(Labyrinth Lord) Tweaks on NPCs in the Monster Stocker

NPC generation is tricky business.

Magic

Some campaigns are bereft of magic while others have it in abundance. As a starting place, I added the possibility of magic armor, shields, and weapons to be added to the NPC routines in the Monster Stocker. Rather than leaving the poor gals (and occasional guy) without some magical gear, I settled on functional chance based on level:

The chance of a magical weapon or set of armor is equal to 5% plus the level of the NPC * 5. For example, a 4th level NPC has a 25% chance of having magical gear. The percentage covers her primary weapon, armor and shield. Secondary weapons suffer a -20% penalty to being magical with a minimum set at 5%.

After looking at a few thousand results, the level of magic appears lower than what I expected. My campaigns trend toward magic being uncommon — not rare. I may be over analysing the results.

Personality Traits

In addition to the magical gear, I also added a personality trait line based partially from the Masks supplement and other sources. Keyword traits can never define the complexity of an individual. Treat them as nothing more than a starting place and adjust as you see fit. Occasionally you will see terms that appear to conflict. You can either to choose to deconflict them or imagine a deeper personality based off those rough traits.

Future Stuff

I still need to work in some level of treasure for the NPCs. Not lair level hoards. Something approaching a general level of magical gear and treasure people of level X may be carrying. I intend to lean toward sparse magic. Adding to scarcity is far easier than scratching off abundant items. Especially for filler results.

The PDF output is nearly done. Test site has it but the layout is still giving me some fits.

(Labyrinth Lord) Minor Utility Updates

I updated the Resource List with several new resources. After doing so, I realized I should keep track of the updates to pimp the new resources. I’ll do better the next time around.

I added a couple of levels to the Labyrinth Lord Monster Stocker. The new levels are NOT based on the cool Oubliette tables noted previously based on the Monster Mark system. Instead, I used gut feeling and the stock LL wandering monster tables as a starting point. NPC’s now have weapon selection but still lack treasure entirely. Finding a balanced approach to NPC treasure has proved more difficult than I thought it would be.

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.

LL TBoD: You May See Art

Today is full of woops. I forgot my test and development platform is actually the generation site for the nightly Labyrinth Lord Treasure Books on Demand. I began folding in the new artwork before my memory kicked me in the head. So, there might be some cover art, or not. Depends entirely on how you get your TBoD.

I should be more consistent about checking code into source control. I wasn’t. If you want an evening of frustration, trying appending a cover to an on demand PDF creation system. I may have to layout the credits page manually and encode the positions later. At least the cover portion is working.

I suspect I should add the OGL as well. Layout is a pain without having to actually select fixed positions, fonts and such in code without WYSIWYG.

Time for a beer.

Labyrinth Lord: Spell Scroll Generator

In addition to playing the role of a virtual pack mule today, I’ve added another utility within my Labyrinth Lord utility section. The Spell Scroll generator was originally going to be fully contained within the Treasure Generator. However, to test the functionality, I added a stand alone variant.

Within the coming weeks, I plan to fold the functionality into the Treasure Generator to output spell scrolls with spell lists directly. I’m prone to tailoring scrolls to fit campaign needs but sometimes you just need a random one for a chance encounter. Feel free to beat on it.

The code was also written to allow easy generation of X spells for Y levels. I wonder how that could be useful?