Rather than hunting through the bestiary to see if Paizo has the perfect level 12 ghost enemy, I can quickly generate whatever stats or loot I need and put most of my effort on the atmosphere or unique abilities the PCs
might face.
Taking a look at Pathfinder generators for 1E and 2E at Leitknight Games.
Q&A with Trevor of Leitknight Gaming
How did you get into creating random generators?
Initially it started as something of a hobby and a way for my wife and
I to sharpen our programming skills. But especially when Pathfinder 2e
came out, there weren’t as many resources available for the new system
so we started to make our own.
What makes Pathfinder your choice of RPG?
We were introduced to the system through a couple of friends about a
decade ago.
Since then we’ve tried a lot of other smaller systems but
we keep coming back to Pathfinder because of the depth of character
building choices and the open source resources such as archive of
nethys and the pfsrd that make tools like ours possible.
What generators are you most proud of creating and why?
Probably a toss up between the loot generator for Pathfinder 2 or the
Duel script.
The loot generator is by far the most popular and used of
our programs.
Duel on the other hand was a lot more challenging to
program. It has two characters fight each other 50k times to see which
one would win the most often, how high your DPS is, etc. So there are
a lot of variables to account for like confirming critical hits,
damage resistance, miss chance, reactions like shield block in
pathfinder 2, etc.
What is the most fun thing about creating generators?
For me at least, seeing it all come together.
Something like the loot generator for pathfinder 1 has a lot of moving pieces. If the program has something like 28k to spend on a weapon it has to account for the
price of a masterwork item, any special materials it might be made out
of, edge cases like cold iron weapons that then make the enchantment
cost additional money, etc.
What are the biggest challenges of creating generators?
Usually things like the edge cases I mentioned above. Thankfully
Pathfinder 2 smoothed out a lot of the strange situations that PF1
had.
Even something as simple as masterwork weapons adding 300gp to
the price while armor only adding 150gp. Or things like trying to
account for randoming nonsensical results such as a darkwood chain
shirt.
How do you use random generators yourself?
I find when I am GMing I like to focus on building the story or what
makes a session interesting.
If for example I want something like a haunted house session with a ghost moving between mirrors. Rather than hunting through the bestiary to see if Paizo has the perfect level 12 ghost enemy, I can quickly generate whatever stats or loot I need and put most of my effort on the atmosphere or unique abilities the PCs
might face.
What is the most interesting generator or tool you've seen?
Not sure if it specifically counts as interesting. But by far the generator I use the most frequently is the fantasy name generator by Emily.
It saves me so much time and has a staggering amount of options. I love that thing.
What are your next big projects (generators or otherwise) that you can talk about?
We don’t have any specific projects in the works. We’re always open to
ideas and suggestions.
But right now the focus is mostly on small improvements across the board. Adding extra backgrounds to the character generator, more in depth population breakdown on the settlement generator. Things of that nature.
Where can people find you on social media?
We have a discord that anyone is welcome to join.
Also a facebook page although to be honest I don’t use facebook all that often.
Is there anything else you would like to talk about?
Just want to say thanks for your page with a lot of great stuff
available and for the chance to talk about some of our work.
More Interviews
You can find more more Creator Interviews on Rand Roll.
I have a discord for discussing random tools and tables and I'm also on instagram as rpg_generators with random tables and gens.
