Something I have been working on recently is a bestiary for my Far Jewel campaign setting. I wanted something that follows the Cepheus Engine rules and worked for my Far Jewel setting, but was generic enough for others. I think I’m there.
Round 1…
The reason I am doing this is I wanted to have a range of life forms that I could use in my roleplaying, but didn’t want to have to design all of them from scratch. I had created a couple other generators on two other sites for NPCs, so this sounded like not too much of a stretch. At the same time, I wanted to have something to present to the community for creating creature stats.
My first effort at creating a "library" of life forms followed the Cepheus Engine SRD rules exactly, including the process for generating the creatures. I called it the "Lifeform Library" instead of a bestiary to match the feel of a science fiction scientific database.
The creatures were generated by looping through each terrain type, then randomly selecting the remaining features, and then presented in standard Cepheus animal format. This worked great, and could generate tons of life forms. I had problems, though, tying them to specific worlds or planetary bodies.
The more I thought about that, and some other issues I was wrestling with, I decided that I needed to do some more work…
Round 2…
I then redid the generation script I use, and had it instead loop through planets that I had fleshed out, and designated as having, in GURPS 3e terms, lower animals, higher animals or near intelligence. (I left out Earth, it being the only world in Far Jewel that has actual intelligence).
From there, I looped through the various terrains and animal types/subtypes, and then generated the actual creatures from there. This seemed to work out much better–I could very definitely tie each creature to a specific planetary body and the policorp that identified it. The performance was even faster, too.
Some of the changes I also incorporated was tying the available terrains to the planetary body type (no desert on an ocean world, etc.) and incorporating the effects of gravity on life forms (high gravity = fewer flyers, low gravity = larger sizes, etc). One feature I wanted to incorporate was the hydrography rating for the planet, but found that was going to be difficult based on how I had the system set up. To some extent, that was already incorporated into the available terrain types, so I am leaving that out for now.
I then improved the way you could find the creatures, which now includes searching by star system. Finally, I added a link from the planetary description page to the Lifelorm Library catalog–that way if you were looking up info on a planet, you could find out what life forms have been found there.
Future Work…
The one big thing I did not get done yet is creating multiple ways to search for life forms. I want to add ways to search by designation (to find something you may have seen before) and more importantly, to be able to search on various creature features.
Searching by star and planet works great for people who want to use my Far Jewel setting, but being able to search by animal features–type or subtype, locomotion, etc.–that will allow anyone to find a representative creature to use in their own campaign.
I also want to play with the readouts some more to get the right feel. That can be more of a personal preference thing, but I’m going to keep working on it.
Anyway, the Lifeform Library can be found under the Far Jewel heading up above, or at the link here. Take a gander, and let me know what you think in the comments below. I’m curious how everyone else generates creatures for Cepheus or Traveller, and what you think of what I have done!
Marko ∞
(Originally published on inthelabyrinth.org, on 9/20/2019. I updated this article to the links point to the Lifeform Library on Untold Realms. I have the tool running here now, but I still need to tweak it some…)
