There are several threads around about "Awesomifying Traveller":
Traveller Boxed Set circa 1981
Awesomize Traveller
and my nudging around ideas for a TSOY/Traveller Home-Brew


That's been a dream of mine since I picked up the books at the Compleat Strategist on 33rd years ago. I knew there was a game in there I wanted to play... the setting was amazing, the color incredibly evocative.... but the resolution mechanics always let me down.

And after rummaging through all the new-fangled systems we have these days to make the play of Traveller more in line with what I always wanted, I settled on Sorcerer & Sword. The port was strangely easy; the system and the tools of the rules lined up to my needs almost 1:1 to what I wanted. There are no Demons in this game -- it's straight up Third Imperium Classic Traveller. But there are things like Psionics, Ambition, Social Standing, The Ticket which replace Lore and that can gum up a character's Humanity. Humanity in this game is defined as Friendship.

Here's the link to the rules. I'm sure there's a lot of cleaning up to do. Inside, you'll find:

• A few pages of world background. We're using the Classic Traveller Third Imperium, utilizing the FRAMEWORK of the setting (the Imperium, the Spinward Marches, the Zhodani, the Vargr, the Alsan, the noble house structure and politics, the Planet Creation Rules and subsector maps, and all the implied details from Books 1, 2, and 3 from the Traveller Black Box). However, we're stripping out all the specifics of the worlds, creating our own worlds and subsectors within the Spinward Marches.
  
• Character Creation Rules (which strangely didn't have to be altered that much! The Descriptors for Stamina and Will are lifted straight from Sorcerer & Sword) The biggest change is switching Lore to "The Rift" which are the things that can separate people from their friends.
  
• A section on what I wanted to play in Traveller, and how I ended up choosing Sorcerer & Sword.
  
• Pages of material from the Mongoose's Traveller System Reference Document (open source) since most of the Players had little interaction with Classic Traveller and I wanted them to see equipment lists and World Creation stuff

And here's a link to the character sheet.


My Players (Eric, Vasco and Colin) started Character Creation on Sunday night, and damn if we didn't start getting some great PCs with great Kickers, Prices and history. As soon as the PCs are done, I'll post 'em up.

SCORES
When creating a character, divide 10 points between STAMINA, WILL and THE RIFT. The fourth Score, PAST, is equal to either Stamina or Will, as determined by the Player
.
STAMINA
Stamina is both a physical and mental phenomenon. It is not “body.” Stamina is the impact on, and the influence over, physical motion and effect. When your character calls upon memories of childhood abuse to draw up hate in order to heft a tire iron through a bad guy’s face – that’s Stamina. By contrast, if a character looms large physically to intimidate someone, that Will. Stamina draws on whatever physical and mental reserves are necessary for its effect.

WILL
Will is both a physical and mental phenomenon. It is not “mind.” Will is the impact on, and the influence over, personalities. When your character looms large physically to intimidate someone, that is Will. By contrast, when your character calls upon memories of childhood abuse to draw up hate in order to heft a tire iron through a bad guy’s face – that’s Stamina. Will draws on whatever physical and mental reserves are necessary for its effect.

THE RIFT
In the Third Imperium, “the rift” is slang for the gap that opens between people because of distances involved in space travel. Children who leave home and travel countless parsecs away leave a hole in their parent’s heart. Parents who take jobs that keep them away for months or weeks at a time become strangers to their families. Interstellar governments are fragile because it’s difficult to keep interests shared when people are so far apart.

The phrase has a second meaning, as well. For those who travel the stars, the friends you travel with are your anchors to remaining connected to your humanity. “A man without friends is a man drifting in space,” the saying goes. When people begin to lose this connection to others, it is said, “He’s got a Rift going.”

The Rift on a character’s sheet is the threat to the Character’s Humanity. It allows the Player Character to get things done in a variety of ways, but by taking action within The Rift the Player must make a Humanity check roll for the Character. To use The Rift – either as a Roll to get Bonus dice for a more important roll, or to tap unexpected resources within the fiction – the Character must do something in the fiction to gain more dice. Like Lore in Sorcerer, the in-fiction description of using The Rift produces Bonus Dice and builds a greater chance of success. But these descriptions all must threaten the Characters Humanity – which in this game is Friendship.

The Rift is a broad category of options containing several Descriptors to choose from. Players choose which Descriptor they want. A value of 4 or more allows Players to choose two Descriptors if they wish.

It is important that the Player add details to the Big Circle on the character sheet for The Rift quadrant. In the same way the Player should add details for Kicker, Price, and Past, so the Player should create NPCs and Locations that are part of the Player Character’s Rift.

PAST
Past represents the most significant piece of your Character’s history in terms of experience, training, friendships and life in general. Players can tap this Score to accomplish things (“I’m rolling my Gunnery Sergeant to take that truck down!”) to tapping contacts (“There’s got a be a mercenary company somewhere around here,”) to gathering resources (“Don’t worry, I know where we can get some guns off the radar.”)

Past Scores can be used to creates rolls for Bonus dice that roll into a roll on the other three Scores, just as the other three Scores can be used to roll in Bonus dice for a Past roll.

The Past Score is equal to the Character’s Will or Stamina, at the Player’s choice.

Here's a section of the Campaign Setting Notes, important I think because it gets to the heart of what I'm going after:

THE TIES THAT BIND
One aspect of the transfer did stump me, though: What would be the definition of Humanity?

Humanity is the most important mechanic in a game of Sorcerer, and holds the same position in Sorcerer & Sword. It is the thematic focus of the game, allowing the Players to take their characters in all sorts of directions story-wise, but serves as a “sun” for all those actions to orbit.

I wasn’t sure how to proceed, and started a thread at The Forge about the matter. I outlined everything I’ve written above (about The Man Who Would Be King, PCs as brothers in arms and so on) and asked for help finding a good definition of Humanity for the game.

Ron Edwards replied:

Anyway, regarding Humanity, it jumps right out at me from your sources: FRIENDSHIP. I agree that age, ambition, and limits of the past (successes as well as failure) upon the present are a big deal, but I think of those as the framework for the really trenchant outcomes for all those stories - which are about friends.

He then went on to ask a series of questions:
• Is it friendship to sacrifice yourself for the friend? What if you do so to manipulate him?
• Is it friendship to go ahead and save yourself when your friend stands in the breach so you can do it?
• Is it friendship to back up your friend when he's being stupid? Is it friendship to kick him in the ass, or in some cases, to kick his ass really bad?
• How does shared experience and long history with shared duty, or with past success or failure, define friendship?
When I think of all your references, that's what sings out at me.

This was exactly what I had been looking for. Strangely, a discussion about the Humanity definition for Sorcerer & Sword was taking place at the same time, and the same answer had been given there. Once again, the Traveller I wanted to play had lined up neatly with Sorcerer & Sword.

It is important to remember that the Humanity mechanic for Sorcerer is not a dry, intellectual exercise. It is not an academic matter. Just like in any story that catches our attention, the thematic material only matters if it actually matters to the Players at the table. So Ron finished his response with the following.

And not for internet answering, Christopher, but do you trust friendship? Does its dangers really outweigh its benefits, when we're not talking about George Lucas or Disney (in which friendship, success, duty, and reward always support one another)? And even if the danger does come home to roost sometimes, is friendship still worth it?
I don't know if these questions make you shudder a little when you consider them for real. If so, then I'm on the right track.

Really cool.
FYI: I was reading the definitions of STA and WIL and I'm not sure if there is a duplication or typeo, but it looks like Sta is listed early under WIL.

My head just exploded.

Friggin fantastic.

It's a great read, Christopher.

I downloaded the earlier version. Can you talk a little about why you changed 'Psionics' to 'The Rift'? I don't quite see how it works in play ... and I really want to play this.

Hi Per,

That's an interesting question Per. Let me say this first: It's certainly not my intent to have set this up for that purpose. I did it because I needed a tool to play GDW's Classic Third Imperium Traveller setting, and I realized that this was going to get me what I wanted. So, in a strange way, I wasn't thinking about anyone else except me and the fun I wanted. Me, me, me, me, me.

Okay. I was also thinking of everyone on this board who had also been looking for a way to hippy-up Traveller. In the context of my group, we had everyone had just finished up a long Sorcerer game, so I guess we'd had our introduction. So whether or not my players were "ready" for something else I don't know. I know locally and specifically to me and my four players, I wanted to do this -- so I'm doing it. Let me think more on it.

But I can say without doubt that it had nothing to do with getting people to play Sorcerer as a gateway drug of some kind. I needed a rules set. I rummaged around. After rummaging around I realized that the rules for Sorcerer and Sorcerer & Sword were going to give me the clearest package of fun for what I wanted. This was, as I said in the document, a surprise.

I find it funny that there are people who go around babbling that Sorcerer is "showing its age" or get caught up in some sort of scheme of "technological advancement" suggesting that a game that was published last year is going to be inherently "better" for fun than a game that was published a decade ago. As far as I can tell, that's about as dunderheaded as assuming a painting of the 20th Century is, by definition, going to be better than a painting from the 17th Century.

Here's my take: I see a lot of games that have one or two really cool core ideas, or a whole bunch of new ideas, that are really smart and really fun to play, but that simply don't deliver the kind of fun I want as consistently to me as Sorcerer does. Sorcerer has a lot of smaller -- perhaps more delicate, moving parts -- that all interact with each other in fascinating ways that get my group to work together in ways that other games simply don't. Every time I thought I was going to have to tweak one or two rules to get what I wanted out of the Traveller rule/setting port, I thought there'd be some work I'd have to do. But in fact, the game is very complete and very thought out and invariably, except in one case -- covering Steve's question -- there was nothing to change or fix. Now, if there had been no Sorcerer & Sword this would not have been the case, because a lot of the attitude and feel of the adventure fiction was really 1:1. But with Sorcerer & Sword, it was just there.

So, no. There was no attempt at, "How do I get people to play Sorcerer -- oh! -- maybe this will work!" Picking Sorcerer was simply the easiest tool to use for a problem I needed to solve, as well as being a game that I trust to reliably deliver the fun. As for Play Sorcerer, I do think seeing the game from a new angel will inform the book -- which I'm very excited about.

[cont'd]

Thanks for the thorough answer, Chris, excellent. You've been very helpful.

Just as a note, I didn't think you had created the S&S/Traveller port as anything else than for your own needs. I was merely wondering whether I could make use of the thing you'd made for yourself for my own purposes, and what your thoughts were in relation to introducing new players. There's good value in playing the original game design before tweaking it - and even here there are a vast amount of flavours to go for.

I agree completely regarding the misconceptions of Sorcerer's age, I've met that viewpoint a couple of times.

Oh, and I've told my current regular playing group that we are playing Sorcerer from next week. Carpe diem.

Last Sunday Vasco, Eric, Colin and I gathered for character creation. I'm still waiting on the finalized character sheets, but here's a summary of what happened. While reading all this, remember that the definition for Humanity is Friendship in this game. It echoes across all the decisions the Players made.

There was a great deal of brainstorming and sometimes the backstories started getting very convoluted and complicated. At one point there was an emphasis on Spec Ops for one of the PCs, and I could feel the whole game shifting to some bizarro space-hack Bourne Identity game -- which had nothing to do with what I wanted to play. So I made a call: The PCs were either Marines, Navy or Army. That's it. Things went much faster after that.

The Players decided that they had served in the Imperial Marines together. They also decided that after mustering out, the three of them started a mercenary company... a small one of about 20 guys and a starship crew working off a tramp freighter. The handle both small unit jobs, as well as getting subcontracted for larger mercenary tickets.

Colin decided that his PC had been on a world working alongside rebels that the Imperium had encouraged to violence. Just when the final assault had been called, the ruling power sued for peace with the Imperium and negotiations finalized. When the Imperium got what it wanted, the war was called off and Colin's battalion ordered off planet. This left the rebels without the backup they needed and the ruling government slaughtered untold rebels. (Colin explicitly based this on the actions of the Bush Sr.'s call to the Kurds to rise up again Saddam after the First Gulf War. Eric and Vasco decide their characters had been on the world as well.) Colin said this would be the basis for his character's Price.

His Kicker was that his merc company had just hired onto a ticket to fight for the ruling government against the rebels he had betrayed years before.


Vasco decided his character's price was tied to something criminal in his past that had caused him to be BRANDED and kept him moving around from world to world. I pointed out that space was big and that if people on world to world knew what the brand meant it would have to be some sort of capital crime under Imperial law, and suggested his Imperial Citizenship had been revoked -- which would be as big a deal a citizen of the Roman Empire losing his citizenship. Vasco liked this idea, and built on it: he had been branded in his teens, and had enlisted in the marines to find a place to belong. He was essentially set up as canon fodder -- but proved himself with marital skill and loyalty time and time again until he DID find a place he could call home. When he mustered out, he stayed with the two guys he'd bonded with. This was his home.

His Kicker is that if he takes the ticket that Colin established as HIS Kicker, his guy gets his citizenship back. Vasco said, as we discussed the idea, "You know, at first I didn't think the citizenship thing would mean that much to my guy, but actually, I think it means more than... yeah... I really like that."


Eric created a son of a noble family of Imperial politics. His father is the Duke of a subsector within the Spinward Marches, but Eric's character is rebellious and has lots of trouble with authority. However, he's a very good and responsible leader to his men. Although he could have advanced quickly through the ranks because of his noble lineage and his ability, he constantly screwed up his behavior on purpose and remained a sergeant... which is exactly where he wanted to remain. He was on a world where the marines where fighting a last stand battle during an in interstellar conflict, and losing badly. An admiral called a retreat to redistribute the forces to world that had a better chance of surviving, but Eric's character destroyed the communication equipment and rallied the troops and locals to a bloody defense. He said, "Like a whole Alamo thing," which became a shorthand for the incident for all of us. (The three of them decided to call their company's ship "The Alamo." Colin added, "In this setting, in the future, The Alamo is shorthand for, 'Fucked over by the officers.'")

Eric's Kicker is that the company is late on payment for The Alamo. If sufficient funds are not wired soon, the loan will default and be absorbed by Fujita Enterprises, where Zee's father A'lan will promptly liquidate the ship and dissolve Zee's company in order to "bring his son home from the war." So the Ticket on the planet established by Colin's Price and Kicker is vital as an opportunity to make some cash.


A few other details surfaced -- which didn't apply right away, but that I knew I would use because the Players were interested in these things:

Colin said, "I want some sort of religious crusade. Somehow." The other guys nodded. I made a note.

Eric, free-associating off of some of the ideas we'd had, discussed some reading he'd been doing about Israeli/Palestinian dynamics, telling a specific incident about how Israelis upstream of a Palestinian settlement cut off the water to the Palestinians -- and how terrible it would be not to have the power to do anything about that. Okay... imbalance of power between political entities... noted.

A couple of days later I started working on some background notes for setting and situation, based off the Players' Characters.

I decided to create some subsectors, again, using the standard rules from Traveller. A subsector in Traveller is a unit of political space -- an area about 8 by 10 parsecs in size. If it's part of the Imperium there would be a duke ruling over it on behalf of the Imperium. Sixteen subsectors make up a sector. For sectors make up a domain. There are about nine domains in the Third Imperium.

(Communication in the Third Imperium can only go as fast as space travel. As space travel takes weeks and months between stars, the Imperium holds itself together by family ties and loyalty -- families and noble rules must act on their own and in the best interests of the Imperium using only their own judgment and authority in moments of crisis. Sometimes, of course, the system fails. But for the most part, it has held the Third Imperium together for 1000 years.)

A subsector map is made up of an eight by ten hexgrid map. You roll a dice to see if there is a world in a hex (I set it at a 40% chance) and then roll up the world details. I rolled for the stars, but have only made notes for about four worlds in addition to Vaerr, which is the Ticket World tied to the PC's Kickers.

Steve,

I'm still working on "The Rift" rules.

The short hand of "Why not psionics?":

The mechanic of Lore is there to threaten Humanity. I knew that I didn't want to focus on Psionics as a key component of the setting. It was there, if the Players wanted, but I really wasn't going to push it. So I wanted to open up the possibility of more way of the Players threatening the PC's Friendships. Still working on the details. I think this is going to be something I experiment with in play.

Hi Judd,

Not sure what to say about that. I mean, I was never that crazy about Star Wars. Ever. One person's color is another person's "WTF?"

I'm using the GDW Traveller setting as my background. In that setting The Ancients, a race of beings that settled the stars about 240,000 years ago, had technology whose level was apparently unmatched by the Imperium, and seeded sentient beings including Humaniti across various worlds of the galaxy. The took samples from Sol -- including humans and animals -- and manipulated the biology, settling them across the stars. The purpose is unknown. The Vargr race is one of those experiments.

Heres' the run down from some Traveller stuff: Intelligent Major Race derived from Ancient genetic manipulations of Terran carnivore/chaser stock, apparently dating from approximately the same time that Humaniti was scattered to the stars.

Inhabiting a region rimward of the Imperium, the Vargr were for years a puzzle to Imperial xenologists. The Vargr biochemistry and genetic makeup are almost identical with a number of terrestrial animals, but differ radically from most of the flora and fauna indigenous to Lair, the purported Vargr home world. Researches during the early years of the Third Imperium concluded them to be the result of genetic manipulation of transplanted Terran animals of the family Canidae, almost certainly of genus Canis. The obvious conclusion, supported by archeological evidence, is that the race known as the Ancients was responsible.

I think The Ancients are a cool part of the GDW Traveller universe. They've left behind all sorts of ruins, weird science stuff, and strange mysteries tying together lots of interstellar history. I think the trick isn't to see the Vargr as "Dog people" -- though someone could and certainly use them that way. They are a concrete product of a highly advance and mysteriously vanished civilization. This kind of "science as unexpectedly weird" is, I think, an important part of Traveller. In my view, looking only at Books 1, 2 and 3, the setting and the game is very grounded in mundane details, feel and tone. It isn't Star Wars at all. And yet... there are hints at extraordinary aspects to life among the stars.... the mysteries we will never understand, the technologies that exist or existed that will never be ours to use. There is this tension between the very mundane feel of so much of life in the Traveller setting butting up against the extraordinary. In a way, it reminds me of what Greg Stafford built with Pendragon, with rules that created a tension between the very muddy and mundane on one side, and the fantastical and idealistic on the other.

Of course, tone, presentation and application matter.

Here's a passage from an email I sent to my Players:

When he was shooting Revenge of the Sith and Fellowship of the Ring back to back, Christopher Lee commented that on Lucas' film, everything was shot on an utterly clean soundstage, while on Jackson's film the actors ended up with dirt under their fingernails.

You know how Jackson's film felt like it has a weight and concreteness to it, no matter how fantastical?

That.

So, even though we've got Dog People, they're not Dog People. They're Vargr. And they should have weight and substance and emotions worthy of Jackson's WETA team down in New Zealand. They are race of creatures being overrun by Imperial expansion and choosing alliances or making last stands or pushing back as best they can to survive.

If we use them as just background or color we've screwed up. We see them as goofy or whatnot, we've screwed up. If we see that as improbable and strange and maybe even impossible -- but treat them as any extraordinary collection of people that have their own hopes and desires -- but are still OTHER -- then we've won.

That's my take, anyway.

CK

I have to admit I felt the same stinge of "Ewww!" when I saw the dog face. On the other hand there's something nice and 70s over it, which gives me warm flashbacks to my childhood, and to great SF films from the era, the original Planet of the Apes, Silent Running, so...

No, your response was great. I just regretted my post for a moment is all.

Your response was totally great, Christopher, it actually cleared away one of my personal hiccups about the setting. Vargr in my Traveller/Sorcerer? Absolutely.

Well...I'm interested in people. People rock my boat more than anything else. I don't really need aliens to help me understand people or as a metaphor for people, so settings with aliens spook me right away and I have to be eased into them. But when aliens make sense (to me) I can dig it. That's why your Vargr are not people with dog heads but a "product of a highly advance and mysteriously vanished civilization." Then that's suddenly interesting.

When I stumbled into Traveller many years ago (actually via the MegaTraveller box) I didn't even notice the big background. We never played it, just made characters, lots of characters, and worlds and space ships.

I have to say I had the same reaction as Judd, but I'd put it differently. The opening posts talk about dark, hard-sci-fi, and that picture reminds me of more lighthearted comic books. I think it works against what you talked about in the followup post, because with the way he's dressed and drawn, he definitely looks like Dog-people. I don't have an image of the Vargr, but if I'd be trying for something more like this if I was just trying for the flavor of what you've said above:


(Awesome thread, btw)

See, I've been interested in the Vargr ever since I bought The Traveller Adventure way back when. Man, I loved Traveller! Thanks for this thread, Christopher. Using Sorcerer to play Traveller is very interesting to me!

I'm going to have to find copies of those black books, or at least the reprint.

Christopher:

First - thank you so much for posting this. I've never really played Traveller, and to be honest didn't know much of the specifics, but your discussion and Sorcerer mod have definitely piqued my interest.

How well do you feel the rules work so far? You mentioned that you're still working on the Rift rules, but thus far, do they feel solid?

Regarding the Rift: does the change really require that much work? From my perspective (just rereading Sorcerer and Sorcerer and Sword), it seems that it's just replacing Lore as the risk to your specific definition of Humanity (Humaniti?) as Friendship. Shouldn't all the existing rules work as-is?

The only other place I felt lost reading your hack was with regards to weapons and equipment. A lot of the base elements don't come with any sort of pricing scale, nor do they seem to list damage-type/column. Considering how much of the document is made up of the equipment lists, these specifics seem important.

I'm asking all of this because a friend of mine who's no longer really into to RPGs used to be a huge Traveller fan back in the day and I'm wondering how well your system would work at cajoling him back into gaming. ;)

Thanks again!

-d-

More notes on the Traveller rules:

When I re-read the Traveller rules the other night, I came across this passage on the last page of Book 3. It's under the last section of the rules called, "A Final Word."

"The Players themselves have a burden almost equal to that of the referee: they must move, act, travel in search of their own goals."

(Emphasis added.)

I had forgotten about that passage, but I can tell you, that one sentence bore a hole through my head when I first read those books nearly three decades ago because one of my grails of RPG was finding a system and group of players that encouraged -- if not depended on -- Players moving, acting and traveling in search of their own goals.

That's what I wanted, but rarely got it. The tools weren't in place to help the GM find a focus that didn't depend on some sort of scenario, and the publishers certainly didn't want Character driven play, since that wouldn't make any sense for published modules. The guy who hires you in the tavern or the patron in Traveller or the Mr. Johnson in Shadowrun and so on were convenient shortcuts to get an adventure going, to be sure... but they darted around the notion that passionate driven Player Characters could be engines to create exciting conflicts and adventures as they drove toward their own goals.

So, I would say Sorcerer's toolkit, which does provide a character creation and play-set that easily handles Characters-as-engines play answers my needs because that's the play I always wanted. We have lots of games that deliver this in spades these days (In a Wicked Age... delivers it front and center!) But I think it's important to remember that while player could (and did) shift the assumptions of rules and setting assumptions to have Characters-as-engines play, it was not how most texts assumed play would go, and the rules really didn't support it.

But I'd also say that it was Traveller, which I didn't realize till two days ago, that put that very specific idea in my head.

Hi Daniel,

You've got pretty much what I'm going for with "The Rift." Note that the applications are still pretty open ended. How one gets the Bonus dice can work two ways:

First, you get to make a pre-roll (just like using Cover or Past) to go for Bonus Dice before making the "main" roll -- as long as, as you say, Humanity is at risk.

Second, you can use the equivalent of "Binding" and "Pacts" on people, instead of with Demons. Again, the to tap "The Rift" Humanity threatening actions must be taken. (In both cases, those actions will provide color to get Bonus Dice for the roll.)

The thing is, the Sorcerer system is weirdly strong and open-ended. How to apply the system in this way is one of the thing I want to try out and see how it goes.

So, no. Not more complicated. I'd say, "Untested" and "Unknown"!

Posted By: peccableThanks for explaining my equipment questions. I only asked about credits/costs because some of the add-ons have credit-cost listed, so the base armor/weapons missing them seemed like a gap.

Good call on this. Yes. Kind of a mistake on my part, in that it wasn't clear. The Prices mentioned are just for a sense of relative value. I should probably price everything, or not anything at all.

Posted By: peccableRE: Damage shifting - is this how it works in base Sorcerer? If I'm hit with a Rifle and Armored, it's not pushed down to Nasty big handgun (which has the exact same penalty), but instead down to small handgun/edged weapon ("X next/X lasting" versus "2X next/X lasting")? To be honest, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the 'normal' rules. :)

In Sorcerer, the Armor Ability actually shifts all projectile weapons down to Fist Damage. (page 52 for the Ability). Kevlar and other modern armor shifts things the same way. (p. 111) My shifting to the lesser damage value is my own application of the Armor Ability to my own needs. It actually makes guns more dangerous in my game, since armor doesn't move all projectile weapons immediately to Fist, only the next lesser damage value. But it's Traveller. I want the Players terrified of combat.

That's why it's new territory, dude! No one's ever made a pact with a person before!

But let's say Eric's character, Zee, bullies someone with his Rift (descriptor) Social Standing, using the Rift as a roll in for Will roll against a "lower class" man, getting the man to take Zee and his team in for the night as authorities hunt for them. He doesn't do this by building a friendship with the guy, right? He's bullying him...

The value of this as a mechanic is that Bonus Dice only apply to the next "incident" or "moment" that occurs after the next roll. A binding or a pact carries over time... which means we might have several scenes in the man's house before the authorities show up, but Zee's Pact still stands with the man, meaning Zee's successes influence the effort the man makes to protect Zee and his team.

Another example: The Imperium is held together by a tradition of loyalty via a feudal system. But someone can be bullied into swearing an oath through fear, or an actual friendship. One is a form of binding, the other is not -- but the latter is more flexible, honest and probably safer.

But we'll see! Don't take the Binding and Pact stuff too literally. I'm just saying there are rules in place to influence and manipulate people in "non-Friend" ways that can extend over scenes and scenes of play based off the idea of binding and pacts.

There was just a big discussion via email about the name of the merc company and other fiction matters, and Eric, one of my players, just pumped this out:

All right, our company is The Eight Six. Our logo looks like one of the old, antique military insignias but where the Imperium banner and colors would be, instead our banner displays the symbol for the Credit ( $ ). You have to look twice to recognize it's a privateer logo.

An illustration of a sultry, buxom woman leaning against a flag with "86" and the unmistakable silhouette of the Spire in Gorzol (the "town center" we managed to hold) has been laser-painted onto the nose of our ship. And underneath that, red shapes that designate achievements our unit has defeated. There are a handful of "holy shit you guys once took down a Zhodani armored division?" type symbols on there; a library of stories we players can invent as needed for backstory etc.

I'm so falling in love with the fiction and details these guys have made up so far I'm almost afraid to play for fear of screwing it all up!


Eric came up with the history for the term 86 in a previous email:

Back in the Fourth Frontier War there was a legend of the 86th Company -- a group like the Alpha Dogs, mixed races of Vargr, Humaniti and Aslan thrown into one group for suicide missions, and the 86th turned the tide of the war in a kind of "300" way. Today any massive victory is considered an "eighty-six" in military slang, and since that legendary battle there have never been any official 86th company in the Imperium forces, which means a private mercenary organization could get away with that name.


After I got the latest email about the ship's art, I added:

On Helius, when Zee rallied the tattered remains of the 149th and local Vargr forces, the name 86th got bandied about among the troops -- at first unofficially, and then as a given by the end of the third week of fighting during The Siege of Grozol. Cut off from communication and support from Imperial forces, the mixed forces in Gorzol began marking their armor with "86th," and using flags and signals referring to the 86th. Not only did the confuse Zhodani intelligence operations, but it built a unique and unified identity for the mixed troops that helped win the day.

Very nice stuff. And I'm enjoying the .pdf, Christopher. Thanks for putting it together and making it available. I've long been a fan of porting Sorc&Sword to other settings and genres.

And for the (belated) record, I fucking love the Vargr.