LostKnightsRPG.org

I'm considering making a program containing a set of GM tools for WOD, following some discussion in the text thread.

The idea would be for the program to be used in house by WOD GMs and would reduce the workload current and potential WOD GMs face, and could enhance games with additional detail and depth.

Because there are several active and potential WOD GMs and players in this group, and the program would be specifically designed for in-group use, I'd like to solicit feature requests / suggestions for this.

What are the greatest time sinks for your WOD gameplay development?
What would you like to have generated for you?
What features would you expect or hope to see in a program providing such tools?
Are there currently elements of GMing a WOD game that are so time consuming as to prevent you from attempting to do so?
What could make the challenge of running WOD games easier for you?
What computer / phone / tablet platforms would you expect to be able to use such a program on?
Keeping in mind that this program would be developed specifically for this group to use, what house rules or conventions would you want to see included?

For my part, the feature I want most is the generation of cities populated by vampires (and mages, and werewolves, but save that for later...) that will work at the press of a button, maybe with a few weighting parameters to that you can select if you don’t want complete randomization.

The second, related, thing I want is to push a button and have a NPC generated for me. Ideally the same button click that populates the city would detail the individual characters.

I think my secondary preference would actually be most peoples first preference, mine differs primarily bc we tend to travel a lot in most WoD games I run.

Some traits I would like to see procedurally generated (preferably with options to limit or weight selections) include:
Name
Sex
Age (real and apparent)
Race
Profession
Hobby
Nature
Demeanor
Clan
Generation
“Level” (eg neonate ancilla elder, with appropriate adjustments to the traits below)
Attributes
Abilities
Backgrounds
Disciplines
Merits/flaws

If it would make a whole brood of related vamps, that would be cool too.

Rydi, that's very much what I'm looking to do first.

The city part is not going to be a huge problem, and the part I'm working on conceptually right now is build choices per vampire.

I'm currently thinking in terms of favored choices based on clan character creation guidelines with an overlay provided by nature and demeanor. I'd like to templatize that as much as possible but it will probably boil down to including general build preferences as part of a clan's entry into the program. Might be able to make a front end to add clans or I might do it as a command line operation, won't hard code it either way.

So the NPCs would spend creation points based on several possible background archetypes and then make xp purchases from a randomized priority list using weights provided by a combination of clan and nature, with demeanor having a reduced version of nature's template if it's different.

What the NPCs get up to on a nightly basis is likely also guided by clan position and nature, as well as backgrounds and some skills. "Further the goals of the clan" is a pretty generic result that, depending on clan and sect might be "use your highest skill to do whatever that skill does" or "go embrace a bunch of randos and bury them."

In a way, that part is probably going to be the most profound, a sort of background simulation that creates the web of intrigue the game promises without a ponderous workload for the storyteller.

First things first, a random city.

This project has been kind of sidelined for kind of a weird reason. I shifted from working with .NET, for which making a desktop application is trivially easy, to working with Elixir, for which building a desktop application is an exercise in pain. I explicitly have permission for a desktop app, which is the major blocker there.