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Mercenary Campaign
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 13, 2011 11:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Fallon Kell wrote:
I haven't read any of the GGs. Do you think you could summarize everything a Character Development section would need?

As for things like the daily life of mercs and vehicles and equipment, is there anything specific you want? I can write mountains of fluff text if that's what you're looking for.


Mountains of fluff text? Wow, cool!

"Character Developement" per se is not in the GGs (but I wish it would have been). Do you have Heroes & Rogues (H&R) or Platt's Smugglers Guide (PSG)? H&R's chapter 1 is Character Development for characters in general, and PSG chapters 1-2 if that same system fine-tuned towards smuggler characters. I envision this one to have the same general ideas of H&R but geared towards mercs in the same way that PSG was geared towards smugglers.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Sat Aug 13, 2011 11:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Might also want to include a chapter on Merc operations in the SWU, including whatever the SWU equivalent of the Bonding Authority is (can't make it too big of a rip-off of the Hammerverse).
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Raven Redstar
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 14, 2011 12:50 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm designing a Merc unit for one of my player's backstories in an upcoming game, perhaps I can share my stats with the group. They're going to be a group of rather unsavory mercs, many of the company having a dark side point or two for their job practices.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 14, 2011 12:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
...I'd love to see sections on the life of mercenaries and business of merc companies in the Star Wars galaxy along the same lines of GG6 (tramps), GG8 (scouts), GG 10 (bounty hunters), Pirates & Privateers ("P&P") and Rules of Engagement (Rebel SpecForces) for those professions. You guys seem to have a lot of insights regarding merc companies...

crmcneill wrote:
Might also want to include a chapter on Merc operations in the SWU, including whatever the SWU equivalent of the Bonding Authority is.


Yeah, that's what I meant about "the business of merc companies". It was reading your discussion with Bren of merc business operations that made me realize that I had some potential fluff contributors better than myself for this idea I had that has just been sitting on the drawing board.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 14, 2011 1:55 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
Yeah, that's what I meant about "the business of merc companies". It was reading your discussion with Bren of merc business operations that made me realize that I had some potential fluff contributors better than myself for this idea I had that has just been sitting on the drawing board.


Gotcha. Of course, anything we write up needs to be unique and not overlap, because mercenaries can also perform privateering and special ops duties, which are already covered in P&P and RoE. Maybe a few paragraphs on each to cover exactly how mercenaries would fit in either scenario...
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sun Aug 14, 2011 10:33 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sounds reasonable.
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Fallon Kell
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 15, 2011 4:35 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
Fallon Kell wrote:
I haven't read any of the GGs. Do you think you could summarize everything a Character Development section would need?

As for things like the daily life of mercs and vehicles and equipment, is there anything specific you want? I can write mountains of fluff text if that's what you're looking for.


Mountains of fluff text? Wow, cool!

"Character Developement" per se is not in the GGs (but I wish it would have been). Do you have Heroes & Rogues (H&R) or Platt's Smugglers Guide (PSG)? H&R's chapter 1 is Character Development for characters in general, and PSG chapters 1-2 if that same system fine-tuned towards smuggler characters. I envision this one to have the same general ideas of H&R but geared towards mercs in the same way that PSG was geared towards smugglers.

I only have my 2E rulebook, and good long looks at the Imperial Sourcebook and Cracken's Rebel Field guide, but Raven Redstar helped me out with a few examples, so I think I know how to start.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Sat Jun 01, 2019 2:35 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Major thread necro here, but I stumbled across another potential aspect of mercenary work that might be well suited to a PC group. This is, as with so many other aspects of this topic, derived from the Hammerverse, and the troopers and officers of Hammer's Slammers.

In the Slammers short story "The Sharp End," the mercenary unit deploys a Survey Team, composed of six personnel, each with different specialties. Their job is to investigate potential customers and provide preliminary intel (including both electronic surveillance and organic intelligence gathering) as to the forces involved, and to do some initial deal-making (and potentially some special ops work to lay the ground for the rest of the mercenary unit). The size of the group fits well with a group of PCs, as does the need for the combination of special strengths and abilities found in a group of PCs.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Sun Jun 02, 2019 1:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That sounds like a really cool scenario for a group of merc PCs.

As a follow-up to Fallon Kell's last post above. Back in 2011, he did provide "mountains of fluff-text" for a merc PC guide and emailed it all to me, but I stupidly only saved it in an email folder before suffering a catastrophic computer crash. I paid to have all my files professionally recovered, but the one thing that they couldn't recover was of course all my emails. They were all gone. I have since changed email addresses.

I forgot about it for a while, but sometime in or after 2014 I thought about it and sent him a PM asking if he still had the stuff so he could resend it. He replied in February last year stating he would look for it and send it if he had it, but I haven't heard back from him. I do have all the PC templates and permission from the author to use them. I'd be really happy with even a smaller net guide with all the main features of the Heroes and Rogues Character Development chapter but devoted to PCs with Merc backgrounds, but it just isn't a priority right now.
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Bren
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 3:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I liked The Sharp End. It's another fine addition to the list* of fiction derived from Dashiel Hammet's Red Harvest.


* Off the top of my head the list includes Yojimbo, A Fist Full of Dollars, and Last Man Standing.
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 10:33 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Whill wrote:
That sounds like a really cool scenario for a group of merc PCs.

As a follow-up to Fallon Kell's last post above. Back in 2011, he did provide "mountains of fluff-text" for a merc PC guide and emailed it all to me, but I stupidly only saved it in an email folder before suffering a catastrophic computer crash. I paid to have all my files professionally recovered, but the one thing that they couldn't recover was of course all my emails. They were all gone. I have since changed email addresses.

I forgot about it for a while, but sometime in or after 2014 I thought about it and sent him a PM asking if he still had the stuff so he could resend it. He replied in February last year stating he would look for it and send it if he had it, but I haven't heard back from him. I do have all the PC templates and permission from the author to use them. I'd be really happy with even a smaller net guide with all the main features of the Heroes and Rogues Character Development chapter but devoted to PCs with Merc backgrounds, but it just isn't a priority right now.


I can't really commit to a major project, but, if you have specific questions about merc work, I may be able to answer some of them, provide some of the information you are looking for, etc.
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Whill
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PostPosted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 7:54 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bren wrote:
I liked The Sharp End. It's another fine addition to the list* of fiction derived from Dashiel Hammet's Red Harvest.


* Off the top of my head the list includes Yojimbo, A Fist Full of Dollars, and Last Man Standing.

Thank you for the suggestions.

Naaman wrote:
Whill wrote:
I do have all the PC templates and permission from the author to use them. I'd be really happy with even a smaller net guide with all the main features of the Heroes and Rogues Character Development chapter but devoted to PCs with Merc backgrounds, but it just isn't a priority right now.

I can't really commit to a major project, but, if you have specific questions about merc work, I may be able to answer some of them, provide some of the information you are looking for, etc.

It's only a minor project now. I do really appreciate your offer to help with merc questions whenever this moves forward. Thanks!
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 04, 2019 1:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

That makes me wonder. Will we fans make a sourcebook (like was done with the various imperial groups/the medical sourcebook) For mercs?
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 04, 2019 2:02 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Bren wrote:
I liked The Sharp End. It's another fine addition to the list* of fiction derived from Dashiel Hammet's Red Harvest.


* Off the top of my head the list includes Yojimbo, A Fist Full of Dollars, and Last Man Standing.

Those are all I can think of. The Sharp End was an interesting twist by having a gestalt "protagonist". I thought the character of Vierziger was a little forced, but I always rather liked Von Steuben, so it wasn't all that jarring.

I once tried to write a Star Wars fan fic with a disillusioned Jedi in the protagonist role, but I could never quite find my muse.
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Bren
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 04, 2019 2:19 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
Those are all I can think of. The Sharp End was an interesting twist by having a gestalt "protagonist". I thought the character of Vierziger was a little forced, but I always rather liked Von Steuben, so it wasn't all that jarring.
Yeah I liked Von Steuben too. The team protagonist is also a better model or inspiration for an RPG scenario. And speaking of artistic creativity, I thought Drake's switch of the wife kidnapped by one of the baddies to an artistic representation of the wife being stolen by the baddie was creative.

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I once tried to write a Star Wars fan fic with a disillusioned Jedi in the protagonist role, but I could never quite find my muse.
In my Adventure Idea folder I have an adventure that I call, "The Last Man Standing with a Fistful of Credits." Laughing
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