Oops, I Did It Again: Random PC Generator

[Tegyrius]

So there you are: waiting for the bus in the pouring rain after a long night of gaming during which you finally pushed your referee too far. In retrospect, the warning signs were there: shaking hands, a nervous tic at the corner of his eye, incoherent frothing rage every time a PC laughed off another 1d6 9mm round to the head. You knew he was tired of apparent PC immortality but you really didn't think he'd go as far as he did tonight. You never expected him to bribe Paul Mulcahy to stat up the RPC.

But it happened. Now you're cold, wet, slightly cranky, and trying to figure out what to roll up for your replacement character.

I'm here to help you.

Introducing the all*-new random Twilight: 2000 v2.2 player character generator. Select your preferences, click the button, and (assuming I debugged several thousand lines of code correctly) it will spew forth a complete player character, fully clothed and equipped and ready for post-nuclear adventuring. With at least 89,280 possible combinations, you'll never need to worry again about having a backup PC!

- C.

* Contains approximately 37.5% pre-used content from the starting equipment generator. Guaranteed gluten-free.

[The Zappster]

Another fantastic tool. Thank you

[Silent Hunter UK]

Great work. Please note this may not generate Britney Spears, even if that lady did once turn up in a campaign.

[Ursus Maior]

Thanks again for the inspiration work. I mean it. I have constructed many plots from random dots like these. It keeps me from repeating narrative patterns of my own to much.

[bash]

I received the following with the kit generator:

an insufficient 2d6 and a copy of Shadowrun 1st Edition

Solid. Gold.

[pmulcahy11b]

I generated a designated marksman wearing Luxembourger jungle fatigues. Not sure the Luxembourgers ever made those...and she has volumes 1 & 2 of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Excellent!

[leonpoi]

As someone who is gluten free, I appreciate the consideration.

What a lovely thing you have made. Time to make some characters !

[Heffe]

This is really excellent. Thank you so much for this awesome resource!

[Tegyrius]

Thanks for all the kind words, gentlemen. I just posted some minor updates. Nothing major, just bug fixes and a few more noncombat role profiles.

Originally Posted by Silent Hunter UK

Great work. Please note this may not generate Britney Spears, even if that lady did once turn up in a campaign.

She is, however, on the list of USO performers who may appear in my expanded encounter generator.

Originally Posted by bash

I received the following with the kit generator:

an insufficient 2d6 and a copy of Shadowrun 1st Edition

Solid. Gold.

Remember buying a Chessex brick of 36d6 for Shadowrun games? Stuffer Shack remembers!

- C.

[bash]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

Remember buying a Chessex brick of 36d6 for Shadowrun games? Stuffer Shack remembers!

- C.

I had several bricks the Chessex mini D6s for Star Wars RPG, I think they were nominally for Warhammer, so I was well equipped for the random Shadowrun game. I still find those dice hidden at the bottom of boxes in my garage.

[Tegyrius]

Enhancements soft-launched over the last few weeks:

• Expanded list of backgrounds.

• Expanded lists of specialties for several combat and noncombat roles.

• Added character appearance and personality traits.

• Re-balanced attribute point allocations (work in progress).

• Enhanced language allocation: native languages now appear in the stat block alongside all other skills and duplicate languages should no longer occur.

• Generator now checks minimum allocations for certain key skills to reduce the likelihood of complete uselessness.

• Added optional retro boot sequence.

- C.

[Tegyrius]

Some minor updates today:

• All Soviet characters now have some level of Language (Russian) proficiency.

• Incremental additions to both combat and noncombat role permutations.

• Added much more variety to American first name tables (female and male tables are each 200+ entries instead of about 20 each).

(Edit: If the generator is refusing to do anything when you click the "build and equip me" button, try clearing your browser cache. Thanks to Desert Mariner for a heads-up on an issue here.)

- C.

[Ckosacranoid]

...and the one thing everyone forgot on the list....everyone from mother Russia has great skill....but now no one can speak the language now.

Sorry, just had to leave something funny like that after you fixed some issues.

[Graebarde]

Good job....

[Tegyrius]

For all none of you who were asking for it, there's now a version of the generator for 4th edition PCs. The character history is a lot less verbose on this - more of sketchy notes or writing prompts than complete sentences. I got very tired of writing modular prose that my elementary (if not remedial) text parser could staple together.

- C.

[Cdnwolf]

THANK YOU

[Jonesy64]

Thanks for the generator! Enjoyed both of your books especially the Pacific Northwest,

[therantingsavant]

This generator is pretty cool, helps fill the void I felt there was in terms of pregen characters in the core rulebook quite well as part of "Starter Set" resources or "the Ammo Box" as I was thinking of calling it. My only comment for improvement suggestion would be to have the ability to select combat +/- non-combat role to help round out starting parties or pregen opposing (or OpFor) parties eg for use in scenario creation - I think the v2.2 generator had this feature.

Mind you this is me with no coding / parsing skill and no idea how much work that would be - it's still amazing don't get me wrong.

And yeah it's been over a year since I visited...

And seems even longer since I posted about anything T2k related over at the 'Rants: https://therantingsavant.blogspot.com/ I realise - apologies, I have just started looking through things and the FB groups and noticed this generator (and Teg's kind comments about my blog back in the day).

Tbh I'm waiting for the Riverine resources so I can start writing posts themed as "Take Me To the River" LOL:

* Cruising Down the Visla
* Smoke on the Warta
* Carry on Down the Oder

Still, all this has inspired me a bit, maybe I should have a look at the old articles and consider 4E versions and commentary like I had originally planned before the pandemic and then the Ukraine war upended things. Or maybe collate all the v2.2k articles into a PDF or PoD for DriveThruRPG even for ease of use Maybe <shrug>

[Tegyrius]

Welcome back!

Unfortunately, the architecture of this one doesn't lend itself well to combat/noncombat selections. In the 2e generator, I used a system combining (background package) + (combat role package) + (support role package) to build the stats, so filtering was fairly easy.

I took a different approach for the 4e generator, though. It steps through (background phase) --> (first adult phase) --> (second adult phase) --> (war phase), with each phase transition having a table of available paths. With that architecture, classifying and filtering each phase transition by combat vs. noncombat is... not impossible, but not easy, and something I'd have to think about how to achieve. There's lower-hanging fruit in terms of incremental improvements to this generator, and I also have a few more sourcebook ideas in the hopper...

- C.

[Heffe]

Teg - out of curiosity, any other ideas for 4e in particular in terms of sourcebooks or anything else, or are you still mainly focused on the older editions?

[Tegyrius]

I'm not really interested in working on 4e story or setting material. While I'm coming to appreciate the system (while still acknowledging some significant shortcomings), Free League's setting is not to my taste. Anything I do for 4e in the foreseeable future will probably be along the lines of rules or equipment conversions.

More importantly, I'm profoundly uncomfortable with the current Free League Workshop terms for T2k products. The required copyright statement for every other FL game line in the Workshop leaves original content ownership with the creator. The required T2k copyright statement omits that clause and seems to assign ownership of that content to Free League and GDW (ref: screen shot taken 19 March 2022 for reference, Workshop guidelines article on DriveThruRPG). As a semi-pro author in this industry with 1.1 million paid words in print, I am wary of the precedent of giving Free League rights to any of my work for free. If they want ownership of content I create, I am open to discussing my availability for standard work-for-hire contracts at my usual word rates.

- C.

[Heffe]

Makes sense. Thanks!

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

More importantly, I'm profoundly uncomfortable with the current Free League Workshop terms for T2k products. The required copyright statement for every other FL game line in the Workshop leaves original content ownership with the creator. The required T2k copyright statement omits that clause and seems to assign ownership of that content to Free League and GDW (ref: screen shot taken 19 March 2022 for reference, Workshop guidelines article on DriveThruRPG).

This is a big reason I haven't "published" my 4e adventure yet. It's pretty much done, except for layout and formatting. I might have to bite the bullet if I want it to see the light of day. It's basically in limbo, ATM.

-

[Heffe]

I assume you guys have asked FL for comment on it? Have they responded with anything?

The omission there is clearly glaring, but given the nature of business I wonder if there might a benign reason for the choice to remove it.

[Tegyrius]

I have not. As previously noted, I don't have a lot of drive to write in the 4e setting, so it's not been a priority for me. I understand that other creators brought the concern to Free League's attention at least as early as March, when I took that screen shot.

Thread drift incoming...

I am hesitant to ascribe malice in this industry, as experience has taught me that ignorance or lack of understanding (especially in international business) are much more likely explanations for something that looks sketchy. However, the fact that FL hasn't changed the terms of the license agreement after being contacted by others - and, to my knowledge, hasn't even responded to those inquiries - makes it hard for me to believe that omission is unintentional.

While this is not my primary means of supporting my other hobbies, I've had a number of friends over the years whose RPG freelance work was a significant fraction of their total annual income. So when I see a publisher who's making profit off creators' work and is neither paying them for the rights (which has been the vast majority of my freelance experience) nor allowing them to retain those rights, my inclination is to see it as exploitative.

That's not to say that I have an issue with you or other creators choosing to participate in Free League Workshop for 4e. Everyone makes their own business decisions, and I suspect that many of the creators with material in Workshop are fans who are just happy to put something out there for the community and earn a bit of cash to sink back into other gaming material. But for myself, I've been doing this too long, and have invested too many hours of my life into honing my craft, to put my usual amount of effort into a sourcebook just to hand it over to Free League.

- C.

[therantingsavant]

Originally Posted by Tegyrius

Welcome back!

Unfortunately, the architecture of this one doesn't lend itself well to combat/noncombat selections. In the 2e generator, I used a system combining (background package) + (combat role package) + (support role package) to build the stats, so filtering was fairly easy.

I took a different approach for the 4e generator, though. It steps through (background phase) --> (first adult phase) --> (second adult phase) --> (war phase), with each phase transition having a table of available paths. With that architecture, classifying and filtering each phase transition by combat vs. noncombat is... not impossible, but not easy, and something I'd have to think about how to achieve. There's lower-hanging fruit in terms of incremental improvements to this generator, and I also have a few more sourcebook ideas in the hopper...

- C.

Yeah so checking the life path system this makes sense. When I made the "Training Packages for Redcaps" article for Ars Magica, I realised you could probably randomise the chunks similarly but the lifepath systems don't really lend to "chunking" as you say without more work sure.

So look I'm patient. But in terms of a GM resource would be amazing.