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Thread: Renown

  1. #1

    Renown

    Ok,

    I am in the process of converting my players CODA 1st Officer to a LUG 1st Officer. I decided to start form scratch and not worry about a straight conversion. I want him to be legal, so I followed the rules. He needs to be a 1st Officer so I looked at the Prereqs for a 1st Officer and it says he has to have 40 Renown. Now I am up to his first tour and he has 5 Renown. The most any tour gives is +2 Renown.

    So he has to go on 18 Tours to get 40 Renown?

    Am I reading that right?

    I thought a tour was 1-6 years long.

    Riker made Commander in 12 years (Chain of Command).

    Can I buy Renown another way?
    If Matt Damon is going to be Captain Kirk, does that mean Ben Affleck is gonna be Mr. Spock?

  2. #2
    Commendation and Famous Incident both are advantages.
    Phoenix...

    "I'm not saying there should be capital punishment for stupidity,
    but maybe we should just remove all the safety lables and let nature take it's course"

    "A Place For Everything & Nothing In It's Place"

  3. #3
    The hidden problem you are running in to is that tours in pre-game character generation do not givc as much skills / XP / Renown as you get in the average gaming session, over time.

    This is beacuse (well in LUG which I am more familiar with) they had the PCs start off a tlower levels and set the needed skills and renown high, because PCS would get a few each session, so that over say a year or two of play in a campaign, those PCs could earn their way up to command levels.

    FASA did not have this problem, it allowed you to generate characters with top skills in character generation, right out of the gate, plus characters for any rank / position on a crew, including Captain. Plus, this being nearly 20 years ago, did not have a renown system for PC (nor ads & Disads for that matter.)

    LUG was set up to generate PCs of rank ENS, LTJG or LT, mostly as department heads for a decent cost, leaving the positions of first officer / XO to the Referee's NPCs, or to long term players, after they had earned it up. The LUG player's guide had rules for high level characters.

    Decipher, I can't recall, but I'll look it up for you in a bit.

    I would highly suggest the following:

    Cadet Cruise
    Starts out in the fleet as rank ENS (or LTJG if the PC has high honors from the cadet cruise.)

    Gain a max of about 1 rank per tour, unless the first tour is long in which case might go from ENS to LTJG to LT by the end of tour one.

    Gaining LCDR by the end of the first tour would be extremely rare, and I would think, unheard of.

    Toss in what renown you can, from the various advantages, and then leave it where it stands, as you start play.

    If it ends up that you have say 20 renown (or whatever), and need 40 to advance to the next rank, then it will just be a lot of game sessions for that pc to advance.

    Designers of any of the above, feel free to confirm this, please.

    I want it to be clear that I am not suggesting that if you want a LCDR or CDR PC, to take the lesser rank of LT or LCDR, and earn it in game.

    I am suggesting instead to take the rank, and pay out a long term full renown cost for the NEXT higher rank, by just owing the renown from wherever you have stopped in character generation.

    Those rules are set up so that a PC cannot board a vessel out of character generation as a LCDR and make Commander by session 3, and Captain by session 5 [just by paying for it with XP points] (and I totally agree with that philosophy.)

    Ranks that would warrant it, and poisitions such as First Officer and Full Captain are YEARS of work, 15 or more, in most cases. I think it is canon that Kirk was the youngest Captain in the fleet at 35, I think it was.

    My real world navy experience bears this out.

    In my own campaign, we have new PC that is of rank LTJG, and we figure if we play about a year, about 50 or so sessions, plus or minus, that guy might make Full Commander, if he is lucky, and doesn't screw up or get killed in battle.
    He's already written off making full Captain as nigh impossible unless our campaign runs a year and a half or two years or so.

    Most pseudo-military game systems / settings are like this, though, Traveller, Twilight:2000 and Battletech included (within their own settings).

    A moderate level of rank to start (via character generation) then slow progress in game, since week to week in your "Show" they will tend to have lots more experiences than they did "In the boring fleet before they got to the exciting ship, worth of it's own TV Show" so to speak.

    Good luck with it.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Aug 1999
    Location
    Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    3,490
    The Renown requirements for characters were based on the idea that everyone would be starting out with Ensigns and Lieutenants, and don't work for generating higher rank officers.

    The best option is to simply ignore the Renown minimums during character generation. Enforce them for in-play promotions, but make sure you award enough Renown to allow them to advance.

    Also, look at the Advantages and Disadvantages the characters have, and bump their Renown appropriately. If a character has a Famous Incident, give him 2 Renown per point spent, in an aspect appropriate to the incident. Commendations likewise - see the TNG Players Guide for this. Aptitudes and Abilities would give Skill Renown. Inept would give negative Skill Renown. Species Friend would give positive Openness Renown and Species Enemy would give negative Openness... Use your judgement - nor every Trait is noteworthy.

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