just a couple tidbits that grabbed my attn. -- some of us are supposed to
be working on final projects, not reading mail! :)
On Imperial Colleges: My opinion is that the Educ increases that we've seen
in the recent rules for College indicates a liberal-arts style emphasis
in Imperial education. The varied courses or whatever the students do
results in a broad range of knowlege that can best be simulated by an
increase in the Educ score rather than any particular skills. Somehow
it makes sense that IISS Admin would want highly educated officers to
supervise what must be an insanely complex service, involving a rich
knowlege about Known Space, how to learn, how to understand a new
culture, the history of technology, of Imperial philosophy.... It also
helps explain the initial IISS neutrality in the Rebellion.
However, I have also used an alternative system which is little-known
and dates to the 1977 Traveller rules. Any character may take four
years off for "college", at a cost of Cr70000. Instead of the Educ bonus,
the character may take EITHER one level-two skill OR two level-one skills.
The player is allowed to select ANY SKILL or skills. This isn't
necessarily a college, but simply someplace the skill could be learned.
(I can't imagine learning just Equestrian-2 at college, but you never
know.... :) ) If College is done as part of generation, I usually waive
the fee. (Although it might be interesting to have a young character
with some nasty college loans! :) again!)
On Credit: I don't think the Imperium operates on an interstellar credit
system like ours. Travel time would make collecting payments (or for
that matter, reciepts!) a bit dicey. Didn't an old JTAS have an article
about Imperial and megacorp sponsored debit cards? The debit cards are
very similar in appearance to credit cards, except that they are
encoded with a specific balance in credits at the bank, and transactions
are encoded on them. Data encryption security for those are even
tighter than a starship's black box -- it takes some hellish levels of
Computer, Electronics, and Forgery to rig one up. If the bank decides
to audit your card, it can take up to seven years to get all the
transactions verified by xboat!
- -- Steve