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sedgetone
December 11th, 2021, 20:52
Hi all,

I was going through and cleaning up an old campaign and decided to extract my NPC generator as a utility to share.

To use it, go into Story Templates and open the Male or Female NPC and click the button at the bottom. It will generate you a Story entry, just follow the steps in the newly generated record.

I hope you find it useful, anyone else got some goodies kicking about?

Forge Link:
https://forge.fantasygrounds.com/shop/items/411/view

Simon

damned
December 11th, 2021, 23:59
Nice work.

Egheal
December 12th, 2021, 17:41
Very nice! thanks.

johnecc
December 12th, 2021, 21:32
You might want to pop it into the Forge for future access.

sedgetone
December 12th, 2021, 21:43
Thank you but I think it’s a bit basic to go in there. The campaign it was from had Russian and Chinese character name tables too but those tables weren’t as big. If I get time, I might do a bigger version as I’ll be running HoTOE next year. Lots of passengers equals lots of NPCs.

I use these not just in game but for inspiration when writing a scenario. All the main skills are in there so if a PC dies, the player can take over an NPC and run it. I’ve had more than one occasion over the years when a randomly needed NPC has ended up being a bigger part in a campaign.

damned
December 13th, 2021, 05:16
I definitely think you might benefit from putting it the Forge.
You an put it in as a Free or Paid item.
The big advantage with putting it in the Forge is when you update it, everyone who has subscribed to it on the Forge will get the update too.

sedgetone
December 20th, 2021, 19:01
Add this little mod to Forge and updated the first post to link to it.

similarly
December 21st, 2021, 23:25
That's fantastic! Thank you!

sedgetone
December 22nd, 2021, 08:10
Thank you, I’m open to any ideas people have for additional tables they’d like to see included or other generic persona Encounter types. I’ve used this tool for at least 2 years now and found this to be sufficient for most ad-hoc scenarios.

The only other things some of my other variants had were a disposition and occupation table. If people think that would be useful I could add those too.

similarly
February 20th, 2022, 11:33
I'm working on a variation of this table, and made a list of 200 Spanish names for my campaign, but have no idea what I'm doing to get it to work.
Question:
I've modified your story template.
I have a table called NPC Names (Spanish)

On the story template, I changed [NPC Names|2] [NPC Names|3] to [NPC Names (Spanish)|1] [NPC Names (Spanish)|3] and that has given me the correct Spanish names from my table.

However, I'm confused on the story template where it says #NPC Names|1# #NPC Names|2#. If I leave it the same, I get "NO DATA IN COLUMN 1 NO DATA IN COLUMN 2", but if I change it to #NPC Names (Spanish)|1# #NPC Names (Spanish)|2#, I simply get #NPC Names (Spanish)|1# #NPC Names (Spanish)|2# with no substitution.

I'm guessing this is a variable somewhere ...

I suppose I could just stick to a simple table, but I really like your mod, and it would be cool to use with Spanish names.

EDIT
LOL, the easy answer was to rename my table.

BTW: if you'd like, I'd be HAPPY to send you my list of Spanish names in case you want to make a variant mod in the future.

sedgetone
February 20th, 2022, 13:09
Hi Similarly,

Okay so from what you posted your new table is called NPC Names (Spanish), and this is working correctly. So if that's the case the Story templates only need a little adjustment to make them work. I'm going to presume that you have laid out the table in the same way as me: male forename, female forename, surname.

Let's start with the Male NPC story template. So at the top of that in square brackets we have a call to the the names table:

[NPC Names|1] [NPC Names|3]

This is rolling twice on the the NPC Names table, the first result returns an entry from column 1 and the second result pulls from column 3. So to make your NPC Name title work it would need to be the following:

[NPC Names (Spanish)|1] [NPC Names (Spanish)|3]

If that bit works for you then the 5. entry would also need to change from this:

#NPC Names|1# #NPC Names|2#

To the following:

#NPC Names (Spanish)|1# #NPC Names (Spanish)|2#

That should get things working for you, now to explain the Story Template tags. So the square brackets with the name in [NPC Names] will roll on the NPC Names table. The pipe symbol | tells it which column to pull the result from. So we query that table twice, the result is always returned and stored in a hashtag # result. So in our case the first query against column 1 is stored in hashtag 1, our second roll on the table against column 3 is stored in our second result from the table with is hashtag 2.

So looking at the Female NPC, presuming the above entries have worked, would look like this:

[NPC Names (Spanish)|2] [NPC Names (Spanish)|3]

#NPC Names (Spanish)|1# #NPC Names (Spanish)|2#

Once you get the hang or Story Templates they become a lot of fun to use, especially in sandbox type adventures. I'm (still) building out Highways Of Blood by Critical Hit publishing. A good example of using Story Templates in that scenario is the old abandoned caravan park. The book give you a table of 100 possible things player might come across while going through a caravan. Depending on the degree of success they might get one, two or three results. So I have a story template that rolls on the tabe table three times and throws in some other details about things that they might have stumbled across. As there are dozens of caravans trying to remember what they stumbled across and in which caravan could be a real pain to journal; using templates makes it super simple. Remember that one Story Template can roll and reference the results from multiple tables.

I suspect your brackets around Spanish are confusing it. I've never used brackets, only standard text. I would suspect you would need to remove the brackets from the above and give that a go.

Powerful and fun stuff, let me know if it works for you.

similarly
February 20th, 2022, 14:18
Thank you so much! You were right: it was the brackets! I should have known, but it's been so long since I did any real coding that I forgot little things like that could mess it up. I've uploaded my Spanish name version of your module. Feel free to use it however you like, or release it as you like as a future variation on your module.

Thanks for your help and explanations! I really appreciate it!

sedgetone
February 20th, 2022, 19:11
Thank you for sharing, I’ve added it to the module and posted it. Once it’s been verified by the FG team I’ll make it live. Name checked you in the reference manual.

Anyone else who has name tables or NPC template and would like them included, please post them here.

sedgetone
February 20th, 2022, 21:22
New build is now available in the Forge.

sedgetone
August 6th, 2022, 18:39
Hi all,

New version is now available on the live stream.

The Story Template generators have been updated to put a stat block directly in them; this was done as some people didn't want to have to create an NPC record to obtain stats. The new Stat block has full, half and fifth values populated. There are then two options given at the bottom of the newly created record detailing how to setup NPC records.

I've included an NPC Attribute Roller so if you want to roll all the attributes straight to Chat with the full, half and fifth values you can do that too. This could be shared with players and used in place of the normal characteristics roller provided in the ruleset.

The reference manual has had a few more items added, including a how-to on sharing the record as I don't think it's as obvious as I thought it was for people new to FGU.

Here's a screen shot of what you can expect from a newly generated Story entry from one of the Story Templates.

53873

If you find the module useful, then please give it a rating on Forge. If you want to contribute names tables for a given language, then by all means sent me a CSV file and I'll do my best to include the new tables and supporting records. Any other suggests on things you'd like to see added are very welcome too.

sedgetone
August 15th, 2022, 18:31
I’ve updated the module again, this time including occupations from the Keepers guide to flesh out you NPCs a little further.

Story Templates have been reformatted to make the results a little more pretty. Skill have been formatted so they can be copied straight into an NPC record and be rollable. The reference manual has a number of additions too, including how to roll specific occupations if required.

With this release I think I’ve gone about as far as I can with this module. Unless you all have some other suggestions for additions I will leave it be. I think you’ll find the skill boosts for the occupations to be quite useable and have for me have made some fun NPCs in campaigns.

Enjoy!

damned
August 15th, 2022, 23:24
Nice work!

Magnimost
September 14th, 2022, 21:46
Does this have the ability to customize the ranges of stats or skills that the system churns out, or is it completely random?

For example, I have created two "races" for Heer soldiers for my A!C campaign in CoC, troopers and officers, both with different stats. So trooper CONs are higher, and EDU for officers. Their skills vary in similar ways (pistols for officers, rifles for troopers).

Here examples of their stats. The rolls look quite weird, but the idea is to have them within fairly tight tolerances so I don't end up with officers dumb as a rock, and troopers who can't run more than a hundred meters. Though both do exist...

54386
54387

sedgetone
September 14th, 2022, 22:11
Yes not a problem, there's really no magic with it. All you need to do is copy the Person Template, then edit the values adding what you've shown posted. The one thing we can't modify is the x5 multiplier although I wish we could. Run /importnpc in the chat window and import the attached xml files.

Simon

sedgetone
April 29th, 2023, 13:07
I've submitted a new build to FG Forge today that adds a few new items, hopefully you'll get it in the next week or so:

1. Table - Player Attribute Generator: although there is the "1. Characteristics" table provide by the CoC 7e Reference and Investigators Handbook, these don't multiple the dice result by 5. This is a replacement for players to use who take umbrage at having to do the multiplication themselves... not to name names... :p
2. Encounters (Random): A handful of entries scaled based on the number of players added to the Party Sheet.
3. Story Entry - Occupations to Chat: Sometimes random occupations aren't what you want, this allows you to generate a chat output (hidden) for a named type based on the table provided. Note, this content is also in the modules reference module too. I would love to do this targeted type via Story Templates but have never found a way. If anyone knows of a way to do it, then please let me know and I'll happily incorporate into this.

There are a handful of little fixes done to the Occupation table and character templates. One of the things I use is Effects to remember who did what on their combat turn. I know this isn't something everyone does but had thought it might be helpful, albeit not a NPC specific thing. If you think these are worth including then let me know. Any ideas you have for other things you'd like to see in it, then let me know.

similarly
May 5th, 2023, 01:53
I was working on a CoC game set in feudal Japan, and made this huge list of Japanese names. It's by no means comprehensive, but I have 500 surnames, female names and male names. I also have a reference addition with information on Japanese pronunciation, syllables, etc. I've tried it out, and it seems to be working okay. Feel free to add this to the main module.

sedgetone
May 5th, 2023, 10:27
Fantastic, thank you for that! I've added the items to a new build and just submitted it for review.

similarly
May 5th, 2023, 13:16
Thank you very much! This is a very useful mod and I'm really glad to be able to add some things to it.

sedgetone
May 5th, 2023, 16:04
Build approved, next time you run the update the content should be there.

similarly
May 5th, 2023, 16:16
Thank you so much! That's fantastic!

similarly
May 6th, 2023, 01:06
Out of curiosity, I added a reference about pronunciation. Is that possible to add, or is that troublesome? If it's not added to the mod, no big deal. It's not really necessary, but I thought it might be useful.

sedgetone
May 6th, 2023, 05:44
I added what there was to the Usage section of the manual. Is there something I missed as I did change the format a little?

similarly
May 6th, 2023, 08:18
I added what there was to the Usage section of the manual. Is there something I missed as I did change the format a little?

Oh, that's where it was! Totally didn't see it. That's perfect. Thank you!