These are some notes I made some time ago in connection with the GURPS playtest.
AN ANALYSIS OF RANK AND STATUS IN DROYNE SOCIETY
CASTE
Caste is substituted for social status in the UPP for Droyne. It is 0 for uncasted Droyne and 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 for respectively workers, warriors, drones, technicians, sports, and leaders. [AM5:18&22]
Associated rules: Droyne who wants to become a krinaytsyuni must roll less than or equal to its caste in order to resist the urge to commit suicide. [AM5:20]
Game effect: None, really, since PC Droyne are allowed to ignore the throw and assume that they made it. It is, however, important to the feel of a typical society to know how many krinaytsyuni a typical society has. It makes quite a difference whether one in ten or one in a million Droyne becomes a _krinaytsyuni_. This is something I believe should be established. And there is not much evidence to go on. I don't think that all leaders, 83% of all sports, 67% of all technicians, 50% of all drones, 33% of all warriors, and 17% of all workers become krinaytsyuni. I believe that first a Droyne has to find a reason to avoid death then it has to make the throw. Not very many will find a reason to begin with. The question is, how many?
Nor can we assume that the proportion of members of the different castes that do become krinaytsyuni is 1:2:3:4:5:6. It seems very likely to me that proportionally more leaders than workers will be able to find a reason to go on living. So the proportions could be just about anything. 1:4:9:16:25:36, for instance. There's one small bit of evidence that bears on this. Page 9 of AM5 says that "Leaders, sports, and drones are most often able to make the transition; lower castes have too strong a need for leadership and direction to comfortably leave their family or community." Note the discrepancy of the drones: they are caste 3, but are better able to go krinaytsyuni than technicians, who are caste 4.
SOCIAL STATUS
AM5:36 states that "Warriors are considered superior to workers; drones superior to workers and warriors; technicians to workers, warriors, and drones; leaders are superior to all castes. Sports are equal to all castes except leaders."
Associated rules: Encounter reactions are affected by caste. A different caste recieves -1. A superior caste recieves +1. It is unclear if both DMs apply to superior castes.
GURPS rules equivalent: The standard status rules does not quite conform to this rule. If you make a ordinary status ladder with, say, workers status 0, warriors status 1, etc up to leaders with status 4, a worker will have different reaction modifiers to warriors than to leaders, whereas the CT rule gives him the same modifier to anyone superior to him. Similar arguments apply to the other castes. And the sports complicate things even more. Whether it is worthwhile to develop a new rule that more closely reflect the original is up to Andy and the editor.
IN-CASTE STATUS
AM5:36 states that: "Caste rank (superiority and inferiority) is determined by the number of coyns drawn prior to caste in character generation. Player-characters have this recorded. NPCs have caste rank generated by 2D-2. Rank 0 is the highest possible rank. Caste rank should not be confused with military rank. Caste rank indicates the relative social standing an individual has within its caste."
Associated rules: Droyne who musters out recieves one mustering out benefit per term served plus one per point of distinction earned, but for each coyn drawn before his caste coyn (ie. his caste number) he recieves one throw less.
Ramifications: Caste rank is either totally arbitrary or assigned by the casting drones. Once assigned it is fixed and immutable. In this respect it appears to be much like human nobilities in the most rigid societies. It has a huge effect on in-caste relations (superiors have a +3 reaction modifier, inferiors a -1 modifier (on 2D, mind you)). It appears to have NO effect on inter-caste relations. It does enable a Droyne to amass more private belongings, again something that resembles high human status.
However, it is difficult to equate it exactly with human social status. The effect that a "high noble" inside one caste is no more than the lowliest "peasant" of that caste to a member of another caste is odd indeed. Note that this works both ways. A worker's reaction to a caste 0 leader-of-leaders would not be any more respectful than his reaction to a caste 10 sub-sub-leader.
Also note that unless the assigning drones mess with the results, the distribution of in-caste rank is top-heavy and that the quick way to generate NPC caste rank produces quite different results than the long version:
Rank Drawing Rolling
0 17% 3%
1 14% 6%
2 12% 8%
3 10% 11%
4 9% 14%
5 7% 17%
6 6% 14%
7 5% 11%
8 4% 8%
9 4% 6%
10 3% 3%
11+ 9% 0%
Of course, it is quite likely that the assigning drones do mess with the result. I think it should be established if this is the case.
Maybe the reason why there are no NPC Droyne with a caste rank higher than 10 is that a Droyne is more versatile the higher his rank is. What if a
Droyne won't get a job unless his coyns match the job? The example on page 19 shows that a leader with the coyns Heat, Light, Death, and Voyages
associated may become a dangerous energy transportation supervisor, or a crematory hearse driver (bit manual for a leader, surely?), or a power generation supervisor, or a starship chief engineer. But the more coyns a Droyne has associated, the more limited the choice of occupation becomes, doesn't it? A Status 0 Leader can handle any leader job. Maybe a status 11 leader can't find anything suitable and would be asked to commit suicide. Same argument for the other castes.
MILITARY RANK
Well, we've discussed this in depth elsewhere. In military outfits age equals rank. Sort of. I prefer Chris' suggestion that military rank is entirely associated with military assignments. The Droyne have no such thing as a colonel, but they do have regimental commanders. And the sort of Droyne assigned to command regiments are leaders of a certain age or sports of a somewhat higher age. Propably sports are seldomly or never assigned as commanders of independent units. But a regiment might have several of its companies commanded by sports. And a brigade stationed together might have a sport commanding one of its regiments.
Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
rancke@diku.dk
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In my opinion it ought to go without saying that if you work in another person's universe, he and anyone else authorized to work in said universe is implicitly permitted to use your work as background material. But I know it doesn't, so I hereby give my permission for Marc Miller and anyone else authorized to work in the Traveller Universe to use the above as background material.
