Character Guidelines

The Psychology Service

In this version of the Federation of the Hub game, the characters will all be operatives working for the Psychology Service. Basic facts about the Psychology Service include:

• The Service is a secret organization. Most Federation citizens have heard that it exists; some haven't. Most don't think about it much. Those who have heard of the Service know that it does psychological research and maintains useful devices such as the Verifiers used at trials and the Customs scanners used at spaceports. Very few know what the Service really does. The Service is never mentioned in news stories.
• You don't know what the Service really does either. You have seen a few things during your training, the character of which will vary depending on your abilities, and you now know enough to know that the Service does more than people think it does. You might think you know everything now. If so, you are wrong. There is nothing wrong with playing a character who is mistaken, however.
• The Psychology Service employs many psi operatives. However, the majority of the Service's employees lack psi talents. The Service quietly scouts the Hub for good people, valuing such pioneering qualities as motivation, raw ability and a capacity for independent thought. The Service often selects its recruits from the ranks of other Federation government agencies.
• Should you choose to play a character with psi ability, remember that most humans don't believe that psi exists (possibly including your character!), and those who do have very sketchy ideas about what it is and what it can do. They may call it magic or witchcraft, on some backwater planets.

Tom's Drop-Dead Requirements for Characters in This Game

If you are going to play the character you create in this game, these requirements must be met:

• New Psychology Service Operative: As mentioned before, your character works for the Psychology Service. Whether you are young or old, you have just recently been recruited to work for the Service. Note that for all characters who start out at first level, a character recruited from another Federation agency in which you will have a level must not have been in that agency for long.
• Trap Door: In case you must leave the game at some point before its conclusion, you will come up with some element of your character's personal backstory that could make him/her suddenly disappear from the overall story between scenes. Perhaps you have a beloved but sickly relative whose health could take a turn for the worse, requiring you to take a family-emergency leave of absence to be at this relative's bedside. Perhaps you have enemies from your past that have been just dying for a chance to assassinate you. Whatever the case, your disappearance should never be unforeshadowed; you should at least mention the possibility at some point. I would like to stress that this is not something that can be used to make your presence optional from session to session; once your trap door is used, you are out of the game at least until the next story is run, if not permanently.
• Patriotism: Your character must fully support the Federation as a whole; this is not particularly difficult to imagine, as the Federation rarely intrudes upon the lives of individual citizens. You have had at least one experience during your life, however, which would tend to cause you to support the existence of the Federation, and this must be described as part of your background. Perhaps your home planet was threatened or even conquered during an alien invasion that the Federation repulsed (such as the Parahuan invasion about 70 years ago), or perhaps you were spared from a multi-planetary plague that the Federation helped to stop, or perhaps the Federation keeps the peace between your homeworld and a neighboring Restricted world with a taste for conquest, or perhaps you have seen firsthand what good the Federation does by serving with the Federation military. There are some ideas, but they are by no means the only ones.

Tom's Suggestions for Interesting Characters

I have a few suggestions I'd like to make. Unlike the above rules, these are not enforced. However, they are rewarded. I will give experience points in exchange for each of these suggestions you follow. You may be able to garner enough XP to start at 2nd level. I would also like to state á priori that any details you do not supply about your character's past I will feel free to make up myself.

• Friends & Family: Your character should not exist in a vacuum. You have parents, and probably siblings, and no doubt you had friends as a child and friends at school at various levels. You may be married, or engaged, or in a relationship ... or not. You may have had past romantic relationships. You probably have friends now. For each of these people I will give you 50 XP if you at least come up with a name, and I'll make that 100 XP apiece if you give me sufficient information about this person. (I get to define "sufficient" -- but mostly I'm just looking for a mini-bio.) If two or more player characters have more than a working relationship (it counts if they just get together to play RPGs on weekends), I will give points to them for this as well.
• Backstory: What planet is your character from? What sort of childhood did you have? What kinds of schools did you go to? What did you major in? What jobs have you had? I will give a variable number of points depending on the amount of work you do on your backstory. My ideal situation would be for you to have a character that you are really interested in.
• Amnesia: However, if you really want to play a character with no idea about his/her past, I have no problem with that; I just want to discourage laziness. I will give you around 200 XP if you are brave enough to tell me that I can make up anything I want about your background that you don't remember and blindside you with it at any time. Remember that the Psychology Service probably knows a lot more about you than you do, or else they wouldn't have hired and trained you. Also, considering that certain psi operators can cause amnesia at will, the Service may actually be the agent behind your amnesia. But there is no shortage of independent psi operators, human and alien, and there are other causes of amnesia as well. Regardless, you can feel free to suggest a cause for your amnesia, but I can't guarantee that I'll use it; you wouldn't know, after all.
• Sketch: If you can draw, draw a picture of your character. If you can't or don't have time, find or modify a picture from the Internet or from a newspaper or magazine. I will give you 200 points if you have some sort of visual representation of your character.
• Weaknesses: This is a very general category, so I can't say here exactly how many XP any given weakness would be worth. Perhaps you have a chronic illness, allergy, or birth defect. Perhaps you have a mental condition (people with psi talents are more prone to instability, statistically speaking) such as a phobia, a mania or a delusion. Perhaps there is something that you don't want generally known about yourself. Perhaps you have an enemy, or are the friend of someone who has enemies. If you were a psi, perhaps your talents were first discovered by an unscrupulous psi who implanted secret triggers into your mind.
• Anti-Munchkining: In case you don't know, "munchkining" or "min/maxing" is the practice of tweaking your character's statistics in an attempt to achieve some kind of maximum perceived efficacy, usually in combat, and usually to the detriment of the character in most other fields, including moving him/her away from the original character concept and detracting from interesting roleplaying. (I have no problem with a character who is good at combat, if that is part of the character's concept, but that cannot be the character's entire concept, because then you would have a robot, not a character.) I would much rather bribe you with experience points and have your character stay in line with his/her concept. Point out a way in which you could have munchkined your character but didn't because it didn't agree with your predetermined concept for the character, and I'll give you some points. I call this "anti-munchkining."