The Absurdly Detailed Town Generator

I found this on Reddit’s RPG section recently: An “absurdly detailed” town generator at mathemagician.net. Just tell it the size of town you’d like to generate, plug in some racial profile percentages, and it spits out a list of randomly generated details – members of the town guard, citizens (including adventurers and commoners), names of businesses, and more. Each business is given a staff (and in the case of taverns, a list of regular patrons, including the time of day they are likely to be there), and each character gets a one-line summary of their race, class, level, and two character traits.

Some of the business names end up sounding a little weird (and always seem to follow a two-word format), and there doesn’t seem to be a way to view/download all of the data in one piece (rather than clicking every link and saving each page that comes up).  But it’s still a lot of fun to play with, and great for making a quick list of citizens to help populate a fantasy town or city.

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Review from a bricked-up library: Masks

It should be pretty obvious by now that I am a big sucker for any product that helps inspire creativity and improvisation, and generally makes the GM’s job easier – and I’ve been lucky enough to happen upon many in recent years.

Masks: 1,000 Memorable NPCs for Any Roleplaying Game could be a candidate for one of the best GM tools ever, at least in my book. It is a 300+ page collection of NPC personality sketches that is not just a list of characters, but a collection of tools to adapt them to your own campaign and use them to the best advantage. It’s not only a book of NPCs, it is a book on how to NPC.

The entire first chapter is devoted to GMing advice – making NPCs memorable, “re-skinning” NPCs from one genre to use them in another, polarizing elements of the character to make them unique – and most importantly, how to not overdo it (these are supporting characters after all, and should never steal the show from the real protagonists).  The lists of traits and “invisible keywords” at the end of this chapter, and the explanation of how they were used, will prime any imaginative GM to immediately begin customizing these NPCs before they even get to them.

After that comes the parade of NPCs, divided into three genre categories (fantasy, modern, and sci-fi), each of which are divided into sub-categories (villains, neutrals, and allies). Each NPC is fleshed out in an array of descriptors – Name, Capsule Description, Quote, Appearance, Roleplaying, Personality, Motivation, Background, and Traits. The descriptions are very concise, to keep the most important and functional elements of the character in the foreground. Many of the NPCs could easily be adapted to other genres with a bit of fiddling and tweaking (and advice for this is supplied in Chapter One).

If all of this wasn’t enough, the book contains a “name ribbon” running through it – a one-line list of names running along the bottom of most of the pages that a GM can quickly reference if a character name is needed on the fly.

While looking through this massive collection of character backgrounds, I found an additional use for it, as I caught myself coming up with story ideas to draw them into. I’m even tempted to challenge myself and choose some at random (they’re all numbered) and try to write a plot around them!

As a side note – I was pleased to discover that it was inspired by one of my favorite Dragon magazine articles of all time – “The 7 Sentence NPC,” by C.M. Cline. It appeared in the August 1992 issue, and I’ve kept a photocopy of it in my RPG binder for many, many years now.

I really can’t recommended this collection enough for any serious GM’s reference library. If I had to come up with a negative about Masks, it would be this – it’s entirely too big to fit into my RPG binder. I’m probably going to have to invest in a good tablet PC that can display PDFs.

 

The bilbereous seminicance of an ancecial bridene.

soybomb.com/tricks/words is a little gadget that creates random pronounceable nonsense words based on real words in the English language.  Here’s a list of words that it made for me:

immerreration	pinostupon	bilbereous	alizesenlay	costaft
convilizes	ovelestancess	vageords	specamplier	dimnassympeth
picauth	nopung	digingentrice	actinimbing	restowins
malfunden	bearties	ablety	cleari	farmatuter
gonsiverlest	prodwondi	sariologa	cognized	rectivittic
seminicance	bustraticarbon	crosphys	mospecue	beyingslavoid
calindacery	vinisharchared	boyfrian	lawrapprop	tempasts
constreas	fighossplancy	prolater	nishintentian	thostravieth
resser	ancecial	decoolitier	ecution	downtroseviers
belitt	destirvits	ceippermings	criplicilly	bridene

You should totally generate a thousand or so of these words, put ’em into a text file, print them out, and put a copy in your roleplaying folder for those times when you need a genuine-sounding word to describe something that doesn’t really exist.

I know I’m gonna.

 

Review from a bricked-up library: Everyone, Everywhere

The Everyone Everywhere List by Erik James Olsrud is low on frills and high on utility – it’s a list of names from several cultures – from African, American, and Arabic to Turkish, Vietnamese, and Viking – to help with naming your next PC, a pivotal NPC, or just when you need a quick name for a bystander, but don’t want to name them “Bob” or “Mary” again.

There’s a special section for pulp/noir names and modern American first names and surnames, plus a list of town and city names for when you need to quickly get out of Dodge, and need to know the name of the next town over.

There isn’t a specific section for fantasy names, but just browsing through the whole PDF will net you several will little effort.

All name lists are numbered so you can roll randomly if you wish. The entire document is 31 pages, so a printed copy will fit easily in your gaming binder for quick reference – and at $3.99, the price is certainly right.

 

A nifty sci-fi name generator

…and since it seems that I’m making up for my lack of posting by tossing up links I find with StumbleUpon, here’s a nifty sci-fi name generator that will give you a list of names in seven categories (cyberpunk, space, Crest of the Stars, Cthulhu Mythos, Serenity, Star Trek, and Star Wars) and many different sub-categories under each:

SciFi Name Generator – http://donjon.bin.sh/scifi/name/

Here’s a sample of what it spat out for me for Space – Locations:

The Waurill Industrial Complex on Irra
The Jenoxium Mines of Pemphredo IV
The Ruins of Ilon City on 4663 Dou Xiu VII
The Living City of Kaferran
The Sicyl Station orbiting Hyldemoer
The Lital Military Base above Ashima
The Vanik Military Base above 4219 Circini VI
The Yeman Military Outpost on Graneang
The Niii Hakucti Colony
The Conian Military Outpost on Micrillan

And a list generated from Cthulhu Mythos – Unspeakable Names:

Ynga-Xothlabho
Glanath
Bha-Akehot
Ugha-Rhulhuggo
Tanithast
Ghat-Yuratho
Sha-Nyarloigua
Glyehoadre
Adda-Rlegoth
Addanonia

Since I’ve always been a little rough at coming up with appropriate names on the spot, sometimes I’ll generate a bunch of names with a program like this, cut and paste them into a Word doc, and print them out for future reference. Having it in paper (rather than making it up off of the top of my head) adds to the illusion that a casual reference to an NPC or location could be crucial to the story – and could even inspire me to make it so, if the mood hits me.

Have fun!