[StevenH]

Originally Posted by hal

Where I'm at with coding:

Hi All, status report:

I can now generate all four stats for NPCs. I can generate magery levels based on the 10:1 ratio of lower magery levels vs next highest magery level. I'm seriously considering writing the code so it will handle not just 10:1 ratios, but any whole value ratios you might care to write - 10:1, 8:1, 7:1 or even 3:1.

I can also generate the age of the character. Within less than an hour from now, I plan on adding the ability to foretell the NPC's fated year of death. I'm even considering the idea of turning the year of death into the following format:

999/99 where the first three digits are the julian date of death and the 99 is the age of the character the year of his death. For instance, I could roll 015/51. The NPC will die (if player characters do not intervene) 51 days past his 51st birthday. If you guys want me to toss in a Military time for the character's death, I can add that as well. Simple matter of generating a Fractional day value and conver it to hours and seconds.

So, what say? What would you like?

Also, would it help to give the NPC mageborn actual Names? That wouldn't take all too much work to do either (Which do you want, French or English Names? I only have those two in a complete list).

And finally:

Per GURPS 3e, newly crafted characters should not be able to have more than 2x their age in skill points.

If I generate the age of a character, I would like to propose that the NPC mageborn is entitled to 2 character points per year in spells for every year of age past 12.

Drat - not finally...

How important is the stat "IQ+Magery" to those in this list? Do you want me to put it in the output for ease of reference?

When you code it, make it so you can vary the % mageborn. Not because we will need it with this first experiment, but for the future. When I was doing my initial demographics, I kept getting too few mages to support the kind of world I wanted to run. Maximara earlier mentioned the trope of relatively common magic items. I kept ending up with too few enchanters to have more than a handful of items nationwide, which would have completely messed up the economics of magic per the book, and I am too lazy and not enough of an economist to rebuild all of that.

While I didn't want magic items to be falling out of everyone's pockets, I also didn't want them so rare as to be the cause of every adventure. (If a PC ended up with a magic item, everyone and their uncle would be trying to get at it, as it would be priceless and any person down on their luck who managed to get it would be set for life. That's one hell of a motivation to spur anyone with an ounce of ambition to go after it.)

As for naming, yes, it would be good to name them. I don't have an objective opinion on whether it's French or English though. The names I use for human NPCs (and PCs) tend to not be from anywhere specific and where they are recognizable I change the spelling a bit.