GM Helper Applications

Admittedly, I am biased. I like writing and utilizing applications that speed my ability to generate game information. Several people I’ve met consider them to be useless in that they are pure random nonsense that allow no creative control. Responding people of that viewpoint is awkward. I do not think utilities are a replacement but rather an additive element.

If you already have ideas, use them. I use name, treasure, plot and other generators to spark my imagination and to fill in holes. I also use them to alleviate tedious table consulting so games flow faster. Likewise, they can eliminate a bunch of prep time if I don’t have to look up specific elements that can be automatically calculated.

For many systems with a near infinite combination of skills/powers/feats, I find them even more useful. Random conglomerations can inspire a nifty NPC, that I would not put together because many options are mechanically non-interesting. Still, they reflect oddball combinations the game designer envisioned.

RPG’s as a whole are becoming an eclectic mixture of table-top and computerized bits. I suspect a significant portion of community expects applications to be available for complex systems. Time is always an issue in life. Personally, I have an expectation that most systems of the future should be coupled with applications which can help me deliver the best possible game to my players at the table. The desire is unrealistic for many smaller, independent systems but the big names should have those tools available as part of the game.

Am I crazy?

User Feedback Rocks!

This post is brought to you by my new friends Greg and Gregory. Two Gregs in one week is awesome in and of itself.

Greg #1 dropped me a line to say how useful the various Labyrinth Lord utilities were for tossing together an adventure. Greg’s returning to gaming due to the request of his wife to play D&D. She’s never played and he picked Labyrinth Lord as an introductory system. Greg comes from the Red & Blue era. He’s made an excellent choice of modern systems to introduce D&D to his wife. Hopefully, she’ll soon join us in the fantastic, chaotic realm of RPG enjoyment.

Greg #2, aka Gregory, sent in a feature request. He asked that I include an option in the 1E Treasure Generator to generate gems and jewelry independently of treasure type. The suggestion made complete sense. I already broke out many different elements so why not gems & jewels? Quality requests require a quality response. The feature is now included. In return, Gregory asked what he could do for me. He offered to promote the site. I countered with him buying me a beer. He won by promoting Mithril & Mages on two separate sites. Now I need to buy him a beer.

Receiving feedback from visitors energizes me to continue to improve. No matter if it is a bug report, feature request, or just a quick word of thanks/commentary.

Cheers to Greg and Gregory. May all your games be epic and the dice roll in your favor.

City Name Generator Updated

I got dinged in a forum comment for not including New Zealand in the City Name Generator country list. Ding noted. New Zealand is now represented.

As are the following countries: Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Bangladesh, Belarus, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Burma, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Chile, Columbia, Congo, Czech Republic, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Honduras, Iceland, India, and Israel.

Considering I used a U.S. based data source, there are a) Americanized names in the list, b) errors, and c) names in languages I cannot read. I chose to keep (c) for flavor.

(A) is an artifact of the data source. Hand assembling the list is not an option and (b) is due to the lack of updates to the data set along with crazy American ignorance. Such is life. Feel free to complain.

I tried utilizing UTF to include additional character sets. The data may be completely borked. Should that prove accurate, I’ll fix that countries effected.

City Name Generator Update

Roughly a month ago, the City Name Generator was discussed on wykop.pl. At the time, I was buried with various life tasks and didn’t dig into the resultant traffic. Today, I took the time to look back at the traffic and the comments about the generator. Frankly, the commentary indicated the data for Poland was crap. Originally, it was generated using information from the GeoNET Names Server from the NGA.

The comments were correct. The Poland database was chuck full of erroneous entries, many of which with Germanic origins. I scrapped the table in favor of a source directly from Poland’s government. I’ll have to evaluate other countries derived from the GNS data at some point in the future.

Labyrinth Lord Monster Stocker update

The recent release of Oubliette #8 included Monster Mark tables for levels seven and eight. The inclusion allowed for the expansion of the Labyrinth Lord™ Monster Stocker to include the new tables. The upgraded generator is now live. Monster Stocker generates 100 random monster entries for the specified level . Results include NPC Party generation. Additionally, treasure can be toggled on or off depending on the needs of the user.

Issue #8 is free for a limited time. The contents include some great material including setting materials and two mini-adventures placed within the setting. The adventures can easily be dropped into other campaigns.

Coding, Editing, and the Transit

Colorado has 300 beautiful blue sky days a year. Strange how one of the overcast days showed up during the transit of Venus. Luckily a few brief breaks in the clouds gave me an opportunity to check it out. I’ll be soil or something less pleasant by the time it happens again.

I’ve been hacking through the 6600 modern occupations in the occupation generator over the last few days. The editing is tedious. Given the classification origin of the list, I expected far fewer duplicates and variants. Once done, the database for the generator will be updated, which should produce more interesting results. I may also release the pruned list as a PDF. Six thousand possible occupations is a lot more interesting than the few dozen jobs most games include as interesting character occupations. The breadth of possibilities allows for more engaging NPC’s.

As my brain tired of editing, I got distracted and started yet another random treasure generator. This one is for Adventure Conqueror King (ACKs). The system is novel in a few different ways. If you want to expose the strange tendrils of a system, translate the tables into code. I mentioned a preview link on G+. Unlike most of my generators, I’m keeping this one stand-alone so I can toss it over to the fine folks at Autarch if they find it useful. It’ll have my ‘normal’ set of ajax related dependencies. Someday I should transition to jquery.

Finally, I chose to opt out of my original opt-in for the DNDNext playtest. The playtest launched while I was on vacation. During that time, I realized I just wasn’t that interested in yet another variant of the franchise. While I am certain the designers are working hard, nothing reported to date compels me to even bother reading the materials. Large corporations are not driven not by innovation, but by the bottom line. The crazy number of badly written polls regarding the release suggest the same. Far more interesting products are available from a plethora of small gaming companies.

Tweak and Tune: Labyrinth Lord Generators

As with all random generation systems, there are details which result that you just are not happy with. Tonight a few defective elements were tackled. #1 on the list was the Monster Stocker. Inline treasure generation was changed to be optional rather than assumed. Treasure should be a function of the situation not just implied by the default Hoard Class.

Next on the list was the over zealous approach to magical equipment for Non-Player Characters. The NPC code is utilized not only by the Monster Stocker but also by the NPC Generator. The original code used a fixed constant as a multiplier based on character level. The result was a lot of magic in far too many results. The replacement is an exponential function to significantly increase the odds high level NPCs have magic while eliminating many spurious results for lower levels. Additionally, the average magical bonus for equipment was changed to be more inline with charts.

Overall, the changes create far more useful results. The DM can always tweak up as desired but constant need for reduction was annoying. Erring on the low side is far more useful than being prolific.