Golden Anvil

Last night's roleplaying went well. We created characters and started a short introductory adventure. Everyone had fun, and everyone is looking forward to next week.

One of the things that I really like about Classic Traveller is that the system (not the setting, but system itself) has a major theme of making sense out of random data. As sareth hinted at in his comment to my last post, it is actually possible for your character to die during character creation. This works, because character creation involves stepping your character though some number of years of their life in order to see what happened to them and what skills they acquired prior to the start of the adventure. You start with some stats, decide if you want to try and get into college, and then move on into a career of some kind (usually tied to the military or interstellar merchants). At some point, you may lose your job, or decide that it's time to retire, and at that point is where your character begins play. It's a system that makes character creation fun, and gives a very interesting framework upon which you can build a character story.

My friend from church is playing a character named Melvin J Montegue Seamour Thudpucker III. No, really, he is. Call him Melvin J or Mel for short. And no, he doesn't know what the J stands for. He ended up serving four years as an engineer in the Imperial Navy before being discharged as a result of his drinking (initially sparked after all his buddies died in a fire fight). He started the game with no money (I was kind and gave him 50 credits of pocket change), few skills, at the age of 23, with a future that looked rather bleak.

Mrs. Kheldar is playing a character named Maggie Johansen. She grew up on a technologically backward planet (they've been stuck back in the early gunpowder age), graduated from college and enlisted in the medical branch of the Navy with high hopes for the future. Unfortunately, she too served for only 4 years before being discharged at the age of 27. She did end up with a decent sized bundle of cash, and a few useful skills.

My friend's daughter (the 14 year old) apparently had the magic dice for the evening. She is playing a character named Dame Gabreila Adria Wisman. That's right, she was knighted when she was young for saving the life of a local noble. After a failed attempt at college, she left her planet to see the galaxy, joining the crew of a Free Trader (small, privately owned merchant ship). She served there for 12 years before deciding to move on to other things. She starts the game at 31 years of age. She has a number of useful skills, and a nice bundle of cash to her into the future.

A couple of interesting things happened during character creation. First, the youngest player in the group (by a very significant margin, I might add) is playing the oldest character. Heh. She also had an interesting career. Her first year working as a merchant allowed her to pick up some skill with Law. This was immediately followed by spending her second year smuggling.

I rolled randomly on a chart I put together (weighted based off the log of the planetary populations) to determine where the group would start the game. Humorously enough I hit the 0.1% chance of them starting on a radioactive mining planet with a population of 84. I had them decide why they were there and take some time to introduce themselves. I liked Maggie's explanation that when she took the job of delivering and installing some medical equipment, she neglected to read the brochure on the planet, and ended up stuck there looking for another job.

Anyway, after some amount of introductions in the "burger joint" on the space station, a couple walked in and explained that they were looking for some off-worlders to help them get off planet. Apparently their families hated each other, and they fear that violence would break out if they didn't leave. They offered cash (including some up front), which got Mel's acceptance right way. That's pretty much where we left things. Next week they'll find a ship, pick a destination, and deal with any complications that might arise.

Well, enough for now. Perhaps tomorrow I'll let you guys know about my project for this month.

Link of the day (I may or may not keep doing these): Dwarf Fortress. This is a game about managing a group of dwarves as they delve into a mountain, build a fortress, and just generally try to stay alive. Really sucky graphics, but absolutely amazing game play. If you have questions, check the wiki, or just ask me.