Okay we touched on why the cutlass could be important enough to warrant every Marine knowing how to use one so we are ready to do this thing. The Marines are carried aboard naval ships; secure navy bases and guard starports. First thing I am going to change is removing the general guarding starports role. Starports are going to be civilian commercial installations and guarded by civilians also you would have squad sized independent units spread all over D and E starports across the imperium and that makes no sense.
Moving on to the tables the first thing we see is the Marines have the highest enlistment number in the game (only Doctors match it) which could indicate a smaller highly selective force. I am going with the key quality being political reliability. The Imperium has the Marines watching the Navy to make it harder for the next Admiral Plankwell. I don't see this as a SOLSEC kind of explicit mission though more along the lines of indoctrination, sorry, service history stories. What is and isn't a lawful order; idealized role of the military in the Imperium and how it is the responsibility and sacred duty of the armed forces to guard against internal as well as external threats (the Marines are just better at it). Why would the emperor lose sleep over the Navy? It is the only branch that can threaten the Imperium rather than just a world the unit is stationed on. As for DM's to enlist the minor preference is for quick thinking and a major bonus for a high strength.
They get shot at more than other services with only the semi-suicidal Scouts having a higher Survival roll. Endurance gives the bonus on this roll. This goes along with my premise of the reliable service in that the Marines get sent in first because they will do what is in the Imperium's interest and then a more permanent solution is put in place if need be. Being able to operate on less sleep and resist supply deprivations is handy if you are a member of a smaller force operating in hostile territory.
Commissions are hard to come by and again we see the military forces preference for knowing facts as the DM comes from EDU but anyone with the standard schooling should be able to get the bonus.
Promotion is also difficult and it matters who your family is as the DM comes from SOC although being from a moderately well off family is good enough.
Reenlistment is, like the Navy, not a sure thing.
As stated above every Marine has Cutlass - 1 and on earning a Commission they get Revolver -1 a more mechanically reliable sidearm than an automatic pistol.
The cash table has an oddity in that the lowest roll is twice what the naval character would earn and the two highest rolls are less than the corresponding naval reward.
The material table is the same as the Navy with 1 distinct difference Marines get a +2 INT and a +1 EDU which is the reverse of the Navy. So throughout their service Marines are trained more on reacting to a situation rather than rote knowledge of a topic.
The Personal Development table only allows for improvement of the three physical characteristics adding Gambling; Brawling and Blade Combat in place of the mental and social characteristics. This has the effect that either a Marine can use 3 tables or all 4 decided at the generation of characteristics which is why I am house ruling in the ability to always replace a skill roll with +1 EDU. Gambling I was going to gloss over as we all know what it is but on reflection I think I will use it to add another detail to the Imperium. The state encourages gambling in its population. My own state in the US has a very profitable lottery and I can see the Imperium doing the same kinds of things. I already hinted that the TAS benefit was awarded like a lottery so why not make it official? I don't see penny ante poker in the barracks giving you a 3,000 to 10,000 cr bump on each cash roll either. Brawling and Blade Combat are reasonable considering what the Marines are supposed to do.
Again I think of the Service Skill table as those things the Marines consider core skills to carry out their mission and we have ATV; Vacc Suit; 2x Gun Combat and 2x Blade Combat. ATV I am looking askance at because I think it is a left over from the 1977 set of rules and should be Vehicle skill. I (oddly considering the boulders of salt I accept elsewhere) have trouble with something covering Wheeled and Tracked Vehicles in the same skill when they are split elsewhere. Vacc Suit makes sense as does Gun Combat. Blade Combat only deserves another mention because it is more commonly gained than Gun Combat.
The first Advanced Education table has Vehicle; Mechanical; Electronic; Tactics; Blade and Gun Combat. Vehicle as I said is more sensible to me than ATV which by the way you can't select when you get Vehicle. I had thought Ship's Boat was available under Vehicle but it does not appear to be so. Mechanical and Electronics are fine, someone has to fix stuff. Tactics is also a necessary skill. Gun and Blade don't need any further discussion.
The 8+ Advanced Education table has Medical; 2x Tactics; Computer; Leader; and Admin. The only standout here is Leader and it is only worth mentioning because it isn't a naval skill. So my premise of some paranoia concerning the Navy holds merit. The military knows how to train for leadership potential and chooses not to emphasize it for naval officers.
I have problems with the skill set available to the Marines. It is missing 2 skills I am not willing to buy the Marines wouldn't have, Ship's Boat and Forward Observer. They are supposed to board enemy ships and/or assault enemy worlds but they can't fly themselves there or call in fire support? I think not. I also think they should have Gunnery as I am not planning on using Book 4 so artillery isn't an available skill otherwise. So I am replacing ATV with Ship's Boat and the second Blade Combat with Forward Observer this leaves an equal frequency of Gun and Blade Combat in the tables. I like the idea of Gunnery but I am not sure what it would replace although I am leaning toward it belonging on the 8+ table I don't want to eliminate anything or reduce the chance of Tactics. Any opinions?
Now to try and sum that all up. The Marines look for Imperial patriots and subtly encourage them to watch out for the other branches rising up. Their missions are either boarding actions in deep space or being outnumbered defending bases or being the first to assault an enemy world. They are also oriented toward psychological warfare by emphasizing closing to hand to hand and hacking people up. They place little emphasis on non-combat skills preferring to focus on killing or getting to a place where people need killing.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
Tuesday, September 29, 2015
A brief interlude about sharp and pointy things
Next up is going to the Marines and that means a service that makes sure everyone knows who to use a cutlass but not a rifle and their Lt's get revolver training. Seriously what is up with all the swords and knives and other D&D crap? I wish I could remember who said/wrote an explanation of why high tech societies using ancient tech weapons I could live with was but I don't. The gist of the premise was there is so much technology stuff on a starship that bullets and energy beams flying around would cause all kinds of collateral damage that could be fatal to everyone on the ship. Damage the controls of M Drive and off you go into an orbital body or the deep dark. Unplanned jump anyone? Runaway power plant to ruin the day? That's just the engineering deck. Now add that you are in a vacc suit/combat armor with restricted vision in the tight close range of a starship interior and it becomes more likely intended or not hand to hand becomes more common. Also as I seem to think I read somewhere else humans find the idea of being attacked with a knife much more frightening than a gun. I fear it was a police show where I heard it so it could be total BS but I could see someone trying to hack my arm off rather than shoot me being more terrifying.
Most of this is me trying to come up with a reason worth suspending disbelief and still using the rules as presented. Let me be clear in that I am not saying the Marines or anyone else for that matter are going in without guns. The nature of shipboard combat gives a the reason so many people know how to kill you with a knife or sword or spear. Any one buying this because I am still underwhelmed. More so considering most times the character spends 4 years of their life and said primitive weapon is the most noteworthy skill they pick up.
Most of this is me trying to come up with a reason worth suspending disbelief and still using the rules as presented. Let me be clear in that I am not saying the Marines or anyone else for that matter are going in without guns. The nature of shipboard combat gives a the reason so many people know how to kill you with a knife or sword or spear. Any one buying this because I am still underwhelmed. More so considering most times the character spends 4 years of their life and said primitive weapon is the most noteworthy skill they pick up.
Monday, September 28, 2015
Starter Traveller post 5, career types Navy
For the next couple of posts I am going to go through the careers in ST and Citizens of the Imperium Supplement 4 and the Law Enforcer which I think is in a JTAS and I know is in MT. I will look at what the game says; skills available and the Mustering Out benefits and how I am going to apply them in my view of the Imperium. Keep in mind I have decided that all pre-game career generation is in service to the Imperium which has a universal conscription and no provision for enlisting as anything other than rank 0 scrubbo no matter the service or UPP of the character. How sincere the stated goal of universal employment and skill training is remains up in the air as does the claim all the services promote on merit. Starting with Starter Traveller itself here we go.
NAVY
The service is described as patrolling space defending society from lawless elements and foreign invaders. Meh, that works. From latter works we know there are Imperial Fleets; Imperial Reserve Fleets and local squadrons. During character generation service is with an Imperial Fleet only. People go from the Imperial navy to local (world) navies or noble huscarles but everyone starts serving the Emperor. It is harder than average to volunteer for the navy with Intelligence offering a slight bonus and Education offering a bigger one. Which using my take on the UPP means knowing a bunch of stuff by memory. The naval entrance exam therefor is a grueling test covering a very wide swath of possible knowledge relying mostly on concrete facts rather than problem solving.
Survival indicates it is moderately dangerous with an Intelligence DM showing quick thinking is key in avoiding what dangers come up.
Commission is where nepotism makes its first appearance it is friggin' hard to get a commission from the ranks and Social Status is what gives you a leg up. A little more thought and it seems likely to me the Emperor wants his fleets controlled by people tied to the future of the Imperium most closely which means his feudal vassals the nobles.
Promotion is a little less likely than average and again the Education DM implies giant tests of facts rather than problem solving. The difference between the difficulty in gaining a commission and getting promoted is significant on a 2D6 roll so once you get rank it is possible to advance.
However the reenlistment is not conducive to a long career. Having no DM for reenlistment makes me even more content with the everyone gets drafted idea because the career system does make your career end kind of arbitrary in there is no way to improve your chance to continue.
Mustering out of the Navy gives you an equal chance for the best and worst kind of travel; improved mental agility; a really significant bump in the crap you know; Blade combat and finally membership in TAS. If you made it to Rank 5 or 6 you can zip into the peerage with +2 to SOC on every 6. Passage vouchers can be used on any ship at any time so I am thinking they are awards by a grateful company/vessel to the crew a of a naval vessel for a rescue of some kind so it is a civilian perk not government one. The Intelligence and Education increases represent the years of living under naval expectations and what they train their people for. TAS is weird to me because if you don't get it mustering out it would cost 1 Mcr. So I think of it as a partnership between the Imperium and TAS in a kind of lottery if you get TAS you could goof off never working again by cashing in your high passage for 8,000 a month for life. The Blade reward is an actual bladed weapon (and skill 0 if not already possessed) with additional awards being different weapons or +1 skill in the same weapon.
This benefit has always mystified me, why the sudden knife fights at the end of your career? True you can view it as something that took place during the career and it is a mechanic of the game that awards it at the end but there is a stranger possibility that occured to me. Combine my belief the Imperium gives the option to return you to your homeworld at the end of enlistment and TAS giving 16% of naval personal the million credit prize upon leaving the service with humankind's fascination with individual conflict and we have the campaign enhancing and creepy TNS exclusive traveling retirement tournaments. If you take up the offer for returning home you travel along on your way home participating in televised first blood duels amongst the various services. Kind of an olympic reality TV recruitment propaganda campaign with TAS getting revenue from broadcasting and the services getting tv exposure to boost enlistment. And this GM enhances his setting where the Imperium is tone deaf to how it can appear not to care about individual citizens, everybody wins! The final high rank getting a noble title also adds to my earlier supposition the Imperium wants those people capable of leading a fleet loyal to the current structure of the Imperium.
The cash table just comes out odd as you can get between 1000 and 150,000 credits with gambling skill of any level being the only DM. <shrug> I got nothing.
However I would suggest and am going to see if it is worthwhile to have each roll represent something worth at least a sentence of backstory. Sitting here writing a blog this seems a good idea actual rolling needs to be done to see if is worth it.
On to the skill tables. The personal development table gives an equal chance to increase any of your characteristics, meh.
Service skills I have always taken to represent the most common tasks that need to be performed and the Navy has Ship's Boat; Vacc Suit; Forward Observer; Gunnery; Blade Combat and Gun Combat. Hmmm, looking at this it seems to me the navy does a lot of boarding actions as all except Forward Observer are useful for this. It also seems the Navy routinely bombs land based targets. If we take my point of view these are the skills the Navy expects its members to need it indicates a fair amount of unequal contests ie piracy and uprisings.
Moving on to the first Advanced Education table we get Vacc Suit; Mechanical; Electrical; Engineering; Gunnery and Jack of all Trades. Vacc Suit makes sense in that the first thing ships are going to do if combat seems likely is depressurize their interiors. The next three seems to indicate keeping the equipment on the ship running is important. Gunnery has shown up twice as well because the Navy is there to shoot stuff when you come down to it. Finally the oddball skill of JOT which is poorly explained leading to really interesting debates on the G+ group on what it should be used for. I am leaning toward it being a DM pool that can be used on any roll and resets every gaming session in addition to the stated level-0 in all other skills.
Finally the is the 8+ Education Advance Education table which I again believe can be explain by that most beloved of bureaucratic tools the standardized test. You have to test to get into the technical schools for these skills Medical; Navigation; Engineering; Computer; Pilot and Administration. Making these skills harder to get would imply the Navy wants more control over the people capable of doing them and looking at them they are the ones which will have an effect on a whole ship rather than the personal on the ship individually.
Not to be ignored are the two rank awards of +1 SOC each as you rise in rank again supporting my view the people able to lead a ship into a fight are the ones the Imperium wants tied to the current status quo.
So we end up with a service that is moderately difficult to get into, really hard to get rank in and probably not one you are going to retire from. While in you spend a lot of time in Vacuum and fights. The more prestigious jobs involve you with keeping the ship going. You also spend a huge amount of time taking tests checking how well you memorize stuff. If you can get a commission you can get promoted and will move in higher and higher circles of society as you do. When you get out you get somewhere between lame and decent money and recognition through free tickets an exclusive membership most people dream about the way we do about winning the lottery and the possibility of some media exposure getting in sensationalized combats with sharp things. If you got high rank chances are good you will receive a title. Applying this to ship design theory I see naval vessels as having the bridge (and senior officers) separated from the rest of crew, every vessel having small craft and at least a few missile weapons for bombardments.
NAVY
The service is described as patrolling space defending society from lawless elements and foreign invaders. Meh, that works. From latter works we know there are Imperial Fleets; Imperial Reserve Fleets and local squadrons. During character generation service is with an Imperial Fleet only. People go from the Imperial navy to local (world) navies or noble huscarles but everyone starts serving the Emperor. It is harder than average to volunteer for the navy with Intelligence offering a slight bonus and Education offering a bigger one. Which using my take on the UPP means knowing a bunch of stuff by memory. The naval entrance exam therefor is a grueling test covering a very wide swath of possible knowledge relying mostly on concrete facts rather than problem solving.
Survival indicates it is moderately dangerous with an Intelligence DM showing quick thinking is key in avoiding what dangers come up.
Commission is where nepotism makes its first appearance it is friggin' hard to get a commission from the ranks and Social Status is what gives you a leg up. A little more thought and it seems likely to me the Emperor wants his fleets controlled by people tied to the future of the Imperium most closely which means his feudal vassals the nobles.
Promotion is a little less likely than average and again the Education DM implies giant tests of facts rather than problem solving. The difference between the difficulty in gaining a commission and getting promoted is significant on a 2D6 roll so once you get rank it is possible to advance.
However the reenlistment is not conducive to a long career. Having no DM for reenlistment makes me even more content with the everyone gets drafted idea because the career system does make your career end kind of arbitrary in there is no way to improve your chance to continue.
Mustering out of the Navy gives you an equal chance for the best and worst kind of travel; improved mental agility; a really significant bump in the crap you know; Blade combat and finally membership in TAS. If you made it to Rank 5 or 6 you can zip into the peerage with +2 to SOC on every 6. Passage vouchers can be used on any ship at any time so I am thinking they are awards by a grateful company/vessel to the crew a of a naval vessel for a rescue of some kind so it is a civilian perk not government one. The Intelligence and Education increases represent the years of living under naval expectations and what they train their people for. TAS is weird to me because if you don't get it mustering out it would cost 1 Mcr. So I think of it as a partnership between the Imperium and TAS in a kind of lottery if you get TAS you could goof off never working again by cashing in your high passage for 8,000 a month for life. The Blade reward is an actual bladed weapon (and skill 0 if not already possessed) with additional awards being different weapons or +1 skill in the same weapon.
This benefit has always mystified me, why the sudden knife fights at the end of your career? True you can view it as something that took place during the career and it is a mechanic of the game that awards it at the end but there is a stranger possibility that occured to me. Combine my belief the Imperium gives the option to return you to your homeworld at the end of enlistment and TAS giving 16% of naval personal the million credit prize upon leaving the service with humankind's fascination with individual conflict and we have the campaign enhancing and creepy TNS exclusive traveling retirement tournaments. If you take up the offer for returning home you travel along on your way home participating in televised first blood duels amongst the various services. Kind of an olympic reality TV recruitment propaganda campaign with TAS getting revenue from broadcasting and the services getting tv exposure to boost enlistment. And this GM enhances his setting where the Imperium is tone deaf to how it can appear not to care about individual citizens, everybody wins! The final high rank getting a noble title also adds to my earlier supposition the Imperium wants those people capable of leading a fleet loyal to the current structure of the Imperium.
The cash table just comes out odd as you can get between 1000 and 150,000 credits with gambling skill of any level being the only DM. <shrug> I got nothing.
However I would suggest and am going to see if it is worthwhile to have each roll represent something worth at least a sentence of backstory. Sitting here writing a blog this seems a good idea actual rolling needs to be done to see if is worth it.
On to the skill tables. The personal development table gives an equal chance to increase any of your characteristics, meh.
Service skills I have always taken to represent the most common tasks that need to be performed and the Navy has Ship's Boat; Vacc Suit; Forward Observer; Gunnery; Blade Combat and Gun Combat. Hmmm, looking at this it seems to me the navy does a lot of boarding actions as all except Forward Observer are useful for this. It also seems the Navy routinely bombs land based targets. If we take my point of view these are the skills the Navy expects its members to need it indicates a fair amount of unequal contests ie piracy and uprisings.
Moving on to the first Advanced Education table we get Vacc Suit; Mechanical; Electrical; Engineering; Gunnery and Jack of all Trades. Vacc Suit makes sense in that the first thing ships are going to do if combat seems likely is depressurize their interiors. The next three seems to indicate keeping the equipment on the ship running is important. Gunnery has shown up twice as well because the Navy is there to shoot stuff when you come down to it. Finally the oddball skill of JOT which is poorly explained leading to really interesting debates on the G+ group on what it should be used for. I am leaning toward it being a DM pool that can be used on any roll and resets every gaming session in addition to the stated level-0 in all other skills.
Finally the is the 8+ Education Advance Education table which I again believe can be explain by that most beloved of bureaucratic tools the standardized test. You have to test to get into the technical schools for these skills Medical; Navigation; Engineering; Computer; Pilot and Administration. Making these skills harder to get would imply the Navy wants more control over the people capable of doing them and looking at them they are the ones which will have an effect on a whole ship rather than the personal on the ship individually.
Not to be ignored are the two rank awards of +1 SOC each as you rise in rank again supporting my view the people able to lead a ship into a fight are the ones the Imperium wants tied to the current status quo.
So we end up with a service that is moderately difficult to get into, really hard to get rank in and probably not one you are going to retire from. While in you spend a lot of time in Vacuum and fights. The more prestigious jobs involve you with keeping the ship going. You also spend a huge amount of time taking tests checking how well you memorize stuff. If you can get a commission you can get promoted and will move in higher and higher circles of society as you do. When you get out you get somewhere between lame and decent money and recognition through free tickets an exclusive membership most people dream about the way we do about winning the lottery and the possibility of some media exposure getting in sensationalized combats with sharp things. If you got high rank chances are good you will receive a title. Applying this to ship design theory I see naval vessels as having the bridge (and senior officers) separated from the rest of crew, every vessel having small craft and at least a few missile weapons for bombardments.
Eldritch RPG by Crossroad Games
Having recently started a series of posts to get ready for a possible Traveller game I discovered sharing with the G+ community is going to make it better by getting views other than my own. I decided to try it with my next Fantasy game as well. My favorite Fantasy RPG is Eldritch RPG by Crossroads Games. It is simple to play and run and the first game I ran on Roll20 was pretty fun before the real world intruded and brought it to a close before any of would have liked. What I am planning on doing is going through the rules as presented in the book giving my take on them (and soliciting other opinions). In the interest of transparency I am an online friend of one of the authors +Eldritch Role Playing Game Dan Cross although I have no ties to the company.
Who the heck am I? I am a 50 year old guy from Massachusetts who has been playing RPG's since I got the Holmes Blue Book in freshman year in high school. I will try and avoid terms like OSR, rules light, story telling and the most common terms thrown around these days because I have noticed they seem to mean something different to each person. <sigh> I will try and expect to fail to convey a sense of the game my expectation of failure has nothing to do with the game. It really is a game that is best played rather than described because it is really intuitive to play but when you describe it it doesn't sound like it. At it's core everything has a die (or series of dice) assigned to it and you roll those dice to exceed a target number. It is a point buy classless system which awards points to improve your character's die sizes or ranges rather than gain levels. There are a bunch of default very broad skills that everyone start with a D4 in and you build your character by increasing the size of the base die or refining the skill with a die in a narrower subset of the skill. For example everyone has Melee D4 which covers any form of beating the snot out of each other with something standing toe to toe. You decide your character is better than average at it so you can bump the D4 to a D6 or D8 or you have a picture of a guy with a walking stick which he uses in combat so you could add a D4 in Bludgeon or Bludgeon D4 and then 1 handed club D4. If Example Guy is standing in a bar holding a short sword (because his party is harassing him all the real heroes use sword) and all of a sudden a gang of orcs attack he rolls a D4 in combat as he retreats toward the umbrella stand. Disarmed he picks up a stray war hammer and starts using D4+D4 until reaching his ebony walking stick when he starts dealing a D4+D4+D4. These are called Ability Die Chains (ADC) and are the core of the system. ADC are simple and flexible letting you to create whatever you want to play without the need for a ton of rules.They all follow the same template extremely broad field / Specialty applying to a lot of situations/ Mastery applying to most cases the PC's can be prepared for. As for GMing the game it is a matter of how much crunch you want to use. There are rules for most of the common fantasy situations but you also look at the situation pick a difficulty and randomly generate a target number.
Having actually run the game and most players I had having no experience with system at all I can tell you explaining was less helpful than just playing. The GM needs a basic idea but not a mastery which is why I am going to go through the book cover to cover to actually know the rules rather than think I know them. The way I did character generation was to ask what the player wanted to play without explaining the rules. Refined a backstory with the player to put them in the game world and then I built the character and did a final tweak with the player. This worked really well with me and the players having fun and them ending up with more than just a fighter or wizard or cleric. You will get different results depending on your group but it is a method to think about. Crap that was a lot of blabbing to say Eldritch works really well to develop a concept and then figure out the rules to meet the concept.
The hardest thing about playing or running Eldritch is accepting it is as easy as it is. This came up over and over again with both me and most of my players continuously over complicating something because we were use to more traditional games. If you find yourself thinking you need to looks something up in the book you are probably overthinking the situation. However there are rules you probably won't memorize right away, disarming (Melee and Ranged) the spell system (not hard but you can make any spell you can imagine) and some other things related to doing movie hero kinds of stuff. Because the system leans more toward a cinematic level of play than realistic.
And rereading this confused mess I am sadly unsurprised I met my expectation of failure. It is a really, really fun game that is easy to play and run which if you are looking for something new I think is worth a look.
Who the heck am I? I am a 50 year old guy from Massachusetts who has been playing RPG's since I got the Holmes Blue Book in freshman year in high school. I will try and avoid terms like OSR, rules light, story telling and the most common terms thrown around these days because I have noticed they seem to mean something different to each person. <sigh> I will try and expect to fail to convey a sense of the game my expectation of failure has nothing to do with the game. It really is a game that is best played rather than described because it is really intuitive to play but when you describe it it doesn't sound like it. At it's core everything has a die (or series of dice) assigned to it and you roll those dice to exceed a target number. It is a point buy classless system which awards points to improve your character's die sizes or ranges rather than gain levels. There are a bunch of default very broad skills that everyone start with a D4 in and you build your character by increasing the size of the base die or refining the skill with a die in a narrower subset of the skill. For example everyone has Melee D4 which covers any form of beating the snot out of each other with something standing toe to toe. You decide your character is better than average at it so you can bump the D4 to a D6 or D8 or you have a picture of a guy with a walking stick which he uses in combat so you could add a D4 in Bludgeon or Bludgeon D4 and then 1 handed club D4. If Example Guy is standing in a bar holding a short sword (because his party is harassing him all the real heroes use sword) and all of a sudden a gang of orcs attack he rolls a D4 in combat as he retreats toward the umbrella stand. Disarmed he picks up a stray war hammer and starts using D4+D4 until reaching his ebony walking stick when he starts dealing a D4+D4+D4. These are called Ability Die Chains (ADC) and are the core of the system. ADC are simple and flexible letting you to create whatever you want to play without the need for a ton of rules.They all follow the same template extremely broad field / Specialty applying to a lot of situations/ Mastery applying to most cases the PC's can be prepared for. As for GMing the game it is a matter of how much crunch you want to use. There are rules for most of the common fantasy situations but you also look at the situation pick a difficulty and randomly generate a target number.
Having actually run the game and most players I had having no experience with system at all I can tell you explaining was less helpful than just playing. The GM needs a basic idea but not a mastery which is why I am going to go through the book cover to cover to actually know the rules rather than think I know them. The way I did character generation was to ask what the player wanted to play without explaining the rules. Refined a backstory with the player to put them in the game world and then I built the character and did a final tweak with the player. This worked really well with me and the players having fun and them ending up with more than just a fighter or wizard or cleric. You will get different results depending on your group but it is a method to think about. Crap that was a lot of blabbing to say Eldritch works really well to develop a concept and then figure out the rules to meet the concept.
The hardest thing about playing or running Eldritch is accepting it is as easy as it is. This came up over and over again with both me and most of my players continuously over complicating something because we were use to more traditional games. If you find yourself thinking you need to looks something up in the book you are probably overthinking the situation. However there are rules you probably won't memorize right away, disarming (Melee and Ranged) the spell system (not hard but you can make any spell you can imagine) and some other things related to doing movie hero kinds of stuff. Because the system leans more toward a cinematic level of play than realistic.
And rereading this confused mess I am sadly unsurprised I met my expectation of failure. It is a really, really fun game that is easy to play and run which if you are looking for something new I think is worth a look.
Sunday, September 27, 2015
Starter Traveller post 4
Oddly there are a couple sections before discussing the types of careers so I will deal with them first. MUSTERING OUT is pretty straight forward with the exception of the restriction of no more than 3 rolls for cash. Given my premise that the pre-game careers represent service in a government job I postulate this is a restriction put in place because of popular demand in reaction to a portrayal of more than a certain amount as an insider scam to inflate government employee benefits unavailable to the private sector. I am okay with this as it fits my idea of a tension between the average person and the Imperium as a whole.
AGING is a painful thing to contemplate what was completely reasonable to me before I was 30 is insulting now that I am over 50. What I am talking about is the rules saying you start your downhill spiral at 34. I am not a biologist so this can be true and if I am honest I can admit I noticed after 25 there were things I could no longer do. Most of those things I now view as foolish like excessive alcohol consumption and failure to sleep which adds to the feeling of unreasonable persecution in the game. Mechanics wise and story wise I can't see a need to screw with it though but I want to. Weirdly there is the implication you are stuck with a character until that character dies or turns 66. Or maybe not so weird as character generation is pretty much presented as playing the hand of cards you are randomly dealt. Regardless I don't think anyone is going to be surprised I have no intention of enforcing this rule and there by encouraging a campaign derailment from player disinterest.
NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS is the final section before we get to the career type overviews. Seemingly somewhat out of place it is placed here I believe because the GM is supposed to roll them up as full blown characters. Decidedly different than most other games but not terribly difficult to do ahead of times in traveller.
AGING is a painful thing to contemplate what was completely reasonable to me before I was 30 is insulting now that I am over 50. What I am talking about is the rules saying you start your downhill spiral at 34. I am not a biologist so this can be true and if I am honest I can admit I noticed after 25 there were things I could no longer do. Most of those things I now view as foolish like excessive alcohol consumption and failure to sleep which adds to the feeling of unreasonable persecution in the game. Mechanics wise and story wise I can't see a need to screw with it though but I want to. Weirdly there is the implication you are stuck with a character until that character dies or turns 66. Or maybe not so weird as character generation is pretty much presented as playing the hand of cards you are randomly dealt. Regardless I don't think anyone is going to be surprised I have no intention of enforcing this rule and there by encouraging a campaign derailment from player disinterest.
NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS is the final section before we get to the career type overviews. Seemingly somewhat out of place it is placed here I believe because the GM is supposed to roll them up as full blown characters. Decidedly different than most other games but not terribly difficult to do ahead of times in traveller.
Crown Prince Paulo announces sweeping new Imperial progam
Traveller News Service 038-718 Capital/Core 0508-A586A98-F
Crown Prince Paulo today announced that with the completion of the X-Boat network another sweeping new Imperial program would begin universal conscription. "During her regency my ancestor Empress Arbellatra not only searched for a legitimate heir but also commissioned detailed and in depth sociological studies to try and understand what drove the instability in imperial society that allowed the civil war to continue as long ans as pointlessly as it did. After bowing to the wishes of the Moot and the subjects of the Iridium Throne at large and accepting the crown and all it's burdens these studies started reporting results. The central reason was the Imperium was seen as a force that acted on the average citizens life but cared little for them. Directed to find a way to overcome this fallacy two projects were begun the first was the X-Boat network so the concerns of the people could be heard and addressed in a timely fashion no matter how far from Capital and the second was a means to give everyone a personal connection to the Imperium and provide training in a career to allow them to have a fulfilling life. In pursuit of the second goal every citizen regardless of social position will upon attaining their majority be required to serve the Imperium for 4 years in some capacity. Hand in hand with the Nobles of the Moot a wide variety of career paths are available and will not only provide a solid skill for the individual but also a way to improve the quality of life for the Imperium as a whole. Further details are available from your local noble.
Traveller News Service 038-1018 Capital/Core 0508-A586A98-F
On the 300th anniversary of universal conscription the University of Sylea held a symposium on benefits gained from it and lessons learned during its implementation. On the whole the academics found it a positive program leading to a more cohesive sense of belonging and proving a workable way of the long talked about universal employment at least for 18 to 22 year olds. Some quibbled with it distorting the fundamental free market system that forms the foundation of Imperium. The most heated moment came when it was asserted the lessons from the program where used in the Psionic Suppression's as asserted by Albert Croale in Crisis of '99. This theory has never been proved and is hotly denied by Imperial Officials but remain popular with the fringe conspiracy theory crowd.
*Traveller News Service; Capital/Core 0508-A586A98-F; X-Boat; Arbellatra; Iridium Throne; Sylea; Psionic Supression's; Albert Croale and Crisis of '99 are all the intellectual creations of GDW and I am in no way claiming any rights to them or their usage. I believe I am following fair use but if I am not please let me know and I will delete this post
Crown Prince Paulo today announced that with the completion of the X-Boat network another sweeping new Imperial program would begin universal conscription. "During her regency my ancestor Empress Arbellatra not only searched for a legitimate heir but also commissioned detailed and in depth sociological studies to try and understand what drove the instability in imperial society that allowed the civil war to continue as long ans as pointlessly as it did. After bowing to the wishes of the Moot and the subjects of the Iridium Throne at large and accepting the crown and all it's burdens these studies started reporting results. The central reason was the Imperium was seen as a force that acted on the average citizens life but cared little for them. Directed to find a way to overcome this fallacy two projects were begun the first was the X-Boat network so the concerns of the people could be heard and addressed in a timely fashion no matter how far from Capital and the second was a means to give everyone a personal connection to the Imperium and provide training in a career to allow them to have a fulfilling life. In pursuit of the second goal every citizen regardless of social position will upon attaining their majority be required to serve the Imperium for 4 years in some capacity. Hand in hand with the Nobles of the Moot a wide variety of career paths are available and will not only provide a solid skill for the individual but also a way to improve the quality of life for the Imperium as a whole. Further details are available from your local noble.
Traveller News Service 038-1018 Capital/Core 0508-A586A98-F
On the 300th anniversary of universal conscription the University of Sylea held a symposium on benefits gained from it and lessons learned during its implementation. On the whole the academics found it a positive program leading to a more cohesive sense of belonging and proving a workable way of the long talked about universal employment at least for 18 to 22 year olds. Some quibbled with it distorting the fundamental free market system that forms the foundation of Imperium. The most heated moment came when it was asserted the lessons from the program where used in the Psionic Suppression's as asserted by Albert Croale in Crisis of '99. This theory has never been proved and is hotly denied by Imperial Officials but remain popular with the fringe conspiracy theory crowd.
*Traveller News Service; Capital/Core 0508-A586A98-F; X-Boat; Arbellatra; Iridium Throne; Sylea; Psionic Supression's; Albert Croale and Crisis of '99 are all the intellectual creations of GDW and I am in no way claiming any rights to them or their usage. I believe I am following fair use but if I am not please let me know and I will delete this post
Saturday, September 26, 2015
Starter Traveller part 3 with a guest appearance by Supplement 4 and MT
First off don't forget where you put your glasses it can delay things like reading and reviewing game rules. The next section is DIE ROLLING CONVENTIONS which doesn't relay anything controversial or worth extra comment on. CHARACTERS, ah now we get to something worth some consideration. First thing I would like to mention is TAS form 2 and maybe ID cars from Supplement 12 Forms, you should consider using them as a visual cue that you are playing Traveller. It may seem silly to some people but any subtle minimal effort required assistance to help players slip into the Third Imperium is welcomed by me. Even with my limited computer skills I can convert the PDF to an image file and then with minimal effort create a personalized card as a piece of digital bling at very least I think I will do this with the Imperial Draft Registration Card from the JTAS bundle. Not much real use but neat at least to me.
INITIAL CHARACTER GENERATION covers generating the base UPP; naming and possibly a title due the character. I had thought about allowing assigning the rolls as desired but upon reflection I think rolling in order is closer to the intent of the game and should allow for a better reflection of a modern too far future reality. We get the body we are born with and it is difficult, though not impossible, to change it too much; we have opportunities to chart our lives but outside forces heavily influence what skills we end up choosing. But I don't want to role play my life you say! and you shouldn't, however what this can be used to do is make your pudgy 48 year old ex-merchant even more heroic when he is holding the doorway of the Basilica of Ste. Besophere on Focaline against a squad of Vargr raiders to save the Nuns and Orphans inside. You are going to end up with a character who probably won't have stats as high as you would like and lacking the skills you want but if you and your players can get the right mind set it will be that much more awesome because they don't.
I have to pick some nits with the some characteristic definitions specifically Intelligence; Education and to a lesser degree Social Standing. Intelligence is described as "corresponds to IQ" which I find less than helpful from the stand point of playing the game. I don't know enough about the scale to use it in game terms instead I believe it is better thought of as a measure of how quickly a character can process and use information. Die rolls and characteristics should only really come up in dramatic situations so it is only game relevant when you are under the gun so to speak. How about a situation like the poem in Adventure 3? In case like that it is more a matter of mental discipline anyone with access to a Google like service can get the needed information but not everyone will when instead there are kitten videos they could be watching.
Education can be thought of as what degree you possess but I tend to think of it more as the amount of crap you retain, your built in Google result as it were like knowing the phrase "Damn the Torpedoes!" actually refers to mines not what most people would think of as torpedoes.
Social Standing is generally ignored unless the PC has a title and I am not entirely sure how to use this stat during a game. I am thinking about a DM in social situations relative to the each person involved. Two people of SOC 7 I think will relate better to each other because of a common style of upbringing than a SOC 2 thug and a SOC A debutante but I am not sure how much effort is involved and if it would be worth trying to figure out.
A final characteristic I am of two minds on is PSI or psionic strength. Should it be generated when the character is created or only when they have it tested? In the first case a player knowing their character has a high strength will probably cut their career generation short and push to find an institute right away. On the other hand it would suck to put in all the effort to find an institute only to have a PSI of 2. I am inclined to generate it at the start because players having this knowledge can be explained by their character having flashes of a 6th sense throughout their life. In a society that knows psionics are real it is a reasonable goal. Also getting bounced after one term can be explained as rumors and suspicions the PC is one of them dirty mind freaks as a spur to exploring the whole psi prejudice if that is desired by the player and GM.
ACQUIRING SKILLS AND EXPERTISE are the general rules for a PC's prior career and allows some speculation on how to use them to make the Imperium different than today. I plan on another post covering my thoughts on the 19 different careers available (6 in ST, 12 from Supplement 4 and 1 from MT) but I will say I am not a fan of the expanded careers. As I said earlier I like the idea of our plucky heroes (or comic reliefs) dealing with situations without having the optimal skill set or high levels of skills which the expanded systems get around with many more skill levels on the whole. If we start looking at the prior career system from a distance it does provide a very different way a government could try and run things.
With no higher learning options it seems the Imperium has decreed 18 to be the age of majority and apparently has mandatory Imperial service. I am inferring this from the start at 18 and enter a career as a simple member with no automatic officers, the Noble career is not part of this discussion as it is unique. So you turn 18 and try to pursue a career that is of interest to you but if you fail in that you get "drafted" even into non-military and perhaps non-governmental careers. I like this idea to make the Imperium different everyone who turns 18 (again lets skip the two careers that start at 14 for now) must serve at least 4 years in a branch of the Imperium. It means the Merchants become the Merchant Marine service instead of corporations and tramp traders to start which also explains how to enforce the fixed rates for passages and cargo. Also everyone starts as an equal level nobody and has to earn a commission into the officer (or leadership) ranks in a real or propaganda meritocracy.
The DM's allowing the simulation of the advantages various characteristics can provide. This also can quiet down the justifiable complaint of why only 1 career can be pursued. In my Imperium the pre-game career is your obligation to the Emperor and after that you start the rest of your life. So the Emperor has pirates and rogues? I suppose I could try and justify it but instead I think I will defer those until I am going through my takes on the different services.
Next is the most common house rule the muster out instead of die in generation rule. I am going to let the player make the call on which option they want to use on this after all if you do have a dreadful set of characteristics there is no reason not to allow suicide by scout enlistment as an option.
As for gaining skills I am really torn. I am leaning toward using the MT skill tables in place of the ST and supplement 4 ones. This is because I am much happier with the random roll to get a skill area and then the player picks a specific skill from a list. If you don't have MT let me give an example instead of getting "Pilot" you would get a table result of "Space" from which you pick one skill out of pilot;navigation;communication;sensor ops or computer (not sure that is an accurate list I don't have the books with me). So why not just use the MT system of basic character generation? It is tempting however I am not convinced the increase in number of skills would end up adding to the game "feeling" I mentioned at the start of this post. Special duty for more skills sounds cool but then you add the extra skill for distinction and you can really bulk up how many skills you get per term.
Now I am aware that it is easy enough to end up with a character that didn't enlist where the player wanted them to enlist and have only two skills neither of which are flashy or exciting and that this isn't a great way to get the player to buy into the game you want to run. On the other hand I do like the "feel" it gives the setting. I will use two additional house rules one is a player can always choose a +1 in EDU in place of a skill roll to dodge the annoying no more skills than INT+EDU which is rarely a problem in basic character generation and any survival or reenlistment roll that is 4 or higher than required earns distinction and a bonus skill roll. The final thing this section mentions is retirement and I will use a modification someone else had suggested but I can't remember who to give them credit for it. Retirement pay is the amount given times the final rank.
Holy crap that is a wall of text. So keeping in mind the point of this series of posts is to use the rules to have a setting that is different without needing a ton of work to accomplish we can have the following points to consider.
1) Every Imperial citizen is an emancipated adult at 18
2) Every citizen must serve the Imperium in some form for at least 4 (optionally 2) years
3) How you serve and what training you receive is determined by the needs of the Imperium not personal choice
4) Everyone is more or less equal in the eyes of the Imperium to start.
So Bob Farmerson turns 18 in Hayseed City on Regina and gets a notice to report to the office of his Imperial Noble where he is briefed on his options and applies for a career. In a couple weeks he leaves for either the service he applied to or for one the Imperium picks for him and does 4 years work in a field that best suits the needs of the Emperor. This suits my goal of having a government that is omnipresent but impersonal
INITIAL CHARACTER GENERATION covers generating the base UPP; naming and possibly a title due the character. I had thought about allowing assigning the rolls as desired but upon reflection I think rolling in order is closer to the intent of the game and should allow for a better reflection of a modern too far future reality. We get the body we are born with and it is difficult, though not impossible, to change it too much; we have opportunities to chart our lives but outside forces heavily influence what skills we end up choosing. But I don't want to role play my life you say! and you shouldn't, however what this can be used to do is make your pudgy 48 year old ex-merchant even more heroic when he is holding the doorway of the Basilica of Ste. Besophere on Focaline against a squad of Vargr raiders to save the Nuns and Orphans inside. You are going to end up with a character who probably won't have stats as high as you would like and lacking the skills you want but if you and your players can get the right mind set it will be that much more awesome because they don't.
I have to pick some nits with the some characteristic definitions specifically Intelligence; Education and to a lesser degree Social Standing. Intelligence is described as "corresponds to IQ" which I find less than helpful from the stand point of playing the game. I don't know enough about the scale to use it in game terms instead I believe it is better thought of as a measure of how quickly a character can process and use information. Die rolls and characteristics should only really come up in dramatic situations so it is only game relevant when you are under the gun so to speak. How about a situation like the poem in Adventure 3? In case like that it is more a matter of mental discipline anyone with access to a Google like service can get the needed information but not everyone will when instead there are kitten videos they could be watching.
Education can be thought of as what degree you possess but I tend to think of it more as the amount of crap you retain, your built in Google result as it were like knowing the phrase "Damn the Torpedoes!" actually refers to mines not what most people would think of as torpedoes.
Social Standing is generally ignored unless the PC has a title and I am not entirely sure how to use this stat during a game. I am thinking about a DM in social situations relative to the each person involved. Two people of SOC 7 I think will relate better to each other because of a common style of upbringing than a SOC 2 thug and a SOC A debutante but I am not sure how much effort is involved and if it would be worth trying to figure out.
A final characteristic I am of two minds on is PSI or psionic strength. Should it be generated when the character is created or only when they have it tested? In the first case a player knowing their character has a high strength will probably cut their career generation short and push to find an institute right away. On the other hand it would suck to put in all the effort to find an institute only to have a PSI of 2. I am inclined to generate it at the start because players having this knowledge can be explained by their character having flashes of a 6th sense throughout their life. In a society that knows psionics are real it is a reasonable goal. Also getting bounced after one term can be explained as rumors and suspicions the PC is one of them dirty mind freaks as a spur to exploring the whole psi prejudice if that is desired by the player and GM.
ACQUIRING SKILLS AND EXPERTISE are the general rules for a PC's prior career and allows some speculation on how to use them to make the Imperium different than today. I plan on another post covering my thoughts on the 19 different careers available (6 in ST, 12 from Supplement 4 and 1 from MT) but I will say I am not a fan of the expanded careers. As I said earlier I like the idea of our plucky heroes (or comic reliefs) dealing with situations without having the optimal skill set or high levels of skills which the expanded systems get around with many more skill levels on the whole. If we start looking at the prior career system from a distance it does provide a very different way a government could try and run things.
With no higher learning options it seems the Imperium has decreed 18 to be the age of majority and apparently has mandatory Imperial service. I am inferring this from the start at 18 and enter a career as a simple member with no automatic officers, the Noble career is not part of this discussion as it is unique. So you turn 18 and try to pursue a career that is of interest to you but if you fail in that you get "drafted" even into non-military and perhaps non-governmental careers. I like this idea to make the Imperium different everyone who turns 18 (again lets skip the two careers that start at 14 for now) must serve at least 4 years in a branch of the Imperium. It means the Merchants become the Merchant Marine service instead of corporations and tramp traders to start which also explains how to enforce the fixed rates for passages and cargo. Also everyone starts as an equal level nobody and has to earn a commission into the officer (or leadership) ranks in a real or propaganda meritocracy.
The DM's allowing the simulation of the advantages various characteristics can provide. This also can quiet down the justifiable complaint of why only 1 career can be pursued. In my Imperium the pre-game career is your obligation to the Emperor and after that you start the rest of your life. So the Emperor has pirates and rogues? I suppose I could try and justify it but instead I think I will defer those until I am going through my takes on the different services.
Next is the most common house rule the muster out instead of die in generation rule. I am going to let the player make the call on which option they want to use on this after all if you do have a dreadful set of characteristics there is no reason not to allow suicide by scout enlistment as an option.
As for gaining skills I am really torn. I am leaning toward using the MT skill tables in place of the ST and supplement 4 ones. This is because I am much happier with the random roll to get a skill area and then the player picks a specific skill from a list. If you don't have MT let me give an example instead of getting "Pilot" you would get a table result of "Space" from which you pick one skill out of pilot;navigation;communication;sensor ops or computer (not sure that is an accurate list I don't have the books with me). So why not just use the MT system of basic character generation? It is tempting however I am not convinced the increase in number of skills would end up adding to the game "feeling" I mentioned at the start of this post. Special duty for more skills sounds cool but then you add the extra skill for distinction and you can really bulk up how many skills you get per term.
Now I am aware that it is easy enough to end up with a character that didn't enlist where the player wanted them to enlist and have only two skills neither of which are flashy or exciting and that this isn't a great way to get the player to buy into the game you want to run. On the other hand I do like the "feel" it gives the setting. I will use two additional house rules one is a player can always choose a +1 in EDU in place of a skill roll to dodge the annoying no more skills than INT+EDU which is rarely a problem in basic character generation and any survival or reenlistment roll that is 4 or higher than required earns distinction and a bonus skill roll. The final thing this section mentions is retirement and I will use a modification someone else had suggested but I can't remember who to give them credit for it. Retirement pay is the amount given times the final rank.
Holy crap that is a wall of text. So keeping in mind the point of this series of posts is to use the rules to have a setting that is different without needing a ton of work to accomplish we can have the following points to consider.
1) Every Imperial citizen is an emancipated adult at 18
2) Every citizen must serve the Imperium in some form for at least 4 (optionally 2) years
3) How you serve and what training you receive is determined by the needs of the Imperium not personal choice
4) Everyone is more or less equal in the eyes of the Imperium to start.
So Bob Farmerson turns 18 in Hayseed City on Regina and gets a notice to report to the office of his Imperial Noble where he is briefed on his options and applies for a career. In a couple weeks he leaves for either the service he applied to or for one the Imperium picks for him and does 4 years work in a field that best suits the needs of the Emperor. This suits my goal of having a government that is omnipresent but impersonal
Monday, September 21, 2015
General purpose coolness
Saturday, September 19, 2015
The reason I picked a set of rules as a focal point
My previous post was me picking a rule set and a highly opinionated descriptions of the ones I own (I should have put the Big Floppy Books (BFB) as a version just to be taunting) and why I picked ST. The reason I needed to pick a set of rules is to have something to go through in an orderly fashion so I contemplate the major points of Traveller gaming. Also it has been years since I actually read the rules start to finish and I expect to discover things I forgot or never read in the first place. It is likely I will talk about the rejected versions because the most awesome thing about having an online community is getting different views. I can post what I originally think as I have before and the opinions others offer universally lead me to a better idea than I started and I thank everyone who has or does take time to chime in.
So the first section is INTRODUCTION which I thought about skipping with the whole I know what an RPG and Traveller is but decided to read anyways. I am glad I did because two things popped out at me "background drawn from adventure-oriented science fiction" and "interstellar travel will be as common as international travel today". Every group has its own way of playing and everyone has their own preferred aspect of playing but "adventure-oriented" seems to indicate a nod toward larger than life characters. Although I doubt we are talking about Kimball Kinnison as the average PC I do believe the premise is characters can accomplish more than "real" people do. This can explain some of the problems I have had accepting the published adventures.
It is totally meta-gaming but I will start before even beginning any kind of play with the need for everyone to be okay with PC finding adventures that might logically have been found long before they arrived. For instance the "Shadows" adventure that comes with ST it seems somewhat incredulous to me that in the 700 years Yorbund has been settled no one else saw the site. The 700 year estimate comes from the dot map charting the settlement of the Spinward Marches from Library Data N-Z (and The Traveller Adventure). It can save some friction after the game starts if players accept that their PCs will benefit (or suffer) from fate putting them in hot spots.
The second point about travel I think needs to be considered in context. The game came out in 1977 (?) and I am aged enough to recall that time. I can tell you international travel was nowhere near as common as it is today. It wasn't unknown but it was still enough of a novelty that someone who had left the country or was from another country stood out. So that is the atmosphere I will try and have my universe recreate. At starports and startown you wouldn't get a second look as everyone is from somewhere else pretty much but away from those locations and PCs will become minor celebrities "Oh my gosh! You've been to Regina? I have seen holograms but what is it really like?" Nice but kind of annoying and really hard to be anonymous. Which is okay because the more sneaky underhanded stuff should be in the cities of "Blade Runner" style.
The next section is ADVENTURING IN TRAVELLER which only has one point worth I feel like emphasizing, "The characters ... search for their own self-appointed goals" I mentioned I have come to believe my most fundamental failure in trying to run (and play) Traveller before is Players need to drive the story more than the GM. Having done far more in the fantasy genre I got used to adapting to what the GM wanted to run rather than exploring the world presented and following what interested me or allowing player to do the same. I feel to have a Traveller campaign be really satisfying the group (GM included) needs to set expectations before beginning because OTU is the ultimate sandbox. It isn't realistic to expect the GM to be able to provide a good session if the PC randomly pick planets scattered all over the sector "just to see what is there" nor in running a sci fi story is it interesting as a player to buy a ticket on the GM railroad either. So what am I suggesting then? Good question for which I probably won't end up giving a good answer but here goes. There needs to be a reason the group is a group much more than in fantasy I think. Ideally that reason gives a very loose storyline for the GM and players to work with.
That doesn't seem helpful to me using generic terms so I will give an actual example. The solo campaign idea which was the start of all these posts came from my idea that all the characters would be from the Solomani Rim. At the end of their generation careers had opted for a return to their homeworld by cold sleep which terrorist hacked the transit orders and had them re-routed to the Spinward Marches. The cold sleep idea comes from repatriation bonds and my belief the Imperium (or major employers) would have a standard clause saying if we move you half way across the universe during your employment we will give you the choice to be returned home on our dime. This seems like a plausible expectation for employees to have and the sorta time travel aspect of low passage also strikes me as a perk of choosing to take it as well.
This starting point explains (without having to actual explain) why the characters don't know much about the marches and gives the understandable unifying factor of being outsiders. I am drawing on my experience of enlisting in the USAF for this. I went from rural New England to (ultimately) Washington DC and even though I never left the US I can tell you it was pretty lonely and strange there. I ended up with some great friends most of whom were from the rural Midwest. Why? The experience of growing up in a town everyone knew everybody else; no malls close by so it was mom and pop stores; being outdoors because there wasn't anywhere indoors to be really and pretty much living free range (due to when my childhood was) meant those guys were the ones I was most comfortable around as we had similar outlooks. So I postulated that Solomani Rim people are most comfortable around others from that region without having to spend time trying to explain it as a thing during play.
Not having a really good idea of the local area makes taking patron offers believable as they wouldn't have anywhere better idea of where to go. The terrorist thing gives an enemy although not one they are able to do anything about or to immediately and brings up the point the Imperium isn't a united and cohesive as the countries we live in today. There maybe a vague let's go home motive but it is like 6 years if they had the money for awake travel or 6 years further into the future if they low berth back by which point they are 12 years behind everyone and evrything they knew. I am not going to have a conversation with myself about what I want to do but if it was for a group of players I would have a conversation about what genre of gaming they are interested in. Knowing they want to fight in the shadow world of conspiracies is different than being the magnificent seven.
So the first section is INTRODUCTION which I thought about skipping with the whole I know what an RPG and Traveller is but decided to read anyways. I am glad I did because two things popped out at me "background drawn from adventure-oriented science fiction" and "interstellar travel will be as common as international travel today". Every group has its own way of playing and everyone has their own preferred aspect of playing but "adventure-oriented" seems to indicate a nod toward larger than life characters. Although I doubt we are talking about Kimball Kinnison as the average PC I do believe the premise is characters can accomplish more than "real" people do. This can explain some of the problems I have had accepting the published adventures.
It is totally meta-gaming but I will start before even beginning any kind of play with the need for everyone to be okay with PC finding adventures that might logically have been found long before they arrived. For instance the "Shadows" adventure that comes with ST it seems somewhat incredulous to me that in the 700 years Yorbund has been settled no one else saw the site. The 700 year estimate comes from the dot map charting the settlement of the Spinward Marches from Library Data N-Z (and The Traveller Adventure). It can save some friction after the game starts if players accept that their PCs will benefit (or suffer) from fate putting them in hot spots.
The second point about travel I think needs to be considered in context. The game came out in 1977 (?) and I am aged enough to recall that time. I can tell you international travel was nowhere near as common as it is today. It wasn't unknown but it was still enough of a novelty that someone who had left the country or was from another country stood out. So that is the atmosphere I will try and have my universe recreate. At starports and startown you wouldn't get a second look as everyone is from somewhere else pretty much but away from those locations and PCs will become minor celebrities "Oh my gosh! You've been to Regina? I have seen holograms but what is it really like?" Nice but kind of annoying and really hard to be anonymous. Which is okay because the more sneaky underhanded stuff should be in the cities of "Blade Runner" style.
The next section is ADVENTURING IN TRAVELLER which only has one point worth I feel like emphasizing, "The characters ... search for their own self-appointed goals" I mentioned I have come to believe my most fundamental failure in trying to run (and play) Traveller before is Players need to drive the story more than the GM. Having done far more in the fantasy genre I got used to adapting to what the GM wanted to run rather than exploring the world presented and following what interested me or allowing player to do the same. I feel to have a Traveller campaign be really satisfying the group (GM included) needs to set expectations before beginning because OTU is the ultimate sandbox. It isn't realistic to expect the GM to be able to provide a good session if the PC randomly pick planets scattered all over the sector "just to see what is there" nor in running a sci fi story is it interesting as a player to buy a ticket on the GM railroad either. So what am I suggesting then? Good question for which I probably won't end up giving a good answer but here goes. There needs to be a reason the group is a group much more than in fantasy I think. Ideally that reason gives a very loose storyline for the GM and players to work with.
That doesn't seem helpful to me using generic terms so I will give an actual example. The solo campaign idea which was the start of all these posts came from my idea that all the characters would be from the Solomani Rim. At the end of their generation careers had opted for a return to their homeworld by cold sleep which terrorist hacked the transit orders and had them re-routed to the Spinward Marches. The cold sleep idea comes from repatriation bonds and my belief the Imperium (or major employers) would have a standard clause saying if we move you half way across the universe during your employment we will give you the choice to be returned home on our dime. This seems like a plausible expectation for employees to have and the sorta time travel aspect of low passage also strikes me as a perk of choosing to take it as well.
This starting point explains (without having to actual explain) why the characters don't know much about the marches and gives the understandable unifying factor of being outsiders. I am drawing on my experience of enlisting in the USAF for this. I went from rural New England to (ultimately) Washington DC and even though I never left the US I can tell you it was pretty lonely and strange there. I ended up with some great friends most of whom were from the rural Midwest. Why? The experience of growing up in a town everyone knew everybody else; no malls close by so it was mom and pop stores; being outdoors because there wasn't anywhere indoors to be really and pretty much living free range (due to when my childhood was) meant those guys were the ones I was most comfortable around as we had similar outlooks. So I postulated that Solomani Rim people are most comfortable around others from that region without having to spend time trying to explain it as a thing during play.
Not having a really good idea of the local area makes taking patron offers believable as they wouldn't have anywhere better idea of where to go. The terrorist thing gives an enemy although not one they are able to do anything about or to immediately and brings up the point the Imperium isn't a united and cohesive as the countries we live in today. There maybe a vague let's go home motive but it is like 6 years if they had the money for awake travel or 6 years further into the future if they low berth back by which point they are 12 years behind everyone and evrything they knew. I am not going to have a conversation with myself about what I want to do but if it was for a group of players I would have a conversation about what genre of gaming they are interested in. Knowing they want to fight in the shadow world of conspiracies is different than being the magnificent seven.
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Okay have publicly stated the goal of ending up with a setting I can run I suppose I need to organize my thoughts a little better. The first thing is which rule set I am going to use. Or a more appropriate description would be what the base system I am going to house rule the crap out of and why. I have pretty much all the version with the exception of Mongoose Traveller. Not that I have anything against it I just don't feel like justifying to myself buying another set of Traveller rules. My choice for the base set is Starter Traveller as it was one of the last CT rule set produced so should be pretty typo free. I own it in print and on PDF and the way I end up running it is inconvenient to have Roll20 up and try and use the same laptop to look at PDF's and Starter is the easiest version to find the base rules in. In case it is helpful to anyone I will give a quick review of the other rules sets and why I went against them. The abbreviation in parenthesis is what I will call them if I mention them again and the links take you to where you can buy them. Another large factor was that I like the G+ Classic Traveller group so if I am using them to improve my ideas I need to use a CT rule set.
1) LBB (LBB) More or less I am using these rules just with a better layout and Starship combat being far easier to run.
2) The Traveller Book (TTB) Again the same rules but somewhat more unwieldy in format also I don't own a dead tree version of this one.
3) MegaTraveller (MT) A very close second on my final choice and one I will be stealing actual rule stuff from. Layout; Typos and a realization that a bunch of the things that changed don't strike me as adding to the fun of playing the game. And again it is still pretty much the same rules.
4) Traveller the New Era (TNE) The version that I feel guilty about. They worked hard on it and I never gave it a chance. 2D6 is Traveller to me and other things are games using the setting. If I am going to game in the Traveller universe it is going to be by playing Traveller. I also hate the setting and can't conceive of how to fix it enough for me to buy into and run. If anyone is reading this who worked on it accept my apology for my prejudice.
5) Marc Miller's Traveller (T4) I love the additional background but failed to expend the effort into learning the system well. It should be an awesome time to adventure but I didn't work out to my satisfaction how much the Imperium should be controlling expansion. Without a unified currency only people without ship payments could go exploring. Even with all that BITS "Space Dogs!" is probably still my favorite published adventure if Scopes where real I would kick them in the ding ding A-hole D-bags.
6) Traveller20 (T20) Again awesome additional background but a completely different game in the Traveller setting. I could bash on this some more because it is so different than Traveller but that is just me being whiny.
7) GURPS Traveller (GT) Setting = Yes Game = No. This one however has a ton of awesome stuff to steal from. I think the SPA originated in the "High Passage" magazine but the Starport book was pretty cool. I consider "Behind the Claw" a vital resource for lootable ideas. Seriously consider if you want any of these publications as the GT license is expiring so they could soon be no more. I still wish they had re-issued the Traveller Cardboard Heroes sets in PDF though. Crap trying to find a link for the "High Passage" magazines I found instead I can get the Cardboard Heroes from FFE <sigh>
8) Comstar's 1248 books don't present a set of rules and the setting tries to recover from TNE so maybe it would be okay. The books are well written and the premises made I can live with I just am not sure I understand wanting to play Sci Fi where tech is actively trying to kill you.
9) Traveller5(T5) <sigh> So many very cool ideas presented in a way I can't wrap my feeble little brain around. I have been told this is because I only have the PDF/CD version but if I am unwilling to spring for the E-version of Mongoose there is no way I am spending for the dead tree version of this unless I win the lottery. I don't see anything I hate I just can't find the time or desire to see how it works together as a system.
In addition to Starter Traveller I am going to use Supplement 4 Citizens of the Imperium to give needed depth to career choices. If anyone is looking for advice on what to get I would say get the CT CD from FFE if you can/want to afford it, The JTAS pdf and all the Challenge Magazines and you are pretty much set with a ton of ideas waiting to distract the crap out of you.
1) LBB (LBB) More or less I am using these rules just with a better layout and Starship combat being far easier to run.
2) The Traveller Book (TTB) Again the same rules but somewhat more unwieldy in format also I don't own a dead tree version of this one.
3) MegaTraveller (MT) A very close second on my final choice and one I will be stealing actual rule stuff from. Layout; Typos and a realization that a bunch of the things that changed don't strike me as adding to the fun of playing the game. And again it is still pretty much the same rules.
4) Traveller the New Era (TNE) The version that I feel guilty about. They worked hard on it and I never gave it a chance. 2D6 is Traveller to me and other things are games using the setting. If I am going to game in the Traveller universe it is going to be by playing Traveller. I also hate the setting and can't conceive of how to fix it enough for me to buy into and run. If anyone is reading this who worked on it accept my apology for my prejudice.
5) Marc Miller's Traveller (T4) I love the additional background but failed to expend the effort into learning the system well. It should be an awesome time to adventure but I didn't work out to my satisfaction how much the Imperium should be controlling expansion. Without a unified currency only people without ship payments could go exploring. Even with all that BITS "Space Dogs!" is probably still my favorite published adventure if Scopes where real I would kick them in the ding ding A-hole D-bags.
6) Traveller20 (T20) Again awesome additional background but a completely different game in the Traveller setting. I could bash on this some more because it is so different than Traveller but that is just me being whiny.
7) GURPS Traveller (GT) Setting = Yes Game = No. This one however has a ton of awesome stuff to steal from. I think the SPA originated in the "High Passage" magazine but the Starport book was pretty cool. I consider "Behind the Claw" a vital resource for lootable ideas. Seriously consider if you want any of these publications as the GT license is expiring so they could soon be no more. I still wish they had re-issued the Traveller Cardboard Heroes sets in PDF though. Crap trying to find a link for the "High Passage" magazines I found instead I can get the Cardboard Heroes from FFE <sigh>
8) Comstar's 1248 books don't present a set of rules and the setting tries to recover from TNE so maybe it would be okay. The books are well written and the premises made I can live with I just am not sure I understand wanting to play Sci Fi where tech is actively trying to kill you.
9) Traveller5(T5) <sigh> So many very cool ideas presented in a way I can't wrap my feeble little brain around. I have been told this is because I only have the PDF/CD version but if I am unwilling to spring for the E-version of Mongoose there is no way I am spending for the dead tree version of this unless I win the lottery. I don't see anything I hate I just can't find the time or desire to see how it works together as a system.
In addition to Starter Traveller I am going to use Supplement 4 Citizens of the Imperium to give needed depth to career choices. If anyone is looking for advice on what to get I would say get the CT CD from FFE if you can/want to afford it, The JTAS pdf and all the Challenge Magazines and you are pretty much set with a ton of ideas waiting to distract the crap out of you.
Something I always wanted to do but haven't yet
Virtualcon 15
Unfortunately I also find out these things thanks to +Joe Johnston
https://plus.google.com/+JoeJohnston-taskboy/posts/GqLGWjMFvth
Tuesday, September 15, 2015
The end goal of my Traveller discussions
I thought I would tell you all why I have been making my posts on my version of the OTU for clarity. I have been trying and failing to run and or play in any kind of Traveller campaign since 1980 and the fault is solely with me. Holmes D&D is how I entered the hobby and pretty much every other game was run by my teenaged self as D&D in different settings. Traveller (and any non-fantasy game really) requires a lot more pre game prep to succeed which I understand now and didn't then. CT provides stuff to go on in the background of a campaign (if you are using the OTU) but almost nothing along the lines of a WOTC setting or Adventure module.
The Third Imperium as a setting is pretty much a couple paragraphs for how it functions and then tons and tons of past or current events to go on around your characters which means the GM (and players) need to decide how it impacts the course of a session to be in the imperium. GDW Traveller adventures are probably the number one reason our group never "got" traveller. I have picked on Adventure #1 before so I will use it again. Being used to running dungeon crawls I tried to railroad the 4 situations in order and everyone was underwhelmed as they should have been. At 50 I grasp what I didn't at 15 the GM should use the material provided to have news stories pop up about Kinunir's and senators and missing ships but if the PC's don't bite move on. GDW were geniuses that I failed to appreciate by trying to put the PCs in the driver seat rather than the GM.
The Double Adventures go the closest to other companies version of adventures but even they required the party to be at a certain place to start and required some forethought if they were to be satisfying Annic Nova for instance has your space dungeon but the GM needs to decide where it came from and other stuff to make it worthwhile. Even the BBG isn't obvious and can take a longish time to be revealed by which point the PC's could have wandered far a field.
And of course there are the two biggest sources of stuff library data and TNS stories both done in a style that were totally gameable. I don't know if gamers have a short attention span or if it just normal to not be able to read a page and a half or set up info and retain anything but GDW gave us info in little chunks in these two forms and even more they gave us little bits of trivia not related to the adventure itself that added to the feeling of a thousand year old empire.
Okay so that is my take on why I failed before, so what is the point of these posts now? Roll20 and the Classic Traveller G+ community makes me think I could try running a traveller game again but this time I want it to be fun. To do that I need to have a clear idea of how the setting is going to affect the game and be able to articulate it in a simple enough and short enough way that PCs don't feel like they are taking a course in Warren's Traveller 101. I also am grateful that the G+ group is full of descent and really creative people who I can bounce these ideas off of and have them improved by the comments. At the end of this I want to end up with is a setting that is different than today in a gameable way.
An easy trap to fall into is using analogy. A starport is like an airport; psionics are like the force and others. They are a handy way to try and get a shared vision going but detrimental to playing in a future different from our current life. On the other hand you can't get to far away from where we are now because we have lives that limit how much time and effort a game can take up. If you get to far away player enjoyment will suffer because it turns into work to play or they don't understand the point of something. So I want to end up with "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" in a rubber suit in effect, there is a functioning government but stand alone heroes running around doing what they wish as well.
To that end I have a couple premises:
1) The population in general (non-PC & non-NPC) are much more concerned about their worlds government that the imperium which is reflected in game as a disinterest in off world affairs.
2) System governments have a certain rivalry going on within the Imperium along the lines of sporting team rivalries to cover why being naughty on one world is mostly problematic on that world only.
3) A certain degree of ambivalence toward the Imperium because if it lack of involvement in day to day affairs to explain the apparent prevalence of people engaging in extra-legal activities. If there are that many people comfortable with saying to strangers "Someone told me you're okay with stealing" it can't be viewed as all that illegal.
4) The Imperium has to provide something at least because I am not interested in the space nazi empire everyone is wanting to overthrow.
5) Bringing the time of travel element out in play. In the internet age I think we miss how dramatic this would be on a day to day basis. If you aren't in the same system it is 2 weeks minimum to engage in a conversation and that is going to be limited in nature as well. You can't just call someone up and ask them what is going on.
6) Because of the impossibility of hands on running of things trust has to be more important. T4 talked a lot about this with good reason. You can't for whatever reason go do something yourself so you have to send someone to do it for you and they will have effective autonomy in how they go about it because of #5.
7) The overwhelming majority of citizens never leave their home system to feed into 1-3 to also make PCs special.
8) A reason for why there is the technology and population spread that exists in the Imperium. I know the basic Long Night premise but there has been 1100 years to get everyone up to TL 9 Interstellar society and there are way to many worlds that aren't for me to accept this. There are also lots and lots of worlds that don't have a self sustaining gene pool. I don't have a biology background to know what that is so I am going with the BattleStar Galactica (SyFy version) 50k number or Pop 5.
And finally I am going to switch to blog posts so I can find stuff again. G+ is awesome to have freewheeling discussions but it really sucks to try and find something after about 2 days.
The Third Imperium as a setting is pretty much a couple paragraphs for how it functions and then tons and tons of past or current events to go on around your characters which means the GM (and players) need to decide how it impacts the course of a session to be in the imperium. GDW Traveller adventures are probably the number one reason our group never "got" traveller. I have picked on Adventure #1 before so I will use it again. Being used to running dungeon crawls I tried to railroad the 4 situations in order and everyone was underwhelmed as they should have been. At 50 I grasp what I didn't at 15 the GM should use the material provided to have news stories pop up about Kinunir's and senators and missing ships but if the PC's don't bite move on. GDW were geniuses that I failed to appreciate by trying to put the PCs in the driver seat rather than the GM.
The Double Adventures go the closest to other companies version of adventures but even they required the party to be at a certain place to start and required some forethought if they were to be satisfying Annic Nova for instance has your space dungeon but the GM needs to decide where it came from and other stuff to make it worthwhile. Even the BBG isn't obvious and can take a longish time to be revealed by which point the PC's could have wandered far a field.
And of course there are the two biggest sources of stuff library data and TNS stories both done in a style that were totally gameable. I don't know if gamers have a short attention span or if it just normal to not be able to read a page and a half or set up info and retain anything but GDW gave us info in little chunks in these two forms and even more they gave us little bits of trivia not related to the adventure itself that added to the feeling of a thousand year old empire.
Okay so that is my take on why I failed before, so what is the point of these posts now? Roll20 and the Classic Traveller G+ community makes me think I could try running a traveller game again but this time I want it to be fun. To do that I need to have a clear idea of how the setting is going to affect the game and be able to articulate it in a simple enough and short enough way that PCs don't feel like they are taking a course in Warren's Traveller 101. I also am grateful that the G+ group is full of descent and really creative people who I can bounce these ideas off of and have them improved by the comments. At the end of this I want to end up with is a setting that is different than today in a gameable way.
An easy trap to fall into is using analogy. A starport is like an airport; psionics are like the force and others. They are a handy way to try and get a shared vision going but detrimental to playing in a future different from our current life. On the other hand you can't get to far away from where we are now because we have lives that limit how much time and effort a game can take up. If you get to far away player enjoyment will suffer because it turns into work to play or they don't understand the point of something. So I want to end up with "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow" in a rubber suit in effect, there is a functioning government but stand alone heroes running around doing what they wish as well.
To that end I have a couple premises:
1) The population in general (non-PC & non-NPC) are much more concerned about their worlds government that the imperium which is reflected in game as a disinterest in off world affairs.
2) System governments have a certain rivalry going on within the Imperium along the lines of sporting team rivalries to cover why being naughty on one world is mostly problematic on that world only.
3) A certain degree of ambivalence toward the Imperium because if it lack of involvement in day to day affairs to explain the apparent prevalence of people engaging in extra-legal activities. If there are that many people comfortable with saying to strangers "Someone told me you're okay with stealing" it can't be viewed as all that illegal.
4) The Imperium has to provide something at least because I am not interested in the space nazi empire everyone is wanting to overthrow.
5) Bringing the time of travel element out in play. In the internet age I think we miss how dramatic this would be on a day to day basis. If you aren't in the same system it is 2 weeks minimum to engage in a conversation and that is going to be limited in nature as well. You can't just call someone up and ask them what is going on.
6) Because of the impossibility of hands on running of things trust has to be more important. T4 talked a lot about this with good reason. You can't for whatever reason go do something yourself so you have to send someone to do it for you and they will have effective autonomy in how they go about it because of #5.
7) The overwhelming majority of citizens never leave their home system to feed into 1-3 to also make PCs special.
8) A reason for why there is the technology and population spread that exists in the Imperium. I know the basic Long Night premise but there has been 1100 years to get everyone up to TL 9 Interstellar society and there are way to many worlds that aren't for me to accept this. There are also lots and lots of worlds that don't have a self sustaining gene pool. I don't have a biology background to know what that is so I am going with the BattleStar Galactica (SyFy version) 50k number or Pop 5.
And finally I am going to switch to blog posts so I can find stuff again. G+ is awesome to have freewheeling discussions but it really sucks to try and find something after about 2 days.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
I mentioned in an earlier post that I felt one of the services the imperium would provide on every world was issuing prepaid debit cards and I thought I would expand on my probably deranged reasoning. First a summary of my points of gammery view for why they would followed with a more detailed reasoning.
1.) Hacking and forging of electronic records.
2.) Control of capital
3.) Money Trail
4.) Deliberate inconvenience
5.) Interest payments
It seems (correctly or incorrectly) the more integrated our world becomes the more prevalent cyber crime is getting. Add to that a built lead time of a week before any flim flam can be detected and I am very dubious the current E-Bank model we have would survive in the Imperium. So travellers would need to take something with them between worlds other than banking records. Currency is possible but unwieldy and if our governments have decided allowing people to stockpile huge amounts of cash is bad I would believe the Emperor would frown on it as well. The prepaid debit card analog works okay for me because you need to get it issued from the Imperial Consul (IC) so it should be harder to forge and makes it an Imperial Crime if you do. Forge it and you are chased throughout known space not just by one or two worlds. Also the card (or cards) need to be turned in at the destination world's IC to get turned back into spendable money. To clarify for most worlds these are not legal tender and have to be turned into local currency although this usually means opening a bank account to access E-Banking on worlds capably of doing this. Worlds lacking the infrastructure to do so more often than not will use them as legal tender and locals doing business with travellers have a POS linked to the IC.
I am not very knowledgeable about international monetary policy but I do know that countries get into to trouble when too much capital is withdrawn as Russia and Greece have recently shown. The imperium is obsessed with free trade so I don't think capital transfer controls would be the norm I do think there is a vested interest in knowing how much is leaving and where it is going. By forcing the transaction to go through the IC the Imperium would have access to data it might not otherwise. Also world governments could petition for some kind of action if there was a crisis. It also allows the Imperium to keep world economies isolated from each other so if the local currency craps out the IC stops issuing the cards. Further any rebellious world suddenly has no ability to buy off world except using physical goods. This gives the IC a very big stick to threaten world governments with.
To have one of these issued I am sure the IC would have access to better than average means of confirming a person's identity. So the Imperium could track individual's money if it was necessary to hinder money laundering and other criminal enterprises. Creepy police state! How could the adventures do anything right? Not really every traveller would be doing this so the amount of data would be staggering so if the Imperium wasn't looking at you it is unlikely they would catch anything. Also remember the Imperium is only concerned with economic crimes for the most part and even those have to threaten interstellar trade.
It makes moving money a hassle to a certain degree by design. Long term investments are the most beneficial to both the investor and the economy as a whole so the Imperium would have a reason to try and keep money on a world to develop that world into a more valuable one. However if you are the champion of hands off governing you don't want to pass many laws and then try and enforce them so you come up with indirect ways to encourage behavior you want. I am leaning toward the view that each card would have a maximum value of 10Kcr so it would be really irritating to move any truly huge amount of cash but not for the "average" traveller encouraging people to take the minimum they feel they will need leaving the rest in local circulation.
And finally banks are more likely than not willing to back this because of the weirdness of when would the transfer take place and who is paying interest when. These days interest gets calculated in ever diminishing fractions of time but where is the capital when it is traveling in jump space? If financial markets are controlling the money transfers it could cause headaches for them so it would behoove then to dump it in someone else's lap. The Imperium wouldn't worry about it because the prepaid cards don't earn interest.
How does any of that effect gaming in the Imperium? Well foremost their first and last stop at any world would be to the IC to convert their filthy lucre allowing the GM to impose imperial entanglements easily. It can encourage the desire for stuff rather than money that will be traceable. It gives pirates something to steal. Yes that is total meta-game but ideally you want a reason for pirates to attack and for merchants to surrender. Everyone wandering around with a cash equivalent provides the target and after a drawn out process the Imperium reimbursing the victims means NPC's have a good reason to give in as most pirates would take their stuff and leave them their lives and ship. Player's of course will fight to the death because it is what we do but if they are passengers and get robbed you have just created the most intense thirst for blood and they will relentlessly pursue the pirates who robbed them.
Or I could just have to much time on my hands and think this stuff up.
1.) Hacking and forging of electronic records.
2.) Control of capital
3.) Money Trail
4.) Deliberate inconvenience
5.) Interest payments
It seems (correctly or incorrectly) the more integrated our world becomes the more prevalent cyber crime is getting. Add to that a built lead time of a week before any flim flam can be detected and I am very dubious the current E-Bank model we have would survive in the Imperium. So travellers would need to take something with them between worlds other than banking records. Currency is possible but unwieldy and if our governments have decided allowing people to stockpile huge amounts of cash is bad I would believe the Emperor would frown on it as well. The prepaid debit card analog works okay for me because you need to get it issued from the Imperial Consul (IC) so it should be harder to forge and makes it an Imperial Crime if you do. Forge it and you are chased throughout known space not just by one or two worlds. Also the card (or cards) need to be turned in at the destination world's IC to get turned back into spendable money. To clarify for most worlds these are not legal tender and have to be turned into local currency although this usually means opening a bank account to access E-Banking on worlds capably of doing this. Worlds lacking the infrastructure to do so more often than not will use them as legal tender and locals doing business with travellers have a POS linked to the IC.
I am not very knowledgeable about international monetary policy but I do know that countries get into to trouble when too much capital is withdrawn as Russia and Greece have recently shown. The imperium is obsessed with free trade so I don't think capital transfer controls would be the norm I do think there is a vested interest in knowing how much is leaving and where it is going. By forcing the transaction to go through the IC the Imperium would have access to data it might not otherwise. Also world governments could petition for some kind of action if there was a crisis. It also allows the Imperium to keep world economies isolated from each other so if the local currency craps out the IC stops issuing the cards. Further any rebellious world suddenly has no ability to buy off world except using physical goods. This gives the IC a very big stick to threaten world governments with.
To have one of these issued I am sure the IC would have access to better than average means of confirming a person's identity. So the Imperium could track individual's money if it was necessary to hinder money laundering and other criminal enterprises. Creepy police state! How could the adventures do anything right? Not really every traveller would be doing this so the amount of data would be staggering so if the Imperium wasn't looking at you it is unlikely they would catch anything. Also remember the Imperium is only concerned with economic crimes for the most part and even those have to threaten interstellar trade.
It makes moving money a hassle to a certain degree by design. Long term investments are the most beneficial to both the investor and the economy as a whole so the Imperium would have a reason to try and keep money on a world to develop that world into a more valuable one. However if you are the champion of hands off governing you don't want to pass many laws and then try and enforce them so you come up with indirect ways to encourage behavior you want. I am leaning toward the view that each card would have a maximum value of 10Kcr so it would be really irritating to move any truly huge amount of cash but not for the "average" traveller encouraging people to take the minimum they feel they will need leaving the rest in local circulation.
And finally banks are more likely than not willing to back this because of the weirdness of when would the transfer take place and who is paying interest when. These days interest gets calculated in ever diminishing fractions of time but where is the capital when it is traveling in jump space? If financial markets are controlling the money transfers it could cause headaches for them so it would behoove then to dump it in someone else's lap. The Imperium wouldn't worry about it because the prepaid cards don't earn interest.
How does any of that effect gaming in the Imperium? Well foremost their first and last stop at any world would be to the IC to convert their filthy lucre allowing the GM to impose imperial entanglements easily. It can encourage the desire for stuff rather than money that will be traceable. It gives pirates something to steal. Yes that is total meta-game but ideally you want a reason for pirates to attack and for merchants to surrender. Everyone wandering around with a cash equivalent provides the target and after a drawn out process the Imperium reimbursing the victims means NPC's have a good reason to give in as most pirates would take their stuff and leave them their lives and ship. Player's of course will fight to the death because it is what we do but if they are passengers and get robbed you have just created the most intense thirst for blood and they will relentlessly pursue the pirates who robbed them.
Or I could just have to much time on my hands and think this stuff up.
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