Welcome to the swiss army knife for the Amar Role-Playing Game (http://d6gaming.org).
This program suite runs on any GNU/Linux system where the scripting language Ruby is installed. Ruby is available as tar.gz, rpm packages or deb-packages as needed for your specific Linux distribution. For more info on Ruby, see http://www.ruby-lang.org.
This tool box for the Amar RPG is designed for generating random or specific encounters and Non-Player Characters for the Amar RPG, random settlements and relationship maps for inhabitants of villages/towns/cities as well as random names for various races and for making Open Ended Dice Rolls.
In order to make real use of this program, you should be running an Amar game as the Game Master.
For more info on the Amar RPG, game rules, adventures and more, see http://www.d6gaming.org/.
For an online version of this program, go to http://isene.org
GraphViz is a requirement for generating relationship maps for towns and between NPCs ('apt install graphviz' on Ubuntu).
LaTeX is needed for random weather generation ('apt install texlive-latex-recommended' on Ubuntu).
To generate an adventure via OpenAI, you need to install my openai gem (see https://github.com/isene/openai).
To set up the program, extract npcg.tar.gz:
tar -xzvf npcg.tar.gz
This creates a directory named "npcg". Go to this directory:
cd npcg
Then, as root, run the setup program:
./setup.rb
This makes it possible for you to run the program by just entering "npcg" on the command line.
Running npcg on the command line will give you a set of options:
A = Generate an adventure from OpenAI
I = Make a general question or request to OpenAI
e = Random encounter
E = Generate a description for a random encounter
n = Generate a detailed human NPC
N = Generate a description for an NPC (via OpenAI)
t = Create a village/town/city
r = Make town relations
m = Generate names
w = Generate a month of weather
q = Quit npcg
Simply pick the tool you want and follow the instructions.
By running npcg on the command line with the -h option, this help file will be displayed:
Notes on the usage of NPC Generation for the Amar RPG
This program will only make sense to you if you know what role-playing games (RPGs) are. It is a useful asset to the Amar RPG.
The program is used for creating villages/towns/cities, random or specific encounters (basic details) or detailed NPC generation as well as random weather for a month. It can also generate relationship maps for inhabitants of a town or for a list of NPCs (with a graphical map showing the various positive and negative relations between them.
There is also an Open Ended Dice roller for the Amar RPG (see the rules for what that is and how it is used in the game). That program is written in the nim programming language and compiled as a stand-alone executable called "O6". Simply put this in your path and you can throw an Open Ended Dice roll simply by running O6 on the command line..
You may select or enter values in any of the NPC's characteristics. Those you don't will be randomly generated. When you have selected/ entered the values you want, press "submit", and the NPC will be generated.
When generating a town relationship map, you can upload a file with the same format as the one generated when creating a random town. The map will then have the name, basic info and the house number in an ellipse for each person that has a special relationship with others in the town. Or you can simply upload a list of characters, one per line and every line with a special relationship will be paired with other lines in the file. A black line indicates a special positive relation, while a red line signifies a special negative relation. A double black line shows a strong alliance, while a double red shows deep hate. A black and a red line indicates a complex relationship. A graphical map is created as a .png file in the npcg directory.
Press "v" when a town, encounters or an NPC is presented to edit the values in your default editor. The files for a detailed NPC (temp.npc), random encounter (encounter.npc), random town (town.npc) or random weather (weather.npc) is generated in the "npcs" directory under "npcg".
Happy generation :)
Several abbreviations are used. They are easily deciphered if you read the Amar RPG rules.
The more obscure ones are:
Spell Heading: A?=Active/Passive? Here a "+" means both Active and passive.
R?=Resist? AoE="Area Of Effect", and we have A=Animal, C=Creature, D=Demon,
E=Elemental, O=Object, S=Spell, U=Undead, W=Weapon.
The asterisk indicates that it will increase with the spell level. 1mr = 1 meter radius.
The CLI-version of NPCg has the following options: -h Displays this helpfile -e Will display results in your editor of choice. Write the name of the editor directly following the "-e", such as npcg -e vim. If no editor is given, the program outputs the NPC to "less".""
When using the html version, amar.html is the starting page.
Git clone this directory in the html root directory. Ensure the directories "cgi-bin" and "cgi-bin/saved" are owned by the user "www-data".
Install Graphviz and LaTeX as noted under "Requirements" above.
Thanks to Alan Skorkin (https://www.skorks.com/2009/07/how-to-write-a-name-generator-in-ruby/) for providing a basis for the random name generator.
Thanks to Jonatan Isene for a multitude of tips. Thanks to the hundred or so players in my campaign that has tested, played, fine-tuned and suggested improvements to the game mechanics. Some have also suggested improvements to these Amar Tools. Thanks to Egil Möller for his suggestions on relationship maps for town residents and for saving unique URLS for NPCs and Towns.
Thank you for trying out NPC Generation. Feel free to visit my website at http://isene.com