Meandering Monsters: Pondering another Book on Demand for Labyrinth Lord

When I originally coded the Labyrinth Lord Monster Generator, I wanted a simple and easy to use utility for generating quick wandering monster stat blocks. In the back of my mind, I keep thinking of expanding it into a book-on-demand supplement similar to the Treasure Book. The heavy lifting is already complete. The monster generator already pulls in the treasure routines. Not to mention, I have a working example for converting data into PDF on the fly.

The lingering issues are matching wandering monster tables and crafting NPC parties, which I touched upon earlier. The issues are achievable. I am not convinced it would be generally useful to others, let alone certain I would personally use it.

The largest obstacle is the latency required to convert the output of the utility into PDF. After spending hours trying to make the treasure book more efficient, I’ve determined it is simply computationally expensive. Like everyone, I hate waiting. Anything chugging away for minutes at a time is going to get skipped, more often than not.

Layout is a challenge within code. It is far easier to use a modern editor than to encode the layout details. Frustration mounted just trying to insert a simple cover page for the treasure book. A book of random critters would be no different. Perhaps I should just hand craft a few books.

I’m leaning toward passing on automation.

Tags: code monkeys, grand illusions, Labyrinth Lord