House Rules
By Thomas Østerlie
There are a couple of things with the rulebook that
my players and I don't agree with. There always is.
As Patrick at Target once asked: why is it that RPG
gamers never are satisfied with the rules as is? My
reply was: because we're all nerds, and we're never
happy until we get to tinker with stuff! At least that's
the reason why I've jotted down these house rules.
I'm never happy with a set of RPG rules until I've
tinkered with them, tweaking them to my own
satisfaction.
The house rules that follows are those used by my
gaming group and I. They're tailored to fit our needs
and to cater our egos. For some of you some or all of
these rules may work. For others none of them may
make your clock tick. It doesn't matter. If you feel
like using these rules, please go ahead. But
remember: you're using the rules are your own risk!
Character Creation
One of the reasons why my gaming group was
attracted to Gemini was due to the rule system's fast
and furious character generation scheme. Being used
to games where it takes an entire session to create
new characters, we could actually start out a session
with generating characters and still get some gaming
done in the same session with Gemini. Of course,
there are things that don’t completely satisfy our
needs. The following changes are those we use when
creating new Gemini characters.
Step 2.2: Height-to-Mass Ratio
Perform this step immediately after having picked
your character's race. While particularly skinny
persons have a lower physical resistance, obese
persons suffer from a relatively general constitution
due to their physical situation. You use the height-to-
mass ratio to determine if your character is under-
weight or over-weight. Take your character's height
in centimeters and divide it by his mass. Use the table
below to see what your height-to-mass ratio is.
Record this in field 2.2 of your character sheet.
HEIGHT/MASS
HEIGHT-TO-MASS
RATIO
More than 3.5
Underweight
Between 3.3 and
1.5
Normal
Less than 1.5
Overweight
Underweight characters have an additional +1 to
their agility score because they are generally small
and nimble. An overweight character has -1 to his
constitution score because of his general poor health.
Other modifiers than those above apply to the
secondary abilities below. The modifications due to
height-to-mass ration are only temporal. If your
character gains or loses enough mass during the
course of the game to change height-to-mass ratio,
you need to re-figure the primary and secondary
attributes affected by the new ratio.
Example: To find his character's height-to-mass
ration, Bob takes the character's height of 195
centimeters and divides by his mass of 54 kilograms.
The result is (195/54=) 3.6. This means that his
character is underweight. Bob erases the current
agility score of 10 and records a new score of 11.
The Inattentive Templar Syndrome
Once a Knight Templar has fulfilled all his
Attribute Requirements, he has mere 15 points left to
distribute on his Perception and Charisma abilities.
There are two ways of distributing these 15 points.
You can either give your Templar a very low
Perception and a normal valued Charisma, or vice
versa. The other alternative, which is the one that
makes most sense, is to give your Templar a blow par
value for both his Perception and Charisma.
A low Perception leads to a low Reaction value. I
mean: a fighting man who's slow to react on the
battlefield? Gimme a break, man. On the other hand,
in my world Templars are stately warriors who know
how to handle themselves socially. They're not
socially inept characters, at all. However, a low
Charisma value makes them such. Oh, puh-leez: I
simply do not buy into this concept. So here's the
remedy, a simple fix: the updated Career Description
of the Templar.
Attribute requirements: STR 14, PHY 14, AGL 11
Areas of knowledge: Close combat and Learning
Special requirements: The Knight Templar must
specialize with some sort of close combat weapon,
and he must have the specialization Ride.
