Time To Play Ball

It is Spring, and my brain is afire with bad ideas and worthwhile/-less projects to accomplish. I don't know what it is about this time of year but my nervous system is trying to convert from winter mode to spring mode. It's great - by "great" I mean mild hypomania feels nice - but it's bad because the raw tension of wanting to do a million little tasks and being able to accurately complete like 10% of them means I'm grinding my teeth a lot and strangely hostile and irritable-r than usual. Serotonin issues.

Here is an example project: I have in mind a fantasy baseball draft league in which we use the Deadball rules by W.M. Aker, which use standard DnD dice to simulate a game of baseball. Why? uhhhhhhhhh Why not? I only have the original version of the rules and they are great, and there has been some fun expansions of the system. An April fool's version/expansion a few years ago had my simulated game turn into an orgy of violence and it was terrific, but sadly we (meaning "I") did not complete the game and the season languished.

A cool thing about the original rules is that they provide for random generation of players, or you can convert real players from their stats. As you may gather, this is my literal jam and biscuits: I love that kind of stuff. And so, I have begun work on  not just some league tournament play ideas (probably fruitless and will come to nothing) but also a Tablesmith generator for teams. I'd kind of like it incorporate my funny Dickensian-names generator and also a real-life American names generator that could (hilariously, in my view) incorporate some "Engrish" name changing rules a la that wonky early 1990s SNES baseball game. I would work on this partly because it would allow me to populate my internal fantasy realm (sort of Mad Max crossed with Wizards of Oz) with minor league baseball teams, and partly because I want to toy with the string manipulation functions of Tablesmith... it occurs to me there's a pretty interesting Venn Diagram between 1970's era NY street gangs, Murderhobos as we know them from DnD, and bush league ball teams. Any loose collection of dudes trying to get paid is always going to be a sketchy proposition

Seems to me on reflection that Baseball and DnD are some particularly American brands of past-times, that I used to be very very fond of playing, that just sort of beg to be folded into fantasy Americana

YMMV of course

Anyways, I got a box of 6 packs of Allen & Ginter Topps "vintage cards" and here is my team, plus Randy "Macho Man" Poffo of course. Think I'm gonna add some ladies and maybe some fictional ball players, also

1. John Kruk, Philadelphia Phillies
2. Robin Yount, Milwaukee Brewers
3. Darryl Strawberry, NY  Mets
4. Kirby Puckett, Minnesota Twins
5. Johnny Bench, Cincinnati Reds
6. Reggie Jackson, Oakland A's
7. Harold Baines, Chicago White Sox
8. Ted Williams, Boston Red Sox
9. Don Sutton, Los Angeles Dodgers
10. Mark McGwire, St. Louis Cardinals
11. Andre Dawson, Montreal Expos

more to come, hold on.  Maybe i'll drop my "Minor League Ball Player" background for D&D 5e, and a "Baseball Furies" model stolen from the PS2 _The Warriors_ game... (these are all conjectural and works in progress so ill get em done when I get em done)

The Byzantine Automation of AD&D Dungeon Parties

If you're a regular reader (I'm sorry!) then you know I dig making stuff with Tablesmith. It's a very powerful automation tool for making all kinds of neat things. A free and very close approximation is Dave Y.'s excellent web-based version Abulafia which has the benefit of talking to other users' tables. I use it to make dungeon keys and other things pseudorandomly. I took a break from untying the knot of code I've put in to make random "weird sci-fantasy" dungeon keys to work on another project. Well, to put it more precisely I wanted to include NPC dungeon parties as planned and random encounters in the dungeon, and I wanted to do it the way I used to do it by hand from the old 1e DMG on page uhhhhh 175 or so.

Easy to make an NPC generator. It really is. You make a random variable generator, plug it into the stats, plug in the races and classes (easy peasy, it's a list), and hit it with a name maker. BOOM! Done. I'm a king amongst lesser beings.

EXCEPT! If you do it that way, you won't be making viable, valid AD&D1e "character NPCs". It was human-o-centric, you see. Gary put hard limits on the demihuman races. Without very high stats, most of the demihuman races could not climb to successful heights. The thing breaks down on entry where races have limits to stats, stat bonuses, and race/class combinations have level limits dependent upon prerequisites. An easy enough thing for a coder to untangle. I'm _not_ a good coder, though, and I have figured out some of the steps (the ones I said were easy), and I am not clearly grokking the rest but it is coming to me slowly. So! I present to you a very quick list of "level 1 character NPCs" spat out by my angry, irritable Tablesmith code. How many do you want? 99? too much text - nobody would read all that. But I will give you, uhhh, 30 to prove my concept. Please note the juiciest bits of these NPCs are not attached - quirks, tragic backstories, motives, villainous plans, etc. All that can be accomplished by referencing OTHER bits of code, but I don't want that part to muss up my problems. The next bit to hard-code is race-based stat bonuses which sounds like it should be easy. It sort of it, but my brain doesn't always do what i want it to. These are all level 1's made with 4d4+2 since the 3d6 way would of necessity make many many non-viable options (which I could winnow out with code but ehhh more steps). Making Assassins evil was a pretty easy task although I thought it would be harder. There are other class/alignment needs I haven't yet coded in, if I recall right (maybe monks?)

Wyrter, Human Fighter 1, NG, S 14, I 10,W 10,D 9,Cn 9,Ch 10, Long Sword, Scalemail

Hallé, Elf Fighter 1, NE, S 13, I 11,W 10,D 7,Cn 13,Ch 14, Staff, Robe

Anores, Human Fighter 1, CG, S 11, I 15,W 11,D 12,Cn 11,Ch 9, Broadaxe, Chainmail

Maynet, Dwarf Thief 1, LN, S 12, I 13,W 14,D 10,Cn 11,Ch 14, Dagger, Furs

Nobby Quidimer, Human Assassin 1, NE, S 12, I 14,W 10,D 13,Cn 13,Ch 12, Crossbow, Hide Armor

Arenradas, Human Magic-User 1, LN, S 10, I 14,W 14,D 13,Cn 14,Ch 15, Staff, Robe

Corela, Halfling Fighter 1, LN, S 14, I 11,W 12,D 11,Cn 10,Ch 11, Sling, Cuirass

Rivière, Human Cleric 1, NG, S 12, I 12,W 15,D 7,Cn 11,Ch 16, Spear, Chainmail

Kelradas, Human Thief 1, NG, S 11, I 14,W 9,D 11,Cn 16,Ch 12, Dagger, Hide Armor

Ippadia, Halfling Thief 1, LG, S 17, I 9,W 16,D 11,Cn 11,Ch 15, Dagger, Hide Armor

Eddavan, Human Magic-User 1, LN, S 14, I 12,W 15,D 16,Cn 11,Ch 10, Staff, Robe

Olafira, Human Thief 1, LE, S 15, I 15,W 13,D 13,Cn 14,Ch 14, Stiletto, Hide Armor

Marandia, Dwarf Cleric 1, LN, S 14, I 9,W 10,D 15,Cn 12,Ch 18, Great Axe, Studded Leather Armor

Godard, Dwarf Fighter 1, NE, S 16, I 11,W 11,D 12,Cn 13,Ch 12, Hammer, Robe

Quièvremont, Human Magic-User 1, NG, S 12, I 12,W 13,D 12,Cn 12,Ch 13, Dagger, Robe

Montaigu, Half-Orc Thief 1, LN, S 12, I 14,W 12,D 10,Cn 7,Ch 9, Blackjack, Furs

Maignart, Human Monk 1, NE, S 12, I 14,W 10,D 13,Cn 9,Ch 15, Short Bow, Robe

Shadradas, Halfling Thief 1, LG, S 12, I 13,W 15,D 15,Cn 16,Ch 10, Dagger, Hide Armor

Fontemai, Halfling Thief 1, CG, S 13, I 11,W 10,D 13,Cn 11,Ch 12, Sling, Hide Armor

Cora Milgrimsible, Human Thief 1, NG, S 8, I 15,W 13,D 17,Cn 14,Ch 15, Garotte, Padded Armor

Kellum, Elf Magic-User 1, CE, S 14, I 14,W 13,D 11,Cn 11,Ch 13, Staff, Robe

Gromgith, Human Thief 1, LN, S 14, I 11,W 12,D 15,Cn 12,Ch 10, Stiletto, Hide Armor

Somneri, Half-Elf Druid 1, Neutral, S 12, I 15,W 12,D 12,Cn 10,Ch 12, Staff, Robe

Kyraatr, Human Fighter 1, LE, S 9, I 12,W 11,D 9,Cn 17,Ch 10, Axe, Plate Armor

Belpas, Human Fighter 1, N, S 10, I 8,W 12,D 16,Cn 11,Ch 14, Short Sword, Cuirass

Cheney, Gnome Illusionist 1, LN, S 12, I 13,W 13,D 12,Cn 14,Ch 15, Staff, Robe

Damarary, Halfling Thief 1, CG, S 14, I 12,W 10,D 12,Cn 12,Ch 15, Dagger, Padded Armor

Lady Knudel, Elf Magic-User 1, CG, S 14, I 10,W 15,D 16,Cn 9,Ch 10, Staff, Robe

Lindvay, Human Cleric 1, CG, S 14, I 15,W 18,D 13,Cn 11,Ch 11, Warhammer, Studded Leather Armor

Ajax Piggful, Human Magic-User 1, N, S 12, I 11,W 12,D 15,Cn 13,Ch 14, Dagger, Robe

Looks like it works! Now, the next couple of bits - making parties of up to 9 NPCs with a certain number of character-type NPCs accompanied by henchmen and hirelings, dependent upon level with certain equipment based on random rolls according to level, I anticipate a hearty challenge and I think I almost have it sorted but I need to leave it for the weekend since Workaday World calls and I must hie away. A bad thing about doing it this way is that these NPCs get generated by machine and wither away into the aether very very quickly without ever having the substance of human effort or dice-rolling the way the old-fashioned method of doing it invests in them... I dunno. I'm an agent of chaos in this regard, I guess.

Is it a crime to make 1000's of NPCs and toss them away into The Nothing? Yes. Yes it is.

Peace be upon both your houses, I commend thee to Mars and Bellona, etc.