The hopefully improved fantasy/scifi name generator

I felt that my previous incarnation with twists on a D6 roll was a little too restrictive and not fast enough. So here's the simpler new incarnation of the system.

Roll 1D10 for name length.
Roll 1D10 to determine starting letter type - Odd = Vowel, Even = Consonant.
It's then the classic vowels on a D6 (including Y) and Consonants on a D20.
This time however you also roll a D6 after you've generated a letter. On a 6 the letter repeats. On a 4 or 5 you repeat the letter type but roll for the next letter, and on a 1-3 you go to the other letter type. You can only have a maximum of two of the same letter or letter type in a row.

Much simpler. Let's give it a whirl!

Fji Qxiag
Kkiwecihy Szyyduy
Uuwe Mtoe

Those are our 'raw' results. Just what the dice dictate, and with some editing we get -

Ji Xia
Kiwe Szyydu
Uwe Toe (I was hoping for Boll... but Toe will have to do)

Eventually I'll get a system together that stops those bad letter combinations but until then the system will always have a chance of churning them out. Though it's true purpose still works, to generate names that don't all sound the same, which is what I can't do when I come up with the names myself.

Skirmyth - The Solo Skirmish/ Light RPG: A Second Encounter

I played a quick solo game this evening using my second incarnation of the Skirmyth rules. A system with more visible stats, but still with no real need to look anything up. Characters are activated when a counter with their name on it is pulled from a cup, the counter has written on it not only the characters name but their speed and attack stats. The number of counters a character has in the cup is equal to their initiative value. Speed determines the distance a character can move in inches when their counter is drawn and attack determines the number of dice a character will roll when making attacks. They do damage equal to the number of successes they score on the dice rolled (Warriors 4+, Rangers 5+ and Mages 6+). Apart from character counters there are also joker counters in the cup. Jokers stay out of the cup until the 'end' counter is drawn but return all other counters to the cup. When the end counter is finally drawn the number of jokers determines which column on a table is rolled on to determine a random event. For example in my game, two jokers were drawn and so when the end counter was drawn I rolled a die and consulted the event table, for two jokers and a roll of a 6 there was a small earth tremor which caused both sides to take morale checks. Morale is currently an extremely simple system. When a character is killed or you are forced to take a morale check by other means pick up a die per character still alive on your side and roll them. You pass the morale check if you roll a single 4+, if you fail to roll any 4+s you fail the check and lose the game. I thought it might be too simple initially but it creates a really interesting dynamic - you don't want a small number of hugely powerful characters because you'll get less dice when making morale checks, on the other hand you don't want a huge number of weak characters because that will normally mean you have to make more morale checks. I also thought it might create unrealistic scenarios where heroes flee from much weaker foes, however should a band of heroes lose a character surely their concern is no longer the mission, but protecting and restoring that fallen character to health? So in that sense it portrays greater realism. The real strength of it however is in the fact that morale is controlled by a standard dice roll meaning you never have to look anything up. The number of dice you roll being the number of remaining characters you have!

This evening I played a simple 4 vs 5 line up and charge at each other game.
On the one side we had -

Sir Gildain - I:4, A:4, S:3, R:6, PTS:34, Warrior
Pharen Thark - I:3, A:4, S:5, R:5, PTS:32, Warrior
Terse Kolf - I:2, A:6, S:5, R:5, PTS:27, Ranger
Tannik Druze - I:2, A:8, S:3, R:5, PTS: 27, Mage

And on the other we had -
Prince Lorek - I:2, A:5, S:5, R:10, PTS:30, Warrior
Harken Drane - I:2, A:7, S:3, R:5, PTS: 25, Mage
Kel Krace - I:4, A:2, S:2, R:4, PTS: 20, Warrior
Skorth Dar - I:3, A:3, S:4, R:5, PTS: 26, Warrior
Ajen Low - I:1, A:12, S:7, R: 5, PTS: 24, Ranger

The game was supposed to be 120pts, however while writing this up I realised that Prince Lorek's force was 125 points... but considering Sir Gildain tabled him without losing a man it's not like those extra 5 points really helped.

The game played exceedingly quickly. I remember reading lots of rulebooks where games claim to be 'fast paced' but this one truly is, with a standard skirmish like this taking around 10 minutes to play. You may also notice I was intentionally trying to break the game with characters like Kel Krace and Ajen Low, Kel having a huge number of activations but being pretty weak and Ajen only a single activation but devastating when he does activate.

So what have I learned and what questions have this little playtest brought to light?
Primarily I need to decide what route I want the main focus of the game to take. At present I'm playing it much like your average skirmish game where two evenly matched albeit different forces face off, rather than a dungeon crawling, hack and slash style game with multiple enemies each far weaker than our main characters.
Secondly I need to decide how damage dealt is increased by circumstances - at the moment if your characters remaining resolve is double their targets the amount of damage they do is doubled, and tripled if triple etc. Alternatively if  two characters are ganging up on another the damage dealt is doubled. I need to playtest further to see if this is too dramatic an increase and maybe adding rather than multiplying would be more appropriate. Obviously +0 if no damage is dealt, +1 if resolve is higher, +2 if double, +3 if triple, and +1 per additional character in the combat.
Thirdly I need to develop the actual solo AI mechanics.
Fouthly I need to develop scenarios to make the game more interesting/ narrative.

Thanks for stopping by!
WGP

The Counters and Cards Conundrum in Skirmyth

I like the simplicity of my current system. Each character has a number of cards equal to their speed and attack stats. For example a character with speed 3 and attack 7 will get 3 speed cards and 7 attack cards in the deck, and it works really well in play. The only problem is the mass of cards required to play the game.

The flip side of this is for each character to have 1 card with all their stats on, and when a characters card is drawn a player gets to decide which action to perform based on the stats of the character on the card.

So we have - System 1 - Each point of a stat has a card, and System 2 - Each character has a single card with all their stats on.

The question is then, is there a middle way? A way between these two extremes?

Yes, what if a character has some cards containing their stats (say speed, shooting, melee) the number of which was equal to their initiative stat. For example a character of initiative 4 would have 4 cards in the deck with their stats on. When one of their cards are drawn the player in control of them would be allowed to select an action to perform based on the stats on the card.

This may drastically change the current system I have, but it removes the need for saving cards since you would never draw a card that you couldn't use. I can also still use the standard rolls for types - Warriors hit on a 4+, Rangers 5+, Mages 6+.
Your stat earns you a number of dice equal to it, the amount of damage you deal in an attack is equal to the number of successes you roll - Warriors 4+, Rangers 5+, Mages 6+.

Further notes -
Warriors hit on a 4+ and have no ranged ability.
Rangers hit in a 5+ and have a ranged ability. Characters further than 12" away are hit on a 6+ as are characters in cover. Characters further than 12" away and in cover are hit on a 6+ and you half the number of dice you roll.
Mages hit on a 6+ and have a ranged ability, their attacks are not effected by range or cover and they can spread damage dealt among multiple targets as they desire.

A characters total points value is equal to the total of the stats on their cards, speed, shoot and melee, multiplied by their initiative (the number of cards) and finally adding their resolve (hit points).

Multiple enemies can all be controlled by the same card drawn, for example all zombies could act when a zombie card is drawn. To make things really interesting why not include counters on the board that represent enemies that have not yet been spotted (including some decoys?), that all move when an 'unseen enemies' card is drawn, and they all make a standard 3" move towards the nearest player character.

Why not include more than 1 joker, and a different card that signifies the turn end. When a joker is drawn all cards are reshuffled into the deck, but the joker drawn is placed to one side. When the turn end card is drawn the number of jokers drawn could signify something, maybe you roll on a random event table, adding the number of jokers drawn to increase the severity of the event? Or the number of jokers dictate the number row on a table you roll on...

Thanks for stopping by, and if you've read this, thanks for putting up with my ramblings!
WGP

Making the most of cheap toy soldiers - Different schemes make different men!

The following 3 guys are from a bag of toy soldiers currently on sale in poundland, the reason I bought a large number of them is because, unlike most cheap toy soldiers they are pretty near heroic 28mm scale! The particular figure I'm using here is by far the best of the lot, and I wanted to test to see how different paint schemes could hide the fact that all 3 are the same model.

So from left to right we have: a member of a local militia, an officer of the NAPD which I think stands for National Police Department, and last of all a zombie solider.

 The paint jobs were very quickly done, although not 100% finished in the pictures. The zombie was the fastest as you could probably guess and the militia member took the longest.

I've found that because the figures in bags of cheap toy soldiers are so generically military, that they can be painted with almost any scheme and it looks as the figure was intended to be. A good example is the NAPD officer's ballistic vest, and his balaclava which are details that were simply painted on.

All three models are for use in a skirmish game/rpg I'm working on set in a post-societal collapse of America which was possibly caused by aliens. Each figure represents one of the main factions in the game, the militias, the police, a private army of reanimated corpses. There'll also be a mutant force, a sewer scum force and the plain old army force so look out for this same figure kitted out for each of those, with the mutant having a small amout of work done with milliput. Oh and the aliens which are currently under construction and do not use the cheap toy soldiers, but use something equally as cheap!

As always I hope you had a good Christmas, and thanks for stopping by!

WGP

Generating your own 'Game of Thrones' style Houses

So as you  can probably tell, I've been thinking about expanding upon the uses of my name generation table, and here's something that came to my attention after reading an article in Wargames Soldiers & Strategy issue 74 on creating figures for Game of Thrones using various plastic historical sets. My brain however is never happy with simply copying, but thinks what if I could use my universe generator currently in development to generate a Game of Thrones style fantasy world with its own Houses? Then all I'd need are some simple rules for combat and I can solo roleplay in that universe too. Which is a concept that's been on my mind a lot lately, that of creating a universe to write stories in and using wargaming to work out the outcome of battles, skirmishes and one on one fights. Which like George R.R. Martin, should kill off characters in a more realistic way.

Anyway, on to generating houses.

Use the table as standard to generate a house name, here's one I generated earlier: House Yzikku (Iz-ee-ku)
Roll 1D% to determine the number of generations the house as existed for: 10
Roll 1D10 for the number of current Lords: 5
Generate the name of each Lord, the ruling lord must have the same surname as the house, however each normal Lord only has that name on a roll of 4+ on 1D6.
Ruling Lord: Slazu (Slay-zoo) Yzikku
Lord 1: Eqo (Ek-oe) Buokyi (Boo-oe-key)
Lord 2: Rik Yzikku
Lord 3: Vira (Vie-rah) Yzo (Ee-zoe)
Lord 4: Falon Yzikku

Then we start drawing up a basic family tree by making rolls to determine the relation of each Lord to the Ruling Lord on the table below:

D10 Roll	If the Lord has the same surname as the Ruling Lord	If the Lord does not
1	Brother	Brother in Law
2	Brother	Son in Law
3	Brother	Father in Law
4	Son	Uncle
5	Son	Life Long Friend
6	Son	Climbed through the Ranks
7	Uncle	Step Son
8	Uncle	Step Brother
9	Uncle	Half Brother
10	Half Brother	Tournament Champion

These rolls should generate gaps, which then require more characters to be generated to fill. This system is a little patriarchal, so if you desire, why not invert it, and have a family of female lords, maybe miniatures wise using Wargames Factory Amazons. The dice rolls on the table above will enable you to work out the rough ages of each Lord, and so generate an age, which in turn will help with modelling later.

After my rolls on the above table I saw a House plot developing, Eqo FiL, Rik Bro, Vira CttR, Falon Half Brother

Slazu's Father and Mother had him and his brother Rik, their mother then passed away, their father re-married and had a third son Falon. Slazu eventually married, and gave his new father in law Eqo the title of Lord in House Yzikku. Vira climbed through the ranks, from a member of a Lord's retinue, to a Lord's bodyguard, to finally a Lord himself. Since it is the custom to execute any bodyguard that sees his Lord die, it can be worked out that Vira was previously (randomly determine) Falon's bodyguard. Slazu's father then died, making Slazu the Ruling Lord of House Yzikku.

We can then determine rough ages, because we can map out generations - Slazu, Rik and Falon are all the same generation, Eqo is the older generation and Vira could be either. First Eqo is 49 years old (D20+40). Slazu, Rik and Falon are (D10+20 assigning Slazu the highest value, Rik the second and Falon the lowest), 29, 27 and 21. I've decided the roll for Vira's age should put him somewhere between 25 and 45, and so am rolling D20+25, which should give him time for all the necessary heroics that gave him Lord status. Vira is 37 years old.

Next I would proceed to generate all the other people necessary to make possible what we have so far, wives, sisters, daughters etc. Then  maybe move on to generate the founding Lord, who no doubt although dead will be revered by all. Then the Lords' bodyguards and finally all the stats necessary for the rules I'll use, whatever they may be.

Here's the basic family tree of House Yzikku centering around the Lords, because you didn't need to see me roll for all this:

Thanks for stopping by!
WGP

Solo RPG Session 1 (with commentary)

First things first, lets randomly generate our player character, I've chosen to be a male, because I find it hard to roleplay the opposite sex, the home planet is generated before the race because of the chance that the race will be named after the home planet. I threw in a home city and country for fun.

Name: Ipsyrubye Iploa, or Ips (Eye-ps) for short.
Home City: Ronog (Roe-nog)
Home Country: Psucybec (Soo-cy-bec)
Home Planet: Otootupa (O-too-too-pa)
Home System: (Star) Big Yba (Big Ee-ba) and 10 other planets Otootupa is the 7th.
Race: Xohels (Zo-hels)
Race Type: Intelligent Energy/ Elemental (currently just for aesthetics)
Gender: M
Strength: 4c
Skill: 4s
Personality: 2c

To speed things up when generating the home system I only generated the home planet and star and just rolled for the number of total planets and Otootupa's position in the system. For the Star I rolled a 7, and generated Bigybap, it just made sense to me to drop the 'p' and split it into two words. For generating stats I now decided on 3 stats to keep the system simple and when drawing cards I only included 2s-6s so we have a lot of progress to make. Ips seems like a pretty strong and skilled Elemental, but is lacking severely in the personality department. For the next step I've drawn up a list of yes/no questions to ascertain where Ips is and why. I shuffled my deck and drew cards, red=yes, black=no, I'm ignoring any jokers. You might notice a lot of the questions are broad and are intentionally used to generate conflict situations, if I'm in a strange location I'll be asking about wars before I ask about holidays. The questions are also about generating a lot about your character and a lot of it is created on the fly.

Am I on my home planet? Yes.
If not I would have gone onto asking 'Am I in my home system? Sub-Sector? Sector?'
Am I in my home country? No.
What country and city am I in? Trivlo in Amo. (Generated in answer to the question)
Does my home planet have more than one race? (I rolled a D3 to determine the number) No (1).
Is this foreign country at war with my home country? Yes.
Are we winning the war? Yes.
Am I a soldier? Yes.
Am I currently on a mission? Yes.
Am I in charge of the mission? Yes.
Am I in charge of a squad? Yes.
I started small considering my stats, but if not would have moved up to platoon, company, army etc.
How many members are their in my squad not including me? 5 (D6 roll, re-rolling 1s)
Are we regular army? No. (Meaning they'd all most likely be Xohels)
Are we mercenaries? Yes. (Meaning a potential mix of races, depending upon tech level)
What tech level are the Xohels? (Because I forgot to ask earlier) Tech 6, Advanced Civilisation, Use of Aircraft, Communication with other planets, Satellites. (So my squad are all most likely Xohels, but I'll roll for it, on a 6 we have an alien mercenary)

Squad Leader: Ips Iploa (Me)
Strength: 4c, Skill: 4s, Personality: 2c
Squad Member 1: (Xohel) Utax Ogamo.
St: 4s, Sk: 3c, P: 6c
Squad Member 2: (Xohel) Mo Lo Kiu (Lots of shortening, almost a 30 letter name there)
St: 6d, Sk: 4d, P: 4c
Squad Member 3: (Xohel) Xagwe Jul
St: 5d, Sk: 5c, P: 3h
Squad Member 4: (Xohel) Mili Efe
St: 5s, Sk: 6h, P: 3d
Squad Member 5: (Xohel) Alix Omoja (dropped the third name 'Kibybu')
St: 6s, Sk: 3s, P: 5h
Are we currently fighting? Yes.
Are we in a good position? No.
Are we outnumbered? No.
Are we trapped? No.
Is there a bomb that needs defusing? Yes. (Maybe I shouldn't have asked that)
Are we also fighting enemies? Yes.
Do we outnumber them? Yes.
How many are there? 2 (I rolled a D6, ignoring 6s because we outnumber them)

I went back and generated the stats for my squad.

Are we well equipped? No.
Are the enemies? No.
(I'll ignore equipment for now, and assume we each have a ranged weapon that provides no bonuses, no armour and a melee weapon that provides no bonuses)
Are the enemies between us and the bomb? No.
Do I have the initiative? No.

I generated the stats for the Amo Fighters. I decided they would be 1 level lower than we were, so only put cards in the pack from 2-5 and didn't generate a personality stat, because I thought it would be pointless for this encounter.

Amo Fighter 1
St: 5c Sk: 3d
Amo Fighter 2
St: 3c Sk: 2s

I'll now ask some questions about the temperament of the two Amo Fighters, to gauge how they have reacted to walking in on us defusing their bomb.

Do the two Amo fighters stand and shoot? Yes.
Who does the first Amo Fighter shoot at? Utax (I rolled a d6 and went down the list of my squad including me)
Does Utax have cover? No (if so I would have added a negative modifier to the hit draw)
Skill Draw: Kc (King of clubs), the Amo Fighters Skill is 3d, the card is higher, and the wrong colour, meaning a critical failure. The Amo Fighters weapon jams.
Who does the second Amo fighter shoot at? Mo
Does Mo have cover? Yes (since the skill of the second fighter was 2 I couldn't add any value modifiers, so I added a suit modifier, only on a black 2 would they score a success).
Skill Draw: 7h compared to the Sk of 2s = critical failure, the second Amo fighter's weapon also jams.

I'm deciding each character in the combat can make 2 activations, so now i'll draw to decide what the Amo fighters will do for their next actions with the most sensible first. But before that I'll need to get some more info on their situation.

Is AF1 (Amo Fighter 1) in cover? Yes.
Is AF2 in cover? No.
AF2 will spend their second action running for cover.
AF1 will spend their second action unjamming their weapon.

Now it's my turn.

At this point I realised the defusal draw and firing will be dependent upon the Skill stat of my squad. And I'm not too worried about the shooting of the Amo Fighters, they seem to have proved rather useless. Before I start ordering folks around though I'm going to take a closer look at that bomb.

Am I near the bomb enough to work out what kind of bomb it is? Yes. (not sure if that's a good thing, but if I wasn't I would have spent my first action getting over there)
Is the bomb on a timer? No. (that's bad)
Does the bomb remotely detonate? Yes. (that's very bad)

I'm going to have to defuse this bomb, or this could be over before it starts. Milie has the highest skill in the squad so I'm going to send them to defuse the bomb.

Is Milie near the bomb enough to defuse it? Yes.
Skill Draw: (now I'm very nervous) 10d compared to 6h, the diamonds are the same colour, but the wrong suit and a higher number, that counts as a standard failure. Milie's action is spent and the bomb is not defused.
Milie does have a second action because they were already near the bomb, so I'll order them to keep at it.
Skill Draw: Qc compared to 6h, the result is higher and the wrong colour, a critical failure.

Let's ask some questions about the bomb, they all have to be pretty negative due to the critical failure, so lets see where this ends up.

Does the bomb immediately go off? Yes.
Is is an explosive bomb, designed to level buildings and kill people? Yes.

Poo.

Scene end.

That new and yet to be fully tested name generation table for human(ish) languages

Step 1) Roll 1D10 to determine the length of the word, rerolling 1s and 2s.
Step 2) Roll 1D10 to determine if the word begins with a consonant or a vowel, odd = vowel, even = consonant.
Step 3) Roll for your letters alternately on the following tables. Roll an additional D6 with your D6 for vowels and D20 for consonants. On a 6 this additional die adds a twist, roll it again to determine which. A twist is allowed to extend the word beyond its original rolled length:
Vowel+Y Table
D6 Roll	Vowel	Twist 1		Twist 2	Twist 3	Twist 4	Twist 5	Twist 6
1	A	Aa		Ae	Ai	Ao	Au	Ay
2	E	Ea		Ee	Ei	Eo	Eu	Ey
3	I	Ia		Ie	Ii	Io	Iu	Iy
4	O	Oa		Oe	Oi	Oo	Ou	Oy
5	U	Ua		Ue	Ui	Uo	Uu	Uy
6	Y	Ya		Ye	Yi	Yo	Yu	Yy
Consonant Table
D20 Roll	Consonant		Twist 1	Twist 2	Twist 3	Twist 4	Twist 5	Twist 6
1	B		Bl	Bl	Bl	Br	Br	Bb*
2	C		Ch	Cl	Cr	Cs	Cz	Ck*
3	D		Dr	Dr	Dr	Dr	Ds*	Dd*
4	F		Fl	Fl	Fr	Fr	Fs*	Ff*
5	G		Gl	Gn	Gr	Gw	Gs*	Gg*
6	H**		-	-	-	-	-	-
7	J**		-	-	-	-	-	-
8	K		Kl	Kr	Kn	Kt*	Ks*	Kk*
9	L		No twist	No twist	Lt*	Ll*	Lt*	Ll*
10	M		No twist	No twist	Mn*	Mm*	Mn*	Mm*
11	N		No twist	No twist	Nt*	Ng*	Nd*	Nn*
12	P		Ph	Pl	Pr	Ps	Pt*	Pp*
13	Q**		-	-	-	-	-	-
14	R		No twist	No twist	Rt*	Rr*	Rt*	Rr*
15	S		Sh	Sl	Sr	St	Sv	Ss*
16	T		Th	Tl	Tr	Tw	Ts*	Tt*
17	V		Vl	Vl	Vl	Vr	Vr	Vv*
18	W		Ws	Ws	Ws	Ws	Ws	Ww*
19	X**		-	-	-	-	-	-
20	Z**		-	-	-	-	-	-
*Re-roll if at start of word. **This letter cannot twist