RPGaDay 2023, Day 10
Between Brain and Biro ...
Let’s start with what looks like the non sequitur of the year.
I’m bisexual.
I’m more towards the biromantic asexual end of the scale, in that I don’t feel the urges for coupling that some people seem to have. But I am bisexual. I’ve been to bed and in relationships with men, women, and gender-non-conforming people.
And I love them all. There’s plenty of love in me to go around. Everybody’s welcome to come along on my ride.
So, then, what has this got to do with the answer to today’s question, “Favourite Tie-In Fiction”?
That’s the thing. I don’t have any favourite tie-in fiction.
Not fiction written by others, at any rate.
Because, to get my fix, I’ve had to write my own.
Grow Your Own
The thing about tabletop is that you do need people to share the experience with you. You really need a bunch of players sat around a table, with a Guide / Storyteller / Referee at the end, directing the adventure.
But if you don’t have reliable access to a group, and if the only thing they want to play is murder hoboes no matter what the game or setting (DoubleZero, World of Darkness, Traveller, Mythras, Comae Engine), you can do the next best thing.
You can write your own adventures.
With creative fan fiction, you don’t even have to stat up your characters. You know roughly what they can do - Oshynn (Harnworld) is on her way to becoming a Gray Mage, but she is also a powerful psion; Ahrain Windspeaker (Traveller) is a vlogger, who travels around the Spinward Marches and becomes an investigator, diplomat, and spiritual healer; Master Axan (Mythras) is leader of a group of people who travel from world to world, settling down and practicing sorcery - and from this point on, they are exploring the world of marriage, being the only character I have ever written of so far who is actually married.
Caleb “Howl” Howell, The Chaotician, (DoubleZero) is a chaos magician, and his world and history are currently being explored on my blog, The Spiral Room. So too is Den Thompson, master hypnotist (DoubleZero); his romance to Lauren Tanaka is the subject of the erotically charged ongoing fiction serial Den & Lauren, also in The Spiral Room.
When you’re writing fiction tied in to a setting, you don’t need to adhere to the customs of that setting. Ahrain Windspeaker, for instance, is currently involved with a monastic order of kind-of Buddhists, whose ship contains technology that seems impossible to current Traveller tech - a zero-point power plant, a drive which allows for instantaneous travel between star systems (hello Star Trek: Discovery Spore Drive, only without the mushrooms), and particle collectors a la the ship from Lifeforce:-
You can find the rules for almost all of this tech in the Mongoose Traveller sourcebook High Guard 2022 Update, by the way. The zero-point power plant is not, so here are the rules:-
Type - Power per Ton - Cost per Ton
Chemical - (TL7) 5 - MCr0.25
Fission - (TL6) 8 - MCr0.4
Fusion - (TL8) 10 - MCr0.5
Fusion - (TL12) 15 - MCr1
Fusion - (TL15) 20 - MCr2
Antimatter - (TL20) 100 - MCr10
Zero Point - (TL 9) 100 - MCr10
Zero Point - (TL 11) 200 - MCr10
Zero Point - (TL 13) 300 - MCr10
Zero Point - (TL 15) 500 - MCr10
Zero Point - (TL 17) 1000 - MCr10
Zero Point - (TL 25) Unlimited - MCr10
Zero-point Power Plants require no fuel; just an occasional stopover of a week or so to collect particles from space using a Collector (page 83, High Guard 2022 Update) to act as a catalyst for the Power Plant.
I’ve created a custom ship which defies all the Traveller laws of physics, because I’ve been happy to tear up the rules on ship and character design.
The same goes for one of the Traveller skills, Jack-of-all-Trades. Here’s the thing about Traveller skills - if you are not trained in a skill, you do it badly (-3 untrained DM), but if you learn basic competence in that skill (skill-0) that untrained DM goes away. As someone who is versed in that skill, your results won’t be any great shakes, but you have a chance to excel with a skill result Effect of +6 or higher.
“Effect” is when your dice roll higher than the target number on your 2D. So say, the target number is 8+, and you roll a natural 12, and your skill is Diplomat-4, say, and your Social Standing characteristic DM is +2, then your Effect is ((12+4+2 = 18) - 8) = 10. So your Diplomat could avert a World War with an Effect like that in their roll.
Jack-of-all-Trades is an exception. In the Mongoose Traveller Core Rulebook, Jack is rated 1 to 3. Each point in that skill eliminates one single -1 untrained DM. If your character has Jack-1, their untrained penalty DM is -2. If they have Jack-3, they are effectively running on every single skill at skill-0, even skills they never rolled for during character generation, such as a botanist learning Explosives, or a priest learning Streetwise.
In my stories, my characters only ever need Jack-of-all-Trades-1. J-o-T-1 is sufficient to eliminate the -3 untrained penalty DM in its entirety. As a matter of fact, not only do I make it a policy to apply this rule to everyone who rolls J-o-T-1 during chargen; I make J-o-T-1 an option for every player character, no matter their career or background. This gives every player character one huge advantage over the non-player characters - they can try their hand to anything, relying on their native characteristic DMs to save the day.
This is, of course, a total violation of all the rules as written.
To which I say: to hell with those rules. You don’t like it - rewrite those rules to match the liberties I’ve taken with this setting.
When To Fold (and Spindle and Mutilate The Rules)
I’ve never seen full representation of LGBT+ characters in a lot of RPGs. I guess tabletop still appeals to cishet white men more than to anybody else.
But it seems to me that if being LGBTQIA+ is still considered to be a violation of some rules, then if the act of writing such characters into the books I want to read is a violation of some unwritten gamebook rule, I’m safe to write about my characters seemingly defying other game rules, too.
Besides, look at those tie-ins, movies, TV series, books, which cleave too strongly to restrictive straitjacket game rules. Don’t they just suck, so much?
I don’t think I’ve even answered the question above. Just told you what I think. Tie-in fiction only works if you destroy the rules. Narrative outcomes beat die rolls any day.