Last time, I wrote about how hacking a sci-fi OSR mission generator for a tabletop duet game led to discovering a recursive random table that alters itself.
This time I want to flesh out in more detail how several random tables combined to generate interesting jobs for Penny the thief, and try tweaking the way some of the tables work.
The results of rolling on the job tables gives you only this information: a type of patron, a type of job, and its risk, distance, and reward. The patron table was detailed last time, but I'll include it here with the other tables (which I hacked from the sci-fi generator):
***
Thief Job Generator 0.2
Patron: 1d6
1-2: criminal
3: noble/merchant
4: government
5: military
6: former patron
(if 6, roll on Former Patrons subtable. every time a job is accepted from a new patron, they're added to the Former
Patrons subtable.)
Job Type: 1d10 (criminal: -1 to roll; military or government: +1 to roll)
1: piracy
2: theft
3: confidence scam
4: smuggling
5: bizarre
6: bounty
7: escort
8: delivery
9: rescue
10: disaster relief
Risk Level (ie; Number of Encounters/Challenges): 1d6
1-2: three
3: four
4: five
5-6: six
(add Notoriety level to the roll)
Distance from Current Location: 1d6
1: current location
2: nearest village
3: nearest city
4: 1 weeks' travel
5: 2 weeks' travel
6: a months' travel
Reward: 1d6 & based on Risk & Distance rolls & Notoriety of thief:
X = (risk+notoriety)*distance
1-2: wealth worth X*40g
3-4: favour (proportional to X)
5: gear worth X*60g
6: add 1 to Notoriety and roll again
***
There's a couple of things I want to point out and work on:
Changing the range of results on the Patrons table so that "criminal" happens on 1 and "former patron" happens of 5-6 would make jobs from existing patrons more likely, which can allow fleshing out those characters from interacting with them more often--which seems like it would be pretty fun. In practice when using the table, sometimes a new patron would be generated that seems similar to an existing one, and so I'd just make it a job from that existing patron.
Shifting the range of outcomes on the Job Type table by just adding or subtracting 1 from the roll to make the extremes unavailable is a cool idea. I wonder what it would be like if it was a roll with a "normal" distribution like 2d6? That would be a way to make certain types of jobs more likely and certain types of jobs more rare. I might do this and set "theft" to the centre of the distribution at 7 to make it the most likely kind of job.
You could make certain types of jobs -only- offered by certain patrons by assigning them an outcome outside of the normal range and using the +1/-1 trick. For example, 2d6 can give you outcomes ranging from 2 to 12. If you want only criminal patrons to offer an assassination job -and- make it really rare, you can assign that to an outcome of 1, and give the criminal patron a -1 roll modifier on the Job Type table.
The Risk Level can be interpreted differently based on the type of job. If it's a dungeon delve to retrieve an item, then the number of encounters could be the number of "interesting" rooms in the dungeon (ie a fight, a trap, an environmental challenge, etc). If it's a mission involving navigating the treacherous relationships between a number of gangs, then it could be the number of parties involved. It could be the number of locations that must be visited to collect parts of a document. The Risk number could even be more abstract and refer to increasingly dangerous random encounter tables (ie; if it's Risk 1, roll on the Basic Encounter table, 2 roll twice, if it's 3, roll on the Challenging Encounter table, 4 roll twice, 5 roll on Deadly Encounter, 6 roll twice--or something like that). Note that the roll is added to the thief's Notoriety level--more on that later.
The Distance table is interesting. I adapted it for the kind of travel scale that made sense for a game where a thief goes from place to place doing jobs for patrons. This encourages travel from point to point on the world map, and this travel can either be abstracted away entirely, made into a ration-using navigation minigame, or turned into a full hexcrawl, as per the preference of your duet.
The Reward table needs tweaking to help with interpreting the results. I really like that it's based proportionally on the Risk and Distance results (and Notoriety--we'll get to it!). This is easy to understand for wealth and gear worth some multiple of the number, (and this multiplier should be set sensibly for the currency of your game: probably some fraction of the cost of a sword or potion, or of the debt your thief is paying off) But what does it mean for "Favour Owed"--the most interesting result on the table?
Before tackling that, I wanted to understand the way the results work. The result of multiplying Risk by Distance ranges from 1 to 36, but it's skewed--the most likely results are 6 and 12 (rather than the 18 you'd expect from a balanced distribution). On a graph, the peak is to the left and there is a long tail to the right. This means that our thief can regularly expect low-to-middling value rewards but allows for a wide range of surprises to occur. You can get a little as 40 g, which is a job a thief probably wouldn't take just for the money, or as much as 2160g worth of gear, which could completely re-outfit our thief--but most likely you're looking in the 200 to 900 g range. However, a bunch of results just aren't possible to get, because you're multiplying two d6 rolls--you can't get 35, or 19, or 7... this results in less round numbers for currency value rewards, which is great for avoiding round numbers. Why offer a reward of 250 g when you can offer 240 g? And if you end up with 480 g worth of gear, some if it will be fun
weird filler stuff because most equipment lists cost round numbers.
The question then becomes how to interpet this result as the value of a favour. An easy way to get around that is to treat it just like wealth or gear, but delayed or specific to certain context. Ie; the patron can pay off a bounty on your head worth X*50g, or source a special potion you need, or get you a specialist hireling for job you're doing, or a place worth that much to use as a safehouse, or perhaps a permanent discount at a particular merchant.
But the thing that makes favours interesting as a reward is their potential non-monetary value and their flexibility. You can forsee our thief calling in a favour to arrange a meeting with an elusive clan leader, or to get safe passage through a warzone, or to hide in the secret basement of the shop when the royal guard is sweeping the town, or store something in the count's personal vault. And the thief will certainly come up with unexpected favours to ask of their patrons. Ultimately it might not be possible to "quantify" the value of such a favour, so probably the best we can do is ballpark the range of outcomes, provide some examples and leave it to the GM's discretion.
Lets say for now we carve out the range thus:
Patron Favour Value:
1-6: Small Favour
7-19: A Favour
20+: Extraordinary Favour
This is probably the thing that needs the most work. It would probably be easier to just add Risk+Distance and centre this on a normal 2d6 distribution. OR I could just collapse it entirely! A result of "favour" is exactly that, no monetary value considered, and it's up to the duet to figure it out. I kind of like the simplicity of that, but maybe there's an equally elegant way of still using the Risk*Distance number.
Finally: Notoriety. Notoriety was my way of figuring out what "Reward Risk" meant in the original sci-fi mission generator I hacked for this. The really interesting recursive result on a 6 to "roll again and add 1 to Reward Risk for all future missions" felt like an abstraction that could be made specific and meaningful in the world of thiefy adventuring. We could take that number and store it separately from the Reward table and make it matter elsewhere. My solution was to make it a kind of reputation mechanic: as the thief does more jobs throughout the world, their Notoriety increases. As they become more Notorious, the jobs that patrons offer are more dangerous--and more rewarding. Not only that, but successfully completing a job gives a chance of Notoriety increasing, as part of the reward!
There is scope for Notoriety to interact with other game mechanics. If there are morale checks, perhaps rando bandits are less likely to stand their ground against a notorious thief. If there are recognition checks, perhaps merchants are more likely to provide a discount, or share the secret menu--but so too are town guards more likely to see through a hasty disguise. Depending on the amount of record-keeping you want, Notoriety can vary in different regions of the world based on where jobs are completed. Perhaps certain patrons no longer want to offer jobs to a thief that everyone has heard of. And of course, depending on your particular thiefy exploits, GM fiat can award a point of Notoriety as the result of doing something particularly public. There's even the opportunity for the thief to do things to -lower- their Notoriety because it's making things difficult for them.
It turned out to be quite a meaty way to use a single number!
Anyway: here's a sample set of outcomes from rolling on all these tables:
> criminal, piracy, risk lvl 6: six encounters, two weeks travel, gear valuing 1800g
> noble/merchant, bizarre, risk lvl 5: six encounters, next village, +1 Notoriety and a favour
>noble/merchant, theft, risk lvl 1: three encounters, current location, a small favour
These starting points leave quite a bit of fleshing out to do. Who actually is the patron, and what is the specific nature of the job?
Next time: MORE TABLES
