Rules Summary

Dice rolls

• Dice throws used for random or unpredictable outcomes.
• Rolls involve two (six-sided) dice unless otherwise stated.
• Referee rolls may be kept secret.

Some terms:

• Saving Throw/Throw: the number you need to roll on the dice to achieve an effect. Written as either e.g. “8” for exactly 8, “5+” for five or higher, or “4-” for 4 or lower (note that the plus or minus sign follows the number).
• Die Modifier (DM): a modifier added or subtracted from the roll before comparing to the “throw”. Listed as e.g. “+4” for bonuses or “-1” for penalties (note that the plus or minus sign precedes the number).

Referee

• Typical GM role.
• Creates the universe and portrays the universe and NPCs within it.
• Resolves rule disputes.
• Acts as go-between when players’ characters need to act secretly.

Characters

• See here for character creation rules.

Aging

• Starting at age 34, aging begins to have detrimental effects on your characteristics.
• Drugs and suspended-animation may alter the rate at which your character ages, so you need to keep careful track of your character’s physical age.
• At 34 and at each 4 years afterwards (38, 42, 46, …), you must make aging rolls.
• This applies both during character creation and to the further passage of time during play.
• Refer to the aging table on page 15 of Book 1.
• Throw two-dice against the target number in parentheses for your current age for each of Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, and (starting from age 66) Intelligence.
• On failure, decrease the characteristic by the number listed outside of parentheses.
• If aging or injury reduces a characteristic to zero, you become ill or wounded. Make a saving throw against 8+ (modified by the expertise of attending medical personnel). On success, you recover immediately: your treatment involved slow drug speeding up your body chemistry so add 1d6 months to your age, but you return to play fully recovered with the characteritsics restored to a value of 1. In the absence of medical personnel you are instead incapacitated for the number of months rolled. Failure means death.

Weapon Expertise

• All characters start out with weapon expertise of ½ in all weapons. Gaining expertise increases it to 1, then additional expertise increases it to 2, 3, 4, etc.
• When gaining expertise in Blade Combat or Gun Combat it must be assigned to a specific weapon.

The weapon skills:

• Brawling: hand to hand fighting in general, including clubs, bottles, and the like as well as actual unarmed combat.
• Blade Combat: fighting with blades or polearms, must be assigned to a specific blade type. Weapon options are: Dagger, Blade, Foil, Cutlass, Sword, Broadsowrd, Spear, Halberd, Pike, Cudgel, Bayonet.
• Gun Combat: the use of guns, must be assigned to a specific gun type. Gun type options are: Body Pistol, Automatic Pistol, Revolver, Carbine, Rifle, Laser Carbine, Laser Rifle, Automatic Rifle, Submachine Gun, Shotgun.
• Gunnery: the use of spacecraft-mounted weapons. Possession of the skill entitles you to the title Gunner.

Basic Skills

TKTK see Book 1 pp. 19-26.

NPCs

• Nominally the referee should use the character generation procedures to generate NPCs.
• When PCs go looking for employees, the first generated character with the appropriate skill will present themself. If they are not accepted, there will be a delay before another character applies.
• Most crew NPCs are dependable or loyal if not treated badly, but in some cases reaction rolls may be called for.

Personl combat

• For combat on the people or animals scale.
• Based on successive attacks by each character involved.
• Rounds last 15 seconds.
• Basic attack throw is 8+ to hit (before accounting for various modifiers).
• On a hit, wounds are inflicted based on the weapon used.
• Combat continues until one side is vanquished.

Procedure (each step is detailed below):

1. Determine if either side has surprise.
2. Determine the initial range separating the parties.
3. Determine if escape or avoidance is possible.
4. Resolve combat with a series of combat throws. In each round, each character indicates their movement status, as well as their target and how they are attacking them.

Surprise:

• Roll one die for each party. If any member has leader expertise, apply a DM of +1; same for tactical expertise; same for military experience.
• If one side rolls 3 or more higher than the other side, they have surprised the others. Otherwise, both parties are equally aware of the encounter at the range of encounter.
• A party with the element of surprise can try to avoid the other party.
• A party with the elemtn of surprise may instead attack using surprise blows, swings, and shots until surprise is lost.
• Surprise is lost when a member of the other party gives the alarm in some manner. All gun shots (except silenced pistols, laser weapons, and any gun in vacuum) will alert the enemy to an attack. A character who is hit but not rendered unconscious will make enough noise to raise the alarm. If the alarm is not raised in this manner, there is a chance (throw 9+) for an unattacked comrade in the surprised party to notice the victim fall and give the alarm.
• Once surprise is lost, normal combat begins. Note that all attacks in a round are made simultaneously, so even if the alarm is raised when only part of the surprising party have resolved their attacks, the others get to make their surprise attacks too.

Range:

• Encounters begin at one of these ranges: close (actually touching), short (1-5 meters, sword or polearm range), medium (6-50 meters, pistol range), long (51-250 meters, rifle range), or very long (251-500 meters, extreme range).
• The referee may decide the initial range of an encounter or determine it randomly using the tables below with a 2d6 roll:

Escape and avoidance:

• A party which has the element of surprise may always avoid an encounter if they so choose.
• NPC parties which have surprise and are outnumbered will avoid an encounter on a throw of 7+.
• If two parties encounter without surprise, either may immediately attempt to escape. Roll 9+ to escape (DM -1 for short range, +1 for medium, +2 long, +3 very long). NPC parties will attempt to escape based on the referee’s judgment.
• Once combat or contact begins, a party may leave the field of battle only through movement.

Movement: * Before each round, each character decides their movement status: evade, close range, open range, or stand. * Evade: At any range you may attempt to evade enemy attacks. This forgoes your attack but grants a beneficial DM to enemy attacks against you based on the range between you: -1 for close/short range, -2 for medium, -4 for long/very long. You do not gain any bonuses from defensive expertise while evading. * Close range: You may move closer to the enemy during the round. It may take multiple rounds to move into the next range band. You may attack normally while closing range, or you may sacrifice your attack (and reduce your endurance points as if making a combat blow) to run and cover double the distance. Vehicles or animals also allow you to close range at double speed. * Open range: You may move further from the enemy, which works just like closing range but in the opposite direction. * Stand: You may elect not to move during a combat range. * Closing or opening range to the next range band takes a number of rounds based on your current range band: 1 for Close/Short, 3 for Medium, 4 for Long, 5 for Very Long. These rounds need not be consecutive, but closing and opening for a round cancel each other out. * Opening range with the enemy at very long range allows you to leave the field of battle.

Attacks:

• Each round, each combatant selects a target from the opposing party.
• To attack, you throw 2d6 and hit on 8+, subject to modifiers for various factors.
• Characters with Strength lower than the Required Strength Level or Dexterity lower than the Required Dexterity Level listed for their weapon suffers the penalty of the weapon’s Required Strength/Dexterity DM. Characters with Strength/Dexterity equal to or greater than the Advantageous Strength/Dexterity Level listed for their weapon gain the listed Advantageous Strength/Dexterity DM as a bonus.
• Your weapon expertise with your weapon is added as positive DM to your throw to hit.
• In brawling or blade combat, the defender’s expertise with their weapon applies as a negative DM to attacks against them. This does not apply to gun attacks (except when the defender is using their gun as a club).
• Characters untrained in their weapon suffer a -5 DM when attacking and a +3 DM when defending. (Player characters always have a minimum expertise of ½ in al lweapons, which avoids the untrained penalty but does not provide a bonus.)
• The Weapons Matrix indicates a DM to apply to attacks with each weapon type against defenders wearing each type of armor.
• The Range Matrix indicates a DM to apply to attacks with each weapon at each range.

Endurance:

• Your unwounded Endurance characteristic limits the amount of blows and swings a character may make.
• Gun combat is not affected by Endurance.
• Each blow or swing is categorized as surprise, combat, weakend, and special.
• Surprise blows/swings may be made without limit as long as you retain the element of surprise.
• Combat blows/swings, made in the ordinary course of battle, are limited to a number equal to your endurance characteristic. Once this has been exhausted, you may make no more combat blows until you have rested for at least 30 minutes.
• Weakened blows/swings may be made even after your combat blow allowance is used up. These blows/swings are subject ot the neagtive DM listed in the Weakened Blows and Swings column of the Weapons Table for your weapon. You may also opt to make an attack as a weakened blow before exhausting your combat blow allowance, conserving it for later attacks.
• Special blows and swings are used in situations where strength would not normally be a factor, such as against an unconscious opponent. They are not weakened and do not use up endurance points.

Wounds:

• When you hit, cross-reference your weapon with the wound column of the range matrix on Book 1 p. 49 to determine the extent of the wound. Roll the wound dice indicated.
• A wound result of 0 or less has no effect.
• Wound points are applied to the victim’s Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance on a temporary basis: each die rolled must be applied to a single characteristic, while modifiers can be distributed between these wound groups as desired. This choice is made by the victim.
• The first wound a character receives is often especially dangerous and is handled specially though: it is applied randomly in its entirety to a single characteristic.
• When one characteristic of a character is reduced to zero by wounds, they are rendered unconscious.
• When all three characteristics are reduced to zero, the character dies.
• Further wound points cannot be applied to a zero characteristic and must be applied to other characteristics instead.
• Unconscious characters with 1 characteristic at 0 recover consciousness after 10 minutes with all characteristics temporarily placed halfway between full and the wounded level (rounding down). Returning to full strength requires medical attention or three days of rest.
• Unconscious characters with two characteristics reduced to 0 are severely wounded and recover consciousness after three hours. Their characteristics remain at the higher of the wounded level or 1. Recovery requires medical attention.

Morale:

• Player or non-player parties will eventually break or rout if they suffer setbacks in battle.
• When 25% of a party are unconscious or killed, the party must begin throwing for morale each round.
• Average morale throw is 7+ to stand, or to not break. Valiant parties may have a lower throw.
• DMs include: +1 if the party is a military unit, +1 if a member has leader expertise, +1 if the leader has tactical expertise, -2 if the leader is killed (for two combat rounds, and then on until a new leader takes control), -2 if casualties exceed 50%.

Special considerations:

• Weapons are usually carried holstered or slung, and suffer a DM of -3 to use the weapon during the round in which they are drawn. If two or more individuals draw against one another, they each roll 2d6+Dexterity and the highest result is counted as having surprise for the purposes of a first hsot.
• Daggers and blades may be thrown at short range: throw 18+ to hit with DMs of: +Dexterity, +expertise in the weapon, -target’s evasion DM if they’re evading. On a hit, the wound inflicted is 2D-3. You may use one combat round at lcose range to retrieve the weapon.
• SMGs and automatic rifles fire 4 round bursts instead of single shots, resulintg in higher chances to hit and the possibility of hitting adjacent targets. Additionally you may fire twice in a combat round, provided it’s at the same target. Regardless of the designated target of automatic fire, non-evading targets adjacent to the original target are also attacked by the weapon’s burst of fire with a DM of -3 to hit. No more than two adjacent targets may be hit by a single burst.
• Each shot from a shotgun may attack up to 4 individual targets that are each human-sized or smaller, are in a group, pack, or herd, and are acting together. All shotgun fire against flying targets within range benefits from a +2 DM.

Weight:

• The weight of clothing, personal armor, and minor items such as holsters, scabbards, and belts are not counted.
• Characters may carry a load equal to their Strength characteristic in kilograms without penalty.
• Characters carrying a load up to twice their Strength are considered Encumbered, and are treated for all purposes as if they had 1 lower Strength, Dexterity, and Endurance.
• Characters with military training may carry up to triple their Strength in kilograms, but suffer a reduciton of 2 to strength, dexterity, and endurance for doing so.
• Normal gravity for a world is 7. Characters can carry an extra 12.5% (⅛) for each number below 7, or 12.5% (⅛) less for each number above 7.

Travelling

Interplanetary travel:

• Most star systems have only one major world.
• Interplanetary travel is pretty slow, and not very widely used.
• Interplanetary travel takes 45 minutes for 10k miles, 2.3 hours for 100k miles, 7.5 hours for 1 million miles, 23 hours for 10 million miles, 3.4 days for 100 million miles, and 9.6 days for 1 billion miles. There’s also a formula for calculating travel times for more general distances on Book 2 p. 6.

Interstellar travel:

• Jump drives are to travel between star systems.
• Jump drives may not be used within 100 planetary diameters of a planet.
• Each jump takes approximately one week. The travel away from planets adds about 20 hours time to the trip.
• The distance covered by use of a jump drive is measured as “jumps”, and can range from 1 jump to 6 jumps.
• You need better jump drives to jump long distances.
• Commercial starships usually make two trips per month. Each trip budgets one week of travel time and another week for transit to the jump point, landing, take-off, and time in port. This allows five or six days in port for handling cargo and passengers and for crew recreation.

Commercial travel:

• Interplanetary is infrequent but possible. Chartered vessels have prices set by the referee (or the player of the owner if the ship is owned by a player character). When available, interplanetary travel by scheduled liners costs 10% of the cost of similar interstellar travel.
• Interstellar travel is divided into four levels of passage: High Passage, Middle Passage, Working Passage, and Low Passage.
• High passage offers first class accommodations and cuisine. Amenities include the services of the ship’s steward, entertainment, a generally comfortable experience, and a bagge allowance of up to 1 ton. It costs CR 10 000.
• Middle passage is offered on a standby basis when not enough high passages are sold. Middle passengers occupy similar staterooms as do high passengers, but don’t receive the same service, entertainment, or quality of food. Their baggage allowance is 100 kg. A late arriving high passenger can bump out a middle passenger. Middle passage costs CR 8 000.
• Working passage is offered by starship captains with a crew shortage, hiring an individual to fill a vacant position for up to three jumps, paying passage instead of money. Expertise appropriate to the position is required. Your baggage allowance is 1 ton.
• Low passage is transportation in suspended animation at low cost. The suspended animation means you do not age during the journey. Low passage is risky: throw 5+ for each passenger to be successfully revived on arrival (DMs: +1 for an attending medic with Medical-2 or better, -1 for a passenger with an Endurance of 6 or less). Failure means the passenger dies. The cost of low passage is CR 1 000 and offers a baggage allowance of 10 kg. There is no refund or civil or criminal liability in case of the death of a low passenger.
• Customarily there is a lottery held to be won by the low passenger who successfully guesses the number of low passengers who survive the trip (funded by CR 10 out of each low passage); if the winner does not survive, the ship’s captain gets to keep the lottery money.
• Membership in the Traveller’s Aid Society is covered on p. 28 of Book 1.
• Passengers are required to check all weapons other than blades and daggers during the duration of a trip.

There’s a lot of dangers or complications involved in interstellar travel:

• Hijacking: For each trip (in which there is at least one NPC passenger), the referee rolls 3d6. On 18, one or more passengers attempt to hijack the ship. See Book 2 p. 8 for details.
• Skipping: When taking passage on a ship, there is no way to determine if the captain has skipped out on their debt for the ship. The referee should throw 2d6 against a target of 12 to determine if this has happened for a commercial ship. A ship that has skipped its debt (including if the player characters do so) is subject to repossession attempts if detected by the authorities or collection agencies. On each world landing, throw 12+ to avoid such attempts (DM +1 per 5 hexes distance form the home planet, max +9; DM -2 if the ship has landed on the same world twice in the last two months).
• Piracy: A starship may be accosted by pirates, customs agents, or military vessels when entering or leaving a system. TKTK
• Contaminated Fuel: When a starship jumps using unrefined fuel, throw 11+ for a drive failure to occur, once per jump in which unrefined fuel is used. DM +1 per jump made since the drives were last flushed (which takes one week at any starport).
• Lack of Maintenance: If a ship’s annual maintenance has been skipped, throw once per jump, drive failure occurs on a 12.
• Drive Failure: In the event of drive failure, manuevering, jumping, and power plant are all affected. They may be temporarily repaired by the ship’s engineer by throwing 10+ once per day with a DM of + their level of engineering expertise. More comprehensive repairs will be made at the next starport.
• Misjump: A jump drive within 100 diameters of a world or star, operating on unrefined fuel, or operating without annual maintenance may malfunction. For all jumps (in any situation) throw 12+ for a misjump to occur. DMs: +5 within 100 planetary diameters of a world or star; +3 using unrefined fuel (except military and scout ships); -1 using refined fuel; +2 if annual maintenance was skipped. When one occurs, throw 1 die, then throw that many dice to determine the number of hexes long the jump is, then throw another die to determine the direction on the hex grid for the jump.

Starships

Purchasing

Commercial starship purchases are usually financed by banks.

• Down payment: 20% of the price at the start of construction.
• Monthly payment: 1/240th of the price of the ship, for 480 months (40 years).
• Total financed price = 220% of the cash purchase price.
• Bank holds title until the ship is paid off, although the purchaser retains possession.
• Bank will require a business plan for how the purchaser intends to acquire the funds to pay the monthly payments. Pleasure vessels, military vessels, and exploratory vessels are unlikely to receive financing unless the purchaser has other sources of guaranteed income.
• Newly purchased ships come with CR 2 million in computer software.

Governments sometimes subsidize large commercial vessels (type 600 hulls or larger) to ensure consistent service to specific worlds.

• Subsidized merchant ships are assigned a specific route connecting 2 to 12 worlds, generally prior to construction.
• The ship’s owner must handle the down payment, but subsequent monthly payments are made by the government. Expenses and operational costs are the responsibility of the owner.
• The government receives 50% of the gross receipts of the ship.
• Subsidized merchants are obligated to mobilize as auxiliaries if the government requests such during times of emergency or hostilities.
• After 40 years, the vessel is paid off and the ship’s owner receives full title (and therefore no longer has to split the revenues with the government), but continues to be obligated to mobilize when needed.

Operating Expenses

Fuel:

• Cost at most starports: CR 500 per ton refined, CR 100 per ton unrefined.
• Fuel is consumed by the ship’s power plant and jump drive.
• The ship’s power plant consumes 10 times the power plant size rating tons of fuel per trip to handle internal power, maneuver drive power, and other needs.
• Jump drives require 0.1 times the mass displacement of the starship times the jump number of the drive, in tons, per jump (regardless of length).
• The maneuver drives of non-starships with a displacement of less than 100 tons use 10 kg (1% of a ton) of fuel to accelerate at 1G for 10 minutes.

Life Support:

• Each stateroom on a starship, even if unoccupied, requires a constant overhead of CR 2000 per trip. Crew members occupy one stateroom each; the remainder can be used forhigh or middle passengers.
• Low passenger berths involve an overhead cost of CR 100 per trip.
• Normally each stateroom is occupied by only a single person: even groups travelling together usually take adjoining staterooms instead of sharing.
• Military vessels or chartered transports sometimes use double occupy (two persons per stateroom).

Routine Maintenance:

• Each starship needs a complete overhaul annually to ensure it is kept in good working order.
• Annual maintenance costs 1/1000th of the cash price of the ship and requires two weeks at a class A or B starport.
• Crew members generally take vacation during annual maintenance but must still be paid.
• Failure to undergo routine maintenance imposes many risks of technical failures when travelling.

Crew Salaries:

• Crew members must be paid monthly.
• NPC crew members must be paid the standard rates listed below for the position (with modifications for expertise or seniority, usually +10% per level of expertise above level 1).
• PC crew members may bargain for better, accept worse, or work for a share of the proceeds of the ship’s activities.
• Characters who take working passage receive passage, room, and board in lieu of salary. Working passage for more than 3 trips results in automatically being hired for salary instead.
• The starship captain is usually the pilot or navigator.
• Not all positions are required for all ships and some ships may have multiple crew for a single row (e.g. multiple stewards for a large passenger liner).

Berthing costs:

• Landing fees and handling costs at starports are common.
• On average, CR 100 suffices to land and remain for up to six days.
• Remaining in port after the sixth day requires paying a CR 100 fee per additional day.
• Some locations may have higher or lower fees.

Revenue

• Commercial starships generate revenue by carrying passengers, cargo, mail, and private messages.
• Goods taken on in orbit are delivered in orbit around the destination; goods taken on while on the planet’s surface are delivered when off-loaded on the destination’s surface. The same applies to mail and passengers.

Cargo:

• Starship captains can inquire at a starport for shipments awaiting transportation and their destinations.
• The referee uses the cargo generation procedure below.
• A starship can carry as many shipments as will fit in the hold.
• Starships can only carry full shipments.
• Normal shipment fares are CR 1000 per ton.
• Starship captains may also purchase goods locally and ship them at their own expense in the hopes of profit at their destination.

Cargo generation procedure:

1. Determine the worlds accessible to the starship based on their jump distance.
2. For each world, roll one die per population number of the destination.
3. Each die represents a shipment, measured in multiples of 5 tons.

Passengers:

• After a starship has decided to head to a specific destination (e.g. by accepiting cargo bound for it), passengers will present themselves seeking transport there as well.
• The referee will roll to determine the numbers of such passengers using the table on p. 12 of Book 2: rolling dice based on the population of the origin and applying a modifier based on the destination’s population, for each of high, middle, and low passage.
• Passengers pay the standard fare for their passage class: CR 10 000 for high passage, CR 8 000 for middle passage, and CR 1 000 for low passage.

Mail:

• Subsidized merchants may receive mail delivery contracts as part of their assigned route.
• They must dedicate five tons of ship cargo capacity to postal duty, the ship must be armed, and the crew must include a gunner.
• The starship is pade CR 25 000 (CR 5 000 per ton of postal cargo area) for each trip made, regardless of the actuall tonnage carried.

Private messages:

• Ships (usually not subsidized mail ships) may be approached to deliver private messages.
• Private messages may be arranged through the ship’s owner or captain or through other crew members.
• Private mail is usually intended for delivery to a specific location.
• Private mail comes with a CR 20 to 120 fee for carrying it.
• The referee should throw 9+ at each port for a private message to be awaiting transmittal, and randomly determine which crew member is approached to carry it.
• Serving as a carrier for private messages introduces you to the recipient as a dependable, trustworthy person.

Shuttles:

• Shuttles operate from planetary surface to orbit and return, where necessary.
• Shuttle service usually costs 1% of the normal interstellar cost. For example, cargo transit between orbit and surface costs CR 10 per ton.

Construction

Book 2 starting on p. 14 covers this!

Starship Combat

TKTK