Robot Crew Oversight

Endie said:
Speaking as someone dealing with the effects of a player with broker 4 plus an augment in the party, I can see very clearly in practice why the designers decided not to include an INT (or EDU, which seems more appropriate) modifier. It's already hard for the party not to get rich quickly at that level.
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I would view that as a roleplaying opportunity. As they say, the nail that sticks up is struck down. If someone is too good at making money, people that feel they deserve it more will come calling for a slice of the pie.

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Terry Mixon said:
I would view that as a roleplaying opportunity. As they say, the nail that sticks up is struck down. If someone is too good at making money, people that feel they deserve it more will come calling for a slice of the pie.
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As a very rare thing, that's ok to do once as an adventure hook, sure. But in general, as Andy Slack said: if the player has invested in building up an ability that high then she's saying that she wants her character to be good at it. And that's fine.

There are carrots I can use as money sinks that work perfectly well to get rid of excess liquidity but that also have the party feel that they are advancing and the player gets to feel that she's great at something. There's no need to consistently punish them for a perfectly legal, rational choice. It's not as if the party having a lot of money is game-breaking for a PoD campaign, anyway: it's supposed to happen.

That said, if I run a "normal" campaign I'm adjusting the decrements and increments on the 3D6 broker table from 5% to 2.5%!
 
Endie said:
As a very rare thing, that's ok to do once as an adventure hook, sure. But in general, as Andy Slack said: if the player has invested in building up an ability that high then she's saying that she wants her character to be good at it. And that's fine.

There are carrots I can use as money sinks that work perfectly well to get rid of excess liquidity but that also have the party feel that they are advancing and the player gets to feel that she's great at something. There's no need to consistently punish them for a perfectly legal, rational choice. It's not as if the party having a lot of money is game-breaking for a PoD campaign, anyway: it's supposed to happen.

That said, if I run a "normal" campaign I'm adjusting the decrements and increments on the 3D6 broker table from 5% to 2.5%!
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Good thoughts. I wasn’t recommending continual punishment but a little pushback from others in the game universe can be fun.
 
Endie said:
Speaking as someone dealing with the effects of a player with broker 4 plus an augment in the party, I can see very clearly in practice why the designers decided not to include an INT (or EDU, which seems more appropriate) modifier. It's already hard for the party not to get rich quickly at that level.
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I actually advocated for including the INT modifier on the price role too, but then alter the chart to reflect that new result. That way it stays balanced.
 
Endie said:
That said, if I run a "normal" campaign I'm adjusting the decrements and increments on the 3D6 broker table from 5% to 2.5%!
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That is one way to handle it, and might be a good approach. My usual method is to make it clear that a 'Speculative Trade' (singular) is the result of a week worth of work from the entire crew; filling the hold with freight is pretty easy in comparison. A 'Speculative Trade' often comes with an adventure attached, too -- this is not 'business as usual' it is a reward for doing extraordinary things.
 
Here is a summary of what I hope are the final models. I've updated the spreadsheet.

Edit: If I’m being dense and some basic model is missing, let me know. The Robot Handbook has a BrokerBot, but maybe I need one, too. Anything else?

Also, I didn’t leave off any “other skills” for the Basic Engineering Droid. It’s just that basic.

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J. L. Brown said:
That is one way to handle it, and might be a good approach. My usual method is to make it clear that a 'Speculative Trade' (singular) is the result of a week worth of work from the entire crew; filling the hold with freight is pretty easy in comparison. A 'Speculative Trade' often comes with an adventure attached, too -- this is not 'business as usual' it is a reward for doing extraordinary things.
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So here's the thing with the speculative trade system. It is *supposed* to be an adventure prompt, not an end result in and of itself. Traveller has never done a good job of explaining this in the actual rules, so large numbers of people think it's a complete system. But it is an adventure prompt, just like all the other RNG elements of CT such as patrons, random encounters, law enforcement hassle checks, and so on. This is why the system does not have rules for rival merchants, corrupt dealers, obnoxious custom agents, tariffs, or any of the rest. The GM is supposed to take the prompts and make stories out of. Not necessarily every single trade, some do just work.

But if you look at the CT merchant adventures, they are never just rolling for a thing and selling the thing later. Look at the Traveller adventure and the various amber zones: You stop at the planet and the best deal is on the local wine, but there's a big corporation trying to corner the market, so you go into the hinterland to bypass them. Or you go to the planet and it has rare wood, but you have to go into the small towns to get any that's for sale to rando tramp traders. You go there to sell medical supplies and there's a rebellion trying to destroy the supplies. You run food to this other place, but someone forgot to mention that the best buyers are criminal organizations.

The Traveller speculative trade system requires the players to be actively incompetent AND roll badly to lose money. The idea is that enough of the trades go smoothly so the ship stays flying, but many of them have significant complications that result in stories.

That's not trampling on players' chosen skills. That's putting their skills to use and playing the game, which is being adventurers. John Falkayn and Nicholas Van Rijn go on all manner of adventures where trade is the WHY, but it is not the WHAT that they are doing. And that's what Traveller was trying to replicate.
 
Vormaerin said:
So here's the thing with the speculative trade system. It is *supposed* to be an adventure prompt, not an end result in and of itself. Traveller has never done a good job of explaining this in the actual rules, so large numbers of people think it's a complete system. But it is an adventure prompt, just like all the other RNG elements of CT such as patrons, random encounters, law enforcement hassle checks, and so on. This is why the system does not have rules for rival merchants, corrupt dealers, obnoxious custom agents, tariffs, or any of the rest. The GM is supposed to take the prompts and make stories out of. Not necessarily every single trade, some do just work.

But if you look at the CT merchant adventures, they are never just rolling for a thing and selling the thing later. Look at the Traveller adventure and the various amber zones: You stop at the planet and the best deal is on the local wine, but there's a big corporation trying to corner the market, so you go into the hinterland to bypass them. Or you go to the planet and it has rare wood, but you have to go into the small towns to get any that's for sale to rando tramp traders. You go there to sell medical supplies and there's a rebellion trying to destroy the supplies. You run food to this other place, but someone forgot to mention that the best buyers are criminal organizations.

The Traveller speculative trade system requires the players to be actively incompetent AND roll badly to lose money. The idea is that enough of the trades go smoothly so the ship stays flying, but many of them have significant complications that result in stories.

That's not trampling on players' chosen skills. That's putting their skills to use and playing the game, which is being adventurers. John Falkayn and Nicholas Van Rijn go on all manner of adventures where trade is the WHY, but it is not the WHAT that they are doing. And that's what Traveller was trying to replicate.
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I am guessing that means that if any of us actual care about worldbuilding, we should all just go find a different game and leave the rest of you alone? I am also guessing that if we don't' want a new adventure every time we roll the dice for trade, we should just all quit and go play a different game? I don't need "adventure prompts" I am the Referee. I write adventures all over the place and they could run into them in innumerable ways. If, my brain gets stuck, I will go find a little d100 chart roll on that and see if that sparks anything, but 99% of the time, I don't need it. The actions of the players create the adventures themselves.

So, it seems to me, based on your explanation (which was well explained btw. nicely done) that Traveller is not a roleplaying game. It is an idea/adventure generator for a roleplaying game. Okay. No problem. So, here is My question, "now that we have the system for generating adventures, when can we get a system for actually playing adventures?" I don't mind a good hack and slash adventure from time to time, but if the only rules we have that are meant for actually roleplaying and not adventure generating are combat, then that is all Traveller is. I was hoping that Traveller would be more than that.

Edit - To further expand on that statement about combat. Shipbuilding rules. Vehicle-building rules. Robot rules. All of these are more or less combat rules.
 
Terry Mixon said:
Added Broker Droids. Happy Trading!

View attachment 5743
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That's great... but. (sorry)

The TL is not listed, and it is a bit important to gauge the relative capability of some of these designs. For example, the 'Advanced Broker Bot' is listed as Broker/5. I assume this is Skill/(3+2) with an INT 12. But a TL15 'Self-Aware' robot brain can have INT raised to 15 (for a trifling 5.46 MCr), giving a +3 to INT-based skills.

Still pretty amazing, and I appreciate you putting so much work into these designs.
 
J. L. Brown said:
That's great... but. (sorry)

The TL is not listed, and it is a bit important to gauge the relative capability of some of these designs. For example, the 'Advanced Broker Bot' is listed as Broker/5. I assume this is Skill/(3+2) with an INT 12. But a TL15 'Self-Aware' robot brain can have INT raised to 15 (for a trifling 5.46 MCr), giving a +3 to INT-based skills.

Still pretty amazing, and I appreciate you putting so much work into these designs.
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The basic and improved versions are TL12 and the enhanced and advanced are TL15. You can download a spreadsheet with all the designs for specifics in my sig. No problems. I'm adding them to my own designs, so I have skin in the game.

The Advanced Broker Droid and the Advanced Engineer Droid are Self-Aware but have not had the INT Upgrade. I just made version of them that has extra bandwidth and does so. I'll add them to the sheet as Advanced Plus units.

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Does anyone think it is a little weird that a Robot Brain Computer/5 can fit in a size 5 chassis for no extra slots, but the Computer/10, Computer/20, Computer/30 'Brains' all take exactly just one slot? I mean, there appears to be no rule against building a TL-15 Size 1 Chassis with a TL-15 Early Prototype of a TL-17 'Conscious' Computer/20 robot brain. Usually a Computer/20 would require a Size 20 Chassis... but one slot and all is well.
 
J. L. Brown said:
Usually a Computer/20 would require a Size 20 Chassis... but one slot and all is well.
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I will disagree with you on this last part. The Size rules for Robots only go to Size 8. After that it says you have to use the Vehicle Handbook rules. So, you can only fit a Computer/8 in a Size 8 chassis for 0 slots.

Also, unless I am mistaken, Prototypes and Early Prototypes increase size by a percentage. Correct? The number of slots required would likewise increase by that amount.

Did I get that right or is My understanding on this flawed?
 
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