My gaming group is scattered across the four winds and we only get together to play about 4 times a year. Between adventures I have been advancing the setting by several years at a time. What I would love to see was some type of random generator (not a program but a series of charts to roll on) for events that occurred in non-played years. Something like what Pendragon did with its Winter Phase as summarized here: http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/dnd3e/...interphase.pdf

Has anyone created anything like this? I may make one but I was hoping someone else had come up with this idea before me. Something like 20 random investigations, the chance to be introduced to a new contact on the investigation, the chance to gain corruption/insanity (very slight like 1 or 2 points) for the trade off of gaining a few hundred xp.

I was thinking if five years passed between actual sessions the characters could still see some advancement, gain contacts, build back story based on their investigations, etc.

Does something like this exist? Would it be useful?

Never seen one but it would be useful, you could always use another systems and just mod the results to work in the 40k background.

It's a good idea. For WHFRP2 someone'd made an excellent 'in depth character creation' which had massively expanded tables for things like Dooming and 'charms', even a reasonably comprehensive way of modelling friends, foes and family. Rather neat.

With advancing characters randomly, I think a few crucial points would be sensible.

1- Linking each advance. Draw up subsector maps as per Battlefleet Gothic and use those 'routes' to guide the motion of your acolytes over time. (So if they spend three years, they can travel, say, up to nine 'links' away from their starting destination. Doing by D5, number each 'link' on the map, with a 1 being 'remain where you are', something like that. Fudging this then guides you as to where you've actually been through your travels/investigations

2- Explorations. How much did you travel locally during an investigation. D10 with 1 being 'confined to one region' through to 10 being 'massive portion of notable places in star system covered'.

3- Type of investigation. Technothriller (as per CSI), Murder mystery (as per any normal detective program), Political Intrigue, Heresy, Cults, Aliens, Monsters, Inexplicable, Visceral Horror etc.

4- Outcome. Did you 'solve the puzzle'? Case thrown out on a technicality? Jurisdiction remove? Inquisitor showed up to handle it personally? Completely baffled?

5- Loose ends. Every investigation has lingering doubts. Unknown fingerprints on some of the evidence? One crucial witness still missing?

6- Noteable events. Showdown with some baddies? Political farce? Scandal? Fame?

If you were to pick a handful (or a ton) of various Crime/Weird/SF/Horror shows and films (and, of course: real life), I think you could easily make a massive, very comprehensive/satisfying 'story generator' which covers a massive amount of possibilities. Easily. Adding in a few additional rolls to detail what sort of support they called on, what sort of 'aides' or liaisons they had to work with, which sort of resources they spent would be pretty trivial after trawling a bazillion seasons of CSI, Law and Order, the Complete Sherlock Holmes, everything Poirot ever investigated, most Miss Marple, some Rebus, some stuff by Raymond Chandler and maybe just the complete X Files too...

This isn't precisely what you want, but it might help. I wrote it to couple experience with age more strongly (rather than the current setup where a 16 year old has as much experience and skills as a 50 year old):

www.darkreign40k.com/downloads/dark-reign-supplements/age-and-experience-color-/details.html

I created tables to describe events that happen to characters during their terms of service, but you can easily use them as events that happen between missions. They could be the starting point for story ideas. They are deliberately vague.

Hellebore