FnD Rules Variant #1: Homeworld Skills

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

In addition to the skills gained in your character's career, You have one additional homeworld skill based on the character's native society.

The skills for worlds with multiple trade codes are not cumulative, instead the character may choose the skill from the available trade codes for the world.

The Codes are taken from Book 6: Scouts


Trade Class: Skill

Agricultural: Vehicle
Asteroid Belt: Prospecting
Barren: Survival
Desert: Survival
Fluid Ocean: Watercraft
High Population: Streetwise
Ice Capped: Survival
Industrial: Computer
Low Population: Communications
Non Agricultural: Vehicle
Non Industrial: Vehicle
Poor: Streetwise
Rich: Carousing
Vacc World: Vacc Suit
Water World: Watercraft

Farming: Vehicle
Mining: Prospecting
Colony: Liason
Research: Computer
Military Base: Tactics

Capital: Admin

 

[Black Globe Generator]

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
Industrial: Computer

What about Mechanical or Electronics for worlds with TL 7-?

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
Low Population: Communications

Okay, I admit I chuckled when I read this one! For some reason I pictured a whole planet communicating by semaphore flags...

I would think Lo would lend itself to rugged individualism. Survival seems like a good choice at first glance, but it gets used a lot already, and not all Lo worlds are wilderness necessarily. How about Leader, to reflect that take-charge, can-do self-reliance that comes from living on a sparsely populated world?

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

Of course refs should tweak it to suit. I conceptualized with a base TL of A in mind.

As to the Communications skill application, It would be like Star System of the HAM Radio operators. An all CB Radio culture would be good for a laugh!

 

[Black Globe Generator]

Would these be (skill)-0 or (skill)-1?

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

Ref's option, but I would say 1, especially in an advanced society TL8+? For my games its 1.

 

[Jame]

Do these stack, i.e. do characters get more than one if the planet has several trade classes?

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

They do not stack. If a planet has more than one code, the player would get a choice of skills...

 

[Golan2072]

May I use this system as part of my CharGen document (crediting you, ofcourse

)?

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

An honor, Captain! By all means!

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

What do you all think of Streetwise skill in general? Does it need fleshing out? I want to say that for every level in it, the character gets a solid contact setup on the street, and also knows how to handle himself by and large. A guy with Street-2 would know Icepick Norman and Lou the Grifter or thier equivalent in most settings for example.

In the comics, I guess it would sort of be like Judge Dredd was in a way, and also how the Timothy Truman version of Hawkman was , with underworld informants/shady contacts.

 

[Chaos]

Originally posted by Black Globe Generator:
*snip*
I would think Lo would lend itself to rugged individualism. Survival seems like a good choice at first glance, but it gets used a lot already, and not all Lo worlds are wilderness necessarily. How about Leader, to reflect that take-charge, can-do self-reliance that comes from living on a sparsely populated world?

I´d rather go with Jack-of-all-Trades. If all other homeworld skill choices are -1 skills, then I think JoaT-0 would not be too powerful.


I would also add one more thing - if the world is on a trade route, the player can choose an additional language as the homeworld skill.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Actually, Baron, I think Streetwise is perfectly nebulous. It can mean knowing the ins and outs, having contacts, places to avoid (hey, a nice person can have Streetwise), etc.

 

[Golan2072]

May I repost this system on the Children of the Earth Forums (crediting you, ofcourse)? I want to back this great system up for the case of the CotI board going offline.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
In addition to the skills gained in your character's career, You have one additional homeworld skill based on the character's native society.

I love reading stuff like this.

Not a bad job at all, Baron. Good stuff. I've worked with homeworld/background skills myself, and although I did take the world's trade codes into consideration, I never thought of basing a skill on the trade codes themselves.

I would suggest this...

A table for each trade code. Roll 1D on the table and get that skill.

For example, for an Asteroid Belt, you have "Prospecting" as the skill. My guess is that there are a lot of people in an Asteroid Belt who are not necessarily prospectors. There's people who run shops, maintain the local starport, maybe work in transporation of ore mined at the belt, etc.

A table with 6 skills on it might be more appropirate than saying all characters from an Asteroid Belt homeworld automatically know prospecting.

Grav Vehicle. Zero G Environment. Zero G Weapons. Engineering. Pilot. Ship's Boat. Communications. Trader. Broker. Etc.

All of those skills come to mind as I think of characters in Asteroid Belts. It doesn't seem right to nail every character down to just "prospecting" just because his homeworld is in an Asteroid Belt.

Also, I would allow a character a chance to roll on the homeworld or background skills chart instead of one of his career charts during character generation--reflecting things a character could learn by virtue of where he lives instead of by virtue of what his career is.

This is a great way for GMs to make skills available to characters who might not otherwise get them.

For example, I'm sure the various companies that mine the Patinir belt in the Aramis subsector have Bureaucrats, but under the Bureaucrat career, a character cannot get Pilot.

But, I find it reasonable to assume that a bureaucrat character living and working in an asteroid belt might have an opportunity to get Pilot skill. It might not be a big chance, but as one of the 6 skills available to a character via his homeworld or background, it won't be rolled that often.

I did something similar to this in my game for background skills:

http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=44;t=000270

And for homeworldskills (in the form of a new type of rule I created called the "Fifth Table"):

http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=44;t=000270;p=2

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

Been also thinking about "asteroid society" in general. Considering that prospecting and possibly ship construction (by wierdoes!) would be the staple in such a system, I can easily see basic prospecting/Vacc Suit being taught in kindergarten. Belting seems a hard life as presented, and I am sure it would dominate a large part of the society's culture, it sort of would have to if settlers and even everyday residents were to live in practical comfort.

Also been thinking on when the "change" in seeing the Mainworld as be all end all for a system happened for me, And I dont think it was book 6, but a bit before that. I know the CT rules sort of touch on the Mainworld as the most important in the Star System, but looking at the variances, truly anything is possible backgroundwise.

Before this, I just sort of played it as that was Regina, with maybe an odd moon thrown in for flavor. The guy that wrote "Travelling without Jumping" sure did know his stuff, and could convey it well. The "change" in perception was for me looking past the UWP, and seeing the Star System as a system entire, and also how that system affects its population.

 

[Golan2072]

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
Also been thinking on when the "change" in seeing the Mainworld as be all end all for a system happened for me, And I dont think it was book 6, but a bit before that. I know the CT rules sort of touch on the Mainworld as the most important in the Star System, but looking at the variances, truly anything is possible backgroundwise.

The amount of focus on a single world, as opposed to an entire system, is a matter of culture and economy; IMTU (the Solar Triumvirate TU), for example, "core" systems tend to be well-developed in all worlds, not just the mainworld; colonial systems, still at their economical infancy, usually only have a significant settlement on the most immidiately profitable world, with far smaller settlements throughout the system supporting it.

In the "Golden Era" OTU, on the other hand, remember that interstellar transport is (realatively speaking) plentiful, cheap, and commonplace; so in many systems, only the world with the best economical advantages is settled significantly. This is one of the reasons of the Hard Times being so hard: worlds were so dependant on interstellar trade that they didn't have facilities for the utilization of local resources and for self-sufficiency, and once interstellar trade grund to a halt, they were deprived of most of their resources.

In the TNE setting, I think that star-systems would be far more developed than in the "Golden Era" OTU, as starships (or the TL9 Starport-A's needed to produce them) are extra-rare, as opposed to the ease of building non-starships, especially small ones, which could be built with a cheap spaceport and TL6+, so that system-wide development is quite intensive in any system that has retained spaceflight of any sort.

Regarding Homeworld Skills, I'm leaning towards the approach detailed in TNE p.23, that is letting the players choose from a list which is limited by the homeworld (e.g. no weapon skills in high-law worlds, no Vacc-Suit skill on TL4- worlds and so on). Then just let the player choose two skills (TNE has four but TNE uses a different task system), and two skills, that are allowed for their homeworld from that list, to be recieved at skill-1 at the age of 18.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
Before this, I just sort of played it as that was Regina, with maybe an odd moon thrown in for flavor. The guy that wrote "Travelling without Jumping" sure did know his stuff, and could convey it well. The "change" in perception was for me looking past the UWP, and seeing the Star System as a system entire, and also how that system affects its population.

I know what you mean. I like how Heaven & Earth, or the World Builder's Handbook, will spit out UWP's for the other planets in a system.

It's interesting to look at the population codes and starports on other system worlds besides the main world.

Right now, in my game, my players are in the Patinir system, an asteroid belt mainworld in the Aramis subsector.

So, I had H&E spit out a couple of maps of the system.

There are several little, small instellations on moons around gas giants and such. I see, even, codes for three separate Research Facilities, two of them on different moons around the same gas giant and one on a world all by itself.

The structure of the system is interesting as well. There's the F3 V Primary, and in orbits 0, 1, and 2 are gas giants.

Isn't that neat. The star...then three big gas giants, inner system, right in a row, each with a number of moons around it.

The first gas giant, in oribt 0, real close to the star, doesn't have any moons, but it does have a ring. And, it's got a Y class spaceport. Since the stats of the ring are all 0's, I'm assuming the spaceport is automated.

The second gas giant has 7 moons. Two of these have Research Facilities, and the TL for those two moons is TL 9.

The third gas giant has 11 moons, but there's not a lot going on here. Several of them have Y class spaceports, but only two have any TL (TL 8).

Next in the system is a large asteroid belt, orbiting at 1 AU, with a width of 0.5 AU's.

Damn, it's big, but there is no spaceport, to TL, no pop...nothing in this big ring.

Move out to 2.8 AU's, though, and you've got a second, smaller ring. THIS is the mainworld belt, yet it's a much narrow-er ring (at 0.1 AU's).

Canon says that Patinir has 2-3 large space stations in the system, at least two of which are at the trojan points of a gas giant. So, I slapped the two stations near the three inner system gas giants, while the third, the biggest, I put in the main (narrow) asteroid belt.

Then, out at 5.2 AU's, we've got a barren piece of rock with an H class spaceport and a very thin atmosphere.

And finally, way out at 9.8 AU's, we've got another barren rock with a thin atmosphere...yet this one is rated at TL 9, Law Level 5, Self-Perpetuating Oligarchy, and a population of a few hundred.

Hmm... what's going on with this place, way out at the edge of the system?

Religious zealots who wanted their own "home"?

A company planting a flag on a world in the system with an eye towards becoming the main world one day?

Pondering these types of things can sure lead to some unexpected (and creative) gaming.

You are definitely right, Baron. I think many Traveller players forget the rest of the system on only focus on the mainworld.

...and there's so much more out there.

(I freakin' love H&E, btw. I use it all the time.)

 

[Black Globe Generator]

Originally posted by WJP:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Baron Saarthuran von Gushiddan:
Before this, I just sort of played it as that was Regina, with maybe an odd moon thrown in for flavor. The guy that wrote "Travelling without Jumping" sure did know his stuff, and could convey it well. The "change" in perception was for me looking past the UWP, and seeing the Star System as a system entire, and also how that system affects its population.

(*snipped*)

You are definitely right, Baron. I think many Traveller players forget the rest of the system on only focus on the mainworld.

...and there's so much more out there.</font>[/QUOTE]I remember how excited I was when Scouts was released, to be able to create whole systems: mining colonies on gas giant satellites, far companions with farming colonies, research labs deep in the outer system, planetoid belts with belter communities - it opened up a whole new realm of adventure in Traveller for me, one that I had barely explored.

That Scouts was released at the same time the Voyager spacecraft were sending back the most incredible images of the outer solar system ever seen around the same time added to the excitement. Volcanic Io, icy Europa, clumpy rings and shepherd moons - my imagination was pumped.

I began figuring out all sorts of reasons to get the players in our game to spend more time in a system - a patron who'd charter their far trader to deliver goods to a research lab on a frozen planet thirty AU from the star, a rich speculative cargo on a mining colony, a distress call from deep in a planetoid belt, a pirate base on a gas giant moon. Good times.

And like the mainworld UWP, each planet and satellite offered a new set of figures to "decipher," to interpret into a meaningful world.

I tend to create way more than I need in actual play, which means I like to "build" systems that the players may never visit, or may not ever get beyond the mainworld - whether they ever visit that belter colony or research lab isn't important, because I know it's there and I can use that to add to the verisimilitude of their experience on the mainworld.

Originally posted by WJP:
(I freakin' love H&E, btw. I use it all the time.)

I finally downloaded H&E the other day. It makes some calcs easier, but I prefer to create my own stellar systems by hand - I usually have some idea of what's out there based on the mainworld, and I like to introduce specific features, so the random creation tools of H&E aren't all that useful for me. Just a matter of personal taste and referee style.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Black Globe Generator:
[I finally downloaded H&E the other day. It makes some calcs easier, but I prefer to create my own stellar systems by hand - I usually have some idea of what's out there based on the mainworld, and I like to introduce specific features, so the random creation tools of H&E aren't all that useful for me. Just a matter of personal taste and referee style.

There's a lot "under the hood" with H&E. You might want to give it a closer look than just a quick glance. Most of the results that can be derived from the World Builder's Handbook will be spit out by H&E. You can tell how xenophobic a population might be. You can tell if they have any strange habits. You get a temperature matrix for the various latitudes on the world. You get a planetary map. You get a system map. You get UWP's on all worlds in the system. You get NPC diplomats, and cargoes, and passengers, and thugs, and police, and all sorts of NPC that you can throw into your game in a moments notice.

I think it's a wonderful program.

And, all of this is customizable . If you don't like something, then you can easily alter it to your tastes, save it, and have it to build up the information in your campaign universe.

I'm a huge fan of H&E.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

I am too. I run a superhero game called "Newtown Champions: , and I used H&E to generate an alternate solar system. This "earth" has continents broken into several Islands (I kept poilities the same on Earth, but changed geography.

By using Earth stats on "random" I came up with some very cool features that really make the game something like DNAgents or something. Example, Earth has three moons, The Third, Diana, having a some form of life!