There is a very interesting post at Campaign Chronicle, entitled 'Character motivation in OD&D'. It is a d20 table of reasons why PCs are going adventuring. The posts says the table is '...to use as-is or to inspire more original ideas...'. I can see it being useful for a particular campaign, either getting PCs to choose one of the options or randomly assigning them (it makes more sense to have a 'card' system rather than a table I think, so each backstory is only given out once, rather than having a situation where three of the seven PCs have randomly or unknowingly chosen the same motivation).
I want to break the system down however and build a way of generating this kind of stuff from random tables.
The first thing I want to do is give each PC a patron or mentor. A simple system I think for that, I'll limit mentors to PC classes, rather than having the ability for a Werewolf or a Treant or a Centaur to be a mentor (of course I now want a 'Centaur Mentor' because in British English, if not American English, it rhymes. But no, keep it simple, stupid, at least for the moment: PC classes only).
Roll d12 - the PC's mentor is a:
1 - Cleric
2 - Dwarf
3 - Elf
4 - Fighter
5 - Halfling
6 - Magic-User
7 - Thief
8-12 as PC's class
This should produce a distribution where 50% of the time the Mentor is the same class as the PC. A d8 would produce a result where the PC and the Mentor were the same class 25% of the time, a d20 the same result 70% of the time. All of these are possible of course...
I created a party of PCs to test the numbers on. As there are 7 classes I rolled a d8 several times to generate some numbers for class-distribution, with 1-7 standing for the classes above. As luck would have it the first number was an 8 so I decided that was the number of PCs I'd create.
My numbers were 812445667 (I tidied the order of the numbers to make it easier for me). That should mean '8PCs - Cleric, Dwarf, Fighter, Fighter, Halfling, Magic-User, Magic-User, Thief' which looks like a pretty cool party to me. I rolled on the table above to determine the classes of the PCs' Mentors. Tabulating that produces something like this:
PC Class: Mentor Class:
Cleric 9
(as PC – Cleric)
Dwarf 5
(Halfling)
Fighter 1
(Cleric)
Fighter 4
(Fighter
Halfling 5
(Halfling)
Magic-User 7 (Thief)
Magic-User 8 (as PC – Magic User)
Thief 4 (Fighter)
Thief 4 (Fighter)
I decided I'd rather have fewer Mentors than more. There's no particular reason that each PC should have a different Mentor, it may be that some PCs have the same Mentor. So, I decided to double up; any time I had a repetition of a class in my Mentor column, it would be the same Mentor. Thus the two Clerics are one Cleric, the two Fighters are one Fighter and the two Halflings are the same Halfling.
So we have five Mentors - a Cleric (Mentor to a Cleric and a Fighter); a Halfling (Mentor to a Dwarf and a Halfling); a Fighter (Mentor to a Fighter and a Thief); a Thief (Mentor to a Magic-User); and a Magic-User (Mentor to a Magic-User).
The relationship of the PC to the mentor is very tricky. Alignment should be an issue I think but can't work out how (or indeed why) it could (should). It seems like it is adding a layer of unnecessary complexity (what happens if the PC's alignment is different to the Mentor's alignment? Does that make the relationship between them more difficult? Do I want that? If not, what purpose would alignment serve? If it doesn't serve a purpose, why bother about it? So, I decided to leave it alone). There should definitely be some sort of discernible connection between the PC and the Mentor though. I decided to roll a d6 again and see what connections I could come up with.
I got 6 after some thought:
1 - Parental (or foster-parental, as 3, where this is not biologically possible)
2 - Avuncular, materteral or other family (or inherited, as 4, if this is not biologically feasible)
3 - Foster-familial
4 - Inherited (Mentor is a companion of a relative of the previous generation)
5 - Geographical
6 - Professional
Basically there's some chance the Mentor is actual family, a parent or someone or less-directly related - if the PC and Mentor are not the same race, then there's an automatic bump to foster-parent/friend of the family instead. Then there's a chance that the Mentor was either a foster-parent or a friend of the PC's parents. Finally, there's a chance that the relationship between them is something more societal - I'm not actually sure how I'm defining the difference between 'Geographical' and 'Professional' here. My idea for 'Geographical' was that the Mentor is some kind of local 'power' (the Lord of the Manor; the Priest of the local temple or some such idea); but then, this bleeds over into a 'Professional' relationship (where the Mentor has taken an interest in the PC for some professional reason). I suppose really this latter doesn't rely on much power on the Mentor's part. If a 'Geographical' result could mean "you came to the Lord of the Manor's attention as a likely lad about the village, and he took an interest in your training", 'Professional' could mean "you came to the Guard Captain's attention as a likely lad about the village, and he took an interest in your training". I think 'Geographical' implies 'you sought out the Mentor because...' whereas 'Professional' implies more "the Mentor sought you out because..." but it's a subtle distinction.
Running these numbers with the previous results produced this:
Cleric 9 (as PC – Cleric) 1 (parental)
Dwarf 5 (Halfling) 5 (geographical)
Fighter 1 (Cleric) 4 (inherited)
Fighter 4 (Fighter) 3 (foster-familial)
Halfling 5 (Halfling) 3 (foster-familial)
Magic-User 7 (Thief) 5 (geographical)
Magic-User 8 (as PC – Magic-User) 3 (foster-familial)
Thief 4 (Fighter) 1 (parent)
Assuming that I'm sticking to the idea of combining the Mentors where I get multiple classes, so having 5 mentors, I now know that ...
the Mentor Cleric is the parent of the PC Cleric and the companion of an older relative of one of the PC Fighters;
the Halfling Mentor is the foster-parent of the Halfling PC and has a geographical connection with the Dwarf PC;
the Mentor Fighter is the foster-parent of the other PC Fighter and the parent of the Thief;
the Mentor Thief has a geographical connection to one of the PC Magic-Users;
the Mentor Magic-User is the foster-parent of the other PC Magic-User.
This all seemed reasonable enough but I want to know if this group of Mentors has any relationship to each other. I rolled a d6 for the following results:
1 Old companions
2-5 Thrown together by circumstance
6 Old adversaries
I actually rolled a 1 which is nice but I don't like this table. Maybe if the divisions were 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6 it would be better. Anyway, I tried to generate connections another way, by stealing JensD's idea from Lost Songs of the Nibelungs about using repeated dice-numbers to stand for connections (a lot of this is directly or indirectly inspired by Jens... much of it can be traced back to something I told him some years ago, "every Hero should have been fostered by Dwarves" which was something of an exaggeration but still, I think, has a core of truth to it). As soon as he comes by to tell me where it is, I'll link to it (honestly Jens, I went back through about 5 years of posts looking, I really did).
Anyway, I rolled a die for each of the five Mentors, intending that each Mentor who shared a number with another had a connection with them. I used a d4 so I would guarantee some repetition, and came up with 12413 (the least connected possible result of course). That means the Cleric and the Thief Mentors know each other. I rolled for their connection (only looking for 'old friends' and 'old adversaries' results... I already know they know each other, so results in the middle don't count) and came up with 'old adversaries'. Somehow having two Mentors as old adversaries and the other three unknown to each other doesn't seem as satisfying as having all of them as old companion, though I am pleased it was 'Cleric' and 'Thief' - there may be mileage in dramatic situations to be created there. But I'm sure I shall play about with this aspect somewhat (what I'm currently thinking is that I'm going to use all of it - the five are old companions, and this is the most important relationship, but the Thief and the Cleric have an antagonistic personal relationship).
I decided to set the Mentor's Level at d4+3. Especially when the PC is at low levels the Mentor should be an important personage, at least on a regional scale. However, I think a Mentor should not be a deus ex machina. Nor the other way around, for that matter. The Mentor should not necessarily take any direct role in adventuring, and it should be on the whole difficult to access their help. The point is that the Mentor has set the PC on the quest so that they can learn their true powers, not come running to Uncle Alrund Elf-Lord if the going gets tough. The occasional help with decoding Moon-Runes or identifying a sword should be OK, even helping to find the best Elven weaponsmith to repair that broken heirloom, but not so much kicking down the doors in of Bigbad Central and killing Lord Nasty in the face with the +5 Shining Sword of Ultimate Cool. The PCs should not be outclassed by their own aunts/teachers/random old friends of their dad.
As the PCs gain in Levels perhaps the Mentor can too, but at a slower speed I think, and taking into account level limits. In any case, mentors should probably be capped at around 10th-12th Level, by which time the PCs should be well on their way to overtaking them, if they haven't already. It may even be that the Mentor doesn't increase in level at all and the PCs start to overtake them from about 5th Level. But, it's around 8th-10th Level that PCs start to establish strongholds and I think this seems a natural point to stop Mentor advancement. You establish the Last Homely House East of the Sea, get together some old comrades in arms, build a library, and get on with the business of protecting the Heirs of Isildur through the long dark of the Third Age. You know the score.
The Level results I came up with were 22211. This equates to Levels 5 (Cleric), 5 (Fighter), 5 (Halfling), 4 (Magic-User) and 4 (Thief). I imagine that this is some adventuring party of a previous generation. If you're really together and have access to 30-year-old character sheets this might even be an adventuring party of a previous generation, and you can skip most of the exposition actually. I don't know if I need levels at the moment but maybe I will. I may as well generate them.
That all seems like a usable set of results. I shall mess about with them more in a future post, however, as it's late and this is getting a bit large I'm ending this one here.
Have I mentioned lately how much I hate the formatting on Blogger?
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