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Utilities



Hex Crawl Encounter Generator


 Any encounter is a potential source of information for the players and each group has a chance and range of knowledge. Some of the concerns can be used to spawn short quests for the party, like finding missing child. Whether it's good for the party to get sidetracked, is up to the individual DM. I'm leveraging the NPC generator to build a description of the leader of the encountered group too.

Encounter Area:ClimateTerrainVegetation
Level
  

Encounter Area:  This refers to the level of organized human civilization.  Because law and order are being maintained, most encounters in Patrolled areas will be with local inhabitants.  Only a few will be with dangerous monsters.  Wilderness is at the other end of the scale.

Climate: The climate chosen is compared against the habitats for animals and monsters, eliminating for example, elephants in an Arctic climate - or Mammoths in a tropical climate.

Terrain:  This refers to the contours of the land or the depth of the sea.  Shallow sea areas range from the surface to as far down as someone on the surface could see into the water in that location. Terrain along with Vegetation is also used to filter the possible results.

Vegetation: This is really a description of the ground cover and only effects land environments.
      Sparse-desert like ground cover, not necessarily arid.  A tidal flat in the generator would be described as a marsh/sparse.
     Open - grasslands, with occasional clumps of trees and brush.
     Scrub - dense interlocking brush, such as the maquis in Spain or early second growth forests.  This is difficult for larger animals to move through, and screens movement very well.
     Woods - open woodlands relatively easy to move through.  Line of sight is obstructed, but you'll probably spot anything before it can close in to attack you.
     Forest - old dense woodlands, with large trees.  You may not see what's coming before it's too late.

Level: A measure of the toughness of the encounters you expect in the area, related from 1-10.  This doesn't effect what may appear, simply how many show up.  I used the 1e DMG Experience point guidelines to calculate the XP values of the monsters, which at this point are taken from the 3e Monster Manual, then divided them somewhat arbitrarily.  I definitely want to do some in depth analysis on how they match to 3e Challenge Ratings.

NPC Description Generator


Inspired by the NPC generation tables in AD&D 1e, and Space 1889, this tool is intended to allow a DM to provide quick customization for Non-Play Characters.

Select the Social Class, Predominant Culture and optionally Gender, then click on Generate NPC to determine the NPCs Hair and Eye colors, Skin Tone, Clothing and any Distinguishing Marks or Noticeable Mannerisms.

The skin tones, hair and eye colors are distributed to reflect a 'Mediterranean' population.
Predominant culture controls the name being generated. Approximately 20% of the names will be from other cultures. Greek names are indicated by (Γ), German by (G) and Roman by (L). As Roman naming conventions spread names from other cutures were often Latinized and added in place of the nomen or cognomen, these are indicated by (L+G) and (L+Γ). Gender is indicated by f. and m. respectively.



Social Class:         Gender:   
Predominant Culture:      






Please send any comments or suggestions for improving this in the Comment or email rod dot thompson dot 61 at gmail. I'm especially interested in additional Distinguishing Marks and Mannerisms that you've seen in real life.
2014/01/20 - Added name to NPC Description Generator and changed from list of names to name generators
2015/07/31 - Added Latin and Roman names, as well as feminine name endings to the generator. Lots of background refactoring.

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