Pandoran Skills

[rust]

Working on the skill list for my Pandora setting, I am very much tempted
not only to introduce a couple of setting specific skills, but also to delete
several of the skills from the core rules in order to replace them with the
new setting specific skills.

Two skills that will definitely have to go are Battle Dress (no such thing in
my setting) and Jack of All Trades (much too broad and therefore implau-
sible for my taste).

The other candidates are Astrogation, for the reasons already discussed in
another thread (no real relevance for the game, better done by a compu-
ter), Communications and Computer.

The use of communications devices and computers is such an everyday
routine activity in my setting that even children can handle it easily, and
for the real complex tasks an Engineering skill or Science (Informatics)
skill seems to make more sense.

As for new skills, the list will be a bit longer, from Athletics (Swim) through
Biosciences (Marine Biology) and Geosciences (Oceanography) to Engi-
neering (Marine Technology), Hardsuit Diving and Trade (Aquafarming).

 

[AndrewW]

The use of communications devices and computers is such an everyday
routine activity in my setting that even children can handle it easily, and
for the real complex tasks an Engineering skill or Science (Informatics)
skill seems to make more sense.

True children can do it but for some tasks such as breaking through computer security and such the skill could still be useful.

 

[BP]

Athletics (Ski).

Maybe parasail as well...

Yep - JoT makes no sense, as it is acquired in a career.. I never used it in CT. To me, this is what the characteristics are for - esp. DEX, INT and EDU relate to the concept.

 

[rust]

True children can do it but for some tasks such as breaking through computer security and such the skill could still be useful.

Indeed, and I would use Communications and Computer for any setting
where this is likely to become a part of the plot, for example a campaign
with agents or military intelligence officers as the usual characters, but
my Pandoran colonists will hardly need the ability to jam enemy commu-
nications or to hack security systems - what they need is better covered
by some Engineering or Science skill, I think.

 

[rust]

Athletics (Ski).

Maybe parasail as well...

Well, until now it seems that none of the careers I intend to use for the
Pandora setting has these skills ...

 

[BP]

... my Pandoran colonists will hardly need the ability to jam enemy communications or to hack security systems...none of the careers I intend to use for the Pandora setting has these skills ...

Ah, well, no 'numbered' spies shooting across the water ways on recreational gear! :lol:

 

[rust]

Ah, well, no 'numbered' spies shooting across the water ways on recreational gear! :lol:

I am afraid even the best Pandoran spy will not get a better number
than 00 ...

 

[rinku]

Keep in mind that even if a skill has no use on Pandora, characters might well have learned it anyway in their previous life. Unless a skill has *no* relevance to the broader setting as a whole, or it's one you're altering for some reason, it should be left in place.

Plus... well you just don't know how your players are going to surprise you. You wouldn't think skiiing skills would be relevant to a desert environment, yet Dubai has an indoor ski slope...

 

[rust]

Keep in mind that even if a skill has no use on Pandora, characters might well have learned it anyway in their previous life.

There is my problem.

A career allows only a limited number of skills, the maximum is 18 (6 Ser-
vice Skills, 6 Advanced Education Skills and 6 Specialty Skills).

For the Pandora setting this means that these 18 skills should be the ones
a character from that career is most likely to need on Pandora. And these
most useful skills include some new skills which are not a part of the skill
sets of the existing careers, so some of the current career skills have to
be replaced with more urgently needed new skills.

It seems to me that Communications and Computer are the two skills I
can delete with the least harm, because their routine use does not really
require a skill, and their use in special situations can be replaced by the
use of other skills, for example Engineering.

However, I started this thread because I am not really sure how to han-
dle this ...

 

[Dave Chase]

I have some possible suggestions

One; Since the colonist are 'hand selected' you can pick and choose what skill they have. (Class AA colonist per the world type)

Two; Since the number of colonist that applied to the Pandora colony are limited the selection process might have to let in a few non Class AA colonists. Some of these colonist might have 1 or 2 of the really needed skills for Pandora but most of the rest of their experience does not apply directly. So they might be good in the lab but suck at water things.
They might be good aqua farmers but have no other knowledge about anything else.

So, I would concur with rinku,
Leave the general skill set along unless it fits into your entire universe of needs or deletes.

Just pick out what characters with what skills are the most likely to be chosen as colonists and that they will get all the benefits.
Those with most all the needed skills but have some other non-related skills will get 80% of the benefits of being a colonist
Those with only 1 or 2 needed skills will get 50% of the benefits.
The rest only get 30% of the benefits.

Or since you are doing shares of planet ownership. Those who meet all the requirements of Class AA colonist get 5 extra shares
Those who are Class A get 4 extra shares
Those who are Class B get 3 extra shares
Those who are Class C get 2 extra shares
etc
Similar to the Class types found under most LLC (Limited Liability Corporations)

Dave Chase

 

[rinku]

Another point, rust, is that healthy people have interests outside of their jobs, even if their job is a 24/7 colonist. Hobbies are important for mental health.

Art, history, and science skills not "needed" on Pandora would not logically bar an applicant from selection who had good skills that were required. i.e.

Doctor Fischmann 777CC7
Medic-4, Physical Science (Chemistry) 2, Life Science (Biology) 2, Art (Sculpting) 2, Social Science (History) 1, Gambling 1

Would you *really* not recruit this guy just because he has 4 skill levels you're not interested in?

 

[locarno24]

And thus were Pandora's underground, high-stakes wist rings born...

 

[rust]

Another point, rust, is that healthy people have interests outside of their jobs, even if their job is a 24/7 colonist. Hobbies are important for mental health.

I agree, but this does not really help to solve the problem.

To give an example, take a look at the Service Skills of the Scholar
career:

Communications
Computer
Diplomat
Medicine
Investigate
Science (any)

On Pandora most science is done with remotely controlled drones, both
because this is less dangerous and expensive than deep sea diving and
because of the distances involved, where it is often easier to send a dro-
ne than to travel there.

Therefore Remote Control would be a necessary skill for any scientist
on Pandora - a lot more useful than Communications - and without it he
just cannot do his job properly.

And if I replace Communications with a more useful skill in all of the ca-
reers, I can leave the "hobby skills" like Art (any) for the Scholar career
untouched.

 

[Lord High Munchkin]

I think Communications was likely inspired by a Uhuru type character concept.

As I view it, a scientist would very rarely need to fill in on a starship in that roll, so it's receipt in character generation is unlikely for them.

 

[rinku]

Oh, I see where you're coming from now. Yeah, changing the various skill tables to reflect the professional skills you're recruiting for makes perfect sense. You can also just increase the options by making more skill clusters.

Remote Operations should probably be a normal Scholar skill anyway. Even today it's a normal skill for anyone working in space sciences, medicine, oceanography, meterology, archeology and a bunch of other disciplines. Swap it for Computer in Advanced Education, maybe. (When Computer is a Service Skill it really ceases to be "advanced").

 

[Captain Jonah]

Every MonT career has three subsets which could be General, Engineer and Research. Your general run of the mill colony skills go with the colonist, tech skills go with the Engineers and science skills go with Researchers.

You have 6 blocks of 6 skills to play with, personal development for stats and a few of the more hobby skills. Service skills for the stuff every colonist needs like swim. Advanced education skills for the more high brow science stuff. Then three blocks for Colonist, Engineer and Research.

COLONIST.

Personal Development
1
2
3
4
5
6 Gambler

Service Skills
1 Athletics (swim)
2 Survival (water world)
3 Remote Operations
4 Seafarer
5
6

Advanced Education
1 Science (space or social)
2 Medic
3
4
5
6

General Colonist
1 Trade (Aquafarm)
2 Drive (Watercraft)
3
4
5
6

Engineer
1 Engineer (Marine Tech)
2 Exosuit
3
4
5
6 Mechanic

Research
1 Science (Bioscience or lifesciene)
2 Computer
3 Sensors
4 Remote Operations
5 Inestigate
6 Science (Geo or physical science)

Ranks.
Colonist
1 Admin
2
3 ???
4
5 ???
6

Engineer
1 ??
2
3 Admin
4
5 ??
6

Research
1 Admin
2
3 Investigate
4
5 ???
6

Add the rest to suit.


Skills like computer can be tucked into Research where they would be used to set up research programs and the like.
Admin skill would be either with the general Colonist or a rank gained skill for all three types, managers and paperwork.
Keep but rename Battledress skill as a general skill for the use of servo enhanced exoskeletons, cargo lifters and rigid hostile enviroment suits. Maybe call it ExoSuit instead.

Add or change skills in the 6 blocks and I'll edit here.

 

[rust]

Thank you very much, Captain Jonah.

I already have a Colonist career ready - in fact, several of them. How-
ever, the problem are the characters who come from all the other ca-
reers. When they arrive on Pandora, they have not yet served a term
as a Colonist, so they cannot have the specific skills of that career.

Imagine that Belter/Miner (a Beltstrike career) who is fed up with outer
space after a nasty accident there, and thinks that his skills and his mo-
ney would allow him to start a new and better life as a Seafloor Miner on
Pandora - and he would indeed be most welcome there.

Unfortunately one of the Service Skills of the Belter career is Astrogation
(another one is Communications ...). The chance that the character will
ever find a meaningful use for that Astrogation skill on Pandora is close
to zero - as has been discussed in the other thread, even a spacer does
not necessarily need that skill. But Sensors, also a very plausible skill for
a Belter, would be a truly good skill to have on Pandora, too ...

This is what I am looking for (and probably failed to explain well), Tra-
veller skills that are of so limited general use, or can so easily be inclu-
ded in other skills, that it would not hurt the game to delete them and
replace them with something more setting specific and more immedia-
tely useful for a character in this setting.

And there I am looking at Astrogation, Communications and Computer
- but I am of course not yet sure whether to eliminate them really would
not hurt the game, which is why I started this thread to see what others
think about the idea.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Well if people arrive at the colony with previous careers they are bound to have skills that are of no use to them as colonists. Having an ex belter join the colony with astorgation and comms along with mechanic, prospector, pilot and sensor is great.

Having someone to reprogram those orbital comms satelites may come in handy even if everyone on the colony can use the radios and satelite comms without training. How about taking the launch out of orbit, working out the best orbital pattern variables for the satelites. Not stuff you do often but if you need them its handy to give old bob a call and get him back from the seafloor mine to fix it.

From the way you were talking it sounded to me like you were just using the basic career citizen subcareer colonist when you were talking about only having 18 skill picks to change and use. A full career gives 36 hence my last post.

With your fresh 18 year old colonists they will only have colony skills, NPCs or players with previous careers will have skills that may be of no use to the colony as it stands. How about in 10 years time, or for special cases. Helga may be a colony aquafarmer now and has a few careers as colonist behind her but if you ever need to argue some point of law or draw up an agreement within or outside the colony her levels of advocate from her previous life suddenly becomes usefull.

Its like anything. You hire people for the skills you want and get the rest of them as a package. As an IT guy I fix PCs and networks, fix the phones, repair the photocopier, fix the broken kettle and deal with the water leak in the ladies because the whole office of girls went girly and refused to go in when they found an inch of water on the floor. I never get hired as a first aider/plumber/handy man/health and saftey rep/shoulder to cry on. I just end up doing them because I can. Same with your colonists, as a day to day job they may not use some of the skills they have but it doesn't mean they never will.

Crash the colony base main computer and find the backups are corupt and need to be reloaded and fixed by hand, suddenly all those computer 0 skills become useless and that poor bloke in the biology lab gets pulled out yet again to fix it with his otherwise useless computer skill.

The only skill that is truly pointless is Astrogation but thats the other thread

 

[Vile]

I agree, in a science fiction game "computer" should no more be a skill than "gwiddling fork".

"See this? It's a finger, and as you can see, it's designed for pressing keys, not holding a pencil."

 

[rust]

From the way you were talking it sounded to me like you were just using the basic career citizen subcareer colonist when you were talking about only having 18 skill picks to change and use. A full career gives 36 hence my last post.

Sorry for that, I forgot to mention a couple of informations.

The most common careers my future colonists will come from are those
from Spica Publishing's Career Books, which expand on the Citizen ca-
reer, for example with the Worker career.
And with the 18 skills I did mean the specializations, since in most of the
careers I intend to use the characters will not change specializations ea-
sily - for example, a doctor is not very likely to work as anything else.

Anyhow, I think I will now keep the Computer skill, for example as the
skill to write new programs for the colony's drones and so on, but delete
Astrogation and Communications, making communications a part of the
Sensors skill, since these skills use the same technology (radio, sonar,
etc.) anyway, and an active sensor system always includes the technolo-
gy to transmit and receive signals.