Non Third Imperium Setting

[Sleepy Fremen]

So I've been running a game in a setting other than Third Imperium. Mostly it hasn't been a problem. However when generating characters for a setting where technology isn't higher than TL 10, you still get things like battledress during character generation. Plus you get Third Imperium artifacts like TAS membership in the character generation tables. Generally, I just asked my players to roll again.
Does anyone have any tips for running non Third Imperium games?

 

[Gypsy Knights Games]

Well, if you're looking for a non-Imperium setting, I would recommend our Clement Sector. Even if you decide to not use our setting, you may find some of the alternatives we present to be useful in your non-Imperial game.

 

[Wil Mireu]

I guess the solution (which you pretty much suggested yourself) is to just replace the things that aren't in the setting with their closest equivalents. Instead of Battle Dress you get some more standard armour, instead of TAS memberships use something along those lines... it shouldn't be too much effort to find them in the tables and replace them.

Meanwhile, if we're suggesting non-OTU settings, Spica Publishing's Outer Veil is a really good, detailed non-Imperium setting - http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/96124/Outer-Veil

 

[F33D]

Does anyone have any tips for running non Third Imperium games?

I ditch SS as a characteristic. Change stuff like Battle dress for whatever the best armour is in your game. TAS membership can be a lesser cash award or whatever fits your game. I have used my own setting for a very long time...

 

[GypsyComet]

"Battledress" can also be more broadly interpreted as "Augmentation/Exo-Skeleton". The same skill can apply to things like the Aliens power lifter, augmented bomb squad suits, zero-G frames, and other things that may not be "battle" dress. We're only a few power generation and storage issues away from some of those *now*, given that human feedback research (for controlling such things) has been going on since the 1960s, and huge bounds in neural control have been made in the last five years. The main advantage TL12+ would bring is gradual miniaturization of power and servos, making Battledress small enough to go where people go. TNE assumed TL12 and had big bulky suits.

What may well happen is that you remove Battledress from most of its occurrences under "Marines", leaving one entry for exotic warfare types. Militaries do tend to lead research like this, though, so if anyone will have the skill at TL11, it will be the military.

 

[Sleepy Fremen]

Well, if you're looking for a non-Imperium setting, I would recommend our Clement Sector. Even if you decide to not use our setting, you may find some of the alternatives we present to be useful in your non-Imperial game.

I guess the solution (which you pretty much suggested yourself) is to just replace the things that aren't in the setting with their closest equivalents. Instead of Battle Dress you get some more standard armour, instead of TAS memberships use something along those lines... it shouldn't be too much effort to find them in the tables and replace them.

Meanwhile, if we're suggesting non-OTU settings, Spica Publishing's Outer Veil is a really good, detailed non-Imperium setting - http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/96124/Outer-Veil

They both look interesting, thanks for the suggestions. I'll probably pick them up in the near future.

Does anyone have any tips for running non Third Imperium games?

I ditch SS as a characteristic. Change stuff like Battle dress for whatever the best armour is in your game. TAS membership can be a lesser cash award or whatever fits your game. I have used my own setting for a very long time...

So far I've kept Social Standing and just sort of thought of it as how cultural sophisticated or politic the character is. Has the lack of a Social Standing characteristic affected your games much?

"Battledress" can also be more broadly interpreted as "Augmentation/Exo-Skeleton". The same skill can apply to things like the Aliens power lifter, augmented bomb squad suits, zero-G frames, and other things that may not be "battle" dress. We're only a few power generation and storage issues away from some of those *now*, given that human feedback research (for controlling such things) has been going on since the 1960s, and huge bounds in neural control have been made in the last five years. The main advantage TL12+ would bring is gradual miniaturization of power and servos, making Battledress small enough to go where people go. TNE assumed TL12 and had big bulky suits.

What may well happen is that you remove Battledress from most of its occurrences under "Marines", leaving one entry for exotic warfare types. Militaries do tend to lead research like this, though, so if anyone will have the skill at TL11, it will be the military.

So you're sorting of thinking like would be to use the battledress skill for something like Heavy Gear or those mechs from Avatar? Or like conventional exoskeleton's currently in development for lifting. Seems like a good idea, the only player with a battledress skill is playing a marine anyway.

 

[F33D]

Has the lack of a Social Standing characteristic affected your games much?

Not at all. I handle a PC's "social status" the same way as I have in every other RPG I've run in the last 30 years. By back story, current in game situations and role playing.

 

[rust]

I handle a PC's "social status" the same way as I have in every other RPG I've run in the last 30 years. By back story, current in game situations and role playing.

The same here. A person's "social status" depends too much on the
specific circumstances to use a static value for it, especially when
the person in question leaves his or her usual social environment
and operates in considerably different cultures and social environ-
ments. As a real world example, the famous entomologist may ha-
ve a high social status at the university where he is a professor, but
a much lesser status among businesspeople in another country, and
with a group of tribesmen in the Amazonas jungle all his scientific
achievements and his tenure mean nothing, there his social skills
(and perhaps the quality and value of his equipment) are far more
likely to decide about his status.

 

[Sleepy Fremen]

Has the lack of a Social Standing characteristic affected your games much?

Not at all. I handle a PC's "social status" the same way as I have in every other RPG I've run in the last 30 years. By back story, current in game situations and role playing.

I handle a PC's "social status" the same way as I have in every other RPG I've run in the last 30 years. By back story, current in game situations and role playing.

The same here. A person's "social status" depends too much on the
specific circumstances to use a static value for it, especially when
the person in question leaves his or her usual social environment
and operates in considerably different cultures and social environ-
ments. As a real world example, the famous entomologist may ha-
ve a high social status at the university where he is a professor, but
a much lesser status among businesspeople in another country, and
with a group of tribesmen in the Amazonas jungle all his scientific
achievements and his tenure mean nothing, there his social skills
(and perhaps the quality and value of his equipment) are far more
likely to decide about his status.

What about using Social Status as a score representing social skills? Much like Charisma in DnD. That makes sense to me in terms of determining promotion for military careers and such.

 

[rust]

What about using Social Status as a score representing social skills?

While this would be possible, I would consider it questionable,
for two reasons. First, the rules have no connection between
social status and social skills, a person with a high social sta-
tus can be totally incompetent when it comes to social skill le-
vels. Second, the best way to represent social skills would in
my view be to use the social skills, not an unnecessary addi-
tional characteristic.

 

[F33D]

What about using Social Status as a score representing social skills? Much like Charisma in DnD. That makes sense to me in terms of determining promotion for military careers and such.

That doesn't even work on Earth outside ones usual "society". It would be even less when talking about different planets. It also can be totally irrelevant for military advancement. The model for the 3I is taken from Imperial age Britain.

I was raised by my father the way he was raised (both of his parents were European nobility). I found that useless when doing business in Japan. I had to learn a different set of social mores...

Marc created the stat because he was to set his game in a rigid feudalistic society.

 

[Sleepy Fremen]

What about using Social Status as a score representing social skills?

While this would be possible, I would consider it questionable,
for two reasons. First, the rules have no connection between
social status and social skills, a person with a high social sta-
tus can be totally incompetent when it comes to social skill le-
vels. Second, the best way to represent social skills would in
my view be to use the social skills, not an unnecessary addi-
tional characteristic.

What about using Social Status as a score representing social skills? Much like Charisma in DnD. That makes sense to me in terms of determining promotion for military careers and such.

That doesn't even work on Earth outside ones usual "society". It would be even less when talking about different planets. It also can be totally irrelevant for military advancement. The model for the 3I is taken from Imperial age Britain.

I was raised by my father the way he was raised (both of his parents were European nobility). I found that useless when doing business in Japan. I had to learn a different set of social mores...

Marc created the stat because he was to set his game in a rigid feudalistic society.

Definitely valid points. So what attribute do you typically replace social standing in regards to character generation? For example gaining commission requires a social roll, do you replace that with an intelligence or education roll instead?

 

[Wil Mireu]

Definitely valid points. So what attribute do you typically replace social standing in regards to character generation? For example gaining commission requires a social roll, do you replace that with an intelligence or education roll instead?

I would agree with F33D - just ditch it as a stat, it's too setting-specific. Playing out Social standing can be covered by other means (usually roleplaying), otherwise just use common sense (maybe an appropriate social skill roll with a DM based on their rank?).

 

[F33D]

Definitely valid points. So what attribute do you typically replace social standing in regards to character generation? For example gaining commission requires a social roll, do you replace that with an intelligence or education roll instead?

I have a stat called Wil (willpower) as the 6th attribute. Replacing for promotion DM in the "Navy" I use EDU.

 

[rust]

So what attribute do you typically replace social standing in regards to character generation?

It depends very much on the specific setting, but most often
it is APP (= Appearance), a combination of "looks", voice and
thelike, somewhat similar to Charisma as it is used in other
games. The way I use it, it gives modifiers for social interac-
tions and is especially important for most types of entertai-
ners. For promotions in the military (and mostly elsewhere,
too) I use the average level of the relevant skills.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

While not appropriate to all non-3I settings, I think there is still something to be said for a mixture of poise, accent, education, background etc affecting how successful a character is with certain skills. Sometimes this is just reflected in a greater level of confidence. Very few societies, even today, are such meritocracies that all we judge people on are their technical skills or status within a profession.

However, I tend to think that social standing should be seen as much more mutable characteristic than the others, attitudes and breeding respected in one society may be held in contempt in another. The "Dilettante" book had some interesting ideas in how social status might change the further someone is away from their home world, though obviously focussed on characters of very high status.

Using some kind of appearance stat seems to bring with it many of the problems of social status, i.e. beauty is largely a cultural assessment, and may only have a good, or bad, effect on skills in a very limited range of places, and perhaps only with reference to the opposite sex. There is a lot more to being an attractive, charismatic or respected individual than just looking pretty.

Egil

 

[rust]

Using some kind of appearance stat seems to bring with it many of the problems of social status, i.e. beauty is largely a cultural assessment, and may only have a good, or bad, effect on skills in a very limited range of places, and perhaps only with reference to the opposite sex. There is a lot more to being an attractive, charismatic or respected individual than just looking pretty.

What I was thinking of is less physical beauty and more general appearance.
An important element of it would be what Victor Lustig, the guy who sold the
Eiffel Tower, included in his ten commandments for impostors: "Never be un-
tidy". Other elements would be movement and body language, or voice. Over-
all I mean the sum of all the general elements which make us like and trust
a person because of the first impression we get of him or her.

 

[Egil Skallagrimsson]

Using some kind of appearance stat seems to bring with it many of the problems of social status, i.e. beauty is largely a cultural assessment, and may only have a good, or bad, effect on skills in a very limited range of places, and perhaps only with reference to the opposite sex. There is a lot more to being an attractive, charismatic or respected individual than just looking pretty.

What I was thinking of is less physical beauty and more general appearance.
An important element of it would be what Victor Lustig, the guy who sold the
Eiffel Tower, included in his ten commandments for impostors: "Never be un-
tidy". Other elements would be movement and body language, or voice. Over-
all I mean the sum of all the general elements which make us like and trust
a person because of the first impression we get of him or her.

Yeah, always a tricky one to pin down, "clothes maketh the man", but also grooming? Is good grooming a socially acquired skill? Convincing body language and voice can result being born into, and educated, in a higher class, but can also learnt.

Just throwing out a few ideas, there aren't really any clear cut answers.

Egil

 

[Wil Mireu]

Yeah, always a tricky one to pin down, "clothes maketh the man", but also grooming? Is good grooming a socially acquired skill? Convincing body language and voice can result being born into, and educated, in a higher class, but can also learnt.

Just throwing out a few ideas, there aren't really any clear cut answers.

Egil

You could even just make that an "Etiquette" skill or something, that you could roll against.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Definitely valid points. So what attribute do you typically replace social standing in regards to character generation? For example gaining commission requires a social roll, do you replace that with an intelligence or education roll instead?

The Judge Dredd supplement uses Influence as an additional characteristic. In the context of that game it is used to scare the heck out of perps and get them to do things. It is used to represent strength of personality.

In my conversion of D20SRD to Traveller, I have used it as an outright substitute for D20 Charisma. In social interaction situations, I allow for use of one or the other (but not both) in situations when either might work.

For Character Generation, I just choose Soc or Inf as appropriate to the text.