View From the Bushes

Hopefully I will be better about posting in December than I was in November. I admit that there at the end I really dropped the ball, but what with Thanksgiving and being sick and my general laziness... The fact that I went four days without posting anything (though I would have normally only posted on two of those days anyway) was the bad news. The good news is that the NPC I've been promising for the last week is available. It's a halfling rogue, named Tasu the Veiled, he's only available to subscribers, but that includes the demo subscribers and that's free so no whining.

Before I talk about the NPC I'll bring you up to speed with what's happened to me since the last time I posted in my blog, though I warn you in advance it isn't pretty. I finally cleared myself of all of my Thanksgiving obligations I was feeling better and things looked rosy. I had gone to my parents house (about an hours drive) and when we arrived my oldest son (who's all but 5) was looking pretty pale. I figured he was just recovering from the nap he took on the way up with maybe a dash of car-sickness thrown in. So I carried him into house; just as I reached the entryway he began to projectile vomit.

Normally I wouldn't write about vomit, but this was something special. Had my son been a full grown adult, assuming that things stayed proportional, he would have easily cleared cleared the 40 foot mark. In any case it wasn't pretty and the clean up took at least another 30 or 45 minutes, that was the beginning of the "troubles". This morning my wife woke up with the same affliction, so I took the day off so that I could minister to the sick and the dying. Or at least the people who wished they were dying. Fortunately in between tending to the wounded I was able to get the last little bit done on the NPC. Speaking of which...

Since this is the first one I'll give you a little overview of what's cool about a Xenogenic NPC. I'll start by saying what I don't like about other NPC generators. First it's rare to find one that equips the characters. Secondly they're much to random, assigning stats with no regard to the class of the character or worse dumping tons of ranks into completely useless skills while disregarding essential skills. Obviously since these are the things that bug me my NPC's are both equipped and non-random. Also taking a sheet from the adventures you can choose the stat level, the percentage of treasure you want and the level of the NPC.

I think the biggest benefit of this sort of thing is if you have a recurring NPC. This way rather than having to update the NPC everytime he reappears you can punch in a new level and spit out a new version with new equipment, the whole nine yards. Ideally I'll put one of these out about every week, with the holidays coming up we'll have to see what my schedule is like and more especially if I come down with the same "Fiji Flu" the rest of the family has.

Carpe Diem Quam Minimum Credula Postero
Ross