Jan 3, 2024 11:04 pm
Lancer: Battlegroup says:
COMMANDERSThere are two steps in creating your commander: assigning traits and choosing a background. The following section explains the process. It discusses traits, provides examples of the backgrounds you might use to define your character, and points toward further questions you might want to consider when roleplaying these far-flung cosmonauts.
TRAITS
Unlike in many RPGs, creating a commander in Battlegroup doesn’t involve assigning stats or skills.
Their personal strength or perceptiveness is of limited importance given the scope and scale of the action taking place. Commanders are defined more by traits stemming from their background, personality, characteristics, flaws, and foibles. When you create a commander, choose three traits that define them – two positive traits and one negative trait that complicates, disadvantages, or influences them in some way.
What sorts of traits might you choose to create your commander? Maybe they’re a brilliant tactician with a keen eye, but who is arrogant to a fault. Or perhaps they’re steadfast and courageous in their drive to protect humanity, but reckless in their actions, often endangering their battlegroup as a result. Traits can be physical or mental qualities, particular aptitudes, something they’re especially known for, and other similar aspects of that nature. Whoever your character is, make sure they have something that defines them. It doesn’t have to be something big or grand, just something that humanizes them. Heroes are more compelling if they’re human.
Example positive traits: bold, brilliant, calculating, courageous, daring, disciplined, empathetic, forceful, honorable, idealistic, inspiring, iron will, keen eye, levelheaded, scholarly, steadfast, thickskinned, unorthodox, unrelenting, well-traveled.
Example negative traits: aloof, arrogant, bluntspoken, callous, disciplinary record, demanding, frail, guilty conscience, hidebound, impatient, infamous, obsessive, overzealous, prideful, reckless, ruthless, self-centered, stubborn, quicktempered, uncoordinated.
As a central character in the story, your commander will have moments when their history, training, and personality shine through. These moments are called uptime checks. You’ll make uptime checks during narrative play and when you’re attempting specific uptime actions. When one or more of your character’s positive traits are relevant to an uptime check, you get +1 ACCURACY for each relevant trait you call upon. Once a positive trait has been called on in this fashion, mark it off. Traits that have been marked off remain part of your commander, but can’t be used again until they’re regained.
You regain the use of all marked-off traits when one of your commander’s negative traits comes into play. There are two ways this can happen:
• you make an uptime check that is influenced solely by your negative trait, receiving +1 DIFFICULTY for the roll; or
• the GM brings your negative trait into play in a way that complicates matters for your character.
If the GM introduces a complication, work together to discuss and flesh out what form it might take. It should always be something that drives the story forward even as it makes things more difficult for you. Additionally, if the GM determines that sufficient time has passed, they can declare that everyone regains their positive traits.
Traits are almost always used in narrative play and uptime. Unless otherwise specified, they never apply in combat. Traits are usually fairly open-ended, allowing you to apply them in creative ways. That said, the GM is responsible for arbitrating outlandish claims: be prepared to justify how your commander’s aggressive personality helps them gather vital intelligence, for example.
Through the course of a character’s story, events may occur that leave a lasting impression on them and change who they are as a person. During the narrative play between engagements, you may choose one of your character’s traits and change it to another. This can’t be used to change one type of trait (positive or negative) to another, and changing a trait that was marked off doesn’t regain the use of it.
BACKGROUND
Backgrounds are short summaries of who your character used to be and how they’ve come to be where they are now. Backgrounds have no mechanical effect, and are solely for contextualizing your commander’s backstory. These backgrounds aren’t the only possibilities in a universe as vast and diverse as that of Battlegroup, and you can always create your own should you wish. By default, characters have one background of their choice.
Alfred says:
Once you have your Background, roll 1d6 for specific Background events.NAVAL FAMILY
Born into tradition, you are the child of a family with a long history of naval service. Your parents may both have been or are currently in the same (or different!) naval force as yourself, as were their parents, and their parents, and so on down the line. From when you were a child, you knew you would one day pin the silver bars of an officer on your collar, and step to the stars...
This background can be taken along with any other background.
UNION NAVY
The workhorse departments of Union’s armed forces and logistics projection, the Union Naval Corps manages the single largest school and training program for sailors and officers in the galaxy. From its core campuses in Cradle to its most distant satellite facilities in the Dawnline Shore, the Union Naval Corps can turn even the most downwell ground-pounder into a competent cosmonaut. You are one shining example of this institution. A volunteer from a Core world or Diasporan world known to Union, you joined the navy and have trained for years, reorienting from a woefully twodimensional perspective to the z-ax view that separates naval personnel from the soldiers they transport. Your world may be where you were born, but the stars are your home; under Union’s banner, you head out to make the galaxy safe and whole.
Graduates of the Union Naval Corps (UNC) include regulars and auxiliaries, all of whom are well aware and generally in favor of Union’s mission. UNC graduates typically go on to serve for five years (subjective time) before being given the option to either rotate into a reserve unit local to their homeworld or extend their service in their branch. All naval personnel, whether auxiliary or regular, undertake a basic course of training at the most proximal UNC campus to them. Most train for a year or two depending on their specialization and need.
The UNC is a massive organization that draws its personnel from nearly every world known to Union, Core and Diasporan both. Most cosmonauts and officers serve for a period of about ten years – five active and five on reserve – though many decide to join up for life. As a pilot, cosmonaut, or officer in the UNC, you may be a lifer or someone on a limited tour. In your time on the ‘lists, you’ve met people from every type of world, of every culture, and of every background.
KARRAKIN NAVAL ACADEMY
As a child or young adult, you gained admittance to the famed Karrakin Naval Academy, matriculating to one of the campuses across the core of Baronic space, the Baronic Concern. The Karrakin Academy system was founded in the wake of the Baronies’ terrible twin defeats at the hands of Union and Harrison Armory. Since then, the Karrakins have gone on to adopt, hone, and expand upon the strategies that once left them defeated and exposed. They have redefined the modern doctrines of space combat, producing some of the finest officers and crew in the known galaxy – you included. Each world of the Concern has a campus of the Academy with its own traditions, colors, and specific histories; the campus on Karrakis itself is generally considered the flagship school and is often referred to specifically as the Royal Academy. Graduates of the KNA tend to be Baronic, with roughly a sixty-forty split leaning ignoble (included in this ignoble category are students sent to the Academy on diplomatic exchange with the Union Navy).
Now graduated and posted to your command, your words carry weight: regardless of which specific campus you studied at, you’re from "The Academy." You are likely younger than the officers you serve with who didn’t attend. The simple bronze globe-and-crown pinned to your lapel sets you apart, marking you as a graduate of the Academy system for good or for ill. Graduates may further personalize their pins to indicate which campus they graduated from, whether they graduated with distinction, and – one of the highest honors – if they won the Inter-Academy Wargame, a ceremonial final test that pits the best officers from each campus against each other to determine who is the greatest commander of that year’s graduating class.
Alongside your background note, answer the following: How did your school fare in the Wargame? Were you a part of it, or did you watch from the observation decks?
ORBITAL DEFENSE FORCE
Your world asked, and you answered: for years you have served in the orbital defense force of your state, arcing high above the land you call home in small shuttles and modest subline ships, spending years aboard orbital cannons and missile batteries. You have always known that the purpose of your work is to defend the world below from threats above. Now, posted to an interstellar ship, you keep that feeling close – that place might be farther away, but it is always there, just below your heart, your home to defend.
Veterans of orbital defense forces (ODF) run the gamut in training, experience, and competency; they can be graduates of a premier naval college or locally trained cosmonauts.
Your character fought (or currently fights) in their homeworld’s (or home station’s) orbital defense force. They are likely well versed in the operation of ships, as even officers in ODF units are called to square away their vessels before, during, and after flights.
PURVIEW INTERSTELLAR COLLEGE
Fresh faces from an equally fresh institution, the first cadet corps out of the Purview Interstellar College have much to prove – you included. Despite a history of iconoclastic, daring naval exploits, the naval forces of Harrison Armory never had a formal educational pipeline for naval officers: previously, enlisted crew and officers trained together, with commissions granted through purchase or promotion. Now, the Purview Interstellar College has been established to formally inaugurate the foundations of an Armory combat doctrine, to set Armory’s officer corps apart from what high command sees to be rival schools in Union and the Baronies.
In line with many of the Armory’s other state-managed institutions, campuses of the Purview Interstellar College (PIC) are startlingly cosmopolitan – for the Armory – with healthy representation from both Purview citizens and students from the colonies. Like legion service, the Interstellar College is a popular choice for young people from the colonies: graduation and service grants citizenship in the Armory. As the Armory’s frontier is contested and space is far more unforgiving than atmospheric environments, the bar for admittance to the PIC is high; one cannot simply purchase their spot – they mustfirst prove a certain level of aptitude.
The Armory’s formalized fleet doctrines are new compared to those of Union and the Baronies, and the frontier is active: unlike some legion posts, commissions in the Armory’s naval branch are all but guaranteed to see action. To prepare for this, cadets undergo a mix of campus-based learning on Ras Shamra and at least one rotation to the front prior to graduation.
THE HONEST TRUTH
Whatever your past life, you were born again in space, graduating from IPS-N’s officer training school, the Honest Truth.
The Honest Truth is a massive, multitoroid station that orbits Argo Navis once every three Cradle-standard years. A cohort of IPS-N’s officers are said to be "born" after one revolution – the time it takes for most candidates to complete their training. The Honest Truth began, like most IPS-N facilities, as a merchant-cosmonaut training school meant to better acquaint and equip the corpro’s pilots with the necessary skills for navigating the stars and moving three-dimensionally through space. With the advent of space piracy and IPS-N’s subsequent upscaling and consolidation of the interstellar freight and transportation sectors, the Honest Truth was expanded into one of the largest orbital stations in the galaxy in order to train and equip sufficient personnel.
Now, with a permanent population in the millions and students hailing from around the galaxy, the Honest Truth is a buzzing hive of activity. Civilian students, naval cadets, and security trainees learn side by side the rigors of null-atmosphere maintenance, zero-gee movement, high-gee movement, and z-ax combat – every piece of knowledge necessary to crew, pilot, and command ships in space.
With everything from lectures on Cosmopolitan culture and atemporal existence through to courses in naval history, a sling-grav racing league, and ensign postings with Northstar’s GALCOMM Corps, the Honest Truth produces some of the finest all-round cosmonauts in the galaxy, whether civilian or military. Graduates from the Honest Truth tend to be steadfast, dependable crewmembers and levelheaded officers, with little time for the pageantry of the Karrakin Naval Academy or the nationalistic fervor of the PIC. Many go on to serve as pilots in respected private security firms, in vital, long-haul freight companies, and aboard line ships in the Union Navy. Most, though, decide to keep close to home, joining up with IPS-N’s Trunk Security or Northstar GALCOMM.
SENIOR PETREL
You are a member of an aged, interstellar order with roots dating back to Union’s First Committee. Lauded as selfless heroes or chastised as irresponsible gloryhunters, deputized by Union or hunted as enemies of the hegemony, the Albatross have played many roles in the long and storied history of their organization. You step into your command during an age of mounting strife. The call for help will echo across the stars – hunted or cheered, you and your cohort will answer.
In contrast to the other officer corps depicted here, those of the Albatross operate under a far more informal system of command. Their ranks are limited – Senior Wing, Honored Wing, Loyal Wing, Wing, Senior Petrel, and Petrel – and particular distinctions in command and seniority beyond those of rank are determined by closeknit, contextual social obligations and community agreement. Some Senior Wings may be younger than the Wings or Petrels they command – a quirk made possible through the complexities of time dilation and the Albatross’s preference for skill over age. In a culture and organization exposed to and familiar with the brutality of time, communal decision-making, shared histories, and record keeping take precedence. One aspect of this shared history is that of the Petrel, the role in which all Albatross begin their service.
Each Albatross makteba trains its Petrels differently, following centuries of local doctrine coupled with shared records from the Albatross’s long history of interstellar travel and all-theater combat. Petrels – cadets – train in tight-knit groups of no more than a dozen, organized under their senior LoyalWing and a retinue of advisers. The Petrel’s course is set from the moment they don their cadet garb: a shorn head, simple clothing, and unadorned hardsuits mark one as a Petrel, a squire destined to be a Wing once their training is complete. These Petrels learn together how to crew Albatross assault carriers, light cruisers, light and heavy strike-ships, and other vessels. The bravest – though also the most likely to die in service – are schooled in the maintenance and support of their LoyalWing’s mechanized chassis, learning with the goal to one day pilot their own.
Albatross Petrels tend to be young, ranging from early teens to early twenties, though older Petrels are not uncommon, as anyone joining the order must begin at this rank. Petrel crew and officers do not have formal ranks like conventional stellar navies – instead, they lean on deeply ingrained systems of cultural seniority and camaraderie, in which command roles not occupied by Loyal Wings are designated to the most qualified Petrel for the job. As a general rule, only Petrels near the end of their training – around their early twenties – ever serve on the line. These Senior Petrels command subline ships, act as executive officers for Loyal or Honored Wings in command of capital ships, or fly spearships of their own in support of mounted Wings.
COSMOPOLITAN SECURITY CLUSTER
Time. This is what you’ve learned of naval service: it’s all time. Distance is useless unless you measure it in the hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades – centuries , even – you’ll spend ferrying between ports of call. This is terrifying to some. To you, it’s just life. You’re an officer in a Cosmopolitan security cluster, a time-aligned security force in charge of defending other Cosmopolitans while in transit, a friendly face who knows the language, culture, and conventions of the era – the "cluster" - you serve.
Like those who come up through planetary defense forces and the Albatross’ makteba system, many Cosmopolitans undergo a combination of formal and informal training in zaxis navigation and null-grav maneuvering.
Indeed, most Cosmopolitan children are schooled from a young age in all aspects of interstellar life, from donning and doffing hardsuits, to starship maintenance, to nearlight calculations, and orbital dynamics. Theirs is a life removed from the "normal" time of the rest of the galaxy, lonely to some but rich in parallel histories, stories, and legends – Cosmopolitans know the void of space, the worlds that dot the stars, and the families that trek across time.
Though they may seem mysterious or anachronistic to Diasporans and Metropolitans, Cosmopolitans occasionally decide to apply their considerable skills and comfort with interstellar travel and spatial navigation to the navies and security forces of non-Cosmopolitan states and entities. As humans who live in "normal time" make a great sacrifice in stepping out of sync with their families, so too do Cosmopolitan crew and officers – only in the opposite direction. As they age in "normal" time, their families – should they ever encounter them again – never seem to have aged beyond the time that they left them. This is a comfort to some, and a great tragedy to others.
Cosmopolitans often need to translate their "realtime" age to their subjective age, but few who step from their families young have reasons other than tragedy. Most desynced Cosmopolitans would place themselves in middle age – often old for their ranks, but with tremendously valuable experience and competency.
