NPC Squads: Instructions v1.0 · 29 Oct 2026

1. Quick start

1. When your game turns up some NPCs, such as a PEF that turns out to be real or a bar encounter, press the matching big button, e.g. City crowd / PEF.
2. A group of cards appears below, newest on top. Each card is one NPC with everything you need to fight or talk to them.
3. Click OK, DB, OOF or OD along a card's bottom as that NPC takes hits.

On a mission? Pick a Race, Class or Profession under Who before rolling, e.g. Zhuh-Zhuh and Computer Tech, and the whole group will be that.

2. The Roll buttons

Each button rolls a new group the way the book does for that situation:

• City crowd / PEF: the New Hope City "Who are they?" tables, changed by the Area and time of day you pick under Where.
• Confrontation: the Confrontation encounter's own table. A Shaker result can turn out to be a Mover with a Mercenary bodyguard, as in the book.
• Raid / Defend: the Defend table, which the book also uses for Raids.
• Police: the book's New Hope City police list. If you roll the number, it's capped at the Law Level + 1.
• Pirates: the book's pirate list.

Clear all removes every group (it asks first).

3. Where

New Hope City

Pick the Area and tick Daytime if it applies. Like the book's tables, these change who is about.

Another planet

Pick the Ring, the planet's Owner (the race whose world it is) and its Planet Class, or press Roll planet to roll them. On another race's world, most of the ordinary people you meet are that race. A higher Planet Class means tougher people.

4. Who

Leave Race, Class and Profession on "Any" to let the tables decide. Pick any of them to fix it for the whole group. For example, Race: Hishen on its own gives a group of Hishen with rolled jobs, and Profession: Police Officer gives a squad of police.

The Race list includes Zhuh-Zhuh Muggies (the small ones). Gender follows the book: Grath are always genderless, Hishen always male, Xeog and Razor always female.

5. How many

• Exactly: you choose the number, from 1 to 12, for when you already know.
• Roll it: the book's ½d6 roll against the size of your Band (fill in how many are in your Band, counting your Star). For Police, a Law Level box appears, because that caps their numbers.

Check "met before?" rolls whether your Star has met this group before. If so, the group gets a badge: Friendly (it went well, so go straight to Further Interaction) or Grudge (it went badly, so an Interaction result of "Same" counts as "Less").

6. The book's group rules

With Book's group rules ticked (the normal setting), a group follows the book's guidance on who goes around with whom, so it isn't just random strangers. For example:

• Joes (ordinary workers) in one group share the same job.
• A Mover brings a Mercenary bodyguard.
• A Razor leads a Grath and some Hishen, never Xeog.
• Gangers stick together.
• There's only one Dealer, Net Runner or Smuggler in a group.

The first card is the group's Leader and has a highlighted edge. Untick the box if you'd rather every NPC was rolled on its own.

7. Reading a card

Each card is business-card sized and shows, from top to bottom:

• whether it's the Leader,
• the portrait, name, race and gender, and the job (with its class),
• the three big numbers, Rep, People and Savvy,
• the weapon and armour,
• any Attributes and other traits,
• the four hit markers.

8. Marking hits

Click a marker along the bottom of a card:

• OK: carrying on as normal.
• DB (Duck Back): a small stamp goes in the corner, so the stats stay readable.
• OOF (Out of the Fight): a big stamp, and the card fades.
• OD (Obviously Dead): a big stamp, the card fades further, and its border turns dashed.

The markings show on PNG pictures too, which is handy for showing the state of a fight in a video.

9. Changing a group

For the whole group

• Click the group's name to rename it, e.g. "Bar on 5th Street".
• + One more adds another NPC who fits the group.
• Remove group deletes it.

For one card (the small buttons under it)

• Re-roll: a new NPC in the same slot.
• New face: a different portrait for the same NPC.
• Remove: takes the card out.

10. Pictures, printing and PDFs

• PNG of group saves one picture of the whole group, with its name and any "met before" badge.
• The PNG under a card saves just that card.
• Print / PDF all cards prints every card at real business-card size (85 × 55 mm), two across an A4 page, ready to cut out. To make a PDF, choose "Save as PDF" as the printer.

Pictures use whichever colours you've picked in the Colours list. That includes Custom colours, so you can give each faction its own colour.

Saving ink: pick Greyscale (for printing) before you print.

11. Keeping an NPC

Sometimes a goon survives and becomes part of the story. To Character Gen opens the Character Generator in a new tab with that NPC loaded as a Grunt, ready to give a full sheet. It asks before it replaces the character already there, so save that one first if you want to keep it.

12. Where your groups are kept

Everything happens in your own browser. Nothing is sent to this website, and there are no accounts. Your groups are remembered in your browser's storage, so they're still there next visit until you remove them or clear your browser's data. Pictures are saved straight to your computer. See the privacy page for more.