#Cepheus Engine

[para-imperium]

Scavenger: Caches and Prizes has launched on Kickstarter!

Thousands of years in the future, the Federation connected dozens of stars with its wormhole network. Colonizing hundreds of planets with transgenic "parahumans" using technology that seemed like magic.

And then the wormholes collapsed, taking the Federation with them.

Now colonies struggle to survive, free of their imperialist overlords but bereft of the technology they provided. Fabricators and medical nanotech alike failed with the Federation's network. Former admirals turned pirate warlords prey upon defenseless worlds. Unrestrained corporations suck planets dry of resources. And mysterious probes wander the depths of space.

But hope is not lost, the wrecks of Federal starships and abandoned stations hold the promise of advanced technologies that could alleviate hunger or unlock the stars again, in the right hands. If you're brave enough to chance the dangers of radiation leaks, malfunctioning robots, or the dreaded Kessler cascade you may bring back great riches. You may find anything from a laser rifle to a technomage's staff that might as well be magic to you. If you're lucky you might even find a ship that you can patch up with scrap.

Scavenger: Caches and Prizes runs off the Cepheus Engine's simple 2D6 system. Just roll two six-sided dice, add modifiers, and if your total is 8 or higher you succeed. Character creation is a mini-game in and of itself: Create parahuman characters based on a variety of pre-made species or create your own from an array of genetic traits and adaptations. Then develop your character's backstory to determine their starting skills and equipment, maybe you'll roll up your own ship.

The Cepheus Engine is a fork of the classic sci-fi RPG Traveller released under the Open Gaming License by Samardan Press and refined by many other publishers such as Stellagama Publishing and their Cepheus Light or Cepheus Deluxe systems. Scavenger will contain a fully playable copy of Cepheus Light as well as being fully compatible with other Cepheus products. 

The rules for the setting's unique technology and species-creation system have been developed. All I need now are more illustrations. If you can help me commission just ten more pieces, the book will be a lot more colorful when it's published.

You might even be able to commission a cameo of your original character in the book.

[hardspaceships]

DSV Far Horizon from the Orbital 2100 RPG. Conducted the first crewed landings of Pluto and Tartarus (a rogue extrasolar planet).

Art by Ian Stead

[pocgamer]

Bringing Starfield to the Tabletop!

You’re playing it on your computer or console. You’re loving it. You want to bring it to the tabletop. This post is all about bringing Starfield from the screen to the gamer table! Continue reading Untitled

[bryanharryrombough]

[from-the-notebooks]

Post Zombie Apocalypse Setting for Traveller/Cepheus

Sixty years ago the world collapsed. The zombie infection came and went but humans have survived. Our numbers are few but we have rebounded and have reformed in ways our ancestors would have found strange and disturbing.

Sixty Years After is a new and unique setting for Cepheus/Traveller. Players take the roles of people trying to survive in this new world and find their place amongst its groups and conflicts as society begins again

The 41 pages of new factions contains not only their goals, leadership, and size but also their social structures, cultures, methods of subsistance, ways of war, histories, etc. There are also many new pieces of gear, including flintlock firearms (with new rules for their reloading) and improvised ceramic armor. It also contains tables for careers, events, and mishaps for character creation.

[from-the-notebooks]

I will say that in my opinion there are far better games to ignore all the rules of and just make new shit up for your chosen setting. I think Cepheus would be my preferred game for that. It is my go to for making shit up.

So, on the official D&D TikTok and YouTube accounts, they have a video where they're explicitly emphasizing that the new PHB is the "largest PHB ever", which is an interesting way of marketing towards a target demographic who think the best thing about your book is that they don't have to read it.

The latest PHB is going to be the greatest PHB for people who think learning the rules makes you the devil and that you can ignore the rules anyway which is why the game is good

[goatse-syndicalist-69]

Over the past several months @robotgirlbutt and I have been developing a sword & sorcery ttrpg intended for open table play. It is today with great excitement that I get to announce that we are finished with our alpha testing and are opening up the table to anyone interested. If you don't know what an Open Table is I suggest giving Justin Alexander's Open Table Manifesto a once over.

So what is the Bloodfall TTRPG? It's a sword & sorcery ttrpg (think Elric, Conan, or Fafhrd & The Gray Mouser) that's loosely based on the Cepheus Engine/Mongoose 1st Edition Traveller and our love of 1974 D&D. It is also mostly a dungeoncrawler but has a lot of room to grow out from that featuring heavily hexcrawling, social encounter procedures, and a fully integrated war game. This bit is probably the most important part of what Bloodfall is, a re-unity between tabletop roleplaying and war gaming.

The main campaign takes place in and around the Free City of Kyrath and its sprawling undercity megadungeon but we're working on adding a lot more regional wilderness locations in the near future. So if you're interested in a comprehensive sword & sorcery tabletop roleplaying system designed by a team of queer writers you can DM me for the server that we're running the table out of.

[thisnameisnotspokenfor]

If Asha and Ceph were to meet other Disney/DreamWorks/Pixar characters,who would they get along with the least to the best?

Would Asha adore Hiccup's inventions?

I got this idea from thinking how toothless would react to ceph's true form.

On a side note

Which would Asha prefer,the assassins or her monthly.

And who would win Ceph's insanity or Baymax's care

Also who would win in a fashion debate between Edna Mode and Ceph?

It’s been a hot minute since I’ve seen a dreamworld movie so I’ll do Disney

((WARNING THIS IS LONG))

In terms of other Disney characters especially heroines I think Asha would get along not so well with Merida and maybe Aurora. Merida is sort of a frenemy. Merida breaks rules and societal expectations while Asha adheres too them a bit too much. Merida turned to magic to solve her problems- Asha hates that. So they’d probably be a little uncool with each other at times which ngl would be sorta funny because I imagine that Asha is unfortunately the only person in the joke who flat out understands Merida says. But I think they’d probably tolerate each other for the most part.

As for Aurora well I think Asha would understand her being upset at her life being suddenly uprooted but I mean considering Asha is a peasant if you ever wanna annoy her just be a princess who cries over having to be royal. She’ll politely tune you out in a heartbeat.

I think she’d be neutral on Anna. Not in a bad way. They’re on two completely different ends of the spectrum in everything.

I feel like she’d be torn over Elsa. Really torn.

Not sure how she’d get along with Raya tbh.

I think she’d respect Cinderella a lot- especially when Asha gains some more retrospective skills. (I’ll go into more detail about this in the future)

She’d get along super well with Mirabel, Kida, Snow White, Mulan, Rapunzel and Tiana. Works for her dreams like Tiana (with skepticism in the magic part), she’s uncovering her people’s past for the betterment of their society like Kida, relates to the chores/hardwork and admires Snow White’s good spirit and Mirabel? Goodness these two would be therapy buddies. They’ve both been the black sheep of their respective groups by not being born with magical abilities to serve the purpose of the authoritative figure who uses magic to rebuild a society and is paranoid of the past repeating itself.

I feel like she’d also get along well with Moana too! They both love sailing, and pushing boundaries. She thinks Moana is super clever as well

((I feel like her and rapunzel have a lot in common too- the authoritative figure in their life belittling them, and wanting to chase their dreams so they’d probably be close as well))

Asha would love Hiccups inventions! (I admit I’ve never seen how to train your dragon)

Uhh Toothless don’t look at that…you don’t want to see that….

And to answer your questions:

Asha is taking her monthly over the assassins.

Ceph is not openly insane to people he doesn’t know. So if anything if he met Baymax he’d act like a normal person at first (he’d be very curious about just what Baymax is)

That last one is a tough one. I mean Edna was spitting some facts but let’s be honest- If any of those things- getting sucked into a tornado, a plane engine, a rocket/bomb, etc happened to Ceph. He’d walk it off.

So they’d be at an impasse because I can’t see either side relenting and this is probably the only thing that even magnifico would side with Cepheus on.

Star clothes is different from earth clothes in SO MANY ways (supernatural properties, they’re very resilient, they change to match the sky etc). So the best outcome is for Ceph to just give her some star clothes and she lets him keep his cape.

Hopefully.

I might do a separate post on how Ceph would interact with other characters.

[zarpaulus]

National Game Development Month

Instead of NaNoWriMo this year I'm participating in National Game Design Month and working on a tabletop RPG based on my Parahuman Space setting. The rules are based on the Cepheus Engine, an open content fork of the long-standing sci-fi RPG Traveller. It's a fairly simple system reminiscent of the "most popular RPG" save that you roll 2d6 instead of 1d20 and you never get bloated with hit points, you stay a squishy mortal the whole campaign (I recommend some armor). You can read the full system reference document on this site but the final Parahuman Space RPG will include all the rules needed for play. The RPG assumes campaigns set after the collapse of the Federation, and instead of the typical tramp trader or mercenary campaigns seen in Traveller the default campaign will be based around salvaging wrecked starships. AKA "space dungeons." Think Hardspace Shipbreaker or Lethal Company rather than Elite: Dangerous. So far I have the character creation and skills chapters, which I've attached to my most recent Patreon post for patrons. I needed to come up with a system for genetic modification of parahuman characters, but the skills are mostly unchanged from the SRD save for removing all references to gravitic vehicles. I also set career mishaps to non-lethal by default ;) I intend to leave the Combat chapter mostly unchanged as well. Psionics, though, will be replaced with Technomagic while the Equipment chapter will need extensive work for augmentations. Originally, I was planning to use a more "rules-light" system titled Faster Than Light: Nomad for this project, but the step system that used for building spaceships was not as conducive to tearing them apart for spare parts. Eventually I intend to bring this project to Kickstarter, I'm hoping that if even if you decide not to subscribe to my Patreon you will throw a few bucks my way once it launches.

Posted using PostyBirb

[para-imperium]

Oops, Kickstarter Launched Early

Okay, I thought that was the "submit for approval" button but apparently I already did that part. Scavenger: Caches and Prizes is now live! http://kck.st/4iPwHvP

Posted using PostyBirb

[dwarvendiaries]

I've absolutely gotten a few friends into Mongoose 2e Traveller and I want to have them play the original as well. Is there a version you prefer? I honestly have problems deciding between them.

Bear in mind I haven't played Classic so my only experience is reading the first 3 LBBs. Mechanically Classic Traveller (CT) and Mongoose Traveller 2nd Edition(MgT2) are similar, with the core resolution mechanic of rolling 2d6 and adding the relevant dice modifiers.

So, which would I prefer to play? Mongoose 2e

Look MgT2 has issues with errata, FAQs, and versioning, but it's well-supported with online resources and provides much needed updates to the technology allowing a game more inline with the current space opera expectations. Classic Traveller by contrast is a "dead game". This means you can buy all of the rules on an affordable CD, and it's got proper and cohesive errata too, but on the other hand, there's only so much Zeerust when it comes to computers one can take.

I also imagine I'd have a tougher time pitching CT's basic character generation rules to my players the MgT2. Skills in Classic Traveller represent years of experience, which means the game tends to produce more focused characters.

CT combat is also less forgiving. This is a difficult one because on the one hand, I like the theory behind combat matrices. They really make players' fighting style feel unique and interesting but they make combat less approachable for new players, damage soak armor requires less table maths (This is why I like how Cepheus engine uses Mongoose-style armor but Classic style ranges). CT also has morale roles for the PCs which I'm not particularly a fan of. Simultaneous resolution is cool AF though.

Last, I kind of prefer CT's graphic design. Yes, I know black and white is basically cheating on colour harmony, but it works. And frankly, I have angry thoughts about the new character creation flowchart in the 2022 update.

Just because you are already playing MgT2 it shouldn't stop you from playing some Classic adventures. You can find a lot of adventures for CT which need minimal conversion to play with MgT2.

[kosmos2999]

Star Trek: The Animted Series 50th Anniversary Episode Review

Episode: The Terratin Incident

Season: 1

Episode: 11

Stardate: 5577.3 – 5577.7

Original airdate: November 17, 1973

Written by: Paul Schneider

Directed by: Hal Sutherland

Music by: Yvette Blais and Jeff Michaels

Executive producers: Lou Scheimer and Norm Prescott

Studio: Filmation Associates

Network: NBC

Series created by: Gene Roddenberry

Cast:

Captain James T. Kirk (voice by William Shatner)

Mr. Spock (voice by Leonard Nimoy)

Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (voice by DeForest Kelly)

Lt. Uhura, Breil (voice by Nichelle Nichols)

Lt. Hikaru Sulu (voice by George Takei)

Eng. Montgomery Scott, Arex, Gabler, Mendant of the Terratin (voices by James Doohan)

Nurse Christine Chapel (voice by Majel Barrett)

Synopsis:

The USS Enterprise is investigating the remains of Arachna, a burned out supernova.to take measures of its radiation and volume expansion. While Arachna reached its peak of radiation emissions, Uhura has detected a radio signal from the Cepheus star, a garbled message of an ancient code not used in two centuries. Spock deciphers the word “terratin” from the code.

Captain Kirk decides to interrupt the research mission on Arachna to to the planet located in Cepheus where it is the source of the signal. Dr. McCoy thinks it is a meaningless signal, but Kirk keeps on in sake of finding intelligent life that needs their help.

While they approached that planet, Spock finds a reading of an energy not perceptible to the rest of the crew. Spock warns the captain of that, but kirk orders to set the vessel in that planet's orbit. It is composed of a crystalline structure and a huge volcanic activity. As the Enterprise was set in orbit, a strange beam attacks the ship. It paralyzes all the crew and the instruments for a brief moment.

Once recovered from the effects of the ray, Engineer Scott reports that all the dilithium crystals are destroyed like peels of oranges and also the its connections. At first, they were noticed that the ship and its instruments are growing in size. But after a moment Spock asserts they were the ones who are shrinking.

All the organic life and materials in the Enterprise are reducing their size by a factor of 0.3. The space between molecules are getting closer but they do not lose their weight. After an analysis, they have half an hour before they can not be capable of using the ship instruments.

Sulu tries to shoot a phaser to the source of the shrinking rays, but he falls from the console breaking one of his legs. Doctor McCoy tried to repair the damage to Sulu's bones but his instrumen failed. Nurse Chapel suggest to use the ear's bones repair instrument. When she gets the tool, falls into a fishbowl. The captain rescue her.

Kirk is beamed down to the planet at his orders trying to find the responsibles of the damege to the crew and his natural size due the restoration effect of the transporter. The transporter is set to beam him back up to the ship in ten minutes.

Back in the Enterprise, Kirk tries to find the personnel from the bridge but they were tranported to the planet by the aliens. He sends a message to the inhabitants of the planet to get back the crew members or he would destroy their city.

The aliens send a message back to the captain. They are a civilization composed of the predecessors of an expeditionary mission who were lost there due to the shrinkage effect of that planet's radiation. Originally called Terra Ten. In their case their normal size cannot be restored.

They are in great danger of dying due to the great volcanic activity in their surroundings. although they are a proud race who never begs for help, this time, their leader, the Mendant begs Kirk to save all the inhabitants he could. He also offer all the dilithium crystals to restore the energy of the Enterprise.

The captain first intitiates a process to restore all the ship's crew members and get all the crystals needed. As he finish, then he sends a transporter ray to beam up the lilliputian city to the ship. The city's ruler was so grateful that he named all the Enterprise's crew as Honorable Terratins forever.

The captain will help the Terratins to move to the Earth-like planet, Verdains on a fertile and well watered plain in just ten days.

Fascinating Facts:

The writer of this episode, Paul Schneider, previously wrote two episodes for season one of The Original Series, “Balance Of Terror” and “The Squire Of Gothos.

[bryanharryrombough]

Dunno how long it will last, but there's a 30% off Clement Sector RPG sale at DriveThruRPG right now.

Clement Sector is a Cepheus Engine* near-future space opera RPG, here's the blurb from the core book:

In 2210, scientists discovered a wormhole allowing travel to the opposite side of the Milky Way galaxy.  Once across, exploration teams discovered worlds far more suited to human habitation than those in star systems nearer to Earth.  Were they terraformed by some unknown race?  Are they just a coincidence in the vast diversity of the universe? Over the ensuing years humans left Earth and began to colonize these worlds.  Nation-backed colonies.  Corporate colonies.  People who simply no longer felt compelled to remain on Earth.  The best and brightest. In 2331, the unthinkable happened.  The wormhole collapsed leaving those in Clement Sector cut off from Earth.  Now these new worlds and new civilizations must stand on their own. The year is 2342.  Adventure awaits!

*an OGL TTRPG based on the Traveller SRD

[jamesdavisnicoll]

Bundle of Holding: Moon Toad Cepheus

Cepheus Engine tabletop Classic Traveller-esque science fiction roleplaying ebooks from Moon Toad Publishing.

[thydungeongal]

Sword of Cepheus Character Creation: Vagabond

For those of you not in the know, The Sword of Cepheus is a Cepheus Engine RPG in the good old swords and sorcery (as well as swords and sandals and sword and planet) genre. What is the Cepheus Engine? Well, it's the system that Traveller, the classic sci-fi RPG of space-trucking and dying in character creation, runs on. I am unsure of the details of why the Cepheus Engine has been turned into a generic, open system, but since the Traveller licence is currently held by Mongoose Publishing and Mongoose was at one point swept up in the OGL hype leading to at least some of their games (including RuneQuest) being made open gaming content under the OGL, I suspect it to be a similar situation here.

Anyway, Sword of Cepheus is an adaptation of the Cepheus Engine into the fantasy genre and to someone whose only exposure to Traveller has been the very first edition of the game (known as Classic Traveller these days) it looks very familiar. Barring the fact that there's no dying in character creation, although characters can still end up badly wounded.

I'll be rolling up a character for Sword of Cepheus, because it's one of those systems where character creation is nice and gamey.

What I know of my character already: As per the poll I ran, I will be making a Vagabond. But since I also happened to notice that this game has options for non-human characters and I'm particularly fond of goblins, I will be making a separate Goblin character. (Non-human characters have their own careers they are locked into, and while Sword of Cepheus is nowhere near as strict about forcing characters to only advance within the skills afforded by their career as something like D&D, it is still a fun nod to Basic D&D's demihuman classes.)

Anyway, a lot of text under the cut:

Sword of Cepheus uses six stats, some of them familiar, some less so: Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Standing. To create a character you simply assign an array to these stats in whatever order you like: 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.

That array happens to be more or less what you would get by rolling 2d6 for every stat, but slightly nudged upwards. In fact, 2d6 per stat was the way Classic Traveller handled character creation, and it is provided here as an alternate stat generation method. I'll be going with the default method for now.

The game tells me a bit about what the stats do, there's a derived modifier from each ability score. A score of 5 (the lowest in the array) happens to be the threshold for having a -1 modifier, with values of 6-8 yielding a modifier of +0, with 9-11 translating to a +1. So our character will be pretty average to start with. I will be assigning that 8 to EDU, because an EDU of 8+ is the minimum needed to access a career's Advanced Education options, so that sounds good. I'm picturing a character who is sly and roguish, clever and quick on their feet, but not particularly well-equipped to handle direct physical conflict. This is what their stats look like:

STR 5, DEX 9, END 6, INT 10, EDU 8, SOC 7

My first decision after this is to pick my character's background from a short list and set one of the skills tied to that background to a rating of 1. Skills in this game start out with a skill rating of nil, meaning that your character is untrained in it and takes a -3 untrained penalty on attempts to use the skill, but in character creation characters will end up with many skills bumped up to rank 0, cancelling out the penalty, after which a skill rating of 1 already gives the character a +1 bonus on checks related to that skill. It's a very traditional ability modifier + skill rating versus target number system, only using 2d6.

Anyway, the Aristocracy background appeals to me the most: I like the idea of a noble scion fallen on hard times, forced into a life of adventuring. The Aristocracy background explicitly states that a character from said background may no longer have a noble title, which makes sense given our character's distinctly average SOC (for reference: the Noble career, distinct from Aristocracy background, is available only to characters of SOC 10 or higher).

The Aristocracy background gives us a choice between three skills: Carousing, Riding, and Govern. Carousing is the skill used for gathering information and mingling in social settings, as well as gambling! So that seems perfect for our character. We pick up Carousing 1 for our character.

Our character has now graduated out of being 14 years old and now we beging the most interesting part of character creation: career advancement. Back in Traveller, characters would pick a service branch and then basically go on 4-year "tours" in that service branch, picking up skills and abilities, and also rolling for random events which included dying horribly. Sword of Cepheus' system is much the same, except we are by default locked into one Career (although there is an optional rule allowing characters to move between careers: this is something I think could be expanded upon, with various careers allowing for "exits" into other careers) and there is no chance of dying in character creation, although there is still room for hilarity. Looking at the master character creation table I decide that 3 Terms is well and good enough to get a rounded character. We've already got our career picked for us too: Vagabond, an itinerant wanderer and general ne'er-do-well.

We first note our career's Service Skills (and this terminology really makes it clear this game is a hack of a military sci-fi game) and pick one of them to set to a skill rating of 1, and the others go to 0. There are exactly six service skills, so it would be theoretically possible to randomize this process as well. But I'm just going to pick Streetwise. So, taking into account our Background Skill, this is what our current skills look like:

Carousing 1, Survival 0, Streetwise 1, Melee 0, Deception 0, Sneak 0, Scout 0

At this point we get two Skill Levels we can distribute among skills from the Vagabond's lists of skills: Either Service, Specialist, or Advanced Education. The text is quite unclear as to whether the first skill level boosts a character's skill level to 0 or 1, but I look around for the Cepheus Engine SRD and the latter seems to be implied as the default. This makes me think that it is more cost-effective to ignore the skills we have already raised to 0 and instead focus on skills that our character doesn't have at all or has at level 1 already. I feel the text could stand to be a lot clearer with its intent here.

Anyway, I look at the Specialist skills category and notice a skill called Jack o'Trades, which reduces the Untrained penalty for using skills by 1 per rank. During my character's first term they can have a skill at a maximum of level 2, so. I'm just bumping that skill up by 2. To make a ridiculously well-rounded character.

Carousing 1, Survival 0, Streetwise 1, Melee 0, Deception 0, Sneak 0, Scout 0, Jack o'Trades 2

At the end of my character's first term I will also roll a Vagabond Event for them with a 2d6. The result is a 7, which guides me to look at the Life Event table, of which there are three: Hinterlands, Village, and City. The Hinterlands table happens to be the first one I see and I don't have a clear idea of my character yet, so I pick that one. My next roll is a 5 which gives my character this:

The local noble takes an interest in you, for better or worse. Either gain an Ally but lose a Benefit roll or gain an Enemy and gain a Benefit roll.

Brief explanation of what Benefit rolls are: once character creation is complete, we will be making a number of rolls equal to number of terms taken in a career's "Mustering Out Benefits" table (there's that mil sci-fi terminology again), and getting a bunch of benefits to start with. I feel that making an enemy of a noble fits our character concept well, so we'll go with that one.

Our character is now 18 years of age and we're starting their second term. To continue with making our character ridiculously well-rounded I am once again putting a level in Jack o'Trades, as well as buying the skill Liaison 1 (used for negotiation, haggling, impressing people, etc.).

Carousing 1, Survival 0, Streetwise 1, Melee 0, Deception 0, Sneak 0, Scout 0, Jack o'Trades 3, Liaison 1

And once again, we roll for a Vagabond Event. A result of 5 gets us this:

Foreigners – Your travel among strangers. Gain an Ally or a Language.

Because I am imagining a very traditional swords and sorcery world but I somewhat want to invert the dynamics a bit, I am thinking of a Thirteenth Warrior situation where our character, from a heavily SWANA-coded region, travels for a time and ends up in fantasy viking land. That also perfectly ties into them having made an enemy with a noble, and also ties into their aristocratic background and loss of social station. Besides our character's native language, they now speak Fantasy Viking.

Our character is now 22 years of age as we begin our third and final term. For skills I am picking Riding 1 and Leadership 1: I assume that during our character's time in viking land they ended up fighting alongside their viking friends, doing horsemanship, that sort of thing.

Carousing 1, Survival 0, Streetwise 1, Melee 0, Deception 0, Sneak 0, Scout 0, Jack o'Trades 3, Liaison 1, Riding 1, Leadership 1

And finally it's time for our last Vagabond Event: a 7 gives us a roll on the Life Events table again, so let's refer to that. Based on what we've established of our character's situation thus far, they are probably in what counts as Hinterlands in this setting. Another 7 gives us the following result:

You form a close relationship with someone. Gain an Ally.

Of course our character became sworn brothers with a cool guy named Brynjolf, his BFF. Together they intend to one day return to my character's homeland and probably kick the ass of whoever it is made them lose their station.

With that our character has come to the end of their third term and at 26 years of age it's time to roll their four mustering out benefits (three for three terms, one for a life event result). These are all separate 1d6 rolls, and before each I must choose whether they will be Gold or Material Benefits. I could also trade Benefits for skills. Gold does not particularly interest me, so I will be simply rolling all four on the Material Benefits table: 4, 3, 5, 5

Which comes out to... Weapon, Ally, Ally, Ally. :D

Our character has hella allies.

We also get to pick two traits for our character (the number of starting traits is the number of Terms divided by 2, rounded up)! These are very much not unlike feats in D&D parlance, being little ways to customize our character and make them a bit more unique. Looking at my options the following two stand out:

Awareness Prerequisite: INT 9+ The character has sharp senses and is difficult to surprise. When rolling the Scout skill to avoid surprise the character throws with Advantage. This applies even if the character does not have the Scout skill and rolls with the Unskilled penalty. Note that this trait does not apply when the character is setting up a deliberate ambush; the Hunter Trait covers that instead.

Danger Sense Prerequisite: DEX 9+ The character instinctively senses danger and can try to evade enemy attacks even when unaware of the assailant. It can be very difficult to ambush this character effectively. When the character is attacked by an enemy the character is unaware of, throw DEX 8+; if successful, the character uses their Dodge or Parry bonus (see the Combat chapter for further details).

Our character is all but impossible to catch off-guard.

Anyway, our character turned out somewhat less remarkable than I had hoped, but I still have a good idea for him: a young noble scion whose family was all murdered in power struggle between the noble houses of his nation, who escaped and traveled to the far North to live in exile, but who intends to return not to reclaim his title but to simply take revenge for the death of his family. To this end, he has made allies many skilled warriors in the North who seek to accompany him on his quest, including his BFF and sworn brother Brynjolf. Playing around with some name generators, I eventually end up with a name for him: Shamash-Nasir

Shamash-Nasir STR 5, DEX 9, END 6, INT 10, EDU 8, SOC 7 Carousing 1, Survival 0, Streetwise 1, Melee 0, Deception 0, Sneak 0, Scout 0, Jack o'Trades 3, Liaison 1, Riding 1, Leadership 1 Traits: Awareness, Danger Sense Benefits: Weapon, Ally (x4), Enemy

We also get a starting package of equipment. This is what the Vagabond package looks like:

Dagger (2d6) Bedroll Cudgel (2d6) Hide Armor (3) Bread, course 9GP 98CP

The rest of character creation is simply doing math for stuff like our character's Stamina (hit points) and Lifeblood (meat points), but that won't be necessary now. What matters is that we got a neat little guy out of this!

[stardriveskickstart]

RPG Draft Complete

I've finished a first draft of my Cepheus Engine RPG based on my @para-imperium setting, specifically set during the same era as the serial story Horizon: Salvaged Heroes.

The Cepheus Engine is based on Traveller, with straightforward 2D6+modifiers rolls and a lifepath system of character creation (I tried to make it less lethal), but under an open license.

Campaigns take place after the collapse of an interstellar empire, and focus on salvaging the wreckage it left behind. Something like a cross between Hardspace Shipbreaker, The Expanse, Lethal Company, and Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

Most characters will be the descendants of genetically engineered "parahumans" designed for colonizing space. I've created a system of traits and adaptations for building custom parahuman genotypes.

If that sounds interesting, you can check it out at my Patreon on https://www.patreon.com/posts/rpg-first-draft-117229171?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

I'm still working on the title. How does "Salvaged Heroes: Post-Apocalyptic Space Opera" sound?

I’ve got two other books in this setting if you’d like to check them out.