Field Agent 3 Abigael "Abby" Tynan - Age 34
Str: 5(-1) Int: 9(+1)
Dex: 11(+2) Edu: 7(+0)
End: 7(+0) Soc: 7(+0)
Skills: Persuade-3, Deception-2, Communications-1, Investigate-1, Streetwise-1, Flyer-1, Melee-1, Carousing-0, Art(Singing)-0, Art(Songwriting)-0, Trade(Waitress)-0
Possessions: TL-12 Wafer Jack, Cr30,000
Enemies: Count Haakon of Sacnoth
1/2 Term Performer(Singer/Songwriter), 3 Terms Intelligence (Field Agent)
Abby grew up on Sacnoth (Sword Worlds/Sacnoth A775956-C), where she had a brief career as a singer/songwriter. When one of her more political songs became a hit, the local noble whose corruption she was satirizing (Count Haakon) took offense and put an end to her career.
Hoping to escape Count Haakon's reach, Abby applied to be a colonist, but was rejected - the colonial office couldn't risk the wrath of Count Haakon. Dejected and wondering what to do with her life, she was approached by Sword World Intelligence, who moved her to the capital of the Confederation, Gram (A895957-C). Though reluctant to move to her homeworld's chief rival in the Confederation, Abby realized that Gram was probably the one world where Count Haakon's influence would not reach.
Abby rose quickly through the ranks, making a name for herself as a field operative. Her good looks and easy nature made her a natural operative, and she helped to uncover numerous worker revolts and other threats to Gram's leadership.
In her 4th term, an unknown enemy blew her cover and her brother was nearly killed. The service decided that they no longer required her, and she was mustered out. Unusually, Abby was permitted to retain her wafer jack (TL-12, hidden access port), though she did have to turn in her software package and submit to a wafer-jack wipe to remove any classified data.
Showing posts with label Traveller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Traveller. Show all posts
Saturday, April 11, 2015
Friday, February 13, 2015
A quick thought on Traveller Social Standing
The topic of "why doesn't Traveller have Charisma, and how do I represent a boorish Noble?" comes up with some frequency in Traveller discussions.
Aside from the obvious hack of just giving characters a 7th stat for Charisma (which works fine), you can also get some mileage out of an alternate reading of the Traveller description for Social Standing (SS).
In Starter Traveller, the book says, "Those with social standing of B+ (11 or greater) are considered to be noble, and may assume their family's hereditary title." That's pretty straight forward.
But what if you decide instead that SS is how well does the character handle themselves in social situations? Assuming that SS of 11 or better is having "courtly manners" that would imply a noble background, give the player the option of actually being a noble OR having some other back story to explain their knowledge of courtly ways. It might even be possible that a high SS player came from a bloodline in exile, or that they served a noble family and the character is "passing".
Of course this is a two-edged sword. The Referee would then have to permit "fallen nobles" who has SS of less than their family due to apathy or ennui, but still maintained their title.
However, interpreting SS even more loosely allows lowborn characters who are highly charismatic to have entre into high SS situations because, though they're unlearned in manners, they have a magnetism that even nobles find charming.
I prefer this interpretation of SS. Just like having a high Education does not automatically make you a professor, having a high Social Standing ought not force a player into the nobility.
Just a thought.
Aside from the obvious hack of just giving characters a 7th stat for Charisma (which works fine), you can also get some mileage out of an alternate reading of the Traveller description for Social Standing (SS).
In Starter Traveller, the book says, "Those with social standing of B+ (11 or greater) are considered to be noble, and may assume their family's hereditary title." That's pretty straight forward.
But what if you decide instead that SS is how well does the character handle themselves in social situations? Assuming that SS of 11 or better is having "courtly manners" that would imply a noble background, give the player the option of actually being a noble OR having some other back story to explain their knowledge of courtly ways. It might even be possible that a high SS player came from a bloodline in exile, or that they served a noble family and the character is "passing".
Of course this is a two-edged sword. The Referee would then have to permit "fallen nobles" who has SS of less than their family due to apathy or ennui, but still maintained their title.
However, interpreting SS even more loosely allows lowborn characters who are highly charismatic to have entre into high SS situations because, though they're unlearned in manners, they have a magnetism that even nobles find charming.
I prefer this interpretation of SS. Just like having a high Education does not automatically make you a professor, having a high Social Standing ought not force a player into the nobility.
Just a thought.
Friday, December 12, 2014
Comfort Food
Why do I always go back to Classic Traveller when I'm feeling down?
Is it because of nostalgia for the countless hours I spent in my youth designing spaceships and worlds?
Is it because of the inherent simplicity of the rules make it easy to run "thought scenarios"?
Or is it because in Traveller, the universe is truly what you make it, with the rules offering as much or as little direction as you desire?
I've all but given up on running an ongoing campaign at home or with friends, but on days like today, I still daydream about jumps into poorly mapped out systems, facing off against rival crews/gangs who heard the same rumors as you did about lost treasures and civilizations, suiting up in your best new gear in hopes that you're not bringing a knife to a gun fight, and doing 2d vector math while juggling limited computer processing resources.
Ok, maybe not so much that last one. :)
Is it because of nostalgia for the countless hours I spent in my youth designing spaceships and worlds?
Is it because of the inherent simplicity of the rules make it easy to run "thought scenarios"?
Or is it because in Traveller, the universe is truly what you make it, with the rules offering as much or as little direction as you desire?
I've all but given up on running an ongoing campaign at home or with friends, but on days like today, I still daydream about jumps into poorly mapped out systems, facing off against rival crews/gangs who heard the same rumors as you did about lost treasures and civilizations, suiting up in your best new gear in hopes that you're not bringing a knife to a gun fight, and doing 2d vector math while juggling limited computer processing resources.
Ok, maybe not so much that last one. :)
Thursday, August 21, 2014
Traveller Character Damage - Pulp vs. Beaten to a Pulp
One of the reasons my home group has given for not wanting to play Traveller is that it's not very "heroic". People can (and do) die easily, and aside from getting better equipment and ships, there's no character advancement to speak of. (Not technically true of course, but "leveling up" is not as exciting an event as it is in D20 games.)
So that got me thinking. Sure, I could switch to "Stars Without Number" (a very well done fusion of D&D and Traveller concepts), but if I were to keep good ol' Traveller as the basis, how could I make personal combat less punishing for the characters without requiring them to always use their Battledress and Plasma Rifles?
Well, one way is to adjust how damage and healing are handled.
In the versions of Traveller I like the best (Classic and Mongoose), damage comes straight off the 3 physical stats. I like this convention because it means as you get hurt, you lose capability. But in both versions, healing is more "realistic", in that it takes days or weeks to recover from wounds. That's SO not Pulp...
Inspired by later edition D&D's handling of damage, I've come up with an alternative, synthesizing CT, MgT and to a very lesser extent, D&D 4+. It's not that different from the stock system(s), but hopefully will be different enough to "pulp" things up a bit.
(Aside: I had a more comprehensive system laid out, but after writing an "or you could just do it this way..." section, I decided I like that way more, so it's the only one I've presented here. Also, CT's standard system is pretty forgiving if you don't actually "bottom out" a stat, so maybe this is just an MgT thing....)
ASSUMPTIONS
RULES
So that got me thinking. Sure, I could switch to "Stars Without Number" (a very well done fusion of D&D and Traveller concepts), but if I were to keep good ol' Traveller as the basis, how could I make personal combat less punishing for the characters without requiring them to always use their Battledress and Plasma Rifles?
Well, one way is to adjust how damage and healing are handled.
In the versions of Traveller I like the best (Classic and Mongoose), damage comes straight off the 3 physical stats. I like this convention because it means as you get hurt, you lose capability. But in both versions, healing is more "realistic", in that it takes days or weeks to recover from wounds. That's SO not Pulp...
Inspired by later edition D&D's handling of damage, I've come up with an alternative, synthesizing CT, MgT and to a very lesser extent, D&D 4+. It's not that different from the stock system(s), but hopefully will be different enough to "pulp" things up a bit.
(Aside: I had a more comprehensive system laid out, but after writing an "or you could just do it this way..." section, I decided I like that way more, so it's the only one I've presented here. Also, CT's standard system is pretty forgiving if you don't actually "bottom out" a stat, so maybe this is just an MgT thing....)
ASSUMPTIONS
- In combat, Endurance represents how "tough" you are, and acts as a buffer against "hard" damage.
- Strength and Dexterity damage is real "broken bone, deep cut" damage, and actually requires healing.
- Instant healing Medkits are available, and fill a role similar but not identical to "Health Potions" in fantasy games.
- Resuscitation of recently dead characters is possible, given prompt attention and/or sufficient medical technology.
RULES
- Damage is applied to Endurance first.
OPTIONAL: reducing Endurance to zero with the first shot will knock the character unconscious. (The "first blood rule" - I generally only use this for NPCs.) - Once Endurance is Zeroed, other damage must go to Strength or Dexterity, player's choice. Apply the WHOLE damage to that stat, and spill any extra on to the remaining stat.
- Strength and Dexterity don't start taking damage until Endurance is ZERO.
- Zero out Strength OR Dexterity, and you're unconscious
- Zero out BOTH, and you're dead
- Endurance restores after a "short rest" (1 hour), or by using a Medpack as a standard action.
- First Aid is assumed to happen during the "short rest".
If it can't for some reason, then Endurance only recovers 1/2, and must heal like other stats. - Once Endurance is restored, other Stats may heal, though never past their initial values:
- 1d6+END points per Medpack used.
- 1+END point per day for light duty, 2 for "bed rest".
- A doctor can use Medic to assist this recovery
- OPTIONAL: if you use more than 1 Medpack per hour, you'll suffer 1D damage from overdose. This damage goes straight to Strength or Dexterity, player's choice. It might be worth it, if Endurance is higher than the number rolled, but it's clearly a risk.
- Recently (within 5 min) killed characters can sometimes be resuscitated:
- A character who has taken total damage beyond twice the sum of all three physical stats cannot be resuscitated. (For an average 777 character, that's 42 points to "vaporize" from healthy. Though it's only 21 points to "mangle the body beyond recovery" from dead.)
- A Resusci-pack (Cr100,000) will bring a character back to 1 in all stats.
- A Difficult Medical/DEX check can work, but each failure adds MoF to the next attempt to resuscitate.
- Some military armors are equipped with automatic medical drug systems. Assuming the armor's supply of medicine is available, the automatic systems will apply the drug any time the character's Endurance hits zero. However, this will happen AFTER the rest of the damage has been distributed, and will not happen if there is a possibility that drug overdose could kill the character. (No stat left is greater than 6.)
Tuesday, May 13, 2014
Twilight's Peak and Traveller Tuesdays
Well, my Traveller Tuesdays group has failed to precipitate from Jump Space, and must be declared lost.
But I've been able to gin up some support for a different Traveller game, this time based around "Legend of the Sky Raiders". (The last one was a sandbox campaign loosely based on "Twilight's Peak", but running wit Mongoose Traveller rules.)
I'd be going back to Classic Traveller, with which I had some success running "Death Station" a while back.
I'll keep "Rule 68A" as a tool for general task throws, but run everything else "by the book". But I won't forget to use the "draw!" rules this time. The fact that CT has what amounts to a combat's initiative system mentioned as almost an afterthought does make one scratch one's head.
But I've been able to gin up some support for a different Traveller game, this time based around "Legend of the Sky Raiders". (The last one was a sandbox campaign loosely based on "Twilight's Peak", but running wit Mongoose Traveller rules.)
I'd be going back to Classic Traveller, with which I had some success running "Death Station" a while back.
I'll keep "Rule 68A" as a tool for general task throws, but run everything else "by the book". But I won't forget to use the "draw!" rules this time. The fact that CT has what amounts to a combat's initiative system mentioned as almost an afterthought does make one scratch one's head.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014
Traveller Universal World Profile extensions
I found these thoughts on Traveller world profiles the other day, and thought they might be worth spiffing up and posting. I hope you find them amusing, even if they don't fit into your view of what Traveller worlds can be like.
As a completist, the fact that in Traveller, certain Universal World Profile (UWP) codes do not extend to ‘F’ (15) has always bugged me a little. For some, like Hydrographic Percentage (0-A), it makes sense. But for Population and Government, it seems that there could be a good scifi use for these “extra codes”.
Population D worlds often have Government type F (see below), but could be any government type. The Government would determine the character of the planet; whether it’s one giant mass of seething telepathically linked worms, a dense hive of SmartAnts™, or some other probably unsettling situation.
Population
The population digit is the exponent of 10, represented in hexadecimal. For example, with 7 billion people on Earth, our Population would be 9. Soon, we'll hit A.
Population D: Uncountable Population
These worlds are "Hive Worlds" with a large number of (most likely alien) sophonts who are not countable in a practical way, either due to their life cycle or living arrangements. Good examples would be “bugs” or a planet full of the creatures from “Pandorum”. The salient characteristic of Population D is that there are more physical creatures than can practically be counted.Population D worlds often have Government type F (see below), but could be any government type. The Government would determine the character of the planet; whether it’s one giant mass of seething telepathically linked worms, a dense hive of SmartAnts™, or some other probably unsettling situation.
Population E: Incorporeal population
These worlds are peopled by non-physical or virtual intellects that can have zero or more bodies and thus are not easily accounted for, as they can create and destroy physical forms somewhat at will. The referee should generate a "True population" number that is the number of intelligences if the concept of individuals still applies. Note that the Gov type can be just about anything, and should be generated from the True Population number rather than the E rating.
Scenario Idea: It's possible that the inhabitants of the Pop E world have a way to determine their true population, and could desire to "set the record straight" with the Imperial Survey Department, depending on their cultural leanings.
Population F: Intelligent Ecosystem
Fully symbiotic intelligent ecosystem (ala Chtorr). In effect, the entire ecosystem is the population. May be difficult to communicate with, though often will have a member species that can interface with the outside world. As with a Type E government, the referee should separately determine the size of the "interface" population species, if one exists. Often but not necessarily paired with Gov F.Government
The additional forms of governments proposed allow for specifying some common scifi themed cultures. In some cases, (as with the existing Balkanization government type) the Referee may need additional notes to fully detail the situation.
Government E: Trans-physical Ascendancy
All citizens live in a virtual environment or separate plane of existence, subject to the whim of who or whatever controls the environment. This situation implies either current or past High Tech ability (The Matrix) or some form of Psionic environment (like Avatar but more so, or Stargate "Ascended"). It’s possible that the inhabitants’ physical forms are still maintained in some way (as in The Matrix).
Scenario Note: It is likely that Travellers will only interact with whatever watchdog systems have been left to guard the planet from outsiders unless they can “get in” somehow. And once in, it may prove difficult to get back out.
Government F: Hive/Communal Mind
All "citizens" share a common will and memory. The hive will either Ignore, Attack or Assimilate outsiders as determined by the Referee. Examples range from Starship Trooper “Bugs” to Star Trek’s Borg. The Referee should determine how many such hives exist on the planet, and if more than one, what “government” they operate under (roll from the number of hive minds, not population). Government F does not require any particular population codes, though the examples found in fiction often match up well with D or F.
Note: Law Level on these worlds represents how aware the commune/hive is of outsiders. An example might be the early Borg episodes of Star Trek™, The Next Generation™ - humans could move about inside their cube ships unmolested for the most part.
Note: Law Level on these worlds represents how aware the commune/hive is of outsiders. An example might be the early Borg episodes of Star Trek™, The Next Generation™ - humans could move about inside their cube ships unmolested for the most part.
Friday, February 14, 2014
A Bunch of New Classic Traveller Characters
I found a notebook with some more Classic Traveller characters I had generated, so I decided to share them. Not that it's hard to generate characters in CT (in fact, it's a fun minigame), but I figure that maybe someone might want some NPCs to play around with.
They're in Courier font because it fits with the 70's and early 80's aesthetic of the game, and I used a slightly modified "index card" format, as you might see in The Traveller Book. Also, I bought some gear for some of these guys - their Credits and Possessions have been updated accordingly.
If nothing else, maybe I'll inspire someone to dig out Classic Traveller and play some. It seems unlikely that I'll get to play any CT anytime soon. (Yeah, I know, so sad. For a guy currently in two different D&D-flavored campaigns, I sure do whine a lot.)
They're in Courier font because it fits with the 70's and early 80's aesthetic of the game, and I used a slightly modified "index card" format, as you might see in The Traveller Book. Also, I bought some gear for some of these guys - their Credits and Possessions have been updated accordingly.
If nothing else, maybe I'll inspire someone to dig out Classic Traveller and play some. It seems unlikely that I'll get to play any CT anytime soon. (Yeah, I know, so sad. For a guy currently in two different D&D-flavored campaigns, I sure do whine a lot.)
Army Lt. 59A6B6 Age 22
1 Term Cr19,150
Medical-1, Electronics-1, ATV-1, Blade Cbt-1, Rifle-1, SMG-1
Possessions:
Cloth Armor, SMG
Notes:
Slight, but athletic
Has advantageous DEX for all trained weapons
Merchant 4th Officer 785767 Age 26
2 Terms Cr39,150
Vacc Suit-1, Electronics-1, Steward-1
Possessions:
Blade, Autopistol, Cloth Armor
Notes:
Scout Explorer 7B986A Age 30
3 Terms Cr49,400
Mechanical-2, Gunnery-1, Navigation-1, Pilot-1,
Air/Raft-1, JoT
Possessions:
Autopistol, Cloth Armor, Scout/Courier
Notes:
Marine Captain Knight 98995B Age 26
2 Terms Cr7,000
Cutlass-2, Revolver-1, Rifle-1, ATV-1, Electronics-1
Possessions:
Notes:
Merchant 3rd Officer B77CD7 Age 34
4 Terms Cr60,000
Engineer-3, Streetwise-3, Bribery-1, G-Vehicle-1
Possessions:
Notes:
Hypercompetent Engineer.
Often gets deals on his own parts
Navy Lt. Cmdr Knight 67696B Age 30
3 Terms Cr60,000
Gunner-2, Vacc Suit-1, JoT-1
Possessions:
TAS, Low Passage
Notes:
Gunnery Section leader
Moves in High Society, recently knighted
Very "By the Book" in approach
Scout X-Boat/Courier 6797A7 Age 30
3 Terms Cr50,000
Pilot-1, Navigation-1, Engineering-1, Computer-1,
Air/Raft-1, JoT
Possessions:
Notes:
Gained EDU while in jumpspace on the X-boat line
Army Captain 98B4A7 Age 26
Terms 2 Cr40,000
Admin-2, Tactics-2, Gambling-2, SMG-2, Rifle-1
Possessions:
SMG
Notes:
Army Colonel 77A894 Age 38
Terms 5 Cr25,000
Rifle-2, SMG-2, Tactics-2, Leader-1, Computer-1,
Fwd Obs-1, ATV-2, Brawl-1
Possessions:
Pension/4kCr, High Passage, SMG
Notes:
Merchant Captain 5B7CA9 Age 42
Terms 6 Cr22,000
Streetwise-3, Steward-2, Electronics-2, Navigation-1,
Bribery-1, Pilot-1, JoT
Possessions:
Blade, Gun, Free Trader
Notes:
Friday, August 9, 2013
What Does Lovecraftian Gaming REALLY Mean?
I've been a fan of H.P. Lovecraft and his peers since I first discovered weird fiction and cosmic horror back in High School. I read everything I could get my hands on - Machen, Chambers, Bloch, etc. The Chaosium fiction collections came out in my early adulthood, and I found (and still find) them a great source for stories I hadn't read before. (Aside: I had to stop reading "A Season in Carcosa" recently, because even though the stories seem innocuous enough, I found them seeping into my dreams. I'll read more once the creeping dread fades.)
But I have never had a lot of interest in "Lovecraftian" gaming. You know, lots of deep ones going after people, ghouls, big, floppy tentacled monsters, etc. Essentially, the "August Derleth" version of Lovecraft - name dropping and cataloging, but adding anything new.
While I enjoy a good historical wargame as much as the next guy, it seems to me that the general approach to Lovecraftian horror is more like quoting Monty Python skits than writing weird fiction. As a geek, I memorized plenty of M.P. in my youth, but laughing about their comedy is not the same thing as creating "Pythonesque" comedy for people to laugh at.
So, how then does one do something "Lovecraftian" without resorting to name dropping (or re-skinning)? It's a tough question, and I don't claim that I have the skill to produce such a thing. But perhaps I can categorize what it might look like.
What made Lovecraft's stories compelling to me was the way he took things that we all take for granted (or at least took for granted back in the dawn of the last century) and turned them inside out. Jesus' resurrection and plan of salvation, horribly echoed in Cthulhu's return and subsequent scouring of the Earth (recall that HLP was raised Baptist, though he renounced that faith), the fear of finding out that your ancestors were not what you were lead to believe and that you can't choose your own fate, the shock of discovering that maybe a brilliant artist is not as imaginative as everyone believes. The list goes on.
So how do you do something like that in Pathfinder/D&D or Traveller, specifically without invoking Elder Gods and Non-euclidean dimensions?
I'm not sure, but here are some thoughts.
Traveller's Third Imperium (The 3I) is in theory the easiest type of setting to convert to horror, since it rests in the conventions of the real world. However, it already has some "Elder Gods" (The Ancients - not godlike in stature, but certainly in power), hidden secrets (like who the Ancients were - spoiler alert from the 1980's: they were a mutation of a reclusive alien species found in enclaves throughout charted space), strange madness inducing phenomena (some people go mad seeing jumpspace) and hints that there was something more going on with how interstellar travel worked than anyone really knew.
These elements were not blatant expressed in the setting though. In fact, I suspect very few groups actually explored the darker side of the Traveller universe, preferring to focus on its decidedly humanistic and capitalistic themes. Mongoose Publishing's "Secrete of the Ancients" campaign did a good job of re-casting the Ancients as a living force within charted space, and had a nicely Lovecraft-y feel without invoking squid-headed super-beings. (Though there were some interesting ways that the Ancients achieved immortality.) But in the end, it was a Humanist's view of extradimensional horror seasoned with a dash of conspiracy theory, not something that contradicts your concepts of what reality is.
Clearly, something like Mass Effect's Reapers would work for Traveller, though they're more directly Cthuloid, not being "alive" as we know it, etc. But the Reapers are still re-skinned Elder Gods, returning when the stars are right to cleanse the galaxy for their own twisted reasons.
Where can we go in Traveller to reach the disturbing "We were SO WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING" state required by cosmic horror?
Maybe psionic powers are really a mental connection with higher-dimensional beings from "jump space", who can cause the familiar psionic effects, but at a terrible if not obvious price to the psionic. And maybe these beings have a plan? Maybe that's too obvious - science is wrong, mystics are right seems like a cop-out.
Maybe the dawning realization that the entire Nobility structure of the 3rd Imperium is in fact composed of "Manchurian Candidate" type Bioconstructs. And maybe they have been deliberately directing technological progress for the last thousand years, relentlessly pushing for higher and higher power jump drives. And now, misjumps seem to be happening more frequently than in the past. Recently, a long-missing ship has appeared in the outer system with only minimal power signatures on board. A local professor wants to hire a ship to investigate....
Better, even if it's a little "God Emperor of Dune" crossed with the Star Trek:TNG episode "Conspiracy". It undermines with the understanding of how society works, if not the structure of the universe itself. That fits well with Traveller's humanistic focus, which might be a drawback to the concept.
I suppose you could imagine some setting in which punching ships through jump space is disturbing some sleeping entity (reverse-Azathoth?), but then we're back to re-skinning.
Pathfinder is already rife with Lovecraft inspired nastiness, but none of it is truly creepy. (ok, maybe Aboleths....) Of course that's because once you catalog something, it's no longer surprising. Many write ups have great atmosphere when you first read them, or really stop to think about them though. But ultimately, it's just another kind of monster to defeat or flee from. Paizo does a good job with huge, world-shattering plots and clearly are fans of Lovecraft (almost too much so, I sometimes think), but I wonder if it would be possible to take a more subtle approach?
What does that cosmic horror even mean in a world with magic, demons, aberrant horrors and monsters? Can you add anything that would invoke actual horror for the players?
What we need is to take something simple and fundamental to the setting, and turn it inside out, changing the significance into something more horrible than you would expect. That's not as easy as it sounds, since countless authors before you have already pushed the envelope on this one.
To really up-end a D&D type fantasy setting, you would need to do something screwy like have the entire thing be happening inside The Matrix. That's right, not magic and gods, but a transhuman post-singularity setting, where reality was a simulation that could be hacked from the inside. The "twist" is that though reality appears infinitely diverse, full of life, magic and will, it is in fact only the shadow cast by cold data, interacting in complex but ultimately artificial ways. Fantasy lives because of the wonder and infinite potential of the fantastical realty. Showing all that to be merely an illusion would be soul-crushing to a denizen of such a reality.
But would that be cosmic horror for the players, or their characters? I imagine it would cause more than a few players to stop playing, though that's only a victory for horror in a meta sense....
As I mentioned at the start, I don't have any good answers. I'm curious if anyone reading has some ideas how to bring cosmic horror to RPGs without simply invoking Lovecraft's memory.
But I have never had a lot of interest in "Lovecraftian" gaming. You know, lots of deep ones going after people, ghouls, big, floppy tentacled monsters, etc. Essentially, the "August Derleth" version of Lovecraft - name dropping and cataloging, but adding anything new.
While I enjoy a good historical wargame as much as the next guy, it seems to me that the general approach to Lovecraftian horror is more like quoting Monty Python skits than writing weird fiction. As a geek, I memorized plenty of M.P. in my youth, but laughing about their comedy is not the same thing as creating "Pythonesque" comedy for people to laugh at.
So, how then does one do something "Lovecraftian" without resorting to name dropping (or re-skinning)? It's a tough question, and I don't claim that I have the skill to produce such a thing. But perhaps I can categorize what it might look like.
What made Lovecraft's stories compelling to me was the way he took things that we all take for granted (or at least took for granted back in the dawn of the last century) and turned them inside out. Jesus' resurrection and plan of salvation, horribly echoed in Cthulhu's return and subsequent scouring of the Earth (recall that HLP was raised Baptist, though he renounced that faith), the fear of finding out that your ancestors were not what you were lead to believe and that you can't choose your own fate, the shock of discovering that maybe a brilliant artist is not as imaginative as everyone believes. The list goes on.
So how do you do something like that in Pathfinder/D&D or Traveller, specifically without invoking Elder Gods and Non-euclidean dimensions?
I'm not sure, but here are some thoughts.
Traveller
Traveller's Third Imperium (The 3I) is in theory the easiest type of setting to convert to horror, since it rests in the conventions of the real world. However, it already has some "Elder Gods" (The Ancients - not godlike in stature, but certainly in power), hidden secrets (like who the Ancients were - spoiler alert from the 1980's: they were a mutation of a reclusive alien species found in enclaves throughout charted space), strange madness inducing phenomena (some people go mad seeing jumpspace) and hints that there was something more going on with how interstellar travel worked than anyone really knew.These elements were not blatant expressed in the setting though. In fact, I suspect very few groups actually explored the darker side of the Traveller universe, preferring to focus on its decidedly humanistic and capitalistic themes. Mongoose Publishing's "Secrete of the Ancients" campaign did a good job of re-casting the Ancients as a living force within charted space, and had a nicely Lovecraft-y feel without invoking squid-headed super-beings. (Though there were some interesting ways that the Ancients achieved immortality.) But in the end, it was a Humanist's view of extradimensional horror seasoned with a dash of conspiracy theory, not something that contradicts your concepts of what reality is.
Clearly, something like Mass Effect's Reapers would work for Traveller, though they're more directly Cthuloid, not being "alive" as we know it, etc. But the Reapers are still re-skinned Elder Gods, returning when the stars are right to cleanse the galaxy for their own twisted reasons.
Where can we go in Traveller to reach the disturbing "We were SO WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING" state required by cosmic horror?
Maybe psionic powers are really a mental connection with higher-dimensional beings from "jump space", who can cause the familiar psionic effects, but at a terrible if not obvious price to the psionic. And maybe these beings have a plan? Maybe that's too obvious - science is wrong, mystics are right seems like a cop-out.
Maybe the dawning realization that the entire Nobility structure of the 3rd Imperium is in fact composed of "Manchurian Candidate" type Bioconstructs. And maybe they have been deliberately directing technological progress for the last thousand years, relentlessly pushing for higher and higher power jump drives. And now, misjumps seem to be happening more frequently than in the past. Recently, a long-missing ship has appeared in the outer system with only minimal power signatures on board. A local professor wants to hire a ship to investigate....
Better, even if it's a little "God Emperor of Dune" crossed with the Star Trek:TNG episode "Conspiracy". It undermines with the understanding of how society works, if not the structure of the universe itself. That fits well with Traveller's humanistic focus, which might be a drawback to the concept.
I suppose you could imagine some setting in which punching ships through jump space is disturbing some sleeping entity (reverse-Azathoth?), but then we're back to re-skinning.
Pathfinder
(Sorry, Pathfinder doesn't have an iconic title format like Traveller does, and the web doesn't have their font. But that's not a bad match for the color.)Pathfinder is already rife with Lovecraft inspired nastiness, but none of it is truly creepy. (ok, maybe Aboleths....) Of course that's because once you catalog something, it's no longer surprising. Many write ups have great atmosphere when you first read them, or really stop to think about them though. But ultimately, it's just another kind of monster to defeat or flee from. Paizo does a good job with huge, world-shattering plots and clearly are fans of Lovecraft (almost too much so, I sometimes think), but I wonder if it would be possible to take a more subtle approach?
What does that cosmic horror even mean in a world with magic, demons, aberrant horrors and monsters? Can you add anything that would invoke actual horror for the players?
What we need is to take something simple and fundamental to the setting, and turn it inside out, changing the significance into something more horrible than you would expect. That's not as easy as it sounds, since countless authors before you have already pushed the envelope on this one.
To really up-end a D&D type fantasy setting, you would need to do something screwy like have the entire thing be happening inside The Matrix. That's right, not magic and gods, but a transhuman post-singularity setting, where reality was a simulation that could be hacked from the inside. The "twist" is that though reality appears infinitely diverse, full of life, magic and will, it is in fact only the shadow cast by cold data, interacting in complex but ultimately artificial ways. Fantasy lives because of the wonder and infinite potential of the fantastical realty. Showing all that to be merely an illusion would be soul-crushing to a denizen of such a reality.
But would that be cosmic horror for the players, or their characters? I imagine it would cause more than a few players to stop playing, though that's only a victory for horror in a meta sense....
As I mentioned at the start, I don't have any good answers. I'm curious if anyone reading has some ideas how to bring cosmic horror to RPGs without simply invoking Lovecraft's memory.
Thursday, July 25, 2013
Fate&Me
Due to the enthusiastic recommendations of a friend whose judgement I value in all matters related to gaming, I've been interested in Diaspora for some time now. Diaspora is a hard-scifi RPG that is built on the Fate rules engine, and which is greatly (and explicitly) influenced by my favorite SFRPG, Traveller. Up until now though, I haven't had the impetus to plop down the 25 bucks to pick up a copy from the FLGS.
Recently, my son got to play the new Fate Core rules at the FLGS's "RPG Summer Camp" (man, do I wish we had such things when I was a kid...), and I've been reading over the rule book they gave him with great interest. Fate Core is analogous to the core GURPS rules - it's a playable game in its own right, but has no setting in mind, and will generally be extended somewhat to fit whatever type of game you want to play. My wife proactively picked up the Diaspora book for me, since she could see where this was going. :)
You can find a lot of very coherent and informed discussions of Fate with a quick google search, so I'll spare you my "complete newbie's impression of Fate". But the thing to know about Fate-based games like Diaspora is that the game system turns your character's quirks (called "Aspects" in Fate, like "Ace Fighter Pilot", "Attracted to Shiny Things", "I HATE ROBOTS!", etc.) into actual game mechanisms. Everything (characters, items, rooms, starships...) has Attributes, and because of that, players and GMs must understand the rules for how Fate and the "fate point economy" works.
This means that while the rules are simpler than just about any RPG I've played, and a player's imagination is more important than a solid understanding of (for example) how to min/max their character builds, Fate is not quite as friendly to very casual gamers who mostly just want to know "what do I need to roll?" I suspect that WDINTR is a symptom of d20 type games, and any player would quickly adapt to the "How can I exploit the situation to my advantage?" mind-set, but having not had a chance to play yet, I don't know.
So what is Diaspora?
Diaspora is a full RPG written against a pre-Fate Core version of Fate, but is only different in the details. Word on the street is that you can port some of Diaspora's setting ideas to Fate Core and just run with that, and things work out very well. I've already mentioned that it was made by Traveller fans in order to have a harder-science Space Opera game. (Which seems ironic, considering Traveller is MUCH crunchier than Diaspora, but yet less "hard".)
Diaspora only makes one "magic" assumption - the slipstream, which is basically a wormhole between two or more systems. No anti-gravity, no "thruster plates", everything is reaction mass and zero-G (unless you're under acceleration). Diaspora is set in the far future, in a small cluster of worlds, which the players roll up at character creation time. (More of the "Player Buy-in" that's typical of Fate games. Players don't get served the setting, they help create it.) Because of the size of the default "universe" (6 systems, each with 1+ worlds in it worth visiting), players will care more about each world than they do in Traveller. I'm curious to try gaming in such a setting.
One of the more interesting aspects of Diaspora (and Fate in general) is how they handle wealth. Fate in general doesn't concern itself with money. If you want to be rich, give yourself the "Moneybags" (or whatever) attribute. What Diaspora does have is the idea that events (like a ship's maintenance schedule) can do Financial Damage to you which you have to Defend against. You can use the ship's Economic potential to aid your defense, and you can even invoke aspects like "I can get you a deal" or "I know this guy..." to help out, too. If you fail, you take "damage" in the form of a Consequence ("Owes Jabba Bigtime" or "Chartered by Local Noble") that you'll need to take steps to recover from.
You get similar rules for acquiring expensive gear. You make a Wealth skill test against the object's price. If you fail, you still get the object, but you pick up some consequences. It's a novel (to me) way of dealing with possessions, and I'm anxious to see if it works out in practice.
I think Fate and Diaspora sound like a blast, but I must admit that I'm still a fan of more traditional rules. I have to say though, that Fate combat sounds like it will be more narratively satisfying that most d20 combats wind up being.
I'm hoping that I can at least take some cues from Fate into GM-ing my other games, though given Fate's elegant and integrated system, it's not going to be as easy as "drop in some attributes". What I probably will do though, is to more formally adopt the concepts of using actions to create advantages. We do that sort of stuff already ("Can I slam the door and run for it?" "What if I throw a pouch of coins at them, do they stop to pick it up?"), but maybe I need to shift how I conceptualize the action some.
<Shrug> At any rate, Now "Fate Core" is on my radar. My at-home group is mostly anxious to give it a try, so we'll see what happens.
Recently, my son got to play the new Fate Core rules at the FLGS's "RPG Summer Camp" (man, do I wish we had such things when I was a kid...), and I've been reading over the rule book they gave him with great interest. Fate Core is analogous to the core GURPS rules - it's a playable game in its own right, but has no setting in mind, and will generally be extended somewhat to fit whatever type of game you want to play. My wife proactively picked up the Diaspora book for me, since she could see where this was going. :)
You can find a lot of very coherent and informed discussions of Fate with a quick google search, so I'll spare you my "complete newbie's impression of Fate". But the thing to know about Fate-based games like Diaspora is that the game system turns your character's quirks (called "Aspects" in Fate, like "Ace Fighter Pilot", "Attracted to Shiny Things", "I HATE ROBOTS!", etc.) into actual game mechanisms. Everything (characters, items, rooms, starships...) has Attributes, and because of that, players and GMs must understand the rules for how Fate and the "fate point economy" works.
This means that while the rules are simpler than just about any RPG I've played, and a player's imagination is more important than a solid understanding of (for example) how to min/max their character builds, Fate is not quite as friendly to very casual gamers who mostly just want to know "what do I need to roll?" I suspect that WDINTR is a symptom of d20 type games, and any player would quickly adapt to the "How can I exploit the situation to my advantage?" mind-set, but having not had a chance to play yet, I don't know.
So what is Diaspora?
Diaspora is a full RPG written against a pre-Fate Core version of Fate, but is only different in the details. Word on the street is that you can port some of Diaspora's setting ideas to Fate Core and just run with that, and things work out very well. I've already mentioned that it was made by Traveller fans in order to have a harder-science Space Opera game. (Which seems ironic, considering Traveller is MUCH crunchier than Diaspora, but yet less "hard".)
Diaspora only makes one "magic" assumption - the slipstream, which is basically a wormhole between two or more systems. No anti-gravity, no "thruster plates", everything is reaction mass and zero-G (unless you're under acceleration). Diaspora is set in the far future, in a small cluster of worlds, which the players roll up at character creation time. (More of the "Player Buy-in" that's typical of Fate games. Players don't get served the setting, they help create it.) Because of the size of the default "universe" (6 systems, each with 1+ worlds in it worth visiting), players will care more about each world than they do in Traveller. I'm curious to try gaming in such a setting.
One of the more interesting aspects of Diaspora (and Fate in general) is how they handle wealth. Fate in general doesn't concern itself with money. If you want to be rich, give yourself the "Moneybags" (or whatever) attribute. What Diaspora does have is the idea that events (like a ship's maintenance schedule) can do Financial Damage to you which you have to Defend against. You can use the ship's Economic potential to aid your defense, and you can even invoke aspects like "I can get you a deal" or "I know this guy..." to help out, too. If you fail, you take "damage" in the form of a Consequence ("Owes Jabba Bigtime" or "Chartered by Local Noble") that you'll need to take steps to recover from.
You get similar rules for acquiring expensive gear. You make a Wealth skill test against the object's price. If you fail, you still get the object, but you pick up some consequences. It's a novel (to me) way of dealing with possessions, and I'm anxious to see if it works out in practice.
I think Fate and Diaspora sound like a blast, but I must admit that I'm still a fan of more traditional rules. I have to say though, that Fate combat sounds like it will be more narratively satisfying that most d20 combats wind up being.
I'm hoping that I can at least take some cues from Fate into GM-ing my other games, though given Fate's elegant and integrated system, it's not going to be as easy as "drop in some attributes". What I probably will do though, is to more formally adopt the concepts of using actions to create advantages. We do that sort of stuff already ("Can I slam the door and run for it?" "What if I throw a pouch of coins at them, do they stop to pick it up?"), but maybe I need to shift how I conceptualize the action some.
<Shrug> At any rate, Now "Fate Core" is on my radar. My at-home group is mostly anxious to give it a try, so we'll see what happens.
Tuesday, May 7, 2013
Traveller Tuesday, Session #1
We had our first gameplay session of the "Traveller Tuesdays" campaign today over lunch. With only an hour to play there are limits to what you can get accomplished, but the group got pretty far - they established reasons to travel together, where their next stop is, and cleared any legal hurdles to departure. Now, they need to pick up passengers and crew, and take the sky.
The Karman Brevit is a 40 year old safari ship originally converted into a Far Trader, then captured by pirates, and now "rebranded" as a legitimate trader, though with only J-1 capability. A measely 5MCr will fix that drive up though. Three players scored a "Merchant Ship" (5 ship shares), so I let them take a 40 year old ship "for free".
Mongoose Traveller didn't keep the (IMHO excellent) MegaTraveller concept that starship drives are composed of modules, and that you need a certain number of modules to get a certain level of performance out of any given hull displacement. So, I've decided to retrofit the concept. The KB's jump drive is composed of 3 units, 5MCr each, which in concert can propel the ship 2 parsecs per jump. However, one of the modules is damaged beyond repair (in fact, they had the useless hulk of it removed during refit), the ship has the equivalent of a Type-A drive, and until another jump module is acquired, they can only achieve 1 parsec per jump. Each additional jump module they install will give their 200dt hull another parsec of range, but they'll need to convert 20 tons of cargo into fuel for each module and add another power plant module to provide the energy required.
As a side note, I decided a Ship Share is 4%, rather than 1% of a ship's cost. So a single "ship" result (5 shares) is effectively a downpayment on a new ship, and 25 shares (5 "ship results) get you a ship free and clear. 20 years of age is equal to 5 ship shares. Which means a 100 year old ship is effectively free, but will be in such poor repair that it is essentially junk.
Next week if all goes by schedule, I'll introduce them to their passengers and available cargoes, guide them through a gas giant refueling dive and fire the jump drives for Jenghe! Here are some highlights of the session:
- The crew of the newly refurbished and registered Karman Brevit, or K.B. for short, having been given the runaround for a while about their Exit Visa (I decided to spare the players actually RUNNING the "Exit Visa" scenario), were blowing off steam at Regina Startown.
- The recent death of a major econo/political figure (actually one of the players) has the system on high alert, which is part of the reason that the K.B. has been denied Exit Visa. Duke Norris swore vengeance on whoever killed "his great friend, Sir Charles Ponzi" and appears to be using Ponzi's "death" to advance Norris' own political ends.
- The "dead" character's accomplice (a doctor of no mean abilities) approached the crew seeking passage offworld, but found that the crew, while willing, was not able to travel yet. In return for passage, the doctor had Sir Ponzi (still incognito) assist the crew in clearing up their legal troubles. A Diplomacy briefing from Ponzi (with a ridiculously high effect) assisted the engineer's next meeting, and after a few tense minutes (and 50Cr slid to an officious but receptive admin), the K.B. was given a 48 hour launch window.
- However, the crew of the K.B. is still broke, and cannot afford to outfit their ship yet. They decided to carry some passengers (the two incognito players were unamused but decided to not draw further suspicions on themselves) and plan to make a deal with the local starport supply clerk against future earnings. (In essence, they'll get X% value once they prove they have boarded their passengers, and the tickets will be surrendered to the harbor master on the next world.)
Notes:
The Karman Brevit is a 40 year old safari ship originally converted into a Far Trader, then captured by pirates, and now "rebranded" as a legitimate trader, though with only J-1 capability. A measely 5MCr will fix that drive up though. Three players scored a "Merchant Ship" (5 ship shares), so I let them take a 40 year old ship "for free".
Mongoose Traveller didn't keep the (IMHO excellent) MegaTraveller concept that starship drives are composed of modules, and that you need a certain number of modules to get a certain level of performance out of any given hull displacement. So, I've decided to retrofit the concept. The KB's jump drive is composed of 3 units, 5MCr each, which in concert can propel the ship 2 parsecs per jump. However, one of the modules is damaged beyond repair (in fact, they had the useless hulk of it removed during refit), the ship has the equivalent of a Type-A drive, and until another jump module is acquired, they can only achieve 1 parsec per jump. Each additional jump module they install will give their 200dt hull another parsec of range, but they'll need to convert 20 tons of cargo into fuel for each module and add another power plant module to provide the energy required.
As a side note, I decided a Ship Share is 4%, rather than 1% of a ship's cost. So a single "ship" result (5 shares) is effectively a downpayment on a new ship, and 25 shares (5 "ship results) get you a ship free and clear. 20 years of age is equal to 5 ship shares. Which means a 100 year old ship is effectively free, but will be in such poor repair that it is essentially junk.
Friday, April 5, 2013
Twilight's Peak Preparations
I have a large-sized group willing to subject themselves to my attempt to referee (what Traveller calls "Dungeon Masters") the Classic Traveller Adventure #3, Twilight's Peak.
Hopefully none of my players will google the adventure and get spoilers. I'll avoid spoilers on this blog as well.
I am still deciding if I'm going to use Classic Traveller+DGP Task System or Mongoose Traveller. I'm sure I'll continue to angst about it until the game starts, and none of the players has expressed a preference yet.
The setup is simple - the players are captain and crew of an old merchant starship, the Empress Nicholle, which is just about to set out on a trading journey down the local branch of the "Spinward Main". The Spinward Main is a chain of star systems with no more than one parsec between any two systems in the chain. The 'main meanders and branches around the sector, and provides a slow and steady route for inexpensive Jump-1 capable ships to traverse. "Tramp" freighters are the lifeblood of those marginal backwaters that the big boys with their fancy high-jump number drives just jump over.
The Empress Nicholle is of a class of ships known as "Far Traders", which means that she can make 2 parsecs per jump - In theory. Unfortunately, her jump drive is old and run down, and can only make Jump-1. To fix (really, replace) her drive will cost 3.5 million credits, which is a whole lot more money than the crew has lying around. Getting that money is the owner's primary reason for taking on this trade mission. The rest of the crew will have their own reasons, but will also be expecting to make money.
The plan is simple: cruise down the 'main, looking for sweet deals and bulk cargo when there are no deals, and maybe (ok, definitely) do some "odd jobs" to cover for the inevitable dry runs. If they get lucky, they'll find leads relating to even more wealth. The Empress can theoretically carry passengers, but there are few enough staterooms that most will be occupied by the crew. Still, passengers often pay lots of money, and it could be worth it to double-bunk for a few dozen extra Kilocredits from time to time. You never know.
Being an "old school game", this will be a semi-linear sandbox. Semi-Linear, because their ship in its current condition can only go further down or back up the 'main, and will have only a few branches to choose from. "Sandbox", because though I plan to have possible encounters and patrons planned out for each world they visit, there are very few if any "must do" missions in the story line. (There *is* a story line though.)
I'm going to rely on the players to handle the ship's finances on their own. I'll tell them their costs and present mercantile opportunities to them, but aside from the crew charter, it will be up to them to decide how they want to split things up. Since only the captain has an ownership stake in the ship, I suspect the first order of business might be to work out how they intend to save up for their new jump drive, and if other players will "invest" their own cut in the venture. (Spoiler alert - they are not going to be able to make enough money hauling bulk cargo to buy the new drive.)
Hopefully none of my players will google the adventure and get spoilers. I'll avoid spoilers on this blog as well.
I am still deciding if I'm going to use Classic Traveller+DGP Task System or Mongoose Traveller. I'm sure I'll continue to angst about it until the game starts, and none of the players has expressed a preference yet.
The setup is simple - the players are captain and crew of an old merchant starship, the Empress Nicholle, which is just about to set out on a trading journey down the local branch of the "Spinward Main". The Spinward Main is a chain of star systems with no more than one parsec between any two systems in the chain. The 'main meanders and branches around the sector, and provides a slow and steady route for inexpensive Jump-1 capable ships to traverse. "Tramp" freighters are the lifeblood of those marginal backwaters that the big boys with their fancy high-jump number drives just jump over.
The Empress Nicholle is of a class of ships known as "Far Traders", which means that she can make 2 parsecs per jump - In theory. Unfortunately, her jump drive is old and run down, and can only make Jump-1. To fix (really, replace) her drive will cost 3.5 million credits, which is a whole lot more money than the crew has lying around. Getting that money is the owner's primary reason for taking on this trade mission. The rest of the crew will have their own reasons, but will also be expecting to make money.
The plan is simple: cruise down the 'main, looking for sweet deals and bulk cargo when there are no deals, and maybe (ok, definitely) do some "odd jobs" to cover for the inevitable dry runs. If they get lucky, they'll find leads relating to even more wealth. The Empress can theoretically carry passengers, but there are few enough staterooms that most will be occupied by the crew. Still, passengers often pay lots of money, and it could be worth it to double-bunk for a few dozen extra Kilocredits from time to time. You never know.
Being an "old school game", this will be a semi-linear sandbox. Semi-Linear, because their ship in its current condition can only go further down or back up the 'main, and will have only a few branches to choose from. "Sandbox", because though I plan to have possible encounters and patrons planned out for each world they visit, there are very few if any "must do" missions in the story line. (There *is* a story line though.)
I'm going to rely on the players to handle the ship's finances on their own. I'll tell them their costs and present mercantile opportunities to them, but aside from the crew charter, it will be up to them to decide how they want to split things up. Since only the captain has an ownership stake in the ship, I suspect the first order of business might be to work out how they intend to save up for their new jump drive, and if other players will "invest" their own cut in the venture. (Spoiler alert - they are not going to be able to make enough money hauling bulk cargo to buy the new drive.)
Thursday, April 4, 2013
Traveller Damage in Various Incarnations
Traveller, in its "Classic", "Mega" and "Mongoose" incarnations (the only versions I have access to) has an interesting system for tracking wounds. Here are some random thoughts about this system.
Rather than abstract "hitpoints", damage is tracked by reducing your three physical stats (Strength, Dexterity, Endurance) directly. If for example your Dexterity is damaged, you're going to have more trouble firing weapons or doing delicate tasks. The details vary by version, but essentially when you "zero" one stat, you are lightly wounded, when you "zero" two you are seriously wounded and require surgery, and zeroing all three means you're dead. (Death can be averted in some versions by quick application of medical procedures.)
Oddly, animals and vehicles use a different system, where they list the number of points needed to incapacitate, and the number of additional points to kill. They don't worry about "stats".
Classic Traveller is the most straightforward. All damage is in "Hits", where each "hit" is 1d6 points of damage. Armor makes you harder to hit, but if you do successfully attack the target, you roll the Hits of damage immediately, applying each whole dice to a random stat. (We always played that you could choose the stat, because that's more fun.) The first hit in any combat is supposed to come entirely off of one stat, on the theory that your first wound could knock you unconscious. I use that rule for "mooks", but not important characters. For animals, the points all go against their "hit points".
MegaTraveller takes a different approach. You add your physical stats together to get a "lifeforce rating", which indexes a table that gives you an animal-style "incapacitate/kill" hitpoint track. The difference from CT is, these numbers are in "hits" not "damage points". Armor in MT reduces the number of hits (possibly to zero), and only after combat do you take all hits and then apply them to the stats of combatants you care about (usually only PCs). The downside of MT armor is that the rules for penetration are complex and involve a somewhat complicated set of fractions. It's no worse than THAC0 in D&D 2e, but it lacks the immediacy of "roll to hit, roll damage".
Mongoose goes the exact other direction, giving animals physical stats, but specifying that the first hits always come from Endurance. Damage is rolled at the time of attack, and armor blocks damage points. MgT armor seems much less effective than CT and MT armor, but I believe that's a side effect of how they brought the MT armor values over.
I've always found CT's "armor modifies your chance to be hit" to be an odd abstraction. For example, rifles get a big bonus to shoot at unarmored targets, and it's practically impossible not to hit someone at 10 meters with a shotgun. Someone posted a "fix" for this that involves first rolling to hit without armor modifiers, then rolling to hit with ONLY armor modifiers to see if you penetrate. I like this idea a lot, especially since against unarmored opponents, it generally means that you won't need to bother rolling penetration because the hit will be automatic. However, I feel like that system would work better with MT's "track the hits, roll the points later" approach.
T20, being a D20 derivative, has an interesting take on damage. "Hit Points" are renamed to "Stamina", and you always take damage to your Stamina when you are hit. At zero stamina, you pass out, but are not seriously wounded. In addition, you have Constitution worth of "Lifeblood", which you only lose if the damage penetrates your armor or you are unconscious when you take the damage. So in other words, get shot without armor, and you'll probably die, no matter how high level you are. But a veteran is going to be able to keep going a LONG time with some decent armor. I like this system a lot, and it would be interesting to try to graft it on to a more standard version of Traveller.
Something to think about for another entry....
Rather than abstract "hitpoints", damage is tracked by reducing your three physical stats (Strength, Dexterity, Endurance) directly. If for example your Dexterity is damaged, you're going to have more trouble firing weapons or doing delicate tasks. The details vary by version, but essentially when you "zero" one stat, you are lightly wounded, when you "zero" two you are seriously wounded and require surgery, and zeroing all three means you're dead. (Death can be averted in some versions by quick application of medical procedures.)
Oddly, animals and vehicles use a different system, where they list the number of points needed to incapacitate, and the number of additional points to kill. They don't worry about "stats".
Classic Traveller is the most straightforward. All damage is in "Hits", where each "hit" is 1d6 points of damage. Armor makes you harder to hit, but if you do successfully attack the target, you roll the Hits of damage immediately, applying each whole dice to a random stat. (We always played that you could choose the stat, because that's more fun.) The first hit in any combat is supposed to come entirely off of one stat, on the theory that your first wound could knock you unconscious. I use that rule for "mooks", but not important characters. For animals, the points all go against their "hit points".
MegaTraveller takes a different approach. You add your physical stats together to get a "lifeforce rating", which indexes a table that gives you an animal-style "incapacitate/kill" hitpoint track. The difference from CT is, these numbers are in "hits" not "damage points". Armor in MT reduces the number of hits (possibly to zero), and only after combat do you take all hits and then apply them to the stats of combatants you care about (usually only PCs). The downside of MT armor is that the rules for penetration are complex and involve a somewhat complicated set of fractions. It's no worse than THAC0 in D&D 2e, but it lacks the immediacy of "roll to hit, roll damage".
Mongoose goes the exact other direction, giving animals physical stats, but specifying that the first hits always come from Endurance. Damage is rolled at the time of attack, and armor blocks damage points. MgT armor seems much less effective than CT and MT armor, but I believe that's a side effect of how they brought the MT armor values over.
I've always found CT's "armor modifies your chance to be hit" to be an odd abstraction. For example, rifles get a big bonus to shoot at unarmored targets, and it's practically impossible not to hit someone at 10 meters with a shotgun. Someone posted a "fix" for this that involves first rolling to hit without armor modifiers, then rolling to hit with ONLY armor modifiers to see if you penetrate. I like this idea a lot, especially since against unarmored opponents, it generally means that you won't need to bother rolling penetration because the hit will be automatic. However, I feel like that system would work better with MT's "track the hits, roll the points later" approach.
T20, being a D20 derivative, has an interesting take on damage. "Hit Points" are renamed to "Stamina", and you always take damage to your Stamina when you are hit. At zero stamina, you pass out, but are not seriously wounded. In addition, you have Constitution worth of "Lifeblood", which you only lose if the damage penetrates your armor or you are unconscious when you take the damage. So in other words, get shot without armor, and you'll probably die, no matter how high level you are. But a veteran is going to be able to keep going a LONG time with some decent armor. I like this system a lot, and it would be interesting to try to graft it on to a more standard version of Traveller.
Something to think about for another entry....
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Traveller - have I come full circle?
I found a piece of what for me is Traveller Archaeology - a full set of Megatraveller rule books, and a ton of DGP's "Traveller's Digest" issues. The TD was DGP's version of the old "Journal of the Traveller's Aid Society", which in turn was basically like "Dragon Magazine", but only for Traveller instead of D&D.
The Traveller's Digest articles are always a ton of fun to read, and the style of adventure presentation DGP had is to me much more evocative than GDW's style. Even if I'd only picked those magazines up, I'd be a happy man. But the Megatraveller rules, now that's really something to dig into.
Megatraveller (which uses the abbreviation "MT" on the web) came out almost exactly a year after I stopped playing Traveller. So though I was aware of its existence, I never saw a copy in person until now. In fact, it turns out that I'd confused it with "Traveller: The New Era" in my mind, which as it turns out is a very different game system whose rules I also have never read.
The MT rules are very much like a straight-line extrapolation from Classic Traveller (CT). If you're fluent in "D&D speak", MT is the AD&D 2e to CT's OD&D. The analogy is very apt, since MT adds a TON of chrome and optional rules in supplements, and even the basic rules are considerably more full than CT, though the core concept of character creation is nearly identical. As an example, the core CT has 6 "services" you can join to gain skills (analogous to D&D classes), but core MT has 18! MT adopts a uniform task system and then re-creates the entire Traveller game around it. CT has skills to, and though there was a certain logic to how they work, MT takes the concept way beyond anything CT offers. (DGP did actually publish a version of their task system for use with CT. This system was popular enough that it ended up in MT.)
The down side of MT is that along with the chrome comes complexity. Ship design is wonderfully expanded, differentiating hull displacement from mass, specifying in great detail the type and power requirements of various ship subsystems (sensors, inertial compensators, etc.) that are hand-waved away in CT, etc. Combat is more rational than CT, and unifies person, animal and vehicle damage systems. There are MANY tasks listed for first aid, repair, etc., to take advantage of the new (and yummy) task system, etc. But because of all this flavor, MT loses much of CT's "rules light" charm. (You know, just like when OD&D became AD&D....)
As I read MT's rules, I do so not so much with the intent of playing MT, but maybe of raiding MT for ideas to port to CT. I've very seriously considered simply using the DGP task system with CT and hand-waving in some sensor rules. I'll leave CT's combat system alone, but adopt MT's initiative/interrupt system, and I'll use MT's "life force" rules for minions.
On the other hand,
I've been an on-again-off-again fan of Mongoose's Traveller (MgT), which I used to believe was a "modernized CT". But I'm reaching the conclusion that MgT is actually a "trimmed down MT". Could it be that I've been going about this all wrong, and that MgT is really the Traveller that I'm looking for? MgT has a unified task system (similar but not identical to MT's) and a lightly more detailed ship design system than CT.
I still think that MgT has dropped the ball on certain details, and their task system encourages the "playbook" style of role playing that I want to avoid. But I wonder, would I be better served by bringing some MT into MgT, playing MT straight-up, or using MT rules to flavorize CT?
Something to ponder as I prepare to run "Twilight's Peak" for some friends....
Side Note: I mentioned a few posts ago that I got T20, which I now recognize as being very much a D20 version of MT - plenty of crunchy details wrapped around a D20 engine - but I've found character generation in T20 to be very confusing. Much of the stuff in T20 that got me so excited appears to have been extrapolated from MT. That doesn't diminish the coolness of T20, and T20 may still have the best combat and damage model of any Traveller I've seen, but unless my players are willing to do some studying on their own (some will be, some won't), I need to stick to a Traveller that is easy to use.
The Traveller's Digest articles are always a ton of fun to read, and the style of adventure presentation DGP had is to me much more evocative than GDW's style. Even if I'd only picked those magazines up, I'd be a happy man. But the Megatraveller rules, now that's really something to dig into.
Megatraveller (which uses the abbreviation "MT" on the web) came out almost exactly a year after I stopped playing Traveller. So though I was aware of its existence, I never saw a copy in person until now. In fact, it turns out that I'd confused it with "Traveller: The New Era" in my mind, which as it turns out is a very different game system whose rules I also have never read.
The MT rules are very much like a straight-line extrapolation from Classic Traveller (CT). If you're fluent in "D&D speak", MT is the AD&D 2e to CT's OD&D. The analogy is very apt, since MT adds a TON of chrome and optional rules in supplements, and even the basic rules are considerably more full than CT, though the core concept of character creation is nearly identical. As an example, the core CT has 6 "services" you can join to gain skills (analogous to D&D classes), but core MT has 18! MT adopts a uniform task system and then re-creates the entire Traveller game around it. CT has skills to, and though there was a certain logic to how they work, MT takes the concept way beyond anything CT offers. (DGP did actually publish a version of their task system for use with CT. This system was popular enough that it ended up in MT.)
The down side of MT is that along with the chrome comes complexity. Ship design is wonderfully expanded, differentiating hull displacement from mass, specifying in great detail the type and power requirements of various ship subsystems (sensors, inertial compensators, etc.) that are hand-waved away in CT, etc. Combat is more rational than CT, and unifies person, animal and vehicle damage systems. There are MANY tasks listed for first aid, repair, etc., to take advantage of the new (and yummy) task system, etc. But because of all this flavor, MT loses much of CT's "rules light" charm. (You know, just like when OD&D became AD&D....)
As I read MT's rules, I do so not so much with the intent of playing MT, but maybe of raiding MT for ideas to port to CT. I've very seriously considered simply using the DGP task system with CT and hand-waving in some sensor rules. I'll leave CT's combat system alone, but adopt MT's initiative/interrupt system, and I'll use MT's "life force" rules for minions.
On the other hand,
I've been an on-again-off-again fan of Mongoose's Traveller (MgT), which I used to believe was a "modernized CT". But I'm reaching the conclusion that MgT is actually a "trimmed down MT". Could it be that I've been going about this all wrong, and that MgT is really the Traveller that I'm looking for? MgT has a unified task system (similar but not identical to MT's) and a lightly more detailed ship design system than CT.
I still think that MgT has dropped the ball on certain details, and their task system encourages the "playbook" style of role playing that I want to avoid. But I wonder, would I be better served by bringing some MT into MgT, playing MT straight-up, or using MT rules to flavorize CT?
Something to ponder as I prepare to run "Twilight's Peak" for some friends....
Side Note: I mentioned a few posts ago that I got T20, which I now recognize as being very much a D20 version of MT - plenty of crunchy details wrapped around a D20 engine - but I've found character generation in T20 to be very confusing. Much of the stuff in T20 that got me so excited appears to have been extrapolated from MT. That doesn't diminish the coolness of T20, and T20 may still have the best combat and damage model of any Traveller I've seen, but unless my players are willing to do some studying on their own (some will be, some won't), I need to stick to a Traveller that is easy to use.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
The Traveller Itch
I'm starting to get the "Traveller Itch" again.
I need to find some way to run a campaign. My home group is busy with Swords&Wizardry (or Pathfinder as a fallback) and is by and large not hugely SF friendly. My work crew might be mobilized for a once-a-week session if I ask nicely, but we may need to "go Mongoose" (MgT) or even T20, since I didn't get the idea that everyone was fully on-board with Classic's "Old School" (that is, "Mostly GM fiat with few hard rules") feel.
I'd like to use the "Twilight's Peak" adventure as the framework for a merchant campaign. I ran this adventure once decades ago for a group of impatient teenagers (I was also an impatient teenager at the time), and I think we missed out on a lot of the fun of the slowly unrolling story. Though one of my friends still teases me about a planet-bound search we were playing where I forgot to reveal one of the most important facts to them. Something along the lines of, "You can't leave the ATV safely, there's a blizzard." Sigh.
In order to make the campaign work, I'll need to get a player to agree to run the starship's accounting. Last time, I used an NPC (naturally, Alexander L. Jamison) as the captain and owner, and didn't have the players make any choices about mercantile matters. I don't plan to get too detailed about such matters, but on each world I'll present the crew with a list of available flat-rate and speculative cargoes, give them a moment to decide if they want to sell what's in their hold, etc. With any luck, that won't take more than 5min per world and hopefully people will take some interest in the ship's (and therefore their own) profits. The players will then get to choose how they plan to spend their time on-world - hanging around the starport (possibly getting some work from patrons or hearing useful rumors while they blow some cash), going out to "see the sights" (if there are any, and the local law allows it), or whatever else may come up.
The part of space Twilight's Peak is set in is a chain about 20 worlds long, which at normal rates of travel means their journey will take a year or so. Some worlds we'll be able to bang through in 10-20 minutes of game time, some may require hours.
I'm sure this is just another of my pipe dreams, and like so many of my other plans will either come to naught or aggravate my state of mind. I dunno, I'll float the idea around and see if anyone bites. The usual office game is off for a few weeks anyway, so maybe....
As a side note, the by-the-book "cost of being alive for a week based on your social standing" rules will definitely be in effect, but some of the worlds that are being visited are decidedly unpleasant, so I might do something like "the lowest of Social Standing, World Population, or Tech Level" since many worlds won't be able to support a high-society lifestyle to begin with. ("Wow, are you wearing a Pirema jumpsuit? That's just sad, man.") I'll have to work out rules for things like refusing to leave the ship. ("I don't care, I'm not going out into the sulfuric acid these idiots call an atmo!")
I need to find some way to run a campaign. My home group is busy with Swords&Wizardry (or Pathfinder as a fallback) and is by and large not hugely SF friendly. My work crew might be mobilized for a once-a-week session if I ask nicely, but we may need to "go Mongoose" (MgT) or even T20, since I didn't get the idea that everyone was fully on-board with Classic's "Old School" (that is, "Mostly GM fiat with few hard rules") feel.
I'd like to use the "Twilight's Peak" adventure as the framework for a merchant campaign. I ran this adventure once decades ago for a group of impatient teenagers (I was also an impatient teenager at the time), and I think we missed out on a lot of the fun of the slowly unrolling story. Though one of my friends still teases me about a planet-bound search we were playing where I forgot to reveal one of the most important facts to them. Something along the lines of, "You can't leave the ATV safely, there's a blizzard." Sigh.
In order to make the campaign work, I'll need to get a player to agree to run the starship's accounting. Last time, I used an NPC (naturally, Alexander L. Jamison) as the captain and owner, and didn't have the players make any choices about mercantile matters. I don't plan to get too detailed about such matters, but on each world I'll present the crew with a list of available flat-rate and speculative cargoes, give them a moment to decide if they want to sell what's in their hold, etc. With any luck, that won't take more than 5min per world and hopefully people will take some interest in the ship's (and therefore their own) profits. The players will then get to choose how they plan to spend their time on-world - hanging around the starport (possibly getting some work from patrons or hearing useful rumors while they blow some cash), going out to "see the sights" (if there are any, and the local law allows it), or whatever else may come up.
The part of space Twilight's Peak is set in is a chain about 20 worlds long, which at normal rates of travel means their journey will take a year or so. Some worlds we'll be able to bang through in 10-20 minutes of game time, some may require hours.
I'm sure this is just another of my pipe dreams, and like so many of my other plans will either come to naught or aggravate my state of mind. I dunno, I'll float the idea around and see if anyone bites. The usual office game is off for a few weeks anyway, so maybe....
As a side note, the by-the-book "cost of being alive for a week based on your social standing" rules will definitely be in effect, but some of the worlds that are being visited are decidedly unpleasant, so I might do something like "the lowest of Social Standing, World Population, or Tech Level" since many worlds won't be able to support a high-society lifestyle to begin with. ("Wow, are you wearing a Pirema jumpsuit? That's just sad, man.") I'll have to work out rules for things like refusing to leave the ship. ("I don't care, I'm not going out into the sulfuric acid these idiots call an atmo!")
Friday, March 1, 2013
A Traveller Patron
Here is a simple patron idea I had, originally designed for Mongoose Traveller, but usable in any system if you disregard some of the notes. I haven't followed the normal "options 1-6" format, though anyone using this should feel free to explore all sensible options, because there are a great many places this encounter could go off the rails, and I've only explored a few. I haven't run this one, so I can't say how it works out in practice. If you decide to inflict it on your players, let me know what did and didn't work.
PATRON - A Snake in the Grass
In the Startown tavern of a high Law Level world, a man approaches the players with an offer: Retrieve a duffle bag from a free trader currently in port for 2000Cr. This bag contains some personal effects, and he claims that he was unfairly fired from the ship's crew and not allowed to retrieve his goods. He will suggest that the players pose as prospective employees (for his old job) and during the interview, get his bag for him.
Referee's Information:
The patron is a liar and a thief. Last night at the tavern, he overheard the actual crewman talking about a bag with (valuable item) that his "lucky dog" bunk mate had acquired. The crewman had already told the captain that he was quitting his job, and since he was leaving on good terms he was going to clean out his stateroom the next day. Unfortunately, that crewman was locked up on a drunk and disorderly charge the previous evening, and will be locked up for 48 hours, giving
In the Startown tavern of a high Law Level world, a man approaches the players with an offer: Retrieve a duffle bag from a free trader currently in port for 2000Cr. This bag contains some personal effects, and he claims that he was unfairly fired from the ship's crew and not allowed to retrieve his goods. He will suggest that the players pose as prospective employees (for his old job) and during the interview, get his bag for him.
Referee's Information:
The patron is a liar and a thief. Last night at the tavern, he overheard the actual crewman talking about a bag with (valuable item) that his "lucky dog" bunk mate had acquired. The crewman had already told the captain that he was quitting his job, and since he was leaving on good terms he was going to clean out his stateroom the next day. Unfortunately, that crewman was locked up on a drunk and disorderly charge the previous evening, and will be locked up for 48 hours, giving
The players can try any technique they want to gain access to the crewman's stateroom, but Starport security is high and the captain is a busy man who will not give tours of his ship to just anyone. The captain is indeed searching for a new crew member, but if the characters ask about the previous crewman, the Patron's story won't match up.
If the players manage to impress the captain and don't sort out the core deception, they should be able to get into the stateroom without any violence, and with some Stealth should be able to get the satchel out. If they're caught, things could get dicey. Likewise, the captain will come looking for them at his departure time. The subsequent events are up to the Referee.
If the players manage to impress the captain and don't sort out the core deception, they should be able to get into the stateroom without any violence, and with some Stealth should be able to get the satchel out. If they're caught, things could get dicey. Likewise, the captain will come looking for them at his departure time. The subsequent events are up to the Referee.
If the players return with the duffle, the Patron will try to cheat them, claiming that he needs to "go get the money". If the players intimidate him successfully (Average Intimidate DM+STR) he will pay 2000cr (marginal success gets them 1000cr). If the players decide to keep the satchel or lie about retrieving it, the Patron will become VERY irate, and will possibly even attack the players with a ceramic knife.
If the players sort out the deception and inform the captain, he will be furious and will want to turn the Patron over to the local authorities. It will turn out that he's a known criminal who is wanted and has a 3000cr reward for his capture. The captain will let them use a spare ship's duffle for the deception. The Patron will be able to detect the deception and will produce a ceramic knife (Blade, but undetectable by local TL) and attack the players. The law enforcement officers will arrive in 1d6 turns afterwards. On a Difficult Deception/DEX roll, the players can swipe the knife without the officer noticing.
Patron: Karl Mortensen 76957(9) (SS is a disguise - real number is 4, Steve Savage)
Deception-2, Melee(blade)-1, Recon-2
Ceramic Dagger (melee, 1d6)
If the players sort out the deception and inform the captain, he will be furious and will want to turn the Patron over to the local authorities. It will turn out that he's a known criminal who is wanted and has a 3000cr reward for his capture. The captain will let them use a spare ship's duffle for the deception. The Patron will be able to detect the deception and will produce a ceramic knife (Blade, but undetectable by local TL) and attack the players. The law enforcement officers will arrive in 1d6 turns afterwards. On a Difficult Deception/DEX roll, the players can swipe the knife without the officer noticing.
Patron: Karl Mortensen 76957(9) (SS is a disguise - real number is 4, Steve Savage)
Deception-2, Melee(blade)-1, Recon-2
Ceramic Dagger (melee, 1d6)
Captain: Merchant Captain Rebart Shivvan 65A887
Admin-2, Broker-3, etc.
Police Officer: Bran Thuragud 99977A
Relevant skills at level 3
Stun baton
Sunday, January 20, 2013
Player Character Cost of Living
All RPGs have ways of separating players from their hard-looted (or maybe even earned) money. Of course, there are equipment expenses, which make up the majority of expenses. Then, sometimes, players need to hire specialists (sages, transportation) or bribe someone in a position of power.
But everyone needs to eat and sleep. In most games I've been in, the GM will charge for a room and meal at the inn, but since the characters rarely spend more than a few days in any one town, and nobody ever seems to buy more clothing :), the idea of a monthly cost of living usually doesn't come into play.
However, many games have rules for such expenses.
In Traveller, it's your Social Standing stat times 100Cr per month, and if you don't spend it routinely, your Social Standing suffers. Players with ships generally also have a ship payment and maintenance costs, but that is offset by their ability to earn money with their ship in many cases.
AD&D (1st ed) had a cost of 100gp per level per month, to be charged automatically by the DM. The stated goal of this rule is to make sure players burn through money, just like the Traveller rule.
Pathfinder has expenses too, but they're not by level, they're by how "high" you want to live. In practice, it means 100gp per month to "live large" - much less expensive than OD&D. Perhaps this rule has changed because of the split between gp and xp, and expected character wealth? I'm not sure, but it certainly is a shift in the way the game works.
In D&D 4e, I couldn't find any equivalent rules, but I'll admit I'm not as familiar with the rules layout and may simply have missed it. I guess it fits the more adventure-centric focus of 4e, though it's possible they just moved those rules to a "Dungeon Mastery" expansion. <shrug>
Games like Mekton, BESM and other light systems don't concern themselves too much with bean counting, preferring to abstract those ideas into the character's background.
So, any thoughts? Traveller and OD&D charge you a lot to cover the various expenses of your Social Standing or Level's equipment and entertainment requirements. Is it even reasonable to port that sort of thing into Pathfinder, or will it skew the "wealth by level" mechanism too much?
UPDATE:
I found my D&D 3.5 books, and found that their is a variant rule for cost of living (instead of bean-counting), but it's the same rule Pathfinder adopted - a fixed price for how large you want to live, with 100gp being "pretty large" and 200gp being "like a king". This is still well short of AD&D's "100gp per level" though.
But everyone needs to eat and sleep. In most games I've been in, the GM will charge for a room and meal at the inn, but since the characters rarely spend more than a few days in any one town, and nobody ever seems to buy more clothing :), the idea of a monthly cost of living usually doesn't come into play.
However, many games have rules for such expenses.
In Traveller, it's your Social Standing stat times 100Cr per month, and if you don't spend it routinely, your Social Standing suffers. Players with ships generally also have a ship payment and maintenance costs, but that is offset by their ability to earn money with their ship in many cases.
AD&D (1st ed) had a cost of 100gp per level per month, to be charged automatically by the DM. The stated goal of this rule is to make sure players burn through money, just like the Traveller rule.
Pathfinder has expenses too, but they're not by level, they're by how "high" you want to live. In practice, it means 100gp per month to "live large" - much less expensive than OD&D. Perhaps this rule has changed because of the split between gp and xp, and expected character wealth? I'm not sure, but it certainly is a shift in the way the game works.
In D&D 4e, I couldn't find any equivalent rules, but I'll admit I'm not as familiar with the rules layout and may simply have missed it. I guess it fits the more adventure-centric focus of 4e, though it's possible they just moved those rules to a "Dungeon Mastery" expansion. <shrug>
Games like Mekton, BESM and other light systems don't concern themselves too much with bean counting, preferring to abstract those ideas into the character's background.
So, any thoughts? Traveller and OD&D charge you a lot to cover the various expenses of your Social Standing or Level's equipment and entertainment requirements. Is it even reasonable to port that sort of thing into Pathfinder, or will it skew the "wealth by level" mechanism too much?
UPDATE:
I found my D&D 3.5 books, and found that their is a variant rule for cost of living (instead of bean-counting), but it's the same rule Pathfinder adopted - a fixed price for how large you want to live, with 100gp being "pretty large" and 200gp being "like a king". This is still well short of AD&D's "100gp per level" though.
Thursday, January 10, 2013
My Top RPGs from 2012
Taking up a meme from Bravo Zulu, I'm listing my top played (and even just fooled around with) RPGs of 2012.
- Dungeons and Dragons, 4th EditionThis is the game system we use in the in-office RPG group, and it's probably the game I play the most. While I'm not entirely enamored with the 4e system, it definitely works, and the "at-will/encounter/daily" system is easy enough to handle. The on-line character builder, though not free, is quite simple to use, and you certainly can't claim Wizards doesn't support their players. I'm on the D&DNext playtest list, and what I see is intriguing. It will be interesting to see how that develops, and if it will cause me to abandon both 4e and Pathfinder. Maybe.
- PathfinderI use Pathfinder in my home campaign, and it's the game I probably spend the most time being involved with. Though I was never a huge fan of D&D 3e, which seemed too much like a game for professional roleplayers and not a game for just having some adventures, Pathfinder feels good to me. I realize my acceptance of Pathfinder was probably made easier by the fact that I'd been playing 4e for a while when I got it. That's an easier transition than from AD&D 2e to D&D 3e. I do have to admit though, I'm still drawn to more old-school D&Ds, like Swords and Wizardry. Maybe I'll give that game a proper shake in the future.
- Classic TravellerI actually had the good fortune to be able to run a CT game with some friends - that's the "Death Station entries I've made here. CT holds a special place in my heart, since (alongside AD&D 1e), that's what I grew up playing. The game is brutally minimalistic in some ways (combat sequence), and equally hyper-detailed in others (weapon and armor data), but with a little preparation work (which would be helped by a decent character sheet design - hmm, a topic for another entry...) and a group willing to abandon or handwave through the more precise grid-based combat systems of D&D, you can have a fast-paced adventure that matches up pretty well with harder SciFi movies for tone.
- Mongoose Traveller
The first of the "RPGs I didn't play, but still spent a non-trivial amount of time playing with" in this list, MgT is very much like CT on the surface, and has the advantage of having a huge library of stuff to buy for it and easy conversions for the older material. Some of the new stuff is awesome, some not so much, but Mongoose has done a respectable job trying to make a Traveller experience for today's gamers that mirrors what we had back in the day. Not all improvements are for the better IMHO, specifically the "Level 0" skill concept. This idea looks great on paper, and matches well with how people view skills these days ("your skill list is your playbook"), but Traveller has classically been more of a "skills are what you put on your resume, but you can try anything" system. That's what the Education stat was for. But I digress. - Mekton II and to a lesser extent, Mekton Zeta
I love mecha anime. I used to be a inveterate BattleTech player, and though I flirted with Heavy Gear back when it first came out, I hadn't found an RPG/Combat system that felt right to me until I recently discovered Mekton II. (I bought Zeta a few years ago, but I suppose it was a "D&D 3e" thing - it just didn't capture my attention at the time.) I watch Robotech (and Starblazers) with the kids, and when they're a little older, we'll pick up some less "America Friendly" series. Mekton is almost a direct fit for Robotech or Gundam gaming, and the Interlok game system looks like a strange fusion between D20 (with its flat probability curves) and Traveller (with its skill focus, random character "life path" and more crunchy rules), though of course it predates D20, so I don't mean that comparison literally. Mekton brings in a lot of Anime tropes. My son and I worked up many of the Robotech characters (including MinMei) with very little trouble. With the right group, this game would be a blast. I'm not sure I have the right group though. - Traveller D20 (T20)
Having said all that, D20 has to my mind a better "skills" system than MgT, and T20 has done some clever things adapting D20 to a harder SciFi setting. My at-home crew is more accepting of a game that has very strong ties to the game they're already familiar with (Pathfinder), and given that I have more recent experience GM-ing D20 games, I suspect that T20 is going to get a lot more play.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
A few more randomly generated Traveller characters
These are Classic Traveller characters. Again, sorry for the inconsistent write-up style. I don't have a good system for doing this yet, so it's more or less catch-as-catch-can.
Army Major Eli Khabr 778B86 Age 30
Skills: SMG-2, Tactics-2, ATV-1, Rifle-1, Mechanical-1, Blade Cbt-1
Possessions: High Passage, SMG
Finances: 12,000 CrImp
Eli was very bright but poor farmer from a Low Tech Agricultural world who dreamed of finding a way to "the capital" to learn about technology and machinery. He applied to the Army, as it was known locally that a career in the Army was a good way to learn a lot of good skills.
His first term, his obvious intelligence and enthusiasm gained him a commission and a minor field command, where he learned a lot about fighting. He also found himself assigned to a mechanized brigade, where he learned basic vehicle maintenance.
[Term 1: Lieutenant, Rifle-1, SMG-1, Blade Cbt-1, Tactics-1, Mechanical-1]
In his second term, he was promoted to captain and put in command of one of his brigade's recon platoons. His officer training gave him additional education in subjects his farm-hand upbringing had neglected as he learned the ins and outs of AFV operation in the field.
[Term 2: Captain, ATV-1, Edu+1]
His third term saw him promoted to Major, where he learned more tactics and, due to some border disputes, gained additional skill with his SMG.
[Term 3: Major, Tactics, Gun Cbt(SMG)]
Eli's superiors were shocked when, at what looked like the height of his career, he decided not to re-enlist. What they did not know is that Eli had been forced to cross a line during his last assignment, and he could no longer serve his government as a soldier in good conscience. Disillusioned and unsure what his future had in store for a man with his talents, Eli took to the stars, hoping to find a new life on any planet but his homeworld.
Army Lieutenant, Merchant 3rd Officer Rezik Farjani A69AB6 Age 26
Skills: SMG-2, Mechanical-2, Rifle-1, Leader-1, Computer-1, Admin-1, Streetwise-1, Vacc Suit-1
Possessions: Gun (SMG)
Finances: 50,000 Cr
Rezik was a strong, clever and well educated kid from a backwater world out on the frontier. Seeing no future in his local scene, he joined the Army, a move that proved to be very beneficial to him. His superiors quickly noticed his abilities, granting him both a commission and a promotion in his first term of duty. While his personal interest was in weapons qualifications, his post taught him much about leadership and computer operations.
However, his brilliant career was cut short after only one term by a classic Army SNAFU, and he wound up joining a Tukera Lines merchant ship's crew as an officer. As a 3rd Officer, Rezik learned much about Admin and Streetwise, as well as how to operate a vacc suit. But the life of a Merchant was not for him, and at the age of 26, he set out into the stars to seek his fortune, where ever that may be.
[Rezig has a Psy potential of 7 at this point, and would probably benefit from seeking some training]
Army Major Eli Khabr 778B86 Age 30
Skills: SMG-2, Tactics-2, ATV-1, Rifle-1, Mechanical-1, Blade Cbt-1
Possessions: High Passage, SMG
Finances: 12,000 CrImp
Eli was very bright but poor farmer from a Low Tech Agricultural world who dreamed of finding a way to "the capital" to learn about technology and machinery. He applied to the Army, as it was known locally that a career in the Army was a good way to learn a lot of good skills.
His first term, his obvious intelligence and enthusiasm gained him a commission and a minor field command, where he learned a lot about fighting. He also found himself assigned to a mechanized brigade, where he learned basic vehicle maintenance.
[Term 1: Lieutenant, Rifle-1, SMG-1, Blade Cbt-1, Tactics-1, Mechanical-1]
In his second term, he was promoted to captain and put in command of one of his brigade's recon platoons. His officer training gave him additional education in subjects his farm-hand upbringing had neglected as he learned the ins and outs of AFV operation in the field.
[Term 2: Captain, ATV-1, Edu+1]
His third term saw him promoted to Major, where he learned more tactics and, due to some border disputes, gained additional skill with his SMG.
[Term 3: Major, Tactics, Gun Cbt(SMG)]
Eli's superiors were shocked when, at what looked like the height of his career, he decided not to re-enlist. What they did not know is that Eli had been forced to cross a line during his last assignment, and he could no longer serve his government as a soldier in good conscience. Disillusioned and unsure what his future had in store for a man with his talents, Eli took to the stars, hoping to find a new life on any planet but his homeworld.
Army Lieutenant, Merchant 3rd Officer Rezik Farjani A69AB6 Age 26
Skills: SMG-2, Mechanical-2, Rifle-1, Leader-1, Computer-1, Admin-1, Streetwise-1, Vacc Suit-1
Possessions: Gun (SMG)
Finances: 50,000 Cr
Rezik was a strong, clever and well educated kid from a backwater world out on the frontier. Seeing no future in his local scene, he joined the Army, a move that proved to be very beneficial to him. His superiors quickly noticed his abilities, granting him both a commission and a promotion in his first term of duty. While his personal interest was in weapons qualifications, his post taught him much about leadership and computer operations.
However, his brilliant career was cut short after only one term by a classic Army SNAFU, and he wound up joining a Tukera Lines merchant ship's crew as an officer. As a 3rd Officer, Rezik learned much about Admin and Streetwise, as well as how to operate a vacc suit. But the life of a Merchant was not for him, and at the age of 26, he set out into the stars to seek his fortune, where ever that may be.
[Rezig has a Psy potential of 7 at this point, and would probably benefit from seeking some training]
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
A T20 game on the horizon for me?
My at-home RPG group (really just my wife and kids) has expressed an interest in doing a short T20 campaign once we hit a break point in our current Pathfinder campaign. For some reason, I've had very little luck getting any traction at home for either CT or MgT flavors of Traveller, but at least two of the three are actively willing to try out T20. (That's not entirely fair - my wife enjoys the MgT character generation sequence.)
So now, not only do I need to make a few T20 characters (who I will post here, of course) to make sure I understand the chargen procedure, but I also need to pick a campaign setting. My players would rather have a mission than an opportunity, if you know what I mean. So a charted space sandbox (the default Traveller campaign) is probably not the best plan.
At the moment, I have two top contenders:
First up, we have The Kursis Charter from the Linkworlds Cluster campaign setting, released as a freebee when T20 was first published. The players' ship, badly in need of refitting (aren't they always?) is given a charter to do a mail run through the Linkworlds cluster. The usual mail ship has skipped, and mail is starting to pile up. As long as they follow their appointed route and leave enough room for the mail (a few tons per world), they're free to engage in other lucrative opportunities as they present themselves. Along they way, they find a trail of clues to one such opportunity. Needless to say, not everyone on the mail route is going to be cooperative, nor are the clues going to be easy to follow up on.
Second is "Epic Adventure 5, Scout Cruiser", also by QLI for the T20 system. In this one, the players sign on with a scout crew in a rather large Scout Cruiser (1000 tons - 5x the size of the usual tramp merchant ship - and a crew of 21 instead of 3-5.), which is going on a deep-space mission into a stellar rift to discover the fate of another delinquent scout cruiser.
So the Kursis Charter has uplifted bears, strange alien life forms, daring rescues and fetch quests. EA5 has a mystery and hostile forces, along with some grim situations. I think the answer, especially given the group I'm playing with, is clear.
In to the Link Worlds we go.
So now, not only do I need to make a few T20 characters (who I will post here, of course) to make sure I understand the chargen procedure, but I also need to pick a campaign setting. My players would rather have a mission than an opportunity, if you know what I mean. So a charted space sandbox (the default Traveller campaign) is probably not the best plan.
At the moment, I have two top contenders:
First up, we have The Kursis Charter from the Linkworlds Cluster campaign setting, released as a freebee when T20 was first published. The players' ship, badly in need of refitting (aren't they always?) is given a charter to do a mail run through the Linkworlds cluster. The usual mail ship has skipped, and mail is starting to pile up. As long as they follow their appointed route and leave enough room for the mail (a few tons per world), they're free to engage in other lucrative opportunities as they present themselves. Along they way, they find a trail of clues to one such opportunity. Needless to say, not everyone on the mail route is going to be cooperative, nor are the clues going to be easy to follow up on.
Second is "Epic Adventure 5, Scout Cruiser", also by QLI for the T20 system. In this one, the players sign on with a scout crew in a rather large Scout Cruiser (1000 tons - 5x the size of the usual tramp merchant ship - and a crew of 21 instead of 3-5.), which is going on a deep-space mission into a stellar rift to discover the fate of another delinquent scout cruiser.
So the Kursis Charter has uplifted bears, strange alien life forms, daring rescues and fetch quests. EA5 has a mystery and hostile forces, along with some grim situations. I think the answer, especially given the group I'm playing with, is clear.
In to the Link Worlds we go.
Wednesday, January 2, 2013
Traveller T20
My son, who knows all too well of my affections for things Traveller, bought me a copy of QuikLink Interactive's "Traveller T20", which is a D20 Modern take on Traveller. While T20 itself is out of production due to an expired Traveller license, the game engine lives on in SciFi20.
Others have reviewed the game in detail, so I won't review the product. Instead, I'm going to point out some things that interested me in the first partial read through.
I'm familiar with D20, especially in its 3.5/Pathfinder incarnation, though I'm not what you would call a professional D20 player, so a lot of power building special interactions are probably lost on me.
Having said that, I think they way T20 handles certain skills and feats is very clever. The best example is Piloting, which is a skill. You can rank up your piloting skill as a general stat, but in order to actually pilot something, you need to take a Feat, such as "Spacecraft" or "Aircraft". So you can have your insanely great spaceship pilot who has no idea how to fly a helicopter, but can pick it up pretty easily (on a level up) and still be a great pilot. This meshes nicely with Base Attack Bonus and the various Weapons feats.
Combat is pretty standard D20 (d20+bonus against AC, roll damage if you hit) but T20 separates your "hit points" into "Stamina" (which are equal to D20 hitpoints) and "Lifeblood" (which is your Constitution score). Any time you take damage, it comes off your Stamina, and at zero Stamina, you're out cold. In addition, any damage you take comes off your Lifeblood, but only AFTER armor has had a chance to stop it. Armor is very important in T20. It not only increases your AC, but it reduces damage to Lifeblood, keeping you alive longer. The way the AR rules work is a bit convoluted, but probably not too hard to handle in practice - each point of AR removes the lowest rolled dice of damage until there is only one dice left. Then, any remaining AR removes points of damage. So a 2d10 attack (3, 8) against an AR 5 armor would first cancel the 3 with one point of AR, then use the remaining 4 AR to reduce the 8 to a 4. So in the end, you'd take 11 Stamina and 4 Lifeblood from that hit. Two other points: nonlethal damage just comes off of stamina, and once you're out cold, additional damage goes straight to Lifeblood, bypassing any armor.
I also like the approach they've taken to building space ships. The math works out to be very much like Classic Traveller in the end, but the approach is totally different. Each hull size requires a number of "units" to power it. Say for example, a 100 ton ship needs two power plant units installed, two maneuver drive modules, etc. Each module is rated for performance. So if you want 4G acceleration, you'd need to buy two 4G gravitic maneuver modules, and a powerful enough power plant to run them. This opens up a lot of RP chrome. "That last hit took out your #3 maneuver drive." instead of "Your m-drive just dropped from a D to a C rating," which is how it would have worked under Classic Traveller.
In addition, you now can choose your avionics, sensors and computer separately, and they all require a certain level of power and control rating (provided by the power plant and computer, respectively). Again, more detail than CT, and in a way that would help bring the setting to life during play.
Character creation has an interesting concept. Traveller characters do not classically start of as 18 year old newbies, they are for the most part ex-service personnel who are already skilled. But D20 games have levels and XP. How do you reconcile those two things? Well, T20 allows you to have a prior career in which you gain a somewhat random amount of XP which you can use to level up your character. The skills and feats available to you depend on the career you have chosen, and it's possible at higher levels that you will not get enough XP to level up during a term.
Another character building rule T20 has added is the idea that your homeworld's statistics grant you certain skills and feats. CT does not care about your homeworld, and Mongoose Traveller handles things with their "level 0 skill" system, which I don't really care for, since it implies that all skills are trained-only skills. D20 in general and T20 in specific of course allow untrained use of certain skills for anyone.
Any way, since pretty much everyone I play RPGs with is familiar with D20 rules to some extent, I may wind up switching to T20, even though CT still holds a special place in my heart. Fortunately, T20 went through some trouble to remain compatible with CT adventures and such, so it doesn't have to be just one or the other.
That's enough rambling for now.
Others have reviewed the game in detail, so I won't review the product. Instead, I'm going to point out some things that interested me in the first partial read through.
I'm familiar with D20, especially in its 3.5/Pathfinder incarnation, though I'm not what you would call a professional D20 player, so a lot of power building special interactions are probably lost on me.
Having said that, I think they way T20 handles certain skills and feats is very clever. The best example is Piloting, which is a skill. You can rank up your piloting skill as a general stat, but in order to actually pilot something, you need to take a Feat, such as "Spacecraft" or "Aircraft". So you can have your insanely great spaceship pilot who has no idea how to fly a helicopter, but can pick it up pretty easily (on a level up) and still be a great pilot. This meshes nicely with Base Attack Bonus and the various Weapons feats.
Combat is pretty standard D20 (d20+bonus against AC, roll damage if you hit) but T20 separates your "hit points" into "Stamina" (which are equal to D20 hitpoints) and "Lifeblood" (which is your Constitution score). Any time you take damage, it comes off your Stamina, and at zero Stamina, you're out cold. In addition, any damage you take comes off your Lifeblood, but only AFTER armor has had a chance to stop it. Armor is very important in T20. It not only increases your AC, but it reduces damage to Lifeblood, keeping you alive longer. The way the AR rules work is a bit convoluted, but probably not too hard to handle in practice - each point of AR removes the lowest rolled dice of damage until there is only one dice left. Then, any remaining AR removes points of damage. So a 2d10 attack (3, 8) against an AR 5 armor would first cancel the 3 with one point of AR, then use the remaining 4 AR to reduce the 8 to a 4. So in the end, you'd take 11 Stamina and 4 Lifeblood from that hit. Two other points: nonlethal damage just comes off of stamina, and once you're out cold, additional damage goes straight to Lifeblood, bypassing any armor.
I also like the approach they've taken to building space ships. The math works out to be very much like Classic Traveller in the end, but the approach is totally different. Each hull size requires a number of "units" to power it. Say for example, a 100 ton ship needs two power plant units installed, two maneuver drive modules, etc. Each module is rated for performance. So if you want 4G acceleration, you'd need to buy two 4G gravitic maneuver modules, and a powerful enough power plant to run them. This opens up a lot of RP chrome. "That last hit took out your #3 maneuver drive." instead of "Your m-drive just dropped from a D to a C rating," which is how it would have worked under Classic Traveller.
In addition, you now can choose your avionics, sensors and computer separately, and they all require a certain level of power and control rating (provided by the power plant and computer, respectively). Again, more detail than CT, and in a way that would help bring the setting to life during play.
Character creation has an interesting concept. Traveller characters do not classically start of as 18 year old newbies, they are for the most part ex-service personnel who are already skilled. But D20 games have levels and XP. How do you reconcile those two things? Well, T20 allows you to have a prior career in which you gain a somewhat random amount of XP which you can use to level up your character. The skills and feats available to you depend on the career you have chosen, and it's possible at higher levels that you will not get enough XP to level up during a term.
Another character building rule T20 has added is the idea that your homeworld's statistics grant you certain skills and feats. CT does not care about your homeworld, and Mongoose Traveller handles things with their "level 0 skill" system, which I don't really care for, since it implies that all skills are trained-only skills. D20 in general and T20 in specific of course allow untrained use of certain skills for anyone.
Any way, since pretty much everyone I play RPGs with is familiar with D20 rules to some extent, I may wind up switching to T20, even though CT still holds a special place in my heart. Fortunately, T20 went through some trouble to remain compatible with CT adventures and such, so it doesn't have to be just one or the other.
That's enough rambling for now.
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