Is it possible to enlist after a character is generated?

[mike wightman]

My view is that once you start adventuring you are now a Traveller - you are not in any career anymore.

Prior history/career is just that - what you did before becoming that select group of people who seek to make their fortune through their own daring schemes...

(as posted earlier if you want to allow two or three careers before the adventure kicks in than do so - I do)

I know active duty campaigns are possible and popular, I've used that approach myself, but Travellers are now living a life of adventure and daring do.

 

[Reynard]

Really? It says every character must become a retired adventurer with no real connection to their career? In the forty years I run/play Traveller, there was no actual distinction between career generation and career continuation if players wanted to be their career especially if it is a specific career path campaign. I think the crews of the Enterprise or the teams in Star Wars would say they are very much facing adventure and daring-do.

Traveller normally expects retirees for mixed career characters but it doesn't have to be set in stone. As a matter of fact, page 2 on Mongoose CR 1st ed. lists campaigns based as careers plus a Traveller campaign. Benefits? What you have accumulated up to that point but not pensions.

 

[mike wightman]

It says every character is a mustered out/retired(something) and is now an adventurer (Traveller) - important difference.

I take it you have missed the re-enlistment roll rule for all these years?
Fail it and prior career is now history - you have been kicked out, roll on the mustering out tables. Succeed and you may serve another term or opt to muster out. Roll a 12 and you have to serve another term.

Star Wars - active duty Impies vs Travellers (ex-merchants, ex-navy, ex- other etc)
Star Trek - active duty campaign, characters are still in the service.

Like I said - active duty campaigns can be fun, but the rules as written have characters serving in careers and then beginning their adventuring life having left or having been forced out of their career.

Look at the example of Jamison

Alexander Lascelles Jamison is now 38 years old, a retired merchant captain,
with a pension of Cr4000 per year, and a healthy cash balance. His single middle
passage, useless to him as a shipowner, has been converted to cash (Cr7.200).
Considering that the merchants forced him out of the service at the peak of his
career, he has some slight resentment against the merchant service.

Jamison as a Traveller is an ex-merchant, his player can now play the game which may include freight hauling and speculative trade, but it will also include patron encounters, adventure and possible discovery of hidden truths, ancient ruins, alien encounters, piracy - all the things the frontier offers an ex-merchant with his own ship. But he is no longer part of the merchant service.