That sounds exactly like what the OP was asking for, and kind of what I was thinking.
CT Only: Character Advancement and goals
- Thread starter jaz0nj4ckal
- Start date
Traveller does have a workable character advancement.
The experience rules cover gaining better skills or increasing your abilities, however, this is expressed in years of training, which initially puts players off.
But if you are running continuous adventures with the same character, then space travel becomes a vital component, it always takes at least a week to go anywhere, and you'll always have about a week in a star system, over the course of the campaign these weeks add up to months and then years, so if you assume your character spends most of their time shipboard doing training, that is where the advancement comes from.
As the characters move from adventure to adventure they will travel, moving from one end of a sector to another could easily take a few months, and even some adventures cover months of space travel, it all starts to add up.
A financial limit could be placed on this as well, character would have to continuously make money to pay for it all, just travelling wont be enough, they'll have to earn a living, normally by crewing or by trading.
The blocker on all this is age, but that's the decision you make on character creation, having an older character with more skills is going to cause problems later, something you need to think about if the character is intended to be played again.
If you are running one-shot adventures then this doesn't really apply, but it wont apply in D&D either.
The experience rules cover gaining better skills or increasing your abilities, however, this is expressed in years of training, which initially puts players off.
But if you are running continuous adventures with the same character, then space travel becomes a vital component, it always takes at least a week to go anywhere, and you'll always have about a week in a star system, over the course of the campaign these weeks add up to months and then years, so if you assume your character spends most of their time shipboard doing training, that is where the advancement comes from.
As the characters move from adventure to adventure they will travel, moving from one end of a sector to another could easily take a few months, and even some adventures cover months of space travel, it all starts to add up.
A financial limit could be placed on this as well, character would have to continuously make money to pay for it all, just travelling wont be enough, they'll have to earn a living, normally by crewing or by trading.
The blocker on all this is age, but that's the decision you make on character creation, having an older character with more skills is going to cause problems later, something you need to think about if the character is intended to be played again.
If you are running one-shot adventures then this doesn't really apply, but it wont apply in D&D either.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Or put another way.
A referee can reward characters with skill or attribute increase provided the players have earned it for their characters in some way.
I don't have anything to add, but I'm posting here just to make sure I can find the thread quickly. The first answers gave me some ideas even on a cursory reading and I want to re-read them when I've got more time
.
If I follow the ideas I get from this forum, I'm going to end up with a game of fantasy Traveller with martial artist PCs which are travelling around to search for anagathics, as a major goal
!
.If I follow the ideas I get from this forum, I'm going to end up with a game of fantasy Traveller with martial artist PCs which are travelling around to search for anagathics, as a major goal
!
Characters have their development needs well met in Traveller for the elements that meet the obvious requirements of adventuring - skills, equipment, cash, a background history that involves them not having died in character generation...
The big questions about WHY they Travel, however, don't get answered in character generation. One option is to use a lifepath process to generate more information about the characters. That could be used to come up with a reason why they Travel.
One thing I've done in a number of games is generate the characters in a symbiotic manner after discussing how we're going to run the campaign. My last T5 game involved discussing options for a ship-based, passenger-based, and simple world-based game. When they agreed on the ship-based game we worked out who wanted to play some of the main roles such as pilot, astrogator/comms-o, engineer, gunner, etc, and developed the characters individually but complementarily from there.
We also used other systems to generate some character advantages and flaws, and list some personal goals and inner-demons. All of that leads to an option to develop an interlocking series of character arcs for each player and the group as a whole. That's one way of pulling it all together, if you've got the inclination...
The big questions about WHY they Travel, however, don't get answered in character generation. One option is to use a lifepath process to generate more information about the characters. That could be used to come up with a reason why they Travel.
One thing I've done in a number of games is generate the characters in a symbiotic manner after discussing how we're going to run the campaign. My last T5 game involved discussing options for a ship-based, passenger-based, and simple world-based game. When they agreed on the ship-based game we worked out who wanted to play some of the main roles such as pilot, astrogator/comms-o, engineer, gunner, etc, and developed the characters individually but complementarily from there.
We also used other systems to generate some character advantages and flaws, and list some personal goals and inner-demons. All of that leads to an option to develop an interlocking series of character arcs for each player and the group as a whole. That's one way of pulling it all together, if you've got the inclination...
Thank you, but I know that. I just find it hard to access when on my phone.
Not to be contrarian, but I do find traits useful as both player and Referee.
I find them useful but annoying.
ShawnDriscoll
SOC-14 1K
The Traveller version I use has something similar to character advantages and flaws and personal goals and inner-demons that I like much better and make use of during game sessions/role-play.
Similar threads
