothing needs an answer from a particular person either, so passing is always an option the room can take.
What does the seed do?: It fixes the order. Without a seed each draw is a fresh shuffle from the browser's own generator. Type a seed of up to 40 characters, such as the name of a lesson, and the same seed with the same category and audience produces the same list on any machine, which is how you hand two groups the identical set or come back next week to the same running order. The bag still works down that fixed order, so a draw of 10 is the first two draws of 5 joined together. Change the seed, the category or the audience and the order changes with it.
Can I keep, print or copy the topics?: All three. Keep pins a prompt to a list under the stage that survives the next draw and is remembered in this browser, up to 40 of them, and only prompts from this page can go in it. Copy puts the drawn set on the clipboard as plain text under a heading that names the category, the audience and the seed if you used one. Print lays the same set out as one card each, ready to cut up and hand round, with the kept list printed after it, and the browser's own print command does the same thing.
Where do the topics come from, and is anything collected?: All 312 were written by hand for this tool. No card deck, no other generator's list and no scraped page went into them, and no franchise, brand or real person appears in a prompt. Everything runs in your browser: no account, nothing uploaded, and nothing recorded about what your room said, because the page never asks for it. Asking for more topics than your filters hold is refused with the number that do match rather than padded out from another category. The category, audience, count, seed and kept list are remembered in this browser so the next visit opens where you left it, and if storage is blocked the page still draws.

Prompts are written for this tool and tagged by category and audience, so a filter returns only prompts carrying that tag and never pads the list out with others. Within a session each prompt is drawn at most once, and when the pool empties the page says so before it starts again rather than quietly repeating.