Traveller Variants

[Leitz]

I'm thinking again, which is always a risky proposition...

There are two character types that I like, but the rules don't seem to support well. The first is the "rogue" or "spy" character. I mean, yeah, stealth is there, but how about reading a contact? Developing a plan to take down the bad guy via a con job? I'm not sure "Tactics" quite covers it.

Before I start rambling, be advised that my ultimate goal is to take something like Cepheus Engine and add careers and mechanics that we can share via creative commons licensing or similar. Everything winds up freely available.

As a game mechanism, how would you handle:

• Long term embedded agent "living the lie" in their entire life
• Awareness of differenet cultures
• Basic tradecraft like following someone, in a vehicle or on foot, without being noticed.
• Spotting someone following you
• Building your organization's resistant to being spied upon
• General intelligence gathering devices and deployment
• Collating intel into a reasonably accurate understanding
• Reading a person
• Intimidating, or convincing someone of something that's not true
• Spotting hard to see things, reading lips
• Sleight of hand
• lockpicking, safe cracking, escaping from bonds, etc

We assume fictional spies can be trained in these things, above their native ability. That's a lot of skills, though, and it doesn't cover the athletics or gun stuff.


The other "class" of character is the noble in a society of peers. Sure, the noble gets a reaction modifier from the local police. How do they manage household expenses? What threats are more attuned to reducing their influence or position, and what can they do to build their defenses? How to interstellar ducal economics work, anyway? How do you track the rise and fall of agreements, alliances, and transitory friends?

What if you extend that to any larger organization? If a manager has "Admin" and a leader has "Leadership", where do you find the visionary social entrepreneurs who change corporations and society? There is something of luck and opportunity, but there are executives who learn how to be transformational. What do they learn? How do you build conflicts for them as PCs to deal with, and how do you track longer term change?

[AsenRG]

Mongoose Traveller 1e had books dedicated to the rogues, spies and nobles for this very reason:). It's just that they're not OGL, so not part of Cepheus Engine...

In fact, you'd be well-advised to steer clear of them if you want to share it with the CE community;). In this regard, starting from the bases is a good idea.
More to come after I give it some serious thought. But I'd note that a lot of these things you mention are covered already in the rules, even if there could be more detailed rules and even mini-games based around them!

[Leitz]

Very intent on going back to historical and theatrical sources for data. I'm happy to respect other's intellectual property.

I have this "grand plan" to write a game variant of Cepheus; removing bits, and adding bits. The 2d6 mechanism and modifiers; with frameworks for individuals and groups to add their own stuff. Not sure how well it will work, or even if it will get off the ground. We'll see.

[BackworldTraveller]

Using Mongoose 2 skills sets, and how I'd play it only...
The skills needed for various roles vary considerably depending on the role being played. Someone who is embedding themselves in a society to observe and report doesn't need the same skill set or mind-set as someone who is sneaking into a location to sabotage it. The former need a good skill at not being noticed while fitting in (Deception, Art(Performance), Carousing); the latter need a good skill at not been noticed by not being observed (Deception, Stealth, Athletics(Endurance)).

The former also need a viable background that is not disprovable while the latter could be anyone.

Culture is pretty-much covered by Streetwise/Diplomacy plus Science(Philosophy) and Science(History)

Tradecraft is another matter. Stealth is a good indicator, and communications (in the non-electronic sense) but so is Recon (to spot that tail) and performance art (not to give the fact that you've spotted it away)

Building organisations that are resistant to spying is hard...indeed the history books suggest that it isn't really feasible for all that long. The best you can hope for is a delay in information leakage. The probability of leaks is proportional to the number of connections and thus to the square of the number of people who know it. 0,1,3,6,10,15,21, etc. If one in 10 connections will leak, it doesn't take long for that to be an almost certainty! Science (Psychology) may help.

Devices and Deployment is Electronics (Comms)

Intel collation and analysis is an Admin task.

Reading a person is Science (Psychology), (or Carouse or Diplomacy or Streetwise at a pinch)

Intimidation and convincing is straight Persuade

Spotting stuff is Recon or Science (Linguistics)

Sleight of hand: Deception and Athletics(Agility)

Lockpicking, etc: Electronics and/or Mechanics and/or Athletics(Agility)

[BackworldTraveller]

Some of this issue is "how do you get players to play a character with Leadership-4 when they are natural followers; or Carouse+2 when they are introverts; or Admin+1 when they are disorganised". Part of the issue is that social networks are incredibly diverse and complex. 100 senators each with between 1 and 100 staff and several million constituents are difficult to prepare as individuals - yet each interaction with them by characters is as individuals. Much easier to land on a barren desert community full of bandits and blow it up!

[Dave]

reading a contact - possibly Streetwise, Carouse, Recon or Persuade depending on what you're after. But if you're roleplaying the scene it's the GM's job to present it and the player's job not to "play stupid" until they get a skill roll.
Developing a plan to take down the bad guy via a con job - Best handled with a task chain rather than a single roll. This is one I would expect a player or group to come up with some kind of plan on their own rather than just asking what to roll though.
Long term embedded agent "living the lie" in their entire life - Need the basics of their cover career, plus Deception.
Awareness of differenet cultures - Streetwise, Carouse, Social Science
Basic tradecraft like following someone, in a vehicle or on foot, without being noticed - Stealth, sometimes Streetwise or Carouse*
Spotting someone following you - Recon, obviously, sometimes Streetwise depending on circumstance.
Building your organization's resistant to being spied upon - Not a skill, probably better offloaded to an organization level subsystem if you're going that route. Stars Without Number's faction system is worth looking at.
General intelligence gathering devices and deployment - Electronics, Comms, sometimes Remote Operations.
Collating intel into a reasonably accurate understanding - Only difficult question in this list, but as with building your organization better offloaded to another subsystem than handled as a character skill.
Reading a person - By design, Traveller lacks the entire suite of "I roll for the answer" skills that some other games have. There's no one good skill here, but that's okay.
Intimidating - By the book this is Persuade. That always seems a little odd, but then again games with an Intimidate skill always end up with one character using that and nothing else so I can deal with it.
convincing someone of something that's not true - Deception
Spotting hard to see things - Recon
reading lips - *
Sleight of hand - Stealth, Perform
lockpicking, safe cracking, escaping from bonds, etc - Stealth

Traveller skills are generally meant to be interpreted broadly not narrowly. So almost everything in that list is covered by existing skills and existing careers, and what isn't covered shouldn't necessarily be a single roll skill anyway.

*Mongoose' Rogue book introduced a very useful mechanism I've used in other circumstances, hamstrung by a poor execution. The useful mechanism is "lower of two skills" for things that are outside the normal bounds of one skill. So lockpicking might be lower of Stealth and Mechanic, reading lips might be the lower of Recon and Stealth, gunsmithing might be lower of Gun Combat - Slug Thrower and Mechanic, etc. The poor implementation was that Rogue added a new skill (Security, I think) that limited Stealth, and just about every other useful skill, rather than use existing ones as pairs. So you needed to use Rogue careers rather than core, and if you were using Rogue's take on skills characters were less competent than they should have been - skills like Stealth and others being capped by Security even in cases where they shouldn't have been, or a high Security being wasted on low other skills.

[rredmond]

Hey Dave! It’s been a while. Good to see you back in the forums!

[Dave]

Thanks, it's good to be back. I should probably post in the Interest thread, but I don't expect to do anything before the first of the year.