Random Families

So there I was, making a hook for the beginning of a post-apocalyptic campaign. I needed some families to pose as the maguffin for the start. Rather than intricately detail all of the villagers that my players were frankly not going to give a shit about, I decided that I would randomly generate them. Below is my scheme for how I did that followed by the example families that I had generated.

First, roll the family size (a d8). If the result is 2, check to see if it's just a pairing of two people (two lovers). I had decided that the chances of a single parent might be high, since this was a post-apocalyptic setting. In retrospect, it probably should've been higher. Otherwise, it might be better to have the chance be higher or lower depending on the setting. Perhaps religious controls forbid divorce, but there's always the chance of death in childbirth, war, or freak accidents (how else would a PC's entire family be dead?).

A note on the ages of people: a couple might not have as great an age variance, depending on the mores of the setting. In this case, you can either add a d10 and subtract a d10 ([age]+d10-d10) to find the age of the second person or just decide. Determining the age of adults can vary, of course. It might be better to change what you roll, depending on what age you'd prefer. After finding the age of the parent(s), I would roll the age of each child, progressing down the chart below.

I determined that a group were siblings by the absence of children and determining that the two were not a romantic couple. They could also be cousins.

Family Size 1d8 (3-in-6 chance of a single parent, 2-in-6 chance pairing). Random Age: 10+5d8 adult, 5d3 --> 3d4 --> 2d6 --> d12 --> 1d10 --> 2d4 --> 1d8 --> 2d3 --> 1d6 --> 1d4 child. Sex m-1 f-2. 

Refugee Villagers

Costa Family: Two brothers, 18 and 15.

Derricks Family: Mother and son, 20 and 2.

Durante Family: Husband and wife, 44 and 43. Likely sterile.

Frost Family: husband and pregnant wife, 25 and 23.

Graves Family: Mother & 3 daughters, 24, 8, 6, 3. Father probably died -- that's a nice tragedy and makes for a fierce mother character.

Tasker Family: Two Sisters, 12 & 28.

Thomson Family: Paulo Thomson (scavenger & amateur doctor; 35-jaraĝa viro)

Wetzel Family: Mother (32), father (29), daughter (12), daughter (5), son (3)

Yamasaki Family: Hector (father, 45), Marion (mother, 36), Jonas (10-jaraĝa son), Tandra (6-jaraĝa daughter).

Example of generation process

I roll a d8 to determine family size and the result is 5. I roll a d6 to determine whether it is a single parent, and I get a 2 (so yes, since it's a 1-3 chance out of 6 for a single parent). Ouch, that's four kids for one parent. I roll for the age of the parent, and decide that it might be lower that 10+5d8 so as to provide that it's early in their life. Instead, I roll 18+2d6 and the sum is 26. Next I roll 5d3, 3d4, 2d6, and 1d12 for each of the children. I get, in order of the chart, 10, 10, 10, and 9. How bizarre. I'll say they had triplets (at the age of 16, my God; this is medieval fantasy, for sure) and somehow another one after that. Then, other partner dies to leave four children of more or less the same age to one very very young adult. How terrifying. This is some real life horror. Now I roll sex for each with a d2, starting with the eldest. I roll 2, 1, 2, 2, 2. I'll move that 1 to the 9-year-old. So one single mother with triplet girls and a younger 9-year-old boy.

Going through this process, you might see how I was developing some of the story of this family as I went. The absence of one of the parents I took to mean a tragic death, but it could easily have been abandonment or conscription (the father is still out serving in his lord's rabble). If you're fleshing out a village that's going to be seen quite a lot in your next campaign, this method might help you with that quite a bit.