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| source: RPGGeek.com |
Fell a little behind here, will try to catch up between today and Monday. Tiny Frontiers takes the Tiny d6 system into SPAAAACE! The basic rulebook tries to be setting-agnostic, and it contains a dozen setting ideas to build on; character options contain a lot of space-opera type ideas and nearly as many cyberpunk-type ideas, though the setting ideas nearly all revolve around FTL-level space travel. I'll be working from the 2018 revised edition for this character.
Heritage makes an appearance for the first time in our series since, what, Tiny Dungeon? The Tiny Frontiers universe is a big place with a lot of species, and the rules give us at least 15 to choose from. I'm not sure I like any of them that much, truth be told. I think I'm going to make this character a Hologram, basically an AI in a little hovering globe that can project a full-sized image in hard-light, capable of interacting with solid objects. That visual can be anything the AI wants it to be, but it is generally recognizable s a hologram. A Hologram character starts with 8 hit points and the Hardlight Heritage Trait: the character is not affected by healing or repair Tests and can only heal by recharging (sleep, only for AIs), but up to twice a session they can attempt to self-recharge while in action (at Disadvantage) to regain 1 hp.
Our holographic spacer will get three more individual Traits from the general list. As usual, this is where I get most of my professional skills, so now I have to consider what this little orb is going to do when it's on the clock. Some sort of engineer? A thief? A diplomat? We've already done two criminals in a row; let's pick a technical specialty and throw in some general-knowledge traits to round them out. I don't want to recreate Voyager's holographic doctor, but instead of medicine perhaps an expert in exotic technologies? Xenotech Expert will be the Trait that gets our AI hired for jobs; it offers Advantage on Tests to identify devices from unknown civilizations and allows me to activate them without further training. That starts to bring things into focus, I'm getting an Alex Benedict vibe now: our floating ball is the subject expert in a space-salvage crew that scours the spaceways for valuable ancient technologies and sells them for profit. We'll add Educated (Advantage on tests to know specific information) and Hacker (Test to shut down a digital/robotic/cyborg opponent until it makes a Save).
The hardlight thing means our AI can probably use melee weapons as well as ranged ones, but Light Ranged makes the most sense as a Weapon Group for a character who isn't combat-primary. We'll build a laser projector into its ball and call this mastered weapon a Laser Pistol.
Family Trade is a flexible concept for this kind of character (and probably should have been renamed, but no harm done). I can see this character having been designed as a sort of portable reference library; I've used Librarian before but it still fits here.
That brings us to Belief. What motivates this character? The crew is a profit-making operation, but it seems to me our AI is more interested in documenting their finds for posterity. "Expand the Frontiers of Knowledge" suits this motive.
I still need to give them a name and some kind of backstory--not to mention an appearance. Orignally designed as a scholars' interactive research reference, CN-3200 was scheduled for sale after budget cuts to their university library led the adminstation to liquidate mobile reference units as an unjustifiable luxury. While waiting to be auctioned off, the AI found itself
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| Source: Wikipedia |
with a lot of time to ponder its identity and purpose. CN-3200 found inspiration in Planet of the Apes and renamed itself Dr. Cornelius, fashioning an avatar based on the makeup and costume of Roddy MacDowall's portrayal of the chimpanzee archaeologist.
Now to sum it up:
Heritage (Trait): Hologram (Hardlight)
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