Or how fast you have to be in front of Mark to successfully run a
journalistic character in your campaign.
Frankly, I feel that if you want to make money as a journalist, you have to
go out looking for stories. Look where CNN sends their top flight people,
to Baghdad, not John Day, Oregon. So, to make a character work as a
journalist he has too have some control over where the party is going.
Which implies that it should be role-played.
When Mark was running Adrian in my universe, I had to organize
scenarios with other players in mind, lest they be dominated by Mark's
desire to seek out new highs and perversities. On the other hand there
had to be a degree of newsworthiness in them, so that Adrian could feed
the masses (and his pocketbook).
It also helps to have an image of what INN (the Imperium News
Network) is all about and how immensely huge an interstellar news
agency is. How I picture it is thousands of independent news tapers
following their journalistic instincts handled by managers with a strong
sense of monetary control and an idea of what would sell. In addition,
INN provides technical support and distribution. I picture technical
support being everything from editing services to mercenaries. INN rates
as just below a megacorp in my campaign.
The task rolls that Mark layed out were pretty accurate on how Adrian
sold his stories (except I was making the rolls). With role-playing one has
to also include a BS modifier for the player's ability to sell the story to his
manager.
Adrian, of course, represents the top of the line independent news-taper,
easily averaging Cr 30,000 a month plus expenses. INN can make billions
of credits off of his one hour exposes' syndicated to the many planets of
the region of interest.
If a character was just starting out, he would probably be happy to make Cr
1000 to Cr 2000 per month, selling most stories to local news agencies.
> Well, speaking as something of an authority on Journalism in the
> Shattered Imperium (:-))
Yellow Journalism, of course :-). Adrian's one disappointment with the
inability to have FTL communication was that he couldn't have an
Imperium wide hook-up:
"This is Adrian Bishop, coming to you live and direct, from Archduke
Norris' private pleasure palace, payed for by Children of the Spinward
Marches Fund..."
eric sergienko
[email removed]
uniformed services university of the health sciences
[phone removed]