Vector movement

“The hedonic-treadmill theory says every time you achieve a goal, you set your sights on the next one,” says Art Markman, a University of Texas psychologist and Psychology Today blogger. “If your main goal is high status, you won’t enjoy it once you’re there.”

I have posted my rules for social class, NPC motivations, reactions and how to influence NPCs using their motivations here.

Tasks

Whenever a task roll is mentioned rules to determine the target number, what skill and modifiers to use will be given, as well as what the degrees of success or failure are noted. See my page on Traveller tasks here for details here.

Maintenance

Every quarter of a year (13 weeks) characters adjust their SOC by various factors, this can lead to one or more increases or decreases in their SOC. There are 5 modifiers to check; Family, Upkeep, Wealth, Socializing and Punishment, each will give a Social Modifier (SM) that can be either positive or negative. You add them all up, taking their sign into account of course, and that is your final SM score. Roll a D6 against this SM score and if you rolled equal or lower you raised your SOC by 1 if the SM is positive or lowered by one of the SM is negative, if you succeeded you may roll another D6, add it to the first and if the sun is still equal or lower you gain or lose another SOC, keep rolling until you fail. Say your final SM is +3. Your first D6 is 1, so you get +1 SOC and can roll again. Your second D6 is a 3, 1 + 3 is four which is higher than the SM of 3 so you stop, with SOC + 1 for this quarter.

Note that if your SOC is the same as your Family SOC, you pay normal upkeep for your SOC, your wealth is equal to or below your SOC, you don’t socialize publicly and you haven’t been convicted of any crimes your total SM will be 0 so your SOC cannot change.

Family SM

Family SOC is usually what SOC you started with but if the referee wants to track the rise and fall of a family this may change during play as well. If your parents are unknown your Family SOC is 5. Family SM is calculated like this:

• +2 if Family SOC is 3+ higher than your SOC
• +1 if Family SOC is 1-2 higher than your SOC
• 0 if Family SOC is equal to your SOC
• -1 if Family SOC is 1-2 lower than your SOC
• -2 if Family SOC is 3+ lower than your SOC

Upkeep SM

You must pay upkeep every quarter (13 weeks) to pay for food, clothes, beer etc. This also simplify play as you don’t need to keep track of small expanses like this during actual play. Look at the Upkeep column of the table below to determine what Upkeep cost at each SOC. If buying 1 to 2 levels above your SOC gain you a +1 SM and buying 3 or more above your SOC gain you a +2 SM, buying lower than your SOC works similarly. If you do buy some fashion item during play and the referee deem you must pay for it you must find an item at the given Art Class (AC) which might be tricky, or treat Upkeep as that of the bought AC if lower. Ignore Upkeep while in prison, use the Punishment SMs instead.

• +2 if Upkeep-SOC 3+ higher than SOC
• +1 if Upkeep-SOC 1-2 higher than SOC
• -1 if Upkeep-SOC 1-2 lower than SOC
• -2 if Upkeep-SOC 3+ lower than SOC

Art class

Art Class (AC) is a multiplier to price for fashionable items. AC 0 is the normal level that is most common and whenever nothing specific is said the item is AC 0. Higher AC items may or may not be of higher quality as well, AC -1 or -2 are always of lower quality and whenever there are rules for breakage take these modifiers into account.

High class skill let you judge the actual AC up to your skill level, anything above will only be known as higher but not its exact value. Let’s say some merchant is selling you a dinner dress at x30 the normal price indicating that it is AC 3. If your character has High class skill 1 you know it is above AC 1 but may not be more than AC 2. If your character or your valet has High class 3 she can certify that the dress is indeed AC 3 and thus worth the x30 price tag. Note that it is only when seen in public situations that AC matter, nobody cares if you were sweat pants and ugly v necked t-shirts at home.

Wealth SM

Wealth is based on the amount of visible money (house, ship, stocks etc) you have from the table. There is no negative SM from having too low wealth. Use the table to determine what your level of wealth corresponds to as a SOC. Ships are valued by age:

• Less than 10 years old 100%
• 10 years or more old 70%
• 20 years or more old 50%
• 50 years or more old 17%

or you can use this formula for ships at least ten years old:
Value = Base value x 0.7^(age / 10)

• +2 if Wealth-SOC 3+ higher than SOC
• +1 if Wealth-SOC 1-2 higher than SOC

Socializing SM

Socializing means being seen in the company of others in public. Keep track of both the highest and lowest SOC your are seen with and note that if you are 3 or more SOC below the ones you hang with they will lose status for being seen in the company of you. Those you hang with discreetly or secretly won’t affect this SM in any way.

• +2 if the highest SOC you socialize with is 3+ higher than your own SOC
• 0 if the highest SOC you socialize with is equal to your own SOC
• +1 if the highest SOC you socialize with is 1-2 higher than your own SOC
• -1 if the lowest SOC you socialize with is 3+ lower than your own SOC

Fame and publicity SM

Fame & publicity deals with the effects of being seen in the limelight, or read about, or even whispered about in certain situations. Keep track of the highest positive publicity as well as the highest negative publicity. Make sure this isn’t limited to media coverage alone, songs, poems, widespread rumors also count as publicity. The limited subset mentioned could be the navy, mercenaries, gamblers etc.
Publicity must be enviable, awe inspiring or heroic, infamy must be loathsome or sickening, merely doing something illegal is not enough.

• +3 for subsector wide or more publicity, everyone knows
• +2 for pop 6+ planet wide publicity, everyone there knows
• +1 for a smaller population or a limited subset publicity
• -1 for infamy known to a smaller population or subset
• -2 for pop 6+ planet wide infamy, everyone there knows
• -3 for subsector wide or more infamy, everyone knows

Punishment SM

If you are convicted of a crime you will suffer an SM at least once but also every 13 weeks if the punishment last long enough. Note that for very low SOC punishments can sometimes give positive SMs. Punishment Levels (PL) will be explained in much more detail in an upcoming post and rulebook pdf called Crime and Punishment.

Well, that should be enough for you to all start climbing up the greasy pole. The Social class pdf available here for download detail rules on reactions, NPC motivations and how to influence them based on their motivations, there is even a little guide on how to determine what reaction is required for a particular favor, also based on NPC motivations. Next I will post an article detailing how to use these motivations in a variety of ways, as an example I will list the primary and secondary motivations of all crew members aboard the Serenity.

What a vision you are, in your fine dress. It must have taken a dozen slaves a dozen days to get you into that get-up. ‘Course your daddy tells me it takes the space a school boy’s wink to get you out of it again. Forgive my rudeness. I cannot abide useless people.

Murphy – Firefly Shindig episode

This entry was posted on April 13, 2020 at 13:09 and is filed under Rules, Traveller. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.