This is another of my favorite background articles for the 2300 AD RPG. Andy's advice helped to provide a rational baseline for wages and upkeep in my non-military campaigns ( although some of my players have "cursed" Andy for the same reason - [ big wicked gamemaster grin ] ). My thanks to Andy for granting permission for me to host it on my web site. - Kevin Clark - Mar. 15th, 1998.

Social Class in 2300 AD

Social status can profoundly affect a character's life.

by Andy Slack

HTML entry/layout/editing by Kevin Clark
( kevinc AT cnetech DOT com )
Please report errors to me.

http://www.geocities.com/pentapod2300/mag/social.htm

Disclaimer required by Far Future Enterprises: This item is not authorized or endorsed by Far Future Enterprises ( FFE) and is used without permission. The item is for personal use only. Any use of FFE's copyrighted material or trademarks in this file should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights or trademarks. In addition, this item cannot be republished or distributed without the consent of the author ( Andy Slack).

The Social Status and Monthly Upkeep Table is based on Hope and Goldthorpe's model of the modern British class system, modified slightly to take some account of Gilbert and Kahl's findings of the American class system. It describes the open class society of a modern industrial nation, where class is not determined by birth. To find a character's social class, roll 4D6-4 ( as for other 2300 AD attributes), then add one-fourth of the character's education to the result. The reasons for education modifying the dice roll are that people from higher-class families tend to have more years in formal education, and those with more education tend to get higher-status jobs.

SOCIAL STATUS AND MONTHLY UPKEEP

                Income   Upkeep
        Social  (Lv per  (Lv per
Result  Class    Month)   Month)  Typical Occupations
20+     9       15,000   4,500    Investors, heirs, executives
17-19   8        4,000   3,000    Higher managers/professionals
16      7        1,500   1,000    Lower managers/professionals
15      6        1,250     900    Clerical, sales, service workers
14      5          800     700    Self-employed artisans
13      4          800     700    Technicians, foremen
10-12   3          800     700    Skilled manual workers
7-9     2          200     200    Unskilled manual workers
6-      1          200     200    Agricultural laborers

NOTES ON THE SOCIAL STATUS TABLE

Generally, unskilled laborers will be SC 2; skilled workers will be SC 3-7; office workers, soldiers or ship crews, SC 3-6: military or ship's officers, SC 7-8; upper-echelon corporate managers, SC 8.

Result: This is the modified dice roll made by the character ( 4D6-4+1/4 education). It takes into account the effect the average education score of 10 will have ( +2 modifier) when assigning a character to a class.

Social Class: This is a numerical representation of the character's social class, much like other game's social standing attribute. Sociologists usually call the highest status class 1, but using ascending numbers is more convenient.

Income ( Lv/Month): This is mostly derived from the salaries listed in 2300 AD. In the game, this quickly and easily gives you and your players an idea of how much money a patron can offer the group to do a particular job ( how much he actually offers may be different and will give the players extra information). For example: "The baron's only offering us Lv200 to find the letter, but my banking contacts tell me he pulls in Lv20,000 a month. I don't think he really wants it back." Or perhaps: "Wait a minute. Where did a fellow like Andrew get Lv5000? There's something fishy going on here.")

Upkeep ( Lv/Month): This shows what sort of expenditure is necessary to keep the character in the style to which he is accustomed. If the group spends a long period between adventures, say while one of them is in training or recovering from wounds, the listed figure is what they will pay for food, lodging, entertainment, etc. in a month. They can always pay more or less than the listed figure; vast discrepancies can be rewarded with renown points ( "Excellent dinner party young Tombs has laid on, Martha; the lad may have more potential than I thought.") or infamy points ( "Good grief, Elizabeth, you invited the TV people over here? What will the viewers think? At least put the pig in the yard!").

Typical Occupations: This shows what sort of careers are followed by members of that social class.

Class 9 consists of the investors heirs and executives, who are classed as capitalists because their main income is from their assets rather than their salaries. Land-owning nobility will be in this class.
Class 8 are the higher-grade professionals, administrators, managers, and proprietors of businesses.
Class 7 is made up of lower-grade professionals, administrators, managers, supervisors, high-grade technicians, and middle-grade businessmen.
Class 6 is composed of clerical, sales, and rank-and-file service workers.
Class 5 contains the proprietors of small businesses and self-employed artisans.
Class 4 is composed of lower-grade technicians and foremen.
Class 3 is made up of the skilled manual workers found in industry.
Class 2 covers semiskilled and unskilled industrial workers.
Class 1 is occupied by agricultural workers and smallholders.

If you don't agree with this split of occupations by class, take heart; it changes according to the nationality of the character and the time he was born in. A few hours in your local library looking under "social stratification" will give you some ideas on how other countries view the matter. My table is based on the British system partly because almost all my players are British and partly because British society seems to have a more convenient number of social classes -- U.S. research seems to distinguish either too few ( five) or too many ( dozens).

No modifiers have been applied for Core or Frontier homeworlds. I have assumed that agriculture and mining in 2300 AD are much more automated than today, and therefore that the lower social classes on Frontier planets take up no higher a percentage of the population than they do today. I have also assumed that some members of higher social classes will migrate to the Frontier to find new country estates, escape from the rat race, or what have you. The higher social classes occupy a niche in society which consumes more resources than those of lower classes, so they feel the pinch of overcrowding and resource depletion earlier ( when the pool shrinks, the big fish feel crowded, and some move to another pool). Also, the higher your social class, the easier it is for you to find the money to travel to a new world.

SOCIAL MOBILITY

It is quite possible in an open society for, say, a man born into social class 3 to rise to social class 7 and then perhaps marry someone from social class 8. In game terms, a character's renown or infamy will modify his social class over time. Characters may increase their social class in the same way as they improve skill levels, but they do so by using renown points rather than experience points. This represents the increased respect people give to famous figures.

Renown used to improve social class is not expended but still counts toward the character's renown level, so keep a separate tally of points spent on class. Each infamy point reduces social class by one level ( the media and its viewers just love a good scandal).

ATTITUDES

A character's social class reflects the status he derives from his parents' occupations or his own career prior to adventuring. The main use of class in the game is to determine a character's outlook on life. While PCs should be allowed to deviate from the normal beliefs of their class, the referee will find it useful for stock NPCs to have stock attitudes about life based on their class outlook.

Bear in mind, however; that not all members of a class hold every view ascribed to the class, and one viewpoint shades into another across the spectrum of class.

Manual Workers: Members of these social classes are to a certain extent fatalists, feeling that luck and forces beyond their control shape their lives. They feel that good pay and working conditions depend on union action. They see work as a way to get money to spend during their leisure time and see the unemployed as unlucky. They usually hold liberal views on economic issues and conservative views on other matters, being intolerant of nonconformists.

Nonmanual Workers: Members of the higher social classes feel they have mastery over their lives and feel hard work will be rewarded. They see the unemployed as lazy, and see work as a place to gain respect, demonstrate their skills, and further their careers. They are usually tolerant on civil liberty issues and of nonconformists.

INTERPERSONAL TASKS

A character's class largely determines the respect he is due from NPCs. Therefore, social class may be used as a crucial attribute in interpersonal tasks. PCs may wish to pass themselves off as members of another class, say to infiltrate an important social event or a worker's demonstration; this is a Routine disguise task whose duration is determined by the referee.

ON THE STREET WHERE YOU LIVE

Certain areas of every city are associated with particular social classes. For game purposes, it is useful to think of the average frontier city as being composed of five concentric rings; the inner-most is zone 1, and the outermost, zone 5. These zones develop naturally as a result of the successive waves of immigrants as the colony grows. When the city is first founded, possibly near the site of the first landing, the higher social classes live in exclusive areas in the inner city ( zone 2), and the poor live further out. Gradually, the richer people move further out, leaving the inner city properties empty. These houses are too expensive for low-income groups to maintain, so they let out rooms in the houses. When new immigrants arrive, they rent rooms in the inner city. The more successful immigrants move into newer, better houses toward the edge of the city, and are replaced by the next wave of immigrants taking lodgings.

The characteristics of these zones and the social classes living there are as follows:

Zone 1 ( Innermost): This is the inner business district with the shops, civic buildings and commercial enterprises. Cultural centers such as museums, universities, and art galleries are also present. A few members of social classes 8 and 9 may have apartments here to entertain business associates or to remain near the business and cultural centers.
Zone 2: This is the older residential area of large, once-imposing houses which were owned by affluent people who have since moved away. The houses are in a poor state of repair and are divided and rented out to people in social class 1 or 2, especially new immigrants and indigents with no regular income ( e.g., PCs down on their luck). The constant changeover of population in zone 2 leads to social problems and a high crime rate. The zone also has a number of students and Bohemian types who favor the area for its low rents and nearness to the cultural centers in zone 1. If you are using the Earth/Cybertech Sourcebook, this is where the cyberpunks and deck jockeys on the make hang out. As you can see, this is the zone where your Streetwise skill is used.
Zone 3: This has a stable population of respectable working-class people ( social classes 3 and 4) and some sense of community.
Zone 4: This is the typical suburban area, inhabited by the middle classes ( social class 5 to 7). Social life in the suburbs is not based on family or locality as it is in zones 2 and 3, but is based on shared interests ( e.g., membership at the same golf club).
Zone 5 ( Outermost): This is the wealthy district, where the rich ( social classes 8 and 9) live in expensive houses with large gardens.

On core worlds, as stated in 2300 AD, people can commute long distances to work via the excellent transport network. Thus, the higher social classes usually live outside the city proper. In Core cities, frequently only zones 1-3 are present, though they are bigger than equivalent zones in a frontier city. In effect, zones 4 and 5 have become houses in the country.

The above sweeping generalizations aren't true for all cities. Sometimes the middle classes move back into the inner city and redevelop it: sometimes over-spill estates for workers are built on the edge of the city proper. Furthermore, not all cities are circular; parts, for example. may be crescent-shaped, bounded by the coast on one side.

SOCIAL CLASS IN PLAY

Here are some examples of how social class can flesh out characters, drawn from the troubleshooter party in my own campaign.

Our group has one character of lowly origin who has striven for many game years to pass himself off as a member of high society -- he likes adventures that allow him to gain the money to do so.
Another character in the group wants to help the lower social classes in the inner cities and seeks out those who have problems with the underworld or the authorities to help them -- this has generated several scenarios where the players did good deeds for no pay at all and still felt sufficiently rewarded.
A third character lives in a run-down apartment in zone 2 of a frontier city. Due to his upbringing in the lowest social classes, he feels this is quite adequate ( "my family was much worse off"). But several other characters have refused to stay in his hovel, even when desperately short of money.

Since social class under these rules is determined by occupation, it can be used as a guide to a PC's rank within his final career. For example, military officers have social class 7 or 8 as a rule. A PC with social class 7 whose final career was ground military would have held a position in the lower ranks of the officer corps, probably as a lieutenant or captain, but possibly as a major. The number of turning points in his career ( and the die roll results for the turning point tasks) should guide the referee in deciding the exact rank held.
-Andy Slack

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Last Update: 1998 Mar 15
First Online: 1998 Mar 15
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