Friday, 9 November 2012

Random Appearance Table

The LL supplement Theorems & Thaumaturgy (my review can be found here) contains a magic item called ring of appearance warping. When worn, the wearer's appearance changes randomly every turn. A useful table is included to help determine the appearance shifts. Further, the table is of the "roll all the dice" form (well, 4 of the 6 dice, but close enough). This makes it very easy to use without needing to roll multiple times.

It seems to me like this table would be very convenient for use as a random appearance generator for both PCs and NPCs. As it is open game content, I can reproduce it here for general use (this post should thus be considered open game content; see the OGL tab above for details). Thanks to Gavin for giving this to the community.

Die Resultd4
Sex
d6
Age
d8
Dress
d10
Features
1
FemaleChildMessyMissing limb
2
FemaleYouthScantObese
3
MaleAdultImmaculateScrawny
4
MaleMatureFormalMuscular
5
OldThreadbareBald
6
DecrepitElaborateHairy
7
DrabTall
8
UniformShort
9
Ugly
10
Beautiful

Here are a few other decent tables that I know about:
  • Gygax DMG NPC personae section (page 100 - 102)
  • Labyrinth Lord AEC tavern patron traits (page 150)
  • LotFP Grindhouse Referee Book NPC characteristics table (back cover)
  • Pathfinder GameMastery Guide NPC Creator's Toolbox (page 94)
Am I missing any other good ones?

My NPCs tend towards blandness and similarity, so I think I should make more use of resources like these.

10 comments:

  1. How about a column for a physical feature, and one for a mental/personality feature?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's a good idea. We could expand this to a full "roll all the dice" table by adding a d12 and d20 column also.

      Delete
  2. Check out Telecanter's effort here:

    http://city-of-brass.org/TelecantersHirelingSpur.pdf

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @Andrew

      Good stuff; thanks for pointing it out. That one is new to me.

      Delete
    2. Hey thanks for sharing that. This link is to a revision I did later:

      http://city-of-brass.org/TelecantersHirelingSpurG.pdf

      which is should be easier to read.

      Delete
  3. Sham's 100 NPC Types (download section at right)

    http://shamsgrog.blogspot.com/

    Zak's Things About Villains

    http://dndwithpornstars.blogspot.com/2011/05/things-about-villains.html?zx=ceeecbd416734d38


    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @James

      Heh, that Zak table might be a bit overkill for adding some color to a retainer or innkeeper. It is a great table though.

      Delete
  4. Courtney has an epic and, shall we say, comprehensive table:

    http://angband.oook.cz/steamband/CharacterTraits.pdf

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @LS

      Thanks for reminding me of that. I have it, but have not used it in a while. That is one downside with awesome free resources. Sometimes I forget about them. That rarely happens with more formally published materials, for whatever reason.

      Delete