Help the Newbie?

[Andrew Boulton]

CT mechanics are simple, but as a rule system it's not even slightly elegant

I think the idea of using the physical stats as hit points is one of the most elegant rules I've seen.

It has the great advantage of being based on D20, the system that around 65% of gamers use,

73.45% of statistics are made up...

CT, if played by the book, generates random characters through a "prior history" process and randomly assigns skills to them. The last time I tried to play a pilot in CT I ended up with a vacuum horse jockey and professional gambler. I'm not kidding, and this is not unusual.

If you don't like what the dice say, ignore them. I've always allowed players to choose stats & skills (within reason).

[Note: the prior history system in CT/MT/T20 gives some input to your "backstory", but it's pathetic compared to say CP2020 (or any game designed after 1980).

It details your career, as opposed to CP, which details your life. Most other systems don't do either.

 

[Morte]

Originally posted by thrash:
Andy Slack had a magnificently elegant distillation of CT chargen that he used for pick-up games at conventions, called "Classic Traveller Ultralite." It appears he has removed this from his site, unfortunately.

That was good. It's where I got "make your stats and skills add up to 50" from.

I'm not sure to which article exactly Morte is referring, but I'll take the compliment anyway.

http://jtas.sjgames.com/login/article.cgi?616

Or there's always RISUS Traveller...

I like that too.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />CT, if played by the book, generates random characters through a "prior history" process and randomly assigns skills to them. The last time I tried to play a pilot in CT I ended up with a vacuum horse jockey and professional gambler. I'm not kidding, and this is not unusual.

If you don't like what the dice say, ignore them. I've always allowed players to choose stats & skills (within reason).
</font>[/QUOTE]I'd much rather have a system where you could actually use what the chargen gave you rather than have to chuck it out because you ended up with a character you didn't want to play. That is what I really hate about the CT chargen system (not the T20 one - I don't like that for other reasons

)

Ignoring the dice is OK to an extent, but if it's a case of having to ignore them all the time so you don't end up a drunk ex-merchant with four fingers on one hand and a limp who has been chucked out of 3 careers, instead of the ace career combat pilot that you really wanted to play, then there's something fundamentally wrong IMO

.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

A random system gives you the choice - either ignore the dice and build what you want, or play what the dice decide (which can often be more interesting).

 

[mike wightman]

I think this may have been the first house rule we ever came up with:
when generating a CT character pick the skill/attribute increase of your choice from any of the tables you are eligible to use for that term
I note that T5 now has a similar system

 

[aramis]

Evo: my rather chaotically arranged prior post was

1) A riposte to malenfant's assertions that the differences were purely artifacts of the game systems differences.

2) a comment on the playtest and how responsive hunter was... I'm certain we occasionally pushed his buttons, tho... sometimes for positive effect.

3) an adission that certain things escaped the playtesters...

I don't recall exactly, but ISTR we'd playtested the damages for weapons BEFORE the switch to SI, from tons of damage. Dr. Skull was doing more of the hardware side; I was focussing on the roleplaying side; that the spinals might be broken didn't really come up, but it is mathematically sound to assert that a T20 spinal meson armed DD can gut most battleships in a single shot about half the time.

 

[SanDragon]

Nobody likes the brownie point system in MegaTraveller? Why do I have to go back, remove the gremlin, and repost it for it to work?!?!?

 

[Elliot]

I like MT the brownie point system - it allows you to bank up points to get SEH's and stuff (and heretically in my game to modify dice rolls to get special duty)

I agree with Sigg (as usual) - from day one, we used the char gen system in CT/MT to develop the number of character points (a la GURPS) that a character got and then the player chose from the tables. This still left characters without edu 8+ not getting the fourth table skills (if your parents send you to a bad school, you pay the price, basically) and in Advanced Char gen it left open special duty as a random roll of the dice. Its not quite like GURPS in that you are at the mercy of what the dice give you.

Everyone I have ever played with (unless playing strictly by the rules for 'fun') has done this, so I didn't think it was all that contentious.

I play MT with additions - I have never figured out MT space combat, so I play Power Projection for that - but then I spent one whole day cutting out the errata and sticking it onto every page of the MT books to get them to work. So my investment is repayed with loyalty!

I would probably go T20 if I was starting out, because everyone these days plays 3ed D&D (or so it seems).

Although I seriously dislike it as a game myself, if you don't like D&D type rules, I would go for GURPS Traveller - you get alot of Traveller for your money and the chance to bring in other stuff from other GURPS products. (...did I really say that!, must vist the shrink...)