Saturday, December 17, 2016

Using Inspiration Pad Pro v3 with DragonQuest

Tables for generating random loot, encounters, names, dungeons, weather and everything else can be found on the net and as part of the rules for different game systems.  Some are generic and can be used for any game system while many are specific to various iterations of Dungeons & Dragons or related d20 variants.  Inspiration Pad Pro is a free Windows program (and Android app) from NBOS Software allows you to easily create your own tables or generators to match how things work in your game world and the game system you use.  I love it and have created a few tables that I use for generating NPCs for my DragonQuest campaigns.
As I said above, IPP is free from NBOS and is a straightforward install. This is a professionally written program that has a clean, easy-to-use interface.  Version 3 added the ability to directly edit the tables inside the program.  Prior to this you had to use Notepad or your own favorite text editor.  The built in editor makes it very easy to quickly modify or create new tables.
This shows the output of my NPC generator. 
Inspiration Pad Pro interface screenshot
DQ NPC Generator
On the left in the tree view you can see a couple other generators under my DQ category.  I split up my NPC generation into multiple tables mostly just to cut down on the complexity of the individual generator files.  The DQ NPCs table generates non-Adept NPCs.  This generator was in part based on the old Ares article about NPCs but extended to include characteristics and skills.  It randomly selects the NPC's proficiency level (Mercenary, Adventurer, or Hero) and proceeds from there.  The NPCs generated will be roughly on par with PCs of the same adventuring proficiency level.
The DQ AdeptStats table is much like other NPC table but produces Adepts.  Their MA is will be in a range more appropriate for Adepts while their other characteristics aren't a little lower on average. They will usually have fewer skills.
I kept the Adept College/Spell generation in a separate table so that I could pick and choose a NPC from the DQ AdeptStats output that suited my needs and then pick the College/Spells from the DQ Adepts output to go with it.

Adept College/Spell List Output
This table also picks a location within the Frontiers of Alusia as the Adepts home.
I hope other DQ GMs find these useful.  If you do use them and have comments or suggestions please leave a comment below or on G+.   If you create your own tables for use with DragonQuest, let me know about those as well.
You can download a zip of the three on my Downloads page.

5 comments:

  1. IPP3 is definitely worth getting. Among other things I've used it for are complete stellar system generation tables (from star class down to the individual moons and asteroids) for the Universe system, treasure tables, dragon-creation tables, etc.

    It's incredibly flexible and useful.

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  2. I've created an Inspiration Pad Pro table for generating orcs in DragonQuest. The logic was tough, but I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

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    1. That's great. Creating DQ chars and such is a bit of a challenge because of the dependencies of things like FT on EN and picking weapons that match PS/MD. Did you put your generator on the NBOS site?

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    2. I've posted in the NBOS forum with a link to the file on my GoogleDrive. The FT just uses the range for orcs listed in the monsters section and is not dependent on EN as it would be for a PC. It does make sure that weapons have the required PS and MD. http://forum.nbos.com/discussion/1704/dragonquest-spi-orc-generator?new=1

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    3. Cool! I'll be sure to grab it.

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