Traveller 5.10 Book 1 - Part 7 - QREBS, Intuitions and Personals

Book 1: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6

QREBS

One of the more interesting things in Traveller 5.10 is QREBS. This system essentially allows us to customize things in terms of quality, reliability, ease-of-use, burden and safety. I see it is "why is that a +2 sword?" and with a mechanism behind it other than enchanted. Some games systems have a bit of this: fine weapons in The Fantasy Trip I think either do more damage or give an edge in your to hit roll as they are balanced so well. Traveller takes that and expands on it in a mechanism that can be used in any game system I think. What's more, it extends even further to give some rules on the working age, chances of breaking down, and so forth.

Of course we are full of tables: 

• the explanations of the QREBS terms and a bit of how to use them
• true age gives the age of an item, with current, antique, artifact, surplus and experimental columns. Roll flux to determine how old something is based on what it is. For instance. I go to a pawn shop looking for a communicator, and rolling flux of 3, it is only 6 months old.
• location damaged based on what it is, so sub-tables for things, vehicles and equipment, character
• damage severity to get the difficulty roll - how many dice will we need to roll?
• diagnosis severity to get how hard it is to actually diagnose the issue, as above it gives us the target dice needed to roll. 

Let's continue with our 6-month-old communicator. Rolling for QREBS we have (and table definitions are in italics):

• Quality = 7 (2D-2) which is pretty good, as a new one starts at 5 on average. We have found a premium Naasirka communicator in the used market! 7 = better than many
• Reliability = 0 (flux roll). Right on average quality. Neutral reliability
• Ease of Use = 4 (flux) meaning this is very ergonomical and has a great user interface making this easier to use. Easier to Use
• Burden = 0 (flux) so not any better than any other communicator to carry about. Burden neutral.
• Safety = 3 (flux) so a pretty safe communicator - not likely to have the power supply explode suddenly due to bad wiring. Safe to use
• Working Age: a good flux roll of 0 means it was never used as even though it is 6 months old, it was a return and the box never opened. 
• Period = Quality, so 7 is 2 years, so every two years of use we reduce the reliability. Better than many

Naasirka C-65 Communicator, used QREBS: 70403. 

While not for most things, and for buying something new we have a standard QREBS of 50000. Is this useful? It can be a fun set of rules. Our character bought the used (but new in box!) C-65 communicator. He first uses it, and the controls are simple and easy to use. If there was an emergency and using it became a critical issue for a task roll, I'd probably use the EOU as a modifier making the roll easier.  But I would also check the reliability: make a flux roll and if reliability (0) <= a flux roll, there is an issue: the battery died or something. Our character is out in the wild with is companion, who falls down a cliff and breaks a leg. Quick, let's see if the C-65 comm device can make the call. We are still in the 1st 2 years of use, so our reliability is 0. Rolling a flux of 3, we have an issue with the communicator! But it does not happen for 1D6 uses, meaning it will work fine the next 5 times we use it. Are there any indicators it is starting to fail? Flux < Safety, 1 < 3, so we have an indicator that the (roll on the things location table) that the output (speaker and/or screen) is starting to fail. Back at the ship, it is easy to diagnose (1 on the diagnosis table), but unfortunately it will be formidable to repair (a 4D roll, based on the damage severity table). They must have soldered that screen to the power system, speaker and use special screws preventing normal toolkit tools access. 

There is a rule to keep things up to date: in the case of our comm device, every 6 months we need to keep it up. This is an average task roll: 2D < Char + skill + Quality Mod + Mod. For this the characteristic is probably Int or Edu: I'd let the player pick the highest. Skill would be electronics, and there is an uncertainty if the skill < 6 of 1D. Which I must have missed in the tasks section. But apparently you need a very competent person to maintain equipment.

And if we keep the device properly stored between use have the reliability postponed. If the character only carries the device planet-side, that week in jump does not count towards the 6-month period. Working life is exactly that: while it is in use. Being stored does not count against the reliability period. 

So yes, more accounting. And in most cases not really necessary, but I still think with a bit of practice this gives us some interesting rules to be used in circumstances that are dangerous and depending on that equipment. And as per the Traveller 5.10, extensive rules. Most games I'd probably just make a die roll and base issues on that. The KISS rule. It is sort of like the armor rules in TFT: you can ignore damage and just assume that you are repairing your damaged armor between battles or track the amount of damage it takes. At some point the damage destroys the armor. Or how some games (Apex for instance) just attach a use die to the item: you can keep shooting your gun, but each time roll a die, and if a 1, you switch to the next die down. For instance, a pistol may have a usage die of d8. You can keep shooting but roll that d8 each time. Roll a one, and now you are on a d6. Roll a 1, and now on a d4. Roll a 1 and you are out of ammo. Realistic? No. Easy to use? Yes. Is it worth tracking? Like all things - it depends on the group and how we want to play. Most of the players I play with do not really want to get into the gearhead and nitty gritty details of stuff like that. But they are okay with me telling them the results of those nitty gritty details, they just don't want to deal with it directly. Although I do have the Saturday group and at least two of them are keeping track of their arrows. 

What is interesting is that there are rules so that the GM can have a hidden QREBS, and the players can start to discover the various factors when they actually use it. 

Is QREBS something to use? I think for an occasional one-off type of item, sure. But for 99% of the time, there is far too much tracking needed to make it work.

Intuitions

We have a single page for intuitions: intuition is the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning. It seems a really odd addition to Traveller: players roll, and highest to lowest gets Insight, Curiosity and Luck. The 2D rolls used are their pools for that: they roll another 2D6 to use insight, curiosity or luck, with a -1 DM per each subsequent roll. The explanation of use is, of course, a bit lacking. I feel this is sort of like Fate or Luck points used in other games and seems just sort of tossed in there. The GM decides to use it or not, and the rills are done per session. Would I use this? No, but it does allow for a bit of flexibility in handling things. 

Personals

The personals are for handling NPC interactions, but going far beyond the "roll 2D6 for a reaction roll" (which I use in most of my games regardless of the rule set). Anyway, the idea behind this section is, yes, you can role-play the interactions but then it is often the personality of the GM vs the player personality. As a number of gamers (myself included) are not particular adept in social situations, this allows the character to have the interactions more so than the player.

There are details on the 4 types of personal: Carouse, Query, Persuade and Command. Using your skills, social status, and whatever else, you pick your strategy and tactics to get a target roll. I know there was a cheat sheet somewhere over on COTI explaining this a bit better. 

While I think it would be clunky the first few times, it could be a useful tool for those players who would rather not have to role-play things at times in situations where they are uncomfortable. Which does seem like an odd thing to say as this is a role-playing game, but not everyone is a thespian or able to really carry the character they are playing in all game play. For instance, in the Fate game I'm playing Grey Cat, a socialite vigilante. I had lunch at a posh restaurant meeting another young lady, daughter of a person of interest. While I can do her action scenes (gymnast acrobat, a combination of Catwoman, Batman and Huntress) I am not good at the social scenes. For me, this type of formalized play would have helped and given it a bit of structure. As I really had no idea what I was looking for, but that is another issue entirely! I am not good at quick responses. 

Traveller 5.10 Book 1 - part 6: Skills

Book 1: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

 Now we get into what all those skills we earned in character generation mean. And the opening paragraph about skills define abilities is even confusing:

Skills are quantifications of each individual character's abilities. Skill is a broad label which is further divided into Skills, Knowledges and Talents. Each has its own usage and restrictions.

So, a skill is broken into skills? Is that like an apple is made up of apples? Seems almost like a Platonic idea of what matter is. Skills are then defined as an area of expertise. We actually start off with the master skill list, which as 64 skills. They are grouped by a general purpose skill, such as Admin, Driver; starship skills from Astrogator (and I still prefer Navigator but see as that could be confusing) and Pilot; trade skills such as Biologics and Gravatics (which is not the same as the engineering skill for grav engines?); the Arts such as Actor and Author; and soldier skills such as Fighter and Heavy Weapons.  Next to this list is also the list of many knowledges, which are the skills broken down even more. so there are technically more than 64 skills as several of those skills are a collection of skills. And we have talents, which usually are used by aliens and not humans. 

Which is where it gets really confusing to me: they are all skills to me. I think the way they did this in the Classic Mercenary and High Guard "advanced" character generation made more sense to me: you picked a specific skill if you got a broader skill. For instance, you rolled Driver and picked grav vehicle. And I think we're doing the same thing here but with a different name for the same thing. Though I think (and I'd need to re-re-read the character generation process) if you get 2 knowledges in a skill you pick up the broader skill, giving you knowledge-0 of the other skills, err, knowledges, in that grouping. Seems overly complicated to me, and not really needed. Why, back in my day a ship's engineer could maintain the jump and maneuver drives. And we didn't need no power plant! Now we have specialists. Which honestly reminds me how software development has changed over the years as well, come to think of it. 

We also get the default skill list, which is much larger than I expected: 12 skills you get at level 0 so you can at least attempt things, though it will be really hard so you will need to add an extra die to the dice pool. T5 does seem to have the skill explosion process down pat! I prefer the Mongoose and Cepheus versions where you get some default skills based on your home world, which T5 does as well in addition to the base default skills. Seems like a power gamers paradise. Starting out you get a broad swath of skills out of the door. Of course, in many ways this makes sense with T5's task system. But for me it seems to make the game more rolling than role-playing as the tasks cover so much. However, I think all that really also depends on how you run the game. In the end, you are still playing Traveller and if a well-prepared referee can have the tasks set up, you are still rolling dice for things that have an impact if you succeed or not. You are just rolling probably more dice and want to roll under the target. Which still does not sit well with me for Traveller. I am old and crotchety, what can I say! (And not really that old, though I did hit 60 a few weeks ago. Which when I started playing Traveller seemed like a doddering old age, but now that I am here, well, 90 is the new old age!)

Reading on, we find that each level of a skill represents about a year of training in theory. The naming convention is the same as it has been since Classic, with Pilot-1 meaning they have that skill at level one. Biggest difference is the level 0 skills, which were actually "half skills" in Classic I found when re-reading some of the old books. I think 0 makes more sense: you are not great at it, but you can try without a penalty. Though with the T5 task system, there is now a bit of difficulty as it adds a die to the dice pool. Unless you are cautious and take twice as long to attempt that task. 

An interesting touch to the default skills is that you can take a hobby after your career and have it at level 0. Except for the 2 careers that have a hobby built into them.

And finally, it is explained that the progression for those skills with sub-skills (aka knowledges) go knowledge, knowledge, skill. Meaning they get the Skill (such as ships boat) at level 1 but not the pilot  ACS (Adventurer Class Ships). Before that, they get the sub-skills at level 1 meaning they can try to pilot a ship if they have shuttle pilot but get no bonus and have and have the extra die because this is hard. Yes, I keep repeating that as the more I read, it does start to make more sense. But still seems pretty complicated. From the table, it looks like once you get that 3rd hit, you just bump up the skill. Which I read to mean that you have all the knowledges at that skill level. We've also changed the rule for maximum skill levels across all skills (which I think was more a house rule but may have been in the books) in that you can at most get a single skill level up to 15. Which matches the human-norm max for a characteristic. Coincidence, or just someone who really likes hexadecimal? And some knowledges max out at 6, and there is this thing about career knowledge based on the number of terms. The example is a Scout who has served 4 terms - he has Scout-4 as a knowledge. Meaning he knows a lot about the Scouts. How would that parley in play? I honestly think it would amount to a sort of specialized admin skill in dealing with the Scout bureaucracy. I can see this as a sort of useful tool when dealing with your previous career, but that is something I think most referees would have done out of the box. We just now have explicit rules for it. Which seems to be what T5 is trying to do. 

And that is the thing about T5: there are a LOT of rules and mechanics. I am hoping as I read through the books I can tease out some of the more useful ones and apply them to Traveller and other games. As there are some really good nuggets in there such as the QREBS system which I have written about, and comes up soon. While I think several make some sort of sense, I really have a hard time seeing how you could use all the rules. I think it is more like the MOAN principle but applied to the rules: use only what you want. MOAN is Map Only As a Needed. Which, if you've been reading my posts, you know I map way beyond that!

We have a quick recap of a skill check (which is what was the only check back in the old days): check against the skill only. An easy task is 1d6, a hard task is 3d6. Not quite the same as we need to roll under the skill level vs rolling 8+ and adding in your skill. But as T5 generally has higher skill levels, sort of similar and is basically the 68A rule from Megatravaller. Interestingly, you always fail if you roll the max. Meaning an easy roll of 1d6 is a lot easier to automatically fail than a hard skill roll (6 on 1d6 vs 18 on 3d6). 

Then we have almost 40 pages covering the skills, talents and knowledges in detail, along with a few examples on how to use them and setting up some task rolls. A far cry from classic Book 1's 5 pages covering the all the skills. But there is a consistent mechanism now for applying the rules and skills. Classic Traveller had a few skills that changed the modifications based on your skill level (looking at you, vacc suit skill!)

T5 is still accountants in space I feel!

T5 represents a skill explosion, which some gamers love, others hate. I personally prefer the simplicity of Classic Traveller yet I can understand having more details. It all depends on my mood. For instance, I am running 2 Fantasy Trip games: the mechanics there are pretty simple. And yes, there are a lot of talents and spells, but you either have it or not. Tracking XP is a lot different than level-based games: it is basically a purchase system: you spend XP to gain a stat boost or buy a skill or talent. Compare this to Old School Essentials, where your skills are class and race-based, and then level-based, and it is more nuanced for each type of character in terms of skill progression and talents. I like both, though I'll admit TFT is a lot easier to run. But I will get better at running OSE (and next year will try a Dolmenwood game). 

Saturday Fantasy Trip Recap - To The Weeds!

Doing a bit of shopping, our heroes that use bows managed to pick up some new bows and arrows from Licheli's Shop of Unusual Bows and Arrows (from Fantasy City Scenes III) and a few other odds and ends. As they are in the marketplace, young Micheal shows up, begging for help:

Micheal comes running to the group - ‘Elspeth has Rat’s Bane. Their hideout is in rat-infested sewers, and she managed to catch the disease. In fact it is spreading like wildfire through the small group (Toddy, Estalar & Aleesa (twin elves about 6 - why are they abandoned in Edge City?), Eret, Wynna). Their manager, George, a wizened old man looking to be 90 but quick with his hands and mind, has been trying to help them. There is another half-dozen children about, but they seem ok. While two of the other children have been cured by a local cleric, there are other problems with the doctors, clerics and magic users with healing potions that are taking time, and George did not have enough gold. There is a plant that grows outside Edge City in the hills to the north that can be used.

I had made up a few notes for things to do and was thumbing through my book of Dreaded Diseases and Amusing Afflictions and the Rat Bane seemed interesting, especially as the child gang of thieves live in rat-infested sewers or abandoned buildings. Using yet another book about poisonous plants a decided on the vetch for some reason. No, it really makes no sense but hey, it is a small adventure at the moment.

First the group finds an apothecary that Hexis knows of, Eleanor Codington's shop (from Fantasy City Sites and Scenes II - see, finally using this stuff! Yay!) The Elf speaks for Dawn in Low Elvish a moment before getting back to common and asking what she can do. After the explanation, it turns out she has 5 bottles of an antidote for the rat's bane. Not many carry it as it only effects the poor who often cannot afford the cure, or do not know what it is until too late. And why only 5: because I intentionally set up 6 small children and I had 5 tiny little bottles for props...I think when my son was little we were planning on doing some sand in a bottle thing. Which only got as far as the bottles).

Alas, only 5 bottles for 6 children

Turns out there is a meadow up in Olmstead's Farm to the north, perhaps half a day walk, that has a field full of the plant, or weeds as Hexis and Axz keep calling the plant. Purchasing a healing potion as well, they are tasked with filling a burlap sack with the vetch so that Eleanor can brew up more antidote for rat's bane, and she will pay in another healing potion for that.

Taking the medicine, little 12-year-old Michael getting a ride atop Deimos, they find George and the children in a battered and abandoned tenement. They give the healing draughts to 5 of the children, Hexis being blunt about death comes to all, but they are off to get more weed to help cure Wynna. When Dawn asks about the twin Elves, George says that they were found on a raft under a bridge that is often a lover's tryst, so makes for easy pickings when the couple is otherwise distracted. The young Elves had fine clothing that Dawn recognizes as aristocratic clothing, but the children are in a delirium and cannot speak.

Just go down the road yonder, and turn right at the fork

Heading out, they get directions from the guards to Olmstead Farm, north and turn right at the fork. Heading out the first part of the journey is uneventful as Dawn sings to keep the company in good spirits, and they turn right at Guedliva's Inn (not knowing that the group of wanted murderers is under the well at this very moment trying to get through the dungeon there). The second part of the journey they encounter a small group of brigands, asking for a gold apiece to pass. Violet turns violent and unleashes the first attack with an arrow. Which missed, but fortunately misses Axz, who had moved behind the brigand.  Of course, a battle ensues, and one of the archers managed to shoot his buddy in the back (hey, it can happen to bad guys as well as our heroes!). They manage to kill all the bandits with the help of a summoned bear. Who, even with some dried salmon, was not too happy about being summoned from his berry patch and ordered to attack the bandit leader. Who he killed. The bodies had a little bit of money on them, along with some weapons. Wrapping up the weapons and hiding them a bit away from the road, they wrote no thieves here in the bandits' blood on their foreheads. Hearing a horse and wagon come up a few minutes later, they meet Mrs. Olm and her child William. They were returning from Edge City, dropping off a wagon of hay. The city goes through a lot of hay every day (and something to think about so that the horses are all fed in the city). While William is not quite old enough, he does look at Dawn perhaps a bit longer than his mother would like. As the group explains their mission, she gives them a ride to the farm. Deimos meditates most of the two-hour trip, regaining his strength from the magic used to summon the bear. Mr. Olm is at least 20 years older than his wife but does know of Eleanor and after a recap of the situation, sends them to the north pasture which is being let fallow this year and the vetch is growing wild. 

The group finds and fills up the sack, along with a second sack with roots and whatever part of the plant is needed to see if the apothecary can grow the plant in town. Violet had to tell the Lizardman and Goblin what to do as she has some amazing farmer skills. They clean up and enjoy a hearty meal and Dawn serenades the group again. They pick up a couple of rumors: two towns over graves seem to be emptying out, though if a watch is there nothing happens. And the Iron Castle seems to be mounting some attacks. Both rumors came from the Deck of Destiny - one of the players found that box and was looking through it as we played, so I had him draw out 2 random cards. 

We left with the group bedding down in the barn, the barn cats keeping clear of Axz. Unlike the cats around Fugh, these cats do not trust Goblins. And they are not sure about the lizard man either. Though Violet will wake up with a cat on her stomach, Deimos will have two cats curled around him, and Dawn has a cat that slept on her head. But at least they did not get bitten by rats!

Nothing too exciting, but we added some rumors from a random source, and I think the group had a good time. I do need to figure a more over-arching plan for them but so far mostly sandbox stuff. And figure an organic way to get Deimos another powerstone or something. Magic is hard for low level characters, but I like it that way. And I managed to use a few of the things I have, which makes me feel better about having all this stuff. If I can use it, then it is not just FOMO and the collector's impulse!

Traveller 5.10 - Book 1, Part 5

Book 1: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Tasks

After character generation, the next chapter deals with tasks. We have a character, with skills and knowledges, how do we use those things? And this is also why the benchmarks chapter comes up before this, as there are some useful concepts that apply to tasks. There are 11 pages dealing with tasks, so this is not just roll 8+ to succeed. 

One of the arguments I've heard against the T5 task system is that it your characteristics tend to overshadow the actual skills you may have. There is a basic function to determine tasks:

nD <= [characteristic] + skills + mods

where nD is the die roll needed. Where it gets complicated is just how many dice you need to roll. Of course, there is a table. And there are adjustments depending on if you are in a hurry or take your time. Basically, the number of dice ranges from an easy 1 (which should be about automatically a success unless you have some seriously harsh modifications), through difficult at 3 dice, to the previously mentioned beyond impossible needing 8 dice, 9 if you are in a hurry! And, in a complete reversal of 40 years of Traveller, this is a roll under roll. The advantage of a hasty roll is that the time takes half the normal time. And cautious takes twice as long. It is noted that your "characteristic represents the base natural skill". I can sort of see that, and with the dice pool mechanism, it makes as much sense as the various systems that grant a modifier based on a range of values (i.e., strength 18 gives you a +3 damage in melee). As Traveller 5.10 really wants to fine tune random rolls far beyond the original short 2d6 bell curve, this fits in with that vision. But it is hard for me to see it as Traveller!

An overview of the various kinds of tasks, such as cooperative, opposed, actions, arcane, and so on. And then a list of the important terms so that everyone is talking the same language in how we set things up and resolve them. 

An example is given: to repair a grav vehicle, the referee decides that this task should take 1-6 hours and is a difficult task. The task format looks like:

To repair a grav vehicle (1D hour). Difficult (3D) < (Dex + Gravatics) + 1 for tools (required)

Knowing that and knowing that the bad guys are on the way, the player can decide they really need this fixed ASAP, so it becomes 4D < dex + gravatics +1 for the tools. If they don't have the tools, they cannot do this.  But if this is just a lazy day in jump, they can take their time and it is only 2D. So, taking a character with a dexterity of 7, and a gravatics skill of 2, and having the required tools, the player must roll 3 dice and get < 7 + 2 + 1, or < 10. Which with 3 dice is about a 50/50 chance (hey, I play a lot of Fantasy Trip!). Note that the dexterity characteristic is the largest piece of the formula. However, I will also note that Traveller 5.10 can give a lot of skills, so if you had a gravatic engineer, that skill level could rival the dexterity. However, I can understand how this could be a strange thing. If you had someone with a dexterity of 12, they would beat a character with a lower dexterity but actually has the gravatic skill and knows what to do via training and education. It can allow players without a skill to be better than those with the appropriate skill. It may be that the skill is required, though. Ahh, yes - the skill (in this case, gravatics) is generally required. However, characters do get a set of default skills at level 0. Those skills allow them to attempt the task but This Is Hard so it is an extra die. Not sure where the default skills are listed, but I think that balances it a little better. 

The This Is Hard also has an interesting twist: if the skill level is below the number of dice, you actually add another die! Going back to our repair job for our grav vehicle: with that skill level of 2, the number of dice now becomes 4 as the difficult level of 3 > the level 2 skill. Of course, taking their time reduces the die so back to the regular difficulty. But the other side of this is a This Is Hard Beyond Impossible Task done in Haste - that needs 10 dice to roll under the target!

Then we get into some weeds with the default skills and phantom skills and so forth. And some tasks don't require a skill, such as moving something. If just a characteristic, the mod is always +3. For instance, putting something heavy in place is a difficult task, or 3D < Str + 3, no skill required. The phantom skills are for tasks where a characteristic does not apply. The example given is trying to convince a buyer that the goods are acceptable: Average (2D) < 7 + Broker. Where 7 is the "phantom" skill. And 7 being the average of 2d6. Though in this case, I could see adding mods based on social levels of both the buyer and seller, depending on a number of things. If the player role played it (at least tried to role play it: some of my attempts at character to NPC dialog are more stilted than I would like) I'd also give a bonus. 

We then go into duration: some tasks it really does not matter, some are variable, some are fixed. The variable ones are like the repair job above, 1d6 hours. And another table for standard variable durations. Which is pretty interesting and think I may use that for my next software estimation as it is as good as anything I can come up with! A month is 6 + flux weeks, or 1-11 weeks. Yep, if I think a month, 1-11 weeks is probably right!

Cooperative tasks are interesting: two characters can help each other, and we use the highest skill and characteristic from each. Going back to our grav vehicle, Susy has dexterity of 12 and grav-1, but Johnny has dexterity 6 and grav-6. Now the roll is 3d6 < 12 + 6 + 1 or 3d6 < 19, pretty easy to do! There are a few other examples given as well. 

Opposed tasks are whoever rolls lowest. Which seems backwards but remembering that this is a roll-under system, so the lower the number the better your success. 

Uncertain tasks the GM rolls one of the dice, so very similar to the "listen at the door" sort of thing where the referee is supposed to roll the dice. I figure my players can handle failing a roll and their character thinks they know. Though I do see this both ways. But I like the players to roll their own dice when they can. 

Speaking of better success, we have spectacular successes and spectacular failures. 3 ones on the dice ( so not possible for 1 or 2 dice difficulty levels) always has a spectacular success even if the roll fails. Which is odd as the beyond possible with 9 dice means you have a better chance of a spectacular success! The reverse for failure is 3 sixes. It is noted that for tasks of 6+ dice, you can roll both a spectacular success and a spectacular failure, making it spectacularly interesting! The referee is encouraged to make it a rousing, memorable event.

The infamous Jack of All Trades skill comes up. Effectively it is used as a skill replacement at -2, so that a JoT 3 will give a skill of 1. The This Is Hard rule applies if the skill is less than the dice difficulty. 

There are some notes about creating tasks and cautions to take into account. The chapter finishes with 2 pages of examples and several more charts. The examples have 3 characters doing the same tasks with differing levels of characteristics and skills. 

In finally reading through this chapter, I think I've a better understanding of what Marc Miller was doing. And I think it does make sense in many ways. The hard part for me is coming up with the task definitions. I would love a list of a bunch of them to help me create my own as necessary. I do think I may try to do this when I run my next Traveller game. Though getting my players to generate T5 characters will be a challenge! Though 1 player does have the T5 rules, I don't think he's actually read them (he collects games). 

I think the same mechanism is applied to fighting, especially shooting. I think the difficulty is set by the size of the object and the range band, so that we can calculate the difficulty based two things we should know. But I'll know for certain when we get to that chapter! The next chapter is the skills list, and I'll cover that in the next review post!

gotta fix that air/raft!

Traveller5.10 - Book 1, Part 4

Book 1: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

Characters and Careers

57 pages into the book, and we finally get into the mechanics of actually creating characters. I've several posts during the last three January character challenge posts showing just how challenging the T5.10 character generation is to me. I understood the advanced and MegaTraveller skill sets, but T5.0 has this thing with knowledges vs skills. There is a ladder system there, but I feel it makes things far too complicated without giving enough benefits for that level of complexity. Oddly, as I am playing a Fate game, that technique of a ladder of skills makes sense and is easy to understand and use. Anyway, character generation consists of 5 steps, which really have not changed since classic: generate stats, decide on a home world (an option without meaning until a later version that had home world skills - maybe Mongoose?), education and training (pretty sure the 1st instance was in High Guard), career and muster out to have a character that hopefully survived!

It is noted that you work backwards from the date the game starts to figure out what your birthday is. Oddly, a post I was reading (and sorry, cannot recall now where!) was talking about characters birthdays. I don't think we've ever celebrated a character's birthday in any games I've played or run. Something I feel I may want to change.

The education, pre-career options have been greatly expanded. And, given enough social stat, you can re-roll with waivers so it is not a binary succeed/fail. And now we have remedial schooling, trade schools, training courses, college, universities, law and medical schools, honors and of course, a few miliary schools. And more tables so that you can have the Imperial University of Regina if you wish. Of course, with the skill explosion (well, personal view there!), education can give you some really good knowledges and skills. Another handy table indicates which skills and knowledges are available at which kind of school. 

We have a few pages doing an example of the education process, as well as the training process for those without the EDU characteristic but rather the training or instinct characteristic in that slot. 

We also have the table indicating that some skills have knowledges, for example the Engineering skill has jump drives, life support, maneuver drive and power systems as knowledges. I think the progression is 2 knowledges, a skill, 2 knowledges, a skill, and so forth. How a knowledge vs a skill plays out mechanically I am hoping to discern in reading through the books.

oddly in the education section, but as there is a human graduate I suppose it fits

Then we get to the meat of the career system, which as always is another minigame in Traveller. There are 13 careers to choose from: Craftsman, Scholar, Entertainer, Citizen, Scout, Merchant, Spacer (aka Navy), Soldier (aka Army), Agent, Rogue, Noble, Marine and Functionary. What started in High Guard continues here: you can adjust your risk to better increase the reward. What is different is that you go through a set of your characteristics each term. This is usually C1 -> C4 (Str, Dex, End, Int). The risk roll is 2D less than that characteristic.  Depending on your initial rolls, you can determine that you can risk more. For instance, if you have a strength of 12, you may feel pretty safe in taking a mod of 2 or 3. Then you can apply that in the other direction on the reward, increasing your chance of success. Not all careers use the same system but a variation of that or not at all. You can pick any of the characteristics but cannot re-use that one until you have used the others. If you fail the risk, you may get injured or suffer other consequences depending on the career. And they did bring back death: if the controlling characteristic is reduced to 0, you die. You can't beat the basic Traveller premise of your character dying before you can play them! Though I think this is the basis of the Dungeon Crawl Classics funnel system. Or the Fantasy Trip's Death Test. Anyway, even if you fail the risk, you still roll for the reward. I think that is where I got confused the first few times. It is not sequential per se, but independent tasks. 

Then you roll for skills. Generally, 4 skills per term, it can be adjusted depending on the career, promotions, and the regular Traveller things. 

We have a couple of pages covering promotions and some example generation for that sort of thing, followed by 3 pages covering mustering out and its various permutations that of course depend on your career choice. Two pages of charts for the various mustering out benefits, including the Imperial medals for those that have a high success roll in the military careers. Another 2 pages to cover the "master checklist" which is a summary of everything in the preceding pages. And each career has its own icon or logo. 

medals! In color in the PDF, B&W in the book

The next 13 pages have a career per page, each with their own quirks and special things. Creating noble characters, for instance, you actually have return and intrigue rather than risk and reward. And you can get exiled and have to roll to get back into the good graces. Not sure I did it correctly, but here is a noble character created that way. The craftsman career uses fame (as does the entertainer) and you can end up being known across known space.

The next few sections cover some specific mustering out and career-based ideas. 

The next section in the character generation process lets us understand how land grants work. This is for nobles (and T5 backers!) and can give you some recurring credits coming in. Or more responsibilities depending on the grant and your social ranking. Of course, that also brings up why would you be gallivanting across known space when you could be safe and sound in a comfortable home? But that is gamers for you!

We cover aging, which is similar to classic. Every 4 years you roll against your current life stage starting at 34 (which still feels too young as I was actually in my best shape in early 40s, between the gyn and running marathons. I no longer run marathons but do go to the gym about every day). Anyway, ages 34-41 you want to roll above 5 for each of the 3 physical characteristics or else take a -1 hit. So just about the same as Classic I think.

Ship shares (pretty sure introduced in Mongoose Traveller. I'll note I was a big fan of Mongoose 1e, but 2e not as much. I really thought 1e did a good job of modernizing Traveller but keeping the "Traveller" part intact. 2e, for me, went off the rails a bit. And to not get me started on those isometric and useless deck plans! Thought they finally switched back to something you can use. T5.10 says that 1 ship share is worth 50 dtons of ship. So a 100-ton ship is free and clear if you have 2 ship shares. Of course, one thing that is consistent with Traveller is that running ships is EXPENSIVE. So a ship can be a white elephant sort of thing.

Fame is explained, and ranges from 0/unknown, 1/parent all the way through all future realities. Oddly medals is half the page. Any successful roll for rewards and you automatically get the medal for that roll based on the raw roll, no mods are applied. Officers get an automatic +1 on the table though. However - those medals do give you extra fame. Which explains why it is in this section. I am assuming that the fame is accumulative, but that is a guess as it does not saw one way or the other.

And we are not done with character generation: we now dive into background information. We have several pages to generate school names. guilds, projects, military mission names, and so forth. Thes section alone is useful for more than just Traveller and could be used in any game, though it is oriented to SF or modern games. I had forgotten about those charts, and they can give a lot of character to your character's background. 

A couple pages cover the character cards, which is useful if you have the PDF so you can print them out. Not as useful in a book other than for scanning and printing. One of the reasons I always try & get both book and PDF when getting gaming books!

We then have a couple of pages for life pursuits. This is sort of gaining experience: you can have a pursuit if you have the basic requirements and can improve your skills. You then get tested, and depending on the pursuit, you achieve certification. While I like the fluff and experience rules, it almost feels too much like real life. There are even rules for cramming, assuming you have the study materials (and now, PSTD from college strikes!) However - if you actually USE those skills you are wanting to improve, each year on your birthday (see, a birthday IS important!) you can see if you improve or not. 

We have 4 pages on genetics. Useful if you want to save off a clone of yourself. Genetics are one of the 2 dice for each of the physical and intelligence rolls.  As I'll never use this, I'm just skimming over it. The list of 81 genetic profiles just sort of hurts my brain. We do have a lot of symbols for various genders, which seems oddly relevant to today's world.

Of course, having said that, I have created a family history which is basically the same thing as the genetic tree in T5.10.

a paladin's family

We then cover chimaeras, synthetics, clones. Now we actually had clones in Classic Traveller, or at least MegaTraveller. Now we have detailed rules on how to use them. Again, not really something I'll use until I do, and then I'll dig into those rules if we needed to. 

Next up, task resolution! Now that we have a character, we need to know how to use those knowledges and skills. And just how many dice we need to Traveller 5.10. 

Edge City, Part 1

We've moved our game from Windemere Crossing to Edge City for the 2 Fantasy Trip games I am currently running. Having a copy of the Compleat Ankh-Morpork City Guide, that is my map and resource for Edge City. Not that I use it a lot, but it does show the sheer scale of Edge City.

I also realize I've never dug into Edge City. The last couple of games we have established that the city is at least a couple hundred years old, and built on top of another ancient city, which in turn was probably built on the ruins of yet another ancient metropolis. This allows for all sorts of dungeons under the city itself. Are they all connected? Probably not, but as I've got two sets of adventurers travelling under the city, it behooves me to come up some ideas for what lies below as well as what lies above!

Unlike Windemere Crossing, Edge City is full of temples and churches, schools and taverns. Anything and everything can be found on this coastal City, end point of the Ocean Trade Route to the East. At least on land - the ports of Edge City have ships cruising out into the ocean, visiting such places as the Rainy City or the fabled Isles of Elencia of the Amazons (which I cannot find anywhere so may not be available). But Edge City is a bustling, busy city. Which gives us urban type of adventures rather than the wilderness. And one of the players has added an island chain where the Lizardmen come from. 

Islands of the Lizardmen

We've also had players meet and in once instance so far, kill some of the local citizens. So far, we have met:

• William, a street urchin and thief who tried to pickpocket Dawn, our Elf bard. There are a few others associated with this child gang, including 'Lizbeth, Bobby and Scraps. Their local boss is George, who the characters have not yet met.
• Derek Goldensunder, Dwarf proprietor of the Drink. Killed by the two gargoyles, vampire Elf and rogue. There are badly drawn wanted posters for the gargoyles and the Elf. The Drink is currently closed until the owner's kin comes along to deal with it.
• Several guards who refuse to go into the sewers.

Outside of town, there is also Gudeliva's Inn and Tavern. She was having issues with Derek who wanted to buy her inn to have a second tavern outside of city walls. She thinks the Dwarf had her father killed and sent the 2nd group in to find proof. And of course that went sideways. She also has an odd dungeon under her well. I'll note the last two entries here came from Philip Reed's Fantasy City Scenes books.

We've also established that Hexis, our Lizardman, lives in a tenement building and has two rooms. It is not far from the market square which was near the docks. He also has hired out as a bodyguard for a few people, and we'll throw in an Orc named Bugunutei who has a list of fighters and grunts that the upper class can hire out as needed. The name is apparently Medieval Mongolian from the Fantasy Name Generator. I have a few Orc minis so one will become this employer and contact. Bugunutei will be a contact for Hexis.

And just how large is Edge City? Based on the Discworld Fandom site, it is about 50 square miles including the surrounding fiefdom. There are about 1 million people in the city and fiefdom, including about 50,000 Dwarves. So, a very large city, with a complex fiefdom surrounding it. We do know that a bit north, about 2 days travel so 40-50 miles, is a pear farm where they make peary, a sweet alcoholic beverage. This from a game I ran years ago. And used the same place for at least one other adventure. Now if I can just find the name!

think my scale may be off. never good with scales in my games!

This part of my game world is over 40 years old but never really developed. I was a loner in high school, but really liked the idea of RPGs even though I never played. So, I bought minis and made maps for where they came from. I still have those paper maps! For instance, the Centaurs are from Triplaner Island.

the electronic version as I learn Campaign Cartographer. Slowly.

And again, it all comes down to how much of what I do in world building actually gets used or is even useful? And it becomes even more difficult when we've got multiple games going on. However, at least for the various fantasy games I run, they are all on the same world, and mostly in the same region. There is a bit of cross-pollination there so that I only have to worry about 1 fantasy world. And the player with the Lizardman islands may also be working on adding things to this world. Of this current group, just the two of us seem to collaborate on world building beyond a few simple things. Though he does have a much darker world in mind at times. But of course, I am digressing yet again. 

Let's bring out some of my city building books and see what we get. Some things are pre-determined: the location and size primarily. And that the city is ruled by the patriarch until the King returns. Who just may be a large, red-headed guard in the town raised by Dwarves.

Bringing out Campaign Builder: Cities and Towns, we have five questions:

1. What is the city's age?  This is a mature community, and mostly planned out though it has grown somewhat organically over the centuries. There are families that have lived here for generations. It is also built atop an ancient city, though most of that city is buried under Edge City.
2. What is the city's primary function? Trade - it is a busy port city at the base of at least two major trade routes: the western-heading Ocean Trade Route and the north-ward route which I've yet to name. Though Stubboon's Last Stand is part of that. Cargo ships come and go, caravans and traders on land come and go. Merchandise from all over the world can be found here.
3. What are the city's trade goods? Being a trade town, it is at the crossroads of many trading routes by land, sea and gate. It is known for its peary (an alcoholic drink made from pears), though most of that comes from small towns to the north of Edge City but is traded in the port. Surrounded by farms, produce of all sorts is also available. And hmm - trade goods have a pricing table based on scarcity. Useful if I could remember that!
4. What is the city's size and population? As above, we're talking a million people in the city and surrounding towns and villages. It is a large city and has several large towns around it as well. 
5. What is the city's government structure? In theory this is a kingdom ruled by a monarch. But there has not been one on the thrown in quite some time, and the Patrician manages the city and its environs. Technically this makes for a dictatorship, but he seems to have the best interests of the kingdom as the driving force of his rulership. 

Magic in my world is all over the place. The Fantasy Trip treats is as a fairly pedestrian affair, with regular magic-based jobs. OSE is more classic fantasy based so a bit more special and not as common. In Edge City, I'm going with it is pretty common and mundane, and people don't think much about. Parts of the world, though, magic can be seen as a corruption, a divine and rare gift, and something not even known. Having said that, magic I think should be special, and while there is a wizard's college in the city, the Unseen University, magic has its costs so is not as prevalent as say, a floating city with magical fountains and unicorns grazing everywhere. 

I had started to use some of the books I have on cities and things, and then realized this post was getting way too long. So this will be continued in part 2!

Traveller 5.10, Book 1 Part 3

 Part 1, Part 2

Benchmarks

Understanding the unfamiliar is easier when players have standards against which it can be compared.

Makes sense - unlike most fantasy games, science fiction games can have all sorts of things that have no context unless you are playing in some IP type of 'verse  such as Firefly, Star Trek, Star Wars. This 8-page chapter has several sections. Starting with money, it has some brief ideas on wages, investments, cost of living. I had not realized until reading this that there is a wage table. Based on your skills and adjusted by a couple of trade codes (rich worlds citizens get a 25% bonus, poor a -25% adjustment. And Hellworlds you sign a 1-year contract). Which is interesting, though the Fantasy Trip also has a wage table for various jobs. This could be useful in a few ways: if you want to bribe someone you should be able to tell how much they make so that it is an appropriate bribe. Or tip for service. Or if you are down and out and take a local job waiting for something to come up. 

We also recap the starship purchasing mechanics, which have stayed the same for 40+ years. You pay your 20% down in cash, they build your ship then you get 40 years to pay it off. What is new is that the bank finally asks you for a financial plan. And we wonder why Traveller is sometimes called Accountants in Space. Hmm, and apparently the ship's steward now handles the ship's accounts. Which is also the conclusion I've come to from a few discussions over on COTI as well. And for me, smaller ships the steward is also the cargo master more often than not. 

There are some fluff paragraphs on shopkeepers, speculators and the like. No rules or mechanics, just an overview of other ways to bring in the almighty credit. We also have some guides to how the land grants work (and hey, I have some for backing T5!)  And for every terrain hex granted, another is also granted on another world in the system. The example given being a RadWorld. So that someday when technology is good enough you could do something with that. 

Then definition of cost (what it takes to make or do something), price (what it is getting sold for), and value (which is an individual assigns to it). And of course, there is a table using some benchmarks to figure pricing. 

Finally, we have size benchmarks. As previously mentioned, sizes have ranges as well. Size 1 is coin-sized, size 5 is person-sized, size 7 starship-sized and size 9 moonlet-sized. The chart matches that with the distance range, so that you know a coin at very short range (5 meters) is the same relative size as a vehicle at distant (5km). So you can say things like you see a size 5 thing on the landing pad, knowing that this is a person-sized thing. Of course, you could as easily say there is a person-sized thing there. And there is a mechanic buried in there (T5 has a LOT of mechanics buried in the text): a size-N item can generally carry and use any object smaller. A size 5 (human-sized) thing can carry a size 4 or smaller thing, such as a rifle. This can apply to vehicles and ships. Though of course ships have to have a cargo hold so not sure if it really applies across the board. But as a benchmark, it is useful.

And of course more tables to adjust the size via a flux roll. Not entirely sure how useful those would be. In a computer game version, sure, to add a bit of variety. For a pen & paper TTRPG, I don't think I can see a use. But someone obviously thought it would be useful. 

The last half of this chapter is all the tables for benchmarks: size, costs, cost of living, noble land grants, value. And values also have bands. Snack is 0, or < 1 credit. A meal is 1 or about Cr10, and ATV is value band 5 at Cr100,000. 

Characters

We finally get to how to generate a character starting on page 46. Well, almost. It covers the basics that have not changed much since the original Classic Traveller: the same 6 stats, using pseudo-hexadecimal for the UPP. It is expanded a bit to handle non-human characteristics, but still restrained to a 6-character UPP. A table has the basic characteristics checks: easy is 1D <= the stat, a regular check is 2D <= the stat, and hard is 3D against the stat. Going with the Classic standard of 8+ to succeed, there is a bit of a match as 2D against a characteristic derived from 2D is sort of similar. Sort of. We are told to check the Tasks chapter for more details. Because the traditional characteristics have been expanded to enable alien characteristics, each position is known by C<position>. For humans, C1 = strength, C2 = dexterity, and so forth. This allows us to use different characteristics based on positional notation. 

Noted are that characters have the 3 physical stats (strength, dexterity, and endurance), 2 mental (intelligence and education) and 1 social (social level). There is a comment about obscure characteristics that may appear as play progresses. 

We then have the encumbrance rules which are based on strength and the burden (which is detailed in the QREBS chapter). There is a lot of look over there for more info which is an issue for me as things get spread out. And from looking through the T5 errata notes in COTI, often the parts disagree with each other. But hey, we now know a character can transfer a Burden up to 5x his strength for C3 (aka endurance) minutes every for endurance. Again, while interesting to have this sort of mechanic in place, this the sort of thing I feel most people will just wing. But we do have mechanics if you want to run it within the actual rules. 

Each of the characteristics goes through the same sort of definitions and examples as the strength above does, This takes a couple of pages, and has several rules and mechanics buried in the text. Such as those who have instinct performing a task that requires education or training takes half the time. And those with instinct get 3 instinctual skills or talents each with a skill level equal to the C5 (aka education in humans) stat. I hope that rule is explained again later when actually generating characters!

And then we start adding the obscure characteristics: sanity and psionics are the ones given. Interesting that they include sanity (the ability to make reasonable, sound use of the mental characteristics). This gets generated at need. Sanity can be reduced due to situations and failures, and San (or CS) at 0 means you are insane. Which translates out to using a flux mod for any check using intelligence or education. It is noted that it may never come up. Though I think running the Death Station adventure could cause checks for sanity (a freezer full of bodies would cause me to have issues!). But now Traveller has some rules for handling sanity (and yes, counseling and drugs can help in the game. Though not sure I want to play a character in therapy. It hits too close to home - I play games to get away from reality!)

Next up is the personal day: how long can you be effective basically. Interestingly, your personal day is going to be 24 hours + a flux roll, so 19-29 hours. And the 1st endurance hours are optimal for you (and there are columns for the other endurance-equivalent characteristics of stamina and vigor). Personally, this works for me as I am a morning person, but I know some night owls who are optimal in the last few hours versus the first. But the table also indicates if you fall asleep when failing a sleepy check. This is a mechanic I can actually see some use for, though it really means you have to have this info on your character sheet to track your personal day and the hours for the optimal, average, tired, and sleepy phases. It is sort of like the OSE rule where you need to rest 10 minutes of every hour or you start to take a hit on reactions and attacks (and I need to look that rule up again to make sure I understand it).

Next are several pages of more charts (T5 loves its charts!). Some of the rules buried in the text are shown again in the context of the appropriate table. And we've a handy d66 table for home worlds if you want to randomly have a home world. Alongside this table is the list of trade codes (which are far more expansive than Classic Traveller) and your home world skills. 

There is a lot going on in this chapter, and other than rolling up your characteristics, we've yet to get into actual character generation. But we'll save that for the next post!