A Pale Beginning

2014-03-10T07:44:45Z

Fragz:

This game is being run (initially) as a play-by-post game here on the [http://starfrontiers.info/forum Star Frontiers Network Game Forums]. Follow [http://starfrontiers.info/forum/viewforum.php?f=87 this link to the game forum to play]. ''Note: that this page will probably be reorganized into a variety of sub-pages as more material is added.''

The game is set on Pale in the Truane's Star system at the beginning of the First Sathar War. Characters will start out on Pale as the invasion occurs and will attempt to survive and fight back against the Sathar invaders. Game background information, house rules, and a list of the player and non-player characters are given in the sections below

==Background Information==
===History===
It is Pale Year (PY) 173, which at some future date will be known as year 3 pre Federation (pf). [[Pale]] has been colonized for 173 years and has grown a sizable population. There are cities scattered all over the planet. The capitol is located at Point True and has a population of several hundred thousand. While the population is predominantly human, there is a significant representation of the other three major Frontier races. The racial breakdown is 46% human, 23% Yazirian, 18% Dralisite, and 13% Vrusk.

The Pan Galactic Corporation wields considerable influence in all aspects of life but there are many small local companies that are holding on in competition. For example, Streele Mining actually controls a majority of the mining and surveying work done on the planet. They may buy tools and robots from PanGal, but the contracts and jobs are held through Streele.

Just within the past two years, a few ships of alien design have appeared from the direction of the Xagyg Dust Cloud. These ships have been merchantmen, carrying members of strange new races and tales of worlds beyond the Frontier. These races, the Ifshnit, Humma, and Osakar, have a confederation of worlds beyond the Xagyg Dust Cloud and seem to have friendly intentions toward the members of the Frontier races.

===Pale Physical Information===
Pale orbits it's primary, Truane's Star, in the outer portions of the star's habitable zone. This causes the average temperature on Pale to be fairly low resulting in fairly cold and severe winters and cool summers. Pale is also a slightly smaller world with a surface gravity of only 0.9 g.

In addition to the cool weather, Pale orbits very slowly on it's axis, completing one revolution every 55 standard hours. As such the local population has divided the day into four working time periods:
* '''Day-day''': Corresponds to the 13 hours starting roughly 1 hour after sunrise. This is the typical working time when the sun is up.
* '''Day-night''': This corresponds to the next 14 hour period and is typically a rest period although the sun is still shining. Because this rest period occurs during daylight hours, all houses on Pale have windows or curtains allowing rooms to be completely "blacked out" to simulate darkness and night time even though the sun is still up.
* '''Night-day''': This is the 13 hour work period occuring during the local night. Since this is a time of major work and transportation, all the streets and buildings of Pale are well lit to provide a semblance of daylight during this work period. When seen from orbit, the cities and towns of Pale in the Night-day part of the cycle blaze with light.
* '''Night-night''': This is the final 14 hour rest period that occurs during the local night time.

The extra hour is added in to either the Day-day or Night-day period depending on the season, the hour being added to the Day-day in the summer when the days are longer and the Night-day in the winter when the nights are longer.

Typical work periods are 10 hours long during the Day-day and Night-day periods although there are many graveyard and swing shift positions that run during other hours.

==Characters==
===Character Generation===
Please use the following rules for generating your character:
# Follow standard Alpha Dawn character generation to determine their starting characteristics
# Characters may be from any of the four races from the Alpha Dawn rules or the Ifshnit, Humma, or Osakar from the Zebulon's Guide to Frontier Space suppliment. Characters from the Zeb's Guide races need to detail in their background how and why they are on Pale as there is only very limited preliminary contact between the Rim and the Frontier at the time of the start of this campaign.
# Instead of the standard skill AD/KH skill system we will be using the skill system from the [[A Skilled Frontier]] article in the [[Star Frontiersman]]. This system will be modified slightly as described in the [[A_Pale_Beginning#Skills | Skills section of the House Rules]] below.
# All players will receive 50 XP to spend on skills, racial abilities, and characteristic improvement over their original 3 starting skills. Note that initial parts of this game will be almost completely ground based so skills related to spacecraft will not see much use. You may want to have that as part of your character concept but they may lie dormant for a while during play.
# All characters will start with a toolkit or weapon relevant to their highest skill in their PSA plus 1000 cr to spend on other equipment as they would like subject to limitations in the [[A_Pale_Beginning#Equipment | Equipment House Rules]] below
# All character should provide a background write-up of their history and include a description of what they do on a daily basis on Pale assuming they are there working a regular job. Remeber when writing these backgrounds up that your character has no knowledge of the existance of the Sathar or upcoming invasion. Bonus starting XP will be given for the following:
#* 2XP - Basic background write-up
#* 1XP - Drawing or picture to represent the character
#* 1XP - NPC contact on Pale. This could be family member, significant other, professional contact, etc.
#* 1XP - Description of the character's goals, dream, and/or aspirations - What does the character want to do with his/her/ids life? What do they hope to achieve.
# I'm going to allow the use of the Mentalist PSA from the Remastered Rules that [[Bill Logan]] created with a fe modifications. You can find the details on this in the [[A Pale Beginning#Mentalist PSA | Mentalist PSA]] house rules section below. You can only take one mentalist skill as one of your three starting skills. If you want a second (or third) you need to buy them with your 50 XP allotment.

===Player Characters===
Here are links to all the characters in the game:
* [[Cal Hendricks]] - Tom V/jedion357
* [[Arturo DaGathuro]] - Daniel O'Neil /oTTo
* [[Erik "the Mouse" Stromm]] - Richard Rose (Shadow Shack)
* [[TBD]] - JoeH/Fragz
* [[Character]] - Player name
* [[Character Name| Character Name Template]] <- This is link to a template you can use to fill out your character.

To add yours, just edit this page and put your charcters name inside the brackets on the edit page, save the page and click on the link created. You can follow the template provided to create your page. The easiest way to do that is to go to the character template page, hit the edit button on top and copy the markup text out of the edit window and paste it into yours and modify for your character.

===Non-Player Characters===
Information on various NPC's can be found below:
* [[NPC Name]]
* [[NPC Name]]
* [[NPC Name]]

==House Rules==
Here are various house rules that will apply to the game.

===Skills===
While we will be using the [[A Skilled Frontier]] skill system, the following modifications apply:
* No '''Beam Weapons''' skill initially available. As described in the [[A Pale Beginning#Equipment | Equipment]] section below, laser weapons have yet to be established in the Frontier at a general level so this skill is not initially available
* '''Space Sciences''' (from the Scientist PSA) covers astronomy, physics, and other space sciences but does not include spacecraft engineering. In truth, astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, etc. should all be separate skills but for simplicity and playability, we'll leave them grouped as they are otherwise.
* '''Spacecraft Engineering''' is a new separate skill in the Tech PSA
* I'm adding a new '''Xenotechnology (''Race'')''' skill that is available either through the Scholar, Scientist, or Tech PSA. This skill represents studying the alien culture and understanding how it works in relation to how it creates and operates it machinery and is designed to help overcome the -20% alien technology penalty. This skill only goes up to level 2, and is harder to earn than would be normal, costing one extra XP to earn level 1 and two extra XP to earn level 2. The skill must be learned for each race indivually but each level overcomes 10% of the penalty applied to using alien technology. Thus if a human had a Level 1 Xenotechnology (Vrusk), when using technology specifically designed for vrusk, that would normally carry a -20% modifier, he only suffers a -10%. If he raised his skill to level 2, the penalty would be removed. This skill would not apply to any technology designed for any of the other races. Obviously Xenotechnology (Sathar) isn't available to begin with as the characters don't even know the sathar exist.
* I'm adding an "'''Architecture'''" skill, available through the Scholar or Tech PSAs that cover things like civil engieering, architecture, building/bridge construction, etc.

====Mentalist PSA====
We're going to allow this and see how it goes. For the most part we will be using the skills/subskills as listed in the remastered rules. (I'll try to get a wiki page up with the rule set). The rules will have the following modifications.
# Mentalist doesn't have be your PSA but all XP costs are doubled. i.e. if it is your primary skill area, costs are as per the rules in the remastered rule book (except I'll allow level 1 to only cost 6 instead of 10). If it's a secondary skill area, then costs are 8,16, 24, etc and if it is tertiary then costs are 16,32,48, etc.
# Pychokenisis and Telepathy are just skills within the PSA not separate skill areas so you can pick two others as your secondary skill area.
# All hour duration skills are reduced to 10 minutes. I think an hour is just a little bit too long.
# The rules don't explicitly talk about using multiple skills at the same time other than giving a couple of examples of where it might be done. So I'm going to say that it can but each additional skill suffers a -10% cumulative penalty. i.e. the second one has a -10% the third a -20%, etc. This only applies if trying to do them at the same time.
# The stacking the effect of levitation (or any other skill that can be stacked) can be used but each stacked effect increases the maintenance cost (i.e. if a second effect is added, then upkeep is 2 points per 10 minutes, not just 1).

===Equipment===
# '''Lasers''' - For this game, the Frontier races don't have portable laser technology. It is something that is just being developed. It exists on a few space craft and there are some heavy laser weapons but the laser rifle and laser pistol don't exist and cannot be purchaced. The equivalent of a Heavy Laser exists but it weighs twice as much uses 2 SEU to do 1d10 points of damage and only has half the range. It's a military testing weapon and is not available to the PCs for purchace.
# '''Albedo Screens and Suits''' - Just as the weapons don't exist, the defences for these weapons don't exist either So no albedo screens or suits are available.

==Tech Specs==
This section will be filled in as new mateiral is created for the game.

===Equipment===

===Vehicles===

===Robots===