[Sci-Fi] NPC Character Generator

[VariousRen]

Hello,

I am the DM for a number of GURPS games, including a dungeon fantasy game called Fall of Brekhan that we are posting on youTube (Shameless plug, watch us at www.youtube.com/whyuroleplayingthis). We are starting a new sci-fi game called Sector Olympus Tau that we will begin playing in a few days, where the players control the full 30 or so members of a starship. The five officers are player made characters built on 125 points, but the rest of the crew are enlisted men pulled from bars, recruiting offices, and so on. The players do not have full control over their skills, but can screen more applicants and try to get better random people.

To do this quickly and easily (Possibly in the middle of play, picking up new crew after a fight) I put together a google sheet with a script to pick a random name, generate random stats, generate random skills, and create random advantages and disadvantages. I figured after all that work I should post it so other people can use it too.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

To use, go to file and save a copy of the sheet for yourself. Open that up, and click the "New Recruit" button. This will create a separate tab with the recruits name and a whole list of generated stats. The NPC's generated are not balanced, instead they are statistically varied so that they fall along a distribution set by a few parameters.

If you would like to change the parameters, they are listed under the crew overview tab, and are expressed as either decimal percents, expected averages, or equivalent point value.

The name list, skill list, and trait list can be modified to fit your specific setting. For names, simple add a name at the bottom of the list. Ensure the first and last name columns are the same length, and have no gaps in them. For advantages/disadvantages, add the name of the trait into the appropriate column. Ensure there are no breaks in the each column (but they do not need to be balanced).

Skills are chosen from three categories. Everyone draws from the critical skills, one specialty list, and one dabbler list. To add skills, pick a specialty (You can rename them if you wish) and either replace a skill or add one to the bottom of the list. The difficulty is 0 if easy, 1 if average, 2 if hard, and 3 if very hard. Unfortunately you can not add extra specialties right now, the 7 + critical are hard coded in (I may change this in the future).

I am posting this here so other people can test this and find any bugs I have missed, and to get feedback on the setting specific feel. Let me know what you think, and feel free to use it and modify it as you would like, just provide credit wherever possible. If you would like to have a more detailed version created for an individual game, I am available for commissions on a case by case basis.

EDIT: The spreadsheet uses a script on Google Sheets, as far as I am aware it will only function online. If you can figure out how to download the script and have it function, please let me know.

[evileeyore]

It doesn't seem to work in Open Office, so I can't test it.

[VariousRen]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

It doesn't seem to work in Open Office, so I can't test it.

If you have access to google (and thus google sheets) you should be able to use it online.

[Arith Winterfell]

I downloaded it and ran the spreadsheets using LibreOffice. They were saved as .xlsx file.

It looks nice, but the button to "Create a New Recruit" doesn't seem to work for me. I just click on it and it simple seems to set it to be moveable rather than triggered any calculations.

I'm really interested in this spreadsheet though!

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by VariousRen

If you have access to google (and thus google sheets) you should be able to use it online.

It seems to work fine in GoogleDocs.

Originally Posted by Arith Winterfell

I downloaded it and ran the spreadsheets using LibreOffice. They were saved as .xlsx file.

It looks nice, but the button to "Create a New Recruit" doesn't seem to work for me. I just click on it and it simple seems to set it to be moveable rather than triggered any calculations.

Same here. It might be a problem with importing it from the base xls to other office programs.

[VariousRen]

Updated the description to let people it only works on Google Sheets. If anyone knows if it is possible to download a Google Sheets script, let me know so I can add it to the post.

[jacobmuller]

Thank you for sharing.
125 character points sounds low but YMMD.
You can have a 250pt nco and not be outre (seals in Vietnam)
PS I'm getting three lists and a page that I assume has a the "button" referred to above but does nothing.
Probably because Google won't let me sign in... grrr

[Fnugus]

Nice little tool. Good job.