Not much to say tonight very dull set up work

 I have a firm idea of the campaign's opening scene but I need to figure out how long it take a message to back and forth from the Spinward Marches to the Solomani Rim. I also need to look at the folio adventure from the MegaTraveller Referee Screen to give the Adventurers a homeworld.

More on Cepheus and changes to the 3I

 Even using the Cepheus rulebook to try and stay organized I already missed something. Under Benefits I wanted to mention the right of return for Imperial careers. At the end of any Imperial career you can ask to be returned to your world of enlistment and the Imperium will ship you there via cold sleep. People refer to this as return postage.

On to the Noble career. The reason this is an NPC career for me is I see them as being tied to a place not traveling. So the Emperor is at the top for the whole Imperium, Arch Dukes have a domain, dukes have a sector, Counts have a subsector and finally Marquis are special agents of the throne, Barons have a world they are responsible for and Knights and Lords work for one of the other nobles, Technically all nobles owe personal fealty to the Emperor who asks them to serve another nobles. Because the Imperium is not an actual feudal government what do the Nobles actually do and what are they responsible for? I view them with naivety and ignorance of an American looking at the United Kingdom's Royal Family. They are the living embodiment of the realm that don't directly rule but have enormous influence. All other powerful organizations in the Imperium are wary of the nobles who can show up almost anywhere and putter about, No company, world government or service branch are going to say no to a visit from a noble without risking the attention of the Imperium. This would allow for an immense amount of corruption balanced by the fact the "job" is solely based on the personal whim of higher ranking nobles. The other thing they are responsible for is to hear citizen's petitions. One of the benefits to being a citizen as opposed to a subject is you can always petition a noble for assistance, the noble has no obligation to provide it just to listen to you. 

Book Two: Starships and Interstellar Travel

The biggest change pure fluff J drives and M drives create fields that effect a volume irregardless of mass. So this is why there are letter drives and standard hulls that is the fields the science can create. 

I am not a big fan of the specific trade goods table preferring the book 7 cr tl code but until I actually start playing I doubt I am going to make any changes for a while. 

Only Imperial citizens can own a jump capable ship and only military ships can have bay weapons and screens.

Book 3 Referees

Every inhabited world in the Imperium has a starport and Imperial Consulate which are located on the estate of the world Baron and pays rent to the noble. This sets them apart from the world government and allows the noble to have a substantial income separate from all the competing interests within the Imperium. Anyone arriving or leaving the world is required to visit the consulate and non-landed nobles are required to pay a courtesy visit to the Baron's office in case their services are needed. I am still of two minds on what tech level means. Is it the highest common tech of local produced goods or the average tech of goods readily available? Or is it the highest tech on the planet writ large? I am leaning toward the average level or readily available goods. The Imperium is overwhelming concerned with economic activity so information they produce is geared toward that so it is most likely what the IISS reports. Communication routes map out what in MT terms are the safe zones they will by and large be the most economically important worlds so naval patrols are frequent and piracy will be very low. The further away from a route the greater the risk. Worlds can only have non-jump vessels so and important system will be well patrolled but less populated systems rely on the scout service S/Cs on mail duty for most patrolling. That is not to say there isn't a naval presence off the xboat routes just far most infrequent.

And that is it for a pre-play scan of the rules. I want to play so I didn't go into the rules like I did before because I am not making my own universe just tweaking GDW's. Tomorrow I hope to generate a character and do a scene or two to get a feel for solo play to see how much I like it.

I have more stuff but I hesitate to say I am better prepared

 So I have my     laptop

                            External CDROM

                            Classic Traveller CD

                            MegaTraveller CD

                            T5 CD

                            Cirque for T5 CD

                            Cepheus Rulebook

                            Official imperial sunburst dice

Of course before I can use any of them I need to set down what my 3I is like. I don't think the changes are to drastic but I want to set them down so I know them before I start. Most of them are only conceptual any ways. I am going to go through Cepheus Engine Book section by section to organize my thoughts because my tiny brain can't do it without help

Book One: Characters

Characteristics: Intelligence is the speed which you can process info. Education is the breadth of your knowledge. Social Status is capped at 9 during character creation because I view the Noble career as an NPC one.

Career: Some services are Imperial some are not. If a character does not serve in an Imperial service are subjects those who do are citizens. When switching careers you don't roll benefits but they count toward the number they are due at the end of their final career.

Benefits: I like the concept of the separation games from earlier posts so I am continuing it. The final 6 months of their final career they are put on a kind of a traveling circus with the end goal of increasing enlistment for the various services, providing entertainment and a sense of belonging to a united Imperium. No one gets a ship as a benefit.

Aerospace Defense is a non-imperial career

Agent is an imperial service

Athlete is an imperial service the Imperium has a entertainment service designed to improve a sense of unity amongst citizens and subjects.

Barbarian is a not an imperial career

Belter is an imperial service

Bureaucrat is an imperial service

Colonist is an imperial service

Diplomat is an imperial service

Drifter is not an imperial service

Entertainer is an imperial service much like athlete

Hunter is an imperial service only citizens can own or operate jump capable ships

Marine is an imperial service

Martine Defense is not an imperial service

Mercenary is an imperial service

Merchant is an imperial service

Navy is an imperial service

Noble is an imperial service more on this later

Physicians is an imperial service as many worlds do not have a large enough population to produce or attract enough medical professionals.

Pirate is not an imperial service

Rogue is player choice for whether or not they acted on the behalf of the government or on their own.

Scientist is an imperial service

Scout is an imperial service

Surface Defense is not an imperial service

Any receipt of a ship on mustering out instead get a +1 to a stat of the players choice or skill 1 in a skill they do not have chosen by player.

Thats it for this shift 

The internet really is forever

 So I recently saw something about Traveller and got the itch to do a solo play. Poking about I found my old blog which survived the end of G+ and the other stuff Google has done over the past 11 years. And the past 11 years haven't been great but I survived and am doing okay which is all I feel like saying about why I haven't posted anything.

The previous posts had the end goal of having a setting and house rules that could be quickly explained to a online group and play on Roll20. Now however I don't think I am going to try and find a group. I work the overnight shift Friday through Tuesday making the logistics unrealistic. Also I don't have to explain the setting and my own prejudices to anyone else. It also avoids the problem of players missing the story or being uninterested in it;. So that gets us to needing to answer the 5 basic questions. Who? What? Where? When? and Why?

Who is me running a group of characters. This offers the huge advantage of being able to grow or shrink the party as I need to. Not having the books with me right now I can't just whip up some right now as much as I want to. My plan is to start with one character and Adventure 0 from Traveller Deluxe. 

What is the Cepheus Engine. I haven't really looked at the rule sets since the blog posts of yore but not much of my gaming preferences has changed so I suspect it is still the rules I want to go with. That being said I have a ridiculous amount of traveller stuff in dead tree and digital and I will be using pieces when I can.

Where is the Third Imperium specifically the Spinward Marches and the Regina subsector. Not having to explain what changes I will be make before I start playing is the prime reason for this choice but the mass of fluff available for this setting is another.

When is one I am working on. Most probably I am going to go with just after the 5th Frontier War. This time period is pretty well covered and allows for all kinds of situations in the aftermath of a major war with the weirdness of the jump drive universe. There is a temptation to go with the T4 setting. Of all of the published ones it is the one I liked the most. Going through them T1 is one I am going with more or less, MT was a to much of a change even though I like the idea of core, fringe and wilds areas and will be incorporating into the campaign. My idea is that the Imperium only cares about the economic value of a world and the further from a valuable world the less anyone would care. TNE I can't really see using anything from this. Why adventure in a Sci Fi setting where technology is possessed by murderous demons. 1248 has the lingering problem of possessed tech although it has some very cool stuff. T20 could have been a cool setting of all the settings I have the least amount of stuff for this one and really don't like the rules. I don't own Mongoose's version or any of their stuff so I have no opinion on them. GURPS traveller is a gold mine of info about the Spinward Marches fluff wise even if I won't use any rule stuff.

Why is the tricky question. I don't know how to social media so I doubt anyone else will ever see these so why post my dumb articles. Well most of us play RPGs to tell a story and I am no different. Only doing it in my own mind isn't as satisfying as writing it down. I am not going to use a pen and paper to write my thoughts and poor attempts at writing so I might as well use a computer. If I am using a computer I might as well use the free google services so as long as I have internet I can putter around with this. At least until my tiny brain get distracted by something else.

Man the past 18 months sucked

I had titled an earlier post "Life hates me doing blog posts" as a joke however a more accurate view would be Life hates me. I could whine about it however my troubles are directly related to failing to apply myself earlier in life so now I have to deal with the reality of trying to live on what unskilled labor pays in the US while living in a region with a very high cost of living.

Enough of that I am going to gather my scattered thoughts and dust off Fermi's Universe and continue on hopefully.

And now for something completely different or more on Fermi's Universe

I haven't posted a lot of stuff about the Tiber-Beltain Referendum (TBR) before this for two reasons. The main one is a mistake I have repeatedly made in the past which is getting caught up in doing stuff the GM needs (more truthfully might want) to know rather than what is needed to actually allow a group to play. The second is I don't want a set of house rules longer than the Cepheus Engine (CE) itself so I want to go through the rules as presented and create from that base as much as possible. The Colonist career presented a problem for me as I disliked the skill choices because I didn't see how they represented what I thought a government would train colonists for. However to present what I think they would be trained for I need to flesh out the government in question so I can create the Colonial Administration (TBRCA). I am a little apprehensive because the internet seems to bring out the easily offended and exaggeratedly combative in people and creating a government is in effect talking politics. This is not my ideal government to live under nor is it meant to represent any current or past government, I am presenting a government to allow the widest possible interpretation for GMs and players that is it.

So far what little I have presented can be summarized as a classic empire as defined by Google, "an extensive group of states or countries under a single supreme authority". This is modified in that the empire, the TBR, has no say in internal world affairs and complete control of interstellar ones. In game this is primarily represented by the fixed prices for passages and freight and the ban on worlds having jump capable military or paramilitary ships. I decided while looking at the Aerospace Defense career that the three planetary military forces do not count as TBR forces which also means that the Scouts and Marines will only be TBR careers. I like this dynamic in that to invade a planet you have to get worlds to lend you their armies but the army has to travel on TBR ships. This helps represent a very tense relationship that I envision typifies the TBR. However this presents a glaring problem namely jurisdiction for crimes. Worlds want no interference from the TBR but also have no way of going after a criminal who flees their system. Worlds can make specific diplomatic requests but it is haphazard at best and with no centralized coordination escaping the system means no one is actively looking for you. What they can not do is sign extradition treaties as the TBR forbids interstellar treaties except those it creates. I am not a huge fan of this idea but it makes sense in the context of the TBR and does leave open all kinds of scenarios depending on the GM and players desires. Further thought also makes me like my idea that everyone has a noble to complain to. I didn't really have a firm idea what they would be doing but this gives a probably reoccurring task for nobles to deal with. Nobles owe their titles (and allegiance supposedly) to the TBR even though they represent the population of one world. So Calvin of New Earth (planet Bob) gets robbed but the crook flees the system. He complains to Sir Loin (of Bob) who takes it to the subsector peer council and convinces them to declare the crime as one against the TBR so jurisdiction is no longer an issue. World governments wouldn't like the TBR asserting authority but would like someone else to do the work and pay for it and the TBR would prefer not to get bogged down in every petty (or not so petty) crime however this does justify their existence to the average person.

Okay I will stop there as I probably got more involved than I needed too. The TBR is a relatively weak central government whose member worlds view it with suspicion. This will impact the TBRCA because the member worlds would be unhappy about creating new members inherently loyal to the TBR or at least more loyal to it. On the other hand it doesn't explain why the TBR would have a service dedicated to colonization. Why does the TBR want colonies? My idea behind the TBR is the behind the curtain power is the rich leading to the weak decentralized government and limited opportunities for worlds to cooperate. So colonies are primarily a way for them to get richer however economic enslavement of a captive market isn't going to be wildly profitable so the goal is to get colonies up to the point of self sufficiency quickly so people have a disposable income. So the TBRCA has a goal of getting a colony to population 5 and a tech level of 4 for habitable environments or 7 for hostile ones. When those goals are met all TBR assistance above what any member gets ceases. Having the goal in mind I can now look at the career and propose changes. The generation table doesn't need any as I am good with those values, the base skill and rank titles. The mustering out table I am thinking of replacing one middle passage with +1 education (EDU) and the high passage with an additional weapon to show a reluctance to let citizens leave although as I am also proposing this doesn't represent a reward for service but instead winnings from a game show I don't know if I will change anything. The cash table doesn't need anything changed that I can see.

I am good with the majority of the personal development table excepting only the lack of an EDU boost so I will replace the Gun Combat with that. My thinking here is to me EDU represents all the things not represented by a specific skill and for a small group to be successful they need as wide a knowledge base as possible so the TBRCA provides a lot of formal education. Athletics is fine because again I can see the TBRCA emphasizing physical fitness to quickly grow the population. The service skills need careful consideration as the overwhelming majority of colonists will know all these skills well enough to at least have no penalty. I am thinking Survival, Gun Combat, Melee Combat, Carousing, Animals and Vehicle. The first three seem to me to be the most basic things you would teach to people going some place with no infrastructure to speak of. I added Melee Combat because not needing ammo to defend yourself could be helpful on an undeveloped world. Carousing is one I would not have thought of on my own and is straight up theft from CE. The TBRCA does it's best to promote a beer commercial attitude in colonists to cut down on interpersonal friction and once again increase population growth. Animals and Vehicle are related as transportation is going to be an issue while building a world so both are going to be pervasive. For specialist skills I propose Survival, Animals, Electronics, Mechanics, Jack o' Trades (JOT) and Comms. The first two are because I think that most colonists would encounter situations using them more than any other skills. Electronics, Mechanics and JOT cover fixing just about any mundane piece of equipment and finally Comms I think would be a widely taught skill to keep tabs on everyone in the wilderness. As Comms also cover sensor operations I can definitely see this being taught as worlds are big places and I suspect quite a lot of a planet will be unexplored even when colonization starts. That leaves the advanced education table for which I propose Leadership, Medical, Computer, Admin, Sciences and Recon. I replaced Advocate and Linguistics because I see the TBRCA discouraging off world relationships other than with the TBR. Leadership boosts group endeavors so it should be desired in the colony skill mix. Medical, Computer and Admin are all skills someone on the colony is going to have to master for it to prosper. Sciences I added because settling a new world should guarantees encountering unknown things so you need a group capable of figuring them/it out. Finally I added Recon to account for the reasonable (to me) desire to thoroughly explore the colonists new home. I welcome any other viewpoints on this as I suspect CE might be better thought out than my version.

Farmer in the Sky or the Colonist Career in Cepheus Engine

I recall reading this years ago I believe it is by Robert Heinlein and was pretty good although I doubt the science holds up. This is the first time I have really looked at an attempt in Traveller to have this as a career the versions I am most familiar with (CT and MT) didn't have one. Right off the bat it seems to me that a distinction between where you are from and what you do for a living needs to be made. Having this as a career means to me that it is a government sponsored job you sign up with a colonial service to populate a world rather than just having a colony as a homeworld I expect this will affect how I view the career as a whole.

Diving into it you need to get a 5+ with Endurance (END) as the controlling characteristic. Which is a reasonable choice as you would want sturdy people on your new world. Survival requires a 6+ with the controlling characteristic being END again. That is not a good omen for a lengthy career. Helping my view of this representing an organization there is advancement in the career. A commission requires a 7+ with intelligence (INT) as the controlling characteristic so it is not easy to start your rise to colonial domination. Promotion requires a 6+ controlled by education (EDU) so quick thinking will get you started by knowing a wide range of information gets you promoted. Re-enlistment is on a 5+ roll which seems to be the Cepheus Engine (CE) standard. Not a guarantee of retirement but not impossible or unlikely either. Completing your first term you get Survival -1 as the base skill and rank -0 in Mechanics, Gun Combat, Animals, Electronics. and Vehicle. An interesting mix; Gun Combat and Survival cover hanging out in a virgin wilderness; Mechanics and Electronics should let you repair most common equipment and Animals and Vehicle cover transport and heavy work. I wonder if Comms shouldn't be here though for both staying coordinated and operating sensors. There is one rank skill earned at Three Council Adviser being Liaison -1 so the service trains you to listen to people on your rise through the ranks. Mustering out offers low passage, middle passage twice, a mental boost, weapon, high passage and for rank 5 and 6 characters a social standing (SOC) boost. None of these are bad but I am thinking it is odd that 4 out of 7 possibilities are traveling opportunities to escape a backwater world. The cash table ranges from 1,000 to 50,000 with 5,000 coming up 3 times bringing to mind for me the deal Amazon offers it's warehouse people. I might have understood this wrong but I believe the deal is something along the lines of try it for a year and at the end if it isn't for you you can leave with 1,000 dollars for at least trying.

The personal development table offers the three physical characteristics and INT, Athletics and Gun Combat. I am really unsure about the lack of EDU on the table as it seems to me that would be in the agenda of any group trying to get a world from zero to break even. The specialist skills are Athletics, Carousing, Jack o' Trades, Engineering, Animals and Vehicle. Huh? I am mystified by Engineering being a skill available to potentially any colonist as it's description specifies starship drives. Carousing seems a bit odd but apparently the Colonial Administration realizes training people to be enjoyable company is a good idea. The advanced education table has Advocate, Linguistics, Admin, Medicine, Liaison and Animals. I am not happy with the skill set overall for the colonist career. Lacking a way to improve EDU doesn't seem right and having no training for operating communication and sensor gear also seems unlikely. Athletics shows up twice and where I can definitely see physical fitness being desired I think that it might be over represented. Animals being on 3 different tables including the advanced education one isn't so far fetched people like animals and they increase in numbers without a manufacturing base although again I think it might be a little to prevalent. I find it odd that Gun Combat is present twice but melee weapon skill would only be available through the mustering out table. Survival and Medicine are only present on one table each and again this strikes me as implausible if you are setting up a new world. I already mentioned Engineering being totally out of left field for me. I suppose I will have to actually come up with the Tiber-Beltain Referendum Colonial Administration (TBRCA) and figure out why they found colonies before I can decide on what I would like for skills available though.