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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kichwas" data-source="post: 205150" data-attributes="member: 891">So you develop a system for winging it or designing on the fly:PC tries to bluff leathersmith as to the quality of the Gryphan skins he's brought in...I decide the leathersmith is say... 34.I give people a level based on their age. I'll assume adulthood starts at 16 for him. My baseline for most fantasy.So I make him a level 5 commoner.x=(age - adult) - level n. Repeat until x < n. At which point n= level.At level 5 he has 8 ranks in his primary career skills. Half that in secondary skills, 1/4 in minor pursuits, and 0 elsewhere. Round down.My NPCs have a 10 or 11 stat unless I'm making them distinctive in that area.I'd give the NPC a craft or appraise check and if he passed it I'd make the bluff hard to believe.I've learned the hard way that you should always have a LONG list of premade names on hand and somewhere to write them down who Saterus Lesepar is once you've named him.No matter what game you run.Also good to have a chart on hand to generate random appearances.If you have PCGen and a laptop I recommend keeping it open to the 'Description' screen of a blank character.It has a random generator there that will give you instant people with names, personalities, and appearance.(And I added a few hundred entries to this over the last day or so. By next version it will be much more complete than it is now).Since I don't have a laptop I'm probably going to take the data files for that and turn them into numbered charts I can keep next to my DM screen. Naming NPCs on the fly is one of my big weaknesses as a DM. Like I said; I've learned this the hard way... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> I can do the rest on the fly and remember it. But I've always been bad with names.As for handling a detailed system, if I can handle Champions on the fly I can do d20. I've been doing Champions since 85. It was my primary system of choice until I did a comination of find BESM and explore diceless games about a year or so before 3E.It's really not hard to do. You can use the xonsistancy in game mechanics that comes with these games to help you out.If you can remember that everything in d20 degenerates down to 'roll a d20 and add mods, high roll is best' then you've dealt with about 80% of the issues.</blockquote>

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