City Name Generator Update

Yesterday, I was informed that I’d broken the entries for Wales within the City Name Generator. While I restored the data for Wales, the vast majority of them can be found under England. A mere 130 entries from the original generator data set is not that interesting. Hat tip to James L. for letting me know.

While I was fixing that, I imported a few new countries:

Kenya
Laos
Lebanon
Libya
Lithuania
Madagascar
Malaysia
Mali
Mozambique
Panama
Papau (New Guinea)
Philippines
Rwanda
Saudi Arabia

The database now contains slightly over 2 million names.

Updated 1E Treasure Generator

The 1E Treasure Generator underwent a few upgrades over the last couple of days. The bulk of the variable items are now automatically generated. A couple of minor bugs were also corrected that were failing to return treasure for Miscellaneous Magic types. Both were simple typos.

Random Generation is Dead

Once upon a time, I was told emphatically that randomness is the bane of everything. Random results are useless. Crap shoot, roll of the dice chances are not for everyone but they are far from useless. Aren’t role playing games pretty much all based on a random chance?

I use them to spark my mental processes. I use them to fill in holes. I use them when I don’t have anything planned. I must not be alone.

A month ago, I started tracking page views on my generators. Each and every time someone clicks a Generate button it issues a log message. I don’t track who, what, or where anyone is from. I don’t care about that information. I just wanted to see how many times the pages are used.

Before the change, I didn’t track any element of the generators other than initial page view. Prior to the change, the overall site had just under 100 page views daily. Now that I actually track generation hits, the page view count averages slightly under 1000 page views a day.

If that equates to dead, I’m must be a member of the undead army. Maybe I can rise up and be an anointed knight.

D&D 1E Treasure Generator

I finally finished the minor elements of the treasure generator. The form and function follows the general approach used in all the other utilities on the sight. Strangely, I started the project shortly before the recent announcement of the re-release of first edition to support the Gary Gygax Memorial Fund.

The generation process includes treasure by type, any magic, maps, or specific treasure class. The reference tables for the process are from the Dungeon Master’s Guide and Unearthed Arcana. Magic and spell lists use the U.A. table information.

Typos, bugs, and easter eggs may be present. If you suspect an error or find a typographic error, please let me know.

December’s Most Popular Utilities

Once again, I tweaked the Popular Resource list on the right sidebar to include the top 10 resources on the site from the previous month. Three different Labyrinth Lord utilities/pages dropped off the list: the Treasure Book on Demand, the Spell Book Generator, and the overall Labyrinth Lord Resource List. All but the spell book utility suffered due to the activation of usage tracking on the AJAX results for utilities in general.

The new entrants include the Medieval Name Generator, the Deck of Many Things utility and the Dice Roller. The latter two get a surprising number of page views while engaging a smaller overall audience. The medieval name utility is always in the top 20 month to month.

Who knows what will hit the top next month. The results are driven primarily by visitors from search engines.

Names, more names, and other utilities

A few days ago, I pimped my Labyrinth Lord Generators. Now, I’d like to detail the other random utilities I have made available over the last few months.

Names

I struggle with coming up with names for people. For those afflicted with naming challenges and to help myself, I have released several random name generation systems.

For people, you can choose between modern or medieval names. The underlying data is based on real names from actual sources. Not ad hoc attempts to clobber a bunch of text together. While I enjoy role-playing, I prefer realistic names so the results are just as useful for writers. The city name generator, especially the U.S. data, is a great way to spark a name for a locale. Data from a dozen other countries is available as well.

Other Modern Stuff

If you need a career for a person, the occupation generator allows either random or drill down selection. Again, it is based off real data as is the business type utility, which is helpful if you want to know what businesses are nearby. The city block generator features quick block by block generation across four different zone types. If you need to know what’s on a random city block, the generator fits the bill.

CyberPunk 2.0.2.0

I keep meaning to port my Fast & Dirty Expendable and Lifepath utilities over from C++ to php. They still function on my old workhorse machine thus porting is a low priority. The system was one of my favorites in years past.

Thoughts on RPG Utility Software

Over the last month, I’ve been cranking out utility software for role playing games. The bulk of them covered either Labyrinth Lord or modern elements. Randomly generated information is central to RPG’s. Like many, most of the time I’d rather make the selection via dice. At times, picking up dice and making a series of rolls is not convenient or you may just need a lot of rolls. They are useful in certain situations but not others. Writing them is rewarding in many ways. .

When to Use

Although many purists would never utilize a coded system, there are situations where they can useful. My top two reasons are speed and inspiration.

Speed

Speed is simply explained. If you need a 100 different results and have 10 minutes to do it, a utility is going to get you the information. Rolling dice and writing up the results by hand is significantly slower. Copy and pasting the information or even a quick download is far faster. If you trust the random number generation used, the results are similar. If you can cut prep time and spend more time gaming, the benefit is a win-win for the players and game master. I’ve never met a gamer who would prepare materials over actually playing. Bulk results are far faster from a coded system.

Inspiration

Everyone hits a wall at times. Randomly generated information can provide a spark to get creativity flowing. Perhaps you want a specific bit of information to spark a group goal but cannot quite come up with what it should be. It may be a friend, foe, or magic item. Rather than racking your brain after it has failed you, hit a generator that focuses on that portion of the information. Maybe 1 of the hundreds of results they can produce in seconds will get you over the hump. Although its far less interactive than asking people, at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday, the generator won’t mind you calling.

When Not to Use

Specificity

If you already know the results you want, you shouldn’t be looking for them within a random utility. For example, if you want a small 7 room dungeon that features a water crossing and a shrine to a long dead god, you are unlikely to find it in a random series of results. You may find a few elements for inspiration but you already know what you want. Design what you know and use the random utilities for the rest if you need more inspiration.

Balance

I’m not a big fan of overall balance in a system or a group. However, everyone and everything needs the spotlight at some point. Perhaps you’ve given everyone but one character a useful magic item and you want to place one in the current dungeon. Random results will not help. You know the character and the goal, its specific, so just pick it and place it appropriately.

Why Produce Generators

A few people have asked me why I write utilities. There are number of reasons. Djeryv offered this opinion on the Goblinoid Games forums, which is accurate within limits.

When people make tools like this…to help in their “own” gaming…they can’t lose. Sharing it with others is just a selfless gift on top of that. It is really cool when we make these tools/generators because they help with putting a game together so much quicker than the hours we spent in the 80’s. The main excuse of why people stop gaming is “no time”. These tools diminish that problem. Also, any printed generator also lets us keep the laptops away from the gaming tables.

However, I’ve got ulterior motives.

Permanence

If a game system is in use, the utility software can be useful forever. Essentially, they are traffic generators. If I was aiming toward monetizing this site (I’m not), every utility I write generates repeat traffic back to the site. Once written, debugged and present, utilities are a constant source of traffic. If they suck or don’t fill a need, they are as pointless as most of the random posts I write. Out of the dozen generators I’ve written in the last 20 years, only the system specific ones continue to result in repeated visitors. Still, those repeat visitors might find a new one useful.

Fun

Yep, I write them for the challenge of writing them. Not because they are difficult. Rather, I get to explore technologies I don’t interact with daily. In the last decade, I’ve never been asked to write a web application. Writing a generator forces me to embrace new technologies I wouldn’t normally use. Learning and using AJAX was cool. I’ve probably over used it but none the less I had fun figuring it out and the result were useful to gamers in general

Learning something new plus producing products useful to others is a lot of fun. I’ve stumbled more than once. The Treasure Book generator is chuck full of inefficient programming. I’ve indented to fix it but the number of people using it raises the priority.

In a strange sense, I’m providing a service to others while having fun doing it. Very similar to running a game for other players. I burn some energy doing the prep work and then they reap the benefits. I have fun. The consumers have fun. I’ll call it a win-win.