schools

[flykiller]

traveller characters pick up game skills during their careers. for the most part these skills seem to be acquired by ojt or on-the-fly "training", but occasionally a character will have the good luck to attend a formal school and acquire a skill by formal training. these school skills, however, are indistinguishable from those that the character just picks up at random.

these are a few rules I use to distinguish school-acquired skills from on-the-run experience.

1) at the referee's discretion (say, once a game day or once a game session) if a character fails a task roll in a school-acquired skill, he may re-roll that task check.

2) a school-acquired skill gives subsidiary skills relevant to that school-acquired skill. for example if a character has attended an airraft school and has airraft 2, then he also has mechanics 1 and electronics 1, and gravitics 0, with regard to airrafts only.

3) imtu characters get skill points to acquire skills. schools grant 2 extra skill points towards the next level of that skill. for example if a character goes to combat rifle school this requires 1 skill point to acquire crfl 1, but the school adds 2 extra skill points, so the character actually acquires crfl 2. if a character attends electronics school this requires 2 skill points to acquire elec 1, but the school adds 2 skill points, so the character now only needs 1 more skill point to acquire elec 2.

schools are limited. imtu schools are available only once per term during the character's first three terms, usually. one exception is that prospecting and damage control schools not only confer prospecting/dcon 1 along with 2 extra skill points in those skills, but also confer 2 skill points and formal training in vacc suit.

 

[kilemall]

I dunno, I tend to look more towards the stats to inform me about the character- if they have a high education stat that tells me they tend towards formal schooling as a learning mechanism, if they have a low education but high intelligence, that tells me they are oriented towards acquiring OJT and 'figuring it out'.

Certainly plenty of schools in LBB4 on, and one could argue the CT starting two skills plus promotions that are not 'X career/life' are all about schools.

 

[atpollard]

I think it was in an old JTAS article on the Imperial Accademy of Science (or something close to that) where they suggested that skills gained through formal education conferred a greater chance at diagnosis and a reduced chance of hands-on tasks ... So having a College Degree in Airraft-2 would function as Airraft-4 for skill checks involving figuring out what is wrong, but only function as airraft-1 for actually repairing the airraft. [I think that it was double skill for diagnosis and half skill for repair.]

Personally, I liked the concept, but found the extra bookkeeping too much fuss.
For me, the fun of play is all about what the character does and says, not what the player rolls.

 

[Jame]

Yes, there are schools in Traveller. You don't see 'em except either as background or adventure location.

 

[Leitz]

I take a totally different view, but that may be more from habit than anything. Or that I'm a trainer in past lives and current student of Rapid Skill Acquisition. I refer you to Josh Kaufman's "The First 20 Hours" for a codified method.

If you don't have the skill, you suffer a large negative modifier on rolls. Thus the zero level is actually very significant. Many skills are easy to teach to the basic level if the learning resource can transmit fundamentals to a willing student. Note the three key points; some resource to learn from, the fundamentals, and willingness. When those three are combined you can do a lot.

I used to teach basic firearms skills. In a day I could take an interested student to safe proficiency on a weapon type. In two days we could cover three different firearms types, handgun, rifle, shotgun. Spend a weekend and get Rifle-0, Handgun-0, and Shotgun-0. If the student was interested I could connect them to people able to take them to skills of 2 or higher in any of those types. Higher skills require more time, more actual doing, and more drive to succeed.

I once had a willing student for my job skills. She was brighter than me so I can't take all the credit. It took her less than a year to go from a 0 skill to a 2 and get a job at an ivy league school's research department. Other people whom I have offered training to can't make half an hour's progress in six months because they don't value the skill.

Benny Lewis has a website called "Fluent in Three Months". If you really look at his material it makes sense. You can get to a skill of 1 or so in a language, in 90 days. The "90" number isn't mentally magic, it's the time some countries allow for someone to visit on one set of paperwork. How many people have taken years of high school or college language and are still not able to hold a basic conversation?

That's the point of "fundamentals". Someone can have Linguistics-4 and not be able to speak a foreign to them language. Someone else can spend a few months on conversations and pass for a native to non-natives. There's a basis for the "fake it 'til you make it" school. I once taught 16 people basic first aid skills in a language I don't speak. We had fun and everyone passed the test. I don't think I'm that brilliant, but I know willing people can learn.

My assumption in Traveller is that learning resources are much more plentiful and advanced than what we have now. The price to learn Rifle-0 might be a lot less than Pilot-0, but if someone can pay the cost, spend the time, and be interested in the subject, it should be easily doable.

When DM's allow skill selection during chargen and later, it pleases me. People get the 1 and higher level in stuff they are interested in. Whatever the story and character mindset is drives the skills I select. Not game balance, because that doesn't exist. It's a game, by definition unbalanced. It's a story, so super-unbalanced. James Bond would never have made millions of dollars for books and movies if hard math decided fate.

Some people want to limit funds for characters, for game balance. Pfui! I'm playing a Marine who had access to millions of credits. He didn't care, that wasn't his story. The game is fun and challenging. I encourage people to be free with skills. Work with the player to build a story that suits that character and then challenge the heck out of them.

 

[Leitz]

Hmm...let me posit something else based on my current game's DM preferences. I "grew up" with CT and loved the options in LBB 4+ when they came out. My current DM prefers a lower skill level game. Since the game is fun I'm not arguing. o:

What if schools gave you all the listed skills at 0? Specialist school might give you a +1, others would advance the character to eliminate negative mods. For example, in Book 4, "Cross training" might give you all the other MOS skills at 0. The same for commando school, etc. During the rest of your game or chargen you could add higher levels of skill.

Would that make more sense? Maybe second assignments at a school could give you higher skills, but is that a common issue?

 

[flykiller]

So having a College Degree in Airraft-2 would function as Airraft-4 for skill checks involving figuring out what is wrong, but only function as airraft-1 for actually repairing the airraft.

seems like a cultural issue regarding education. I was thinking more theory and operational education rather than just academic theoretical booklearning. airraft 2 means you can fly it around real good, and the engine is back there, and you have to put oil or fuel or something in this tube not that tube. airraft 2* means you understand how the gravitic generators counter planetside gravity to push the vehicle left or right and how far you will drift off visual anticipated course because of wind, and the power plant is in the rear but powers the forward generators more strongly than the rear, and there are parallel power system so that if one breaks you can still fly the vehicle (mostly sideways), and you've been shown how to do that and have done it, etc.

My current DM prefers a lower skill level game.

not at all, it is vastly powered. the skill level system simply is blunt, almost to the point of irrelevance. notice how "blade" includes bows and arrows ....

For me, the fun of play is all about what the character does and says, not what the player rolls.

well, surely success/failulre plays a role in what the character does in the game? and surely success/failure are based on skills and not merely referee fiat? is a character with jot 5 a good character?

Yes, there are schools in Traveller. You don't see 'em except either as background or adventure location.

it could be played that way. I simply offer a suggestion to make them relevant in character development and gameplay.

 

[Leitz]

well, surely success/failulre plays a role in what the character does in the game? and surely success/failure are based on skills and not merely referee fiat? is a character with jot 5 a good character?

Sure, a very good character if the DM and player have fun. Imagine a Scout with JoT 5 and straight 7's UPP. Probably 30ish in CT. A girl who does "a little bit of everything" and finds everything fascinating enough to play with it for a while. The Scout service needs all sorts and she's just the person to round out a team to go do some xeno-anthropological research because she worked on the Teledyne iotumagnetic transducers a couple years ago. The culture seems to have an affinity for magnetic ley lines and other planetary phenomena.

What a character rolls is less important than how they react to it. If the ship takes a missile hit enroute does she panic because she's always slow to put on her vacc suit? Or does she run back to engineering because she and a friend rebuilt one of those Partreanverk M Drives one summer when they were bored?

Does she "hang out with the guys" at the bar or dress up to show off her SEH at a dinner party? How long does it take people to realize how much she knows? Is she a braggart or a church mouse?

It's all in how you play it. If everyone has fun, it's a good character.

 

[atpollard]

seems like a cultural issue regarding education. I was thinking more theory and operational education rather than just academic theoretical booklearning. airraft 2 means you can fly it around real good, and the engine is back there, and you have to put oil or fuel or something in this tube not that tube. airraft 2* means you understand how the gravitic generators counter planetside gravity to push the vehicle left or right and how far you will drift off visual anticipated course because of wind, and the power plant is in the rear but powers the forward generators more strongly than the rear, and there are parallel power system so that if one breaks you can still fly the vehicle (mostly sideways), and you've been shown how to do that and have done it, etc.

Airraft was a bad choice for an example. In the article, they were discussing the difference between something more like Electronics-2 learned from 4 years in the Navy on a warship and Electronics-2 learned from 4 years at a university earning a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.

not at all, it is vastly powered. the skill level system simply is blunt, almost to the point of irrelevance. notice how "blade" includes bows and arrows ....

A fair evaluation. For the record, I view a skill level as something closer to the old D&D prestige classes ... Each skill level represents all of the knowledge, skill and experience gained through about two years of working full time at a profession.

The classic example that I go to would be Wheeled Vehicle-1 does not mean that you know how to drive a car and passed your drivers license exam. It means that you spent two years working as a full time cab driver and have logged thousands of hours worth of experience behind the wheel and may have once needed to use a roll of duct tape to patch a radiator hose to limp your vehicle back to the garage ... or perhaps you spent two years driving supply trucks in government convoys through a war zone and know what to do when a mortar lands near the vehicle in front of you ... or perhaps you spent 6 months being trained as a chauffeur for executives and have extensive knowledge of offensive and defensive driving techniques as well as 18 months of full time field experience putting them to work, including what to do when kidnappers actually attack your car with full-auto weapons.

Under that sort of a definition of skill-1, something like Blade-1 represents 100 weeks of 40+ hours per week of martial arts practice with archaic weapons. That would make you something close to a modern day medieval squire. The ability to use a long sword, a dagger, a longbow, a crossbow and a spear does not seem an unreasonable result for an investment of 4000 to 6000 hours of your best time and effort. Or as an alternative, Blade-1 could represent 2 years of Olympic athlete type training in the Rapier, because a young courtesan like yourself might actually be called upon to defend your honor. The player's history will define the details of the skill. The skill level just quantifies that experience in a game mechanics bonus.

well, surely success/failulre plays a role in what the character does in the game? and surely success/failure are based on skills and not merely referee fiat? is a character with jot 5 a good character?

I agree. I simply ENJOY the clever interaction more than the game mechanics. The role playing of Robert with a mental fog was priceless.
I tend to keep things like the actual rolls behind the scenes. As an example, Doc's efforts to cure Robert with ELSA were the result of converting Medic-4 success and failure rolls on a hard (10+) task into an interesting narrative. The rolls drove the time required and the various temporary success or failures ... hopefully the narrative added more 'atmosphere'.
For me, excessive bookkeeping (like bonus points for actions and fractional skill levels) distracts from the fun of the game ... 100% personal preference.

JOT-5 could (under my definition of what skill represents) present an extraordinarily unique character. The biggest issue is to define exactly what JoT skill represents ... the rules are sort of vague in the descriptive department for that particular skill. Under the RAW, Robert and his case of skill-3 chips is pretty close to what a JOT-5 might be.

 

[atpollard]

traveller characters pick up game skills during their careers. for the most part these skills seem to be acquired by ojt or on-the-fly "training", but occasionally a character will have the good luck to attend a formal school and acquire a skill by formal training. these school skills, however, are indistinguishable from those that the character just picks up at random.

these are a few rules I use to distinguish school-acquired skills from on-the-run experience.

1) at the referee's discretion (say, once a game day or once a game session) if a character fails a task roll in a school-acquired skill, he may re-roll that task check.

2) a school-acquired skill gives subsidiary skills relevant to that school-acquired skill. for example if a character has attended an airraft school and has airraft 2, then he also has mechanics 1 and electronics 1, and gravitics 0, with regard to airrafts only.

3) imtu characters get skill points to acquire skills. schools grant 2 extra skill points towards the next level of that skill. for example if a character goes to combat rifle school this requires 1 skill point to acquire crfl 1, but the school adds 2 extra skill points, so the character actually acquires crfl 2. if a character attends electronics school this requires 2 skill points to acquire elec 1, but the school adds 2 skill points, so the character now only needs 1 more skill point to acquire elec 2.

schools are limited. imtu schools are available only once per term during the character's first three terms, usually. one exception is that prospecting and damage control schools not only confer prospecting/dcon 1 along with 2 extra skill points in those skills, but also confer 2 skill points and formal training in vacc suit.

A more specific "on point" response:

I like benefit 1.

I already do benefit 2 for any skill based on what I view a skill level to represent IMTU. It would otherwise be another good benefit.

I don't like keeping track of skill points, so bonus #3 is just not to my taste, but I don't see it as being unbalanced.

I like the idea of adding Vacc Suit skill to Prospecting and Damage Control School. Is that significantly different in practice from bonus #2?

 

[BlackBat242]

I think it was in an old JTAS article on the Imperial Accademy of Science (or something close to that)

Imperial Academy of Science and Medicine; JTAS #22

 

[Enoki]

I suppose you could also set up some sort of system of ability to self-learn using the future equivalent of correspondence courses.

Maybe the player(s) could purchase such a course for some amount. Course completion would be based on a combination of:

Time elapsed (a minimum time to complete to this extending as the player encounters difficulties in finishing the course)

Education and intelligence levels (higher levels would generate greater chances of success) The skill level to be obtained could be used as a measure. Above a certain level, it would be very difficult to just study to get many skills.

Difficulty of the course (harder subjects are more likely not to be learned on one's own, that sort of thing)

Availability of assistance, a coach / teacher / mentor or access to equipment for hands on learning associated with the course.

This would be mainly for skills that could be learned in a classroom sort of setting as opposed to ones needing OJT or regular physical practice.

 

[kilemall]

Re: Jot-5 and edumacation vs. guy doing his thing in no-frills colonial backwaters, I handle it with knowledge checks then task checks.

Successful knowledge checks, education + skill/kskill reduce the task check difficulty on success, then intelligence + applicable skill for 90% of the non-combat skilled actual task success.

Jot-5 isn't a +5 skill in everything, but it does convey a deep practical knowledge and problem-solving expertise making up for the lack of specific skill. So it can only be used for knowledge checks, not the tasks themselves (although it counts as having a skill-0 and so no zero skill penalties).

I had actually come up with the kskill concept on my own (convert one education point into 4 kskills) without knowing about the current system, because I just think you need to be able to have clear theoretical knowledge and also have deeper characters with interests like 21st century Jazz or Comparative Xenoarcheology without overpowering the system.

Re: what they do and do not know what to do, the knowledge check shows they did or learned something in the past to be able to apply. I make them write it down and explain a backstory as to how they knew that. Big big opportunity to flesh out characters.

 

[flykiller]

I don't like keeping track of skill points

it's not hard. pilot 1, pilot 1(1), pilot 1(2), pilot 1(3), pilot 2.

and there are benefits. it allows skill points to be acquired through in-game experience or as instructor experience ("the best way to learn something is to teach it"). and it allows gradation of skill difficulties. for example simple skills such as firearms or airraft require 1 skill point for level 1, 2 for level 2, etc. moderate skills such as electronics or leadership require 2 skill points for level 1, 3 skill points for level 2, etc. and difficult skills such as pilot and navigation require 3 skill points for level 1, 4 skill points for level 2, etc.

I like the idea of adding Vacc Suit skill to Prospecting and Damage Control School. Is that significantly different in practice from bonus #2?

it's really just a kludgy add-on at this point. I envision every space-going character as having some kind of 5-minute ojt training in vacc suit / 0g, but no-one is going to want to expend a school slot on vacc suit. but I also can't see any prospector or damage control team being sent into their line of work without formal school-level training on how that vacc suit system works and how to use it in an actively hostile environment. so I just toss it in. having a school system allows that and allows a distinguishing between the two levels of skill expertise. "I've worn vacc suits without dying lots of times" vs "I know what I'm doing." having a skill point system allows gradation of that too - you could confer one skill point, or two, or a skill point and a school-trained rating, or two skill points and a school-trained rating, or whatever seems appropriate.

It's all in how you play it. If everyone has fun, it's a good character.

this is always true. but the character's skills are part of the character and should matter. if they don't then there's no point in the character having skills and they might as well be generic jot 5. "so mr. bond, do you lose as graciously as you win?" "I wouldn't know, I've never lost."