General Have you found CharGen to be in the way of playing Traveller?

[Condottiere]

It's a great way to create fleshed out random non player characters.

Player characters, depends on your preference.

 

[Enoki]

Most of the players I have had come from a Dungeons & Dragons background.
As a result, they want to either become the finest single-discipline professionals (Nav-6, Pilot 4, Vacc Suit 4 and nearly nothing else)
Or, they want to train their characters into Swiss-Army-Characters.

As I see it, that is not Traveller.
The way I see Traveller, the Char gen system provides characters who need to work together to be a "Swiss-Army-Crew"
Each member of a team provides their skills to a whole.
In that way, I've had my campaign running since 2007, and I stress the work of the team over highlighting the individual characters

That works against them in the scenarios I'd run. Being highly specialized means, you either get pigeonholed and are useless much of the time. That makes the over specialized player a liability rather than an asset. The player with lots of low-level skills is far more useful. The D & D specialized party (tank, basher, mage, healer, etc.) doesn't work in Traveller because, at least in my version, most of the time you aren't trying to kill things in a variation of dungeon clearing. Players often have to perform multiple, separate, tasks simultaneously or nearly so to get things done. You need to fuel your ship while somebody needs to get the cargo sold and more bought, and you need information about X, Y, and Z to continue on, while somebody needs to restock the galley, and there's parts for the engine to be gotten... Then you find out the party, or somebody, has to go to a town on the other side of the planet to do something and a suborbital hop is expensive compared to a plane ticket while you can't land your ship anywhere near where you're going...

The sort that play a lot of D & D are totally lost in that setting much of the time.

There I agreed with you 100%
As a result, I developed my own system, related to my Char Gen system.
So, say a Character has Gun Combat - Laser Weapons 1 and wants to improve to Level 2.
In Char Gen, improving and Gun Combat skill demands 10 "points" each (with points earned for events in My Char Gen procedure) for Level 1,2 or 3
It then costs 15 points each for levels 4 and 5, then 20 points each for levels 6+

That said, each player can have their character "regularly train or practice" with a single targeted skill until they make their improvement roll
Each in-game month in which they train or practice, they get one "Tik", or two if they were trained by an instructor.
Once they earn enough Tiks for the "mandatory" number of points (See above), they must make a Formidable skill roll to increase their skill as intended.
DM's = +1 for Int >9, +2 for Int >11 ; +1 per additional Tik over the mandatory level.
So, if "Frank" has an INT of B, and has been studying Gun Combat-Laser Wep's for 13 months of in-game time, he needs to make a formidable roll of 14+ with +2 and +3 = 9+ on 2D6

I have something similar but its more time based. I also group most of the weapons into much broader categories with you being "familiar" with one particular one or another that you possess versus picking something random up in a firefight or for the first time where you get a -1 to skill (min 0).

Here is where my real life experience steps in.
I was shot and - according to three doctors who confirmed it - killed in combat.
Then, I woke up on an autopsy table. Sent the doctor setting up for the procedure to the CCU for three days.

So, I "am" the character killed in Char Gen.
Following what the doctors called, "Spontaneous Unexplained Self-Resurrection, I got into IT, interacted with Dr, Hawking(which led to a stint working for Dr. Sagan) and more.

Given that experience, I don't let my player's character die. I use charts from JTAS to have them legally drummed out of the service, or discharged after injuries which made the medically unfit for service, etc..
Or, I have the character experience a wound, for which they get the appropriate decoration(Purple Heart, wound Badge, etc)

In this way, there is a chance of character advancement while teams share their skills as a team to solve issues.

Cool. I'll stick with you get nothing for that year other than maybe a medal.

 

[kilemall]

I suppose if I was going to have a skill mix for a CT campaign or extended adventure I would break the 18 careers into Space, Planet, and Citizens.

Space-
Navy, Marines, Merchant, Scouts, Pirates, Belters

Planet-
Army, Sailors, Flyers, Hunters, Barbarians, Rogues

Citizens-
Others, Diplomats, Doctors, Scientists, Nobles, Bureaucrats

Decide the mix, roll 1d6 for which career per roll.

Roll 1d6/2 +2 for number terms. Roll each term’s promotions, than roll skills/improvement, than benefits.

Allow sabbatical term and charge off benefits- I allow starship loan terms for those that don’t have the credits.

Than aging.

10% immediate equipment purchase, 90% cash in for tickets, ready to go.

Note that the spacers have 4 careers with a chance for a ship, the planet careers 1 and the citizens 2. Seems about right, and especially the types they can get.

Gives the organic character feel while skewing towards the preferred campaign type and matching skills.

 

[Enoki]

I suppose if I was going to have a skill mix for a CT campaign or extended adventure I would break the 18 careers into Space, Planet, and Citizens.

Space-
Navy, Marines, Merchant, Scouts, Pirates, Belters

Planet-
Army, Sailors, Flyers, Hunters, Barbarians, Rogues

Citizens-
Others, Diplomats, Doctors, Scientists, Nobles, Bureaucrats

Decide the mix, roll 1d6 for which career per roll.

Roll 1d6/2 +2 for number terms. Roll each term’s promotions, than roll skills/improvement, than benefits.

Allow sabbatical term and charge off benefits- I allow starship loan terms for those that don’t have the credits.

Than aging.

10% immediate equipment purchase, 90% cash in for tickets, ready to go.

Note that the spacers have 4 careers with a chance for a ship, the planet careers 1 and the citizens 2. Seems about right, and especially the types they can get.

Gives the organic character feel while skewing towards the preferred campaign type and matching skills.

I've done ones like new colony on some marginal planet. That required making up all new skills and such because the game is oriented towards combat more than anything. A colony game is oriented towards just freaking surviving the environment.

AH's Outdoor Survival game was a good basis for add on's to this sort of game. You had to get food, water, shelter, and then move forward with establishing a sustainable mini-society while fighting off critters and the occasional pirate attack all in a Traveller universe. The objective was to get your colony to a point where it was sustainable and possibly economically viable off world in trade.

The occasional "Viking" (pirate) raid didn't make things easy not to mention having to terraform and just survive day-to-day. But that calls for a different range of skills than the game normally provides for. An ex-military type or two is useful, but you need people with construction skills, farmers, terraformers, and the like to make a small colony work. It's much harder than you'd think if done right.

 

[spank]

It would be nice if there was an abbreviated character creation, something along the lines of:

Roll
1	Navy
2	Marine
3	Army
4	Scout
5	Merchant
6	Other
Terms = 1+2d6/2 (round up)
Service skills:	Navy: +1 Soc per 2 terms
	Marine: Cutlass-1, If 3+ Terms Revolver -1,
	Army: Rifle-1, If 3+ Terms Revolver -1
	Merchant: Pilot -1 if 4+ Terms
	Scout: Pilot -1
	Other: Blade combat -1
Skill points = 1 per term + 1d6
Roll on service, education or Adv education for skill, Skill level = 1d6/2 round up, continue until skill point are used.
Cash = 2d6 * terms
1 Weapon relevant to each skill, or handgun and skill-1
1 middle passage per term.

Just something I threw together literally as I was typing it. There are some possible outliers that don't exactly match CHARGEN, such a possible 2 term character with 7 skill points. You could limit Skill points to 2X terms. Also the middle passage benefit is not exactly kosher.

 

[kilemall]

I’ve done colonist career builds. Prospecting, hunting, survival, recon, equestrian, engineering/mech/electronics all figure prominently along with a need for food production type trade skills- I go with agriculture and carniculture which should cover both the lower tech natural way and higher tech genetic engineering versions.

I believe world tamers handbook is pretty much nothing but a hard colonizing game