Blindness in GURPS, and the "Star Trek" setting 2262...

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by Culture20

......military orgs that feature the "best of the best" will by their nature weed out a lot of higher point disadvantages if they're not mitigated, and ......

Oh My Kahless!

I Never said that this NPC was 'military' - she is a civilian character hired by the ship's command crew to work onboard as a Psychologist /Therapist/ Counselor.
It was implied in her job interview that when she was younger she did go through Starfleet Academy and possibly served a year on a starship in her 20s.

This being "Starfleet" and not a contemporary military - there are a lot of scientists, explorers, and researchers in the organization.

Part of this all grew out of the 'meta-game' aspect of both player characters and NPCs having disadvantages like 'Flashbacks', 'Nightmares', 'Insomnia', 'Paranoia', and 'Workaholic' on their character sheets and descriptions.
I had their NPC chief Medical Officer half joningly say "This ship really needs a psycholigist or therapist". Then one of the players said, in character: "She's right we do."

At first they thought about having a Starfleet Medical Officer who was a therapist (Remember that other thread I did? ) But they leaned more on having a civilian because they were also worried about Section 31 spying on them.

- Ed C.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

It was implied in her job interview that when she was younger she did go through Starfleet Academy and possibly served a year on a starship in her 20s.

If that were the case, then I would recommend Courtesy Military Rank 3: She's not in the chain of command but she retains the title she earned during her active service.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by whswhs

If that were the case, then I would recommend Courtesy Military Rank 3: She's not in the chain of command but she retains the title she earned during her active service.

I think you could make a case for most starfleet ranks being courtesy ranks anyway, the chain of command seems very flexible even among the parts of the service that lean more to the military side. The Captain and First Officer usually seem firm enough to be actual ranks. Anything beyond that, not so much.

[Phantasm]

Just how closely are you adhering to the actual Trek canon, given how TOS and DSC/SNW were produced nearly 55 years or so apart?; things in DSC/SNW were not even thought of by TOS writers.

As I said above,

Originally Posted by Phantasm

I'd just declare "I am altering the canon; pray I don't alter it any further" and have the bionic eyes appear in the Enterprise or Discovery era.

Of course, there's also the possibility she has High Rejection Threshold (from Bio-Tech and Power-Ups 6: Quirks) in which case her body tends to reject cyber-eye replacements.

[Inky]

I'm not sure about any of the following.

I had a look at this https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=152810 , but while it has a 'have you used this in your games', there don't seem to have been many replies to it. What particularly were you looking for comments on, if anything? The rules for the Blindness disadvantage do seem to leave a lot to GM improvisation.

'In unfamiliar territory, you must travel slowly and carefully, or have a companion or guide animal lead you' - how long does it take to become familiar? The figure of eight hours' use to become familiar with a weapon seems too short, the 200 hours for learning a point of Area Knowledge seems too long. Characters page 294 has a rule for learning languages - 'Time spent in a foreign land counts as four hours per day toward both Cultural Familiarity and the local Language, no matter what else you are doing', even if you're doing something else at the same time, and that seems as if it might be a good fit for this. If you wanted, you could halve the time required because she's already familiar with a similar type of ship.

'If using a ranged weapon, you can only attack randomly, or engage targets so close that you can hear them' - how close is that? Campaigns page 358 has rules for Hearing rolls, but it seems to me that they don't make sense, and on a quick search on the forum I didn't find much except other people saying that they didn't make sense and that they didn't use them.
In any case, it seems to me that you'd often be wanting to run them backwards. If something is approaching rather than standing still, often you don't want to know if somebody hears it at a pre-determined range, but how close it is when they hear it. I suppose that would be equivalent to the MoS on an unmodified Hearing roll, so that, for insance, a success by 3 would mean you head it when it go wihin a ange equialen to a ange penaly of 3. That would mean 8 times further away than the range listed next to that particular sound, if you were using the rules for Hearing rolls from Campaigns, the ones that possibly don't make sense.

Given that starship computers in the TOS era seem to be set up for voice commands and voice output routinely, a Blind character should have a much easier time with day-to-day work in this setting than some other settings even without any additional gadgets, once she's learnt the layout of the ship. It occurs to me that until then, since it seems to be possible to determine crew members' locations for the purposes of emergency beam-outs (this possibly goes by communicators, since it only seems to apply to crew members), if the computer hears 'Computer, where exactly am I?', it should be able to tell her the answer. As she's a non-combat NPC who mostly won't be leaving the ship what she'd do in an emergency shouldn't come up, unless something happens like there's a hull breach or the ship gets boarded. I can think of a lot of ways of possibly solving some problems with gadgets, depending how much use you want to make of gadgets, but you may want to leave that as an exercise for your players.

[Derrick_rp]

In the first season of Star Trek : Strange New Worlds, which takes place in 2259, Hemmer is blind and has no VISOR or similar device to mitigate his condition. He has limited psychic abilities that help him cope, but nothing technological. This would seem to imply that VISOR technology does not exist in the era of your game.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Derrick_rp

This would seem to imply that VISOR technology does not exist in the era of your game.

No, Hemmer was just unwilling to accept a technological fix to something he didn't consider broken. A big deal was made of this in the first season of the show.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

No, Hemmer was just unwilling to accept a technological fix to something he didn't consider broken. A big deal was made of this in the first season of the show.

In a somewhat similar vein, I could see a therapist who is blind deciding to eschew solutions that allow her to see, if she feels she gets a better understanding of someone without visual stimuli getting in the way, if she doesn't want their appearance to influence how she treats them, and/or if she has found that the degree of quasi-anonymity granted by her not knowing what people look like makes them more inclined to open up to her. The cane that tells her of her surroundings is a really good idea, but I feel that, rather than a Mitigator, it may be more appropriate for it to grant her Vibration Sense (which explicitly doesn't replace vision - although I believe there are Enhancements in GURPS Powers: Enhanced Senses that make it more useful in that regard). I can think of three ways to build such a thing. First off, you could give the character Vibration Sense with a Limitation for requiring the cane (I'd eyeball it at -10% or so if the canes are relatively easy to get). If the cane is somewhat unique and would be more difficult to replace, you could build it as a Gadget. Finally, if it's just gear that grants Vibration Sense to anyone who takes the time to become Familiar with it (and is sufficiently fluent in braille), wait until the 27th and build it using GURPS Meta-Tech. In all cases, you could have further Limitations if the information is limited to the width of the corridors rather than giving her an idea of where people and objects are at (that's probably -50% or more, honestly), if it takes her a moment to read the braille output (Takes Extra Time), etc.

As an aside, I'd like to commend Qoltar and/or his players for opting for a therapist that is a retired member of Star Fleet. Having previously served means she's likely to know more about where they're coming from (or at least they'll feel she does) than a typical civilian would, but at the same time they won't be potentially intimidated by her rank (as she either no longer holds one, or simply has a Courtesy Rank).

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by Varyon

......As an aside, I'd like to commend Qoltar and/or his players for opting for a therapist that is a retired member of Star Fleet. Having previously served means she's likely to know more about where they're coming from (or at least they'll feel she does) than a typical civilian would, but at the same time they won't be potentially intimidated by her rank (as she either no longer holds one, or simply has a Courtesy Rank).

Apologies on something....
...I just rediscovered a rough draft character sheet I did for her over a month ago - I had her as part of the 'Merchant Marines' earlier in her life - not 'Starfleet'.
But Somehow I remembered it as "Starfleet" as being in her past..

The more I thnk about it all Starfleet has been shown as willing to take a risk and try somedthing different. She may tested really well on entrance exams and got into the Academy. Then once 'there' they thought "Okay, we will come up with a device so she can be active on ships" That didn't work out perfectly.

Liking the idea more and mopre that she did have some Starfleet experience when younger. The character as hired by the crew just turned 59 years old - plenty of years for back story with her.

And again - the deck plan layout for most starfleet 'saucers' or primary hulls are pretty much 80% the ame from the ship to ship. She only has to learn the 20 percent of it that is different or unique to this ship.

- Ed C.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

The more I thnk about it all Starfleet has been shown as willing to take a risk and try somedthing different. She may tested really well on entrance exams and got into the Academy. Then once 'there' they thought "Okay, we will come up with a device so she can be active on ships" That didn't work out perfectly.

With her failed eyesight being a consequence of glaucoma, which is something that typically occurs later in life, I assumed she was perfectly healthy during at least her early years in Starfleet, and either the glaucoma started after she left to pursue other options or was in fact (part of) the reason she left, perhaps as a form of medical retirement. A quick look online notes that untreated glaucoma typically results in total blindness within 10-15 years, but with higher intraocular pressure can be as little as 3 years. She likely would have received some treatment for it, slowing it, but I'd say you could probably be safe assuming it took around 15 years (say she had really high IOP but the treatments slowed it down enough to take 15 years). If we assume she's been totally blind for 5 years, that would mean it would have started around 20 years ago, or around the time she was 39 - a bit young for glaucoma, but far from impossible (particularly if it was induced by some sort of odd phenomenon/anomaly). I'd imagine she would have been able to continue serving for at least 5 more years, but let's call it 6, which would have her medically retiring from Starfleet at the age of 45. You mentioned in a previous thread that new ensigns (or at least the new ones you wanted for your "Design an Ensign") tend to be between 20 and 27 years of age, which would have meant a good 18-25 years of service from her (probably on the shorter end if she was already a therapist when she first joined, but it's possible she didn't start out as such). Would that work for your purposes here?