Sometimes, the players just want to break something. Anything, really.
That's when it's time to mix up a Bar Fight cocktail.
Oh, sure, they could enter some arena combat, or start a scrap with the local City Watch, but those are life-or-death fights with potentially disastrous physical and social consequences. I'm just talkin' about some good old-fashioned fisticuffs. No weapons (except for the occasional chair), no dismemberment, no lifelong prison sentences.
What's the first thing you're going to need? NPC punching bags, of course.
James R. "Grim" Cone (who seemingly stopped posting way back in 2011) put together a solid Random Tavern Patron table for Swords & Wizardry. You don't always have time to random-roll a bunch of colorful NPC's on-the-fly when your players suddenly decide that it's clobberin' time, though.
So I went ahead and cobbled together an Abulafia Random Tavern Patron Generator to do the work for you. It's mostly comprised of Grim's characterizations, but I added attributes and hit points to round out the NPC's for social and combat mechanics. Every once in a great long while, an NPC will pop up who has an attribute higher than 18. Clearly they have a legendary magic item on them, or they were blessed by the gods, or they're a frickin' werewolf. It's up to you to decide what's really going on underneath.
Obviously, you can use this for more than just tavern brawls. You can populate the dinner car on the Orient Express with it for your murder mystery game if that's what tickles your pickle. The generator will deposit 10 NPC personalities neatly in your lap whenever you want. The only thing they're missing is names, mostly because these people are meant to exist in the background. If you or your players decide that one of them is interesting enough to bring into the limelight, then I guess you're just going to have to come up with a name on your own.
That's when it's time to mix up a Bar Fight cocktail.
What's the first thing you're going to need? NPC punching bags, of course.
James R. "Grim" Cone (who seemingly stopped posting way back in 2011) put together a solid Random Tavern Patron table for Swords & Wizardry. You don't always have time to random-roll a bunch of colorful NPC's on-the-fly when your players suddenly decide that it's clobberin' time, though.
So I went ahead and cobbled together an Abulafia Random Tavern Patron Generator to do the work for you. It's mostly comprised of Grim's characterizations, but I added attributes and hit points to round out the NPC's for social and combat mechanics. Every once in a great long while, an NPC will pop up who has an attribute higher than 18. Clearly they have a legendary magic item on them, or they were blessed by the gods, or they're a frickin' werewolf. It's up to you to decide what's really going on underneath.
Obviously, you can use this for more than just tavern brawls. You can populate the dinner car on the Orient Express with it for your murder mystery game if that's what tickles your pickle. The generator will deposit 10 NPC personalities neatly in your lap whenever you want. The only thing they're missing is names, mostly because these people are meant to exist in the background. If you or your players decide that one of them is interesting enough to bring into the limelight, then I guess you're just going to have to come up with a name on your own.
