Good question! Really, it depends on what skills you already have. I’ve posted a couple tutorials to the blog, but without much regard to skill level. I’ll almost inevitably be posting more in the future.

Last year, the Procedural Generation Jam had a big list of tutorials: http://procjam.tumblr.com/post/99689402659/procedural-generation-tutorials-getting-started That’s a great starting point.

If you don’t have much programming experience, it might be worth prototyping some systems on paper, with dice, cards, or other tools. These can be useful in themselves, and it is good practice for the kind of thinking that’s behind all procedural generation.

Lastly, I want to encourage you to just dive in. Procedural generation is always going to be experimental because it revolves around finding unexpected ways to combine different parts to get new results. Start with something that makes something, even if it is a really simple something, and keep finding new ways to tweak it and combine it until you’ve discovered something new and unique to you.

Anyone else have any suggestions for good tutorials?