Traveller: Character Challenge 2023: 22/31: Agnes Birmingham, Collector

Sorry for the middling maudlin previous post! Just my normal seasonal issues and too much work (after swearing I'd never do the 50+ hour weeks/working weekends, I've been doing that since Thanksgiving for a big migration. That still is very unlikely to make the end of February deadline. So a bit of tension from all that).

Anyway, poking through the near-infinite pile of plastic, the Reaper 5 Core set had some townspeople. And I got to thinking that Traveller has a near infinite number of worlds of various technologies and societies, and wondering if I could create a character, then give it stats for a variety of game systems? If anyone remembers, way back when there was a Thieves World set that set up the City of Sanctuary and the main characters for a variety of RPG, including Traveller. I was heavily into the books at the time, but the lack of money meant I never got it. That and I primarily just ran Traveller so did not have the other game systems, though I thought about getting them (Runequest seemed like a cool game. Maybe one of these days I'll....no, I have too many games I am already not playing! Need to remember the Joy Of Missing Out as well as its enemy, FOMO!)

Anyway, this rotund, pipe-smoking and well-dressed dame could be a lot of things. A mayor, a rich dilettante, a madame of the local house of ill-repute. Let me roll some Traveller stats, and we'll decide from the social rank what to make of her.

857397. So, not a dilettante, not particularly bright but educated a bit above average. And then if we translate 2d6 rolls to 3d6, and using the rather extensive dice roll tables in the T5 books and comparing percentages, we can estimate what those would be in a 3d6 system such as OSE. And TFT is basically a 3d6 system at the core based on the average starting attributes. Of course, some of these do not have a direct 1:1 match, but close enough.

Traveller	Old School Essentials	The Fantasy Trip
Strength: 8	Strength: 12	ST: 12
Dexterity: 5	Dexterity: 8	DX: 8
Endurance: 7	Constitution: 10	N/A
Intelligence: 3	Intelligence: 6	IQ: 6 => 8 (minimum)
Education: 9	Wisdom?: 13	N/A
Social: 7	Charisma?: 10	N/A

So just who is this well-dressed woman? While not astute at all, she does have either an education or a natural wisdom of sorts. For Traveller, she really does not match any of the classic careers. Looking at my somewhat extensive bibliography, think we could make her a colonist (Mongoose), frontierist (Cepheus), clergy, craftsperson/tradesman, in organized crime, prostitute, a few other things. And I really need to update that post - I have a few more Cepheus books I think since I last made an update. What, me, a completionist? No...well, maybe. Though I have given up on Mongoose for the most part as I really don't like what they are doing. Though they finally got back to usable top-down 2D deck plans instead of those useless ones they were peddling.

So, back to who this woman is? I don't have a lot of overlap between classes and Traveller careers. Fortunately, the Fantasy Trip is class agnostic as you assign skills and abilities to make your own class essentially. Thinking a trades person may be hard for someone of very limited intelligence, but that is countered by her wisdom and education. But I'd also like her to be of use as an adventure hook. And Diverse Roles has the Collector. And I've misplaced the physical book somewhere! Dang, hate when that happens as I have a shelf that is for all my Traveller stuff! Well, and a giant bin for all the stuff I've had since high school and college as those would take a few more shelves but are odd-sized! Anyway, while the collector is for collecting fine art, we can use that as-is for Traveller, but make it collecting antiques, and for the fantasy games, antiques with magic!

Agnes Birmingham's family business in the collection of antiques and artifacts gave her an easy entry into the field (rolled a 12). Coming from a frontier world. she picks up Survival-1.

Term 1 (18-21)

She readily survives (and EDU 8+ seems that being an art collector is a LOT more hazardous than I think it should be!). She also gets promoted from rank 0 to rank 1. She picks up Broker-1 and Admin-1 for skills. She also falls madly in love and gains an ally. Rolling for skills (though Cepheus Deluxe lets you pick, I still prefer random rolls in Traveller. Plus, we may be able to increase some of those attributes!) she gets +1 STR for a UPP of 957397. She also gets these skills at 0: Carouse-0, Persuade-0, Art (Antiquities 0), Advocate-0.

Term 2 (22-25)

Another 4 years of surviving the harsh world of collecting, and in re-reading the deluxe rules, we really get 2 skills per term, and can use one to raise an attribute. We'll do that so we can get a tad smarter. We'll bump her INT by 1 for a UPP of 957497 (which really does not affect the 3D scores yet), and she picks up Language (Trokh-1) as she deals with an Aslan antiquities dealer. And a disaster - she gets injured - she loses that +1 STR she picked up before, so back to 857497. She is also promoted to rank 2. No skills from this rank.

Term 3 (26-28) Failed survival roll

She failed the survival roll, which in most Traveller systems post-Classic really means you get kicked out and roll on a mishap table. Poor Agnes - she did not last long in the career! And I'll need to translate those skills to the fantasy systems.

She does get 2 mustering out rolls, so Cr1000 and hey, +1 INT! Final UPP is 857597. A 5 is 28% chance of rolling that or lower, and that is close the 8 for a 3D roll. If I am reding those charts correctly! And that is always a big assumption.

Agnes Birmingham

Agnes comes from a family of antiquities dealers, but had a falling out in her early 20's. After a few years with the love of her life, they decided to hit the road together. While still together 20 years later, Agnes has become more of a fixture in town rather than a wandering collector. Heavy-set and prone to wearing overly fancy clothing, she fancies herself as one of the town's elites though she is not. A constant waft of pipe tobacco from her pipe follows here everywhere, and her voice is high-pitched and strident to most people. Eugene, her husband of over two decades, is often still on collection runs to the ruins in the mountains near where they live. She loves to show off the wares in the shop and is always ready to give a long history of each piece. She knows her pricing and can be fairly persuasive when she needs to be.

Traveller Stats

Agnes Birmingham, age 40-something 857597

Broker-1, Admin-1, Language (Trokh-1), Survival-1, Carouse-0, Persuade-0, Art (Antiquities-0), Advocate-0

Cr1000

She and her husband own an antiques shop in Startown. She smokes gyps-weed, a sweet-smelling tobacco. Wearing clothes that may have been fashionable 20 years ago, she sits outside her shop, gossiping with her neighboring shop keeps. Her husband still searches the ruins of an alien city a few kilometers outside of the run-down port city. You may meet her looking for curios, or she may want to hire someone to find her husband who is several days late from his latest foray into the ancient ruins.

Old School Essentials Stats

STR: 12
INT: 8 (native, but also Orc for the Traveller language skill)
WIS: 13 (+1 on magic saves)
DEX: 8 (-1 AC, -1 Missile, -1 initiative)
CON: 10
CHA: 10

Agnes Birmingham and her husband, Eugene, have a small shop in Windemere. While she stays and watches the store now, she and her husband used to roam the mountains south of Windemere Crossing, delving into ruins and caverns in the search of artifacts and magical curios. While she has put on a few more pounds since then, Eugene has maintained his sprightlier self and still searches for the things to sell in the shop. Smoking a sweet tobacco, Agnes's shrill voice can be heard over the marketplace, and her fancy clothes, though a bit worn and stained, are still a great source of pride for her. For all her bluster, though, she is a nice person and gets along with others (our carouse and persuade 0 skills - gets a +1 on reaction rolls) You may meet her selling low-end magic items and odds and ends, or willing to purchase things the adventures may have found. She may want to hire the adventurers to search for her missing husband - he left a few days ago and has not returned.

The Fantasy Trip Stats

ST: 12 DX: 8 IQ: 8

Skills: Literacy, Administrator, Business Sense (yes, she does not actually have the IQ for this, but I'm just going to make it a more intuitive grasp of business and it maps close to the Broker skill). Speaks Common and Orc.

Background is the same as the OSE version above.

I'll just do the TFT character sheet - she is an NPC rather than a character, and for me it is getting late. And no, I won't count this as 3 characters for the challenge!