You are magnetic ink or the Bueaucrat Career in Cepheus Engine

If this turns out uninspired blame me. I have always wondered about this career in the various T versions as I can't fathom why someone would want to play it. I am not saying it doesn't make sense as a career but rather as a choice for an alter-ego in a game most of us play to escape from our own here and now. The description says this is a government official although I believe it is applicable to any large group acknowledging that it is necessary to have them to run. Let's get down to it then, shall we? Surprisingly it is hard to qualify for this career needing a 6+ with social standing (SOC) as the controlling characteristic. It seems that bureaucrats are a someone elite group so I may backtrack here on my NGO viewpoint. Thinking on this it seems likely to me that this career isn't the clerk at the registry of motor vehicles but perhaps more along the lines of a civil rights enforcement organization leading to a more positive public image. Survival is a fairly easy 4+ with education (EDU) as the controlling characteristic. Commission is fairly easy at 5+ with SOC giving a boost of hindrance. Promotion on the other hand is a difficult 8+ with Intelligence (INT) controlling any possible modifier. So it appears nepotism will get your foot on the bottom rung but you need an agile mind to climb the career ladder. Re-enlistment is 5+ giving a moderate chance to retire if you pursue this career to the exclusion of others. The base skill is Admin -1 unsurprisingly with Advocate -1 awarded at rank 4 Chief.  At the completion of your first term you know Computer, Carousing, Bribery, Leadership and Vehicle at rank 0. Again this skill set is not the one I originally imagined for a government desk jockey however it does suggest someone who gets out and mingles to find out what is going on. Mustering out offers low passage, middle passage twice, high passage, boosts to both mental characteristics and finally (to 5 and 6 characters) a SOC boost. All of this seems fine and the SOC boost helps with my re imagined career being one the average citizen admires. Cash wise the table ranges from one thousand to fifty thousand credits (still disliking English and it's rules) which seems okay to me.

The personal development table offers boosts to your dexterity (DEX), endurance (END), both mental characteristics, Athletics and Carousing. I am not sure what I make of this beyond being the kinds of things a regular person could accomplish in their free time. A quirk of mine regarding character generation is that the awards are what the career trained you to do however rather than as leisure activities which I view as covered by background skills. END, INT, EDU and Carousing can all be explained as coming from doing your job possibly for unexpected long shifts in the case of END. That leaves DEX and Athletics to explain in the context of a bureaucrat which I am struggling with at the moment. Then again I am positing the society as a whole is encouraged to gamble and compete so perhaps a part of the job is to run and compete in local versions of the Showcase of Worlds. The specialist skills are Admin, Computer, Perception, Leadership, Steward and Vehicle. The only ones that stand out enough for comment are Leadership a skill that boost a group rather than an individual; Steward which covers not only catering to others but appearing in high society and finally Perception which seems to have been left out of the rules. My version goes from Ocean Ships to Physical Sciences and with English having at least two meanings for the word, "I perceive that man is falling out a window" and "He appears unhappy about it" what is intended isn't immediately clear. I am going to go with noticing things being modified by INT and noticing an emotional state being modified by EDU. Advanced education skills are Advocate, Computer, Liaison, Linguistics, Medicine and Admin none are odd enough to comment on. So at the end I have gone from a faceless minion of the triplicate gods to a troubleshooter for the Referendum who wanders about trying to identify and solve discontent with the system. It is not meant to represent a rebel leader however as the most prevalent skill is Admin which is used to get the system to work rather than disrupt it. This is probably a concept I would have never had if I wasn't looking at the careers beyond just their titles and can see this actually being a character trope that someone could want as a background.

*insert something clever wordplay-ish here* or the Belter Career for Cepheus

The only two things that had come to mind for me were Bobby Darin's "Clementine" and "Quark" from the early eighties, one has lyrics that are no longer mainstream acceptable and the other I don't remember well enough to quote. Regardless let us have a look, a belter mines the asteroid belts for minerals or salvage. Which is why you should read the rules before getting too attached to a concept. Much like the Barbarian turned out to be more of a survivalist I had never considered the salvage aspect of being a belter. In Fermi's Universe (FU) I set out the idea that there had been lots of aliens in the past and that the all somewhat mysteriously disappeared and left it at that. Having read the description of belter I now am thinking that the were litterbugs and there is a ton of crap drifting around in systems waiting to be found. None of that changes any rules Per se but does offer a piece of filler fluff for the setting which is good. Having a career that does this also means it is reasonable (to me) that on the whole archaeology is probably closer to the 1850's kind than the more modern idea being more find stuff and take it rather than study it in place.

Wow it is ridiculously easy to qualify for the belter career needing only a 4+ with Intelligence (INT) being the controlling characteristic. Survival doesn't have the best chance even if you have the maximum bonus from your Dexterity (DEX) so lots of people die or get critically injured doing this job. With no formal ranking that only leave your re-enlistment at a 5+ meaning retirement is possible but not likely. At the end of your first term you get Zero-G -1 and Comms, Demolitions, Gun Combat, Gunnery, Prospecting and Piloting at rank 0. We can pause here to spew hatred at the English language for its ungodly rules on punctuation and whether numbers should be words or numerals. This list of "everyman" skills is even more pleasing to me than the barbarian one including every one I conceive as necessary to do the job. I am also intrigued that the base skill is Zero G rather than Prospecting which I agree with completely.  Moving on to the mustering out table your character can receive all three types of passage, a weapon (and possibly skill in its use), a boost to a mental characteristic and finally ship shares. The only one needing comment is the ship shares because I stated in a prior post I am not a fan of them. The problem is what to replace them with? I waffled for a while on this before deciding to change it to rank 1 in any skill of the player's choice allowing for skills not otherwise available. A ship would be a huge award so it's replacement should be as well in my line of thought. To be confusing though you can't use this award to increase a skill you have only to add another skill at rank 1 as I am offering it as a way to say a character devoted considerable free time to learn something above and beyond what normal characters do with their free time during generation. The money table ranges from 1,000 to 50,000 with 5,000 being awarded three times giving me (the GM) an idea of a standard find should be worth.

Keep in mind on the skill tables that a belter will get two rolls for each term as there is no advancement in the career. The personal development table offers the three physical characteristics, Zero G, Melee Combat and Gambling. I dislike having no chance for mental improvement however I also can't plausibly offer any replacements so it will go unchanged. The specialist table has Zero G, Computer, Electronics, Prospecting, Sciences and Vehicle which I am content with. Finally the advanced education table has Advocate, Engineering, Medicine, Navigation, Comms and Tactics and again I am satisfied with the table. On the whole I am satisfied with the career but I am dubious with the lack of two skills those being Mechanical and Jack of Trades. The problem is the skill tables presented give a wide range of skills so you can be a jack of all trades without the skill. As for Mechanical the only skill I could see replacing is Vehicle but that one makes sense as well so I don't like doing that. I will leave the skill tables alone after all.

At Law Level 2+ it is illegal to punch a horse while wearing a furry speedo or the Barbarian Career

The description says it represents citizens of a tech level 4 or less world capable of surviving without advance technology. Hearing (or reading) the career title however brings Conan to mind even though TL 4 is actually on par with WWII so lets see how this goes. It is fairly easy to qualify to join this career and you are helped or hindered by your END. Your survival chance is a moderately high 6+ modified by your STR. There are no commission or promotion rolls leaving only the re-enlistment check of 5+ which is not a guarantee of retirement by any means but still is possible. At the end of your beginning term you get Melee Weapon - 1 (a cascade skill) and mechanics; gun combat; recon; survival and animals all at level 0. This already has more of a survivalist than hulking swordsman feel to it. Mustering out benefits are low and middle passage; weapon x2; a mental boost and a boost to your END. Nothing bothers me about any of those so we can move on to cash which ranges from 0 to 10,000 cr which does bug me a little. A personal dislike of mine is rolling and getting a nothing result during character generation mostly because players are going to fail enough during play to not screw then out of the gate as it were. However this is a minor and personal enough quibble that I doubt I will change it.

On to the skill tables keeping in mind you get 2 per term as there is no chance for formal advancement in the Barbarian career. Personal development offers improvements to the 3 physical stats and INT; athletics and gun combat. Although I usually dislike players having no chance to improve their EDU thereby locking out a entire table unless they already have a high score to begin with I am okay with it here. The kinds of non-formal education things you would learn are covered pretty well by the skills available even without the advanced table I am content. No chance to improve SOC is also non-troubling as I can't see living rough leading to interstellar renown. Specialist skills offered are gun combat; J-O-T; melee combat; recon; animals and tactics. Again I have no trouble with any of these and like the inclusion of J-O-T to represent self reliance. The advance skills are advocate; linguistics; medicine; leadership; tactics and broker. It strikes me that this represents a set of skills necessary to interact with off worlders rather than to live off the land which is why I am okay with a character either having access to them before they start or never getting them as I don't see these as very common on low tech worlds.

I really like this career. The skills available do seem to suggest to me worlds that are not that interested in joining interstellar society but prefer to go it on their own which could easily explain everyone else calling them barbarians. I am a little iffy squaring my new outlook with getting melee combat as a base skill but I do like the rest of it. Melee and gun combat in this case are more likely (to me) to come from hunting than fighting other people. Athletics implies there are few people who don't have a job that involves manual labor. Recon and survival means that most people probably spend a significant amount of time in the wild. Animals shows up twice correctly emphasizing the importance they play in less industrialized societies. Tactics can be learned by anyone as described in Cepheus Engine (CE). Mechanics and J-O-T are nice additions to show a bias toward fixing it yourself rather than just buying it again. The advanced skills are realy well thought out in my opinion seeming to represent a special individual who is used to dealing with off world people and ideas represented by advocate; linguistics and broker. Leadership; medicine and tactics makes me think village elder even though there is no age requirement on the table. There is a thought perhaps it should be EDU 8+ or 4+ terms.

Engine, Cepheus Engine or the Agent Career

Sorry for my horrible work ethic, no excuses I am afraid.

So next up is the Agent career which is meant to encompass spy and secret agents although it could also be a undercover police officer or insurance claims investigator I suppose. Basically anyone who gathers information under false pretenses. It is moderately easy to join up with your social position helping or hurting you. That is an interesting choice to me although the predecessor to the CIA was the OSS which was said to mean Oh So Social! as it was staffed by all the right families. Survival is a slightly riskier proposition than either of the first two I have covered, being quick on your feet mentally helps you as INT is the bonus (or penalty) characteristic. Commission and promotion is helped or hindered by EDU although neither are terribly difficult to obtain. Re-enlistment is pretty high at 6+ leaving me to believe no one stays for long. Possibly because of paranoia on the part of the Tiber-Beltaine Referendum (TBR) in regards to the loyalty of it's agents. At the end of your first term you gain Streetwise - 1 and level 0 in admin; computer; bribery; leadership and vehicle. The lack of a combat skill as part of basic training implies they aren't expecting you to go in or come out with all guns blazing as your first course of action. At rank 4 you also get Admin - 1 to account for all the bureaucracy you will be dealing with. Mustering out offers passage of all three types; a mental boost; weapon (and possible training); A SOC boost and possible membership in the Explorer Society. All of these I am fine with and I like them even more as prizes for a game show rather than awards from a spy agency. The money table goes from 1,000 to 50,000 which strikes me as a little low but not enough to change anything.

The personal development table offers a boost to DEX and END but not STR and both mental stats, it also has carousing and athletics which seem like handy things to pick up. I am not sure about not being able to get a STR boost but that can be left until after I look at hand to hand combat to know if it is as disadvantageous as it seems. It does seem to imply (again) that you are not supposed to be getting in fights which makes sense. How good a spy can you be if you keep getting caught after all? The specialist skills are gun and melee combat; bribery; leadership; recon and survival. This seems to again imply the goal is not to get caught. It is true that combat skills show up but the other four entries are skills to avoid direct confrontation. Finally the advanced table has advocate; computer; liaison; linguistics; medicine and leadership. Interesting to note that the premier agent skill is leadership not streetwise. Realizing this changes my view on the career as a whole, Leadership provides a pool of points that can be doled out to members of a team to accomplish a common goal. So our spy becomes a team leader rather than a lone wolf. Coupling this with the general low emphasis on combat skills leads me to the view that agents are more Mission:Impossible than James Bond. They get a mission but little manpower support from the agency and assemble their own team to accomplish whatever task is set before them. In Fermi's Universe (FU) it goes along with my view of a very weak central government having deniable assets with little to tie them back to the TBR. Also with so many internal (effectively rival) governments I imagine this to be a common career which goes back to the relative low bar to entry. The only other skills to show up more than once are bribery and computer again implying a preference to avoid situations where you could be identified.

And this is why I am doing this series of blog posts. Just looking at the Career name I was thinking James Bond but actually delving into the skills awarded changed that view into a different but still valid one.

Calling Sky Captain or the Aerospace Defense Career in Cepheus Engine

First a totally random and unrelated thing try listening/watching The Piano Guys on Youtube I like their stuff and maybe you will as well.

My view of the Tiber-Beltaine Referendum (TBR) has been changing as I go through this. I had wanted a 3I clone but I am moving away from that. I am currently thinking it is much more like an European Union (EU) as understood by a not very interested American. The 3 big drivers of it are Tiber; Beltaine and Kent. Tiber is the industrial tech engine run by noble scientists. Beltaine is a rich agricultural world run by a plutocracy which I haven't decided if it is a corporate government or a charismatic oligarchy. Finally Kent is a conservative to reactionary culture within the Referendum. The reason they get worlds to join without having to invade or threaten them overtly is the TBR has little power on the worlds themselves. It only controls interstallar matters leaving what happens on worlds to the government of that world. In exchange the worlds get membership in a large open market and someone else has to defend them from anyone else. I am bringing it up now because this means that the Aerospace; Maritime and Surface Defense careers are not Government service as I imagine the draft to be. Not a giant problem as the Cepheus Engine (CE) already allows you to change careers and only the first term is required to be in service to the TBR. Because it is a mandatory draft for the first term I am interested in opinions on whether or not the DM -2 for switching services should apply?

As presented the Aerospace Defense Force operates on a world out to close orbit which I am calling 10 diameters, cases where the world is a satellite it is 10 diameters of the main world. If the world is instead an asteroid belt it covers what is defines by astronomers as the belt and changes all instances if Aircraft to Piloting. To enlist you need a 5+ with endurance as the controlling characteristic however you would also face a DM -2 because of the mandatory draft by the TBR which gives around a 50% chance for an average citizen. Survival is 5+ with dexterity giving a boost or bane. The service has ranks so there is a commission roll of 6+ and a promotion roll of 7+ both of which have education as the characteristic providing a modifier meaning what you know is more important than your physical capacity or problem solving skills. Finally re-enlistment is on a 5+ which seems to mean you can have a reasonable chance to serve long enough to retire. Provided you make it through the term you get Aircraft - 1 which is a cascade skill and then level zero in Electronics; gun combat; gunnery; melee combat; survival and aircraft but you already have that. This implies everyone who enlists is trained to fly an aircraft which is different than today but acceptable. The rest of the skills nicely simulate basic training with electronics being my only possible quibble as comms seems to be a better choice as it covers sensors and comms and electronics is more general. Moving through the ranks at rank 3 (Squadron Leader) you gain Leadership - 1 which makes sense. The mustering out benefits are one of each kind of passage; weapon x2 ; +1 to Edu and Soc (requiring rank 5 or 6). These are all possible awards from the Showcase of Worlds! so I don't see the need to change anything beyond my earlier stated change of +1 Edu being +1 Edu or Int. The cash table has a range of 1,000 to 50,000 so you can expect to come out reasonably set for awhile. If it has been clear before this is not separation pay but winnings as well.

The personal development table offers a +1 to the physical characteristics; athletics; melee combat and vehicle which is fine except a very gameist personal quirk of mine it means that if you don't come into the service qualified for the advanced education table you never get access to it. We covered the srvice skills during term resolution. Specialist skills are comms; gravitics; gun combat; gunnery; recon and piloting. My only current concern is gravitics because on worlds with a tech level below 9 (?) this wouldn't be all that sensible. The advanced education skills are advocate; computer; jack of all trades; medicine; leadership and tactics all are plausible. Again I am satisfied with the individual tables but a little concerned about the range of skills on the whole. I feel like mechanical should be available and computer should be more prevalent. On the other hand with everyone knowing how to fly it isn't hard for me to imagine that the Technician career are the ones who fix the planes. You know I kind of like this idea warriors fight and technicians keep things working. It is a way of the setting not being just like today with starships but without introducing more house rules.

I have been working on a man with blonde hair and a tan or the athlete career in Cepheus Engine

A side note to start I hate computers. Or maybe just linux, no it's computers. I have spent an hour trying to type 4 lines for my blog and it has been a nightmare. If you are using a wired connection there is no problem but if I want to use my laptop on a wifi connection it drops the connection whenever there is no data transfer. which wouldn't be such a pain if it then didn't take 30 seconds to reconnect; look up google; establish a secure connection and do whatever the hell else it was doing. By the time all that crap happened blogger had detected a problem with the autosave and then ignored the crap out of me. why do I suspect linux? Because I am currently typing this using my old slow netbook that has Windows XP on it without the same problem. Thanks for a super safe operating system that prevents any online dangers by keeping me from using my effing computer at all.

Anyways the Athlete career in Cepheus Engine (CE). It can be thought of as a professional athlete but there are other possibilities as well. I am calling for everyone to serve the Referendum for four years and where there could be that many official teams considering the farm system I also am including PE teachers and personal trainers and the like. To qualify you need to get 8+ with Endurance as the relevant characteristic which means you need to be a little luckier and/or sturdy than the average being to get in. Survival is a 5+ with a boost for Dexterity which needs a little thought if you go with the failure equals death rule. I leave that as the player's option on every survival roll so your Athlete career coming to an end from an injury is not surprising. There is no commission or advancement which leaves a re-enlistment roll of 6+ meaning it is rare that someone serves to many terms as an Athlete. At the end of your first term you get Athletics - 1 from the service and level 0 in Admin; Carousing; Computer; Gambling and Vehicle. Admin is the tyrannical papery fist that rules all known space so any service can account for learning it. Carousing is the skill of being personable which is handy if you are either self promoting or trying to get people to do something most people don't want to, exercise. Computer would presumably be something any star citizen would know with higher levels possibly representing how to work social media to an Athlete's advantage. Gambling is another skill I think of as wide spread in Fermi's Universe (FU) as the government pushes gambling to provide the illusion of limitless opportunity for every citizen. Vehicle is again a skill everyone could be expected to pick up I am adding Animal to the list to account for low tech worlds and equestrian style events.

The mustering out benefits are low passage; +1 Int; weapon; high passage; Explorer's Society and high passage again. FU has the Showcase of Worlds! media circus, I mean talent show with fabulous prizes like the above as the reward. This changes the Explorer's Society into a to be determined cool name for former winner. Why some careers get a boost to thinking on their feet and other get tons of facts memorized I am unsure of and am going to change all of them to +1 Int or Edu and leave it to the player to decide. The cash table ranges from a kind of lame 2000 to a very respectable 100,000 which makes sense to me considering the wide range in player salaries we see today.

The service skill table was summarized at the end of term resolution. The personal development puzzles me somewhat because there is no provision to increase your strength or endurance. It has Dex; Int; Edu; Soc; Carousing and Melee Combat. I don't have any problem with those as I can see them all being things helpful to anyone in the Athlete career as I imagine it. The specialist skills are Zero-G; Athletics x2; Computer; Leadership and Gambling all of which make sense to me. The advanced education skills are Advocate; Computer; Liaison; Linguistics; Medicine and Sciences which again all make sense. I have no problems with any one table but I am somewhat dissatisfied with them overall. Computer shows up on three tables but Athletics only on two. Likewise gambling and carousing are on two tables but strength; endurance and gun combat are not available. I am inclined to replace carousing with +1 Str and melee combat with +1 End on the personal development table. In the case of the specialist table I am thinking of replacing computer with melee combat and gambling with gun combat. However I am not sure I am actually going to make those changes without generating a few characters to see how I like the table as is and with the changes made.

More Cepheus less broken English hopefully

Hopefully not being exhausted means I can write in something closer to American Standard English than my last post, we shall see. The comments on the last post gravitated toward a ship being available without depending on random chance which I am not to surprised by because it is the standard for most games. However that assumption does miss what I was trying to get at. Giving a ship by whatever means won't necessarily setup a game your player want to play in. I tried to run Star Hero (1st edition) years ago and it fell apart because I planned a standard Cepheus Engine style game. The Hero system is a point buy, build what you want system and the players built a teen idol, a spy, an ex-space marine and a Han Solo clone (I think it was a long time ago) it ended poorly. A part of the game failing was we made all or most of the choices in isolation before we started and it became too difficult for my GM skills at the time to create a game fusing them all together.

Perhaps if I had used the advice from the last post it could have worked. I will set out an example next but even so it will not be completely valid because it is still just me doing it. Hopefully it will demonstrate why it may be a valid way to approach a game. So for our hypothetical game group we have a GM and four players. The GM goes through the Cepheus Engine (CE) and only creates enough setting for a starting point including any modifications to the rules. The five meet up in a google hangout to babble at each other of what they want to play. Alpha wants to be a teen idol striving to become interstellarly famous, Beta has been reading Raymond Chandler and wants a film noir detective, Epsilon wants to be a girl scientist/inventor and Delta is good with whatever. Some snickering and snark later our teen idol is a twenty something idol, our detective is an ex-agent who is now a bodyguard, the girl inventor is the idol's kid sister and Delta rolls up a standard Fermi's Universe (FU) character ending up as a former soldier/scout/drifter who is now the roadie. The GM knows from his background the group can be on the TBR Showcase of Worlds! expanding the separation games concept into an on going government run traveling contest the Idol is trying to win. That's great and all but what if any of the first three don't manage to roll the qualifications to get into the right careers? Basically the GM should waive the minimum number of rolls to get the players the character they want.

So Idol Alpha wanted a teen idol the GM could say that his draft service was in the Entertainer career which is the easiest by skipping rolling the draft and qualification roll or he could have the player roll a term as an Entertainer and then go through the draft saying the first term was from 14-18 before the government interrupted his dream. For Beta Bodyguard the standard draft is fine and if agent isn't what is rolled the second term it can be selected. Scientist Epsilon is harder because the concept is a teenage genius which is unlikely to be created randomly. A little thought and the GM allows Str 1D6; Dex 2D6; End 1D6; Int 3D6; Edu 3D6; Soc 2D6; 1 term as a scientist and 1 term as a tech with no mustering out for either and setting the characters age at 16. Delta becomes the GM's favorite for not requiring anything special. None of the characters have a skill set oriented toward starship operations and none of the players are all that interested in running a starship. That implies 3 different possibilities for how the group is wandering the stars. Buying regular passages on ships which would mean finances will be a part of play to pay for all of them. Government ships transporting all show contestants and their entourages which means the group has little control over their movements. Last would be a corporate sponsor providing transport which needs the corporation to be fleshed out. The player decide on the Corporate sponsor. From here the GM can plan a series of adventures his players would actually want to pursue. The players have an idea for why they are adventuring together and some expectation of the general course of the game.

Okay none of that is an thing different or new from the standard sit down and talk it over advice every rule book mentions. Why beat a dead horse then? Mostly because I believe it is a really good idea to do this in a sci-fi game. People being what they are will have expectations of how things work and if you don't hash them out before you start a modern/future game it will come up in the middle of  play. Having to stop playing the game to have an explanation of what the characters should know will derail at least the scene you are in. Having everyone on board for the general theme of a campaign is super helpful when you are using a rule set that allows for anything. "You are all in a bar" works for fantasy but not so much in genres resembling our own lives (to the extent of being adults with jobs) as a reason to risk your lives together.