[Event Tables] Aren't these supposed to be interesting?

[Kilgs]

Going through the new events tables in Scouts and those presented in Psion, I'm seeing a lot of uninteresting Connections. Wasn't the entire point of Events to give characters a chance to connect? A lot of these events are completely solo events, completely unsuitable for Connections or simply boring...

"Life on the edge hones your abilities. Gain one skill. (Repeated at least twice on new Psion tables.)

"You gain an insight into one of your Psi-powers." (Psion)

"You are engaged on a long term project on a single world. This will take two terms and you must leave the Scouts afterwards." (Scouts)

"Administrative wrangling means you are transferred to another branch of the Scouts." (Scouts)

"As a result of your mission, gain one of the following..." (What Mission?)(Scouts)

"You gain valuable espionage expertise. Gain one of..." (Scouts)

"You serve under a captain who is overly strict. Gain one of..." (Scouts)

"You gain valuable survey expertise." (Scouts)

This doesn't even mention all the Events that are actually Mishaps. Since when do I pass my Survival roll and still get drummed out on several different possibilities?
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Pattern? So what is up? Am I taking crazy pills here?

 

[ThunderChilde]

Meh, that's my MAJOR gripe about the tables in Scouts.
A trend
Mercenary Tables: okay, a little darker than the MB for army and marines.
Navy Tables: Pretty good except for the backhanded entries, and an upward trend seems to be in the offing.
Scout Tables: Quite dreadfell really, paints a corrupt, shadowy and devious IISS. I'll eventually find the time to rewrite these, I want my heroic explorers of old back.
Psions Tables: Looks like the trend downward continues, which make the Scoundrels and Agents books likely to have very dark and vile tables.

 

[rancke]

Meh, that's my MAJOR gripe about the tables in Scouts.
A trend
Mercenary Tables: okay, a little darker than the MB for army and marines.
Navy Tables: Pretty good except for the backhanded entries, and an upward trend seems to be in the offing.
Scout Tables: Quite dreadfell really, paints a corrupt, shadowy and devious IISS. I'll eventually find the time to rewrite these, I want my heroic explorers of old back.
Psions Tables: Looks like the trend downward continues, which make the Scoundrels and Agents books likely to have very dark and vile tables.

If the tables are supposed to be generic, they should be fairly neutral as to the nature of the service; not heroic, not villainous. For greater utility, you'd want three tables, one for ordinary run-of-the-mill organizations, one for corrupt organizations, and one for unusually fine organizations. Then a referee could decide that the Scout branch in this subsector is thoroughly corrupt, the one in that subsector is the pride of the service, and the ones in the other subsectors are more or less average.

Actually, you'd really want to take the dates into account too. 20 years ago this branch was rotten to the core, but there was a clean-up 12 years ago, but in the last four years things have become rather grim again...

Nah! too much trouble for too little gain...


Hans