The recent mention of Dirk Remmecke's superb mock-up of a Sword & Sorcery version of Traveller has made me consider writing those books. No, not a full 16,000 words per book, but maybe 4-5000 words, suitable for JTAS Online (Assuming Loren would accept such an article -- it'd certainly warrant a 'Variant' label! 
) Most likely I'll never get it done, but I think it's an interesting and amusing thought experiment.
So how to go about the Characters? We[*] want six basic careers, and we want magic-users of some kind (after all, this is Sword & Sorcery). But we don't want character classes. Any career might find magic of immense use, though some careers may be beneath the dignity of a wizard. OTOH, the Grey Mouser dabbled in magic...
What I had in mind was to give players a choice of one "boon" from a list of roughly equivalent advantages:
* The character has magical aptitude. At the end of each term, throw a die. If the result is equal to or less than the term number, his magical aptitude has been discovered. He recieves Magic-0 and is now eligible for using the Magical Education table.
* The character started young. His first term started at age 14. To enter the Barbarian career voluntarily, a character must take this boon.
Two questions: Do those two boons sound roughly equivalent? (I guess a lot would depend on how powerful magic is).
Can anyone think of any other suitable boons? A magic sword? A ship? Money? None of them seem quite right to me.
The six careers might be:
Soldier
Sailor
Scholar
Trader
Rogue
Barbarian
That's about it for my initial thoughts. Comments?
[*] By 'we' I mean the mulitude of posters who, like me, think this is an interesting subject
.
Hans
) Most likely I'll never get it done, but I think it's an interesting and amusing thought experiment.So how to go about the Characters? We[*] want six basic careers, and we want magic-users of some kind (after all, this is Sword & Sorcery). But we don't want character classes. Any career might find magic of immense use, though some careers may be beneath the dignity of a wizard. OTOH, the Grey Mouser dabbled in magic...
What I had in mind was to give players a choice of one "boon" from a list of roughly equivalent advantages:
* The character has magical aptitude. At the end of each term, throw a die. If the result is equal to or less than the term number, his magical aptitude has been discovered. He recieves Magic-0 and is now eligible for using the Magical Education table.
* The character started young. His first term started at age 14. To enter the Barbarian career voluntarily, a character must take this boon.
Two questions: Do those two boons sound roughly equivalent? (I guess a lot would depend on how powerful magic is).
Can anyone think of any other suitable boons? A magic sword? A ship? Money? None of them seem quite right to me.
The six careers might be:
Soldier
Sailor
Scholar
Trader
Rogue
Barbarian
That's about it for my initial thoughts. Comments?
[*] By 'we' I mean the mulitude of posters who, like me, think this is an interesting subject
.Hans
Last edited:
