Monday, December 15, 2014

City of Curses: Musing on NPC generation

I need to create NPCs of sorts for Fate Core.  Seeing as I need some way to quickly roll them up, and I managed to well, complicate my iteration of Fate Core by using both Approaches and Skills, I need a system to device them fast-like.  Because it is faster for me to create a method of generation than to generate pre-gens.

Odd how that works.

This method creates a series of Modes (as first noted in the Fate Toolkit).  I've decided to break it down to the four big class blocks Crux (the setting my Fate Core game runs in) uses into Modes.  Arcane, Divine, Martial and Finesse.

All I have to do is use them to stat out a NPC in a flash.

Arcane: Crafts, Investigate, Knowledge, Sorcery, Wealth
Divine: Empathy, Faith, Notice, Provoke, Rapport, Will
Martial: Athletics, Brawl, Physique, Ride, Shoot, Weaponry
Finesse: Burglary, Contacts, Deceive, Performance, Reflexes, Stealth

There is a fifth mode, Racial.  Since each race in Crux has its own skill, it feels apt to go ahead and toss out a 5th mode for that.  One mode is rated at Fair (+2), a second at Average (+1) and the last two are rated at Mediocre.

That handles skills, but it doesn't cover approaches very well.  There are five base NPC types I recall from the Pathfinder Core book: Arcane, Divine, Ranged, Melee and Skill.  Let's use that for our approaches then:

Two at Fair (+2), Three at Average (+1), One at Mediocre (+0)

Arcane: Clever Fair, Flashy Fair, Careful Average, Sneaky Average, Quick Average, Forceful Mediocre
Divine: Flashy Fair, Careful Fair, Clever Average, Forceful Average, Quick Average, Sneaky Mediocre
Ranged: Careful Fair, Quick Fair, Forceful Average, Sneaky Average, Clever Average, Flashy Mediocre
Melee: Forceful Fair, Quick Fair, Flashy Average, Careful Average, Sneaky Average, Clever Mediocre
Skill: Sneaky Fair, Clever Fair, Quick Average, Flashy Average, Forceful Average, Careful Mediocre

So the quick method to making a NPC is combining each of these.  As for Aspects, my fallback is using racial aspects and probably being a little creative with classes I think.

This is just me musing with another idea somebody else had posted elsewhere.

Example:
Nameless NPC
Crow Vigilante (Human)
Rank and File members of the Eternal Order of the Eagle and the Crow, these Crows are street thugs, but dedicated to doing good works instead of criminal activities.  Crows blur the line of right and wrong, often being willing to do wrong in order to help what they think needs to be done.

Aspect(s) Crow Vigilante
Skills: Finesse Fair, Martial Average, Divine Mediocre and Arcane Mediocre.
Approaches (Skill) Sneaky Fair, Clever Fair, Quick Average, Flashy Average, Forceful Average, Careful Mediocre
Stress Track 3 Boxes

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