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| I understand from reading old threads that Mother's Milk (can't say I like the name... Basic, Childhood or Cultural perhaps?) skills are deliberately left to the GM. As a GM however I'm not sure how I should decide what skills are appropriate for a culture. It'd be easy if I was making Deathworld, I'd just give everyone Guns +2 and Paranoid +2 What things would you recommend a GM consider when making these decisions? | The most important division of skills is that betwen tech levels. A world culture less than 5 won't have use for Electronics, for instance, and one
less than 10 can't use Transfer. It isn't so clear cut the other way, as rural areas tend to preserve older skills. I know several people today who hunt
and are good with snares, and others who weave. They are not common skills, however, and should only be used for specific characters.
The second division I make is between rural and urban skills. A rural character might have Gun and Tracking, as they learned hunting early, but an urban character would be more likely to have Streetwise and Blade instead. A character growing up on an orbital or space habitat would likely have space oriented skills like Zero-G and Astronomy. The character's family Rank can tell you a lot. A daughter of a Rank K Agribusiness family should have Agricultural and Business-oriented skills like Husbandry, Grow, Biology, Business, Sell, Negotiation, and the like. the son of a Rank J Military family would have military-oriented skills like Discipline, Gun, Tactics, Strategy, Alert, and Survival. Use the Family Rank as a guide, not a straitjacket, though. These are suggested, common family occupations at that Rank, but you can have a family of Actors at Rank K instead of an Agribusiness family. Keeping these things in mind, I recommend a technical skill, a social skill, a miscellaneous skill, and a weapon skill. Electronics, Streetwise, Zero-G, and Gyrojet would suit a highly urbanized kid from a space orbital, while Aquaculture, Husbandry, Swimming, and Melee would suit a rural kid from a water world, and Training, Goad, Riding, and Blade would describe an aristocratic kid from a rural, low tech world. Here's a short pdf I made for Cold Space, which was later incorporated into the book, but it may help you out: |
| Also from a quick skim, I see that the core book tends to lump everything into one heap with no real delineation between material that's relevant to the GM and the player. I'm not suggesting that it's necessary to rewrite the book to support novice players and GMs (although that's a commendable long term goal), but some sections targetted at GMs to help them get in the right frame of mind would be helpful. | Agreed. Some of the smaller, more focused games within StarCluster or Powered by StarCluster have more GM targetted material. We didn't put any in SC 2E because the size of the game was running away from us. We hope to include some of this in SC 2.5, which will bring together a lot of this material along with more setting material. Don't mark a date on your calender, as it may be some time before we get to it. |
| Does the IQ bonus to school entry waivers apply for all waivers (eg entry to an occupation)? | Not unless you want it to as a GM. It's a feature that is easily abused - a character pumping his IQ up to 200 has a +80 to become a Doctor out of High School. If that's OK with you, or you retain more contol over your players' characters, then feel free. This is an issue that came out strongly in playtest. |
| How do StarCluster Universal Translators work? | I tripped across this page, and thought the section on UTs was excellent and quite apropos for your question. In this guide's terms, StarCluster UTs are
Plug n' Play Literal Cybertranslators, Vocabulary based, with limited Agreement and no Implicatures, and the Interface is confident - it translates words
it feels are too ambiguous as HISS, with variable Anthropomorphism and no Diplomacy.
Human UTs are always spoken-word output, but can see in a limited arc. Alien plug-ins have appropriate chemo-receptors and such, depending on the particular alien communication method, to understand the particular alien language. UTs do not translate your speech to others, only translating thier speech to you. Human UTs deal well with human dialects and rare languages, but less well with alien dialects, and rarely translate anything but the most commonly encountered Alien languages. |
I have a great idea for a setting/Guide/etc. for StarCluster 2E that I think a lot of people would enjoy using. How can I get it published? | Contact us. We are more than happy to work with you. |
| So I'm making up a StarCluster character, and each year, I gain more skills, and occasionally lose and gain some stats. Where do I stop? Do I just keep adding on the years? When do you play? Is this the map of the character's life, and you play out the year(s) you are interested in? It seems a bit anti-climactic if you know the character's whole life before they ever even start play! | When you create a character, you stop at the age you want the character to adventure, then play. Usually, your GM will give an age recommendation, like "Create a charater between the ages of 30 and 35." This limits the skills of the character to whatever limit the GM needs for the game. At the end of each adventure, the GM will assign you a profession, like "Comm Tech". You can roll (or choose) from the appropriate skill table. That defines your year. In other words, if you generated a character to age 33, then for the 34th year, she was a Comm Tech. If you want to reuse the character in a later adventure , say one where the GM wants characters between 40 and 45, continue generating the character until you get somewhere between those ages, we'll say age 43. So, the character in question would now be - say - 44, being generated up to age 33, played for year 34, generated again from 35-43, and year 44 will be played out. There is no difference between a played out year and one where the character was generated. The adventures your character had in the generated years happened, they were simply not played out. Of course, if you and your GM want, you can go back and play out those years you generated. This is known as "looping," and can be done forwards and backwards withing the character's lifetime. This method of play is easily accomplished in the StarCluster system because of the year-by-year nature of the character advancement. If you want to loop backwards, temporarily take away those skills and salaries your character earned after the looping date. It is helpful to make a new front character sheet for the looped year. To loop forwards, merely generate the character forwards in time until the loop date. |
| Well, I looked through the Light version game book, but where is the setting? There are references to planets and such, but not much to go on. | We decided to make the Light version game without a setting. This is meant to be a taste of the StarCluster system, not a full fledged game, but if the GM wants to create planets, cultures, equipment, and peoples, it should work fine as a generic SF game. There is a complete listing and stat-box type description of all the worlds available included with the complete version of StarCluster 2E, PDF or print, but they are listed in the most general of terms. The concept is to allow the individual GM and playing group the greatest latitude in creating whatever kind of game they want. |
| Are you going to be publishing any more of the setting? | Yes. We will be focusing on creating World books and System books. For instance the freely downloadable world guides for Burn and Faren are available, as well as the System guide for the Suprise System included in the Nugik Adventure, and the much more detailed World guides of the Sweet Chariot and Book of Jalan RPGs. |
| If I create something and you later publish a World guide for the same thing won't that screw up the canon? | Nothing you can do will screw up the canon. The only canon that matters is *your* canon in your game. There is no canon outside the core rules. Everything else is optional. That is why all our World and Systems guides are optional pieces that you as a GM can slot into the game to make your life easier. |
| Is there a metaplot? Some overarching thing that is happening in the cluster? | If you want there to be one, go ahead. We are not creating one. Our Guides give a snapshot of things as of the game year 150, but nothing more. If you as a GM wish to develop things further, it's your game. |
| There are a lot of tables here. This is rather intimidating. | The vast majority of the tables are in the character creation section, and almost all of them are both random and non-random as you choose. You can instead think of them as lists of choices to pick from. |
| Can I use Blood Games characters and situations in StarCluster? They use the same engine, correct? | You can do anything you want. If SF Occult/Horror interests you, then go ahead. Remember that there are small differences between the skills in Blood Games and StarCluster, and make allowances. Non-Path characters should use the standard StarCluster profession tables, and Path characters should substitute certain skills. It should play fine with a modicum of work. |
| What are the differences between StarCluster 1.x and 2.x? | Mostly in inclusiveness. The new core book includes a lot of setting and equipment detail which was optional in 1.x. We have also drastically streamlined the chargen, and fused Random and Determined chargen methods completely. There is a sample System Guide included detailing a solar system for play, some sample starships and vehicles, and a comprehensive NPC generation system with varying degrees of character completeness. Initiative counting has reversed direction, so that lower is better - i.e. the count goes from 1 to 120. The only roll where higher is better is Quality of Success/Damage. Certain things have changed names. For instance "pods" are now called "small craft" and the "Navigation" skill is now called "Transfer." |
| If you have the Robot Design Guide, can you make a Robot PC? How? | You can certainly play Robot PCs, particularly any with Self-Programming brains. A Self-Programming brain is much more like a human brain, as it learns
skills from experience. With a self-aware but not Self-Programming brain, you have to have someone else - a programmer - input your skills as programs.
Non-SP robots are better as NPCs than as PCs. For an SP robot, create the robot as normal, then select it's initial skills. For example, an SP II brain is 'born' knowing 10 levels of skill. These can be divided up however the player likes, but most of the skill slots will probably go to senses rather than skills. The robot is employed - in servitude - at a profession consonant with its skills. At the end of each year, the amount of credits the robot would have earned from its job is deducted from its cost, and the robot learns new skills from the experience exactly as a humanoid would. The SP II brain can learn up to 2 skill levels per year, which the player chooses from among those listed under the profession. This can be random if the player prefers. This is pretty much what normal PCs do. The biggest difference is when the robot player character hits the maximum number of skill levels its brain allows, in the case of the SP II, that is 30 programs. That is at least 10 years of learning, even if the player takes the maximum of 2 skills per year. As the robot has been paying down its indenture to its contract's owner, by the time it gets near the limit, it should be free. After the robot has hit its skill level limit, it can continue to learn - indeed it must learn - but must drop skills not used to make room. Another big difference is if the robot PC has an abberation. The more sophisticated the brain, the higher the chance of this happening. This is a role-playing opportunity. You might want to discuss it with the player and decide on an abberation rather than randomly rolling it. Most of the abberations are fun to play out. SP Robot Brains have an equivalent IQ - SP I brains have an equivalent IQ of 100, with each increase in capacity adding ten, i.e. SP II brains are equivalent to an IQ of 110. SP I robot brains have a rather flat, emotionless affect, and each successive model indicates a doubling of affect complexity from the previous model - i.e SP II brains are twice as complex as SP I brains, and SP III brains are twice as complex as SP II brains. |
| Is StarCluster 2E a "rules heavy" game? | Well, since all the rules needed to play are contained in 9 pages of the 287 pages for the game, "rules heavy" is not really applicable. On the other hand, there's a fair degree of substantiveness to the rules, what we call "crunch." It would be fair to call StarCluster 2E a "rules medium" game in our opinion. Character Generation, on the other hand, is rather detailed, with a full lifepath system. If you prefer quick character generation or you need NPCs, there is a section with extensive options and templates to let you whip up PCs and NPCs very quickly. |
| IMPORANT | KNOWN STARCLUSTER 2E ERRATA |
| Page 8, Character Generation | "Remember to add +1 to your die roll for each point of IQ over 120. High IQ is a big asset here." should read "Remember to add +1 to your waiver chance for each point of IQ over 120. High IQ is a big asset here." |
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