only two good features in it (the treasure and the random encounters, the rest are horrible, the dice if you add more than one dice to roll it adds them all up and gives you the total (horrible for an world of darkness games as you need the value of each dice to count a success or fail)

the name generator is garbage with names that seem to be made up by a cat walking on a keyboard (you cant even select what race or genre you are making them for)

the weather might be cool if it works, but when i select winter it keeps telling me its warm and sunny??!? and you cant chose the time of day it generates it for.

the business name sounds like they were all made for D&D only in mind.

and the npc traits are bizarre and short like : short white hair, hazel eyes, loves cats, hates politics.

for one dollar i can excuse all that junk and enjoy the only two good features but if you buy it for any of the other ones please beware.

In all, a generally useful suite of programs. They are a bit limited, and you might have to click the "generate" button a couple times to get something you can use at that moment, but each are useful for what they say.

Dice Roller - I prefer dice rollers that (1) showed the actual rolled numbers instead of only the sum, and (2) allowed multiple combinations to be rolled (like being able to roll 10 3d6 for character creation) with one click. This one only does one combination, and it only shows you the sum. I've seen better dice rollers, but this one isn't bad for a quick roll.

Random Weather - This is a very useful function to add color to your descriptions without a lot of work.

Random Names - Most of the names it generated for me are nigh unpronounceable. It's not very useful in its current form.

Random Business Names - Each category has its own formula (for example, the "Taverns and Inns" category, follows the "The [adjective] [noun]" formula), which may detract somewhat if you care that much about the names. For someone like me who has a lot of trouble making names up on the fly, it's a godsend.

NPC Traits - The descriptions get a little outlandish sometimes, but if you keep clicking you'll found something you can use in short order.

Random Treasure - This would be useful for a standard D&D or similar game, but that's about it.

Random Side Encounters - Some will add flavor. Some will make good adventure hooks. Some will be really odd.

im a firm believer in using anything that makes my GM life easier in-game and while prepping adventures. this nice piece of software helps with both.

it offers a simple dice roller, a weather generator, random names, random business names, npc traits, random treasure and random side encounters. heres my thoughts on each...

dice roller : does what it says and easy to use. weather generator : simple descriptive day at a time weather, with seasonal options. random names : outputs were a little too difficult to pronounce most of the time. random business names : choices of taverns & inns, armor & weapons, magic shops or general stores. names outputted seem suitable. npc traits : physical & personality traits. simple & mostly usable. random treasure : choices of small, medium, large or hoard, also gems / jewellry options, choice of coins too. no magic items tho. side encounters : choice of on or off road. seems good descriptive texts, but mostly not worth pc's following up on.

overall a fine piece of software. could it be improved ? of course, such as adding a check for random encounter (ie % chance of encounter in various terrains, not stating what encounter is just yes or no to an encounter) per day. id also give the option of doing a month of weather at a time saved to txt file or copy / paste enabled. also i would change this into a stand-alone executable program, not an installed one as could then be run anywhere on anyones pc or from usb stick without need for full install.

thanks to prism tho, keep up the good work :)

Excellent and recommended little program. Often use it for doing my game prep and prompting my imagination.

Nice little program. Useful if you have a laptop at the gaming table.

Total rip off program, I could have done alot better with a simple excel spread sheet.

The Generic Game Master's Helper is a software program designed to aid game masters while playing RPGs. This is a generic program suitable to any fantasy or even non-fantasy setting, and has a number of useful features that DMs can use to speed up or improve their games. This review is for version v3.0 of the GGMH program, and was reviewed on a system running Windows XP. This software program is written specifically for the Windows platform, although that is by and large the only requirement for running the program.

The program is very easy to install and offers to opportunity to abort the installation on numerous occasions. Installation is quick and without any quirks. There is an option to uninstall the program once installed. The program interface is very simple and easy to use. The main window contains a single piece of artwork, and each of the menus operates by bringing up pop-up windows that enable one to use the various features of the software. There is an adequate help system as well, whereby the user can gain more information on each of the various features by simply pressing a key.

There are a number of features that are included in the program: dice roller, random weather generator, random name generator, random business name generator (shops/taverns), traits for NPCs (personality and appearance), random treasure generation (coins and gems only), and the function to generate short blurbs for side encounters. Each function is accessible from the menu, although only one can be active at the same time. This to a certain extent limits the usefulness, as I can certainly see the need arise where one may want to use more than one of these functions at the same time, and have all the pop-up windows open at once. Each pop-up window contains the full functionality of the feature, as well as some additional artwork to support the feature, although in most cases it has little to do with the function of the feature itself.

The features themselves all work as expected, generating the required data as they should. For the most part, I found a lot of these useful, and most of them provided something interesting to use in game or even out of game when preparing for an adventure. Being able to generate random names, business names, and NPC traits in one package has a certain appeal to it. However, there are a couple of quirks that could probably be improved upon. For one, the dice roller could at least have included something a little more useful for character generation. Many games use the mechanic where you roll a number of dice and drop the lowest, and there is no facility for this. Also being able to see what each individual die roll was when rolling more than one would've been useful in addition to the total provided. The dice roller is fairly random, though not perfect by any means.

The other features provide loads of options, although I suspect that once again the random nature of the options is not always as random. It was fairly easy to generate the same name more than once with just a few simple clicks, in particular for some of the features such as the side encounter generator. The names function work very well, although once again the business names tended to generate similar names a little too often for one's tastes. Having said that, the name generator itself tends to generate odd names here and there with too many consonants crammed together which makes the names rather strange to read or pronounce ('Brklaingin', for example).

Overall I think some may find this a useful package, particularly if you're working in campaigns with lots of travelling or lots of NPCs that need to be detailed. The average dungeon crawl will naturally not find much use for this, but when preparing for city-based adventures or campaigns this can help a lot. While the features are useful, I think they're not quite random enough and don't generate enough options. Too often the same result comes up a few clicks after the result came up the first time. This can certainly be improved upon.<br><br> <b>LIKED</b>: A collection of useful features and an easy-to-use interface with no apparent bugs or quirks.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: The random nature of the various features is quite poor with the same result coming up too frequently just a few clicks down the line. This plagues most of the features of the software program. Even though the program can supposedly generate thousands of variations in each feature, the randomization doesn't allow this well enough.<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Acceptable<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Disappointed<br>

This is a great handy littl tool, at a fair price. I highly recomend it for ANY GM!<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>