Spiritual Attributes for Traveller

[Alan]

Spiritual Attributes for Traveller

I've been considering different approaches to designing narrativist-favoring mechanics for a hard SF RPG about stellar exploration and trade.  

Here's some past ideas I've posted:

RPG Proposal: The Outward Urge
Narrativist Space Trader

And here's some past threads about SF RPGs that I've found on The Forge:

Science fiction II ] (Still open as of Jan 03)
Science fiction  (An old, closed thread)

I've taken another look at the old workhorse of SF RPGs, Traveller (edition 4 - which is the classic system with some expansion).  The game is an elegant approach to simulationist SF, with some strong gamist elements.  Gamist elements, I think, include gimmicks, money, and ships as the main rewards for play - but also the character generation system.  Character generation requires playing through the character's education and career in 4 year blocks, rolling for entry into professions, promotions, and injury each block.  Character generation has always been one of the charming parts of the game.

As a mental excercise, I worked out a spiritual attribute system for T4.  Most of the following is simply adapted from The Riddle of Steel, which lays narrativist rewards over what appears to be a simulationist combat and skill system.  I would substitute these narrativist systems for the gamist systems in T4, modifying T4 character generation and replacing it's experience point system..


*Narrativist T4 Character Generation*

Add Worldview, a short statement of the character's personal philosophy.

Add Motives (adapted from TROS's  spiritual attributes.)  I've chosen six categories which I think reflect the Traveller ethos as I'd like to play it. Four of them require specific definitions created by the player.

All Motives start at zero.  The player has 7 to distribute, with a maximum of 5 and a minimum of 0.  Career generation might be modified so that significant events _requires_ one of these points be committed to a particular Motive.

_Motives_

Conscience - Reward for ethical behavior.  No specification necessary.
Drive - A cause or passion for something greater than the character. Player specifies.

Duty - Player specifies a kind of duty - to the Imperium, to a person, to The Truth, etc.
Enterprise - Player specifies a career, business, or exporatory vision for the character.
Inquiry - .  Player specifies a subject or area of knowledge which engages the character's intense curiosity.
Luck - Reward for impressive play, luck, and bad luck.  No specification necessary.

Retain the cool roll-your-career system, but encourage players to create story for every dice result - just as player narration mechanics do in many narrativist games.


*Narrativist T4 Reward System*

Motive points, with the exception of luck, would be awarded whenever a player pursued the Motive in the face of opposition.  These five Motives could also be lowered if the player ignores an opportunity to pursue a Motive.  Luck would be awarded if the player made other players laugh, or impressed them with some role-play or planning.  Also, points might be earned on good and bad dice rolls.  All Motives would have a maximum (maybe 5, like in TROS).

Motives, except luck, are activated when the character is in a dramatic conflict involving the Motive.  When activated, these provides substantial bonuses to task rolls.  Luck can be activated by player choice, but is expended, while other Motives are not.

_Experience & Improvement_

At any time, the player can spend Motive points, perminently, to improve skills and traits.  The total of all Motive points spent is tracked and called "Experience".

_Wealth & Perks_

Rather than using the crunchy trade and mercenary profit rules from Traveller, I'd require story to buy ships, laser upgrades, promotions, nobility, etc.  The players would tell the GM what they want and he would set a total number of Experience points required before the upgrade can be achieved.  Notice that this is about the  change in the characters Experience total and doesn't require more Motive points.  (Theatrix suggested this improvement method.)


*So What?*

This post is just a cool idea I wanted to suggest.  I think it's a halfway point between looking at what other designers have done while waiting for the ideas to synthesize into something that's mine.   In the meantime, I'd love to hear that someone tried it and tested it out.  If I do, I'll post a follow up.

[Alan]

I always think of the question hours later:

Did I choose appropriate spiritual attributes?  Will they capture the Traveller ethos?  Will they lead to narrativist play?

[simon_hibbs]

I always think of the question hours later:

Did I choose appropriate spiritual attributes?  Will they capture the Traveller ethos?  Will they lead to narrativist play?

I think it's a pretty flexible set of attributes. Players can presumably choose to emphasise some attributes over others by allocating points? Also presumably the actual subject of the attribute could vary considerably. A SolSec operative might have a high Duty to the Solomani Species, while a Vargr corsair captain might have a high Duty to his crew.


Simon Hibbs

[Paul Czege]

Hey Alan,

From a narrativist perspective, I think Drive, Duty, Enterprise, and Inquiry are perfect, and Conscience and Luck are fairly weak. It seems to me the key here, if we're talking RoS style narrativism, is Motives that focus the character and provoke proactive play. What you want is Motives that create audience expectations and tension about outcomes related to those expectations. So I think Conscience and Luck, as implemented, don't make the grade. I predict characters with Conscience and Luck Motives will be characterized by a primarily reactive style of play, and a loose inter-player dynamic of polite tension-undermining respect for player subjectivity.

A fix would be to get specific about what it means for a character to make a commitment to Conscience, or to Luck. For example, Intacto-style commitment to Luck would be one possible step in a good direction: Luck is governed by adherence to ritualistic superstition; you can have your Luck challenged and stolen.

Paul

[Alan]

Simon,

Yes, four of the motive categories require player customization, so they work exactly as you describe.

From a narrativist perspective, I think .... Conscience and Luck are fairly weak. It seems to me the key here, if we're talking RoS style narrativism, is Motives that focus the character and provoke proactive play. What you want is Motives that create audience expectations and tension about outcomes related to those expectations. So I think Conscience and Luck, as implemented, don't make the grade. I predict characters with Conscience and Luck Motives will be characterized by a primarily reactive style of play, and a loose inter-player dynamic of polite tension-undermining respect for player subjectivity.

I'm not sure I understand.  Maybe you could explain more?  How do Luck and Conscience fail to support narrativist goals?  And say more about Motives that provoke proactive play - that's interesting.

In the meantime, here's some commentary on why I think the two motives work for my idea.

I felt that Luck, as an metagame trait was justified in two ways: first, the concept often shows up in hard SF fiction (eg Larry Niven, Andre Norton) as a kind of a-religious alternative to a higher power; second, as an additional way for players to protagonize their characters.  This may be important if the game system can produce total, or even catastrophic, task failure ("whiffs"), as in classic Traveller or TROS.

I like Conscience because it emphasizes ethics.  I observe that most science fiction literature involves ethical decisions - while the prototype SF RPG Traveller emphasizes getting more wealth and toys by any means necessary, a very American attitude, but not really in keeping with the literature.

Conscience would be gained by taking ethical action which is a detriment or risk to the character; or lost when an opportunity is ignored.  It does require some group contract about what is ethical, prehaps defined in a pre-game session.

How's that?

[Mike Holmes]

Alan,

I sorta agree with Paul. Especially about Luck. While certainly genre appropriate, Luck as written does little to cause players to adress moral questions. Which is what Narrativism per se is all about.

That said, who cares? Go with Luck exactly for it's genre appropriatenes, and don't worry it's "Narrativismness". The only potential downside of Luck as written in that vein is that it to a small extent allows a player to avoid taking other more pertinent sorts of Narrativist SAs. But like I said, big deal. Note also, that for what it's worth, that the ability of a GM to lower SAs is pretty anti-Narrativist, as it allows the GM to enforce character concept. It allows him to interfere with decisions of the player and adds little, IMO. This has always seemed contradictory to the empowering nature of SAs, and I would personally never play with it. If a player chooses to ignore his own potential reward for diving into an SA, then he's making a conscoius choice (or just not paying attention to the game).

Anyhow, I like what you have, and am tempted to try it out in my latest Traveller campaign. Might be just what the doctor ordered. In more general terms, I've seen the application of SA-like mechanics as applicable to a lot of different genres; almost anything really. Especially if you just disregard the categories, and just call them all something like Drives. A Drive to do good is Conscience. A Drive to get the affection of a person is a Passion. A Drive to learn the secret of the Ancients is an Inquiry. Basically, other than their abilty to inform the player about suitable options, the categories are useless, IMO (and can you see how Luck is the "cop out" choice, here?). An informed player can come up with whatever SA he likes, and the GM can inform the player.

That said, the idea of Inquiries as a category of SAs is brilliant. Perfect for Traveller. Hivers must start with all their SAs in Inquiries. :-)

Problem is, how do you reward the player for using their SAs in Traveller? You've missed one crucial part, wich is that Traveller is not a dice pool system. So how do SAs add? Straight bonuses to a 2d6 roll or even 3d6 roll seems a bit too potent and deterministic. What do you suggest?

Mike
[/i]

[Alan]

Problem is, how do you reward the player for using their SAs in Traveller? You've missed one crucial part, wich is that Traveller is not a dice pool system. So how do SAs add? Straight bonuses to a 2d6 roll or even 3d6 roll seems a bit too potent and deterministic. What do you suggest?

Mike,

Glad you like the idea.

I left that out precisely because I'm not sure how to do it.   I think a range of 0 to 5 is good for SAs, but this means they're too big for the 2d6 dice resolution method - a +3 or +5 is really hefty at that scale.

One idea was to have the SA act as a reroll pool when activated - each point would provide a reroll on one of the 2d6.  Each point could only be used once  per activation - ie when the pool is used up, some story would have to pass before it could be activated again.  This adds bookkeeping.

Another idea is SA as a _minimum_ dice roll for one die.  In this option, the lowest of the 2d6 is raised to the SA value.

Or one die might be a different color.  If it rolls less than or equal the SA value, you add the roll of a third die.  I like this one best.

[Ron Edwards]

Ummmm ....

I don't know why it took so long for me to get to this, but we can't be discussing Traveller per se in this forum. Not allowed.

Alan, are we talking about "Alan's Traveller-inspired indie RPG design" or about Traveller? If the former, then let's get more specific about that, and if the latter, I'm gonna hafta close the thread or maybe move it to Theory.

Best,
Ron

[Alan]

I don't know why it took so long for me to get to this, but we can't be discussing Traveller per se in this forum. Not allowed.

Alan, are we talking about "Alan's Traveller-inspired indie RPG design" or about Traveller?

Both.  It's a design exercise for the purpose of better developing my own SF game, hence I put it under "Design."  It does involve applying TROS-like narrativist mechanics to the existing game Traveller.  Not theory, but experiment.

[Mike Holmes]

That's a good point, actually.

If it's an expriment to come up with a completely new game (and why not), then we can look at something that's inspired by the Traveller universe, but uses more TROS-like mechanics (The Riddle of Space?). Basically, I'd replace TROS chargen with a Traveller term-by-term generation system, to come up with characters. But the stats and abilities would be TROS pools.

Hmmm... Start with a small set of priority selections like TROS for race, social standing, homeworld selection, stats and Flaws/Abilities. No skills/proficiencies (other than are added by homeworld, which might actually be several selections) Then each term just lowers certain skill TNs or adds dice to pools as appropriate. Sorta like selecting a whole bunch of small packages instead of just taking two large ones. Then aging just subtracts from stat pools again.

Could work. Could work well.

Mike

[DP]

TROS--The Reason of Space?

Jeez--your post contains great fuel for a mindstorm, Mr. Holmes. What if each of a character's "terms" in this Traveller-like game brought into being or reinforced a trope/SA? It'd be like the lifepath system from games like Cyberpunk or Tales of Gargentihr, but with a "lesson" or determination taken away by the character: "Year One: Learned that Duty in the Navy is subordinate to ambition. Determined not to become one of them."

"P.S. Learned to fly an Air/Raft, whatever the hell that is."

[Mike Holmes]

Dave, that's it exactly.

Mike

[Blake Hutchins]

Let me suggest the term "Memes" instead of Motives, if you want a more S-F flavor.

Best,

Blake