Death during Character Generation

[Maladominus]

See, that "Role-play" of character generation is the big difference. My players don't roleplay through it, but board-game through it. They don't try to connect to characters until after the character is done.

My experience is the same. Most of my Players have always felt that "The Real Game of Traveller" begins as soon as Mustering Out is done.

In fact, as I've been playing with my current Playergroup for 2.5+ years now, I can honestly say that I know what parts of Traveller excite them, and what parts bore the living crapperola out of them. Let's see..... the part of CharGen that excites them the most? The part of CharGen that gets them excited and giddy is the end.... Mustering Out.

 

[deniable]

My players are pretty much the same. We don't spend gaming time on character building. They show up with an already built character. [1] We discuss roles while deciding what we're playing next and they build the characters in down time. We're mostly running TNE so they can actually build a character to fit. It works for our play style.

[1] I do insist on watching the initiative roll. Another 7, it's a miracle. (Not as bad as Twilight 2.0, but it's still the stat of choice for combat monsters.)

 

[deniable]

You've got a CT character generator that uses the official rules? If so, it's the only one of its kind (no other character generator I've found on the net uses the official rules as listed in the LBBs).

If that's the case, I want a copy!

It's mostly done. I'm still finishing mustering out benefits and have yet to do aging, but once it's cleaned up, I'll throw it out there and see what people think. (And figure out which licensing gods I have to appease.)

 

[Supplement Four]

It's mostly done. I'm still finishing mustering out benefits and have yet to do aging, but once it's cleaned up, I'll throw it out there and see what people think. (And figure out which licensing gods I have to appease.)

If you're sure it's an honest-to-goodness real by-the-book character generator (using the hard Survival Rule), then I definitely want it.

Please alert me when its finished.

 

[casquilho]

If you're sure it's an honest-to-goodness real by-the-book character generator (using the hard Survival Rule), then I definitely want it.

Please alert me when its finished.

I have to second this. I would love to have a copy once it is done.

I am looking forward to your work.

Daniel

 

[Merxiless]

I like the death in character generation rules.

As someone else said a while back, have the stats before you risk Scouts or Marines.

If you want to play it safe, low risk, do the easy services. You want high risk, high reward go for the tougher Services.

In my game, Scouts and the Services are greatly respected, because they have such a high rate of casualties.

 

[Supplement Four]

I like the death in character generation rules.

As someone else said a while back, have the stats before you risk Scouts or Marines.

If you want to play it safe, low risk, do the easy services. You want high risk, high reward go for the tougher Services.

In my game, Scouts and the Services are greatly respected, because they have such a high rate of casualties.

Plus, the hard Survival rule (not the soft one, where failing doesn't mean death but instant muster out with injury instead) allows players to dump characters that they don't like. It puts an element of player control on chargen. The system isn't totally random since a player, who doesn't like his character, can just keep rolling until the dude is dead (small chance of ending up with a very old dude). Then, the player can attempt a new set of stat rolls and boogey-woogey.

 

[rancke]

Plus, the hard Survival rule (not the soft one, where failing doesn't mean death but instant muster out with injury instead) allows players to dump characters that they don't like. It puts an element of player control on chargen. The system isn't totally random since a player, who doesn't like his character, can just keep rolling until the dude is dead (small chance of ending up with a very old dude). Then, the player can attempt a new set of stat rolls and boogey-woogey.

Players can dump characters that they don't like anyway. They just tell the referee that they don't feel happy about playing them.


Hans

 

[aramis]

Players can dump characters that they don't like anyway. They just tell the referee that they don't feel happy about playing them.


Hans

Many GM's don't accept that, Hans. A few will show you to the door rather than let you dump a character.

 

[rancke]

Many GM's don't accept that, Hans. A few will show you to the door rather than let you dump a character.

I know that. 35 years ago I would have accepted it. Nowadays I'd be out that door in a heartbeat¹. Over the years I've grown unwilling to put up with the sort of GMs who feel that they're entitled to force their players to play characters they don't want to play. I've come to see roleplaying as a cooperative venture. Referees are no more entitled to force players to play characters they don't like than players are entitled to force referee's to referee characters they don't like.

¹ Well, I might, if I was feeling mischievious, start playing and have my character commit suicide first thing. But I expect the end result would be the same. ​

Hans

 

[aramis]

I know that. 35 years ago I would have accepted it. Nowadays I'd be out that door in a heartbeat¹. Over the years I've grown unwilling to put up with the sort of GMs who feel that they're entitled to force their players to play characters they don't want to play. I've come to see roleplaying as a cooperative venture. Referees are no more entitled to force players to play characters they don't like than players are entitled to force referee's to referee characters they don't like.

¹ Well, I might, if I was feeling mischievious, start playing and have my character commit suicide first thing. But I expect the end result would be the same. ​

Hans

I see rules as a social contract - if the rules specify random rolls, and you agree to play that ruleset, you're also agreeing to play whatever you roll up, no matter how spiff or sucky or "not what I wanted"... and suiciding the character outside of CGen isn't living up to the social contract of a CT or MT ruleset game.

I do use the MT-standard survival rule (In fact, the "Alternate" is death in all but CT; only in CT is the alternate short term and out), but allow players to opt for death instead if time is not of the essence.

 

[Murphy]

I turned chargen into a minigame where you can make life choices every term, which lead to different skills or benefits. It's possible to die, but chances for that aren't high, and aging is balanced so characters don't grow in overall power over many terms, rather the nature and focus of their abilities changes.

We tend to end up with many 40-50 year old characters just because chargen is too fun to stop, and all failed rolls yield special disadvantages instead of a simple attribute penalty.

We once had a 98-year old scout grandma who had a distinguished history, but suffered from absent-mindedness, had bad manners and refused to admit her age affecting her skills. She did in fact have some high skills but not in typical scout fields -- her best expertise was with explosives.

 

[MikeinBallard]

I like the idea of not wasting time. The alternate rule I came up with is simply:

Survival roll fails:

• Character is assigned to not quite a hell world
• Earns Animal Handling/Guardbeast-1
• Earns Steward-1

The player trained his Scout supervisor replacement, although he was not aware that is who he was training at the time, and he was forced out by said replacement's paranoid imaginings. The player was assigned to an unpleasant world and assigned guard dog and KP duty. i.e. Sometimes it's not an exciting death, but an unexplained, boring job/career termination.

 

[rancke]

I see rules as a social contract -

Whereas I see gaming itself as a social contract, if you want to be that formal. An agreement not to spoil each others fun is a big part of that contract.

...if the rules specify random rolls, and you agree to play that ruleset, you're also agreeing to play whatever you roll up, no matter how spiff or sucky or "not what I wanted"... and suiciding the character outside of CGen isn't living up to the social contract of a CT or MT ruleset game.

Ah, but I don't agree to play rigidly by any ruleset that doesn't allow me to have fun. I think of rules as a means to and end, not an end itself. If sticking to a rule makes you happy, then by all means stick to it. But I don't see that agreeing to play a game obliges you to sit and not have fun.


Hans

 

[Jame]

What I was going for, though, is a dis-incentive to scratch a poor character. Let's say a player rolls extremly bad for stats--not a stat over 5. Well, chances are that player is going to try to get that character killed so that he can re-roll his stats.

I want a disincentive for him not to do that--instead to spend the character's career improving his stats on the tables.

I want the incentive to be that the player will keep the first character he rolls up, no matter what the stats are.

I would either let the player re-roll at least two of the stats or see if he can roll a difficulty each term to increase one of his characteristics in addition to rolling for skills.

This is, however, me coming from a group which generally plays d20/Pathfinder. More heroic characters are the norm, and while I want to have characters which aren't heroic, I'm not going to force them to play a "weak" character - I'm more interested in getting them to play and show them the Traveller game as a whole.

 

[Chuck Anumia]

I Agree

I like the death in character generation rules.

As someone else said a while back, have the stats before you risk Scouts or Marines.

If you want to play it safe, low risk, do the easy services. You want high risk, high reward go for the tougher Services.

In my game, Scouts and the Services are greatly respected, because they have such a high rate of casualties.

I will allow 1 (One) survival roll during chargen.
The second time the character gets a dead result it is time to roll up an new character.

I don't want players feeling forced to play a character they don't want and neither do I want them to think they are "Superman" or "Thor" and cannot die.

 

[McPerth]

While I've always used the failed too means death, having mostly refereed MT, the brownie points could be used to avoid such a death.

As I considered them too powerful (and they allowed some "cheats", as using one BP to achieve or raise a decoration when you missed the roll by one, and recovering it with the decoration), I used them on a different way: they allowed you to reroll any roll at the cost of 1 BP for the first reroll, 2 for the second one (in the same roll), etc...

This used to avoid untimely death when you character became interesting, as it used to be after (at least) the first term, so you used to have (again at least) one BP.

For basic Chargen, I allowed for 1 BP per term, comission, promotion or special duty.

 

[Supplement Four]

I see rules as a social contract - if the rules specify random rolls, and you agree to play that ruleset, you're also agreeing to play whatever you roll up, no matter how spiff or sucky or "not what I wanted"... and suiciding the character outside of CGen isn't living up to the social contract of a CT or MT ruleset game.

I disagree.

Suiciding out is one of the ways a player has influence on his character in an otherwise random generation system. I see it as on of the player's controls.

The player rolls stats randomly. He cannot arrange scores to taste. And, he may not even get into the type of career he'd like to have for his character if he doesn't make the enlistment throw. Remember, in CT, a player gets one attempt at a career of his choice, and if he fails that, he must submit to the draft.

So, the player has one option with a character that he doesn't really want to play. He can try to go as many terms as possible and hope that he fails a Survival throw so that he can start over with a new character.

Suiciding out is not always possible. I've seen players have their characters fail enlistment into their career of choice, submit to the draft, then end up in the career with the easiest Survival Throws and end up making them until he rolls for the maximum of 7 terms, then end up with an old man to play.

I've also seen players attempting the suicide option, then get hot on the dice, and end up with a character that they never expected to play--a character that they grow to really like through the character generation process. When this happens, it is usually quite fun!

In my games, I certainly "allow" the suicide option, but I also enforce it if the option doesn't work.

Most of the time, if a player suicides once or twice, he finds something he likes about a character and sticks with him. And then, the game begins.

I've also seen it where a player rolls a dream character only to lose him with a bricked Survival check. Players who like their characters are cautioned not to get too greedy in their thirst for skill points. That next term can kill a character that you really like.

I LOVE the decision process that a player has to make during CT chargen. I find that it goes a long way to bonding player and character. Because the player has risked something he likes with the dice, it creates a bond between himself and the character. Usually, players come out of CT character generation with an excellent understanding of their characters, and the players are usually quite into the characters that they are playing.

And, suicided characters don't always go to waist. I'll keep them as NPCs for future use. I've also, in the past, worked that dead character into the background of a surviving character. The suicided character becomes a relative or a friend of the player's PC.

 

[Timerover51]

I figure that the player is generating a character to PLAY, not determining whether or not the character survives. No survival roll is taken or required.

 

[aramis]

I disagree.

Suiciding out is one of the ways a player has influence on his character in an otherwise random generation system. I see it as on of the player's controls.

I see suiciding in CGen as different from suiciding in play. It was the latter I object to, not so much the former. (Tho', sometimes, the dice conspired to leave me with a character that was anything but what I wanted to play. Still, I played them, and had fun.)

If I'm running CT (without the short term option on), or MT/MGT with the death option turned on, you play the first character to survive to muster out, or you don't play.