Age of Traveller Characters

[SpaceBadger]

[Copied and started in new thread so as not to mess up Dragon's Bane OOC thread]

Man, I'd forgotten how hard it is to push a Traveller character through chargen to get the skills you want without dying! (I'm more used to point-buy systems like GURPS or FUDGE.)

I finally got a guy w pretty much the skills I want, but w one problem - he isn't old enough! I picture this character as kinda grizzled, been-there-done-that - but at this point he is only 36 years old! (4.5 terms - got discharged from the Navy mid-term - it's a Vargr thing.)

Being Vargr, he could enlist in another service after quitting or being discharged from current service, but I don't really want to do that and risk having him fail survival. Do I need to enlist him in another service and push him through more terms to get him as old as I want, or can I just say he is older, without taking the advantages and disadvantages of actually serving more terms?

I've a friend, a year younger than I, who looks QUITE grizzled... looks 50ish. He's 42, and a LTC. Me, I often get accused of being in the low 30's... and am 43. Another friend, couple months older than me, still gets asked for his ID at the NCO club, even when in uniform... he's on his way to warrant course, with 15 in. Another friend, when he forgets to shave, gets accused of being 60+; when shaven (pate and chin), gets accused of being 30ish.

Heh. I remember when I first got Traveller at age 17, thinking it would be weird to play such OLD characters - why, if you put a character through even four terms in a service, he would be 34 years old! Ancient!

Now I am making new characters w Traveller chargen for the first time in years, and I discover that I can't even make one as old as I am (50) unless he rolls a 12 on re-enlistment after his 7th term! (And - wow - those ageing rolls sure are rough! It's a wonder us middle-aged folks can even tie our own shoes - what would it be like to have a Traveller character aged 70 or 80?)

Thought: How old was Marc Miller when he first wrote this game?

 

[sabredog]

what would it be like to have a Traveller character aged 70 or 80?)

This brings up and interesting question. If your character is living in a society where anagathics are available, would you be able to use them to stave off the more debilitating age rolls during chargen?

 

[Shonner]

what would it be like to have a Traveller character aged 70 or 80?

Mongoose won't generate a character that old with attribute values you'll like, unless you are all drugged up to feel younger. And you'll always be on drugs though. But the beauty is... you have all those skills you normally wouldn't have if you were only 34 or 38.

 

[mike wightman]

You can add another term by saying the character has taken a sabbatical an gone to college prior to the game starting as detailed in the experience section of LBB2.

Your character is now 4 years older an has another skill at 2.

 

[Sifu Blackirish]

Sifu Blackirish walks in...

You folks are getting hung up on something that is, IMHO, trivial.

If you are the referee, and your scenario requires a character to be a certain age, don't kill him off if the dice roll badly. One character I made up was a Scout who died five times in seven terms! If I had just given up on him after the first failure, i would have never developed a great character!

Details are here...

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=15434&highlight=Erasmus+Johnson

If your vision requires a character to be so old, let him be so. I keep track of survival rolls for near misses and wounds, so I can flesh out the backstory. Remember that you do not need to be a slave to the dice!

Here's the term by term breakdown of what happened to Erasmus...

PE -- PILOT
T1 = +1 EDUC .JACK O T
99 *INITIATION CRUISE
T2 W ..JACK O T ...JACK O T
03 *SURVIVED PIRATE ATTACK
T3 W .NAVIGATION ....JACK O T
07 SURVIVED ASTEROID COLLISION
T4 W _JACK O T +1 INTEL
11 SURVIVED MAGNETIC STORM
T5 W +1 EDUC .GUN CBT
15 SURVIVED HOSTILE ALIENS
T6 W ..NAVIGATION _.JACK O T
19 SURVIVED NEBULA FLARE
T7 W ...NAVIGATION _..JACK O T
23 SURVIVED MISJUMP
T8 N ..GUN CBT +1 EDUC
24~ SURVIVED ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT

 

[Shonner]

Heh. I remember when I first got Traveller at age 17, thinking it would be weird to play such OLD characters - why, if you put a character through even four terms in a service, he would be 34 years old! Ancient!

In SPI's Universe, aging rolls begin at 28 instead of 34.

Today I changed my CharGen code so that debt can be acquired in order to fix health problems and end up with an awesome "old" dude with more backstory and skills to brag about. No more character death though during CharGen.

 

[rancke]

This brings up and interesting question. If your character is living in a society where anagathics are available, would you be able to use them to stave off the more debilitating age rolls during chargen?

Or if your character lives in a society with medical technology more advanced than that of the Earth of the 1970s so that your life expectancy is a good deal longer than the three score and ten that Traveller character generation seems to assume, even without anagathics? Or if you're of Vilani descent and has the Vilani longevity genes in part or in full?

In terms of game mechanics it should be easy to do: just change the aging thresholds and/or the aging throws appropriately. But what would such a society be like when people have time to learn a profession really well and then have time to practice it for decades before his attributes begin to decline?


Hans

 

[FreeTrav]

Forget anagathics... what's the correct age to begin character aging at? In a universe where mixed-blood Vilani can routinely live well past 100, and purebloods can make it to the beginning of their third century, maybe "middle age" isn't considered to have rolled around until 60 or 70, and maybe aging shouldn't start until a character is in his/her 50s.

 

[rancke]

Forget anagathics... what's the correct age to begin character aging at? In a universe where mixed-blood Vilani can routinely live well past 100, and purebloods can make it to the beginning of their third century, maybe "middle age" isn't considered to have rolled around until 60 or 70, and maybe aging shouldn't start until a character is in his/her 50s.

For a purebred Vilani I'd suggest simply doubling all figures. Start aging at 68 and at every 8 years thereafter.

I'd also suggest reducing all mixed-blood Vilani to three "strengths": 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4. All figures are multiplied by 1.25, 1.5, and 1.75.

Bonusses to saving throws would depend on medical stage, i.e. a Vilani living at TL 6 would start aging as indicated above but with no bonusses to the throws.


Hans

 

[BlackBat242]

So which version of the game decided to have Vilani have such different aging rules?

Because CT made no differentiation whatsoever between Solomani & Vilani in that respect.

 

[aramis]

So which version of the game decided to have Vilani have such different aging rules?

Because CT made no differentiation whatsoever between Solomani & Vilani in that respect.

CT had no Vilani coverage at all mechanically.

Standard CT/MT saves are
4-7: 8+ 7+ 8+ 8+
8-11: 9+ 8+ 9+ 9+
12+: 9+ 9+ 9+ 9+

CT Solomani use standard aging saves.
MegaTraveller adjusted Solomani aging saves IIRC by 1 point each for the first 8 terms. (Vargr from V&V use this rate, too. That one I looked up.)
Here's the Vargr table from MT.
4-7: 7+ 6+ 7+ —
8-11: 8+ 7+ 8+ 8+
12+: 9+ 8+ 9+ 9+

Which works out to about 70 expected age of death.

Which only ups the average man's age of death from age by about 6 years.

Vilani aging saves receive between a +1 and +5, for most pure vilani, only +4.

A +5 (pure line noted for longevity), the expected age is 210...
A +4 is about 130.
A +3 is about 98
A +2 is about 82
A +1 is about 72.†

This DOES match the CT fluff.

Methodology: highest lost rate attribute; each term loss is treated as a fractional loss and cumulated term to term; att is assumed to be 7, so any att loss total of 6.5 to 7.499 is presumed to be "dead of aging".

TNE's system is, for me, FAR more realistic, but it's also a good bit more of a pain. 1d15‡; roll over current to save vs loss. Applying the aging save modifiers gets interesting; I modified the methodology, and since Agl starts dropping first... Methodology follows, but note Average attribute is 6 in TNE.

Unmodified: 169

Note that modified versions apply the same basic modifiers, but keep a natural 1 as a fail.
Solomani "+1 for terms 4-11" 173
Vilani +1: 221
Vilani +2: 269
Vilani +3: 313
Vilani +4: 349
Vilani +5: 365

Methodology:

for each roll, as before, expected loss for term cumulates; odds figured by attribute 6- (rounded cumulative loss). While this isn't exactly correct, it's a useful shorthand calculation method that is good enough.

For adjusted, I subtracted the + from the attribute, to a minimum of 1.

note that I am shocked at how high the expected age of death is. Note also that dex 10 is quite a lot worse...

+0 201
Sol 205
+1 257
+2 309
+3 361
+4 413
+5 461
​

TNE aging saves are WAY too high. a potential fix: change the die type for aging saves:

Adjusting TNE's die roll for aging save to 1d12 takes the numbers to the following:
+0 140
Sol 157
+1 185
+2 221
+3 261
+4 289
+5 301

This is still too high.

1d10...
+0 129
Sol 137
+1 161
+2 193
+3 221
+4 245
+5 257
​

† 70, a term break, is below 6.5, but 74 is above 7.5
‡ 1d20, but rerolling 16-20.

 

[McPerth]

So which version of the game decided to have Vilani have such different aging rules?

Because CT made no differentiation whatsoever between Solomani & Vilani in that respect.

Not sure about being another place where rules are given, but in MT:V&V there are those rules, giving the Vilani modifiers to aging rolls (higher modifiers as more pureblood a caracter is).

 

[rancke]

CT had no Vilani coverage at all mechanically.

But Vilani longevity is mentioned somewhere. I think. Could be I'm mixing it up with the long life of certain Imperial families.


Note that as I indicated in a previous post there are two completely different issues involved. One is longevity genes. The other is the question, ignored by any Traveller rules and setting writeups, of whether or not ultra-tech[*] medicine would keep people alive and hale for longer than 20th Century medicine keeps us?

[*] As I use the terms: High-tech = What we have on Earth today; ultra-tech = What the Imperium has that we don't; hyper-tech = better than what the Imperium has.​

I suggest splitting the two issues into two different game mechanics. I've already made my suggestion about longevity genes. For medical advantages, I suggest a bonus to the saving throws based on the medical support the character has had access to during the period since the last set of saving throws. Use an average if he has changed milieu partway through.

Perhaps something like this:

TL Bonus
0-2: -2
3-5: -1
6-8: 0
9-11: +1
12-14: +2
15-17: +3

Note that these numbers are pulled out of thin air for no other reason than they sound reasonable to me. I have not done any analysis of the life lengths they would result in, nor checked what specific medical technologies become available at what tech levels.


Hans

 

[aramis]

But Vilani longevity is mentioned somewhere. I think. Could be I'm mixing it up with the long life of certain Imperial families.

Indeed it is. I don't recall exactly where.

TL Bonus
0-2: -2
3-5: -1
6-8: 0
9-11: +1
12-14: +2
15-17: +3

Note that these numbers are pulled out of thin air for no other reason than they sound reasonable to me. I have not done any analysis of the life lengths they would result in, nor checked what specific medical technologies become available at what tech levels.


Hans

-1 on CT standard is about 64† as well.
-2 is right about 62.

Same method as before for CT.

for TNE:

Die:	d15	d12	d10
+5	365	301	257
+4	349	289	245
+3	313	261	221
+2	269	221	193
+1	221	185	161
+0	153	149	129
-1	125	105	93
-2	101	89	81
-3	89	81	69
-4	81	73	65
-5	77	69	61

 

[Fritz_Brown]

The really weird part is that the aging rolls begin while you're in a career - usually a career that involves a minimum level of physical fitness, and even rewards it! Yes, you can hit one of the attribute improvement rolls in your career, but it's still sort of odd that the fittest folks get hit with aging. (IMO, a Bureaucrat should get negatives to their aging rolls.......)

 

[Nathan Brazil]

So which version of the game decided to have Vilani have such different aging rules?

Because CT made no differentiation whatsoever between Solomani & Vilani in that respect.

CT "implied" that Vilani were long lived in part due to the Emperor's List, with the bloodlines of some Emperors. But CT as others noted had not actual rules for Vilani aging differences. Tinkering with aging came with the CT Alien Modules. When DGP did their Alien Modules for MT, there came the aging rules for Vilani.
GURPS Interstellar Wars continued that idea with Vilani character packages having the Extended Lifespan advantage.

Part of the rationale, I thing, for later games giving Vilani longer lifespans is in part to provide a rationale for the conservative, almost hidebound, nature of Vilani culture. Conservatism is integral part of Vilani in IW history. One factor to support that from our real world experience is that aged societies generally are more conservative. If we are that way with some societies having average age 10 years older than others, what must it be like for the Vilani who are still "human" with doubled lifespans?

 

[Frankymole]

The Vilani chargen rules in DGP's "Vilani and Vargr" include different ageing effects depending on how mixed blood or "pure" Vilani the character is genetically. IIRC there's a little table to dice against to find this out.