Date: Thu, 24 Aug 1995 08:47:35 -0700 From: Christopher_Griffen@dmcwave.com (Christopher Griffen) Subject: Advanced Recruiting Rules: Beta Version I'm currently refereeing a Regency mercenary campaign and have found that recruiting is a bit vague. Other than making a die roll on your Recruiting skill, I didn't know how else to make the process more in-depth. In my efforts to make recruiting interesting and more challenging for my players and I've come up with the following. Supplemented with a fair degree of roleplaying, these rules may just work out. Criticism and suggestions are invited. Thanks. --Chris RECRUITING: ADVANCED RULES Recruiting involves the active pursuit of personnel to be hired for a task, contract or long-term position. Most often used in the mercenary field, Recruiting skill enables its user to locate individuals suitable for employment using a variety of methods. These methods include posting job listings in local publications and/or computer bulletin boards, frequenting establishments at which the desired personnel may be located, and networking with one's contacts and other individuals who may come into contact with potential recruits. Successful recruiting depends on a number of facets. Among them are: --Recruiting Skill --Population --Sampling Rate --Military Proximity --Starport Level Recruiting skill is far and away the most important facet. A good recruiter can find potential recruits in just about any populated environment. The higher the recruiter's skill, the better he is at beating the bushes for potential employees. Basically, recruiting depends on a successful task roll made at Difficult level. If the individual succeeds, he successfully locates a qualified corps of potential recruits. No success indicates an inability to find viable recruits. Future attempts at recruiting in that system will not be possible until two weeks have passed. Catastrophic failure indicates the same as failure except that the user cannot find any viable candidates for 30 days in that system. At the end of the established period, the recruiter may attempt to recruit in the same system without penalty. If the recruiting task was successful, the individual may attempt to recruit in the same system after two weeks have passed, modified by the appropriate DMs, listed below. Any attempts to do so before two weeks have passed will meet with automatic failure. The following DMs are applied to recruiting rolls: Die Modifier (DM) --------------------------------------------------- RECRUITING SKILL +Recruiting Skill (as per normal at Difficult level) POPULATION -1 if Low Pop 0 if Med Pop +1 if High Pop SAMPLING RATE (EFFECTS NOT CUMULATIVE) -2 if same system sampled within 30 days -1 if same system sampled within 60 days 0 if system not sampled within 60 days or more MILITARY PROXIMITY +1 if naval base present and hiring ship's crew or mercenaries 0 if no military base present +1 if Government 7 or Law Level 0-3 (and hiring mercenaries) STARPORT LEVEL +1 if Starport A (+2 if recruiting trader crew) 0 if Starport B-D (+1 if recruiting trader crew) -1 if Starport E-X (0 if recruiting trader crew) If the recruiter is successful, he is able to muster a number of recruits equal to his Recruiting skill level (not his asset level, but his skill level). If he achieves exceptional success, he is able to muster a number of potential recruits equal to twice his Recruiting skill level, modified by the rules listed below. The potential recruits will present themselves within a number of days equal to 2D/Recruiting Skill (drop fractions). For example, Esteban has a Recruiting skill level of 3. A roll of 2D achieves a result of 7. Dividing 7 by 3, we obtain 2.333 as our result. Fractions are dropped, for a final total of 2. Esteban's recruits will appear within two days of his initial Recruiting attempt. Ambitious referees may optionally choose to modify the above rules for roleplaying purposes. You may want to require several methods of recruiting and apply appropriate DMs, depending on the ambitiousness of the recruiting methods of your player(s). Attempts by multiple individuals to recruit may not be pooled together for a more favorable DM. Instead, each individual's recruiting task is handled separately. However, there is a maximum effectiveness that one group can have in collective recruiting efforts. To determine the limitations on number of recruits, first determine the total recruiting skill levels of the members of your group. If the number of Recruiting skill points exceeds two times the planetary population UWP digit, the total number of recruits beyond 2 x UWP is to be divided by two (drop fractions). For example, Esteban and his group are rather prolific at recruiting. The entire group, including Esteban, has 10 levels of Recruiting skill. Everyone achieves standard success on their Recruiting rolls. They are recruiting from a planet with a population UWP digit of 4. To find out the total number of recruits obtained, we subtract two times the UWP digit (2 x 4 in this case, for a result of 8) from the total levels of Recruiting skill (10). The result is two. We divide this number by two to achieve a result of one. Esteban and his group therefore acquire a total of nine recruits.