Giving 'Other' a new lease of life.

[mike wightman]

Step 1 - Characters in the Other career get two skills per term as per SMC modification of S:4 CotI careers with no commission or promotion.

Step 2 - the player has the option of rolling on the Patron table to determine what the character arc of the Other career is.

Step 3 - the player can choose one skill at level 1 as an automatic skill just like most careers get relevant to the character arc.

Jake is rolling a character, he chooses Other for a change.

He rolls a 6 and a 2 for a shopkeeper prior career arc. He chooses Admin 1 as his automatic skill.

 

[The Oz]

Not bad; I like the option of rolling on the Patron table to find a prior career.

Is the "automatic Skill-1" tied to the choice to roll on the Patron table? If so, why would anyone not choose to roll on the Patron table? I don't see any harm in rolling on the Patron table; why not require it?

Perhaps the roll on the Patron table could be tied to a roll during char gen? Many services have a roll for "Position," perhaps Other could also have a "Position" roll which, if passed, allows the roll on the Patron table to see what prior career (and thusly, Skill-1) you get. This "Position" roll would be showing the character moving out of the temporary labor pool and into an actual employment.

 

[Brandon C]

Step 2 - the player has the option of rolling on the Patron table to determine what the character arc of the Other career is.

He rolls a 6 and a 2 for a shopkeeper prior career arc. He chooses Admin 1 as his automatic skill.

Prior career or career arc? These aren't the same thing.

 

[kilemall]

Hmm come to think of it, perhaps the Patrons should be a source of CT COTI chargen expansion?


Patrons of the Imperium?

 

[mike wightman]

Not bad; I like the option of rolling on the Patron table to find a prior career.

There are some interesting results

Is the "automatic Skill-1" tied to the choice to roll on the Patron table? If so, why would anyone not choose to roll on the Patron table? I don't see any harm in rolling on the Patron table; why not require it?

Yes the automatic skill should be derived from the career, it can be any skill that makes sense for that career.

Perhaps the roll on the Patron table could be tied to a roll during char gen? Many services have a roll for "Position," perhaps Other could also have a "Position" roll which, if passed, allows the roll on the Patron table to see what prior career (and thusly, Skill-1) you get. This "Position" roll would be showing the character moving out of the temporary labor pool and into an actual employment.

Now there's a thought...

 

[mike wightman]

Prior career or career arc? These aren't the same thing.

They are to me. I am using the term career arc to represent the jobs done by the Other career - just to differentiate between a prior career by the book and a prior career outlined by the Patron table.

 

[mike wightman]

Hmm come to think of it, perhaps the Patrons should be a source of CT COTI chargen expansion?


Patrons of the Imperium?

That would be quite a book...

 

[Brandon C]

They are to me. I am using the term career arc to represent the jobs done by the Other career - just to differentiate between a prior career by the book and a prior career outlined by the Patron table.

To me, "prior career" is the character's job before he entered Other while "career arc" is what the character does during his time as Other. While they can both be the same, they don't have to be and the character is more interesting if they differ.

 

[mike wightman]

In CT you can't be in another career prior to Other. Other is the name of your career. I am using the Patron table to add colour.

If you check out the Other entries in Supplement 1 you will find that even GDW didn't use their own rules to generate the Other NPC list.

Other characters represent a broad range of individuals from the criminal
through the ordinary to the extraordinary. Rather than use the procedures from
Traveller Book 1, a modified procedure has been instituted which makes all
available skills possible for a character. In addition, characters are allowed a random
number of terms of service before being listed here. These characters may be
assumed to be armed, regardless of their possession (or lack) of weaponry expertise.
As these individuals are encountered, the referee should pencil in the occupation
the character has assumed, such as asteroid miner, computer forgery expert, petty
thief, etc.
These characters are not recommended for use as player-characters.

I just noticed something I had forgotten - in the sample Scouts section it mentions that scouts receive two skills per term, this is three years before the revised edition of CT would make this the rule as written.

As an exception to the rules in Book 1, each Scout receives two skills per term served, rather than only one.

 

[Brandon C]

In CT you can't be in another career prior to Other. Other is the name of your career. I am using the Patron table to add colour.

I know Other is the name of a career. What I'm saying is that "prior career" implies a career before entering Other (or any other Book 1 career).

FWIW, you can get theoretically get psionic training before term 1 of a career and Books 4+ add various academies, although strictly speaking these aren't careers.

 

[Bob Weaver]

I'm not persuaded that Other needs a new lease on life. I think that it has its place in the LBB 1-3 mix of prior careers. Your suggestions for improvement seem to be about giving Other characters more skills on the character sheet. I've written on my blog a few times about this topic; in sum a character doesn't need a laundry list of skills to be interesting and playable. Omer Golan-Joel has also blogged about this topic.



https://ancientfarfuture.blogspot.com/2014/08/casual-encounter-fenton-tukachevski.html
https://ancientfarfuture.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-curious-case-of-other-service.html
http://spacecockroach.blogspot.com/2014/08/on-beauty-of-classic-traveller.html
http://spacecockroach.blogspot.com/2016/12/once-again-on-classic-traveller-skills.html


If the changes you've suggested work for you and your players, then rock on. What I'm saying is that you haven't established that the Other service is broken and in need of fixing.


Best regards,
Bob W

 

[Timerover51]

That is interesting about Supplement 1 not following the 1977 Book 1. I will have to look that up and do some thinking. There are a huge number of skills in the Cepheus Engine to play with if that is used.

 

[kilemall]

Ya, Others was kind of an unfortunate shortcut- LBB1 basically says you're a service guy, or you are a slimy streetwise civvie doing lord knows what down dark alleys of Startown.


As to expansion of Others skills besides the Patron-derived skill, here's another table I have, the Advanced Services table. I have some S4 skills too.


Advanced Services (INT 8+)
1. Admin
2. Steward
3. Investigation
4. Carousing
5. Recon
6. Tactics


The only questionable one for above might be Tactics, I put it in as colonials or criminal orgs might have to fight.


For the main skill tables, I put some Cepheus skills in, because the human interaction skills are lacking in CT and I think are the most useful to import over. I replaced Forgery with Deception and Bribery with Persuade. I use very broad skill sets, so no Diplomat/Liaison/Advocate, that's all under Persuade. Leader is still separate from Persuade as that is more about social/team dynamics, setting examples, inspiration, etc.

 

[mike wightman]

I'm not persuaded that Other needs a new lease on life.

Fair enough, thank you for taking the time to leave your comments, it always helps to get Other opinions

I think that it has its place in the LBB 1-3 mix of prior careers.

As do I, I have just never had a player choose it - drafted into it yes, but choose it, nope.

Your suggestions for improvement seem to be about giving Other characters more skills on the character sheet. I've written on my blog a few times about this topic; in sum a character doesn't need a laundry list of skills to be interesting and playable.

Sorry I have not read your blog, and you misunderstand the intent. It is not a laundry list of skills, it is not-quite parity with Scouts and CotI careers.
I've had players quite happily run 1 term characters with nothing more than referee granted level 0 skills.

Omer Golan-Joel has also blogged about this topic.

I haven't read his blog either.

If the changes you've suggested work for you and your players, then rock on. What I'm saying is that you haven't established that the Other service is broken and in need of fixing.

In 1001 Characters Scouts are granted 2 skills per term, which becomes the default in 81 CT.
In CotI career generation as presented in SMC all careers that have no commission and promotion get two skills per term.

All I am suggesting is extending the same curtesy to Other for the sake of not quite parity, since they also suffer from no automatic skills at all.

It is also of note that GDW didn't use the Other career as written to generate the sample character in 1001 Characters, and opted to grant them a greater latitude to skill acquisition.

I will continue to grant these options to my group since they like them and it makes it more likely Other will be picked as a first choice career - which prior to these house rules has not occurred in nearly four decades...

 

[hdan]

If you're not going to use S4, I'm a big fan of adding "2 skills per term" for Other to help mitigate the fact that it's essentially the "penalty career" at the moment. And I really like the idea of using the Patron table to generate your employer.

I'd suggest that under those circumstances, if you fail to re-enlist in "Other", that means you must roll a new patron or start adventuring.

I suppose as another option, "Other" could become the "non-random service". Thus you can either join a service where you may get a lot of skills but you don't get much choice, or join "Other" and chart your own course, but with fewer skills, no advancement opportunities, etc.

And a final option, use Other as written, but each term give the character a "Dedication roll" with the Experience system. This could take the place of the "commission/promotion" skill check in other services, though you'd have to make two consecutive rolls to hold on to the skill. (I might consider removing that part of the Experience rules for Other characters, since the character isn't adventuring, and potentially has more ability to throw themselves into their hobbies.)

 

[kilemall]

Another thought on the Patron Others technique-


A lot of those patrons are 'in the Service' personnel. That makes me think those sort of Others are more like support companies various bases and operations would contract for.


So maybe it's extra maintenance people for a base, general services like fueling and cargo for starports, or 'private security' for an operation a service is trying to keep official distance from. A lot of leeway to create some unusual Others backstories other then just the petty crime class.

 

[RandyB]

Another thought on the Patron Others technique-


A lot of those patrons are 'in the Service' personnel. That makes me think those sort of Others are more like support companies various bases and operations would contract for.


So maybe it's extra maintenance people for a base, general services like fueling and cargo for starports, or 'private security' for an operation a service is trying to keep official distance from. A lot of leeway to create some unusual Others backstories other then just the petty crime class.

I like the idea of broadening out the options like this.

 

[GypsyComet]

If you're not going to use S4...

Thought experiments aside, this decision mystifies me.

 

[mike wightman]

I quite happily use S4 but keep Other as a potential career choice... it allows for a lot of player freedom to make up a backstory for their Other career terms.

 

[GypsyComet]

I quite happily use S4 but keep Other as a potential career choice.

Other does concentrate those skills you don't normally advertise knowing. Since CT didn't have any other criminal careers in house other than Pirate, Other covers a lot of ground. There are magazine additions to the career list that cover this part of society in more detail (sometimes too much detail), but if you were sticking close to the source, most of those aren't going to get used.