Steve

In the Traveller Hero game I’m starting, for the first character I converted over I set a retired Brigadier General perk as 3 points (half what the Perk is in HD for an active member of the service and much less than other sourcebooks had it at), thinking this would still allow the character some access to Imperium military bases and additional other uses where being a former officer might be of benefit. To simplify things, I’m treating it as a form of limited security clearance with other small benefits thrown in. The retired, scarred, arguably slightly embittered sergeant in the group may be charged a point for having a retiree military pass, so he can at least get on to bases without fuss. He won’t be invited to tea with the base commander and swap war stories like the general will though.

Among the Perks, rank in a military organization has a cost due to the benefits it provides. Would a retired officer still retain some of those benefits and thus pay for a lower cost Perk? It seems that a retired Admiral or General might still retain some benefits worth a few points. Just not as good as still being in active service.

I converted over the first of the PCs to 6th Edition Hero on Monday, and it went pretty well. Brigadier “Mes” Meson came out to a surprisingly high 225 points after converting his stats, adding in the package deals for Marine and Marine Officer, some bonuses to those skills based on his career events and some extra tweaks I threw in. His high point value was almost all due to skills and perks. Thanks to having four ranks in Leadership earned during his illustrious career that ended in honorable retirement, his highest characteristic is a 20 PRE (since setting it at 19 bugged me), further boosted by some positive reputation bonuses. Complications weren’t that hard to do based on his life events. A Hunted earned from his career events, the Imperium officer he reported for failure after a fiasco mission which later earned Mes a promotion for doing so. The package deals also gave some very good suggestions for psychological complications that fit: Marine Code-never leave a man behind. I added in “The Burden of Command” which I can’t recall right now if it came from the book or was my own idea. For his Equipment load out, he has some mesh body armor (not battledress), an auto pistol and a cutlass. All in all, he would not be out of place as a “sword and planet” hero.

Whoa. That’s some heated competitive spirit there.

That’s an intriguing notion. You might also take a look at Ogre for ideas for starfighters versus capital ship battles.

Ah, I did miss that. Based on my past experiences with the game in days of yore, most Traveller characters will be Average Joes struggling to make a living in unusual situations, which would translate into lower-point Hero characters in the 8-13 primary characteristic range. Our cyber-eyed gunfighter will probably have an 18 DEX as his best characteristic. The Trojan Reach looks like it will have plenty of adventure potential.

My group had our character creation session for the new campaign using Mongoose’s Pirates of Drinax campaign setting this weekend. It was quite a lot of fun, like a time-compressed pre-campaign session, and everyone had a great time following their character’s life paths. One character started out with a fantastic stat set (three 12s rolled in front of me) and the other two were closer to average. Of those other players, one had his best stat as his social standing, and the third was fairly average with social standing as his dump stat (a five as I recall). Because there was a pretty big difference in the totals of their characteristics, we all decided to let the two with lower characteristics have some rerolls on their life paths to make up the difference. They all then decided to go to the military academy for the Marines, and that’s when the fun began. My player with the golden stats failed to get into the academy and was drafted instead, ending up in the Marines anyway as a private. The low SOC player managed to successfully enroll on his first try and the third used one of his rerolls and managed to get in on his second try (and we explained that as his high SOC meant Daddy pulled some strings). The other two later managed to graduate with honors without rerolls, entering the service as lieutenants, while the stat-lucky player finished pounding it out in his first enlistment and was promoted to a higher level noncom. The player kept joking about “college boys” like that sergeant character from the old “Black Sheep Squadron” tv show. After that, things continued to be interesting. The golden-stat player kept getting injured and ended up losing both eyes, one each on two separate tours of duty which were replaced with the marines covering most of the cost. Meanwhile, the two academy grads steadily ascended in rank, never once failing an advancement roll and never getting injured that I recall. They also accumulated a small collection of contacts, rivals and enemies during this phase. The high starting SOC player served his entire career in the motor pool, and the other graduate was a Star Marine. During one particular enlistment later on, there was apparently a disastrous military campaign that took place that was the fault of the commanding officer. The low SOC player decided to turn in his commanding officer and received a bonus to his next promotion roll and advanced again in rank. The noncom player ended up getting injured in that mission and lost his other eye, getting that one replaced and picking up a bit more medical debt. The golden-stat player, having had enough of the dangers of military service by this point, changed his career to being a corporate agent and then ended up almost burning his face off on his first tour of duty for his new employers but gained the Demolitions skill. This added to his accumulated medical debt for more repair work. Even before this, he was being compared to a young Nick Fury. The other two players retired as Brigadiers with pensions and earned a lot of mustering out benefits. They also decided to pay for anti-aging treatments. The formerly low-SOC player finished with a 10 SOC thank to his rank, and the other somehow managed to become a decorated war hero with a SOC in the low teens all while commanding the motor pool. After everyone settled their medical debts, the two Brigadiers joined up again with their old service buddy, who had become a deadly gunfighter based on his skill levels by then, and they ended up in the Trojan Reach together to begin their new adventure. I’m now going to take their rolled characters and convert them over to Hero.

Well, one can simply have parts fail too, and space can throw a lot of nastiness at a ship other than battle damage. Random debris, solar flares, explosive decompression, etc. Being a week away from a starport by jump drive when a sprocket in that jump drive breaks or a vital component in the air processor unexpectedly fails means bad things are about to happen unless the engineer can pull a miracle out of his back pocket. In the Age of Sail that Traveller replicates in space, self-sufficiency is key. A crew should always have a talented engineer and spare parts on hand.

When my friends and I watched it way back when, we couldn’t seem to help ourselves from riffing on the bits it seemed to steal from Star Wars. Not a surprise given who produced it. The Evil General was also given a costume seemingly made for mockery by teenaged film goers like we were.

My daughter caught it last week along with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, around June 1st. The in-laws went and stayed in a hotel when they first manifested symptoms and he tested positive. They just came back home yesterday after their symptoms were gone. He was vaccinated and she wasn’t, but he had the far worse case. She only had very mild symptoms. My daughter had three days with a sore throat, then three-four days with cough, body ache, loss of smell and extreme tiredness, and then it faded back to just a sore throat and tiredness as she recovered. She never had much of a fever, like only one degree. She tested positive last weekend and missed her promotion from 8th grade. She was all better again as of Friday.

The Hostile RPG by Zozer Games follows this sort of universe paradigm, since it emulates gritty, retro-future (zeerust) movies from the 1970s like Outland and Alien. Computers are robust, easy to use and easy to repair to survive whatever gets thrown at them in the unforgiving vastness of space. Solid and well-made keep people alive, so buttons, dials and toggle switches took the place of more fragile touch screens and keyboard commands while gauges and meters replaced multi-purpose LCD screens.

That’s another possibility. I could convert them into points towards a Free Trader vessel Perk.

I’m in the process of setting up a possible campaign in the Trojan Reaches for my gaming group so sat down to try out some conversions from Mongoose 2nd edition to TH. Here are some things I noticed when converting my first rolled up character. Seth Arlen, a six-tour, retired Imperium Navy officer that managed to be promoted all the way to Admiral with only middling physical stats for STR/DEX/END but very high INT/EDU/SOC converted over at about 130 points with barely anything spent on stats and most of that spent on skills and perks. In converting him over to 6th Edition, I gave him some Reputation bonuses due to his high ending SOC (15), his rank of Admiral, and one of his later life events being that he saved his entire ship on a mission. He also had two successful diplomatic missions on prior tours. The amusing thing is that I started him out on his career path as a Navy Engineer after he graduated from a university, so he ended up with really high tech abilities but also picked up pretty good skills in Tactics (naval), Diplomacy, Blades and Leadership. He ended up a fusion of aspects of Kirk and Scotty, which amused me. I think he can stay at 175-points when I am done buying up more of his characteristics and tweaking him, but I honestly expected a retired veteran after 20+ years in uniform to cost more points. My thinking was that a character converted over might get a point bonus for extra tours past their mid-thirties, an XP loan that could be paid back over time so they advance very slowly in play compared to a much younger character. in looking at the stat conversions, I’m wondering if the conversion rate for STR/DEX/END might be better set at 1.75x rather than 1.5x due to how things ended up with Seth. His stats converted over to nines for STR and DEX. Of course this means that some alien races could go into the twenties for some stats if they have good scores in that other system, but that didn’t seem out of line to me. Mongoose Traveller has a skill called Diplomacy that I didn’t see in the conversion chart, so I used Persuasion to convert it. They also have Ship Shares as a Benefit item for mustering out which I guess is new, so I’’m currently converting it as a Money Perk for now. I used Mongoose’s guide path for making a Traveller character because it provided a neat narrative path for pre-game life and established links to other characters during this process, which I thought would help make a more cohesive group. I might end up just using Traveller’s mechanics though.

Pittsburgh could have a local villainous agent group, like Card Shark is for Hudson City. It would be a form of local color, rather than having DEMON and VIPER hog the spotlight. Perhaps a restyled mafia organization?

Don’t forget the abandoned amusement parks for certain supervillain types.

Sorry. I used Wikipedia to look at Pittsburg and didn’t realize it was a California city with that name that came up. That one has a Browns Island nearby.

Browns Island looks like it would make a terrific place for a hidden base from which to stage assaults on the city. VIPER could set up shop there, perhaps starting out with a submerged base underneath the river and then tunneling into the island to create a major complex. Alternatively, there could be one or more bases left over from the Golden or Silver Ages out there. Such a base could be accidentally discovered by a hero or villain and appropriated for their own use. Perhaps it still exists because it has an automated repair system that is maintaining and maybe has even been continuing to expand the facility on its own over the past several decades. An entire secret history could be built up around such a base. Recent readings of “earthquakes” in the area could lead to its discovery. If it’s VIPER doing it, they could stage cover stories to keep people away, something like a superhuman version of a Scooby Doo or Johnny Quest mystery.

I like the idea of using one or more laundromats as a funding mechanism. It gets bonus points for also being a potential draw for organized crime types looking to sell the new business owner protection. I think most heroes would steal from criminals rather than commit forgery. I could see them committing Leverage-style scams though.

Probably would only accept something like Bitcoin.

I can picture some superheroes live-streaming their adventures. Some villains too (like Foxbat).

It sounds like a form of Extra Time to me.

Holy items could also act as bonuses to the Contact roll through a focus. This allows some tailoring for the different deities. A forest god’s most basic holy item might just use a bit of normal carved wood that can replaced as needed by the Druid/priest, but one made from an ancient tree within a faerie mound and then blessed by a dryad might give the biggest bonus. The first symbol might be a mere +1 or +2, whereas the other would give a far higher bonus. Having a symbol makes it more likely you will be noticed by the Contact, but you can still cast without it. You could also have holy items that all members of a pantheon will notice.

In the comics, the Batman can self-fund his relentless war on crime thanks to Bruce Wayne’s inherited billions. Peter Parker sells pictures of his masked vigilante activities to pay for his crimefighting expenses. On the other end of the spectrum from Bruce Wayne, the Punisher will blow away drug dealers and other lowlifes before walking out with one or more satchel bags full of cash, repeating as necessary whenever he needs to buy more equipment. How does your character fund their war on crime?

While I get what you’re saying about angels appearing in all their glory and majesty, that’s not what happened here. Verse 5 is more about Peter expressing his respect for the Lord (who had been teaching nearby for a while) than fear of Him and verse 8 is Peter declaring shame at his own sinfulness after realizing who Jesus was. There’s not really fear involved in this encounter, the one where Peter pulled in so many fish after putting in his nets again after already having an unsuccessful night fishing, and he was amazed that his nets were breaking and he almost sank his boat.

She’s kind of a cross between a Princess of Amber and a Time Lord, so yeah, alien.