I’ve been working on a Cepheus Engine kitbash for my Human Destiny setting bible and game.

One thing that became obvious fairly quickly is that the usual skill sets for Cepheus Engine, as derived from Traveller, may not work well in this setting. The typical premise in the older games is a band of misfit characters trying to make a living through some combination of troubleshooting, mercenary work, or tramp-freighter trade. Those are a lot less likely in Human Destiny stories, which are more likely to be heavily social-interaction-oriented in the context of post-scarcity economics and a fairly strong interstellar state. Think Star Trek or the Culture, rather than Firefly or The Expanse.

So here’s the tentative skill set for the new game. I anticipate task and conflict mechanics to work in a standard manner for Cepheus Engine, but this is distinct enough from the SRD that the game will certainly be presented as “An Alternate Cepheus Engine Universe.”

Incidentally, I spent a lot of time reviewing other science-fiction games in my library to remind myself how this was done elsewhere. It’s actually rather amusing how many games, published across four decades of time, have taken very similar approaches to this problem . . .

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Tentative Skill List

Artistic Skills

• Fine Arts (Specializes to Architecture, Body Art, Calligraphy, Drawing, Interior Decorating, Musical Composition, Photography, Poetry, Pottery, Sculpting, Video Production, Virtual Production, Woodworking, or Writing)
• Handicrafts (Specializes to Basket Weaving, Brewing, Blacksmith, Bookbinding, Carpentry, Cooking, Gardening, Glassblowing, Jeweler, Leatherworking, Masonry, Needlework, Sewing, Winemaking, or Woodworking)
• Performing Arts (Specializes to Acting, Dancing, Singing, or a specific musical instrument)

Athletic Skills

• Athletics
• Free Fall
• Observation
• Riding
• Sports (Specializes to a specific sport)
• Stealth
• Unarmed Combat

Interpersonal Skills

• Carousing
• Debate
• Deception
• Diplomacy
• Games (Specializes to Gambler, Virtual Gamer, or a specific game)
• Instruction
• Interrogation
• Leadership
• Negotiation
• Personal Service
• Persuasion
• Public Speaking

Operations Skills

• Battle Dress
• Demolitions
• System Operations (Specializes to Comms, Computers, Security, Sensors, or Telepresence)
• Vacc Suit

Outdoor Skills

• Animal Handling
• Navigation
• Survival
• Tracking

Professional Skills

• Admin
• Broker
• Forensics
• Law
• Medicine
• Memetics
• Politics
• Profession (Specializes to a specific career)
• Protocol
• Strategy
• Streetwise
• Tactics

Scientific Skills

• Research
• Science (Specializes to Anthropology, Archaeology, Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Ecology, Economics, Geology, History, Linguistics, Literature, Mathematics, Metallurgy, Meteorology, Paleontology, Philosophy, Physics, Physiology, Planetology, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Theology, or Xenology)

Starship Skills

• Astrogation
• Engineering (Specializes to Drive, Life Support, or Power Plant)
• Gunnery (Specializes to Bay Weapon, Orbital Bombardment, Spinal Mount Weapon, or Turret Weapon)
• Pilot

Technical Skills

• Civil Engineering
• Construction
• Cybernetics
• Electronics
• Gravitics
• Mechanics

Vehicle Skills

• Air Vehicles (Specializes to Airship, Grav Aircraft, Rotor Aircraft, or Winged Aircraft)
• Ground Vehicles (Specializes to Cycle, Hovercraft, Tracked Vehicle, or Wheeled Vehicle)
• Water Vehicles (Specializes to Motor Ship, Sailing Ship, Small Craft, or Submarine)

Weapon Skills

• Guns (Specializes to Archaic Guns, Energy Guns, Gravitic Guns, and Stun Guns)
• Heavy Weapons
• Melee Weapons (Specializes to Fencing Weapons, Impact Weapons, Knives, Staves, or Swords)
• Missile Weapons (Specializes to Bows or Crossbows)

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Current status of the project: I had vaguely hoped to have a new partial rough draft for my patrons by the end of December, with the character rules more or less finished, but designing this list took a lot longer than I expected.

I’ll have my formal “planning for January” blog post in a few days, but I suspect my main efforts for next month will involve finishing this game-design task so I can push a version 0.4 draft to my patrons, and possibly writing a new Human Destiny novelette. A murder mystery, oddly enough, although murders are vanishingly rare in the Human Destiny setting . . .