Belters - how?
- Thread starter PVernon
- Start date
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Scouts. Easier to find mineral strikes.
GrayPennell
SOC-12
One has several choices outside of scouts. A spacer is just as good a choice. A merchant knows the value of money. A rogue and belters just seem to go well together. "Hey I have a great astroid to you can buy trust me" The citizen with big dreams can make it to the belt breaking free of the earthbound.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
If I remember correctly, was there not a Belter character class in Classic Traveller. I have the Belter game, so I know that a class was worked up. Could you not adapt that character class to Traveller 5?
You could, although I think it is usually better to use a career that encompasses Belter activities.
Citizens of the Imperium has the Belter career, and I believe Don has argued for some of the COTI careers to be added into Traveller5.
I tend to feel that most of the extra careers aren't distinct enough in skillset and process. For Belter to be a true career I think it would need to be expanded a bit, to where it's not just for Belters, but for survey, prospecting, and exploration... i.e. Scouts.
esampson
SOC-13
Scouts on exploration duty are probably close enough that you could 'tweak' their chart to make a decent belter. You would have to do things like replace the 'Discovery' result with a 'Strike' result (less fame, 3 strikes would not automatically give a TAS membership, no potential for land grant, but characters gain a significant amount of money) but I think you could 'get by' with a modified chart.
On the other hand such a thing would only be 'getting by'. A dedicated Belter career path would function much better and allow the addition of new skills that aren't covered in the core rules (skills such as mining and refining). You would probably add some form of rank so that characters on their first terms get smaller shares, create sub-paths that allow characters to work for big corporations or work as independent wildcatters (similar to how a scout can decide to work Exploration or Communication), and handle things like the fact that people on crews will probably have some specialties (your pilot probably isn't the same person as your geologist, at least with larger crews).
I think that by and large most of the career paths from CotI have already been folded into the T5 choices but that doesn't mean that new paths can't be added, perhaps in the players guide, whenever that comes out.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
I guess that I fail to understand why a career included in what most would regard as canon, cannot be added to the game, possibly as a subset of Scouts, but given the number of inhabited asteroid belts, a Belter character class would seem to be nearly mandatory.
esampson
SOC-13
I don't think anyone has said it couldn't be added. It simply hasn't been added. Some people think you might not need to go the whole route of designing a new career path but I haven't seen any suggestions that there's no place for them.
Burying the Belter career within the Scout char gen sequences would be a poor way of handling an iconic Trav - nay, sci-fi - character. Scouts are part of the 3I structure and organization, the Man if you will. Belters are aligned to no thing and no one, save the next big score. Maybe some are megacorp regulars but they've given up the ghost.
YMMV
YMMV
I'd use the Belter career from MegaTraveller (closest to T5) as a guide and make up some 'life event'/'mishap' tables to go with it, as well as a few sub-types: ones focused on Processing, Prospecting and Operations(? the basic belter type). Maybe invent a "mining school" option too.
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Glisten A&M* University.
Alternately, the Glisten School of Mines...
*Asteroids and Mining
GrayPennell
SOC-12
I like this too. Though looking at the class descriptions I think it would be easy to develop MTU Belter character generator. Just follow the examples as templates. If you do have the Belter rules even better.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
I have the Citizens of the Imperium and the Belter rules, and also the JTAS article on asteroid belt mining. The task flow sheet in the article actually worked pretty good.
GrayPennell
SOC-12
Could we talk you into typing it up and placing it here
[m;]No, you may not[/m;]
That would be copyright infringement.
It's in best of JTAS1 on the JTAS CD.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Could we talk you into typing it up and placing it here
About all I could do is post what I would view a Belter Character might look like, if I could figure out a way of doing that without using any copyrighted material from the game. I am not sure if that is possible.
I would recommend reading Poul Anderson's short story, Industrial Revolution, which can be downloaded from Project Gutenberg, for some ideas.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/30971/30971-h/30971-h.htm
If you search through the Science Fiction subject heading on there, you can pick up a fair number of stories covering asteroid mining. Just takes a while to sort through everything there and find them.
GrayPennell
SOC-12
I didnt mean the rules as written but I what about your own character outline? We post beast, worlds and starships would a character generator be ok? I am about half done with my Belter Character Generator and would like to share it for comments
That's fine, it's that it looked like you were asking for the flowchart, which is part of the article.
GrayPennell
SOC-12
I have the following skill columns. As you can see I need one more skill column. I am thinking sciences but that is taking up by academic. I also thought ship operations which would have a bunch of ship base skills and than delete those from the other columns and add more odd skills. Any other ideas?
1 Personal
2 Academic
3 Service Skills
4 Vocation
5 Advance Education
6 Business
7
1 Personal
2 Academic
3 Service Skills
4 Vocation
5 Advance Education
6 Business
7
esampson
SOC-13
For that matter it would be nice if there was a 'Scout School'. As it is if I want something like that I have to send the character through the Naval Academy and then spend a term in the Navy before transferring.
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