Life expectancy.

[epicenter00]

Just to poke my head into this thread, I'd like to throw out some ideas:

* Vilani Prejudice: I've always thought that a lot of reason why there aren't better organ transplant technology and such is that Vilani cultural prejudice has kept it in check. Due to the lack of bad bugs on Vland, Vilani medical technology has been behind - they might be philosophically opposed to ideas of extending the human life span.

* Memory Limits: While most RPGers tend to think of skills as an accumulative thing (that is, the older you are, the more skills you have), there may be an undefined limit to how many skills you could have. I'm not saying that the human brain will become "full" or any nonsense like that, but instead that there's a human limit to how many skills you can brush up and keep your memories current on. Knowledge that isn't used would degrade. If you introduce long lifespans measured in centuries, it might certainly be worth looking into "upper limits" for the number of skills a person can have. I think MT (it's been a while since I've looked at the rules) and some other editions of Traveller have skill limits - it might be worth it to look at those again and perhaps revise them.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by alte:
Someone asked about the life expectancy implied by the Book 1 tables.

Yep, that would be me. I've since had a chance to look it up and the rule I was vaguely recalling is the aging crisis roll. I wonder if you factored that into you averaging exercise alte?

Looks like, using your ability 7 as average idea, one would likely hit an aging crisis at age 66 on average. But that's not automatically death, you roll 8+ to survive, with DM for medical. Odds are good with a Doctor (medical 3) attending that you pull through.

So your 70 years seems about right but with good luck avoiding age penalties and access to a Doctor one could live much longer. Or with bad luck and no Doctor one could die much sooner.

But I've never really seen it as a natural life expectancy table. And of course the real reason for the table is the role it plays in the game within the game of character generation. "Do I go another term for more development, risking an aging roll, or do I get out while I'm healthy?"

Your DM ideas don't look bad though. Presuming the character has the access to the TL and ability to use their Soc to affect it.

For example what of the character born a Baron of a high tech world but drafted into the Imperial Army and stationed on some backwater low tech world? After 16 years as an infantryman without a commission he reaches an aging throw. Does he have a bonus for his circumstance of birth despite it not being a factor for nearly half his life? Or does he have a negative to reflect his current situation which is not much different from that of the Barbarians he's been fighting all these years?

And what of those Barbarians? If one should leave his homeworld and travel with a Duke eventually being Knighted for some minor act and moving into the manor of his liege on a high tech world. Is his aging throw going to be penalized for his birthrite, or is he going to benefit from his current status and location?

Just wondering aloud

 

[Blue Ghost]

epicenter00; I think the rule is you can only have a number of skill points equal to or less than the sum of your INT and EDU. So a 777777 character would 14 skill points.

I think the rule goes on in that you can have any number of skills at zero (essentially limitless skills), but as one skill improves with use another degrades. Hence a character who improved his electronics skills by creating a cel phone out of sticks and stones would gain skill point, but lose, say, his autopistol-1 skill (turnig it to autopistol-0) because he didn't use his weapon this adventure (and/or wasn't going to the firing range). I think it's a GM's call as to how that works.

 

[TheEngineer]

MT also deals with the increase of characteristics.
So its indeed possible to increase education or intelligence, and thus expanding the total number of possible skill levels.
Regular training of physical characteristics is naturally a way to extent adventurer life without anagathica.
Anyway the regular limit for a human being is 30 skill levels (plus lots of zero-level skills).

 

[Liam Devlin]

Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
Survival rolls already cover career differences (especially the T4.1/T5 draft).

I allow TL bonuses to aging rolls.

I forget the exact details, but it was something like:

TL Bonus
0-3 -2
4-7 -1
8-11 0
12-15 +1
16+ +2

Great Idea Andrew!

With what is known in Traveller in the medical advancements along TL-lines, i'd do it this way for survival rolls:

TL DM to Surv roll
0-1 -5
2-3 -4
3-4 -3
5-6 -2
7-8 -1
9-10 +0
11-12 +1
13-14 +2
15-16 +3

(Well, hey, it meshes with T20 too )

 

[TheEngineer]

Hmm, is it really correct to correlate TL and personal aging roll in such a general way ?
What TL is meant anyway, when doing the aging roll ?

 

[Liam Devlin]

Maybe, but without making a minutiae laden health-care system and diet-exercise routine, this streamlines all of that into a Character's lifestyle in the chargen survival-aging process.

if you had to, default this to their Homeworld for upbringing & knowledge of how to take of themselves.

Dunno about the idea for using SOC as an additional modifier..EDU maybe better.

As for it being 'correct', we were noting homebrew rules here

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

This topic is reminding me of one of my earliest games, in which the players' driving interest was to steal enough money to pay for an 18 year old cloned body to have their brain transplanted into. I think it was MCr 20 or so...

 

[atpollard]

I doubt that basic human psychology would be altered by prolonged physical life. There are natural changes in the way people think as they age (the elderly tend to prefer what is familiar and resist change, for example). It would be fascinating and scary to ponder the effects of this over centuries of life. Imagine being governed in the 21st Century by people who were educated in the 1700's and have grown increasingly contemptuous of new ideas. (assume that Fear + Power = Contempt). It might also be interesting if people became "unstable" over time the way AI tend to become unstable.

Henry Ford (the auto maker) might be a good example of someone born into one culture, exerting power over a very long period of time, and having difficulty accepting the new social order as the world changed.

England had some long reigning monarchs, did any of them wield power and oppose or embrace change?
(Sorry, but in the US public schools, my education on English history ends after the war of 1812 and does not pick up again until 1941 - except for a small footnote on WW1).

 

[Klaus]

Here's a list of English monarchs who served 30 years or more as King or Queen. (Age at death in parenthisis)

Alfred the Great 30

Henry II 34

Henry III 56

Edward I 35

Edward III

Henry VIII 38 (56)

Elizabeth I 45 (70)

George II 33 (77)

George III 60 (82)

Victoria 64 (82)

Elizabeth II 55 (81)

It actually seems the Monarchs who presided over the greatest change were long lived and reigned for a long time, although the later ones have less and less executive power.

Elizabeth I (creation of the nation state) & II (retreat from empire, decline as a power), George III (some serious revolutionary stuff going on), and Victoria (domination of the world).

So, it would seem your thesis is incorrect, if we only take British monarchs as evidence.

 

[atpollard]

Originally posted by Klaus:
It actually seems the Monarchs who presided over the greatest change were long lived and reigned for a long time, although the later ones have less and less executive power.

Elizabeth I (creation of the nation state) & II (retreat from empire, decline as a power), George III (some serious revolutionary stuff going on), and Victoria (domination of the world).

So, it would seem your thesis is incorrect, if we only take British monarchs as evidence.

You could be correct about my error, unless the monarchy has been superfluous to the government and culture since George III.

Is Elizabeth II a keen advocate for British bio-technology?

 

[Klaus]

I think Ma'am would have "No comment."

The next monarch may have more to say, bless him, but as to being taken seriously.....

The one after, well who knows if it'll still exist by then, and perhaps he might not even have a drop of Saxe-Coburg blood in him...

 

[Blue Ghost]

Originally posted by Liam Devlin:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
Survival rolls already cover career differences (especially the T4.1/T5 draft).

I allow TL bonuses to aging rolls.

I forget the exact details, but it was something like:

TL Bonus
0-3 -2
4-7 -1
8-11 0
12-15 +1
16+ +2

Great Idea Andrew!

With what is known in Traveller in the medical advancements along TL-lines, i'd do it this way for survival rolls:

TL DM to Surv roll
0-1 -5
2-3 -4
3-4 -3
5-6 -2
7-8 -1
9-10 +0
11-12 +1
13-14 +2
15-16 +3

(Well, hey, it meshes with T20 too ) </font>[/QUOTE]I think these are good starting points, but I think survival and aging effects would also depend on the type of world one was raised on. Maybe an "advanced" char-gen system would have DMs for vacc worlds, water worlds, TL and GL alike.

Example; one might expect better health care on a high tech level world that was fairly prosperous and socially progressive. Whereas a similar world with a Stalinist government would probably shave decades off one's life expectancy, and give serious -DMs to aging effects.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Originally posted by Klaus:
I think Ma'am would have "No comment."

The next monarch may have more to say, bless him, but as to being taken seriously....

I think Charles' problem is simply that he's way ahead of his time. He started telling people about the importance of the environment, "organic" farming, and inter-faith dialogue *decades* ago - back then, everyone thought he was a nut, it's only recently the rest of the world has caught up with him.

 

[Klaus]

Perhaps that is so. He's had a lot of sound ideas, but can be reactionary too (carbuncles). However, he's dreamer, and the establishment don't like that, and the papers have it in for him.

On tv he comes across as dithering and indecisive. Who knows whether that's case or not, the impression has stuck. Pity.