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House Rules for Character Creation

KrisComet

SOC-10
The one problem I have always had with my gaming group is that the various
Traveller and MT games seem to produce characters who are a tad shy of the
old folks home. Has anyone ever created their own system for character creation
which allows for younger characters with more skills than the normal paths would allow?
 
Yeah, some guy called Frank Chadwick. His house rules engine got printed up and sold as "Traveller: the New Era"... 4 skills for term 1, 3 for term 2, etc.
 
Add a term as a belter to the front (IIRC they start at age 14) or just adopt a house rule to allow any character to start at age 14.

I think that you have a more basic problem, though. Your players either want to be skilled at everything or a master of many fields.

I once used the MT Rogue basic Chargen to create a 70+ year old thief. I wanted to play an old guy with lots of vice skills. When I generated the character I was shocked at the result. It was way too many skills for anyone to have. And less the problem of the Int + Edu limit concern you, I had lots of skill rolls to apply to attribute modifiers to raise them.

The goal should be for the TEAM to be skilled at everything (or enough to get the job done) and each character to be GOOD at something. Personally, I find 2 terms is often enough to get 6+ skills in MT (a Skill-3, three skill-1, and a few skill-0). That's enough to create a personality.
 
To be fair, Mongoose Traveller also generates a goodly number of skills at low levels:
1-5 level-0 skills for background
4-6 (due to duplications) Level-0 skills for basic training
0-2 for connections
Per Term: 1-6
  • 1 skill level
  • 0-2 skill levels for promotion
  • 0-1 skill levels for commission
  • 0-2 levels for life events
 
The one problem I have always had with my gaming group is that the various
Traveller and MT games seem to produce characters who are a tad shy of the
old folks home. Has anyone ever created their own system for character creation
which allows for younger characters with more skills than the normal paths would allow?

The way I read this, and correct my misinterpretation if I'm wrong, the problem and solution is not where you think it lies, in the rules.

I wonder if your issue is one of several possible ones:

Age - Do you object to the characters being listed as 56 years old because you imagine that makes them decrepit? Who's to say 120 isn't the new 40 in the far future? Or is it the aging rolls catching up with the stats and making all the characters low physical specimens? I've long thought the "aging" rolls are (to quote a great line) "not the years, honey, but the mileage". Or in other words Travellers tend to "age" prematurely because they live a hard and dangerous life. That 56 year old (in the future where 120 is the new 40) looks and feels more like 170.

Skills - Is it that all your players want to be able to do everything well? Or do they each have something they want to do well and keep generating terms until they get it? Both are problems easily addressed. In the first case you need to teach them that they should each bring a different specialty to the game, not each be able to do everything. In the second, as ref you should fudge so they each get their desired skill early and allow them to improve it during play.

As to the general question, younger characters with more skills.

For the first part, if you stick to the survival rule as originally intended (fail equal death in char gen) this alone should be enough that your players will, by choice or simple probability, end up with characters averaging about 3 terms.

For the second part CT is better. The skills are fewer and broader, so they mean more. And the characters have more zero-level skill chances to make them more versatile.

Or you could just double* the number of skills awarded in CT basic char gen and really stick to the survive or die rule. That seems the easiest way to get more (random) skills and keep the characters young.

* Anywhere it says gain 1 skill you gain 2, anywhere it says gain 2 skills you gain 4. So 1st term is 4 skills. Subsequent terms are 2 skills. Rank advancement is 2 skills. Scouts get 4 skills per term.

A similar solution for MT would probably be about as good. Hard survival to encourage few terms and doubling the skill rolls to allow more skills.
 
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Ahhh

Ahhh well tks for all the good advice, yep I cud use Frank's rules but they don't appeal to me... hmmm perhaps I should break out those TNE rules and give them another chance.

Tks for the redirect on the perceptive problem; you're right it could just be my gamers.

Tks for the weblinkg...

TRAVELLER RULES
 
The one problem I have always had with my gaming group is that the various
Traveller and MT games seem to produce characters who are a tad shy of the
old folks home. Has anyone ever created their own system for character creation
which allows for younger characters with more skills than the normal paths would allow?

Try CT. I've rolled plenty of one and two term-ers using straight-out-of-the-box CT.
 
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