Crewmember Retirement and Roguelike Progression in Mothership

When the crew is in port, a player may decide to retire their current crewmember and start over at level 0. Here’s the rules:

• It has to be a friendly port. If everybody hates you, you can’t retire there.
• A retired crewmember is no longer playable, and instead becomes an NPC. Their money and Stress will affect the kind of life they lead as an NPC.
• Retirement does not necessarily mean ‘doing nothing for the rest of your life’, but instead adopting a safer, less risky lifestyle. For instance, a retired crewmember may settle down with a menial job and start a family.
• If the Warden brings back a retired crewmember you used to control as an NPC, you may discuss their role with the Warden to ensure they are acting in-character.
• If circumstances affecting a crewmember’s quality of life are not dealt with, they may cause a drastically less peaceful retirement. A crewmember being actively hunted down by foes would do well to deal with those foes before retiring, for example.
• A retired crewmember can come out of retirement at any time but they’ll be reset to level zero- they’ve gotten rusty.

A crewmember’s total amount of money upon retiring affects their lifestyle. If they have any outstanding debts, subtract them from their funds. If the crew holds their funds communally, a retiring crewmember must negotiate their percentage with the rest of the crew (or steal the money). Relevant storyline factors (very wealthy benefactors willing to help out, etc) can be included in the total money calculation at the Warden’s discretion.

• Negative 25+ mcr: Utterly wretched poverty, debtor’s prison, or even worse.
• Negative 10-24mcr: Poverty, or worse if the entity to whom they owe their debt is vindictive.
• 0 to negative 10mcr: Poor, but able to eke out an existence.
• 1cr to 999kcr: A comfortable life, if not a luxurious one.
• 1mcr to 499mcr: A comfortable life, able to afford an occasional extravagance.
• 500-999mcr: Able to afford a decadent lifestyle and finance large-scale personal projects of their choosing.
• Over 1000mcr: Filthy rich, enough to be considered a major, setting-wide power.

This being Mothership, it’s far easier to fall into poverty than to get rich.

A crewmember’s Stress upon retiring affects their overall state of mind during their retirement. It's totally fine to reduce Stress right before retiring, but large-scale Stress reduction can be expensive.

• 0: Optimistic and at peace with their lot in life. Things generally tend to work out well for them.
• 1-5: Well-adjusted and able to put the horrors they’ve faced behind them.
• 6-10: A bit jumpy, tends to be distrustful, but not so bad that it gets in the way of day-to-day life.
• 11-15: On the bad days, they can’t stop thinking of the things they’ve seen. On good days, they can put it out of their mind.
• 16-20: Haunted by the past. Never quite at ease. Probably keeps has a weapon close at hand at all times.
• Over 20: Completely traumatized. Difficulty reintegrating into civilian life. Constant nightmares, intense paranoia.

After retiring a crewmember, a player may take ONE of these boons when creating their new crewmember (some may require the player to have an in-story explanation):

• One unique piece of gear from the retired crewmember.
• One skill of any level that the retired crewmember had.
• One-quarter of the amount of funds the retired crewmember ended up with (this takes those funds away from the retired crewmember).
• One stat that the retired crewmember had, or reroll any one stat during character creation.

If the retired crewmember had negative funds or over 20 stress, the new crewmember doesn’t get a boon. If the retired crewmember had over 500mcr AND zero stress, the new crewmember may choose two boons.

EDIT:

I’ve decided to rework how the boons are assigned. Here are a few principles I’m keeping in mind while doing it:

1. The boons should reward a skilled player for retiring a character.
2. The boons should take into account a character’s funds, stress, and level upon retirement.
3. The system for assigning boons needs to be simple because actually retiring a character is rare- most die instead. A game system players rarely interact with should be lightweight.
4. You should roll a die at some point during the retirement process because rolling dice is fun.

So here’s what I’ve come up with:

Roll Xd10, where X is the retiring character’s level, and compare it to the Retirement table. Yes, this means that retiring a level-0 character is pointless. If the character’s total money is negative or their Stress is over 20, roll [-]. If their total money is over 500 mcr or their Stress is 0, roll [+].

1-5	No boons.
6-20	New character gets to choose between getting 1/8 of the retiring character’s funds, one piece of their gear, or one of their Trained skills.
21-45	Choose between getting ¼ of the retiring character’s funds, two pieces of their gear, or any one of their skills.
46-60	Choose two: getting ¼ of the retiring character’s funds, two pieces of their gear, or any one of their skills.