Extending Character Generation in Classic Traveller

[robject]

Originally posted by WJP:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Your Gengineering rules in general.

Oh, gotcha.

Well, I figured many house rule systems use a 3D-take-the-best-two or a 2D-arrange-to-taste method of rolling stats, and I was never comforatable with that in Traveller. I always liked the one-roll-2D-per-stat method as written.
[/qb]</font>[/QUOTE]I've tended to prefer the what-you-roll-is-what-you-get method myself, but also allowing players to take a year or two (if able) for physical training somewhere along the line.

I think TNE's Fire, Fusion, and Steel has a reasonably Traveller-friendly system for light cybernetics, as well.

 

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by WJP:
Most people don't leave their homeworld. It's an expensive and time-consuming proposition (akin to a ride across the Pacific, for a week, in a shrimp boat, costing $8,000...people wouldn't travel as much if that were the case). The people who travel the spacelanes are a relatively small population when compared to the total number of citizens in the Imperium. But the ones who do make up a new social class of sorts.



These people are called: Travellers.

This is coming close to being the sort of thing you put on the back of a game box.

[Man, I've got to get a copy of the Classic Books and the Classic Supplements.... Or maybe I can adapt your rules to the T5 playtest....]

 

[Jeffr0]

Originally posted by WJP:
Most people don't leave their homeworld. It's an expensive and time-consuming proposition (akin to a ride across the Pacific, for a week, in a shrimp boat, costing $8,000...people wouldn't travel as much if that were the case). The people who travel the spacelanes are a relatively small population when compared to the total number of citizens in the Imperium. But the ones who do make up a new social class of sorts.



These people are called: Travellers.

This is coming close to being the sort of thing you put on the back of a game box.

[Man, I've got to get a copy of the Classic Books and the Classic Supplements.... Or maybe I can adapt your rules to the T5 playtest....]

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by robject:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by WJP:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Your Gengineering rules in general.

Oh, gotcha.

Well, I figured many house rule systems use a 3D-take-the-best-two or a 2D-arrange-to-taste method of rolling stats, and I was never comforatable with that in Traveller. I always liked the one-roll-2D-per-stat method as written.
</font>[/QUOTE]I've tended to prefer the what-you-roll-is-what-you-get method myself, but also allowing players to take a year or two (if able) for physical training somewhere along the line.
[/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]As to using the Solomani Geneering rule in my game...

We rolled up 8 player characters and 4 NPCs. Each of those dozen had the same chance for Solomani Geneering, and none of the 12 made it.

I made the Geneering thing so hard to obtain that it will be truly hard for a player to get it (kinda like rolling up a Marquis...which did happen in my game!).

And, that's just the way I like it. If someone had gotten it, great. We'd roll with it. But, it's hard. I'm not going to give it to 'em. They've got to earn it with their dice during chargen...or they don't get it.

And, so far in my game, nobody's gotten it.

It will be a very rare thing if someone ever does.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by robject:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by WJP:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Your Gengineering rules in general.

Oh, gotcha.

Well, I figured many house rule systems use a 3D-take-the-best-two or a 2D-arrange-to-taste method of rolling stats, and I was never comforatable with that in Traveller. I always liked the one-roll-2D-per-stat method as written.
</font>[/QUOTE]I've tended to prefer the what-you-roll-is-what-you-get method myself, but also allowing players to take a year or two (if able) for physical training somewhere along the line.
[/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]As to using the Solomani Geneering rule in my game...

We rolled up 8 player characters and 4 NPCs. Each of those dozen had the same chance for Solomani Geneering, and none of the 12 made it.

I made the Geneering thing so hard to obtain that it will be truly hard for a player to get it (kinda like rolling up a Marquis...which did happen in my game!).

And, that's just the way I like it. If someone had gotten it, great. We'd roll with it. But, it's hard. I'm not going to give it to 'em. They've got to earn it with their dice during chargen...or they don't get it.

And, so far in my game, nobody's gotten it.

It will be a very rare thing if someone ever does.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:

Originally posted by WJP:
[qb][Man, I've got to get a copy of the Classic Books and the Classic Supplements.... Or maybe I can adapt your rules to the T5 playtest....]

CT is the only way to go!

(I will definitely give T5 a hard look. I WANT it to be great. But, if it isn't, I'll just keep swingin' with CT.)

But, I posted this stuff here for people like you who want to take it and adapt it to their own games.

If you can get some use out of it, then brother, I hope your game is awesome.

Jeff Zeitlin, over at Freelance Traveller, wants me to write this stuff up as a "how to customize chargen for your game" type of article.

I'm going to try to get that to him....at some point.

Until then, it's here.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:

Originally posted by WJP:
[qb][Man, I've got to get a copy of the Classic Books and the Classic Supplements.... Or maybe I can adapt your rules to the T5 playtest....]

CT is the only way to go!

(I will definitely give T5 a hard look. I WANT it to be great. But, if it isn't, I'll just keep swingin' with CT.)

But, I posted this stuff here for people like you who want to take it and adapt it to their own games.

If you can get some use out of it, then brother, I hope your game is awesome.

Jeff Zeitlin, over at Freelance Traveller, wants me to write this stuff up as a "how to customize chargen for your game" type of article.

I'm going to try to get that to him....at some point.

Until then, it's here.

 

[Jeffr0]

When I picked up the MT freebie last year I spent few hours trying to figure out what careers were possible from each of the homeworlds in the Regina subsector.

I think I got as far as Keng before giving up....

I like your system because you can get several homeworld skills that help different you a bit. The fact that they're mostly level 0 makes 'em not so big an imbalance.

The T5 rules are slightly more inspiring than the MT ones for Homeworld skills, but yours go further with the 5th table bit. I'm not sure it's worth the chance of not getting a skill, though. But for high Soc character's its basically just another option. Moderate Soc characters would only roll on it if the table had really good skills worth the risk.

I like how SOC becomes the most important attribute in the char gen game. Yours approach is better than T5-- the waiver seems to only impact what goes on in school if I've read those rules right.... Though robject is right.... The steadily dwindling effectiveness of the string pulling means you have to use it wisely. Hmmm... maybe if we put the two ideas together....

 

[Jeffr0]

When I picked up the MT freebie last year I spent few hours trying to figure out what careers were possible from each of the homeworlds in the Regina subsector.

I think I got as far as Keng before giving up....

I like your system because you can get several homeworld skills that help different you a bit. The fact that they're mostly level 0 makes 'em not so big an imbalance.

The T5 rules are slightly more inspiring than the MT ones for Homeworld skills, but yours go further with the 5th table bit. I'm not sure it's worth the chance of not getting a skill, though. But for high Soc character's its basically just another option. Moderate Soc characters would only roll on it if the table had really good skills worth the risk.

I like how SOC becomes the most important attribute in the char gen game. Yours approach is better than T5-- the waiver seems to only impact what goes on in school if I've read those rules right.... Though robject is right.... The steadily dwindling effectiveness of the string pulling means you have to use it wisely. Hmmm... maybe if we put the two ideas together....

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
I like your system because you can get several homeworld skills that help different you a bit. The fact that they're mostly level 0 makes 'em not so big an imbalance.

I think only one of the 12 characters we rolled up for the game (maybe it was two...but no more than that) received a background skill higher than level-0. Nobody got a Level-2 skill out of it. And, if a few background skills were obtained, only one of them was at Level-1, the rest being level-0 (I think the Marquis character got started with Computer-1 before going into regular chargen).

I was pretty pleased with the results. It's available. It's possible. But, it's definitely not unbalancing.

I'm not sure it's worth the chance of not getting a skill, though.

The Fifth Table(s) have some pretty doggone good skills on them. And, in an effort to not unbalance the game, I decided that the Fifth Table would be consulted with some risk.

It's harder for a low SOC character to expand than a high SOC character (in RL as well), so I figured low SOC characters would probably stick with what's available in the chargen tables. High SOC characters can take advantage of their higher cultural standing by having other (and many times better) skills to choose from.

The Fifth Table also allows the GM to slid a specific skill towards a player if it's important to the campaign/adventure. These can be non-official, GM-created skills, or maybe just skills that a particular career wouldn't normally provide.

I like how SOC becomes the most important attribute in the char gen game.

It sure makes that stat useful and playable, doesn't it.

SOC is very important to a character in my game--because the skills he gets during chargen are probably the skills he will have for the rest of his life.

INT and EDU become very important, later, in the character improvement rules (that I am working on but have not finished yet).

Yours approach is better than T5--

Thanks, man.

Though robject is right.... The steadily dwindling effectiveness of the string pulling means you have to use it wisely.

I'm not sure I agree with the way the waiver is set up...the logic behind it doesn't make sense to me.

It seems to me that your contacts and connections in life should become MORE useful to you the older you get--not the other way around.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Jeffr0:
I like your system because you can get several homeworld skills that help different you a bit. The fact that they're mostly level 0 makes 'em not so big an imbalance.

I think only one of the 12 characters we rolled up for the game (maybe it was two...but no more than that) received a background skill higher than level-0. Nobody got a Level-2 skill out of it. And, if a few background skills were obtained, only one of them was at Level-1, the rest being level-0 (I think the Marquis character got started with Computer-1 before going into regular chargen).

I was pretty pleased with the results. It's available. It's possible. But, it's definitely not unbalancing.

I'm not sure it's worth the chance of not getting a skill, though.

The Fifth Table(s) have some pretty doggone good skills on them. And, in an effort to not unbalance the game, I decided that the Fifth Table would be consulted with some risk.

It's harder for a low SOC character to expand than a high SOC character (in RL as well), so I figured low SOC characters would probably stick with what's available in the chargen tables. High SOC characters can take advantage of their higher cultural standing by having other (and many times better) skills to choose from.

The Fifth Table also allows the GM to slid a specific skill towards a player if it's important to the campaign/adventure. These can be non-official, GM-created skills, or maybe just skills that a particular career wouldn't normally provide.

I like how SOC becomes the most important attribute in the char gen game.

It sure makes that stat useful and playable, doesn't it.

SOC is very important to a character in my game--because the skills he gets during chargen are probably the skills he will have for the rest of his life.

INT and EDU become very important, later, in the character improvement rules (that I am working on but have not finished yet).

Yours approach is better than T5--

Thanks, man.

Though robject is right.... The steadily dwindling effectiveness of the string pulling means you have to use it wisely.

I'm not sure I agree with the way the waiver is set up...the logic behind it doesn't make sense to me.

It seems to me that your contacts and connections in life should become MORE useful to you the older you get--not the other way around.

 

[Supplement Four]

UPDATE...

Freelance Traveller has invited me to write this stuff up as an example essay. You can download the new and improved version of what you see in this thread here.

And, you can obtain a nifty character sheet for your game here: FRONT and BACK.

 

[Supplement Four]

UPDATE...

Freelance Traveller has invited me to write this stuff up as an example essay. You can download the new and improved version of what you see in this thread here.

And, you can obtain a nifty character sheet for your game here: FRONT and BACK.

 

[Whipsnade]

WJP,

Excellent news!

You know, Jeff Zeitlin has got to be the biggest unsung hero in Traveller fandom.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Whipsnade]

WJP,

Excellent news!

You know, Jeff Zeitlin has got to be the biggest unsung hero in Traveller fandom.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[cheepicus]

I'd like to have the PDF of this neat system, but the ones linked to contain 99% garbage characters. Are they using some esoteric font or something? (I don't have a problem with other PDFs).

 

[cheepicus]

I'd like to have the PDF of this neat system, but the ones linked to contain 99% garbage characters. Are they using some esoteric font or something? (I don't have a problem with other PDFs).

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
You know, Jeff Zeitlin has got to be the biggest unsung hero in Traveller fandom.

Absolutely, he is.

FLT is an incredible Traveller resource.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Bill Cameron:
You know, Jeff Zeitlin has got to be the biggest unsung hero in Traveller fandom.

Absolutely, he is.

FLT is an incredible Traveller resource.

 

[Supplement Four]

Originally posted by Genjuro:
I'd like to have the PDF of this neat system, but the ones linked to contain 99% garbage characters. Are they using some esoteric font or something? (I don't have a problem with other PDFs).

Hum....

No, they're in Arial. Pretty common font.

I download them and they look fine.

Anybody else have this problem?

Genjuro, PM me with your e-mail address, and I'll send you a word doc.