Alpha Dawn - Star Frontiersman

work week is five days of work with three days off.
One way to determine how much to pay is to pay 10
credits per level of skill per day plus 10 to 100
credits per day depending on the danger. You
probably should pay no less than 20 Cr/day and no
more than 500 Cr/day.
Pay does not have to be just credits. You may agree
to pay for medical care, or you could provide
equipment with the understanding that characters
get to keep it when they finish the job. You should
always provide free transportation to the starting
point of the adventure.
At the end of an adventure, the characters will
return to their employer to collect their pay. You
should pay them according to their degree of
success, paying less if they failed to complete an
important part of the mission, or paying a bonus for
excellent work or delivering more than was
expected. In this way, you can use pay to encourage
players to complete a job. Remember that half of
their pay should go to cost of living. If a character is
unemployed during any week, he can find a job that
will cover his cost of living and give him an
additional 5 Cr per week.
Experience. A character learns things and improves
himself through his experience on adventures. At
the end of an adventure a character gains
experience points (XP) which he can use to raise his
ability scores, gain new skills or improve old skills.
The referee awards experience points at the end of
an adventure or evening of play, based on how well
the person played during the adventure. This reward
encourages good play. Experience points are
awarded for accomplishing each goal of an
adventure. A character who survived but did not
contribute anything to the group's success should
receive only 1 XP for that goal. If a character
accomplished his job and nothing more, he should
receive 2 XP for the goal. If a character did an
excellent job or contributed greatly to the group's
success he should receive 3 XP for the goal. On the
average, player characters should be receiving
about 3 to 7 XP each during an average evening of
play. The referee should never award more then 10
points for one adventure.
How to Be a Good Referee
A good referee never tries to beat the players, but
tries to create exciting challenges for them to
overcome. You must match these challenges to the
abilities and resources of the player characters. If
the challenges are too easy, players will lose
interest. If they are too hard, player will be
frustrated and no one will have fun.
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Be fair when you make decisions, and treat all
characters the same. You must be flexible; if players
are having a hard time with the adventure or are
missing important information, adjust the situation
so they still have a chance to succeed.
A good referee takes notes during an adventure.
You must remember anything that can affect the
course of the adventure: did the characters turn off
the alarms on their way in? Have they seen these
poisonous trees before? How did they treat this NPC
the first time they met?
Is it hard to be a referee? Your ability to be a fair,
decisive, thoughtful referee probably is better than
you suppose, for you already have a number of tools
you can use. You can use your imagination to create
interesting events and to deal with unpredictable
actions by your players. You can use your players'
imaginations too. Listen to the things they say
during the game; they might give you some ideas to
use later. You can also get ideas from stories you
read and movies you see.
As the referee you are the final authority in the
game and you can use that authority to make
decisions and settle arguments. You also can control
the game so that it is fun for everyone; don't let
dice rolls decide how the game should be run if it
just slows the game. Use your own judgment about
what is fair. You can use your knowledge of how
things happen in life to help you make decisions
about the game.
As referee you also control how the characters will
be rewarded, and you can use rewards to encourage
good, thoughtful play. If they succeed through good
decisions, you can give them extra experience
points or a pay bonus.
Remember that you have a major advantage over
the players. You know everything there is to know
about the adventure and just why something
happens. The players know only what their
characters have discovered. You can use this
knowledge to create mystery and to make fast
decisions when your characters do something
unexpected.
How to Referee Creatures
During an adventure, creatures as well as intelligent
alien races may be encountered. Because there is
such a great variety of creatures on one planet and
so many different worlds to adventure on. it is
impractical to give a list of all known creatures. The
referee must create the creatures in his adventures.