Game in the Brain

So I have to stop right now and focus on the adventure for the Mini-Con in Nov 27. But I did figure out some of the stats of the project. I’m a fan of defining and adjusting scope of work since its become a kinda of a game and essential in project management and GMing.

I’ve gone as to define Difficulty as a Scope of Work. The greater the scope of work, the harder it should be. Distractions  (Pain, Emotions, active agents, etc…) and Resources (time, consumables, equipment, manpower etc…) are seperate elements. Isnt that nice and easy to remember: Difficulty (Scope), Distractions, and Resources are the circumstances that one has to consider for a Task.

Enough of the Distractions here is the Remaining Scope.

• Perks (4 hours). I’ve allowed sub-Characteristics. Stats dont go up as easily, but Perks do. They are specific modifiers to a narrower field of a Characteristic. Currently I need to just fill in the fluff and definitions. 
• Example: 
• Like Lifting, Power, Build, for Strength
• Credit, Peer Group, Social Access for Social Status
• Generic Fluff (10 hours). So the Traveller Universe is not SRD, which is not a bad thing. It just means I will use my CC premade universe. No big deal lolz. Still to give it the Traveller Vibe I have to maintain the following.
• Human Centric. But in this case 3000 years of Pantropy  and Overrunning the previous dominant civilization (Humans and its Pantroy are the R strategy in a K/R selection theory). The previous aliens Imperium were more stable and slower growing (K strategy). 
• Organizational Limitations reverts to more basic Social Organizations (Client Patron of Feudalism). 
• FTL is only Interstellar and not Intra-stellar. 
• Skill and Task Definitions (6 hours). I’ve gotten carried away with scoping and have begun defining skills more carefully. I’ve also added skills that are taken for granted but its needed to exist like – Culture, Languages, Local Expertise, and Surviving in a particular Environment or Social structure. I wanted these skills there to help players understand the barriers of understanding and trade, I didnt want to hand wave these elements. As someone who is bi-lingual and learning chinese but is heavily influenced by western and eastern thought and philosophy these are the things important to me: bridging differences in perspective, culture, language, and worlds. 
• Backgrounds and Education (10 hours). So after rolling stats, players roll their character’s Background (they can choose their Pantropic form) and then their access to Higher Education. Background determines Social Status early on, and Education is the first chance to Boost that stat. 
• Social Elites will have better stats (bonus to certain stats) and access to augmentation. They are the truly alien people by the opportunities they have access. 
• Professions (16-20 hours). I’ve made them and need to build a lot of the fluff. Social status advancement (and Credit) is one of the key fixes I’ve done with system. As you get older, unless you have misfortunes that ruin your credit, you get better credit. 
• Characters can have access to youth restoring drugs and options, but it is expensive and drives one to stay working forever. It is in itself a kind of trap. Given the kind of life space travel can do to a character’s life. 
• Fiscal terms are not earth years. Because of the vastness of space and travel, a fiscal term can be 2-6 years at a time. Imagine how much life is lost in work in an era that travels the distances it can. 
• Equipment (10 hours). Its a lot of detailing and I’ve fixed it to be lighter on the charactersheet and working memory of the player. 
• Physical Feats and Hazards (12-16 hours). I planed to do two sets: Ad hock, and some details and further reading sources. So players and Gms have a quick fix to easily find. The detailed elements are there to forewarn the GM of certain things, but the emphasis is moving things along – so its filled with ways the GM can handwave while easing his science conscience. 
• Combat (10 hours). I’ve emphasized in simplifying the combat using zone system and initiative by player narrative. Will have useful benchmarks for the GM to guide his intuition. 
• Star ship creation (20 hours). I’m rehashing it a bit, making it easier and using Metrics. Sorry to the Dogmatics. My baseline ship is based on the Liberty Ships of 14,000 metric displacement tons. I want to create tutorials and files using blender for GMs to render for themselves. I want to create a standard for sharing. I want the GMs and Players to be able to modify the ship and share their blender files. 
• Trade (20 hours). I want make spreadsheets or app that do all this calculating (I’ll be trained in this app maker). One thing I can really contribute is the “Case Study” elements and sample that help show how a deal can be terribly wrong as well as access to similar case studies to inspire the GM and the Players how they could have worked differently. 
• Character Sheet for Convention Style Play (10 hours). Then a character sheet that pretty much follows Extra Credits Tutorials 101 guidelines. Learning the system small chunks at a time. Additional pages to the Character sheet teach new elements of the system, while its counter part is giving the New GM guidelines is exercising these new mechanics. Stuff that Apocalypse Word Engine does and that other Game system should consider to lower the barrier for entry.