Skills that don't exist but should

[Enoki]

As of late I've noticed, and run into situations where a character could have skills in a particular area but cannot simply because that skill doesn't exist in Travelller (or at least some editions it doesn't). These include:

Firefighting: As in aboard ship or a building.

Damage control: Making temporary rapid repairs to a ship to keep it functioning or minimize damage. Things like sealing a leaking bulkhead or bracing a failing section of hull.

Welding: Self evident.

Plumbing: Self evident.

Enviromental controls: Repairing and maintaining life support systems.

Martial arts / boxing / other trained hand-to-hand combat: This is opposed to the Brawling skill which I see as more a OJT (so-to-speak) skill. That is, the character learned by getting into fights rather than learned by some systematic training in hand-to-hand combat.

In other areas the skills seem overly specialized, particularly weapons.

 

[far-trader]

Quick take and thoughts before shutting down for the night...

I blame skill bloat and roll playing, both evils spawned by the "evolution" of RPGs. I don't recall the issue existing when I started playing. We had few skills and we mostly role played with dice being decidedly secondary to the narrative. In fact even with skill bloat and more tables for rolling I don't recall our games bogging down in the morass of "I don't have that skill." and "I didn't make my roll for that."

Skill bloat leads to the mistaken presumption and subliminal suggestion to players and refs that if it's worth doing it has to have a skill for it, and the corollary being if there is no skill or the character doesn't have the skill they are helpless to contribute to the effort. That's wrong imo. One can and should always default to role playing, common sense, or even simple stat rolls if one must roll. Not every action should be tied to a roll of the dice. It also tends to lead to players thinking their character is useless if they don't have a whole load of really high ranked skills. Or if they are thrown into a situation where their whole load of really high ranked skills aren't used.

To grab the first of your examples:

Firefighting: Sure you could have a professionally trained firefighter who would know a lot more about just how to fight a fire, but pretty much anyone can pick up an extinguisher and use it. If they were smart they read the directions before. If they are not totally brain dead they read the instructions at the last minute. Will the character be as good as a professional Firefighter? No... but that's due more to equipment than skill. You don't need a skill to use an extinguisher in the game. Alternatively grant the character a good chance if they have an appropriate background, by making it up. "My character served 4 terms in the Navy, some of that time was spent on damage control parties and firefighting drills. In fact on two occasions he was involved in actual firefighting."

Roll playing rather than role playing is the other problem. Refs and players who can't or won't acknowledge a contribution to the game without rolling dice.

Taking your second example:

Damage Control: Again, that's a background issue and I'd look to the player to role play and again make it up, along the lines of "5 terms aboard Scout ships has taught me a thing or two about making emergency repairs."

As for Welding, Plumbing, and Environmental Controls... seems to me they'd fall under Mechanical and or Electrical in CT so they're covered.

Martial Arts is included in Brawling imo, I've long played that any levels above 0 are specific arts or degrees in them. For example Brawling-0 is just what everyone can do throwing fists or swinging chairs. There's no elegance and it's not that effective. If the player gets Brawling-1 I'll ask them to pick a style (Boxing, Wrestling, Judo, etc.) and each level after that can be a different style or an improvement on the style. The game effect is the same for a Brawling-3 (Kung-Fu, Boxing, Wrestler) as it is for a Brawling-3 (Judo-3-Green Belt). The role playing IS different for the two though.

 

[aramis]

Enoki:
Fire Fighting: if you're fighting a fire aboard a ship, you're an idiot. You simply vacuum the compartment - people handle vacuum longer than fire does, and if you have a fire that's self oxidizing, you're not going to put it out without cooling it below ignition temp - usually not practical. The people who would have the skill would not generally be good PC choices.

Damage Control: Mechanical.
Welding: Mechanical.
Plumbing: Mechanical.
Environmental Systems: Mechanical. The control system is electronics.
Martial Arts: Brawling.

You're just looking for skills far more narrow than CT/MT provide for. In MGT, Firefighting is available as a specialization added by the GM - either professional or science.

 

[Hyphen]

Another thought: if you want to "broaden" skills, you can. In MT, for example, many "spacer"-type skills were added to what had been in CT. Did that mean CT-era PCs are suddenly ignorant? Hopefully not - a conversion may be needed, or a quick decision on "Included" skill levels, but it shouldn't be a show-stopper. That is, unless that's the point, and you have an NPC (or a new PC) standing by to fill the gap.

For e.g., Turrret Wpns-2 may allow them to pick up Spinal Mount-1 or 0, depending on what's needed (and how generous you are feeling). JoT can also help here.

For another e.g., see the Irklan article if you want Martial Arts skill, and that broken out to the Nth degree.

 

[DangerousThing]

Here's an example of a skill that I feel traveller lacks: Analyst.

I define this skill as:

1. The ability to handle multiple streams of data and draw conclusions.
2. The ability to quickly assess the value of data

There are a couple of other items, but I'm in bed and can't look them up now.

This skill was needed when one of the players wanted to play an intelligence analyst. It was defined for T5, but it would work for pretty much any version.

I defined it generally enough so it could be used for trade analysts and such.

 

[Stevie-the-Gamer]

A mix of Computer and Admin for general analysis. Add background to taste (In the Navy? You are now a Naval Intelligence Analyst)

 

[McPerth]

Damage Control: Mechanical.

IMHO it would depend on the kind of damage, but it could be solved by Mechanical (as you say), Engineering, Electronics or Gravitics

Environmental Systems: Mechanical. The control system is electronics.

Once again IMHO, I'd put it into Steward, as I see it as one of its duties to maintain the proper environment for the passagers.

And let me remember that Life Support is one of the specialties for the Engineering in MgT (against both Aramis' opinion and mine).

Here's an example of a skill that I feel traveller lacks: Analyst.

I think it was discussed in another thread, but I see analyst more as a realm of the players than the characters, alike what is said about strategy in Tactics skill (CT:bk1, page 22, under Tactics skill).

In genenral, I'd wish to remember all us that adding more skills uses to make the characters more specialized and less capable, instead of adding needed detail to the game (e.g. the specialization MgT makes on the Engineering skill makes the crews of a small ship larger to keep the same level of proficiency, as you need 4-5 engineers where you needed one if you want to have skills above 0).

 

[Icosahedron]

Meh, it's all skills bloat.

They're all covered in LBB1 by Engineer, except the martial arts, and that's covered by Brawling.

As for the weapons, I agree - Pistol, Rifle, Crew-Served, and Energy weapons as a qualifier is all you need.

 

[robject]

Here's an example of a skill that I feel traveller lacks: Analyst.

I define this skill as:

1. The ability to handle multiple streams of data and draw conclusions.
2. The ability to quickly assess the value of data

There are a couple of other items, but I'm in bed and can't look them up now.

This skill was needed when one of the players wanted to play an intelligence analyst. It was defined for T5, but it would work for pretty much any version.

I defined it generally enough so it could be used for trade analysts and such.

Sort of like the "Research" skill from MT.

Intelligence or Education. Now, if you want to apply analysis to a career, then you're pegging INT or EDU against a skill -- such as Computer (Computer Analysis... isn't this a Computer task?) or Mechanic (Mechanical Analysis... isn't this a Mechanic task?), or Trader (Trade Analysis... how is this not a Trade task using INT or EDU?).

Maybe I'm not thinking it through enough, but it seems that Analysis is useless unless applied to another skill... in which case Analysis is just another way of saying Intelligence or Education?

 

[PFVA63]

As of late I've noticed, and run into situations where a character could have skills in a particular area but cannot simply because that skill doesn't exist in Travelller (or at least some editions it doesn't). These include:

Firefighting: As in aboard ship or a building.

Damage control: Making temporary rapid repairs to a ship to keep it functioning or minimize damage. Things like sealing a leaking bulkhead or bracing a failing section of hull.

Welding: Self evident.

Plumbing: Self evident.

Enviromental controls: Repairing and maintaining life support systems.

Martial arts / boxing / other trained hand-to-hand combat: This is opposed to the Brawling skill which I see as more a OJT (so-to-speak) skill. That is, the character learned by getting into fights rather than learned by some systematic training in hand-to-hand combat.

In other areas the skills seem overly specialized, particularly weapons.

Hi,

I think that you bring up some very interesting points that may well be worth considering. Specifically, although its been awhile for me, I do seem to recall that in some version of Traveller there did in fact seem to be maybe a bit too much over specialization in way of some weapon skills (if I am remembering correctly).

On the flip side of this too it also did seem to me that some skills almost seemed to be considered a bit of a catch all skill, where for example and ENG-1 skill would seem applicable for such a wide range of tasks as fixing a faulty automatic door all the way though to operating, maintaining, and repairing a starship jump drive.

On top of all that there also seemed to be instances where there may be some overlap or at least ambiguity in the use of different skills (for instance if wither ADMIN or BROKER can be used to give advantageous roll modifiers in some instances should they also do so in other kind of similar situations, and/or could you combine the effects etc).

Because of the fear of having too many potentially overlapping different skills and/or having too many overly specific and limited ones, I had kind of begun to wonder if there might not be a better way of trying to role play this other than relying on specific individual skills.

Hopefully, not getting too far off track here, my thoughts lately have been along the lines of maybe rather than trying to determine what specific skills a character might get while being rolled up, maybe instead it might not be a bad idea to try and determine who a character is supposed to be (such as a starship officer, a farmer, or just a general citizen of a mid population world, etc) maybe adding in some factors such as if he/she has any specific hobbies, went to a college like school or did an apprenticeship etc, and then try and just categorize things by whether that character might have a better than average chance of doing something, average chance of doing it, or a below average chance, etc, based on who that character is.

For example then, if you come up with a situation where your basic mid-pop world citizen might have to try and break down a door, the PC could explain to the game master that since the character has a kind of low SOC standing and did physical exercise as a hobby his character might have some experience and breaking into stuff and/or using hi brute strength, therefor he might have a bit better than average chance of breaking the door.

Conversely a starship officer who was born on a high tech world and has spent most his life in the NAVY may not be all that skilled in trying to fish or hunt, so he may have a much lower than average chance at being successful, while the farmer (having spent alot of his life living off the land) may have a much better than average chance, etc.

Anyway, just some thoughts, and I hope I haven't gotten too far off your original post.

Regards

PF

 

[Enoki]

Enoki:
Fire Fighting: if you're fighting a fire aboard a ship, you're an idiot. You simply vacuum the compartment - people handle vacuum longer than fire does, and if you have a fire that's self oxidizing, you're not going to put it out without cooling it below ignition temp - usually not practical. The people who would have the skill would not generally be good PC choices.

Not always a possibility and not always on a ship... I attended the US Navy version of firefighting school numerous times. Just getting over the fear of a major fire takes training. It isn't always possible to vent a compartment either. What if it is in the middle of the ship and venting it means venting many others some of which have unsuited people in them?
The time to figure out how to work the fire extinguisher is not when you are standing there trying to put a fire out either....

Damage Control: Mechanical.

I think mechanical is too broad. Someone who can work on cars today isn't going to be good with steam plants, or someone good with machinery may not know anything about air conditioning.

Welding: Mechanical.

Welding is specialized. Just because you can fix a machine doesn't mean you can weld. It takes special training. Having this as a seperate skill means if your ship, as an example, has hull damage you as a mechanic may not be able to make more than a temporary fix of a hole. A player with welding skills can make a permanent repair.

Plumbing: Mechanical.

Same thing.

Environmental Systems: Mechanical. The control system is electronics.

Not necessarily. You have to handle specialized equipment and gasses and liquids in HVAC systems for example.

Even electrical and electronics are two sufficently diverse fields of work that one does not lap over into the other enough to allow for equal skill in both knowing only one of them.

Martial Arts: Brawling.

I'd count brawling as martial arts -1. A trained fighter versus one with just self-learned ability.

You're just looking for skills far more narrow than CT/MT provide for. In MGT, Firefighting is available as a specialization added by the GM - either professional or science.

I'll add the example of steward. This covers alot of ground as a skill:

Chef / cook, housekeeping, concierge, waiter/ waitress, desk clerk / hotel / resturant manager, among other skills.

 

[far-trader]

The road you seem to be going down Enoki leads to hundreds of skills meaning you better have dozens of players each willing to play multiple PCs just so everyone can always be sure that somebody in the party (applying the term very loosely) has the needed skill

"OK, there's a passage door here. Who took 'Turn Knob' as a specialization of their 'Open Door' skill?"

"Nobody? OK, somebody make that their next skill acquisition and then teach a designated second. I guess we blow it again. Front and center Demolitions!"

"...no, I don't know if it's locked. I don't care if you can pick the lock. Unless you have the 'Turn Knob' specialization you're just wasting time. Now get clear, the C4 is set."

 

[Timerover51]

As of late I've noticed, and run into situations where a character could have skills in a particular area but cannot simply because that skill doesn't exist in Travelller (or at least some editions it doesn't). These include:

Firefighting: As in aboard ship or a building.

Damage control: Making temporary rapid repairs to a ship to keep it functioning or minimize damage. Things like sealing a leaking bulkhead or bracing a failing section of hull.

Welding: Self evident.

Plumbing: Self evident.

Enviromental controls: Repairing and maintaining life support systems.

Martial arts / boxing / other trained hand-to-hand combat: This is opposed to the Brawling skill which I see as more a OJT (so-to-speak) skill. That is, the character learned by getting into fights rather than learned by some systematic training in hand-to-hand combat.

In other areas the skills seem overly specialized, particularly weapons.

I assume that you have never been in either the US Navy, US Coast Guard, or Merchant Marine service. For the Coast Guard and Navy, firefighting and damage control are part of your basic training, with regular refresher courses. The same thing with damage control. For both services, damage control parties are designated, and trained in using damage control materials. One or more of the ship officers will be designated Damage Control Officer, and has attended a Damage Control course, along with taking refresher courses. For US Merchant Marine licenses, you have to have firefighting and damage control training. You also are going to have some form of fire suppression equipment in every compartment, or at the very least, smoke detectors.

Welding and plumbing come under the duties for your ship's Engineer staff. Anyone with at least a Mechanic 1 level of skill, or an Engineering 2 level should be able to handle anything short of a major shipyard job, and if the parts are available, they might be able to handle that. Environmental Engineering would be included in that. Typically, a ship is going to have the full detailed drawing for every system on board, plus full electrical and plumbing schematics.

For Martial Arts, I would figure that a Brawling skill level of 2 or higher should handle that easily.

After having my head nearly blown off by a ROTC cadet while going through summer training at Fort Riley with the .45 automatic, and then having to do familiarization training for a bunch of quartermaster enlisted, including a few women, on the M-60 machine gun, I have no problem whatsoever with specialized weapons skills.

 

[aramis]

Enoki, unlike a naval vessel, you'll be able to void any compartment pretty quickly. Much more quickly than on a wet-navy ship, because you can just shut the bafles to the others, and open the discharge vent to vacuum. And, suited or not, vacuum is more survivable than major fire.

There are several easy ways to put out fires in space.
The easiest is just to remove all the air.

Another way is to kill the gravity and maneuver drives, and seal the room and compartment. See, in 0-G, matches smother themselves unless placed in a flow of air. Candles, too.

If you have a self-oxidizing compound burning, well, (1) you've got to cool it and (2) you've got to prevent it from damaging everything nearby... and the irony is that your best tool is flooding with cryogenics... which Traveller ships have in plenty. Sacrifice the people there, flood the compartment with L-Hyd to drop the reaction below combustion temp. You can use partial vacuum to cool even further by venting.

Remember the fire triangle, Enoki.... Fuel, Oxidizer, and heat. Remove any one of those, no fire.

 

[Icosahedron]

flood the compartment with L-Hyd to drop the reaction below combustion temp. You can use partial vacuum to cool even further by venting.

Remember the fire triangle, Enoki.... Fuel, Oxidizer, and heat. Remove any one of those, no fire.

Er, enough L-Hyd may remove the heat (eventually) but in the meantime, aren't you just adding fuel?

While the L-Hyd is being pumped in, and is rapidly evaporating to a partial pressure, wouldn't it actually feed the flames? Admittedly, once you have evcuated the compartment, the fire will be limited by the amount of oxidiser, but if it hasn't yet reached that limit, throwing fuel at it might not be the best idea.

I'm sure there would be other cryo-gases aboard.

 

[aramis]

Er, enough L-Hyd may remove the heat (eventually) but in the meantime, aren't you just adding fuel?

While the L-Hyd is being pumped in, and is rapidly evaporating to a partial pressure, wouldn't it actually feed the flames? Admittedly, once you have evcuated the compartment, the fire will be limited by the amount of oxidiser, but if it hasn't yet reached that limit, throwing fuel at it might not be the best idea.

I'm sure there would be other cryo-gases aboard.

Not in sufficient quantities.

Remember - outside of a narrow range of mixtures, Hydrogen isn't explosive. And, given the self-oxidizing fire, the minor flash of a few pounds of O2 with a few Oz of LHyd is a minor blip, especially since one can set it up to flash fill, and can vent the local O2 before that flash fill, so there's no Oxygen (other than in the self-oxidizing combustion material) for it to react with.

Also remember: the two most common self-oxidizing fuels are gunpowder and solid rocket propellant - a fire in a cargo of munitions is the kind of thing you're dealing with. Flash-freezing it with LHyd isn't increasing the risk nearly as much as letting it spread, and anyone near it is a write-off in either case.

Oh, just for reference, the whole point of using water to fight fires is to remove heat... but it also expands considerably in vaporization... 28:1 IIRC... which means using water to fight a fire aboard a spacecraft means venting it anyway... or suffering a pressure spike which can drive smoke and steam places you don't want them going.

 

[PFVA63]

Hi

On the topic of firefighting, I guess fighting a fire in space is one thing, but fighting a fire on a crashed/grounded ship that may be venting liquid hydrogen (into its gaseous form), and which may also have several systems down due to short circuits etc, and which may even have "dust" from its cargo of grain or coal, or "vapours" leaking from its cargo of hydrocarbons, caustics or other potential stuff, may be a much different thing all together.

On the topic of skill in general, maybe it might just be an issue of some skills being too all encompassing while others are too specific.

Along these lines maybe you could treat skills like ENG as giving a character the ability to do the general stuff you might expect of an engineer at full skill strength, but that for doing some more specialized things (like welding, firefighting, building earthen dams or levees, or building defensive fortifications) at maybe either ENG minus X or even ENG/Y to relfect that some of these abilities might be things that a person may learn (to some level) after being an engineer for awhile (as they branch out further in their field) but that a 1st year (or relatively young) engineer may not have as much experience in (though there abilities here may still be greater than a totally untrained person).

This does kind of bring up the question though of just what ENG means which may be dependent on how you got it and/or the version of Traveller that you are playing (as some versions may have additional skills separately defined that may otherwise be lumped into ENG in other versions). For someone in the Navy or a Merchant carreer I'd suspect there might be more a focus on shipboard power and propulsion (at least initially). For someone in the Army or Marines or some other career though I wonder if ENG might not be more focused on vehicle level stuff or maybe even Combat Engineering or CORP of Engineering like work. As such, it kind of makes you wonder if maybe ENG might not better be served as a cascade type skill to better differentiate what is meant for a given character.

A final thing that a discussion like this brings to mind is Tech Level issues. Specifically, should a character from a TL 10 world (or who has served in a primarily TL10 level military) have the same abilities at completing a task as a charcter from a TL14 level world (or who has served in a TL14 level military)? I suppose this could go both ways as well. Specifically, would a character from a lower TL be able to do the same task as a character from a higher TL if they were working on a TL14 drive, as well as whether a TL15 character would be all that well suited to changing out something called a "Carbo - rator" on a ground vehicle the locals call a "real cream puff" with a "baby" purring under its hood, which uses a tank full of "burning fossils" as fuel, as would a TL7 character.*

Just some thoughts.

PF

* my apologies for kind of ripping off "Futurama" here, but I think they did do a fairly good job of making a joke about how little we sometimes know about the life and times of people in our past.

 

[CosmicGamer]

FIREFIGHTING
The fact that there is discussion regarding firefighting techniques is proof enough that not everyone knows everything about fire fighting. This brings us to the original post. Should firefighting be a skill? Should fire fighting be considered part of an existing skill like science? Should we consider that certain background careers and skills would include some firefighting skill?

MECHANICAL SKILL

I think mechanical is too broad. Someone who can work on cars today isn't going to be good with steam plants, or someone good with machinery may not know anything about air conditioning.

Someone that works on cars is a car mechanic and got training not in general mechanics but just cars and probably only certain makes and possibly only certain systems. Someone that works on air conditioning may have no general mechanics training and perhaps has just a knowledge of air conditioning and maybe heating systems too.

Perhaps think of the Traveller mechanic as kind of a JoT mechanic who isn't specialized in one thing?

Without giving a long biography that would bore you, I am a pretty good handyman so I personally have no problem accepting that an unspecialized mechanic can work on a variety of things.

ADDING MORE SKILLS
far-trader and others have indicated that more skill specialization is probably a bad direction to go. If the variety and quantity of skills is increase without any comparable change to the number of skills gained during chargen the overall character is weekend in capability.

And where does it end?

In real life, when does a medical professional practice every type of medicine? A medic could be a surgeon or one of many specialties. Cardiology, Dentistry, Imunology, Gastroenterology, Neurology...

example of steward. This covers alot of ground as a skill:Chef / cook, housekeeping, concierge, waiter/ waitress, desk clerk / hotel / resturant manager, among other skills.

How about a chef/cook that specializes in deserts. Further specialization of a desert chef that only makes elaborately decorated cakes.

 

[Bob Weaver]

A mix of Computer and Admin for general analysis. Add background to taste (In the Navy? You are now a Naval Intelligence Analyst)

The job of an intelligence analyst is not too different from that of a librarian (my profession); in short, to sift through the available raw data and recognize & extract the useful information. That is dependent upon the analyst having good enough knowledge of the subject matter in question. So I see that activity as being a function of the EDU stat, with, as Mr. Bankhead so nicely phrased it, background to taste. If the player can spin a good story based on chargen or previous adventures as to why they know about this particular field, give 'em a +DM and let them try. The Referee should set the target number in secret, so that the players won't know if they've correctly analyzed the data or not.

 

[PFVA63]

Hi

...If the player can spin a good story based on chargen or previous adventures as to why they know about this particular field, give 'em a +DM and let them try. The Referee should set the target number in secret, so that the players won't know if they've correctly analyzed the data or not.

I think that's probably a pretty good idea. To me it kind of gets the player more into role playing the character.

Other thoughts along similar lines might be if a character can point to his low SOC and upbringing on a mid-pop world maybe he could kind of argue in a DM for "hot-wiring" a ground vehicle or breaking into someplace, by noting that has character did a little "joy riding" or minor breaking and entering and maybe some other "petty" crimes as a kid, whether or not he has an actual "THEFT" type skill.

To me then, getting back to the OP's comments on firefighting, welding and plumbing etc, maybe if the character could show that some of his skill in ENG came from his time on a mid-tech tramp freighter then as a GM maybe I might consider that his ENG skill level might include a base level in alot of these sub-ENG type tasks. However, if his background is different than that, I might consider modifying any DM he might get for "firefighting" or "welding" etc differently (especially if he comes from a relatively high TL level background where the ships and such may more likely have been made of higher TL level materials than steel or aluminum, etc).

I guess then in the end, maybe the best thing might be to use what skills are avialable, combine them with whatever background the player has developed for the character (including STATs and/or events from previous gaming sessions, etc), and feel free to adjust any DMs etc as the GM feels fit to do, accordingly.

PF