“Feiernde Bauern” (“Celebrating Peasants”), artist unknown, 18th or 19th century
Today I have posted a new Perl script to my blog that will generate hundreds of random non-leveled (i.e., commoner) NPCs in a plain text file, including basic physical characteristics, psychological features, and information about employment (the script is available here and from the header menu above). The program is a companion piece to the leveled NPC generation script previously published on this blog. While that script was for creating rival NPC parties and the like, this one is primarily for generating NPCs to drop into your campaign whenever your players drop into their local tavern to collect rumors or stop a random passerby on a city street.
Notes and Caveats:
- It would be remiss on my part if I didn’t acknowledge the influence on this script of Richard J. LeBlanc Jr.’s NPC generation charts in his D30 Sandbox Companion publication. I strongly recommend clicking that link and buying all of his D30 products in both PDF and print (the latter available here).
- There is one more NPC generator script yet to be uploaded: one that generates the entire population of various types of city districts including both leveled and non-leveled NPCs and using some of the demographic assumptions introduced in third edition Dungeons and Dragons. I will post that within the next month or so (it needs a bit more polish).