Scoundrels - I Am In Awe! :)

[alex_greene]

I dropped by Fan Boy 3 today, and collected Scoundrels. So much to be covered. I can see how you can blend this book and Agent - or indeed, this book and Psion - and create an extremely satisfactory campaign featuring rogue elements of society and agents bouncing off each other and raising sparks.

Heists. I mean, heists. The hospital job and train job in Firefly are cited. You guys really should have cited the original The Italian Job, Ocean's Eleven (the older one with Sinatra and that) and Catch Me If You Can - again, the original, as well as Dog Day Afternoon and The Godfather as inspirations. Hells, you could also cite The Ladykillers; a prime inspiration, where a band of rogues set up in a bed-n-breakfast and pretend to be a band, with rehearsals and practice, whilst working on their heist.

But the one-page abstract heist mechanic is a gods send.

Odd Jobs at the back - perfect. Absolutely perfect. Just the thing if you want to give your characters something to do whilst waiting for the Big Score to come in, plus while they're performing that odd job, they can bump into Patrons, pick up rumours or gather information on the place they're casing preparatory to a heist. Utter genius.

I've got to read through the rest of the book, but this looks like yet another top notch addition to the Mongoose Traveller stable.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

Excellent, I will pop in tomorrow.

 

[Brutorz Bill]

This sounds awesome. I've got Agent and am quite pleased with it. I don't have Psion yet. Thanks for the info!

 

[alex_greene]

Well, here's something you may want to think about.

Agent covers the job of being a professional hit man - being given your target, the method of execution, and so on. Your character can just as easily come from the wrong side of the tracks and come from the Scoundrels book, particularly the Assassin subcareer listed in there somewhere.

Scoundrels, on the other hand, covers things like heists and organised crime, smuggling and all those kinds of shenanigans - including piracy. Again, your guy could easily come from the Agent book, roped in to work in a crew of privateers secretly funded by a rich benefactor such as a corporation, aimed at ships belonging to a rival corporation or government.

 

[Mawdrigen]

Given my players are going off Privateering Scoundrel is AWESOME.

Especially the patrol shipd >

 

[alex_greene]

Okay, here's something to think about, if anyone's still not convinced.

You can run Firefly - type campaigns.

Virtually everything in Firefly has been covered in Scoundrels. Piracy (in Firefly it's of the "spider in the web" kind, rather than the "close to intercept, all guns blazing" kind you find in Traveller, though Reavers come close to the latter); salvaging operations; confidence tricksters (Saffron being an expert at this); heists of a train, a private residence, a security firm's cash payroll and of a hospital; smuggling - of cattle, and later of human wetware; and fencing of stolen goods, along with an armed robbery that went wrong, resulting in sixty thousand creds, untraceable, being dropped into the back yards of a bunch of mudders on a planet with a well tainted atmosphere.

Hell's Teeth, Firefly is cited at the start of the book. Scoundrels is the perfect inspiration if you aim to misbehave.

 

[Jeff Hopper]

How well does Scoundrels cover confidence scams?

I've always wanted to run a Traveller game based on the TV show Hu$tle...

 

[alex_greene]

There's a chapter towards the end on gambling and con games. I haven't had a chance to look at that section yet, but it's something to look into if you want to play a con artist and run hustles against people.

 

[Pointy Stick]

I tried actually using the abstract heist rules in Scoundrel last night and discovered that they quickly become confusing.

The pre-heist stuff is easy enough (casing the joint, gathering information, etc.).

The heist itself is less clear. I take it that the way it is intended to work is as follows:

1. Determine remaining heist length
2. Make skill checks to reduce remaining heist length to 0. If length reduced to 0 before three failed checks occur, the heist is completed.

Where they lose me is on the skill checks. It sounds like the check is supposed to be against the difficulty of the heist (i.e., the heist length). But this seems pretty brutal, as even an average heist would require a 12+ roll on skill checks.

Are you supposed to roll against the remaining heist length, so that checks get easier and easier as you get toward the end of the job? That seemed to make it almost *too* easy, where the other way is too hard.

I feel like I'm missing something obvious here.

 

[hdan]

Where they lose me is on the skill checks. It sounds like the check is supposed to be against the difficulty of the heist (i.e., the heist length). But this seems pretty brutal, as even an average heist would require a 12+ roll on skill checks.

Maybe they intend you to "cascade" skills? (Can't remember the MgT term, but where you apply the effect of one roll as a modifier to the next.) Like have your cyber-guy roll some security checks to give you bonuses, etc.

Sounds like I need a copy of Scoundrel!

 

[Mytholder]

Where they lose me is on the skill checks. It sounds like the check is supposed to be against the difficulty of the heist (i.e., the heist length). But this seems pretty brutal, as even an average heist would require a 12+ roll on skill checks.

Are you supposed to roll against the remaining heist length, so that checks get easier and easier as you get toward the end of the job? That seemed to make it almost *too* easy, where the other way is too hard.

Nope - there's a list of difficulties just below that section. An Easy Heist gives a +4 DM (so roll+skill+stat+4 vs target number of 8), Routine +2 and so on.

 

[Pointy Stick]

Where they lose me is on the skill checks. It sounds like the check is supposed to be against the difficulty of the heist (i.e., the heist length). But this seems pretty brutal, as even an average heist would require a 12+ roll on skill checks.

Are you supposed to roll against the remaining heist length, so that checks get easier and easier as you get toward the end of the job? That seemed to make it almost *too* easy, where the other way is too hard.

Nope - there's a list of difficulties just below that section. An Easy Heist gives a +4 DM (so roll+skill+stat+4 vs target number of 8), Routine +2 and so on.

Thanks Myth, I'll have to check that out...if it was right there staring me in the face, well, the /facepalm will be epic! :wink:

 

[Baron_Vulk_Morden]

I love the little homage to a certain film trilogy they did on page 10 of Scoundrel, on the Events! table for the Smuggler career:

21 A crazy old man, some farm kid and two robots want you to smuggle them to the sector capital. They will pay one Benefit roll. If you accept, roll 1d6.

1 They are on the run from the law and they bring trouble with them. You are arrested – roll on the
Incarceration table but you are not ejected from this career.

4 Nothing unusual happens but you are left with the lingering feeling that something strange was
going on.

6 Both of them are powerful psions. You may test your Psionic Strength and may automatically
qualify for a psion career next term if you wish.

(Removed rolls 2, 3, & 5, sorry )

 

[alex_greene]

I love the little homage to a certain film trilogy they did on page 10 of Scoundrel, on the Events! table for the Smuggler career:

21 A crazy old man, some farm kid and two robots want you to smuggle them to the sector capital. They will pay one Benefit roll. If you accept, roll 1d6.

1 They are on the run from the law and they bring trouble with them. You are arrested – roll on the
Incarceration table but you are not ejected from this career.

4 Nothing unusual happens but you are left with the lingering feeling that something strange was going on.

6 Both of them are powerful psions. You may test your Psionic Strength and may automatically
qualify for a psion career next term if you wish.

(Removed rolls 2, 3, & 5, sorry )

And of course, there's always this:-

Edit: Try that for size. *wanders off grumbling as that damned blogomatic account*

 

[Baron_Vulk_Morden]

Your picture didn't load, can't see it in either Firefox or Internet Exploder, er, Explorer...

 

[Vile]

Can't see it in Chrome, either.

 

[AndrewW]

Ok, as long as that's being checked. Didn't see it in Firefox, Opera or Seamonkey here. But it can be viewed if you view just the image, right click where the image should be and select View Image.

 

[BP]

The image is being blocked from linking... (one can open it directly - which will put it in the cache - the effect of the View Image AndrewW mentioned or simpy pasting the properties URL into your browser address bar).

No worries - your're not missing much.

 

[Baron_Vulk_Morden]

I opened it in another tab
Oooo!
Family Guy SW episode!
:lol:

 

[FreeTrav]

Ok, as long as that's being checked. Didn't see it in Firefox, Opera or Seamonkey here. But it can be viewed if you view just the image, right click where the image should be and select View Image.

If I try to do that, it doesn't work. It tries to open http://www.blogomatic3000.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/FGSSSD.jpg, which gets me the Blogomatic3000 "Page not found" page.