How many career templates should be in the core rules?

[Echo]

That's like saying Marines are Army. Rogues are planet based, Pirates are ship based.

I don't really see why Rogues would be planet based particularly. Rogues are just those that are criminally inclined and experienced. That would include Pirates, surely? The actual background of the character's experience would be determined by where they come from again. A Rogue brought up in an Asteroid belt, or in space, would most likely be a 'Pirate' - as opposed to one brought up in a heavily urban environment.

And to be honest, I don't really think that Pirates or Barbarians are particularly archetypal in science fiction, generally.

 

[Tobias]

The actual background of the character's experience would be determined by where they come from again. A Rogue brought up in an Asteroid belt, or in space, would most likely be a 'Pirate' - as opposed to one brought up in a heavily urban environment.

I don't think your upbringing has anything to do with it. That's like saying that people from coastal regions who join the military will become Navy, and those from land-locked regions will become Army(at least with our Navy, it is more the other way 'round.)
And yes, the "Space Pirate" at least is very much an archetype. In Traveller, so much more. A "Vargr corsair" is something different from a "Vargr Rogue".
Not to mention that, even function-based, these are very different jobs. A pirate needs to know very different skills from a highway robber.

 

[Echo]

I don't think your upbringing has anything to do with it. That's like saying that people from coastal regions who join the military will become Navy, and those from land-locked regions will become Army(at least with our Navy, it is more the other way 'round.)

Well, no it's not, because the Navy and the Army are both miltary operations that train you up, then whisk you away to wherever they want. If you happen to be a 'rogue' brought up in space, then your thieving-style is likely to be associated with piracy.

And yes, the "Space Pirate" at least is very much an archetype. In Traveller, so much more. A "Vargr corsair" is something different from a "Vargr Rogue".

Well, the core rules are not supposed to be just designed for the Imperium, and I haven't read much sci-fi fiction with definitive 'pirates' in (as opposed to rogueish groups in space). And like I say, I cannot see why they Vargr Corsair and the Vargre Rogue are such different archetypes anyway. They are both criminal types; one has a bigger hat. I mean, we could also consider a Vargre smuggler as being different to a pirate, or a planet-based rogue. Do we need a new career template for them too?

Not to mention that, even function-based, these are very different jobs. A pirate needs to know very different skills from a highway robber.

Possibly, but I don't see why you can't learn a different set of skills within the same career template. I mean, a Merchant could be space-based or planetary based too - but we don't need seperate templates for each, do we?

 

[Takei]

And yes, the "Space Pirate" at least is very much an archetype. In Traveller, so much more. A "Vargr corsair" is something different from a "Vargr Rogue".
Not to mention that, even function-based, these are very different jobs. A pirate needs to know very different skills from a highway robber.

My thinking exactly. Like the Army and Marines they are defined by different roles (or skills in game mechanic terms).

 

[Takei]

Possibly, but I don't see why you can't learn a different set of skills within the same career template. I mean, a Merchant could be space-based or planetary based too - but we don't need seperate templates for each, do we?

I understand what you're saying but think that it feels better to keep them seperate. You could apply the same reasoning to the Navy and Scouts; they're both ship based careers with probably more overlap than Rogues and Pirates, but it wouldn't feel right.

 

[atpollard]

Thinking about it, Belters are really a sub-set of blue-collar workers. I can't think of a good name for the blue-collar career.

SPACE WORKERS might be a career name. It could include all of the space based industry workers that earn a living with a vacc suit. Orbital construction workers at class A and B (and C based on rules set and preference) starports. Belters who prospect asteroids. Laborers at the mega-corporate foundries that process the ore into Bulk cargoes to fill the holds of super-freighters. The workers who skim gas giants and operate the refineries that keep the starport supplied with Refined Fuel.

 

[atpollard]

My thinking exactly. Like the Army and Marines they are defined by different roles (or skills in game mechanic terms).

What are the "skill" differences between the Army and Marines in Traveller? In my opinion, the similarity between the two skill sets is the best reason to combine the career templates (like book 4 did).

 

[aramis]

Pirate are not rogues. The term Rogue implies strongly characters who make their living by cheating others. Their entire skill set is based upon parting fools from their money by unlawful or quasi-lawful means.

Pirates are a highly technical group who live by being competent sailors/spacers and competent boarders/troops, by either starmercing or raiding. Pirates steal ship, cargo, fuel, and/or supplies, not by wits, but by force.

Pirate subsets would be space crew and boarder....

Rogue subsets are con-men, gamblers, and grifters.

 

[Tobias]

Well, no it's not, because the Navy and the Army are both miltary operations that train you up, then whisk you away to wherever they want.

No, they are career choices. And for example, our little Navy is flooded with Bavarians who made that choice. In spite of the fact that they grew up the the part of the country maximally removed from any salt water.

Do we need a new career template for them too?

We need, by this reasoning, no career template of any kind. If you are going to do the full functional lumping together, just offer a large amount of skill tables for one unified "career."

I mean, a Merchant could be space-based or planetary based too - but we don't need seperate templates for each, do we?

No, we don't. Because IMHO we don't need a template for planet-based merchants at all.

 

[atpollard]

We need, by this reasoning, no career template of any kind. If you are going to do the full functional lumping together, just offer a large amount of skill tables for one unified "career."

Since most characters will end up Travelling with an ecclectic band of adventurers, I could live with only the Merchant Template. You just need "merchants" who like lots of guns, "merchants" who can fix stuff, "merchants" who can pilot a starship, "merchant" doctors, "merchants" with noble connections, "merchants" with leanings towards illegal trade, and a few others that I have probably forgotten.

When they publish a RTT:Stryker, you can add a Soldier Template with lots of different types of "soldiers".

 

[Echo]

Pirate are not rogues. The term Rogue implies strongly characters who make their living by cheating others. Their entire skill set is based upon parting fools from their money by unlawful or quasi-lawful means.

So do pirates. It's just their skill set is based upon parting fools from their money, by unlawful or quasi-lawful means,....in space, and on board a ship.

Pirates are a highly technical group who live by being competent sailors/spacers and competent boarders/troops, by either starmercing or raiding. Pirates steal ship, cargo, fuel, and/or supplies, not by wits, but by force.

Well a bank robber would have a different set of skills to an embezzler, but their both still rogues. Same difference. Moreover, I can see many people actually opting to Pirate career - it's too specific, and a weak archetype for a sci-fi game.

 

[Echo]

No, they are career choices. And for example, our little Navy is flooded with Bavarians who made that choice. In spite of the fact that they grew up the the part of the country maximally removed from any salt water.

You're missing the point. You don't need to live by the sea to join the navy. You can go to a recruitment cente, and as soon as you join, they will train you, and then send you and then send you out to sea/space. A pirate, on the other hand, is something you would only become by virtue of the opportunity of being in close access to the sea/space. I can't imaging anybody being dragged over from a central mainland area to join a pirate crew, they certainly wouldn't be able to get to port by chance, and I doubt many Pirate crews would have many recruitment centres dotted around urban centres either. Pirates are just rogues that are adapted to ply their trade in a marine/space environment.

We need, by this reasoning, no career template of any kind. If you are going to do the full functional lumping together, just offer a large amount of skill tables for one unified "career."

No, we don't. Because IMHO we don't need a template for planet-based merchants at all.

Well that's just from one extreme to another. A merchant doesn't need to be space-based to trade, and we are not lumping everything together. We are trying to find broad archetypal careers that can encompass some internal options too, to avoid an over-proliferation of types to choose from.

 

[atpollard]

Pirate are not rogues. The term Rogue implies strongly characters who make their living by cheating others. Their entire skill set is based upon parting fools from their money by unlawful or quasi-lawful means.

Pirates are a highly technical group who live by being competent sailors/spacers and competent boarders/troops, by either starmercing or raiding. Pirates steal ship, cargo, fuel, and/or supplies, not by wits, but by force.
Pirate subsets would be space crew and boarder....
Rogue subsets are con-men, gamblers, and drifters.

I agree with your arguments that Pirates are not similar to Rogues based on their skill sets (which should form the basis for the Career Templates).

However, I suspect that Pirate is less of a template than an asterisk beside the Merchant, Navy or Marine templates. There are probably no archetypes in sci-fi for a character who pursues a career in piracy with no previous life experiences in a legitimate career. [ie. I graduated top of the class at the Pirate Academy, spent four years interning with a pirate band in the Spinward Marches, before saving up enough money to buy my own pirate ship from Pirate-Mart.]

Rogues are closest to the OTHER skill set in LBB 1. An interesting thought, is that the skill set for a career criminal/con-man is nearly identical to the skill set needed for Law Enforcement and Espionage.

One skill set which is handled a bit strange is the Starship Crew skills which are offered via three career paths: Merchant Ship Department, Navy Ship Departments and the Scout Service Ship Department. The various tables have a great deal of overlap and could be combined into a Starship Life Template.

Starting with the available skills and grouping them into logical sets would probably point to a different logical career structure than what has grown out of CT. One or two base skills would differentiate and define the sub-group (Navy pilot/Merchant pilot/Scout pilot or Artillery/Infantry/Marine or Police/Criminal/Spy) with many possible skills in a common pool of skills (Starship skills or Soldier skills or Clandestine skills) that multiple sub-groups would draw from.

 

[Tobias]

A pirate, on the other hand, is something you would only become by virtue of the opportunity of being in close access to the sea/space.

Historically, a pirate is something you become by being a former merchant or naval crewman, but seeing it that way, it doesn't make sense as a primary career at all.

Pirates are just rogues that are adapted to ply their trade in a marine/space environment.

Historically, again no. Overlap of land-based robbers and pirates was minimal. Pirates were sailors first, robbers second. Piracy required an array of technical skills that you didn't possess by virtue of living within X miles of the sea.

Well that's just from one extreme to another. A merchant doesn't need to be space-based to trade, and we are not lumping everything together.

And why not?
"Merchant" has, in Traveller, so far meant something very specific: The space equivalent of a Merchant Marine officer. If you're going to expand "careers", which would be a misnomer then, to such wide fields as to be no longer recognizable as archetypes, you can just as well be honest, ditch the whole process and institute freeform character generation.
But the reason why we don't need "planet-based merchant" is the same we don't need lawyer, civilian wheeled vehicle driver or even such CotI careers such as Bureaucrat: Dull. I'd hate to see Traveller go MW 3rd edition, where they presented you with all kinds of civilian character options instead on concentrating on the damn Mechwarriors.

 

[aramis]

However, I suspect that Pirate is less of a template than an asterisk beside the Merchant, Navy or Marine templates. There are probably no archetypes in sci-fi for a character who pursues a career in piracy with no previous life experiences in a legitimate career. [ie. I graduated top of the class at the Pirate Academy, spent four years interning with a pirate band in the Spinward Marches, before saving up enough money to buy my own pirate ship from Pirate-Mart.]

MT's Hard Times has the "advanced" CGen for StarMercs... space mercenaries. The pirate career is essentially a perfect fit to this as a subset of advanced.

The Pirate Career, in CGen terms, is a career of independent astronaval & astromarine activity. Unlike the Navy, one is likely to have opportunity for limited mercantile skills. Unlike the merchants, one is very likely to pick up extensive combat skills. Unlike the Navy and Marines, there is likely little forced separation between troops and naval personnel, and all are likely to have done bits of both.

I might point to: the Oseran Free Mercenary Fleet (Later Dendarii FMF) of the Vorkosigan series, by Bujold; The Pirates of McCaffree; the Maquis of Star Trek. All of these fit the pirate career far better than Navy, Marine, Merchant, or rogue. There are other examples in SciFi of mixed-astronaval/astromarine forces in contexts where there are also extant astronaval forces, and, in all but Trek, a clear and distinct separate ground force.

Pirate is a poor descriptor for the career, Corsair or Starmerc being FAR better.

 

[Echo]

I don't think that the Merchant has always had such a specific meaning in Traveller. It could always be interpreted as a land-based, corporate role. A merchant is just a mobile businessman, corporate or otherwise, who trades. Obviously, in the context of a space-faring sci-fi game, there is an implication of space travel, but it was never explicit.

The overlap between pirates and land-based rogues may have been minimal, but again this is beside the point. A pirate is a type of rogue.

I suppose you could see pirate careers in a later suppliment, but it really wouldn't be missed in the core-rules. You don't need to go to the extremes of saying 'ditch everything' just because there is no space for a single, minor, career. They didn't have a pirate career in T4's chargen either, which is one of the few sections of that game that fans didn't complain about.

 

[Echo]

Actually, thinking about it...

Would there be any reason why a character couldn't get a couple of terms in the Navy, another term as a Merchant, and finally a term as a Rogue and just call himself a 'pirate'?

 

[Takei]

SPACE WORKERS might be a career name. It could include all of the space based industry workers that earn a living with a vacc suit. Orbital construction workers at class A and B (and C based on rules set and preference) starports. Belters who prospect asteroids. Laborers at the mega-corporate foundries that process the ore into Bulk cargoes to fill the holds of super-freighters. The workers who skim gas giants and operate the refineries that keep the starport supplied with Refined Fuel.

Or how about Spacers? That would nicely cover things like Planetes, which would be great.

 

[Takei]

What are the "skill" differences between the Army and Marines in Traveller? In my opinion, the similarity between the two skill sets is the best reason to combine the career templates (like book 4 did).

Well, they are VERY similar. Marines will have things like Zero-G Combat, Gunnery and Small Craft that would be missing from the Army skill lists.

I can't actually think of any skills that the Army would have that Marine's wouldn't! The Marines drive tanks, use artillery (or possibly ortillery), fly fighters have their own medics and doctors. It might be tempting to have seperate MOS tables for Army and Marines and then a couple of general service tables that apply to both. The problem you then get is that Army characters are better skilled at general soldiering than Marines, which is patently not true. Then again, you're always going to get that if characters get the same number of skills for serving a similar number of years.

 

[Takei]

Pirate is a poor descriptor for the career, Corsair or Starmerc being FAR better.

Yep, Corsair would be a much better choice than Pirate.