A new game if you're interested...

[MasterGwydion]

Hmm, I will have to profess that all I know about it comes from the movie. Maybe we should avoid the cultural ties to the names at first and instead give titles representing the role that can be flavored for each game. For my current list, Capo is the standout. I think a territorial manager fits between a lieutenant who is task-specific and the underboss but I am asking you because I am awful at naming -- maybe Turf Owner?

I would have used a culturally neutral term, but I couldn't think of one. lol

 

[mavikfelna]

For Thief rank 0, Baby Face, Rank 2 Burglar, rank 3 2nd Storyman.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Thieves aren't really part of groups though. Unless We are thinking more along the lines of Thieves' Guilds, but that is a bit to fantasy for me. Hard to have titles without being part of a group.

 

[mavikfelna]

Thieves aren't really part of groups though. Unless We are thinking more along the lines of Thieves' Guilds, but that is a bit to fantasy for me. Hard to have titles without being part of a group.

But thieves do have communities and brotherhoods. And sometimes groups. The good ones develop associations with diverse groups and will gain reputations as they increase in skill and they will probably gain nicknames or codenames from them that could be reflected by the titles as well.

 

[mavikfelna]

Thief Rank 4, Rogue

 

[MasterGwydion]

But thieves do have communities and brotherhoods. And sometimes groups. The good ones develop associations with diverse groups and will gain reputations as they increase in skill and they will probably gain nicknames or codenames from them that could be reflected by the titles as well.

No honor among thieves. Any thief can rat out another thief they know to get a lesser sentence. Unless they were a family of thieves? Or an asset retrieval business? They may have corporate titles.

 

[Condottiere]

Organized crime.

With similar assumptions, you could make Made Man a commission.

Associates remain non commissioned.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Organized crime.

With similar assumptions, you could make Made Man a commission.

Associates remain non commissioned.

If you're not a Made Man, you're not family.

A not Made Man can be a "Friend of Mine"

A Made Man is a "Friend of Our's".

 

[Condottiere]

If you're going to vanillainize, it could be an Insider.

 

[pholus96]

Okay, I'm going to summarize this at OP. Let me know if these sound right, but at least they are filled in!

 

[MasterGwydion]

So one thing that disappoints me in the Core Rulebook is the absence of ranks for many of the professions. Yes, many do not have a formal rank structure but some kind of terminology that implies increasing ability or an increasing sphere of influence would be pretty useful to my players having a picture of their growth over time and I think it's a wasted opportunity.

As an example, the Scout career has two ranks "Scout" and "Senior Scout" but I can look at a lot of older books (oh you know, like Classic Traveller's book 6 for scouts) and I see a lot of ranks that would imply character growth and a story reason to make the next advancement roll!

So I started by taking every career in the core rulebook that had one of those sad little dashes for ranks and looked through old books for versions of the career that gave every rank a title. And then I played with ChatGPT and got a long way. But I realized I'd rather not have AI generated rank titles and who else would be better to ask than the rest of you.

So here is a game if you're up to it. I will present a core rulebook career and show it's rank structure in a table. I will then make a suggestion or two I have for ranks. You can reply by suggesting a title for one of the ranks in return either an alternate for mine or filling in one of the blanks.

I know, it's silly, but I think we'd be happy with the product. So here goes. The first career is "Rogue-Enforcer" The core rulebook gives zero ranks. I have two ideas to start with and I want to see if anyone wants to help fill out some of the others. Just reply with a rank number and alternate name, for example "Rank 6 - Boss" because, well, mob bosses pretty much run their local show.

Here is my table with two suggestions! Let's see if we can fill it in!

Rogue-Thief Rank	Rank Name in Core Rulebook	Suggested Alternate Rank Name	Skills from Rulebook
0	--	Baby Face
1	--	Pickpocket	Stealth 1
2	--	Burglar
3	--	2nd Story Worker	Streetwise 1
4	--	Rogue
5	--	Thief	Recon 1
6	--	Master Thief

Rogue-Enforcer Rank	Rank Name in Core Rulebook	Suggested Alternate Rank Name	Skills from Rulebook
0	--	Pledge
1	--	Associate	Persuade 1
2	--	Crew Runner
3	--	Lieutenant	Gun Combat 1 or Melee 1
4	--	Captain
5	--	Underboss	Streetwise 1
6	--	Boss

I would recommend switching Persuade and Streetwise on the Enforcer.

 

[pholus96]

I would recommend switching Persuade and Streetwise on the Enforcer.

I'm actually thinking that changing the actual RAW is beyond what I want to do. At first, I just think this exercise should be to fill in missing rank titles so a character can feel a progression...