[ericthered]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I don't think I do this. At least, my experience has been that rolling dice to define a character, a species, a planet, or whatever is likely to produce something random and unsuitable, and I've basically given it up.

Originally Posted by Mark Skarr

I don't do this at all. It's fun to sit around, with friends, and roll on random tables to see how non-sequitur we can get with results, but, that's not something I'd set a game up around.

Its tricky to do, and I have to admit I throw away or warp a lot of the results I get. I often use custom tables as well, or very generic ones that give ideas. The dice aren't dictating what happens: they're assisting me in my brainstorming. And usually I'll come up with three or four ideas this way and use one of them. I've got good automatic rollers for the things I do a lot of, and I can quickly build more, so I can bang things out pretty quickly.



As an example, I needed to build a political framework between 6 cities for a game. To do this, I rolled up 6 NPC's using the collaborative gamers NPC generation system (I have an automated generator for that). Then I randomly generated a graph of "Good connections" between the 6 city rulers. I also generated a sympathy rating, their background (military, civilian, religious), and a competency rating.



I knew which location needed to be the ring leader, and that he needed to be military, so I assigned the graph and the NPC profile to that location. I also knew one city had to be politically isolated from the others and have a certain type of leadership, so I assigned that. Then I distributed locations, graph relationships, and NPC's to the different cities. And then I sat down and figured out why these relationships worked. Why is the short fat appointed incompetent civic leader friends with absolutely everyone? Perhaps he's good at the wining, dining, and politicing aspect of things. There are two military leaders, and one of them is the leader of the faction... perhaps the other one is trying to imitate the actions of the more successful.



The drama came when the PC's tried to navigate this political system. Who do they need to beat in battle to stop everyone? who can be used as a neutral party to negotiate a treaty? Who can be easily bought off? Who can be brought into the war, and what can you offer them?


Often, when I'm struggling to be creative, I find that imposing limits gets my mind going. Its easier to come up with a reason why the true power in a city is informal than to just build a city power structure from scratch.


And you need to have just the right random tables. I usually build custom ones when I'm noodling with an idea, and run it a few times to make sure the ratios come out right.

I wouldn’t consider “roll and see” drama. Randomly generating NPCs, on the fly, isn’t something I would do. I have a large stable of NPCs that I can draw from, and, if necessary, I can always create a new one to fill the role I need right now. If they were in a position where “do they have a mistress” is a relevant question, I would already have an answer because I know what is going on, in general, and could decide that in an instant.

I don't have that stable of NPC's, so I use the dice. As a side note, how did you build the stable, and how do you ensure you have someone appropriate for every situation?