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Risus Trek Character Rules

Rules
As standard for Risus, each character will receive a pool of 10 dice with which to select your characters
cliches. As per Advanced Op*on I, a player may gain up to 2 addi*onal dice by selec*ng a Hook and a Tale.

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Each character who is a member of Stareet MUST spend 2 dice from their pool to gain Stareet Ocer (2)
as a Cliche. These dice can be used for anything a Stareet ocer might know or do it basically represents
the basic educa*on provided in the Academy. It includes (but isnt limited to) science, leadership,
engineering, weapons, hand-to-hand combat, pilo*ng, rst aid, or any other reasonable thing youve ever
seen a Stareet Ocer do. If youve ever watched any incarna*on of Star Trek, youd know that the
Academy produces very well-rounded ocers.
Next, youll need to select your Stareet Department. You may spend up to 3 dice from your ini*al pool of
10 dice on your Department. These dene your role: Engineer, Science Ocer, Security, Command, etc.
When performing tasks related to your Department, you will add your Department dice to your Ocer dice
the resul*ng total is your dice pool for that ac*on. Essen*ally, the combined dice are considered a single
cliche.
Stareet Department List:
Command Ocer
Helm Ocer
Counselor
Engineering Ocer
Medical Ocer
Opera*ons Ocer
Science Ocer
Security Ocer
You may also use some of your Department dice to assign ranks to a Specialty. A Specialty is a par*cular
subset or eld within your Department. For example, your Department could be Opera*ons, and your
Specialty the Transporter. Special*es are a subset of the Department just as the Department is a subset of
the Stareet Ocer Cliche. Therefore, when using your Specialty, your dice pool is equal to the sum of your
Stareet Ocer rank, your Department rank, and your Specialty rank.
Specialty dice have an added benet: you may reroll them during a test! However, you must take the second
roll, even if its worse. Also, should you lose dice during the test, Specialty dice are lost rst. Finally, your
Specialty rank can never exceed the rank of the associated Department.
The following lists some sugges*ons for Special*es:
Command Ocer Administra*on, Nego*a*on, Starship Tac*cs
Helm Ocer
Shu2le-craD, Specic Ship classes, Nebula Naviga*on
Counselor
Persuasion, Vulcan Psychology, Nego*a*on
Engineering Ocer Warp Drives, Power Systems, Starship Design
Medical Ocer
Klingon Physiology, Gene*cs, Exobiology
Opera#ons Ocer Systems Management(Bridge Ocer), Transporter, Sensors
Science Ocer
Biotechnology, Physics, Archaeology
Security Ocer

Starship Tac*cal(Weapons, Shields, etc.), Interroga*on, Ground Tac*cs

GMs should keep in mind that Special*es are meant to be narrow focuses within a eld and so should NOT
apply to every test made for that Department rank.

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Finally, you will spend the remaining dice from your ini*al pool on whatever! These dice should be used to
dene your characters personality or other skills, and you may spend up to 4 dice per cliche. Are you a
Ladies Man? A Skilled Liar? Superb Cook? Diploma*c? Anything (subject to GM approval) is fair
game here. Do you know something special (Romulan culture, Warp engine designer), or do something
unique (Skilled Linguist, Ace Pilot, Weapons Expert), or possess a dis*nct quality (Enhanced Vision like
Geordis VISOR)? That goes here too.
You may also use these dice to dene some racial characteris*cs. While you can select any race you like, not
all of them really aect your character in meaningful ways. Think of these as racial skills or abili*es. You
dont have to assign dice to a race in order to play a character of that race, although you wont really have
much chance doing racial things. For many races, this doesnt ma2er much. No one ever really humand
his way through a situa*on. But Klingon could be used when tapping into that Klingon rage to do something,
or during batleth combat, or when dealing with the Klingon High Council with proper e*que2e. Basically, if
you can think of a standard racial cliche that youd expect to do, then puNng some dice there would be nice.
Romulan might enable you to be sneaky, among other things. Vulcan would allow you to use those dice to
perform tasks youd expect a Vulcan could do: the neck-pinch, mind-meld, know history or science perhaps,
or to slow your breathing via Vulcan medita*ve techniques. Eec*vely, non-humans can get cool special
abili*es. Humans get cool extra dice for other stu!
Its okay if some of your miscellaneous cliches duplicate abili*es provided by your Stareet training. For
example, say youve got: Stareet Ocer (2), Security Ocer (3), and Expert Shot (3). This character would
be a top-notch shooter! Lets say hes involved in a combat. During combat, you must select one cliche to
use. As stated above, Stareet Ocer and your Specialty of Security Ocer are considered a single cliche,
for a total of 5 dice. As combat wears on, perhaps youve lost some dice lets say youve lost 3 dice so far
from your Security Ocer pool. That leaves you just 2 dice leD and for someone without an Expert Shot
(or similar cliche) that would be all they had. But you have the op*on of switching to a dierence cliche
the Expert Shot, and that would give you 3 dice to roll. Overall, a character as described above would have a
net 7 dice to lose before losing the ght whereas someone without the Expert Shot would only have 5 to
lose. Of course, that character would also have a huge por*on of their character dice *ed up in shoo*ng (as
opposed to some diversica*on) but a choice like that is up to the player.
Other op*ons might exist besides the Stareet path, but those would need to be discussed with the GM
prior to character crea*on to ensure a proper placement within the campaign.
Op*on: Dice By Rank/Experience
The rules outlined above generate an average experienced Stareet Ocer of mid-level ranks Captain to
perhaps Lt Commander. The op*on presented here adjusts the number of star*ng dice by the experience of
the character, as judged by their Rank in Stareet. This creates unbalanced star*ng characters, but comes
closer to crea*ng more realis*c (as much as you can with Risus) character proles. ADer all, isnt it odd that
the Captain, with years of experience and a career path that began in another department, has the exact
same total of skills as the Lt down in Engineering?
All characters receive 5 Dice to be used for general background and/or racial use. The remainder of their
dice are granted based on their current Rank or Experience (length of Stareet service aDer the Academy).
Ensign Stareet Ocer (2). This represents a freshly-graduated cadet. Dice gained from future Rank
increases are allocated to the characters chosen Specialty.
Lieutenant junior grade ~1 year

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Lieutenant
2-3 years +2 dice
Lieutenant Commander 3-5 years +3 dice (Command becomes available)
Commander
5-8 years +4 dice
Captain

~8+ years +5 dice

The accumulated dice are not stacked, so a character going from Commander to Captain gains one net die
for a total of ve dice. Also note that the Specialty of Command isnt available un*l the rank of Lieutenant
Commander. This means that dice spent prior to this Rank must be in some other Specialty. They dont just
put you in Command of something fresh out of the Academy, you know. It should be noted that this doesnt
mean a character cant have Command-like cliches un*l they reach Lieutenant Commander however. Its
en*rely possible that you have some other cliche like Natural Leader (2) or the like, which could ll an
equivalent role. Of course, the second cliche wont be combined with the Stareet Ocer cliche, as its not
Stareet training that youre using.
Finally, Hooks and Tales can certainly be added into the available dice. Its up to the GM to decide to limit
these to Background only, or make them usable for Stareet skills as well.
Using this op*on will again create unbalanced characters, and isnt for every party. Obviously, whomever is
in charge (the Captain) will have more dice than everyone else, and some groups may not like that. But who
ever saw the random Ensign guy show up Captain Kirk?

Risus Trek Character Rules

Star Trek: Exeter rushl rushl 2012-09-28T14:49:47Z 2012-10-03T02:23:44Z
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