Wednesday, May 13, 2015

So a while back, I sat down and played a Dungeons and Dragon board game with some friends. It was... mostly fun, but what I really took away from it was the simple AI built into the game's monsters.

So a while back, I sat down and played a Dungeons and Dragon board game with some friends. It was... mostly fun, but what I really took away from it was the simple AI built into the game's monsters. 

Jump to last night, when I was knocking together materials for a FASERIP solo game. I got to thinking about how nice the ranks in that game are for describing things, and lamenting the fact that I am lazy and don't want to roll up a whole mess of NPCs right now. That got me to thinking. We have some wonderful resources in the community, but would people be interested in a sort of shared character library?

I picture things like attributes described in terms (al a FASERIP), and some simple AI built in. Something an individual could grab and drop into their world, know roughly how the character would react, and away they'd go.

An example:

John the Fighty Man

Strength  Decent
Agility      Average
Fortitude Great
Reason    Bad
Intuition  Average
Charisma Average

Special Powers / Traits
Three time winner of the "Eat a stone's weight in cheese." competition.

Behavior:

When intimidated this character reacts: Hostilely
Personality-wise, this character is: Jovial, if unhelpful.
When in combat, this character:
1.) Attacks aggressively
2.) Retreats at 1/4 health
Commonly found at: Ale houses, brothels, puppet shows.

Thoughts?

6 comments:

  1. I'm all for that idea. ;) Any resources we can get are good in my book.

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  2. Love the puppet show bit!  It's the little things that add real color to the world.  There are more Color Animal Inns than you can shake a +1 pointy stick at, but taking the time to describe a puppet show and you have memorable stories and a reoccurring gimmick to play with.

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  3. Looks like a little bit of "The Window" game system.

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  4. If more folks show interest, I'll set up a drop box or something, or knock out rough guidelines for folks to blog about, dunno. It just seems like something that might be useful.

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  5. I play Traveller solo, we already have the "1001 Characters" book :-P

    However, the behaviour idea is wonderful, I may have to make up some more random tables!

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  6. Behavior Traits could be quickly mapped on a d6 scale, or with words:
    eg.
    Bravery: 1/Coward - 6/Lion Hearted
    Honour: 1/Back-stabber - 6/Defender of the Weak
    Sanity: 1/Unstable - 6/Ice-cold calm
    etc
    Which could help with Traveller NPCs where psych traits aren't part of the basic char gen

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