scifi campaign thingamajig

Good point Kolson, I should have been more clear about that: the thing is that the majority of the 55 people in that theater (you guys included) were not part of the standing navy, and those with a militar career just got reasigned to the Zephir.

Also, from the mechanical standpoint, there isn't a list of advantages, disadvantages, knowledges and skills, and for a good reason. I want the game part of this campaign to be as fluid as possible without being set in stone, so I decided against a level up mechanic, becoming instead 'make your case with the GM to raise this or that'. So if you feel your character should be better at fighting strawmen after the conflict is over, or you took your free time this week to learn an alien language, and so on, you can try and convince me of that. That's why the Rest mechanic has complete rest.

I'll defer to my superior officer as to where I'm assigned.  Preference to the Courageous.


Also, first draft of my char sheet.

Fax Mateus

Primary: Mental 4
Intellect: 5
Recognition: 5
Wisdom: 4

Secondary: Physical 3
Strength: 2
Agility: 5
Vitality: 3

Tertiary: Spiritual 2
Dominion: 2
Communion: 2
Passion: 4


Health: 4
Focus: 6
Confidence: 5

Advantages: Loyal 4, Fearless 5
Knowledges: History 5, Math 5, Physics 2, Military 3
Skills: Piloting 5, Armed Combat 5
Disadvantages: Crazy -4, Unstable -2

Focus = 1/2 Mental rounded up + Wisdom.
Confidence = 1/2 Spiritual rounded up + Passion.

Crazy and Unstable needs some more clarifying before I can give it some points.

Get a free Knowledge: Military 2 and Skill: Armed Combat 2 for being part of the forces. Can use 24 points between advantages, knowledge and skills.

Oh, and I forgot to ask: would you prefer to pilot a straight fighter, a transformable robot like Kolson, a straight robot, or something else? The unit you'll receive will probably be experimental unless you specify a mass-produced one. Up for you.

STAT PRIORITY
Mental--Primary: 4

• Intellect: 6
  
• Recognition: 3
  
• Wisdom: 5
  

Physical--Secondary: 3

• Strength: 4
  
• Agility: 2
  
• Vitality: 4
  

Spiritual--Tertiary: 2

• Dominion: 1
  
• Communion: 2
  
• Passion: 5
  

Health: 9
Focus: 7
Confidence: 6

ADVANTAGES
Heavy Lifter, 3
Religious Mediator, 4

KNOWLEDGES
Mechanical Engineering 3
Physics 2
Mechatronics 3
D.M. Tech 4

Skills
Ship Engineer 4
Non-combat Personnel Regimen 2
D.M. Power Suit Use 3
D.M. Engineering 4
Athletics 2

DISADVANTAGES
Workaholic, 3 disadvantage
Pragmatist, 2 disadvantage

DESCRIPTIONS/EXPLANATIONS
Heavy Lifter: Through painstaking labor, you've achieved a muscle memory that can best be described as “oxen” in nature. When performing any mundane task outside of combat requiring a strength check, you gain a bonus to strength.

Religious Mediator: You’re willing to agree-to-disagree on some matters, and take an “open discussion” attitude toward all debate subjects spiritual. This causes others to be more partial to your opinion. In all Passion vs Dominion/Communion checks, you gain a bonus to Communion or Passion pending which side of the conflict you take, and your advice--you actually have to have something to say--lends an appropriate bonus to your side of the conflict, but it can’t be Dominion in nature. Nature of an application of a Communion bonus to a Dominion check, or whether simply adding a Communion check, is up to the GM’s discretion.

Mechanical Engineering explained: as it applies to game mechanics, the Engineering knowledges are catch-all for math, physics, and science, and can be rolled as long as they are related to the Engineering knowledge specifically.
*Taken from wikipedia: "The engineering field requires an understanding of core concepts including mechanics, kinematics, thermodynamics, materials science, structural analysis, and electricity. Mechanical engineers use these core principles along with tools like computer-aided engineering, and product lifecycle management to design and analyze manufacturing plants, industrial equipment and machinery, heating and cooling systems, transport systems,aircraft, watercraft, robotics, medical devices, weapons, and others."

Ship Engineer Description: Daily management of interstellar vessels is your pride and joy. People might not spend much time on the engineering deck, and you tend to catch blame for relatively mundane problems, but when things are really going haywire, you’re the crew’s lifeblood, and everyone lends their ear when you have something important to say.

Non-combat Personnel Regimen(catch-all) Description: You’ve gone through a couple routine weapon firing and maintenance drills and some basic close combat drills, but you sure as hell aren’t combat-ready. They pay you to fix ships, not fight wars. Weapon proficiencies include pistols, unarmed, and improvised weapons.

Workaholic explained: You're devoted to what you do for a living to the point it becomes unhealthy mentally and/or physically, and it obstructs abstract pursuits. While performing any action work-related or related to your profession, apply a temporary penalty to Dominion and a temporary bonus to Passion. In some severe hazardous situations pending GM discretion, you will remain stubborn, and have to roll against Dominion/Communion even if you the player don’t think continuing the task is worth the effort and risk.

Pragmatist explained: In severe situations when you're trapped between a rock and a hard place, you’ll always opt for the pragmatic solution most appealing to you, in spite of how apathetic, cowardly, or disconnected you may look to others for choosing it. If the solution is best described as "cold" or "dark" to those who are against it, you take a temporary penalty to Communion and Dominion in your attempts to reason with them. This is not to be mistaken as a psychosis, as there are still horrible things you won’t stoop low enough to call acceptable solutions. On the flip side, if a problem can’t be fixed by any practical means, you’ll lose some confidence in the heat of the moment and defer to whoever you believe to be the smartest of the bunch caught in the same boat.

And here's his theme, while I'm at it.

Essoje wrote:Focus = 1/2 Mental rounded up + Wisdom.
Confidence = 1/2 Spiritual rounded up + Passion.

Crazy and Unstable needs some more clarifying before I can give it some points.

Get a free Knowledge: Military 2 and Skill: Armed Combat 2 for being part of the forces. Can use 24 points between advantages, knowledge and skills.

Oh, and I forgot to ask: would you prefer to pilot a straight fighter, a transformable robot like Kolson, a straight robot, or something else? The unit you'll receive will probably be experimental unless you specify a mass-produced one. Up for you.

Crazy: Utterly fearless, to the point of negativity.  Prone to taking actions that others would deem extreme or otherwise excessive without fear to the consequences.  See also: Archengeia in real life.
Unstable: Fine most of the time, but on occasions will have fits of emotional instability, prone to irrational behavior and thought during such 'attacks'.  See also: Javan in real life (no I kid)

As for the pilot thing, whatever would put me in Kolson's team.  Or in other words, no preference at all.

@Rory: Dominion is being listed as 0, when it probably should be 2 based on the rest of the math.
All character have 24 points to distribute between all advantages, knowledges and skills. All these are just straight bonuses to a roll check. The idea of this system is that all the cool complicated stuff is mainly RPed, and these numbers just there help the character and the GM to know their limits and see the results.
Being a ship engineer, you just received for free Knowledge: D.M. Technology 2 and Skill: Powered Suit Usage 1 and Skill: D.M. Engineering 1. Powered Suits are the standard way to move containers and equipment inside a spaceship in Zero G, and pretty decent for extreme environment use as well, like space or the D.M. Core Chamber for example.
Workholic is a -3 disadvantage, while Pragmatism is a -2 in your character's case. Add 5 extra points to use in your advantages, knowledges and skills.

@Arch: I guess Crazy -4 and Unstable -2 should do the trick. Have 6 extra points for traits (what I'm grouping advantages, knowledge and skills as).
And you are piloting a... *rolling dice sounds* space forklift. Nah, it was a straight space fighter.

Character sheet updated, should be done now theoretically.

@Arch: Sorry, maximum of 5 points in a single trait on character creation.

Ooh, thanks. I missed that, Spirit stats updated. What's the max on points we can spend on any skill or knowledge?

I'm gonna go ahead and make Heavy Lifter worth 4 points and Religious Mediator worth 5 cuz I want the bonuses to be significant.

Sheet updated with additions to skills, accompanied by point expenditure, points spent and points gained from disadvantages should balance out. If you see any problems or any redundancies, let me know.

Swapped out Materials Science with Mechatronics. Basically dealing specially in robot stuff. I figured Materials Science just felt kinda redundant game-wise.

I'll get to work on a character sheet then. I hope to be done sometime during the weekend. Halloween and birthday obligations are seriously putting me behind.

I know man. Damn pagan festivities, right?

I swore it was higher then 5 for max, but I'm probably blind.  Fixed.

Essoje wrote:I know man. Damn pagan festivities, right?

Yeah! :p

Actually I'm taking one point out of each of my advantages(cuz 4 and 5 respectively is probably way too much) and spend those two points on Athletics 2. Cuz this guy's fit.

@Arch: Yay for miscomunication! The max for stats is 6, which was correct before. Traits are advantages, knowledges and skills. Those are the ones that cannot go higher than 5.

@Rory: That's fine, you have enough time until the campaign starts.

I just realized I keep forgetting to do this. I'm so sorry.

Speaking of which, character sheet updated... I think.  Please lemme know if I screwed up for a fourth time, kinda hard to concentrate at the moment.

@Kolson: No worries, duuude. Take your time. I mean, what's the hurry, right? :p

@Arch: I got you Arch. The sheet is fine.

@Rory: But not yours, now that I've taken another look at it. Vitals' math is off, and is calculated as: 3rd substat + (1/2 of main stat, rounded up). Your character's health is 6, focus is 7 and condidence is 6. And the skills are off, as you forgot to consider you got free points that count to the 24 total. So you still have 4 trait points to spend.

Well maybe my math is off. Can we go over this?

Free points: 5:

Points gained from Disadvantages: 5:

points spent: 26:

By my math, I realize that I should have more points to spend than I thought I did, but you sure it's 4, and not 3?

Ok, my original math was wrong, yes, so just follow this: 24 for new char + 4 for background (the 'free points') + 5 extra from disadvantages. That's 33 points total.
So for everyone's sanity sake, get rid of the (-X points) from your sheet, which messed with my math to no end, and just consider you have 33 points to use as traits, but 4 of them are locked into at least DM Tech 2, DM Engineer 1 and Power Suit 1.
Much simpler and harder to mess up.

Works for me.

YEH! PWOINTS!

Legal Name: Javier Toombs Juárez
Goes By: Javier Toombs
To Friends: Javi (ha vee)
Call Sign: Tombstone
Age: 29

Physical Description
Hair: Dark brown.
Hair Style: Buzz cut, but with the hair a little longer on top than usual for style reasons.
Eyes: Dark brown.
Facial hair: Clean shaven.

STAT PRIORITY

Spiritual--Primary:
Dominion: 5
Communion: 5
Passion: 4

Physical--Secondary:
Strength: 3
Agility: 5
Vitality: 2

Mental--Tertiary:
Intellect: 2
Recognition: 2
Wisdom: 4

Health:
Focus:
Confidence: 6

KNOWLEDGES
Astrogation
Physics
Military Protocol and Procedures
Military Tactics

Skills
Unarmed Combat
Small Arms
Heavy Weapons (or whatever you are calling ship weapon systems)
Pilot (Focus on Starfighters and equivalent)

ADVANTAGES
Basic Training
Instinctual Tactician

DISADVANTAGES
Addiction to Alcohol (mild)
Heart on his Sleeve

DESCRIPTIONS/EXPLANATIONS
Astrogation: Can plot courses in space.
Physics: Basic college level courses + practical experience in space.
Military Protocol and Procedures: Self explanatory.
Military Tactics: Formal training in the basics of fleet combat and the disposition of combat forces, with a special focus on starfighters and the equivalent.
Unarmed Combat: The basics of unarmed combat/bar fights.
Small Arms: Skill with pistols and the basic marine rifle.
Heavy Weapons: Covers ship weapons systems. I can call it something else if you prefer.
Pilot: Obvious.
Basic Training: The basics of self defense, basic first aid, and basic survival training.
Instinctual Tactician: Javi isn't known as a deep thinker but he is known for his ability to "read" the enemy, to understand them on an intuitive level. After he's fought or observed an enemy, he can make a Wisdom check to attain some critical info that may create an advantage for him and his troops.
Addiction to Alcohol (mild)-A broken home didn't equip Javi with completely healthy coping mechanisms, leaving him vulnerable to alcoholism if he experiences some sort of major setback or personal loss.
Heart on His Sleeve: Javi is terrible at hiding his feelings on matters, often having to bite his tongue or risk losing his temper. This can lead to trouble with authority figures, especially if he views a situation as unjust or bullshit.

Javan: Just need your feed back on stuff and I'll make the changes or whatever and finish this up.

Give me some time to recover from a particulary bad rhinitis attack and I'll get back to you.

Hypothetical question: if your PC had a baby in their origin, would the child be raised on the ship they work on for closeness, or would they be raised separately in a sector designated? Does the Zephyr have a solution onboard?

@Kolson: There's no Los Angeles in current Earth. Or anything in the place where Los Angeles once was. Or any other city we players know about. English is a dead language. Let me try to grab something that makes sense instead of trying to explain. Just a sec... there we go! This is what Earth looks like right now, and has been for as long as any living human remembers...


Anyways, back to the sheet.
Main stats have numerical values just like substats, and it's actually important to note them down. Add their 3 substats and divide them by 3, rounded down.
Vitals are 3rd substat plus (main stat /2, rounded up).
This means health is Vitality + (roundup Physical/2), and Focus is Wisdom + (roundup Mental/2).
Besides that, everything seems to be in order. Alcoholism (mild) gets a -2 rating, while Hearth On His Sleeve gets a -3. Also, you may mark having a free Military Protocol 1, Pilot 2 and Instinctual Tactician 1. This gives you 29 (33 total) extra points to use in the rest of your traits.

@Rory: Nothing changed to the lives of whatever family your character have except for them getting more money because you are doing all sorts of life-risking stuff from now on. Which means they live in a sector of Zenobia, where is the safest and sanest place to keep non-combatants in the fleet.

@Arch: If you can create a subforum for this campaign, I would be most grateful. Otherwise, we'll have to do with somewhere else.