02-13-2014, 03:42 PM | #31 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: A character type for a Star Trek game
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I assume that Aiden (full name Aiden Adair MacConnamara) was sent to a boarding school near the home of some distant relatives on the death of his mother (his father died earlier, Aiden never knew him). These relatives were very kind and loving people and not in the Eugenic breeding program. This is why Aiden lacks most of the nastier traits of the other Eugenic "Supermen," he was a loved, but not spoiled, child. I figure the school was good for Aiden and he excelled at languages becoming fluent in French, German, Gealic, Latin, and Greek, before leaving school (as these languages rarely come up in Star Trek they are full freebies, background chrome). He also while working with his sisters after age 13 (when Aiden was taken out of school) and before going on the Botany Bay, Aiden picked up Arabic, Chinese, Swahili, Urdu, Farsi, and Indonesian. These are paid for out of the background points. (2 points in each). Aiden got a solid background at school, Mathematics to IQ, Literature to IQ, History to IQ, Writing to IQ+1, Physics to IQ-2 (improved at Starfleet Academy) Chemisty, Geology, Botany, and Geography (the science not just Earth's map) to similar levels. Aiden also plays the Gealic Harp and the Guitar, and he can sing. I also bought Handsome and Voice.
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo Last edited by Astromancer; 07-17-2014 at 01:52 PM. |
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02-13-2014, 06:06 PM | #32 |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: A character type for a Star Trek game
Generally, raised attributes is a good and simple way to indicate the result of genetic engineering.
It's not flavourful at all, but raising DX and IQ by 1 or even by 2, and also raising HT (and perhaps ST) does work. |
02-13-2014, 08:31 PM | #33 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: A character type for a Star Trek game
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The original Space Seed ep, IIRC, put the Eugenics Wars in the 1990s. It wasn't explained just when the actual project to create the superman happened, but it has to have been at least 20 years or so before the wars, more likely ~30. So...probably Khan and the other superman were being bred in the 1960s, in secret somewhere. Which might make an interest plot hook, just where were the superman bred, and who bred them? Why were they created? Was it a rogue American project? A Russian attempt to create New Soviet Man? Something Mao dreamed up in a fever? India? A hidden cadre of surviving Nazis? Something non-state related like THRUSH? I have this sudden vision of a TOS/Man From U.N.C.L.E. crossover, with time travelling TOS people meeting up with Solo and Kuryakin while investigating the creation of the superman by THRUSH. That might actually fit THRUSH's self-concept, actually. Or you could use that concept in a 60's era game without the time travel, if you just wanted the TOS setting to be the distant future, any set of characters in such a setting could come across the superman project, and the GM could drop hints about what they're encountering to see how long it took the players to realize what they'd met up with. That's an interesting question: did Gary Seven try to stop the Eugenics project? If so, how did he fail? Or did he fail? Maybe he kept the disaster from turning into a world-killing nuclear catastrophe, managing to limit it to just a war? Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 02-13-2014 at 08:49 PM. |
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02-14-2014, 05:30 AM | #34 | |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: A character type for a Star Trek game
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02-14-2014, 09:18 PM | #35 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: A character type for a Star Trek game
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You could still use the 60s characters, THRUSH could turn out to be a cover for the project, or its outer layer, for ex. At least one fan theory always held that THRUSH was founded by Professor Moriarty, and I once saw a very good Man from U.N.C.L.E. fanfic in which a surviving German officer informs Allied intelligence people after WW II that THRUSH had been causing trouble for both sides during World War II. Were Mengele's experiments related to the project in some way? Or the whole 'eugenic fad' that swept the West in the 1920s and 1930s? For that matter, if the project goes back to the 19C, you could use Victorian or Old West settings as well. Maybe Brisco County Jr. once caused trouble for the breeding project? Here's another thought: suppose the organization that bred the supermen survived the 1990s, in the shadows, and is still around in Kirk's time. If so, what is their view of Aiden? Is he a resource to be used? A loose end to be controlled or eliminated? Do they even realize what he is (at first)? Last edited by Johnny1A.2; 02-14-2014 at 09:27 PM. |
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02-14-2014, 10:52 PM | #36 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Copenhagen, Denmark
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Re: A character type for a Star Trek game
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Hans |
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02-15-2014, 03:30 AM | #37 | |
Banned
Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Europe
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Re: A character type for a Star Trek game
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Although you're gonna need what GURPS classifies as "super-science" to achieve anything much in a handful of generations. Or slightly more than a handful if Galton gets his subjects to start breeding real early. Also, Galton being Galton, you ought to go heavy on the IQ, and on intelligence-flavoured Talents. But really, flat IQ suits his attitude the best. He was very big on general intelligence. |
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02-15-2014, 05:19 AM | #38 |
Join Date: Mar 2006
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Re: A character type for a Star Trek game
Wait... I've actually read this book. There actually is a novel about Gary Seven waging a campaign over the years to prevent Khan and the project that created him and his ilk from bringing about an apocalypse. It's all done secret-history style; the Eugenics Wars happened in the 90s, but most people didn't notice.
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02-16-2014, 02:06 PM | #39 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: A character type for a Star Trek game
There are some changes in the character. He's now going to be 19 when the Botany Bay blasts off in 1996, thus he's born in 1977. His stats have been slightly changed also.
Backstory: Aidan (full name Aiden Adair MacConnamara) is born in the San Francisco bay area shortly after his father's death. He's pretty much raised until age four by people hired by his mother and mainly experiences life around the University of Califoria Berkeley. Or rather it's daycare centers and nursery schools. At four he's sent to a boarding school in Boston near the home of distant relatives of his father. The school normally didn't except even profoundly brilliant four year olds but Aiden's family pulled strings. Aiden lucked out. His cousins loved him. She was a history prof at Boston U. and he was a Concert Musician, and they were both talented and skilled at raising children having had several of their own. At the school the teachers were understanding and Aiden got the addition bonus of a older classmate, who having lost his much loved younger brother, gloms onto Aiden as a replacement. Aiden thus gets welcomed into the life of the school. Aiden, because he was a loved but not spoiled child, has few of the nastier traits of the other "Eugenic Supermen." Aiden's mother died soon after he started school. Any plans she had for making sure that Aiden thought like his "peers" were ignored and her estate paid his school bills and other expenses. When Aiden was 13 (by this time he had about the same level of education as a normal Harvard Freshman has at the end of his first year of college), Aiden was pulled form school by his sisters, none of whom had seen him since he was two. He spent the next six years at Khan's court as his sisters' confidential secretary, and sometimes handled Khan's household accounts (historians love the details he later gave them, romatics yawned). Aiden was on the Botany Bay both because he was part of a family that bred particularly true, but also because Khan was aware that Aiden seemed to have measurable ESP. Otherwise Khan had little use for Aiden. Aiden's last surviving sister was also on the Botany Bay. She was in one of the lifesupport Units that failed. After the events of Space Seed Aiden asked to face trial and prison rather than to be exiled with Khan. Kirk and Spock, after hearing the young man out, agreed. Khan, though glad to be shed of Aiden, denounced him as a traitor. Aiden called Khan a "Drama Queen." More tomorrow, my time is up.
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo Last edited by Astromancer; 05-28-2019 at 01:06 PM. |
02-16-2014, 05:30 PM | #40 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Earth, mostly
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Re: A character type for a Star Trek game
As the governments against which Aiden might have committed crimes have been presumably extinct since the Third World War, it would be an interesting question as to whether Aiden could in fact be charged with anything. He might well simply be released into civilian life, where he could then become a citizen of the Federation and apply to Starfleet Academy...
(Khan was exiled not for crimes against Terran governments, but for attempting to seize control of a Starfleet vessel and kill its captain. His people went along voluntarily, although only a few of them shared in his crime.)
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If you break the laws of Man, you go to prison. If you break the laws of God, you go to Hell. If you break the laws of Physics, you go to Sweden and receive a Nobel Prize. |
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