Fiddliness and Soloing

[d10000]

In real tabletop games, or when doing prep work, I have a high tolerance for fiddliness and crunch, being a fan of BRP, HackMaster, GURPS and other games which are definitely not rules lite. In theory this would be true in solo play, except for one key problem: NPC statistics. Creating a random anything in Risus, Mythic or similar systems isn't too difficult. In GURPS, however, using anything that isn't prestatted is quite involved, the core characteristics are manifold and generate further derived characteristics, etc. Does anyone have ideas on how to implement practical npc/creature generation? The Ultra abstract systems often leave me wanting in a couple areas where grit really entertains me (especially combat and Wilderness Survival) but other than having someone start me up like 50 genre appropriate NPCs and putting them in a manila envelope I don't know how to do this.
GURPS had several solo Conan modules, as did RuneQuest but they are mainly ' choose your own adventure' games with more involved fighting and magic results (which is pretty awesome, but not of obvious help here).

[TimeKiller]

In real tabletop games, or when doing prep work, I have a high tolerance for fiddliness and crunch, being a fan of BRP, HackMaster, GURPS and other games which are definitely not rules lite. In theory this would be true in solo play, except for one key problem: NPC statistics. Creating a random anything in Risus, Mythic or similar systems isn't too difficult. In GURPS, however, using anything that isn't prestatted is quite involved, the core characteristics are manifold and generate further derived characteristics, etc. Does anyone have ideas on how to implement practical npc/creature generation? The Ultra abstract systems often leave me wanting in a couple areas where grit really entertains me (especially combat and Wilderness Survival) but other than having someone start me up like 50 genre appropriate NPCs and putting them in a manila envelope I don't know how to do this.
GURPS had several solo Conan modules, as did RuneQuest but they are mainly ' choose your own adventure' games with more involved fighting and magic results (which is pretty awesome, but not of obvious help here).

Quite an issue you have there, not terribly familiar with those systems, but a few ideas occur to me:

Firstly, some kind of roll chart may be doable, roll a number or 2 and find the results on a chart for skills.

Secondarily, you might try assigning different skill types or character types and qualities to a deck of playing cards, use the cards to determine them.

If you gave a little more info for what sort of info you need I may have some more ideas for you.

[d10000]

Thanks for suggestions, though I decided to just go with Dark Dungeons (D&D Cyclopedia clone).