Shaintar Character Builder and Adventure Generator

It's all about the story, right?

Mr. Richard Woolcock’s savage-stuff.blogspot site is a great resource for all kinds of things. He’s put together a lot of source material for Savage Worlds and other rules system thru the years and a fellow gamer and member of the Nerds-International family Karlen ‘’of-the-hill-people’’ Kendrick has contributed as well. I will be writing about a recent game I ran and the reason I mention these guys and their resources.

I recently ran a Shaintar One-Shot game for some friends, in Fantasy Grounds. I didn’t have as much time as I would’ve liked in order to prepare, so I used the website tool to give me an idea for a scenario (see the link below), and simply used some pre-gens from a previous One-Shot I had run last fall.

link:

Shaintar Adventure Generator

The adventure generator is a great way to get ideas and inspiration, even if you’re not running a Shaintar campaign. Just substitute the appropriate element that suits your own setting. They are generic enough that you will not stand there scratching your head going ‘’WTH!’’ And if you’re not happy or really inspired with one result, just click again on the ‘’Generate Adventure’’ button.


You do have some customization options before you ask for a result. Such as:

• Do you want the adventure to have a twist?
• Do you want the adventure to involve "Something"?
• Does the adventure involve someone who needs rescuing?
• How many complications do you want in the adventure?

So you can get a bare bones scenario that has as many or as few elements as you wish. I myself choose fewer, since I was planning a One-Shot only.

This was for me a great boon. I was able to write up a quick story and it even coincided in an element I had introduced in a long running game a year or so back.

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And now about the Heroes

One of players made me notice that the pre-gen he had picked may have been sub-par compared to the other characters (he picked a human Priest of the Light). There were a few differences between this archetype and a Priest/Cleric of another setting or game system, but I did concede that he had weaknesses I hadn’t considered. Perhaps this pre-gen was one of the last to be written up and I may not have put much thought into him. Whatever the reason, I've decided to spend a bit more time and effort and revised all those pre-gens for future use.


This reminded me of the other Shaintar tool on the Richard's website; The Shaintar Character Generator, and I have decided to play around with and and update these pre-gens at the same time.

link:

Shaintar Character Generator

It is a very user-friendly tool. On the main page you can begin with one of over 20 archetypes or choose a blank one if none of these fit. This is the first step and allows you to create a Novice character with zero experience points.

What’s great about this webtool, other than that you don’t need to download anything, is that it will also let you know if you don’t fulfill an edge’s requirement or if you’re not strong enough for the weapon you carry, even the encumbrance, but you can simply pick a weapon and/or armor that is lighter and change it manually later if you don’t use the encumbrance rules.

That may be one of the drawbacks though. If you want to ignore edge requirements and encumbrance, this tool will not let you save the character or move onto the ‘’Advancement’’ step. But it’s a free character generator, so I’m willing to overlook it.



Once you’ve made the new hero, you can then click on ‘’Character Overview’’. You have a small white box, to the right that will allow you to add a portrait, and then click the ‘’Printable Character Sheet’’.


But if you want give him/her a bit more experience, then click on the ‘’Advance Character’’ button. You will then be able to choose the number of advances for your Hero, from 1 to 20. And once a gain it will let you know if you meet the new edges’ requirements. It will even take into account skill improvements. If a skill is equal or lower than it’s linked attribute, then you will be able to choose another skill to improve. At this step, you cannot change the hero’s gear though. You will have to do this manually yourself.

Once all is done, click on ‘’Character Overview’’ and you will be able to print or save as a PDF the character sheet, which looks quite nice. Too bad it doesn't save as an xml though. Then it would be even easier to upload it to Fantasy Grounds, but if all that's left is to write them up in your VTT, that's still pretty good. 

I created 5 Veteran characters of different races and professions (50XP) in less than and hour or so. I may tweak them a bit, but the grunt work has been done for me.

So there you are. Two really easy tools for the GM and one that can be useful to players as well. Just point your player to this Character Generator site after telling him how many Xps he's got to play with, if any.

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You can always reach me for ideas, suggestions or comments at
bignastydragon@gmail.com

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