[TML] Nobles in Traveller

[Brad Murray]

On Dec 3, 2007 8:58 AM, Hans Henrik Rancke-Madsen <rancke at diku.dk> wrote:

> Also, there was a distinct risk that a player could end up as one of the
> 300
> most important people in a society with 15 trillion members (Or at least
> closely related to one of them). Not the kind of social connections I
> wanted any of my players to have.


We have a couple of fixes to the noble issues in our current game.  One is
systemic and one is an IMTU settings solution.

Systemic: We got rid of Social Standing as a stat.  Anything story-related
that you want to do with it could be accomplished with the appropriate skill
(oratory and intimidation worked well for my character) and maybe an Aspect
anyway, and that let nobility a concrete mechanism and the story can be
handled more softly and reasonably than actually being a duke or something.

Setting: IMTU there's the Emperor and there are Dukes.  Land holding
nobility that aren't running systems (Dukes) but rather just little fiefdoms
on a planet somewhere are the norm (millions of these) and even Dukes are
relatively common -- sure, only one ducal family per system maximum but
that's still thousands of dukes.  If a player wants to be a real duke that's
not really a problem because in order for an adventure to happen he pretty
much has to be an ex-duke or else he's swamped with ducal duties and not
having any fun.  Ex-dukes probably have a nice web of contacts but as many
enemies as friends and there has to be a story in not being a duke any
more.  So that's all cool.  If you retained Social Standing in this TU you'd
probably set Duke somewhere around 11 or 12 and use SS as a measure of power
within the political structure rather than a literal nobility ranking for
the most part.  It would become more of a Contacts stat than anything else.

-- 
Brad Murray (halfjack)