Basic Character Generation in MT

[zakrol]

I'm a fan of the basic character generation in MT and am in the process of putting together an html/javascript page to generate characters. As is often the case, when you get into the detail of something you find you don't understand it quite as well as you thought. Could anybody help me with the following issues?

- The Economic skill says that it include Admin, Trader, Broker, Legal (and possibly others). Is it really that wide ranging? Or should it be a cascade skill making this an MT typo?

- How do people treat rifleman and combat rifleman, especially for Army/Marines type characters. In particular, say you have Combat Rifleman-1 and get a Rifleman skill, how would you treat the result? The rules claim no relationship but the skills are very similar.

- On mustering out, a second 'Weapon' result can be taken as a skill level in a previously taken weapon. Is that a skill in just that weapon or the broader skill. So, say you got a Laser Rifle with the first roll and then chose a skill for the second roll, would you get a Laser Rifle-1 skill or a Laser Weapons-1 skill (assuming no previous skill)?

Any answers/comments gratefully received...

Chris

 

[zakrol]

I'm a fan of the basic character generation in MT and am in the process of putting together an html/javascript page to generate characters. As is often the case, when you get into the detail of something you find you don't understand it quite as well as you thought. Could anybody help me with the following issues?

- The Economic skill says that it include Admin, Trader, Broker, Legal (and possibly others). Is it really that wide ranging? Or should it be a cascade skill making this an MT typo?

- How do people treat rifleman and combat rifleman, especially for Army/Marines type characters. In particular, say you have Combat Rifleman-1 and get a Rifleman skill, how would you treat the result? The rules claim no relationship but the skills are very similar.

- On mustering out, a second 'Weapon' result can be taken as a skill level in a previously taken weapon. Is that a skill in just that weapon or the broader skill. So, say you got a Laser Rifle with the first roll and then chose a skill for the second roll, would you get a Laser Rifle-1 skill or a Laser Weapons-1 skill (assuming no previous skill)?

Any answers/comments gratefully received...

Chris

 

[zakrol]

I'm a fan of the basic character generation in MT and am in the process of putting together an html/javascript page to generate characters. As is often the case, when you get into the detail of something you find you don't understand it quite as well as you thought. Could anybody help me with the following issues?

- The Economic skill says that it include Admin, Trader, Broker, Legal (and possibly others). Is it really that wide ranging? Or should it be a cascade skill making this an MT typo?

- How do people treat rifleman and combat rifleman, especially for Army/Marines type characters. In particular, say you have Combat Rifleman-1 and get a Rifleman skill, how would you treat the result? The rules claim no relationship but the skills are very similar.

- On mustering out, a second 'Weapon' result can be taken as a skill level in a previously taken weapon. Is that a skill in just that weapon or the broader skill. So, say you got a Laser Rifle with the first roll and then chose a skill for the second roll, would you get a Laser Rifle-1 skill or a Laser Weapons-1 skill (assuming no previous skill)?

Any answers/comments gratefully received...

Chris

 

[jappel]

Chris,

1) I'm fairly certain that Economic is a cascade. Seems to me this is erraticized somewhere.

2) I recently went through the chargen tables pretty carefully with an eye to modifying Don McKinney's point-based MT chargen with the concept of "in-class" or "non-class" skills found in T20. Combat Rifleman is actually damned hard to come by; the only people who can get it (combining the basic and advanced MT chargen) are Marines, Army, Scouts, Sailors and Pirates - in short, those who can get the Special Combat cascade skill, which is the only way to get Combat Rifleman in MT (unless it's given as a default skill for Army and/or Marines, I don't recall).

Now, was this a deliberate design decision or an oversight, particularly in the case of the Army and Marines? My best guess is that it's a little of both. I think there was a deliberate intent to limit Combat Rifleman to only those prior service careers with personal combat roles (don't forget the Scouts got some security services in CT Book 6). However, making it only available via the Special Combat cascade skill makes it tough for even line grunts to get more than a level seems to me to be an unintended consequence.

Bottom line - as a simple fix, add CR to the cascade for Gun Combat for the Army & Marines, or possibly any purely military career.

3) I think the wording here was a holdover from CT, where you took skills in specific weapons until Book 4. Giving the appropriate weapon-type skill as you describe seems to be the right way to go.

Do you have the MegaTraveller errata on Don McKinney's page? I believe this is as complete as you'll get.

John

 

[jappel]

Chris,

1) I'm fairly certain that Economic is a cascade. Seems to me this is erraticized somewhere.

2) I recently went through the chargen tables pretty carefully with an eye to modifying Don McKinney's point-based MT chargen with the concept of "in-class" or "non-class" skills found in T20. Combat Rifleman is actually damned hard to come by; the only people who can get it (combining the basic and advanced MT chargen) are Marines, Army, Scouts, Sailors and Pirates - in short, those who can get the Special Combat cascade skill, which is the only way to get Combat Rifleman in MT (unless it's given as a default skill for Army and/or Marines, I don't recall).

Now, was this a deliberate design decision or an oversight, particularly in the case of the Army and Marines? My best guess is that it's a little of both. I think there was a deliberate intent to limit Combat Rifleman to only those prior service careers with personal combat roles (don't forget the Scouts got some security services in CT Book 6). However, making it only available via the Special Combat cascade skill makes it tough for even line grunts to get more than a level seems to me to be an unintended consequence.

Bottom line - as a simple fix, add CR to the cascade for Gun Combat for the Army & Marines, or possibly any purely military career.

3) I think the wording here was a holdover from CT, where you took skills in specific weapons until Book 4. Giving the appropriate weapon-type skill as you describe seems to be the right way to go.

Do you have the MegaTraveller errata on Don McKinney's page? I believe this is as complete as you'll get.

John

 

[jappel]

Chris,

1) I'm fairly certain that Economic is a cascade. Seems to me this is erraticized somewhere.

2) I recently went through the chargen tables pretty carefully with an eye to modifying Don McKinney's point-based MT chargen with the concept of "in-class" or "non-class" skills found in T20. Combat Rifleman is actually damned hard to come by; the only people who can get it (combining the basic and advanced MT chargen) are Marines, Army, Scouts, Sailors and Pirates - in short, those who can get the Special Combat cascade skill, which is the only way to get Combat Rifleman in MT (unless it's given as a default skill for Army and/or Marines, I don't recall).

Now, was this a deliberate design decision or an oversight, particularly in the case of the Army and Marines? My best guess is that it's a little of both. I think there was a deliberate intent to limit Combat Rifleman to only those prior service careers with personal combat roles (don't forget the Scouts got some security services in CT Book 6). However, making it only available via the Special Combat cascade skill makes it tough for even line grunts to get more than a level seems to me to be an unintended consequence.

Bottom line - as a simple fix, add CR to the cascade for Gun Combat for the Army & Marines, or possibly any purely military career.

3) I think the wording here was a holdover from CT, where you took skills in specific weapons until Book 4. Giving the appropriate weapon-type skill as you describe seems to be the right way to go.

Do you have the MegaTraveller errata on Don McKinney's page? I believe this is as complete as you'll get.

John

 

[Elliot]

1 Economic is a cascade

2 Combat rifleman is the specialised skill for military characters - as such it is highly specialised and only for combat trained personel, that is why Merchants and Scouts are relegated to mere rifleman and Army/Marines get the extra skills in the combat rifleman. A soldier who is restricted to rifleman is restricted to the weapons in that cascade (this was discussed in a Traveller's Digest.).

3. I agree with Jappel - but I thought that you had to have the weapon skill from CG before you could choose the weapon in MO - maybe that was a house rule.

 

[Elliot]

1 Economic is a cascade

2 Combat rifleman is the specialised skill for military characters - as such it is highly specialised and only for combat trained personel, that is why Merchants and Scouts are relegated to mere rifleman and Army/Marines get the extra skills in the combat rifleman. A soldier who is restricted to rifleman is restricted to the weapons in that cascade (this was discussed in a Traveller's Digest.).

3. I agree with Jappel - but I thought that you had to have the weapon skill from CG before you could choose the weapon in MO - maybe that was a house rule.

 

[Elliot]

1 Economic is a cascade

2 Combat rifleman is the specialised skill for military characters - as such it is highly specialised and only for combat trained personel, that is why Merchants and Scouts are relegated to mere rifleman and Army/Marines get the extra skills in the combat rifleman. A soldier who is restricted to rifleman is restricted to the weapons in that cascade (this was discussed in a Traveller's Digest.).

3. I agree with Jappel - but I thought that you had to have the weapon skill from CG before you could choose the weapon in MO - maybe that was a house rule.

 

[kaladorn]

1. I'd make all gun skills for Army/Marine combat rifleman.

2. Economic is a cascade.

3. Ask yourself how a Free Trader ever gets Sensor Ops. (This is left as an excercise for the student)

4. There were at least 3 or 4 errata releases.

5. Go download Greg Svenson's MTCG program (MegaTraveller Character Generator) (Google can help here... or I can go dig up the link if need be)

6. The letter of the law:
You get a weapon, then you can take the applicable skill. MT tries to preserve some old skills, when it really *wants* to use groups. For instance, if I have a player get a laser rifle, I give him laser weapons. Someone with laser rifle-4 who picks up a laser carbine but gets no bonuses is retarded, since the difference is not principle of operation, or anything of that sort. The weapon just has less ammo and a lower power beam, but equal recoil and aiming character.

7. Ask yourself this other question. Read about the Imperial Marines most places, what is their most common image? Battle dress. Now try to get that. Read GT's rendition of Marine Training (thanks Mr. Berry) then try to get BD skill for your Marine. (My resolution: All Marine Vacc Suit levels are BD levels)

 

[kaladorn]

1. I'd make all gun skills for Army/Marine combat rifleman.

2. Economic is a cascade.

3. Ask yourself how a Free Trader ever gets Sensor Ops. (This is left as an excercise for the student)

4. There were at least 3 or 4 errata releases.

5. Go download Greg Svenson's MTCG program (MegaTraveller Character Generator) (Google can help here... or I can go dig up the link if need be)

6. The letter of the law:
You get a weapon, then you can take the applicable skill. MT tries to preserve some old skills, when it really *wants* to use groups. For instance, if I have a player get a laser rifle, I give him laser weapons. Someone with laser rifle-4 who picks up a laser carbine but gets no bonuses is retarded, since the difference is not principle of operation, or anything of that sort. The weapon just has less ammo and a lower power beam, but equal recoil and aiming character.

7. Ask yourself this other question. Read about the Imperial Marines most places, what is their most common image? Battle dress. Now try to get that. Read GT's rendition of Marine Training (thanks Mr. Berry) then try to get BD skill for your Marine. (My resolution: All Marine Vacc Suit levels are BD levels)

 

[kaladorn]

1. I'd make all gun skills for Army/Marine combat rifleman.

2. Economic is a cascade.

3. Ask yourself how a Free Trader ever gets Sensor Ops. (This is left as an excercise for the student)

4. There were at least 3 or 4 errata releases.

5. Go download Greg Svenson's MTCG program (MegaTraveller Character Generator) (Google can help here... or I can go dig up the link if need be)

6. The letter of the law:
You get a weapon, then you can take the applicable skill. MT tries to preserve some old skills, when it really *wants* to use groups. For instance, if I have a player get a laser rifle, I give him laser weapons. Someone with laser rifle-4 who picks up a laser carbine but gets no bonuses is retarded, since the difference is not principle of operation, or anything of that sort. The weapon just has less ammo and a lower power beam, but equal recoil and aiming character.

7. Ask yourself this other question. Read about the Imperial Marines most places, what is their most common image? Battle dress. Now try to get that. Read GT's rendition of Marine Training (thanks Mr. Berry) then try to get BD skill for your Marine. (My resolution: All Marine Vacc Suit levels are BD levels)

 

[zakrol]

Thanks guys. That all helps - common sense should rule over letter of the law.

I had actually coded Economics as a cascade so it's nice to see everybody agrees.

Making Rifleman into Combat Rifleman for army and marines makes sense, likewise with the weapon group skill on mustering out.

I have seen Greg Svenson's MTCG which is very cool and wide ranging. Especially all the alien generators...

I have some paper errata with the basic ruleset but I'll go dig through the list mentioned above.

Thanks again!

Chris

 

[zakrol]

Thanks guys. That all helps - common sense should rule over letter of the law.

I had actually coded Economics as a cascade so it's nice to see everybody agrees.

Making Rifleman into Combat Rifleman for army and marines makes sense, likewise with the weapon group skill on mustering out.

I have seen Greg Svenson's MTCG which is very cool and wide ranging. Especially all the alien generators...

I have some paper errata with the basic ruleset but I'll go dig through the list mentioned above.

Thanks again!

Chris

 

[zakrol]

Thanks guys. That all helps - common sense should rule over letter of the law.

I had actually coded Economics as a cascade so it's nice to see everybody agrees.

Making Rifleman into Combat Rifleman for army and marines makes sense, likewise with the weapon group skill on mustering out.

I have seen Greg Svenson's MTCG which is very cool and wide ranging. Especially all the alien generators...

I have some paper errata with the basic ruleset but I'll go dig through the list mentioned above.

Thanks again!

Chris

 

[kaladorn]

The new version Greg has coded up recently fixes some more bugs and offers even more options (depends when you last saw it) for how you manage the process. You can still get dead ended here and there, but I really like it and once you get the hang of it, you can crank out a lot of cool characters.

The MT errata is available somewhere on-line. Try Traveller Downport or some of the other traveller sites or fire up your Google-fu. I think the last set was from late 1988.

Re Sensor Ops: I think this should be a Space skill, and I think Space should appear in more places in chargen (as opposed to particular subskills).

One thing classic CT and MT generation sort of misses: Some trades would have minimums to get in, and skill rolls don't simulate that.

I send someone to protected forces school. When I get them back, I plan to deploy them on a job requiring that skillset. I don't expect them not to be able to run a vacc suit because they blew the skill roll.

Similarly, what Marine (IMTU) would be allowed out into the real world without Battle Dress and either Energy Weapons or Laser Weapons skill? Answer: None.

One approach would be to reimplement schools as a success/failure thing where, if you succeed, you get certain minimum skills, and if you fail, you might still get a skill or whatever, but you don't get the full list. I mean, they have *examinations* to make sure you can do certain things.

Similarly, certain rank positions should probably be married to certain skills. I mean, it is possible as a free trader to generate a character who ends up fairly high ranking without a majority of the skills you need to be an officer on a ship.

Watch standers and military officers and various commercial ship officers require varying tickets and there are rigorous exams. You look at CT/MT chargen, and you sure don't get that out of it...

So, I love the chargen, but applying a modicum of sense to the final product is good.

Also, of course, I like a plethora of skills. I took an old JTAS article on the Imperial Academy of Sciences and expanded the Science and Academic cascades a lot. On the merchant side, I added Cargo Handling (wow, what a thought!) from Merchants and Merchandise. Etc.

 

[kaladorn]

The new version Greg has coded up recently fixes some more bugs and offers even more options (depends when you last saw it) for how you manage the process. You can still get dead ended here and there, but I really like it and once you get the hang of it, you can crank out a lot of cool characters.

The MT errata is available somewhere on-line. Try Traveller Downport or some of the other traveller sites or fire up your Google-fu. I think the last set was from late 1988.

Re Sensor Ops: I think this should be a Space skill, and I think Space should appear in more places in chargen (as opposed to particular subskills).

One thing classic CT and MT generation sort of misses: Some trades would have minimums to get in, and skill rolls don't simulate that.

I send someone to protected forces school. When I get them back, I plan to deploy them on a job requiring that skillset. I don't expect them not to be able to run a vacc suit because they blew the skill roll.

Similarly, what Marine (IMTU) would be allowed out into the real world without Battle Dress and either Energy Weapons or Laser Weapons skill? Answer: None.

One approach would be to reimplement schools as a success/failure thing where, if you succeed, you get certain minimum skills, and if you fail, you might still get a skill or whatever, but you don't get the full list. I mean, they have *examinations* to make sure you can do certain things.

Similarly, certain rank positions should probably be married to certain skills. I mean, it is possible as a free trader to generate a character who ends up fairly high ranking without a majority of the skills you need to be an officer on a ship.

Watch standers and military officers and various commercial ship officers require varying tickets and there are rigorous exams. You look at CT/MT chargen, and you sure don't get that out of it...

So, I love the chargen, but applying a modicum of sense to the final product is good.

Also, of course, I like a plethora of skills. I took an old JTAS article on the Imperial Academy of Sciences and expanded the Science and Academic cascades a lot. On the merchant side, I added Cargo Handling (wow, what a thought!) from Merchants and Merchandise. Etc.

 

[kaladorn]

The new version Greg has coded up recently fixes some more bugs and offers even more options (depends when you last saw it) for how you manage the process. You can still get dead ended here and there, but I really like it and once you get the hang of it, you can crank out a lot of cool characters.

The MT errata is available somewhere on-line. Try Traveller Downport or some of the other traveller sites or fire up your Google-fu. I think the last set was from late 1988.

Re Sensor Ops: I think this should be a Space skill, and I think Space should appear in more places in chargen (as opposed to particular subskills).

One thing classic CT and MT generation sort of misses: Some trades would have minimums to get in, and skill rolls don't simulate that.

I send someone to protected forces school. When I get them back, I plan to deploy them on a job requiring that skillset. I don't expect them not to be able to run a vacc suit because they blew the skill roll.

Similarly, what Marine (IMTU) would be allowed out into the real world without Battle Dress and either Energy Weapons or Laser Weapons skill? Answer: None.

One approach would be to reimplement schools as a success/failure thing where, if you succeed, you get certain minimum skills, and if you fail, you might still get a skill or whatever, but you don't get the full list. I mean, they have *examinations* to make sure you can do certain things.

Similarly, certain rank positions should probably be married to certain skills. I mean, it is possible as a free trader to generate a character who ends up fairly high ranking without a majority of the skills you need to be an officer on a ship.

Watch standers and military officers and various commercial ship officers require varying tickets and there are rigorous exams. You look at CT/MT chargen, and you sure don't get that out of it...

So, I love the chargen, but applying a modicum of sense to the final product is good.

Also, of course, I like a plethora of skills. I took an old JTAS article on the Imperial Academy of Sciences and expanded the Science and Academic cascades a lot. On the merchant side, I added Cargo Handling (wow, what a thought!) from Merchants and Merchandise. Etc.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

OK. I am just now going over MT chargen, and I have a simple (but, possibly ignorant) question: WTH is Inborn?! It mentions JoT and a couple of others, but the text doesn't really give you any indication of why those specific skills would be mentioned. Also, since it is supposed to be something the PC can do naturally, would it assume a skill level of 1 (or 0) in whatever "cascade" is chosen before Inborn is applied?

(BTW, is it thread resurrection if it's only 2 1/2 months old? )

 

[Fritz_Brown]

OK. I am just now going over MT chargen, and I have a simple (but, possibly ignorant) question: WTH is Inborn?! It mentions JoT and a couple of others, but the text doesn't really give you any indication of why those specific skills would be mentioned. Also, since it is supposed to be something the PC can do naturally, would it assume a skill level of 1 (or 0) in whatever "cascade" is chosen before Inborn is applied?

(BTW, is it thread resurrection if it's only 2 1/2 months old? )