Introduction

The FDE program is an extended interface to the Fast and Dirty Expendables section of the Cyberpunk 2020© game system. It is simply an automated program which quickly generates these fast characters.

10 roles, 12+ varied ages, 96+ weapons, 123 cyberwear options, 84 skills, 2 genders...over 238 million combinations. That doesn't count the 4600 possible names.

Enhancements

FDE provides a number of enhancements over the base charts offered on page 20 of the second edition manual.

Random Name Generation

Using a flexible algorithm, names are generated based on 3 unique name sets. The data set includes 4600+ names. The algorithm also provides middle initials as well as middle names occasionally. Users may turn this on or off as well as enter a name on the form if turned off.

Role Generation

Roles can either be assigned randomly by the program or if the user is need of an NPC for a specific task, a role can be selected from the interface screen.

Age

Many times NPC characters need to fit some task which requires a different age spectrum than the standard 16+2d6. FDE allows the user to input the age range the NPC should fall within and then randomly assigns an age within that group. The program defaults to the range 16-28 in correspondence to the typical PC generation phase.

Advanced Skill Points

Since characters are generally more experienced with age, the FDE program allows the use of additional skill points based on the characters age. These points are determined by the character's random age minus the minimum age. Thus a typical PC who has an age of 25 would subtract the minium age (16) and have 9 additional skill points which are randomly dispersed across both career and pick-up skills. Age range must be greater than 16 and the choice must be turned on.

Stats

The FDE program does not adjust stats to match the role of the NPC. This may seem like a detraction rather than an enhancement but it gives a variety of abilities in the various roles. Besides, how many of you college graduates are actually doing what you went to school for? I purposely decided to not match stats with roles to give some degree of realism to my NPCs.

Armor

Armors are currently handled by the same small set suggested in the source book. However, the EV value and SP areas are calculated and displayed as appropriate.

Weapons

Weapons are generated by type but not by weight category within the types. Full specs for the weapons are displayed but the current list of weapons is limited to the main source book. Additional weapons will be added as time is availalble.

2/12/01 Fixed up weapons tables. See New Releases for add'l info.

Miscellaneous

Cyberware

Cyberware generation is now much more intelligent. It currently handles most things intelligently. Breaking from the standard FDE, the program allocates 1-3 cyberware items for non-solos, 3 plus 1d3 for Solos. In addition, all characters add one additional item per six years beyond the age of sixteen.

Future Installments

Miscellaneous

There are a number of things I've thought about doing that I haven't written the code for. Money, for instance, could be done but I've yet to come up with a workable system for implementing it. Also, the pickup skill system currently gives 5 skills beyond the career skills. I plan to make this a bit more random at some point. (Yes, 5 was just the number I chose and has nothing to do with the system, Choomba.) Another thing I'd like to develop is a Handle generation scheme similar to the random names. Unfortunately, in my experience, these are fairly character-specific and there I have yet to come up with a good source of these to use for the selection process.

Proper Use

This program is designed to be free. The code contained with the program is, however, copyrighted 1997 to Mark A. Hassman. Thus, the code may not be used in whole or in part in any other work intended for commercial use. Currently, the program is not available in any format other than the CGI program. I originally had it tailored for standard text input/output for use on any machine with a C++ compiler but the development environement was shifted to a Unix box and geared toward cgi. I may attempt to retrofit the original program for distribution.

Cyberpunk:2020 is a Registered Trademark of R.Talsorian Corporation. Original Cyberpunk:2020 material Copyright 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 by R.Talsorian Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Used without permission. Any use of R.Talsorian Corporation's copyrighted material or trademarks in this archive should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights or trademarks.

New Releases

Oh my. Fixed a problem that occured during the upgrade of the box this runs on. That's fixed. Next, I've been adding a few weapons from various official supplements. Shall I expand to the various online weapon listings with the author's permission? Email me your vote

Feedback: Comments, Suggestions and Bug Reports

If you use the program and come to the conclusion that it should do something it doesn't (or does something it probably shouldn't), let me know. I would love to hear if the thing is of any use to anyone. I can be reached via email at mark@moosh.net. If you provide a good return address, I'll most likely respond within a day or two.

Now, without further ado here's what you've been reading about... FDE: Fast & Dirty Expendables.