Character Careers

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CONTEXT. I'm going to talk about CT Book 1 too.

CT Book 1

Everyone knows it. "I died during character generation". The jeer has become a badge.

I go in with aspirations, such as becoming a Merchant Captain with a 100% paid off Free Trader. But any delusions of grandeur are gone by the end of Term 1. If the character is still alive, the goal is to get out alive with just a few crumbs of capability. If this happens, I breathe a sigh of relief.

I like the leveled-playing-field, and I like playing "against the game". But, it requires adventures to provide pre-generated characters. I never "get what I want" -- but that's a feature.

The harshness of the system, and the way it holds out a sliver of hope, makes it memorable. Survival is a stronger challenge than performance.

 

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T5 Book 1

I admit that I am a fan of systems that are fast. MegaTraveller and Mongoose Traveller are not favorites of mine. D&D chargen is not enjoyable to me. T5 Book 1 is not bad, although I suspect formatting gets in my way a bit.

Structurally, it's built the same way as CT Book 1 and other Traveller career rules systems. But typical of modern systems, it gives you a lot of power. It's easier to get into a career, and the careers focus on performance rather than survival. It's relatively easy to get a Ship Share, and only a few shares are needed to take possession of a ship. The proliferation of skills tends to overwhelm me, and the tendency for me is to generate "Geezer" players.

I might be overstating those downsides. The system I believe is in line with modern games that are relatively free with their rewards, and the risks are highly manageable. Some people want to craft a character the way they want -- I mean the point of a character is to represent something of the player. There's a tension, and Traveller has walked that tension from one edge to the other across all its systems.

But as a result, it's not particularly memorable, any more than MegaTraveller or Mongoose or GURPS, etc.

 

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T5 GenCon

It's different from T5 Book 1, though with reasonably similar outputs. Marc put this out in an 8 page handout for GenCon.

This system has an edge to it; the survival roll once again means death on failure. You're forced to run with a different characteristic for each entire term. THAT means a character typically will target three to four terms before having to really push his luck.

I find that a welcome return.

Marc even created a clever "Death Award" for characters that die during chargen. In person, he has an inked stamp for your character sheet. Alternately, there's a T5 "Death Badge" card, similar to the Wound Badge.

Coupled with that is the looser structure of the GenCon rules; it follows career gen as usual, but for some reason it feels lighter. I like that too.

It's a tradeoff: the result of the super-quick mechanic also means that there's less differentiation between careers. Scouts is not more deadly than Merchants. A "Deadliness DM" could be added, but maybe there's a better way?

Another interesting twist is that skills are chosen at the END of career resolution. This is because these rules are streamlined on purpose -- and they are faster than CT Book 1, on purpose. That particular rule could be trivially changed to require skill selection inline if the referee desires it.

 

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T5 GenCon versus CT Book 1

So here's what it comes down to: Classic Traveller Book 1 is fast and dramatic. Also, it will kill off half of my characters in Term 1; half of the survivors will get kicked out of their service in term 1. I count myself lucky if my character gets out alive; when I get one with a Free Trader, it will be a huge surprise. In general, that's a feature.

You will know your character, and you will remember the process. It burns itself into your DNA.


T5 GenCon is easier to calculate characters by. You'll be able to estimate the character's probable number of safe terms; although it could end early, career aspirations are not dashed as casually as CT B1. Typically you'll get two, three, even four good terms out of a character, thus the system produces more usable characters more often. And yeah, they can still die.

Characteristics as target numbers, and end-of-career skill selection, produce a system that's faster to learn and faster to run than CT B1. I could generate a character almost without using the tables, and refer back to the tables later to finish the work.

 

[whartung]

So after characters were killed off in CharGen, did he simply have them start over a new character? Did that impact the time available to play the game?

 

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GenCon-style Example

I could generate a character almost without using the tables

Let's see if that's really true.

Generation

Str 6, Dex 8, End 8, Int 2, Edu 7, Soc 4​

​

Ohhhhkayyy. Well I know I'm going to run him through 2, maybe 3 terms, and see what happens.​

Resolution

I'll pick Merchants. But I won't look at the tables, yet.​

​

We know we roll for (1) Survival, (2) Commission, (3) Promotion, (4) Reenlistment.​

​

• Term 1. CC=Dex. Survival=5 (ok). Commission=8 (ok). Promotion=10 (fail). Reenlist=5 (ok).
  Rank=O1.
  
  
• Term 2. CC=End. Survival=4 (ok). Promotion=4 (ok). Reenlist=7 (ok).
  Rank=O2.
  
  
• Term 3. CC=Edu. Survival=7 (ok). Promotion=4 (ok). Reenlist=3 (ok).
  Rank=O3.

​

Totally retiring now. Skill levels = 3 terms x 4 skills + Commission + 2 Promotions = 15.​

Only now, after the process is done, do I need to consult the tables for mustering out and skill receipts.​

Finalization

Consulting the tables...​

​

Rank O3 = Second Officer.​

​

Skills:​

• Admin-1
• Astrogator-4
• Diplomat-1
• Fighter-0 (Pistol-2)
• Gambler-2
• JOT
• Trader-3
• Vacc Suit-1

Benefits:​

1. Random weapon (need to get my weapon cards organized...)
2. Cash: Cr 10,000 x 1D (=5) = Cr 50,000.
3. Int+1 (good!)

Well if I had stayed with it one more term, he would've got that Merchant Ship... but odds are the character would've actually died.

 

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So the character is:

Merchant Astrogator (Second Officer) 688374, Cr 50,000. Autopistol.
Admin-1, Astrogator-4, Diplomat-1, Fighter-0 (Pistol-2), Gambler-2, JOT, Trader-3, Vacc-1.

 

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So after characters were killed off in CharGen, did he simply have them start over a new character? Did that impact the time available to play the game?

Actually he had planned for that -- one 8.5 x 11 page had three character sheets on it. One of them was likely to survive.

 

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So after characters were killed off in CharGen, did he simply have them start over a new character? Did that impact the time available to play the game?

In an unrelated game, Stan Shinn *required* that characters die during chargen (he used CT Book 1)... and then had the characters "re-activated" for a plausible-deniability operation.

 

[whartung]

Actually he had planned for that -- one 8.5 x 11 page had three character sheets on it. One of them was likely to survive.

But they had to go through the rolling process again, right?

I can see it taking, especially someone new, 10m to roll a character, and just curious how this impacted the play time of others having to wait for the dead character to re-roll.

I would think a better plan would be to have a few ready made characters to fill in for those players that don't survive chargen since the session times are typically limited.

 

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I would think a better plan would be to have a few ready made characters to fill in for those players that don't survive chargen since the session times are typically limited.

And this is why the classic adventures included pre-gens.