CharGen: Medals

S

SSWarlock

Mongoose
One of the things I enjoyed about previous Traveller chargens was the ability to win a medal for valorous (or stupidly lucky) behavior.

I'm considering allowing players to take a penalty to survival rolls in the hopes of receiving such an award. The purpose would be to add a little more background color to characters with a military background while getting some kind of immediate benefit during chargen. Here's what I propose:

DM / Award
-2 / MCUF (Meritorious Conduct Under Fire)...+1 or -1 (player's choice) on next Events roll

-4 / MCG (Medal for Conspicuous Gallantry...Same benefit as MCUF and +1 or -1 (player's choice) on any one Mustering Benefits roll

-6 / SEH (Starburst for Extreme Heroism)...Same benefit as MCG and one additional Mustering Benefits roll
 
Personally I wouldnt give the player an automatic option to make the roll, instead I'd replace the 6 result on the Army & Marine event charts with something like:

You are present when the doo-doo hits the fan.
Roll Gun Combat or Melee 8+ to avoid injury.
Roll Leadership or Tactics* 8+ to earn a medal.
A penalty may be taken on either roll and applied as a bonus to the other.
Scoring 8-11 on the medal roll earns the character an MCUF.
Scoring 12+ on the medal roll earns the character an MCG.
Click to expand...

* more cynical GM's may choose to use Social Standing as a 3rd (or only) option.

I wouldn't add the SEH to the regular roll, but would instead simply add it as an automatic bonus to the 12 result on the Army, Marine and Navy event charts.
 
Solivagus said:
You are present when the doo-doo hits the fan.
Roll Gun Combat or Melee 8+ to avoid injury.
Roll Leadership or Tactics* 8+ to earn a medal.
A penalty may be taken on either roll and applied as a bonus to the other.
Scoring 8-11 on the medal roll earns the character an MCUF.
Scoring 12+ on the medal roll earns the character an MCG.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
I'd give the player a choice in such an event: run away and automatically avoid injury (but get no medal) or act like a hero, risk injury (I'd say roll Gun Combat or Melee 10+; if you fail roll twice on the Injury table and take the worse result), and get a medal regardless of that roll (simply because you took that risk).
 
I had considered using medals, but used a different method. Many of the event results for military careers already give advancement bonus's for a character doing something heroic (as in result 12). I just assigned medals to these results.

I do like the ideas above though that make the chance of a medal not completely randomn, but based on character skill.
 
Sturn said:
I had considered using medals, but used a different method. Many of the event results for military careers already give advancement bonus's for a character doing something heroic (as in result 12). I just assigned medals to these results.

I do like the ideas above though that make the chance of a medal not completely random, but based on character skill.
Click to expand...

I also like the idea of making them dependent on character skill. Thank you all for your posts; I'm going to rethink how my original implementation and revamp it along your ideas.
 
How about this?

Add the following to an Events roll of 12 for Army, Marines, and Navy.

Roll 8+ against any single skill on appropriate Specialist table to earn a medal.

8-10 MCUF
11-12 MCG
13+ SEH


Or would it be better to add the above to an Events roll result of 12 for Navy, a roll result of 6 for Army/Marines, then add the following to the Events roll result of 12 for Army/Marines as well?

Roll 6+ against any single skill on appropriate Specialist table to earn a medal.

6-8 MCUF
9-10 MCG
11+ SEH

I'm thinking the Army and Marines may have more opportunities (lucky them?) for noticeable heroics in combat. Thoughts?
 
Don't forget that most medals given are Unit Citations or Campaign Medals these could easily happen due to any military event without altering the rules. Just decide what sort of medal each event awards and fill in some background for the player. :idea: Simple. :idea:
 
By moving the event roll for Army/Marines to 6 from 12 you already increased the odds of them rolling that event, you have a 8% chance of rolling a 12 and a 42% chance of rolling a 6. I guess it depends on how frequently you want to give your players an opportunity to add some glitter to their uniforms.
 
Doh! I completely forgot to confirm the odds, silly me. They're a bit higher than I wanted. Thanks for the heads-up, sirpedro.

And the Unit Citations idea is a good one, Xoph. Thank you as well for that.
 
I like what your doing so far. I always liked the medals the you could get in CT, and if I remember correctly in CT Mercenary depending on what type of action your character was participating in for a given year they also earned Combat Service Ribbons. These would correspond to the Campaign ribbons that Xoph had mentioned earlier.
 
sirpedro said:
I like what your doing so far. I always liked the medals the you could get in CT, and if I remember correctly in CT Mercenary depending on what type of action your character was participating in for a given year they also earned Combat Service Ribbons. These would correspond to the Campaign ribbons that Xoph had mentioned earlier.
Click to expand...

Yep. Actually, I'm expecting the soon-to-be-available (*gives Mongoose a soulful puppy-dog look and whimper* ) Mercenary and High Guard supplements to include similar material and rules.
 
I can't wait for Mercenary to come out, I don't remember ever being this anxious for a RPG supplement to be released, hopefully it will come out in EARLY June.
 
Yeah...me too. ;)

Oh, and Medals and Wartime Commendations are in there, too. They are a bit different than they have been in the past (more of a gameplay reward rather than a career-boost to keep them fairer to non-combat character careers), but they are still there.

-Bry
 
Mongoose Steele - any chance there will be previews of mercenary prior to the actual release like there was for the Core book?
 
It didn't take much bugging of Matt, just a short email. I got official confirmation that over the next few weeks there will be previews of the upcoming supplements.
 
I have it on reasonably good authority that Matt responds well to a good foot massage :lol:

Perhaps that when emails don't suffice....

LBH
 
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