How big a deal is the Starburst for Extreme Heroism?

[aramis]

By VC requirement, no, Hans. The VC is normally not awarded posthumously.
The CMH* hasn't been given since the early 1900's, and the MoH requirements are barely different from the supposedly lesser Navy Cross. A single core subsector should, based upon the rates in CGen, supply enough SEH's to name every cruiser in the imperium (640x8x12≈61000), and a Pop A TLA-F shoud have 50-120 thousand battalions, with a nominal battalion of 300-500 men, we'll use 300... 50000x300=15M, and 1 per 5000 men still gives 3000 just in actives (and the rates are at least 10x that in CGen for combat arms), with as many as 5 TLA+ Pop 9 worlds in a subsector in the core, and 1000 years of prior service....

A single TL12 PopA Early Joining World should have at least 1000000 prior SEH's awarded.


*The Congressional Medal of Honor as the formal title of the award was deleted some point around WWI. The Medal of Honor is actually a different, easier award with a similar device, since the CMH required passage of a resolution in joint session of congress, and required nomination by a Senator. The MoH is recomended by either a senator (And approved by commitee) or the regimental commander (and must be approved up chain to the DoD), and is awarded by the president.

A true CMH equivalent would be issued by the Moot or a domain moot.

 

[david.wendelken]

I don't dispute your math, just the relevance of it.

The character generation tables aren't for the general population, they are for the significant people that the player characters may come into contact with in the course of their role-playing game story.

The odds are stacked so that the game master has an easier time finding story hooks.

The character generation tables aren't for people the characters will never have anything to do with, directly or indirectly.

Those folks glide thru life, rarely learning much of anything and rarely exerting themselves to accomplish anything at all, much anything of merit or interest. Pretty much like most of the people in your town and my town.

Well, maybe not my town. I live next to Ft. Bragg, NC, where there are lots of elite soldier types.

For the run of the mill do-nothings or do-littles, the gamemaster just needs to assign minimal skills and forget about them. Pretty much what the players will do as soon as they walk away...

 

[david.wendelken]

Incidentally, as the tech level goes up, the percentage of people bearing arms goes down. Dramatically down, throughout most of human history.

Traveller postulates that a unit of 10 soldiers has the combat potential of 100 soldiers at one tech level lower, 1000 soldiers two tech levels lower, and so on. Don't remember which GDW publication I read that in, it's been 30 years or so.

So, a tech level 12 planet would need approximately 1/10th the military manpower to have the same level of force. That has an impact on the number of people who have an opportunity to win such a medal.

Secondly, most planetary forces in a unified world government do not get involved in significant wars on a continuous basis.

Imperial forces, being the mobile reserve for a sector, and being higher tech than the usual planetary force, find themselves at the tip of the spear more often than their planetary counterparts. This is because they go where the trouble is, and they get sent in on the hard missions first. Both would up the odds of imperial forces having a higher medal winning ratio per soldier than the average planetary force, all other things being equal.

 

[Commander Truestar]

Incidentally, as the tech level goes up, the percentage of people bearing arms goes down. Dramatically down, throughout most of human history.

It has always been my "belief" that this is also do to the advances of society that often make it less nessesary to have a weapon or less legal(as the government in question moves to remove weapons for various reasons).

I have never seen the need for anything to be a limiting factor on how much of it I want....even when it is killing power (muhahahaha)

Marc

 

[aramis]

The rules, however, David, don't support your assertion. CT was rather "simulation minded"...

And the system specifically states that PC type generation is normal for NPCs.

 

[far-trader]

I still think PC career gen is more "useful" for NPC generation than "normal".

If it was normal the population of the Imperium has a whole lot of perfect specimens (12s across the board) out there. Why would they be recruiting and drafting the lame and imperfect (usually) PCs and other NPCs (even ones with 2s across the board)?
Where's the selection process for getting these prime candidates? At least as officers and heads of corporations.

 

[aramis]

Perfect specimens, however, are not 12's, Dan, they're 15's. You can, in theory, get ONE 15 in a term (Term, 1st term, commission, Promotion is 4, and you'l need 3 per 15)... In MT, you can get 3... (Term, 1st term, Commission, Comm. Bonus, Promo, Promo Bonus, SD, SD Bonus)... but in either case, you're a talentless hack, lacking any useful skills...

 

[rancke]

The rules, however, David, don't support your assertion. CT was rather "simulation minded"...

And the system specifically states that PC type generation is normal for NPCs.

No it doesn't. Well, not the bits you quoted, anyway. They say that NPCs may be generated using the CGS. Heedless authors have done just that for 30 years, and in many cases this has proven perfectly adequate. But it certainly has produced its share of belief-straining examples, from Imperial barons serving as missile gunners and customs inspectors to incompetent elite soldiers.


Hans

 

[Commander Truestar]

- Snip -

... to incompetent elite soldiers.
Hans

They're not incompetent!!! They are very competent at following incompetent officers and manuals!

Marc

 

[david.wendelken]

The rules, however, David, don't support your assertion. CT was rather "simulation minded"...

And the system specifically states that PC type generation is normal for NPCs.

So, for a planet with a population in the 3 billion, do you:

1) use the character generation system for all 3 billion, or

2) use the character generation system for the up to 100 people the characters come into contact with as part of the story?

I "assert" that you use option #2.

The rules state that the character generation system is suitable for those 100 people.

I concur, and for EXACTLY the same reasons I already explained.

If you truly believe that the character generation system is suitable for the other 299,999,999,900 people, have a go at it. I suspect that somewhere around person 300 to 1000, you'll say "@%#% this #$%$^"!!! and decide it sure as heck isn't.

NPC, just to remind everyone, stands for non-player-CHARACTER. Character, as in character in a story.

 

[rancke]

If you truly believe that the character generation system is suitable for the other 299,999,999,900 people, have a go at it. I suspect that somewhere around person 300 to 1000, you'll say "@%#% this #$%$^"!!! and decide it sure as heck isn't.

Many years ago I played with a referee who did everything By the Book. If the rules said it, that's the way it was, even if it didn't fit with his plans.

We'd become billionaires and had become involved in the affairs of a small TL5 country on newly-opened Algine, and we decided we needed a few mercenaries. Say 600 to form a regiment, 300 to be the cadre of two native regiments, 100 for an artillery battery, and 100 for an airforce. So my character went to Porozlo and recruited according to the rules in Mercenary. It took a while, of course, and we had to skip a fortnight's recruiting now and again to "reset" the die roll penalties, but for the first fortnight, we got 6D+30 raw recruits, 5D+25 veterans, 4D+20 veteran offecers, and 4D+20 mercenaries, so it didn't take all that long. We cherry-picked the cream of the raw recruits and had our mercs in less than half a year, including a fair number of Flyers for our air force.

Peter, our referee, didn't mind us having a handful of mercenaries, but he thought 1100 was too many. But the rules said we could do it. So he told us we'd have to furnish him with stats for every mercenary we wanted to hire.

So one of the other players, Lars, wrote a small program for his Sinclair and generated all the recruits, veterans and officers. (I myself actually rolled up 130-odd mercenaries (Yes, I know)).

The results were interesting. We had one officer with Tactics-6 and a good crop of <Skill>-5s. I can't remember if we had any other Skill-6s, but we did have one with Instruction-5, which meant we could have him train people with other skills at level 4 up to Instruction-4, which would allow them to train the other recruits up to <Skill>-3 (Yes, I since found out that this may not be allowed, but we all thought it was (We never deliberately tried to cheat Peter)).

The guy with Tactics-6 was named Foxx Travis and there was a really tough sergeant who became A.B. Calvin. We named another dozen of the most outstanding. If Peter had asked us to name them all, he might have had better luck keeping the numbers down .


Hans

 

[atpollard]

The rules, however, David, don't support your assertion. CT was rather "simulation minded"...

And the system specifically states that PC type generation is normal for NPCs.

So the OTU has no professional plumbers since the NPCs generated could not learn 'Plumbing', but the average citizen knows how to field strip and maintain a combat rifle since firearm skills are so common in the generation tables?

I think that the NPCs referenced are the 'exceptional individuals' that a band of adventurers are likely to interact with (like for a meeting with a smuggler), not the average town person.

YMMV

 

[aramis]

So, for a planet with a population in the 3 billion, do you:

1) use the character generation system for all 3 billion, or

2) use the character generation system for the up to 100 people the characters come into contact with as part of the story?

I "assert" that you use option #2.

The rules state that the character generation system is suitable for those 100 people.

I concur, and for EXACTLY the same reasons I already explained.

If you truly believe that the character generation system is suitable for the other 299,999,999,900 people, have a go at it. I suspect that somewhere around person 300 to 1000, you'll say "@%#% this #$%$^"!!! and decide it sure as heck isn't.

NPC, just to remind everyone, stands for non-player-CHARACTER. Character, as in character in a story.

No, I follow the rules as written and use the CGen for any NPC they interact with, which, depending upon game, could be any of those 300 billion, not just some elite 100.

You and Hans are making an ilogical leap that it's a distinctive subset rather than a non-distinctive sample. So EVERY army officer I dump in game is, in fact, generated by use of the CGen tables. Every Navy rating is also generated by the tables.

That's why I use computerized processes to do so.

You're taking a story game approach to a simulation game. You're applying your own biases in ways to twist the rules away from what they say. They do NOT say the Character Generation is for PC's only (Well, TNE does, but it differs in so many ways philosophically from CT & MT that it is irrelevant here.)

 

[rancke]

You're taking a story game approach to a simulation game. You're applying your own biases in ways to twist the rules away from what they say.

You're taking a simulation approach to a roleplaying game background. And it's a relatively crude simulation.


Hans

 

[Leitz]

You're taking a simulation approach to a roleplaying game background. And it's a relatively crude simulation.


Hans

I'd have to go with Hans on this one. When I generate NPCs for games it's the one or two skills needed for that role, unless the NPC will be a long term game component. Then I make them up and add the back-story to liven things up.

Who wants to plan an average Joe? Heck, who wants to *be* an average Joe? I like my PCs to be well above the average and I try to inspire others to themselves be more than average. Normal is overrated...

L

 

[aramis]

Half the fun of Traveller is that the characters are abnormal only in motivation, not in capability.

 

[sabredog]

I'd have to go with Hans on this one. When I generate NPCs for games it's the one or two skills needed for that role, unless the NPC will be a long term game component. Then I make them up and add the back-story to liven things up.

Who wants to plan an average Joe? Heck, who wants to *be* an average Joe? I like my PCs to be well above the average and I try to inspire others to themselves be more than average. Normal is overrated...

L

I concur, while Traveller certainly has simulation elements in a wargamey sort of way, it is first and foremost a roleplaying game. It's as much a wargame or simulation as Runequest is, but no one would ever think that game isn't an RPG first.

I "generate" all my NPC's - redshirts, named NPC's, etc. - by coming up with their stats and info on my own without using the tables. It's more persoanl and fun that way. And even though I've used and programmed computers since they needed punchcards to work I prefer the paper and pencil personal touch.

I figure that PC's need to be exceptional, but not super-human, so they use the tables and tend to be more highly skilled than the average guy off the street. That's part of the spirit of any RPG - playing someone else and doing things you can never do in real life. That "someone else" doesn't have to have maxed stats (that would be too much), but logically anyone who is some ex-Scout now looking to make his fortune in the frontiers of Space is going to be a few cuts above the guy who just punched his ticket for a couple terms so he could avoid getting drafted into the Marines.

The "cheat" I use for players - if they want to use it - is just to roll and extra die for their initial characteristics. Not everyone does it, the current engineer of the Chromium Rodent in my campaign with a strength of 5 and endurance of 6 is proof of that.

 

[Leitz]

Half the fun of Traveller is that the characters are abnormal only in motivation, not in capability.

There's obviously a point where min/maxing is a pain. On the other hand, letting characters have high stats and skills let's them play different games. For example, McKenna from the story is a PC who has 2 SEH and 1 *SEH*. He's got good stats, a recent ennoblement, and lots of special forces types skills. I'd be hard pressed to build a better combat wombat.

After retiring from the Army he faces an even bigger challenge; raising three kids and supporting his wife's dream of being a marine biologist. While I doubt the DM will let Josh rest, it's interesting to me to have to play that sort of character.

But I could take the same character and play him in a political game; building on his ennoblement and fame. Or as a mercenary. Or as a trainer of local troops, or as a dozen other things. Having all that he does lets me and the DM work on whatever we choose to, and integrate with other PCs who may have different goals.

So to the original question, "How big a deal...", I'd say "Whatever you want to make of it!" It can be a great story hook or a pain in the patoot when you're trying to be sneaky and paparazzi are following your every move. Or it can be like Miyagi's; put up in a box that no one knows about.

L

 

[JAFARR]

I know I'm a little late on this one, but I'll add my 2 Crs.

I play CGen per the book for NPCs. I allow my PCs to roll 1d6 + 6 for the first 4 stats with education and social as straight 2d6 on the theory that below "average" people don't go adventuring. There is however, a distinct possibility that they may be forced to do so. Therefore, if a player is a purist, they may choose to go it by the book (as long as, they don't begrudge the other players the option).

But, I think we have overlooked something. We are looking at military awards here. Aren't there similar awards to the CMH for police and firefighters? I know that there is a civilian award of some sort that is very rarely given for valor in the public sector. (in the US anyway)

As has been noted elsewhere on these boards, a lot of rules have been modified by GMs in TTUs due to actual playing proving that the original rules as provided were flawed in some details. Personally, I think the intent was for SEH to be equlivant to CMH. If you think it gets awarded to often, make it harder to earn in YTU.

 

[Easterner9504]

I agree SEH = MoH. My character has MCG and no commands, highly humiliating.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Who said no plumbers in Imperium.

Name: Joe the Plumber
Race: Human

Attributes [147]
ST 13 [27]
DX 13 [60]
IQ 12 [40]
HT 12 [20]

HP 13
Will 12
Per 12
FP 12

Basic Lift 34
Damage 1d/2d-1

Basic Speed 6.25
Basic Move 7 (Basic Move includes +1 from 'Gigantism')

Ground Move 7
Water Move 1

Social Background
TL: 12 [0]
Cultural Familiarities:
Languages:

Advantages [34]
Fit [5]
Hard to Kill (1) [2]
Hard to Subdue (1) [2]
High Pain Threshold [10]
Luck [15]

Disadvantages [-50]
Disturbing Voice [-10]
Gigantism [0]
Impulsiveness (12 or less) [-10]
Insomniac (Mild) [-10]
Numb [-20]

Quirks [-5]
Boisterous [-1]
Habit (Rubs scars) [-1]
Likes Drinking [-1]
Likes Poker [-1]
Wears pants low on hips [-1]

Skills [24]
Beam Weapons/TL12 (Rifle) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Boxing DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]
Brawling DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Electronics Operation/TL12 (Communications) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Electronics Repair/TL12 (Security) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Expert Skill (Hydrology) IQ/H - IQ-2 10 [1]
First Aid/TL12 (Human) IQ/E - IQ+0 12 [1]
Gambling IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Guns/TL12 (Pistol) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Guns/TL12 (Rifle) DX/E - DX+1 14 [2]
Hazardous Materials/TL12 (Biological) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Judo DX/H - DX-2 11 [1]
Liquid Projector/TL12 (Sprayer) DX/E - DX+0 13 [1]
Mechanic/TL12 (Contragravity) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Observation Per/A - Per-1 11 [1]
Piloting/TL12 (Contragravity) DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]
Professional Skill (Plumber) DX/A - DX+0 13 [2]
Smith/TL12 (Copper) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Smith/TL12 (Iron) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Smith/TL12 (Lead and Tin) IQ/A - IQ-1 11 [1]
Stealth DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]
Wrestling DX/A - DX-1 12 [1]

Stats [147] Ads [34] Disads [-50] Quirks [-5] Skills [24] = Total [150]