Dice Rollers and Other Things

Nothing like getting up at 2 AM with a fresh pot of coffee to get some productive time at the keyboard. As you may or may not know I have a web site with a bunch of dice rollers, random tables and assorted other RPG-related stuff. Since I used to run a couple of computer moderated strategy games (Eldritch, Monsters!, and Iron Kings), most of the stuff is email-oriented. The last week or so I've been working on a new dice roller that's web-based and backed by a server database. It's now up and running in beta mode right here.

The premise is pretty simple. Create an account, create a dice session, share the session info with whomever you want to allow access, and you're off. And yes, I know, it's a pain to have yet another login, but no login is not an option because of bots and spammers, and I don't have the cycles right now to integrate a global sign-in with Facebook, Google or the like.

I'm eager to hear any and all feedback, either in comments here, using the comment form on the web site, or via whatever social media you happen to see this on. Thanks for reading and (hopefully) checking out the dice roller.

Random - Creature Generator

I recently added a new set of tables to the random generator. This one produces short descriptions of mundane creatures, predators, herbivores, and such. It's loosely based on the Traveller creature encounters tables, but the results should provide some fodder for the imagination. Here are some sample results. The first two lines in each entry are the generated value, the rest are my notes.

Random Tables - Update

I've been adding more tables to the random stuff generator. I figured it was time for a full listing of what's there. Most of these are pretty complete. The ones in need of the most work are the demonic creatures generator and the modern residences generator. Here's the full listing:

• Modern Vehicles - Cars, motorcycles, trucks, and various oddball things you might see on the highway. There are generators available for individual vehicle categories or a random selection from all types.
• Modern Residences - Brief descriptions of houses, apartments, condos, and other homes. Each includes a few notes about the interior, exterior, and / or locale. Useful for on the fly scene setup.
• Demonic Creatures - Nasty beasts with fangs and fish heads and tentacles and... well you get the picture. Just descriptions for now.
• Dungeon Doors - Doors, complete with locks and traps.
• Dungeon Junk - Random bits and pieces of garbage to give some color to that empty room.
• Dungeon Noises - An assortment of random creaks, groans, and squeaks. What was that?
• Card Hands - Sets of four five- and seven-card hands dealt from a standard deck of playing cards.

More to come.

Treasure Generator Update

I updated the random treasure generator I've been working on today. It now has at least some data for all entries and is generating a wondrously random range of weird magic stuff. I also rounded out the armor and weapon tables, so entries should be functionally complete.

I also threw together a small collection of other random generators: modern vehicles, fantasy map descriptions, and modern residences (WIP).

Let me know what you think!

Randomness Revisited

A few days ago I wrote about the random treasure generator I was working on. This is just a brief followup to let folks know it's mostly done. Mostly.

Randomness

A long time ago, I had an Amiga 1000. Being both a gamer and a programmer, I spent some time playing around with various game-related programs. One of them was a text processor that read various table-like files and produced randomized results from them. Time moved on, and the Amiga went the way of the dinosaur and dodo, to be replaced by a PC running Windows and another running FreeBSD. Once again I did a bunch of messing about with table-driven randomizers and ported the old Amiga code over to new OSes and new languages.

The latest incarnation is written in PHP, and I just finished the beta version. The first test page is now up, a random treasure generator for D&D-like fantasy RPGs. If you have a few minutes, please stop by and give it a spin. Feedback welcome of course.

Link: http://www.pbegames.com/treasury/