For day two of the Character Creation Challenge, I’m thinking I will do the obligatory Traveller character. It’ll be for Aduality{0≠2;100=108}, my space-fantasy setting (which was originally created in conversation with Traveller). The name is some pretentious over-wrought reference to fringe religions; it has meaning but that meaning doesn’t really matter.
In this setting, interstellar travel is achieved by means of the noetic drive, which transmutes a ship from normal matter into story-stuff. Storytellers called noopilots steer these drives by telling variations of the Casey Jones story to biological elements that used to be people (and still kinda are, even if they are really, really high on drugs). The variations in how they tell the story of Casey Jones determine to which world they travel, everything from their word choices to their plot structures to characterizations and side characters and even some of the events in their stories connect the memetic ecologies of one world with those of another, allowing the transmuted ship to jump between them.
Only orgone energy (real weirdness by rogue real-world psychologist Wilhelm Reich) can power the noetic drive’s transformation, so the (again, very real-world weirdness of) New Messiah is required for any starship. Also known as the Electric Jesus, it has been developed and expanded and improved upon from the instructions originally given to the real-world Spiritualist leader John Murray Spears. To translate: starships in this setting may be driven by storytelling, but they are powered by sex.
90s-style men in black used this technology to fight off an invasion by the Greys, which kickstarted the Interstellar Empire. There’s more, of course, but let’s get on with the challenge! This character, unexpectedly, could easily serve as a ship’s advocate (lawyer) and general face.
OK, so let’s start with a simple and exceedingly old-school method of rolling characteristics ~ no assigning, just roll them in order! We get a character with Strength 9 (+1), Dexterity 9 (+1), Endurance 4 (-1), Intellect 8 (0), Education 7 (0), and an ever-exciting Social Standing A (+1)! That means our character is just shy of knighthood ~ maybe we can change that during character creation!
We get three Background Skills and, since I’m doing the old-school thing of finding out who this character is by means of the character creation, rather than coming to character creation with a character idea, I’m gonna choose them randomly . . . . So, at the end of childhood, this character shows up with Art 0, Carouse 0, and Mechanic 0.
For some reason, this brings to mind a space-Kerouac ~ someone still fairly well-mired in “traditional” masculinity such as being a “car guy” but with a deeply artistic soul and a love of the party. The Beat Generation is honestly a perfect archetype for Traveller, I daresay, and possibly only prevented from having a stronger influence on the game by virtue of its generally being more English in its publication history than USian ~ after all, Ginsberg was the Third Great Defining American Poet™ after Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman. All three of those poets being queer is an oft-ignored important thing.
Kerouac’s history, of course, was more working-class than aristocratic. While I might throw in a touch of his friend William Burroughs, the heroin-addicted chaos magician who was the moneybags behind the Beat Generation in a lot of ways, I feel like this character might be more along the lines of the wealthy imitators of the Beat Generation that have littered the last three-quarters-of-a-century, the legions of hipsters who desperately want to capture the media-created cool of those mid-century artists.
This qween is definitively gonna try to go to college, so let’s see if they get in . . . . With a 3 on 2d6, not even their social standing can save their application. Scrambling for a career with every ounce of their eighteen-year-old body, they will try to get an early start among the literati, and handily succeed at becoming an artist. Basic training gives them Deception, Drive, Persuade, and Steward at 0.
During these early years as a writer, they are invited to take part in a controversial event or exhibition. They just barely manage to do well, pushing themselves to learn how to perform almost any function and figure out how to enact almost any skill (Jack-of-all-Trades 1), impressing not a few impressarios and gaining that knighthood! Truth be told, impressing all those critics took a decent amount of work and verbal tapdancing (Persuade 1). It is shocking just how many supposed intelligentsia need to have texts exhaustingly broken down into bite-sized pieces for them to easily digest . . . . Nonetheless, they do make their name and break into the artistic community! They seize this immediate rush of recognition as a chance to perform their writing before an audience, gaining Art (write) 1
After turning 22, this character ~ you know what? Let’s just name them Sal Paradise; I was always a fan of that name (it’s the name Kerouac gave his self-insert character in On the Road) ~ was sorely tempted to try to return to school, their (no, let’s actually choose pronouns: let’s do a she/her, using “Sal” as an alternative to “Sally”) her cocky insults directed at the not-so-intelligentsia hiding a sneaking worry that all her persuasion is just bullshitting to make insipid writing look historic. She swallows back these self-doubts, however, and pushes forward with her writing career.
In terms of powergaming, her decision was a brilliant one! She picks up another level of the god-skill, Jack-of-all-Trades, as she pushes herself to shatter the limits of art and writing in her efforts to prove herself. Many times she is faced with a desire to achieve some particular thing or effect with her writing, something she has no idea how to achieve. Every time, that desire drives her to further hone her incisive mind toward the advancement of her trade.
Certainly, she seems to be on the rise, as she soon achieves one of the greatest marks of appreciation an artist can receive ~ one of her pieces of writing is stolen between her 22nd and 26th birthday! The investigation brings her into the criminal underworld. Quite eagerly, if we’re being honest, but a win is a win. Sal quickly learns her way around, building contacts and learning etiquette. However, these clandestine pleasures soon prove an untenable distraction for Sal, costing her (by a single point on the die!) any advancement in his career.
Approaching her Saturn return after his 26th birthday, Sal continues grinding away on that bohemian milestone. The strange chemicals and iffy situations Sal’s new friends offer her further sharpen the blade of her thoughts, increasing her Intellect by 1. That’ll help with career advancement! (Sal gains a DM of +1 on Intellect rolls, like the advancement roll for her career assignment.) It also teaches her the wit and skill to use her writers’ mind in dicier situations, increasing her Deception by 1. This is when Sal writes her first major popularly successful text, a fanciful exploration of life beyond the rigid limits of normal lawful society. Especially well-received, it makes her a minor celebrity.
Now entering into his 30s, Sal continues plucking away at her writing, further developing her mind, increasing her Intellect by another level. She begins to suspect that her friends on the freer side of the law might have been stringing her along for more nefarious and less friendly purposes, as another of her pieces is stolen. This time, the investigation teaches her the importance of a quick eye and a quicker tongue, giving her a level each of Recon, Investigate, and Deception, as well.
In her mid-to-late 30s, Sal finally finds her way back into university, not as a student or a professor, but as a translator of foreign religious poetry. She is starting to turn more Gary Snyder or even Allen Ginsburg than Jack Kerouac, now ~ actually, definitely Ginsburg, as censorship or controversy pushes her out of the literati, blacklisting her among publishers and booksellers. Her Ferlinghetti was not as lucky or amazing as Ginsburg’s, it seems. I would normally be inclined to have her pre-game end here, but the mishap specifically gives her an easier time to qualify for her next career, and I don’t wanna waste that . . . .
Before her next career, however, Sal gets several benefits from her two decades as a writer. Six rolls, one of which gets a +1 bonus on the roll. It might be foolish, but artists don’t have a great cash benefits table, so I’m gonna use all those rolls on the other benefits table. That might have been a mistake, as the roll I give the bonus to is a 6 (thus equalling 7)! She could have gotten 80,000 credits, but instead she receives a marquesal subcontract and an education, as well as four contacts. Does the count approve of Sal’s controversial writing, or did they make her a marchioness as a means to silence and sideline her? I doubt Sal herself knows . . .
I think Sal is going to try to find out by leaning into her new title and trying her hand as a noble. It’s one of the harder careers to get into, but with a high social standing and a +2 bonus on the roll, I think Sal has a good chance. She also rolls an 11 on 2d6, so easy-peasy-pudding-annd-pie-kiss-all-the-girls-and-make-them-cry she manages to nestle herself among the subcontracted nobility, ruling over a whole star system. Well, she doesn’t really know or care about governance ~ she’s here to party and patronize artists like she was once. Can’t help picking up some knowledge of how to rule, however. She quickly picks up Diplomat 0, Admin 1, and improves her writing.
She met someone while partying her way through her 41st year. A whirlwind romance strangely full of witty chattering suggestion of conspiracy, hedonism, and life beyond the power of the Emperor or Company to limit. On Sal’s 42nd birthday, this mysterious wealthy woman gifted her a yacht and 10,000 credits, whispering to her that Sal should find her own freedoms along the spaceways. Through her headache the next morning, Sal learned that her marquesal contract had been changed, using some small-print to alter a few things here and there without Sal’s permission. She still held her title, and the powers thereof, but was no longer restricted by its duties. The count had decided to rule her system directly.
She left on her yacht, with some new friends, that very day, feeling age weaken and grow heavy her limbs.
Sal’s yacht ~ let’s call it the On the Road Again (there’s a Muppets theme in how I name starships in this setting) has 1d6 quirks . . . and she rolls a 6 XD Sal’s yacht has double maintenance costs, sensors upgraded by one type but also damaged (giving a -1 penalty), is severely damaged (10% Hull), a library computer full of erroneous information, and a -1 penalty to all repair attempts.
Just for shits and/or giggles, let’s throw together an idea of Sal’s homeworld. Wikipedia’s Random Article function generally names worlds for me, so let’s call it . . . Josephine (after Josephine Connolly MP, evidently). Josephine is the size of the moon, with a trace atmosphere like that of Mars. Completely unshockingly, it has no surface water (there was only like a one-in-twelve chance of there being any), but it does have a rather moderate temperature, with an average between zero and thirty degrees Celsius. On this tiny, dry rock, tens of millions of people live. Considering that the surface area of the planet is only somewhere around 33 million square kilometers, I daresay Josephine is quite a crowded place.
It’s governed by feudal technocracy, which no doubt is intended by Traveller to be the kind of elitist government Asimov depicts in the Foundation series wherein whoever has “more” or “better” or “higher” technology rules. I, however, remember what “technocracy” actually means (“rule by the skilled”) and hate it. Society is not an engineering problem. My setting’s empire is founded ultimately upon two things which have recreated feudalism in pursuit of technocracy ~ two things that took capitalism’s dying breath and used it to turn human society back a notch on the Marxist teleological dial ~ namely, subcontracting and the post-ownership society. Rolling a feudal technocratic government for Josephine means that it is ruled directly by its subcontracted baron, who builds the apparatus of government by further subcontracting titles and duties.
Sal now holds that baron’s contract.
That baron, like Sal herself if we’re being honest, is more interested in partying and socializing than in actually governing. He has assembled several of his subcontracts into an impersonal bureaucracy to govern without his oversight. Recently, that bureaucracy has begun to metastasize, rivaling the baron’s position of power on Josephine. Still just a fringe power, with few explicit supporters, it nonetheless is starting to break free of his control.
Deeply religious, Josephinean culture houses many outposts of the Unionists’ Guild, which is simultaneously the engine which empowers the noetic drive to connect the galaxy and the Spiritualist center of interstellar society. Many a medium connects Josephineans to the Associations of Spirits on the Other Side, and the ghosts with whom they talk have given their blessing (as has the count) to Josephine’s war with a nearby world known as Wapiti Station. Anyone who has traveled by means of the noetic drive are highly and explicitly privileged under Josephinean “law” (“policies”, “practices”, or “regulations” are perhaps better words in a feudal technocracy like this). Unionists sit above interstellar travellers in this hierarchy, whether mediums or not. All other citizens ~ including mediums not of the Guild ~ are considered equal, beneath these two classes.
Speaking of Josephine law, it is considered moderate among the Empire’s worlds, as is Josephine’s local starport. Notably, Josephine plays host to both a base of the Emperor’s Own Scouts (EOS) and a research station. I’d determine what they were researching, but I’d wanna do a whole, long process of world creation based on MegaTraveller’s massive expansion of the system. I might do that at some later time, though. This post is already too long.
Josephine can produce basic starships, sitting just shy of the Empire’s average technology level. It’s a bit of a backwater ~ a metropolis, certainly, but still slightly a backwater.
The Most Honorable Marchioness Sal Paradise, 42-year-old controversial author
Strength 8 (0), Dexterity 9 (+1), Endurance 4 (-1)
Intellect A (+1), Education 8 (0), Social Standing D (+2)
Admin 1, Art (write) 2, Carouse 0, Deception 2, Diplomat 0, Drive 0, Investigate 1, Jack-of-all-Trades 2, Language 1, Mechanic 0, Persuade 1, Recon 1, Steward 0, Streetwise 1.
Rank 3 Artist, Rank 1 Noble
Josephine
Size 2, Atmosphere 1, Hydrographics 0, Population 7, Government 5, Religious, At War, Unusual Customs: Travel, Law Level 7, Starport C (Berthing Cost 400 credits, scout base, research base), Tech Level A, Non-Agricultural
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