100-dTon TL 12 Prison Transport

[Black Vulmea]

Just because things CAN BE THAT WAY ... doesn't ipso facto mean that things HAVE TO BE THAT WAY.

Jump duration doesn't HAVE TO BE 168 +/- 17 h . . . but in the explicit setting of the game, it is.

Can you handwave it away? Of course. Want to make it a day per jump number? Or a week per jump number? Go ahead. No Imperial agents will show up at your door demanding you adhere to RAW or be disappeared to a prison hulk orbiting Pixie.

But "should" jump be one day per parsec? "Ought" it be one week per parsec? No. It is what it is, unless or until you change it.

I fold, spindle, and mutilate RAW IMTU to suit myself and my creative agenda. I set my campaigns in the decanonised Judges Guild sectors to sidestep a lot of accumulated canon right out of the gate. The only 'authorities' in my game are Dave Sering and me, and I veto Dave whenever I feel like it.

If you want travellers lining up around the block for low berths because they're guaranteed good dreams and waking up refreshed and glowing, with pleasantly minty breath, no one's saying your can't.

But "should" and "ought" have nothing to do with it. That's your interpretation and your value judgment and you're absolutely welcome to both - game on, friend.

From both the implied and explicit setting, I see neither a benevolent nor an evil empire: I see an indifferent Third Imperium, sometimes brutally so. It's a self-interested oligarchy, not a paternalistic technocracy. If your perception or conception of it's different from mine, have at it, brother. Variety is the spice that must flow, or something like that.

 

[Spinward Flow]

From both the implied and explicit setting, I see neither a benevolent nor an evil empire: I see an indifferent Third Imperium, sometimes brutally so. It's a self-interested oligarchy, not a paternalistic technocracy.

That's very insightful.
The notion that "grand interstellar polity" ... "couldn't care less about YOU" ... makes a lot of sense and is often times going to be a good starting point for framing settings and setting up TUs. For one thing, it means that the PCs are not "the center of the universe" or even the "main protagonists" of whatever might be happening at the time. If anything, the PCs are "bit parts" in Ye Grande Scheme Of Things™ that aren't expected to amount to much.

Self-interested/indulgent oligarchs rarely spend their resources (with "mindfulness" being one of those resources!) on things they can't be bothered with ... and the unwashed masses/little people of an interstellar polity DEFINITELY qualify as being "not worth their time" (except maybe on a collective basis, for reasons various and sundry).

Easiest way to explain it is ... Somebody Else's Problem.

 

[Vargr Breath]

The main thing in making your own rules or changing them, is to be consistent. Once you draw that line in the sand and say, "this is how it is in my game." you have to make sure you don't jump around between other rules. I have no problem with homemade rules as long as they are explained as a changed from RAW.

 

[kilemall]

So, MED-1 is like a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman, MED-2 a Nurse Practitioner, MED-3 a MD internist, MED-4+ MD-Specialist/Surgeon ?

​

With Dex 8+ and Medic-3 a surgeon.

 

[Vargr Breath]

With Dex 8+ and Medic-3 a surgeon.

I tend to think of Medic-3 as a GP but that's just me.

 

[Black Vulmea]

The notion that "grand interstellar polity" ... "couldn't care less about YOU" ... makes a lot of sense and is often times going to be a good starting point for framing settings and setting up TUs. For one thing, it means that the PCs are not "the center of the universe" or even the "main protagonists" of whatever might be happening at the time. If anything, the PCs are "bit parts" in Ye Grande Scheme Of Things™ that aren't expected to amount to much.

Self-interested/indulgent oligarchs rarely spend their resources (with "mindfulness" being one of those resources!) on things they can't be bothered with ... and the unwashed masses/little people of an interstellar polity DEFINITELY qualify as being "not worth their time" (except maybe on a collective basis, for reasons various and sundry).

Satori.

I think I finally figured out the line of demarcation between us, Spin: you see cold sleep revival as something in which personal skill and knowledge are directly relevant to success and survival, whereas I see it as inherently limited by the technology such that personal knowledge and skill contribute minimally.

Does that sound about right?

 

[Vargr Breath]

Satori.

I think I finally figured out the line of demarcation between us, Spin: you see cold sleep revival as something in which personal skill and knowledge are directly relevant to success and survival, whereas I see it as inherently limited by the technology such that personal knowledge and skill contribute minimally.

Does that sound about right?

So are you saying, the higher the technology the better chance of survival?

 

[Black Vulmea]

So are you saying, the higher the technology the better chance of survival?

No, I'm saying that the state of the operational technology used throughout Charted Space produces the results we see in RAW. It's also what "Suspended Animation" in TD 21 says: the tech progression affects rates of suspension and revival but has no effect on revival itself.

Does that mean other technologies can't or won't exist? No - as I noted in another post upthread, it's an area of advanced research IMTU, like ansibles and teleporters.

 

[Vargr Breath]

No, I'm saying that the state of the operational technology used throughout Charted Space produces the results we see in RAW. It's also what "Suspended Animation" in TD 21 says: the tech progression affects rates of suspension and revival but has no effect on revival itself.

Does that mean other technologies can't or won't exist? No - as I noted in another post upthread, it's an area of advanced research IMTU, like ansibles and teleporters.

Maybe we come to something like this

 

[Grav_Moped]

Does that mean other technologies can't or won't exist? No - as I noted in another post upthread, it's an area of advanced research IMTU, like ansibles and teleporters.

Medical Fast Drug (Cr2,000/dose, TL-9)
Fast Antidote (Cr900/dose, TL-12)
No survival roll.
Without the antidote, the patient has to wait 3 weeks beyond the jump (assuming 1 jump) to revive.

 

[spank]

Medical Fast Drug (Cr2,000/dose, TL-9)
Fast Antidote (Cr900/dose, TL-12)
No survival roll.
Without the antidote, the patient has to wait 3 weeks beyond the jump (assuming 1 jump) to revive.

FWIW, Fast drug is High Passage in Dumarest.

"There sat the money and the comfort money could provide—the tourists who travelled High, doped with quick-time so that a day seemed an hour, a week a day."

Of course High Passage came with it's own sort of special handling.

"He sipped again. The liquid was at blood-heat, kept that way by the mechanism in the base of the container. ‘I don’t like this,’ complained the girl. ‘I want something solid.’ On a larger ship she could have had it. Cold, of course, since no solid food could retain its heat during the long quick-time journey from plate to mouth."

 

[Grav_Moped]

FWIW, Fast drug is High Passage in Dumarest.

In-game, it's meant as a "PC doesn't die during the week-long trip back to proper medical attention" token.

That's slightly different than the purpose of a Low Berth (again, that's from an in-game perspective; as an available mechanism it does much the same thing without the risk).

 

[Black Vulmea]

Medical Fast Drug (Cr2,000/dose, TL-9)
Fast Antidote (Cr900/dose, TL-12)
No survival roll.

Metabolically slowed isn't the same as cryogenically suspended: "In some situations, the use of drugs (to speed up or slow down the body chemistry) or low passage (suspended animation for low cost travel) will make the character age faster or slower than a strict game calendar would indicate" (TTB, p. 19).

IMTU, Fast is used to recover time lost to Medical Slow treatment, as a treatment for nervous conditions like "jump jitters," or as a brute force anti-aging treatment. It cannot be used to evade taxes, however, which requires more radical medical intervention . . .