AADA Arena Setup Rules?

[swordtart]

Originally Posted by juris

AM is for starting characters. Outside of AN I'd always give duellists more than 30 skill points. A driver +1 gunner 0 in Division 20 is a joke - how did that person even survive?

I revised the whole skill advancement anyway - the current system is too harsh on starting characters, and too easy for continuing characters. If you don't believe me - then you haven't had a player harvesting cycle kills...

True. I am now inclined to the Cepheus/Classic Traveller (CT) model - the skills you have are the ones it has taken years to acquire. You shouldn't be able to massively increase your skills in a week, no matter how busy you were in that week (and lets face it in CW if you are in an armed single seater you get a Skill Point each in Gunner and Driver for just turning up).

To compensate (like CT or Cepheus) you would get a raft of skills at 0 for free at start-up. Most of these would be non-combat skills (and otherwise we rarely see anyone take Lawyer-0 as a random example). Skill 0 is sufficient to hold down a job using that skill (Lawyer 0 would likely be a legal clerk rather than Harvey Dent but you could still scrape a living). Skill 1 would be an associate and level 2 would be a full partner. Depending on your career and background you would also acquire a few skills at 1 or higher.

Cepheus has a skill advancement scheme (unlike CT) but it requires study (or I allow on the job training - see next para) but it takes weeks (basically add up the skill numbers you have (not levels) so Gunner 1, Driver 2 would be a total of 3. Training takes a number of weeks equal to that total plus the skill number you are trying to achieve (so Gunner 2 would take 5 weeks, Driver 3 would take 6 weeks).

These are weeks of study (with some practical exercises allowed) not elapsed weeks. If you are spending 8 hours a day driving a rig up and down the country for a week that would count as of a week of Trucker training. If the Truck Driver fired 20 shots in that whole week, it wouldn't count as a week of Gunner training for him. On the other hand a Gunner on that same rig could count the week as a week of training even if he expended 10 rounds in anger as we can assume that while he is not actually shooting at opponents he is running simulators, covering the angles, reading "Combat Gunner" magazine, sharing was stories with the other gunners and the like to keep his skills sharp. Basically you can count your primary role on the vehicle as training, but not things you exercise just when necessary.

AMs could legitimately spend their time between Saturday Night Events practicing either on simulators or actually out on the track using paintball ammo. They would choose either Driver or Gunner as their focus for the week.

There is no mechanism to acquire NEW skills in Cepheus (but many scenarios gift players without appropriate skills for the specific job as pre-mission training).

If you use Zozer's Zaibatsu you can use the character generation rules pretty much unamended and transplant them directly into CW. This is particularly suitable for CW as it assumes that the characters are young rather than 40 year old veterans like tends to be the case with CT and it is a Cyberpunk rather than Science Fiction setting which seems a better fit than CW. It also gives you a raft of handy extras (like statistics)* which can greatly enhance a campaign in CW as otherwise everyone is the same 150lb 3DP component. If you are prepared to do a little cross-mapping of skills then you can still make a fairly good fist of it using the basic Cepheus rules (and they are free).

*To be fair, there were some CW articles that allowed you to make characters a little more varied, but to be honest they didn't really work for me as the underlying CW mechanic was too lumpy to be able to fine tune.

[juris]

Yes. This exactly.

My system - all skills start at 0 as 'untrained', but even 1 skill point removes the penalty.

Logarithmic advancement

10 skill points +1
20 (more) skill points +2 (total 30 skill points)
30 (more) skill points +3 (total 60 skill points)
etc

That's basically it. A starting character can have three +1's, or two plus 1's and be a jack of all trades.

As you said a '+3' is very impressive and basically makes you a 'professional' in that skill.

Originally Posted by swordtart

T
To compensate (like CT or Cepheus) you would get a raft of skills at 0 for free at start-up. .

[43Supporter]

Originally Posted by juris

That's basically it. A starting character can have three +1's, or two plus 1's and be a jack of all trades.

I used a variant of this back-when.

A starting character had three "combat skill" levels, and six "non-combat skill" levels -- a "combat skill" defined as "any skill which would be used in an arena fight" (the various driving skills; Gunner; Handgunner; etc.). So a beginning duellist might look like this:

-- Driver +0; Gunner +0; Handgunner +0
-- Mechanic +0; Area Knowledge +0; Navigation +1; Politics +0; Fast-Talk +0

He has the basics of combat down; he knows enough to be able to basic upkeep on his vehicles; he won't get lost on his way to and from the arena; and he has the "gift of gab" to deal with sponsors, TV crews, and such-like.

Skill advancement:

-- General skill points convert to specific skill points at 10:1.
-- Skills upgrade at the following rate: 0: 10 pts.; +1: 10 pts.; +2: 14 pts.; +3: 17 pts.; +4: 20 pts.; etc. (In short: Take the square root of the level, calculated to 1 decimal place; then multiply by 10.)