House Rules

Mindjammer in the Hammer House Rules

Invoke Before the Roll

You must invoke aspects before you roll the dice, not after. Physically, you represent this by naming the aspect, taking the fate point, and placing it in front of you. This is now committed. Stack up your committed points, and add points to the stack for free invokes. As you commit them, add something to your description of what is happening to show how the aspect is relevant. After the roll, use as many of the committed points you want to re-roll, then use the rest for a +2 each. (The GM has to do the same thing.)

Expand for reasoning

Because you can choose to invoke aspects after the roll, there can be this thing that happens on actions that should be exciting and climactic. What happens is the roll is so important that, after it is made and fate points start being spent, what should be an exciting moment can become a tedious moment of negotiation over which aspects apply, retconning descriptions to make more aspects apply, trying to remember what the net bonus is up to, etc. This change breaks that situation, and means that after everyone has committed their resources, we roll the dice and describe what happens with no further delay.

I believe that the temptation to "grub" for bonuses is a lot stronger when it is to achieve a known target (e.g. after a roll) than as part of a gamble (e.g. before a roll). That is, when you know that if you could find just one more aspect to get an extra +2 bonus you would succeed, it can be hard to step back and say "yep, that's it, there's nothing left." But if you are gambling, you meet some internal "how important is this to me" threshold and stop, and then the dice fall where they may. In addition, another temptation that comes up is the strong temptation to rewind something previously described in order to make new aspects relevant. Here is a silly but illustrative example. I say "My character charges in to the bad guys, swinging wildly!" Then I roll the dice, and miss by a lot. I have Prima Ballerina as an aspect. There is a strong temptation to say "well, ok, maybe I didn't charge into them so much as gracefully pirouette into them..." This can take the wind out of the sails of an exciting moment.

So, we'll try this and see how it work.

Close Combat (Skill)

Melee Combat and Unarmed Combat are combined into one skill, called Close Combat. Particular skill with weapons or martial arts should be described using aspects and/or stunt.

Longevity (Extra)

The Longevity extra (pg 110) is replaced with the following. Credit to Jocelyn Mlynarz on G+ for the basic idea for this change.

LONGEVITY
Costs 1 aspect, 1 or more skill points
You older, possibly much older, than the default character age (page 37). Incorporate your great age into one of your aspects. You may use your budget skill points to purchase personal skills, as if you had earned those skill points at significant milestones, but you cannot have a skill better than Great (+4).

Overseer (Rapport Stunt)

The Overseer stunt (pg 94) is replaced with the following.

You command groups to accomplish tasks, whether military, naval, or workers on large-scale projects. When you create advantages for your subordinates with Rapport by giving orders, inspiring speeches, good advice, etc., you can generate more free invokes on those advantages. Specifically, for every two shifts you roll on the success past the first shift you get one free invoke on the aspect (1 shift = 1 free invoke, 3 shifts = 2 free invokes, 5 shifts = 3 free invokes, 7 shifts = 4 free invokes, etc.).

Alternate Jump Rules

Background

These rules are about journeys using the jump drive, not individual jumps. A journey consists of one or more jumps between the start and destination. Often, the extra jumps are to or from one of the many unnoted stars in the octant that are otherwise uninteresting. The exact number of jumps taken is almost always unimportant. A journey is somewhat abstracted as getting from where you are to someplace you plan to spend some time. If you plan on just pausing for long enough to cycle the planing engines and jump again, then that isn’t your destination, somewhere else is.

These rules assume that the main difficulty with jumping is avoiding matter; any matter, no matter how diffuse, slows you down and/or increases the danger of a mishap. Also, they assume that in the complete absence of matter between two points the minimum time to traverse the distance between those points is roughly 1 day per 5 LY. That is a law of the universe; you can’t get there any faster than that through 2-Space. So the main goal of plotting courses for a jump is trying to get the actual travel time between point a and point b as close as possible to the minimum possible time without putting your ship in danger.

The farther you have to go, the more you are likely to get slowed down somehow along the way. These slowdowns might include finding intermediary stops along the way, misplanned jumps that have to be aborted, minor repairs after being inadvertently thrown out of 2-space, etc., as well as the general “headwind” pressure of forging through the expected or unexpected interstellar matter (dust, mostly) you encounter. But these rules also assume that as long as you aren’t too worried about how long it takes to make the journey, you can always find a safe path.

Rules

These rules replace all of the rules in the section titled “Planing Engine Jumps” starting on page 224 of the rulebook, Table 13-2, and the box labeled “Mindjammer Routes” on page 225. Misjumps still happen, but only those that result in a consequence need be brought into the story, all the others are factored in to the amount of extra time a journey might take.

1. Determine the distance between start and destination in LY. Divide this value by 5. This is the minimum amount of time in days the trip can take.
2. Find the distance on the table below and get the Base Difficulty; you should find the minimum time is within the time ladder band shown on the table as well. Add the ship’s Scale modifier to this difficulty. Subtract one if the journey is in Core Space. Subtract one if the route is routinely travelled by friendly vessels, that is, those that would share local conditions and data to the Mindscape. (This means -2 for well travelled routes in Core Space). This is the Course Difficulty, the difficulty that must be beaten if you want to make the jump in near minimal time.
3. Make the Planing Skill roll, making use of advantages from other character’s Pilot rolls, fate points and aspects, etc. and check the outcome...
   1. On a Failure, step down the time ladder for each shift the difficulty was missed by; your voyage is going to take substantially longer than the minimum time. To avoid this, you may choose to take consequences instead representing more long-term wear and tear on your ship; a consequence can take care of as many shifts on the time ladder as its value (Mild 2, Moderate 4, Severe 6). If, for some reason you are unwilling to deal with failure shifts by moving down the time ladder, and can’t or won’t take consequences to deal with them, your ship is taken out. You may arrive at your destination or you may not at the GM’s whim, and the condition you arrive in is likely to be troubling. Good luck with that.
   2. On a tie, you will have some situation aspect on arrival that will complicate your life in some minor way of the GM’s choosing, such as “Chronodisplaced” or “Tired out from Hard Jumps” or “Engines on the Fritz” or similar. You can avoid this by going down one step on the time ladder.
   3. On a success, you make the journey within the same time ladder band as your minimum time, although not in the minimum possible time. If you were on a schedule, you made it on time.
   4. On a success with style, you make the journey in essentially the minimum time, not off by more than a few minutes to hours. You also have a boost.

Note that you can't get around the Jump Maximum of your ship with these rules; you'll need to stop for to overhaul as described on pg 225-226 or take a consequence. Reaching your jump maximum interrupts your journey; you'll need to make a new roll after the overhaul.

Base Course Difficulties

Distance	Time	Base Course Difficulty
Microjump	Several Hours	Poor (-1) 1
1-3 LY	Half a Day	Mediocre (+0)
3-6 LY	A Day	Average (+1)
7-20 LY	A Few Days	Fair (+2)
21-50 LY	Several Days (A Week)	Good (+3)
51-75 LY	Half a Month (A Few or Several Weeks)	Great (+4)
76-150 LY	A Month	Superb (+5)
151-300 LY 2	A Few Months	Fantastic (+6)
More than 301 LY 2	Several Months	Epic (+7)
	Half a Year 3
	Year 3

¹ See Microjumps for details.
² Only possible with very high Tech Index engines and X-Cores.
³ Provided to extend the time ladder for reference.

Microjumps

Any jump of less than 1 LY is a Microjump. Poor (-1) difficulty makes these jumps seem easy, but that is actually not the case. These are often more difficult than longer jumps, because they are so short there is no real way to make them safer. Because of this, failed shifts must be soaked up in consequences, they cannot be dealt with by moving down the Time Ladder. If you have no consequences, you are taken out and the GM will put you into a very dire situation. Microjumps should only be attempted by smaller ships with good planing engines. Note that the rules for Activating Planing Engines in Dangerous Environments found on pg 228 still apply in their entirety.

Examples

Expand for examples

• A Botany Bay class Explorer is going to make a journey of 50 LY in the outer worlds. The minimum time to make this journey is 10 days (50/5), or “Several Days (A Week)” on the Time Ladder. The base difficulty is Good (+3), but after adding the Huge (+2) scale modifier, the Course Difficulty is Superb (+5). The Explorer rolls a -2 and adds its Planing Skill of +4, for a result of Fair (+2). Assuming no fate points are spent, that’s a failure by three shifts, so the time taken steps down the time ladder to “A few months”. The Explorer decides to take a mild Consequence of “Feedback in the Power Conduits” to avoid two of those shifts, meaning the actual journey takes “Half a Month (A few or Several Weeks)”.
• A Friedman class Bulk Transport is going to make a journey of 15 LY in the Core on a well travelled shipping lane. The minimum time to make this journey is 3 days, or “A Few Days” on the Time Ladder. The base difficulty is Fair (+2); adding the Enormous (+3) scale modifer and subtracting 1 for the travel taking place in the Core and 1 for it being on a well-travelled shipping lane means the Course Difficulty is Good (+3). The Transport rolls a +1, which added to its Planing Skill of +2 is a Good (+3) result, a tie. The Transport decides to arrive on schedule with a situation aspect of the GM’s choosing; the GM decides the Transport’s sentience and piloting crew are “On Edge” because of the pressures of getting the cargo to its destination on time.
• A Nautilus class Manowar has just received word that the Venu may be going to attack a system 33 LY away. There is a lot of traffic between its current location and the threatened system. The minimum time to make this journey is ~7 days, or “Several Days (A Week)” on the Time ladder. The base difficulty is Good (+3); after adding the Enormous (+3) scale modifier and subtracting 1 for the well traveller route, the Course Difficulty is Superb (+5). The Manowar rolls a +3, and because they really want to get there as fast as possible spends a Fate Point to make that a +5, for a total of +9 after adding in the ship’s Planing skill. That’s a Great (+4) success with style! Not only does the Manowar arrive in almost precisely 6.6 days, but it will have a boost when it hits the N/2 boundary and either is in time to defend the system or needs to avenge it.
• A Chembu Bioship needs to make a journey of 25 LY between two Fringe Worlds to investigate a particularly interesting biosphere. The minimum time for the the journey is 5 days, or “Several Days (A Week)” on the Time ladder. The base difficulty is Good (+3); after adding the Regional (+4) scale modifier, the Course Difficulty is Epic (+7). The Bioship rolls a -1; after adding its Fair (+2) Planing, it has an Average (+1) result, which is pretty awful in this context. A Fate Point is spent to make that a Good (+3) result. That still misses the roll by four shifts, which means the journey will actually take several months. The Bioship decides that’s ok; the Planetary Intelligence is patient and you don’t make ships Regional size if you want to get anywhere quickly. Note that without the Fate point, the journey would have taken a year, but that’s still much, much faster than a slowship.

Why these rules?

Expand for Reasoning

Between the departure system and the destination system there are conceivably a number of conveniently placed gravity wells that could be used to make a journey by taking shorter jumps. Part of plotting a course to your destination is calculating the risk/reward of stopping off at these in-between systems in terms of extra time, how much interstellar matter is avoided, etc. This is because an average octant contains maybe 4000 stars, but only a handful of these (30-50) will be of any interest. The rules as written don’t take this fact into account, and assume that ships will always make a jump between “systems of interest” in the Octant. That assumption seems strange to me. These rules assume that ships and pilots will make use of these extra waypoint systems on an as needed basis to improve their travel times. (As an aside, the rules as written have roughly a 1 day for every 3 LY rate; I’ve made this ratio more favorable (1 day:5 LY) to account for the fact that often ships will have to take more time to arrive safely.)

The rules as written make Enormous scale ships with low planing engines (such as the Bulk Transport or Chembu Bioship) far more hazardous to take into Jump than they should be, I think. Consider that the Chembu Bioship starts off at Great (+4) difficulty (due to its Regional size) before you even consider how far it is jumping, and it only has Fair (+2) Planing. That is a recipe for disaster as written. These rules let the Bioship go wherever it wants to go safely, it just takes its time doing it. As noted above, even with the worst possible rolls 2-Space travel is going to be faster than slowship.

The rules as written, in general, don’t seem to provide for very safe 2-Space travel. That seems counterintuitive to the nature of Commonality society. 2-Space travel seems like it has to be at least as safer as today’s seagoing shipping otherwise the Commonality couldn’t exist as it does.

Discoveries

Milestones, as defined on pgs 160-162 of the rulebook, are reconceptualized as Discoveries in this game, as follows...

• Minor Discovery - the bread and butter of a Space Force Instrumentality Cooperative, a minor discovery adds to the knowledge of the Commonality in a meaningful but mundane fashion. Examples include surveying a system with one or more previously unknown biospheres or interesting phenomena, identifying a new biosphere that had previously not been surveyed in a known system, passive Predecessor site identification and evaluation, etc. A minor discovery is one that will be welcomed as an addition to the Mindscape, but with no sense of urgency.

• Significant Discovery - a significant discovery is one that holds significant potential for benefit/harm to the Commonality. It must be surveyed to be useful; it doesn't count as a discovery until significant detail has been gathered. Examples include locating and developing a cultural capability profile for a lost colony, locating a human standard exointelligence and evaluating it for full contact, locating and investigating active Predecessor sites, locating and dealing with unsanctioned activity by Commonality agents, etc. A significant discovery is one that will prompt action on the part of the Commonality and likely prompts immediate action on the part of the Cooperative.

• Major Discovery - a major discovery is one that presents a profound benefit or immediate danger to the Commonality. It is something important enough to make the Cooperative consider an immediate, or at least expedited report to SpaceForceInst. Examples include: identification of lost colonies/exointelligence of high tech index that have Venu-like potential, discovery of posthuman intelligence, discovery of dangers to Commonality installations and resources in the subsector, etc.

At the end of each session, the Cooperative will ask itself what discoveries it made, and will receive the benefit of the most important discovery. Benefits are identical to those listed for Milestones. (Mechanically, this means that the Cooperative is rewarded with advancement for discovering new things, not necessarily for resolving situations.)

Crew and Crew Consequences

The Cooperative has other crew besides the player characters. Mechanically, they will interact with the game as follows:

• Whenever an additional crew member is in a scene somehow, the aspects on that crew member are also in the scene and can be Invoked and Compelled just like any other aspects.

• There are no extreme consequences available (pg 155).

• Any player character can choose to give another crew member in a scene a Severe Consequence to alleviate stress that would otherwise take them out. Each Crew member has only one Severe Consequence "slot", but its good for 6 stress. The GM will decide the nature of that Severe Consequence.

• The GM may make the serious cost necessary to succeed on a failed roll involve harm to a crew member in the scene.

• If there are crew members in a scene that could reasonably help on an action, the player gets a team work bonus (+1).

Construct Skills Usable by Construct PCs Through an Avatar

The following construct skills can be used by a Construct PC via their Avatar as Character skills: Bureaucracy, Contacts, Empathy, Knowledge, Provoke, Rapport, Resources, Science, Technical, Will.

All other Construct skills are not usable via the Avatar; the PC must spend skill points to add Character skills to the Avatar extra.

Active versus Passive Sensing

Active Sensing and Passive Sensing work for the most part as described in the construct skill rules (pgs 201, 204), with the following exceptions:

• Active Sensing makes a spacecraft easier to detect, but this detection is NOT automatic. Your spacecraft's Active Sensing skill is added as a bonus to all attempts to located your vessel.
• Active Sensing is limited by the speed of light. Practically, this means that active sensing may not be very useful at distances of greater than a few light minutes. However, it also means that by the time an observer might detect your use of Active Sensing, you can already be accelerating rapidly to some other destination.

Here is an example of the second bullet. Your spacecraft is hiding from a Venu vessel in the same system. That vessel is 50 light minutes away in orbit around a planet. You scan a planetoid that is 20 light minutes from your location to see if it has a covered location to hide your spacecraft. Getting the information from your Active Sensing scan will take at least 40 minutes (round trip time for light to and from the planetoid). This will give you roughly 10 minutes to act on that information before the Venu vessel could detect your use of Active Sensing.