It's been a while since I posted anything here. Life was alternately busy and full of studies, and failing that I've had a long spell of writer's block. I've also been bouncing from game to game without making much progress, and playing through lots of published solo adventures (DSA, T&T, and Dragon Warriors) which I never record. Lately I couldn't seem to stick with the same game for 4 days running, and felt creatively blocked on top of that.
Poking at an established but stalled campaign and getting nowhere is particularly dispiriting, so I decided it would be best to try something new. I thought that it might be a fun experiment to generate a character completely at random, start them off in a random situation, and see what came of it (minor spoiler: it worked; my notes file was at ~6100 words when I started writing this up).
But what game to choose? Throwing money at a new game that might fail to spark was off the table, so instead I turned to what I had on my shelves already. Any game without (mostly) random character generation was automatically out, which cut down my options considerably. I wanted something that had lifepath-type character generation, so, to make a long story short, I eventually went with classic Traveller.
The first order of business was assigning a homeworld. I did my usual trick of rolling a d8 & d10 on the subsector map. If a blank hex or Red zone is indicated, the homeworld is the one with the highest population out of the nearest surrounding systems. The dice gave me hex 0409, a blank. Regina (pop8) is bigger than both Hefry (4) and Yori (7), so my new PC grew up on the subsector capital.
I usually make a bunch of characters at once and the most interesting one(s) tend to become the stars of the show. For the purposes of this experiment, though, I was going to roll up only one, so they needed to be cogent enough to carry the story. I rolled stats in order (B97789, off to a good start!), and swapped the highest into Intelligence, but after that I let all the dice fall as they may.
Initial UPP is thus: 797B89
For non-Traveller players: The Universal Personality Profile (UPP) is a 6-digit hexadecimal sequence (A=10, B=11, etc.) that gives the PC's attributes in the order below. Attributes are rolled on 2d6, 7 being human average. Humans can potentially have a max of 15 with increases through character creation (or later training). If you want to see the rules, the Facsimile Edition is free on Drivethru (at the time of writing); it's the same ruleset I'm using, minus the brief sketch of the setting & adventures.
My PC's beginning stats are--
Strength 7 (average)
Dexterity 9 (good)
Endurance 7 (average)
Intelligence 11 (exceptional)
Education 8 (can use all the skill tables)
Social Standing 9 (posh)
At this point, a fledgeling PC is 18 years old with a universe of possibilities before them. Or in this case, with a subsector's worth.
I made my character in the order I usually do (homeworld, stats, career, mustering out, life events, gender, ~ethnicity, name) and then analysed the results to put together a biography. I'll run through this term by term to illustrate how it all fit together. But here's a picture of the raw character generation steps, if you can read my handwriting:
To tell the story of my new PC's history, it makes sense to engage in some chargen hysteron proteron and give them an identity first. I rolled a d6 to determine their rough ethnic background: 1 solomani, 2-5 imperial human, 6 vilani. This far away from both Terra and Vland, the only real effect is of this roll is to give me a schema for naming them.
1d6=solomani. Another die roll decided my PC is female. Given those two data points, the first thing that popped into mind for a name was Hortense, after a random minor character in the French novel I was reading. I changed the spelling (though not the pronunciation) to account for 3 millennia of linguistic drift and/or spelling reform. The surname will be created by just stringing some syllables together that sound plausibly like a name that could have originated on Earth but which either doesn't mean anything in particular or is at least not absurd/obscene/embarrassing; I tend to Google these things to be safe!
So, what does young Ms. Ortance Staalazingen want to be when she grows up? A d6 tells me she wants to be a scout. I was hoping for something different, as I frequently play scouts, but then again, I don't usually have trouble finding stuff for them to do. And I committed to playing what I rolled, so off she goes to the IISS recruitment centre.
I rolled 3 Life Events from the table in Zozer's Solo. Two of these made sense to put in her career path. The third one didn't go into her history; instead, it gave me the perfect idea for the first adventure!
Ortance spends several weeks moping round the family home until her parents begin to fear she's not planning to leave. "You'd really ought to go to university, darling. We're certain it would be for the best. It's only, you're so awfully clever. 'Twould be a shame to let that go to waste." Mater and pater know someone on the admissions board, of course, so young Ortance is soon bundled off to the University of Regina. She casts about for direction a bit, taking whatever elective suits her fancy at a particular moment (JoT-1), but also finds a great interest in both sophontology, organic chemistry, and the biological sciences (Medical-1). She also gets up to the usual sorts of uni activities -- drinking, shagging, parties, zero-g lacrosse, and getting her heart broken at least once (Life Event: Fell in love, but your lover (d6=)turned against you).
[Uakye was of course also chosen at random: (d6) 1-3 Regina, 4 Research Station Beta (Yori), 5 random high-tech world (TL A+), 6 random Industrial world; d6=5]
Things went swimmingly at first. She soon learnt her way round the lab and got extensive training on the equipment: electron microscopes, cryo & radiation chambers, field emitters, filtration rigs, particle stasis regulators, and molecular disassemblers, just to name a few (Electronics-1). And when the internship ends, she finds that she has impressed her bosses so much that she is offered a permanent contract.
Everything goes well for the next 2.5 years, despite constant nagging project deadlines and excessive amounts of overtime, until a few weeks before her 25th birthday. Just what occurs she can't remember, nor has she much recollection about the days immediately preceding her waking up on a ventilator in hospital, covered in bruises and lacerations. Worse still, neither the police nor any of her colleagues at work (she'd hardly time for friends) are able to shed any light on the matter.
[Survival rolls are 5+, and she gets a +2DM for her INT, meaning she can only fail if the dice roll a natural 2. A roll of 3 this term barely scrapes by.
Life Event: Suffered amnesia, something bad happened to you but your memories are vague.]
She spends only a few days in hospital (of which one is spent unconscious under the influence of medical slow drug), but the constant panic attacks and night terrors keep her off work for about three months with a phased return thereafter. Luenvire take care of their valued employees, however, and a psychiatrist is appointed to treat her at no expense.
But she's still young and indestructible, so she can survive coming to work hungover. Or still drunk. Or with a makeup case full of powders and/or ampoules to help her through the day. Her performance at work noticeably suffers, and a disciplinary hearing or two convince her she needs to slow down (her re-enlistment roll was 5, the minimum needed for continuation).
She also begins to suspect her psychiatrist is spying on her for her bosses. And that it's somehow related to what happened, and they are purposefully keeping her ignorant. Paranoia gets the better of her, and she uses some of her less savoury new friends to acquire a pistol to keep in her flat for safety; she's not legally allowed to own a gun under Uakye's law level of 8 (rolled gun in mustering out benefits).
She's not going out dancing as often, and she'd stopped going to the company gym when the hot vilani from accounting got transferred back to Regina, so her physical fitness sees a slight decline (ageing: -1 STR). But not spending the bulk of her paycheck on booze is having a salubrious effect on both her liver and her bank account (mustering out benefit Cr10,000; made the ageing saving throw for Endurance).
She's beginning to feel like her life on Uakye is stagnating, though. Maybe it's time to move on (failed re-enlistment roll).
1. +1 INT
2. gun
3. -
4. cr10,000
As I mentioned earlier, the 3rd Life Event roll made for a better campaign start than part of her history, so I'll get to that in scene one of the adventure. This will be one of the few Traveller campaigns I haven't started off just using Travelling Alone!
Here is the final character sheet & character portrait I made with Heromachine:
Ortance Staalazingen
697C89 Age 34 Other 4 terms
JoT-1, Medical-1, Electronics-1, Streetwise-1, Computer-1
cr10,000
auto pistol
next post: space adventure!
Poking at an established but stalled campaign and getting nowhere is particularly dispiriting, so I decided it would be best to try something new. I thought that it might be a fun experiment to generate a character completely at random, start them off in a random situation, and see what came of it (minor spoiler: it worked; my notes file was at ~6100 words when I started writing this up).
But what game to choose? Throwing money at a new game that might fail to spark was off the table, so instead I turned to what I had on my shelves already. Any game without (mostly) random character generation was automatically out, which cut down my options considerably. I wanted something that had lifepath-type character generation, so, to make a long story short, I eventually went with classic Traveller.
(Almost) completely random character creation
To keep things simple (and get playing faster) I decided to stick to just the Traveller Book and the Third Imperium setting -- starting in the Regina subsector as detailed in the back of the book.The first order of business was assigning a homeworld. I did my usual trick of rolling a d8 & d10 on the subsector map. If a blank hex or Red zone is indicated, the homeworld is the one with the highest population out of the nearest surrounding systems. The dice gave me hex 0409, a blank. Regina (pop8) is bigger than both Hefry (4) and Yori (7), so my new PC grew up on the subsector capital.
Regina A788899-A Ri
I usually make a bunch of characters at once and the most interesting one(s) tend to become the stars of the show. For the purposes of this experiment, though, I was going to roll up only one, so they needed to be cogent enough to carry the story. I rolled stats in order (B97789, off to a good start!), and swapped the highest into Intelligence, but after that I let all the dice fall as they may.
Initial UPP is thus: 797B89
For non-Traveller players: The Universal Personality Profile (UPP) is a 6-digit hexadecimal sequence (A=10, B=11, etc.) that gives the PC's attributes in the order below. Attributes are rolled on 2d6, 7 being human average. Humans can potentially have a max of 15 with increases through character creation (or later training). If you want to see the rules, the Facsimile Edition is free on Drivethru (at the time of writing); it's the same ruleset I'm using, minus the brief sketch of the setting & adventures.
My PC's beginning stats are--
Strength 7 (average)
Dexterity 9 (good)
Endurance 7 (average)
Intelligence 11 (exceptional)
Education 8 (can use all the skill tables)
Social Standing 9 (posh)
At this point, a fledgeling PC is 18 years old with a universe of possibilities before them. Or in this case, with a subsector's worth.
I made my character in the order I usually do (homeworld, stats, career, mustering out, life events, gender, ~ethnicity, name) and then analysed the results to put together a biography. I'll run through this term by term to illustrate how it all fit together. But here's a picture of the raw character generation steps, if you can read my handwriting:
1d6=solomani. Another die roll decided my PC is female. Given those two data points, the first thing that popped into mind for a name was Hortense, after a random minor character in the French novel I was reading. I changed the spelling (though not the pronunciation) to account for 3 millennia of linguistic drift and/or spelling reform. The surname will be created by just stringing some syllables together that sound plausibly like a name that could have originated on Earth but which either doesn't mean anything in particular or is at least not absurd/obscene/embarrassing; I tend to Google these things to be safe!
So, what does young Ms. Ortance Staalazingen want to be when she grows up? A d6 tells me she wants to be a scout. I was hoping for something different, as I frequently play scouts, but then again, I don't usually have trouble finding stuff for them to do. And I committed to playing what I rolled, so off she goes to the IISS recruitment centre.
Enlistment
Ortance submits her application to the scout academy, brimming with hope. She has DM+1 for her high INT, but her STR of 7 affords no bonus. She'll be accepted on a total of 7+ : 2d6+1=4... failure! Her dreams of adventure are dashed against the rocks. She'd been sure she'd get in. She hasn't really known hardship up to this point, having been insulated from it her whole life. She's from a well-to-do family on a rather nice planet, after all. Whatever shall she do now?The Draft
She's forced to submit to the draft. 1d6=6, Other. I take this to mean that there was no draft at the time (she turned 18 in 1089, so the 4th Frontier War ended 5 years prior). And none of the service recruiters really wanted her. At least, not the navy. She'd not apply to the army or marines, and the merchant service (probably a desk job at Tukera Lines) sounds a bit too much like being in trade.Terms of Service
Cycling through the Other 'service' is a lot simpler than the others, as there is no Commission or Promotion, and only 1 skill per term after the first. Survival is easy (5+ with a +2 DM for INT 9 or better), and re-enlistment is similarly 5+ (no modifiers). I am using the optional rule where failed survival results in an injury instead of death. I will only be mentioning the survival & re-enlistment rolls that were interesting enough to tease bits of narrative out of. Ditto for the mustering out benefits.I rolled 3 Life Events from the table in Zozer's Solo. Two of these made sense to put in her career path. The third one didn't go into her history; instead, it gave me the perfect idea for the first adventure!
Term 1
'Other' characters frequently end up looking like career criminals, but her two rolled skills were Jack of all Trades and Medical. I could have gone the mob doctor route, but the term 2 & 4 skills suggested a different path.Ortance spends several weeks moping round the family home until her parents begin to fear she's not planning to leave. "You'd really ought to go to university, darling. We're certain it would be for the best. It's only, you're so awfully clever. 'Twould be a shame to let that go to waste." Mater and pater know someone on the admissions board, of course, so young Ortance is soon bundled off to the University of Regina. She casts about for direction a bit, taking whatever elective suits her fancy at a particular moment (JoT-1), but also finds a great interest in both sophontology, organic chemistry, and the biological sciences (Medical-1). She also gets up to the usual sorts of uni activities -- drinking, shagging, parties, zero-g lacrosse, and getting her heart broken at least once (Life Event: Fell in love, but your lover (d6=)turned against you).
Term 2
Poor spurned and humiliated Ortance wishes she could just fly off into the stars. And as fate would have it, an opportunity to do just that arises. Ortance secures a prestigious internship as a lab assistant with Luenvire BioMed LIC, a bio-technology corporation based out of Rhylanor. She doesn't look back as the Type-M subsidised liner (j-3) races out to Regina's 100d limit to begin the 3 week journey to Uakye (B439598–D Ni), one of the highest tech worlds in the Subsector.[Uakye was of course also chosen at random: (d6) 1-3 Regina, 4 Research Station Beta (Yori), 5 random high-tech world (TL A+), 6 random Industrial world; d6=5]
Things went swimmingly at first. She soon learnt her way round the lab and got extensive training on the equipment: electron microscopes, cryo & radiation chambers, field emitters, filtration rigs, particle stasis regulators, and molecular disassemblers, just to name a few (Electronics-1). And when the internship ends, she finds that she has impressed her bosses so much that she is offered a permanent contract.
Everything goes well for the next 2.5 years, despite constant nagging project deadlines and excessive amounts of overtime, until a few weeks before her 25th birthday. Just what occurs she can't remember, nor has she much recollection about the days immediately preceding her waking up on a ventilator in hospital, covered in bruises and lacerations. Worse still, neither the police nor any of her colleagues at work (she'd hardly time for friends) are able to shed any light on the matter.
[Survival rolls are 5+, and she gets a +2DM for her INT, meaning she can only fail if the dice roll a natural 2. A roll of 3 this term barely scrapes by.
Life Event: Suffered amnesia, something bad happened to you but your memories are vague.]
She spends only a few days in hospital (of which one is spent unconscious under the influence of medical slow drug), but the constant panic attacks and night terrors keep her off work for about three months with a phased return thereafter. Luenvire take care of their valued employees, however, and a psychiatrist is appointed to treat her at no expense.
Term 3
Not even a string of hypno-therapy sessions (non-psionic, of course!) are able to reveal the events resulting in her hospitalisation. Her psychiatrist tells her to mind her stress levels and not to waste her entire youth slaving away in the lab, and Ortance takes the advice to heart. But she soon finds that the more interesting clubs on Uakye are in the seedier parts of the city (Streetwise-1), and she starts having to lie to her analyst about how she's spending her weekends. And evenings.But she's still young and indestructible, so she can survive coming to work hungover. Or still drunk. Or with a makeup case full of powders and/or ampoules to help her through the day. Her performance at work noticeably suffers, and a disciplinary hearing or two convince her she needs to slow down (her re-enlistment roll was 5, the minimum needed for continuation).
She also begins to suspect her psychiatrist is spying on her for her bosses. And that it's somehow related to what happened, and they are purposefully keeping her ignorant. Paranoia gets the better of her, and she uses some of her less savoury new friends to acquire a pistol to keep in her flat for safety; she's not legally allowed to own a gun under Uakye's law level of 8 (rolled gun in mustering out benefits).
Term 4
The paranoia starts getting to her, so she decides to clean up her act, once again throwing herself into her work. She learns how to programme and run simulations (computer-1) and how to reset passcodes when her boss forgets his kid's birthdate. Again.She's not going out dancing as often, and she'd stopped going to the company gym when the hot vilani from accounting got transferred back to Regina, so her physical fitness sees a slight decline (ageing: -1 STR). But not spending the bulk of her paycheck on booze is having a salubrious effect on both her liver and her bank account (mustering out benefit Cr10,000; made the ageing saving throw for Endurance).
She's beginning to feel like her life on Uakye is stagnating, though. Maybe it's time to move on (failed re-enlistment roll).
Mustering Out
The Other service has the worst benefits table of any of the standard careers (a roll of six nets you nothing!) and the most variable cash table. I almost never take more than one roll for cash except in very special circumstances (like when I rolled up a 5-term navy ensign with Social 12). Besides, if you roll multiple blade or gun benefits, you can convert some to skill levels. For this PC I went with 1 cash & 3 benefit rolls and got the following:1. +1 INT
2. gun
3. -
4. cr10,000
As I mentioned earlier, the 3rd Life Event roll made for a better campaign start than part of her history, so I'll get to that in scene one of the adventure. This will be one of the few Traveller campaigns I haven't started off just using Travelling Alone!
Here is the final character sheet & character portrait I made with Heromachine:
697C89 Age 34 Other 4 terms
JoT-1, Medical-1, Electronics-1, Streetwise-1, Computer-1
cr10,000
auto pistol
next post: space adventure!
Welcome back! Looking forward to seeing how this Traveller campaign develops.
ReplyDeleteOh boy! He's back with another campaign and it's a Traveller one to boot! This is going to be great!
ReplyDelete