House Rules

A collection of house rules used in this campaign.  Here is a table of contents for house rules:
  • Character Improvement
  • Tech Levels
  • Skills

Character Improvement

New Style Character Improvement (Used After Mini-Con 2018)
Surviving characters (if any :-) will get character creation points, depending on the success of the adventure.  Points will be awarded for "mission success" (and this is not all or nothing, you get partial credit for intermediate success), "personal success" (if you have personal goals), and "good roleplaying".

Character creation points can be used immediately or saved up or some of each.  You can buy skills, advantages, disadvantages, and attributes, just as in character creation, unless I say otherwise.  You can also buy allies (or buy off enemies).  You do not need to use these points to buy equipment, unless it is really exotic or expensive.  Random things you can just pick up during your regular adventures, between sessions.

Old Style Character Improvement (Used Before Mini-Con 2018)
Because this campaign is episodic and designed to be run only once or twice a year, character improvement assumes that the characters are benefiting from other activities which happen "off camera".

So therefore, when we play once a year (or less) then each character can choose one of the following character improvements:
  1. Get a new skill as though 1 point had been added to it.  If you want to do this, you can tell me the skill, and your DX and IQ level, and I can tell you what level you will get the skill.
  2. Raise one skill, one point, to a level of fifteen or higher.
  3. Raise two skills, one point each, to a level of fourteen or lower for each skill.
  4. Raise one skill, two points, to a level of fourteen or lower.
  5. Develop a new character contact (work with GM on this).
  6. Develop a new owned devices (work with GM on this).
When we play more than once a year, different rules will be used.

Tech Levels

We will use standard GURPS tech levels, so Imperial Space is basically TL 10 to 12. Right now, I'm just assuming everything is TL 10 (except maybe for some Ancient artifacts). Specifically, you can ignore tech levels when it comes to skills and character backgrounds.

Skills


Zero-G and Free Fall are two names for the same skill.

There are three separate Gunnery skills in this world: missles, beams, and sandcasters.

On a starship, there are many different Electronic Operations skills, and one can not be substituted for another: Communications, Monitoring (internal sensors), Sensors (external senors), etc.

On a starship, there are basically two repair skills: Electronic Repair and Mechanical Repair. Mechanical includes hydrolics and generally "everything else", not electronics. Electronic repair skill has two starship specializations, which are generally called "electronics" and "power" although informally called "small electrics" and "big electrics" or "regular voltage" and "high voltage". Basically, the first skill covers electronic equipment throughout the ship, while the second covers specialized electronic equipment in the generators, manuver drives and jump engines. On a small ship, there are no specializations for mechanical repair. (On a larger ship, you might find guys who only work in the "engineering spaces" or the "passinger spaces" and might find specialized plumbers, etc.)

The Armoury skill also has many specializations. For tech level 10 through 12 weapons (standard Imperial stuff) there are these common specializations: small arms (personal weapons), heavy weapons (stuff mounted on vehicles, or towed behind them), shipboard weapons (stuff mounted on spaceships or large wet navy ships).

On a space ship, someone with electronics repair (power) might be able to fix a weapons problem if the root cause is power supply. Similarly, someone with mechanical repair might be able to fix a weapons problem if the root cause is in the mounting or turret movement. But if the problem is really in the weapon itself, you need a specialist.


There is only one Navigation skill that you need to operate a starship. It covers both jump navigation and regular space travel navigation.

Below here are raw notes.

Luck

As for luck, think the rules are a little too generous, and put the following limitations on luck. You can choose something else, if you would like:
1. Luck can only be used once per fire-fight (unless the fight lasts for more than 2 hours of game time).
2. After luck is used, the player must make at least 4 dice roles before it can be used again
3. The player can choose to ignore either rule 1 or 2 or both, during the first half of the game session, but that happens, then luck has run out for the rest of the session, and no more luck.

What do you mean by "Computer Operations"? This is a general computer use skill. It will not help you man a console on a starship bridge. It does help you use a computer, in general. Please tell me if you want this skill, as I have not yet given it to you.

For Armoury, I assumed you meant for personal type weapons.
I had originally meant this to (as mentioned in the e-mail to Darrel) allow me to help work on the ship's beam weapon... I kind of guessed/understood that those skills might be hard to come by. But, of course my skill in the repair of the weapon is a lot less than my skill at shooting it!!