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Tonight is roleplay night for me, although at the moment instead of just roleplay we have also been experimenting with other ideas from one off roleplay games giving everyone a chance at running something to playing DOOM: The Boardgame, which has been surprisingly entertaining. Last week we ran a .45 adventure game which the producers describe as a narrative action game, which is part board game and part roleplay.

The setting was Stargate and here is a write up of last week’s session that I have only just got around to finishing.

The following extract is from a personal journal kept against regulations and  discovered amongst his personal effects after going missing on a mission to PX2-51. This is a rendition of the events on a recon mission to Urth (originally designated as P5X-1138). Regarding this mission of particular significance were the sheep referred to as subsequent investigation showed it to be almost genetically identical to the Manx Longturn Sheep, a species that until this discovery was on the brink of extinction.

The briefing indicated that there would be a high probability of a first contact being made as the MALP’s sensors what looked like a small homestead just south-east of the gate and some sheep-like creatures grazing in the vicinity.

Giving the order to advance through the gate I noticed that Lt. Cpl. Wolf was driving more carefully than on our previous mission. No doubt the motor pool had requested that he try and avoid rock formations with the Wolf this time and live up to his nickname.

Arriving the other side of the gate showed there was little chance of a repeat of that debacle as we were on the edge of a wood and there was a distinct absence of large rocks to collide with. There were obstacles however in the form of the creatures the MALP had indicated were nearby, which appeared to be gathered around something about 150 meters away. The homestead was about 250 meters further away beyond the herd and to the north lay woods.

Advancing slowly so as not to disturb the herd Lt. Cpl. Wolf drew us closer for a look at the animals, as the MALP had indicated thanks to a curious member of the herd coming over to investigate it earlier they were rather sheepish. Closer inspection confirmed the similarity although the heads of several were adorned with pairs of horns, most had 2 or for but some of the larger had six horns. Despite this though they seemed placid enough as although members of the herd noticed our approach there were not any obvious displays of aggression.

I got out to have a closer look at the sheep and to see what they were gathered around. Pushing carefully through the herd followed by Cpl. Archer the sheep didn’t seem to mind us overmuch. As one of the animals moved aside I though I caught a glimpse of an outstretched hand on the ground and concerned for whomever it might have been I pushed forward more rapidly. Unfortunately for me this disturbed the herd and one of the biggest members presumably assuming I was a threat ran at me from the side and caught me in the leg with one of it’s horns knocking my under the hooves of the rest of the herd. Cpl. Archer, who had been just behind me attempted to distract it and prevent it injuring me further whilst I was prone before it.

It reared up in front of Cpl. Archer, who was finding out that a pistol is a less than ideal weapon against an aggressive ram and just as it was about to attempt to gore him Sgt. Dogg gave Lt. Cpl. Wolf the order to fire. Executing a clean headshot Cpl Calibre dropped the ram, before it injured Cpl. Archer further. The sound of the shot caused the rest of the herd to scatter away from us in panic, allowing me to regain my feet. Seeing the wound Cpl. Archer had on his leg I instructed him to stay on the ground whilst I attended to his injury, despite the blood the wound was not as bad as I had initially feared. One of the horns had torn through his uniform and whilst it had just gashed his inner thigh and I joked with him about how it was lucky he wasn’t six inches shorter before attending to my own wound.

Remembering the hand I had been trying to investigate before the ram had interrupted I went over and discovered a young, unconscious man clad in bloodstained woollen trousers held up by a knotted rope who had evidently been attacked before us and received further wounds being trampled by the herd, his wounds were serious and whilst I was able to stabilise him he remained unconscious and it was obvious that without proper medical attention his wounds would probably kill him.

Whilst I was doing this Cpl Calibre headed into the trees thinking he had heard something, whilst Lt. Cpl. Wolf and Sgt. Dogg reboarded the landie and got it moving again towards the bungalow with Cpl. Archer following on foot. Just as I was about to signal Lt. Cpl. Wolf to bring the Wolf back so that I give the native some further attention from within the trees the sound of a single staff weapon discharging sounded. Cpl Calibre indicated that he was being fired at by a human armed with a staff weapon and requested permission to open fire. I told him to avoid firing if at all possible and started running towards the trees following the sounds of the staff weapon firing accompanied by shouting.

Pulling up to Cpl Calibre’s position and pausing for a moment to concentrate on the shouting I realised that the language was Germanic and that he was accusing us of being hustlers after his sheep. Indicating to Cpl Calibre that he should cover me I shouted that we were not hustlers and didn’t wish to hurt him before stepping out from the cover of a tree into view of the man. He looked to be in his forties and shared a resemblance to the teenager I had discovered trampled by the herd. Guessing that he was the father I told him that his son was seriously hurt, but that we could help if he would let us.

Seeing that we intended him no harm he drew closer and I led him towards his son’s body leaving Cpl Calibre to continue investigating the edge of the woods. Introducing myself I found that he called himself Bernhart and tried to engage him in further conversation. Worried about a possible Jaffa presence due to his possession of the staff weapon as I walked with him I attempted to find out where he had obtained it from, but all I was able to understand was that he had fought a man for it when he was much younger and stronger. It was obviously a useful trophy to him and from the way he carried it, he was obvious familiar with it’s use. Seeing his son on the ground near the landie which Lt. Cpl. Wolf had brought round he ran forward, obviously concerned for the boy. He was saying something about how the boy had been injured by a beast and how he had been trying to hunt it - I indicated to the ram we had killed, but he shook his head and said something I couldn’t understand about man-beast.

I tried to explain that his son’s injuries were serious and that we could help if he would let us take his son back through the gate with us, at first he was reluctant but when I indicated that here he would die and but that we could take him thought the gate and heal him and that we would bring him back he calmed back down and started helping Sgt. Dogg lift the body into the back of the Wolf which the shepherd seemed somewhat in awe of.

Whilst the Lt. Cpl. Wolf had looped the Land Rover back round, Cpl. Archer had continued advancing towards the home of the shepherd and encountered his wife wield a skillet, able to understand her intent if not the words Cpl. Archer shouted for me to come over and calm her down. Jogging over to his position a bestial roar followed by gunfire sounded out sending the sheep into a panic and the woman ran back into her house. Turning to face the direction the roar had come from I saw Cpl Calibre backing out of the trees pursued by some kind of monstrous creature, obviously the man-beast that Bernhart had been talking about.

It stood about 8ft tall and was covered in dark fur and surprising agile for something so large. It was also tough, Cpl Calibre’s fire didn’t appear to be affecting it unduly. Attempting to aid Cpl Calibre I halted my advance and I drew up my rifle, firing a three round burst into it’s shoulder. All this did however was enrage it further and with a blood-curdling cry of bestial rage it leapt forward towards Cpl Calibre sweeping one of it’s massive arms at him. Attempting to protect himself and his rifle Cpl Calibre cried out in pain as his right arm was broken by the beast.

Carefully choosing my shots along with Sgt. Dogg I fired at the beast and whilst the animal was not stopped by the fire it was distracted enough by the wounds it was receiving to allow Cpl Calibre to break free from the monster and put some distance between him and it. Seeing the lack of effect the fire from Sgt. Dogg and I was having and seeing Cpl Calibre outdistancing the creature, Cpl. Archer from the cover of the wall around the homestead decided that his pistol would be useless and took aim with one of his LAWs. Unfortunately for me however, he hadn’t noticed my proximity to the Beast and that I would be caught within the blast. Seeing the streak of the rocket and knowing what it meant I hit the deck and whilst hit by some shrapnel I was relatively unscathed - The beast was also seemingly unscathed, despite being caught unawares and hit directly. Picking myself up off the ground assuming the demise of the beast I was caught off-guard as the beast lunged out of the smoke at me and raked it’s claws across my chest.

Not seeing that I was engaged with the beast due to the smoke surrounding us Cpl. Archer fired his remaining LAW at the beast and caught it squarely in the back, obliterating it in a mass of gore which covered me and forced me to the ground underneath the weight of the remaining bodyparts. Amazingly I escaped unscathed from the blast, I can only presume that the body of the beast protected me from most of the blast. Trapped underneath the body unable to free myself I surprised Cpl. Archer coming over to inspect his handiwork who found me underneath the corpse and unharmed, I suspect however that my language as he helped me out from under it wasn’t a surprise to him.

As I tending to Cpl Calibre’s arm, Sgt. Dogg suggested that we should take the ram back with us as well as some of the remains of the beast. When I asked Bernhart he seemed reluctant indicating that he planned to butcher the ram. I suggested a trade and that perhaps we could buy it from him, but he still seemed reluctant as he evidently considered it valuable. It was at this point that Cpl. Archer suggested we trade food with him for it if he was so worried about losing a source of food and that we offer him our MREs as well as bring something more palatable back through the gate with us.

Once we offered to trade it for food he was much more ameniable to the loss of his ram and he help us secure it to the bonnet so that we could take it back through the gate with us. Because we were taking his son back with us I offered to take him as well, but the thought of going through the gate made him uneasy and he begged off going explaining that he had to look after his wife and herd.

Although so far I haven’t got around to stage 3 of my non-player character (NPC) roleplay generator so it’s not yet implemented online for quick and easy use, although I am working on that.

I actually finished this on Christmas Day (because I am just that festive) and so here’s my present to those that roleplay and know how to put a perl script to use - Everyone else gets nothing!

Perl script - roleplay
Library file - lib-roleplay.pl

It’s two files this time for ease of further potential development and to save me typing things repeatedly so both of them will be needed and I am sure I will have a few other generators based of them shortly (as well as adding a few things to this one).

Currently the script will generate a random NPC using the rules from the Pathfinder Beta and uses a 20 points buy system and biases stats according to classes before adjusting character stats for race. In the case of Humans and Half-Elves the +2 bonus is assigned randomly independant of any variable.

Possible names and descriptions are race specific, so that rotund Elves and spindly, wan Dwarves  shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Each race has a pretty much unique set of first names although as surnames are of the form “adjective+noun” for the most part there is some overlap avaliable according to which root words seemed appropriate for the race, e.g forge and stone for Dwarves and oak and forest for elves etc.

For the half breed races there is a little extra step before creating the name, as the script decides whether they were raised by Elves, Humans or Orcs and names them as appropriate.

As well as optimising a couple of parts of the script I realised could be improved when finishing off the script I also plan to add other features. Features that I plan to include in rough order of priority include:

• Web implementation
• Additional 20pt stat arrays for selection
• Additional shuffling options for stats by class
• Additional stat arrays for other point buys, 15 and 25 first.
• Other stat generation methods
• Adding other character statistics, e.g. saves and hit points.
• Basic equipment, after all it’s too easy to just give everyone swords as a default
• Improved descriptions, inc a random characteristic such as big hands, body odour, etc
• Implementation of other races, Orcs, Goblins, etc
• Implementation of other classes, Adept, Expert, etc
• Addition of skills
• Inclusion of other systems, D&D 3rd edition in particular.

I am sure I will think of other things to add, but that will do as a starting point. Feel free to add suggestions if you can think of anything I should make a point of adding.

At roleplay last night as it was the last session before Christmas the traditional exchanging of gifts took place, as with any group of friends such an endeavour is rarely treated seriously. Amongst the gifts I found for people included the films Doom, 2001 Maniacs and Serenity, so at least one person got a good film out of my gift giving. Although I will concede that the only reason they got the film was because it was on special offer.

Earlier in the week when I had been discussing buying gifts for the people in the roleplay group with one of them and how hard it was to find appropriate gifts for people, Zak one of the other players shared his cunning shopping plan with me – Go into the nearest Christmas tat store and grab the nearest items appropriate for each person at roleplay.

I got this:

It sounds even worse than it looks and it has only the one heavily distorted song, but it has decided my next character for a fantasy roleplay game – I shall be a bard!

Furthermore to increase the arbitrary nature of deciding my character I shall use my recently created Pathfinder NPC generator to determine the rest of the basic details for my next character. One quick running of my NPC script until a bard was created and the end result was:

Errijon Darkthinker is a male Gnome bard with stats:

Str 8
Dex 15
Con 12
Int 12
Wis 8
Cha 19

Errijon Darkthinker has heavily-scarred skin and a squat body.
They also have baby-blue eyes and unwashed silver hair.

Now all I have to do is come up with a backstory…

Woohoo! I’ve completed version 1.0 of my Pathfinder NPC generator. For those with the know how to download and run the program you can download it here: Pathfinder v2

For those that don’t you won’t be missing out for long. The next stage of my cunning plan is to implement it into a webpage, so that it looks all shiny and doesn’t need to be run in a terminal window where it looks like this:

The only change since the preliminary version I put up earlier in the week is to add a simple description of the character. The structure of the sentence is the same each time (for the moment at least), but with the options available there are over 7.5 million possible unique character descriptions on offer which will do for the moment.

The finished product will probably have more, but it will also bias descriptions according to race - At the moment it’s possible for an elf to be fat for example, but for the moment at least descriptions according to race is something for a future version, along with more developed stat blocks.

I know descriptions such as eye colour make little or no difference to the game, but that is beside the point it is the little details that matter and it helps out the GM* by doing as much of the legwork for him as possible. That and it will also mean no Dwarves should have to kill themselves because they wind up with an Elvish name.

*Games Master (or the one who makes the game go) for the roleplay illiterate.

Man or so the theory of evoluton would have it is descended of apes and in an effort to go back to my roots recently I have been trying to teach myself to code in Perl and become a bit of a code monkey. When I was a child and by that I mean 6 or 7 years old I used to have a Spectrum 128K and remember many happy hours typing programmes into it and many frustrating hours trying to debug the programmes - Especially if typed up from Input magazine.

However over the past 15 years barring an hour a week or so during my first year at uni I haven’t done any computer coding at all. Luckily however it would seem it is a little like riding a bike in that you never really forget how to do it, as it’s all come flooding back over the past week or so.

Inspired by a recent change to using Ubuntu instead of Windows and the knock on effect of knocking out my wireless internet I had been exposed to small amounts of code written by a friend, but started wanting to see more. To help me in this he gave me a book to introduce me to Perl and I started working my way through it.

True to form though I was soon complicating things and so where the book wanted me to create a programme to calcuate the circumference of a circle, I was making a calculator. it didn’t take long until I had a functional calculator and started adding various functions to it to allow it to do more. I’ll concede that were I to use a calculator on my computer I would still use the one installed and not my programme for ease of use, but it was a good exercise to introduce me to Perl.

But programmes should have a point after all writing them for their own sake is not enough and so I wanted to make something a little more useful. Previously a friend of mine had written a javascript application to generate NPCs for roleplay games, so that at the drop of a hat if he needed to come up with a character he could. He suggested that I try to port his programme into Perl which he had been intending to do for a while and gave me a couple of reasons to try it - Basically that I’d learn something from doing it and it beat doing it himself, especially as for him it was more of a chore than a task.

I set about the task with enthusiasm, if not skill and decided rather than port it across to write the programme from scratch myself and compare it with his afterwards to see how differently we approached the problem.  Despite issues with forgetting semi-colons and only a limited grasp of Perl I now have a working NPC generator for Pathfinder, which is a roleplay ruleset that my friends and I are currently testing.

Here’s a little extract from the code:

#Routine for determining race
sub race
  {
#Defines races
  @race = qw/dwarf elf gnome halfling halforc halfelf human/;
#Picks race
  $race = @race;
  $decrace = int(rand($race));
  $charrace = $race[$decrace];
  }

If that doesn’t scare you and you want to read the rest of it you can download it and have a look - Pathfinder v1

Currently all it does is create a character and determine name, gender, race, class and stats so it is far from complete yet, but it’s a starting point and I am already working on the next version which will add a basic description to the character, as well as give them some equipment and should have that ready in the next couple of days.

I died last night…

Luckily for me however it was roleplay night and so it wasn’t fatal to me – For my character though the robot foot that was placed with deliberate pressure upon my skull it was somewhat more terminal.

Like many deaths it was needless and could have been avoided. Unfortunately not all the players stuck to the plan and instead of being heroic, they decided to bail out of a window at the first sign of trouble.

Allow me to set the scene…

In a galaxy far, far away and in a time far removed from our own is the Spear of Destiny with her crew of misfits trying to survive in a hostile galaxy after having managed to piss off space pirates and alien creatures with gribbly mind control powers. A la Star Trek, the command crew are the heroes and abandon ship at every opportunity to go on adventures. At the moment thanks in part to a space battle going badly wrong (and the Captain thinking he knew how to fly and crashing the ship into the attacking vessel instead of giving it a broadside) the Spear is grounded and being repaired. The repairs are costly and so the party have undertaken some freelance work to help fund the repairs.

The party have been investigating what appeared to be a missing persons case. Through our investigations quickly led us to conclude it was a kidnapping and following leads we have uncovered a witness, who having overheard the kidnappers speaking allowed us to identify the kidnappers as space pirates.

As the missing person was the son of a starship repair company it wasn’t too hard to figure out a motive, take hostages and return them in exchange for parts for the ship – Going back to the company who had hired us, we presented them with an update on what we had found. They informed us that, “The case is closed. Oh, and by the way could you tell us who your witness is?”

Not being completely stupid, we decided not to hand over the details of our witness and instead set up a sting. The plan was simple, give them a false target and then tail them back to their source. The false target was to be one of our team, with the rest of us on hand in case it all went wrong and turned into a gunfight.

So we sat and waited and sure enough as evening came, so did a kidnapper. Sticking out like a proverbial sore thumb I saw the droid from where I was watching the front of the building and gave the alert. He then entered the building and went up the stairs. It was at this point I noticed something wrong with the scene, a sole droid had walked up to the building. This suggested to me that perhaps they weren’t going for a kidnapping and were just going to silence the witness, a not unplanned for circumstance as everyone had guns handy.

The droid being polite knocked on the door instead of just barging it in, at least until he figured he’d been rumbled. He tried saying he was police and that he was raising awareness of attacks in the area, so could he come in and advise her. When asked for ID, he decided a fist shoving the door aside was ID enough. Again this was not entirely unexpected.

What was unexpected was the response of the player acting as the bait – Instead of playing the helpless woman role as planned, or even grabbing her gun and initiating plan b – Susan decided to head out of the flat by the nearest exit. A first floor window, head first.

Figuring that the gig was up and it was time for a gunfight, as another player was still in the flat concealed in a cupboard, I ran into the building and started heading up the stairs. Olsen, instead of staying in the cupboard come out into the flat and engaged the hostile droid briefly in hand to hand (not that he choose to do that) and shortly after followed Susan out the window and to the ground. This happened just as I reached the door to the flat, with Susan having dusted herself off following a few seconds behind me.

I took a couple of shots at the back of the droid and did little more than get his attention, and then things started going badly wrong. Metagame wise I rolled four 1s on the trot, which on a 20 sided die has a chance of occurring once every 160,000 times when four 20 sided dice are rolled. In short, not something that happens everyday.

Now in roleplay terms, 1s are bad, very bad. So 4 on the trot is catastrophic and the following sequence of events reflected that. Now 4 1s is unlikely, but that doesn’t really tell you what happened. Roleplay isn’t called rollplay, so whilst getting 4 1s is exciting*, the really excitement is the interpretation of the rolls and here is what happened in game.

As Olsen flew out of the window, Failes drew a bead and unleashed a couple of rapid lasblasts from his pistols into the turned back of the droid. More pissed off than damaged the droid turned around and ran through the corridor towards Failes and colliding with him and throwing Failes bodily though the window he had carelessly stood in front of. (Metagame – The droid bullrushed me and on out opposed strength checks I rolled a 1 and he rolled closer to 20 and had lots of bonuses as well).

Relatively undamaged, but severely unhappy about this Failes rolled over and raised his gun to shoot up at the droid. (Metagame – For my attack roll I rolled a natural 1, which usually means something like a weapon jam or something else that means you can do nothing else that turn whilst you sort it out). However his aim was thrown off wildly, as he noticed that a) he was lying in a road and b)that he was directly in front of an oncoming car and decided too late that getting out of the way of the car was more important than taking the shot. (Metagame – I was given a reflex save to notice the car and rolled the third 1).

Failing to get out of the way of the car in time, Failes was hit by the car and left stunned lying in the road by the force of the impact. (Metagame – The fourth, but not fatal 1 is rolled. Incidentally when the gamemaster rolled for how long I was stunned he managed to roll the maximum).

Seeing me thrown out of the window, Susan decides to run away again whereas Olsen getting back up to the window he had been thrown out of earlier opens fire on the droid scoring a telling hit. Figuring discretion is the better part of valour the droid jumps to the ground through the hole he had made using me and walks over to Failes’ prostrate body and raises a stompy metal foot.

As he does this Susan, the coward is just across the street trying to get into our getaway car in plain view of my body. Heroic Olsen on the other hand is in pursuit and gunning for the droid. The droid then tells Olsen, “Give me the girl, or your friend gets it.” Slightly less heroically Olsen points at Susan and then shoots the droid in the back as it turns to face Susan.

Susan however had earlier been wearing a wig when the droid saw her, a wig that she had removed after jumping out of the window and so the droid didn’t recognise her. At this point the boot came down and it was time for Failes Wildly; one of my favourite characters, to die.

The plus side for me though is that whilst things had gone badly for me, they continued to get worse for the rest of the party after this, with them almost dying, destroying a chunk of a spaceport and one of our spacecraft (one destroyed the other), having our mothership stolen and looted by pirates before being given the choice of joining a pirate crew or being ‘cut loose’.

Of course for next week, I’ll have a new character and it’ll be time to somehow turn the situation around.

*Well I am a mathematican, so I am allowed to get excited over numbers.