WOIN SolSpace Questions

[Irishrelief]

I figured I'd start a general question thread for SolSpace - Spartan Gambit.

My first one is about origins for the USF officers as presented. Since Spartan Gambit is a setting supplement and "requires the use of a What's OLD is NEW core rulebook", if I selected the 2000AD (I much prefer to call it that than Judge Dredd and the Worlds of 2000AD since we will be getting Rogue Trooper and Strontium Dog in the close future) core book and picked Clone as my race (either from 2000AD or GSC difference is 1 exploit) could I reasonably pick the judge origin Cadet before finishing the traditional route of Academy>Branch>Cruise>Tours?

SolSpace has a huge gap when it comes to the militaristic [combat] skills. The setting isn't presented as a Star Trek utopia, and in fact does discuss the militarized and corporate nature of the setting. However, marines/marine officers don't have a proper representation for tour of duty. No advancement offers [combat] as a choice, in fact using the standard progression in Spartan Gambit the highest your rifle skill could ever get is 4. Three from Security Branch School (picking rifle as a skill choice), one from SBC curriculum, not taking race into account. The same applies to [melee] (2 chances to pick) and [unarmed] (4 ranks if Security Branch School an opted for on Cadet Cruise).

 

[Morrus]

There’s ‘proper’ marines in the core rules, so they aren’t repeated in The Spartan Gambit. The officers in TSG are not really soldiers — even the security officer is more cop than soldier.

Remember you also get another 12 XP to spend as you wish.

 

[Morrus]

Here's how I mean it to work --

A character from The Spartan Gambit is a starship officer. Even if assigned to the USFMC, these characters are the starship officers, not the actual marines. The book has Security Officers as career options, which are basically redshirt 'cops' on starships and the like, not soldiers.

The core rules contains soldiers - marines, snipers, etc. If you want to play an actual soldier type, rather than a starship officer, you'd use those careers.

How to slot them into the Academy structure? I would allow characters to join the marines straight after Academy. Once you go into branch school, you're looking at starship officers again. So you'd go Academy -> Marine Cadet -> Marine.

So it would look like this.

 

[Irishrelief]

There’s ‘proper’ marines in the core rules, so they aren’t repeated in The Spartan Gambit. The officers in TSG are not really soldiers — even the security officer is more cop than soldier.

Remember you also get another 12 XP to spend as you wish.

I keep forgetting about the 12 XP at the end of creation. Maybe there is a style disconnect for me. In our current world grunt officers are just as hard and trained as the enlisted. There are obviously memes about lost Lts and the most dangerous weapon is an Lt with a compass. On the whole though most officers have to be just as is not more capable than those they lead.

So is there a greatly diminished focus on combat for TSG? I understand the sneaky, problem solving aspect, but I mean the what comes next portion. As a player and DM I just don't want people to feel like the only combat option for an USF officer is to be a red shirt. I will likely encourage players to find a middle ground between the two Academy careers and look to add [combat] to the potential curriculum for those that want to be more O'Neil and less Hathaway. I mean after all if I'm DM it's my game.

LONG EDIT: HAHA you got your second post in while I was typing this up. Your exact pathing is what I had just come up with looking through the NEW book and flipping back and forth with TSG. As always I appreciate how involved you are with your system. It is an insane treat to have these conversations with the creator to get the best understanding of intent before implementing house rules/changes.

 

[easl]

I found it fairly easy to max out combat stats (6d6 skills, 21 defense) using the build guidelines. Sure, you have to build with that in mind, but if you want someone good at combat, it's pretty easy to do.

 

[BlckKnght]

It's also worth remembering the higher quality gear is not all that expensive, and you can probably get quite a few "high quality" items within your requisition cap. That's a +1d6 on whatever skill applies, up to the 6d6 cap. Exceptional quality stuff or better is perhaps harder to justify, but it's very unlikely you'll need it, since it requires at least a 2d6 skill pool (to be able to benefit from the +2d6) and at most a 2d6 attribute pool (of you'd go over the 6d6 cap). If the stuff was important to you, your attribute for it would probably be higher already!

 

[Morrus]

On this topic, you helped decide my next EONS article.

 

[Morrus]