Jetboots Redux | Star Frontiers

A
few months ago, Jedion posted a treasure trove of old Dragon magazine articles
in one PDF on this site.

One
of them was a story called “Jetboots don’t fail me now!” by Charles A. Venelli
that was in the November 1988 issue of Dragon Magazine. You can see a separate
PDF of this original story here: <a href="/node/9954">http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/9954</a>

Vanelli
offers an alternative way to calculate a character’s movement rate and his
story begins with this vignette:

Player
(whose character; a space-station security guard, has unexpectedly discovered an
intruder in a storage area): “I back away,
drawing my nightstick.”

Referee: “Great,
because the guy takes off the moment he sees you. He’s carrying a box from the
storeroom.”

Player: “I
chase after him! When I catch up, I’ll smack him with my nightstick! I move at
30 meters per turn.”

Referee: “Being
a human, the intruder also runs at 30 meters per turn.”

Player: “Well,
then, how am I gonna catch him?”

Good
question. Unless the intruder happens to slip on a convenient banana peel or
other unforeseen obstacle, the poor security guard may never get his man. Here
we see evidence of a flaw in the STAR FRONTIERS® game, in that all beings of
the same race run at the same rate of speed.

The
problem, however, is not just limited to running or walking; it also applies to
swimming, climbing, and just about every other movement task that a character
might attempt.

In
the STAR FRONTIERS game, all creatures are given a set of movement rates which
are dependent only upon the races of the creatures involved. Thus, every Human
in the Frontier runs just as fast as every other Human. The same can be said for
Yazirians, Dralasites, and every other known race.

Obviously,
this just isn’t the case. Any decent member of an Olympic track team could beat
the socks off the average person on Earth in a foot race, yet the current
movement system would not allow this.

Since
all characters are not
created equal in the STAR
FRONTIERS game system, all speeds should not be equal. Speed should be based
upon the basic attribute scores of a character and the character.s race.
(Obviously, a Dralasite cannot run as fast as a Vrusk.)

Vanelli then
proceeds to offer a diversified movement rate system based on the average of a
character’s strength and reaction speed.

“The Strength
score is used in the MRM because a character’s speed and quickness are based
upon the strength of the muscles within that character’s limbs,” Vanelli wrote.
“The Reaction Speed score is used because, by definition, it is a measure of a
person’s quickness.”

By taking the
average of Strength and Reaction Speed, you create a Movement Rate Modifier,
then use a series of somewhat complicated charts (of which I think there are
some typos in the statistics) to calculate a character’s speed.

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