As a follow up to a question I asked yesterday, I just wanted to provide some feedback and research for anybody interested.
Several helpful TMPers directed me to Berthier, a free and very cool campaign management software system that is free to download. Berthier has a ton of features, is map-based, and can include fog-of-war, scouting, random events, and even supply lines. A very nice find.
Unfortunately, it was far more sophisiticated than what I need for my solo gaming. I am primarily looking for a way to automate some randomized elements of my solo games/campaigns, such as mission creation, enemy force composition, random events (both in-campaign and on the battlefield), reinforcement arrivals, and so on.
I then stumbled upon this: randomgen.site40.net
Randgen is a little program (also free) that is mainly intended to be a highly customizable utility tool for rpg dms. It basically lets you create events and encounter tables, generate enemies, treasure, xp and so on to suit your needs, and it is not game-specific. It is flexible enough that it could easily be used as a tabletop gaming utility. Unfortunatly, it does require that you learn a very simple programming language so that you can construct the logic, formats, tables, ect in whatever fashion you want. It doesn't look all that hard, but aving just sunk mucho time into an abortive attempt to create something similar in basic. I am programmed out for now, but RandomGen shows enough promise that I will return to it in the future.
The final program that I encountered is called KNAS Randomizer, also free. knas.se . It is just what it sounds like; a program that will randomize one or more list that you provide it with. All you have to do to create a table is provide each entry on the different line of a txt file. The program will then randomly select one of the elements-you can specify how many randomized selections are made, and whether there is replacement. So say you create an enemy force list with all the different types of enemy forces that may be encountered (and maybe the more common types have more than one entry). If as part of your scenario setup you learn that the enemy force includes six combat elements, you simply select the enemy force list file from the top of the page, indicate that it should make six selections with replacements, and select go. It will then effortlessly generate the six enemy units for you. I even included the basic game stats for eahc enemy unit on the same line, so everything to play comes up with the force list.
Bottom line: I think all three of these tools could be useful for the solo (as well as social) gamer, depending on your needs.
find wargaming inspiration in his DNA results? Probably!