Newcomer to Traveller: some questions

[Talon7]

Hey folks!

So I've only recently heard of Traveller, and I've been ready to start getting the Mongoose edition. I've gotten the core rulebook and have a rough grasp on the rules, but something about character creation nags at me a bit.

It seems that in order to get decent skills you need at least four careers, and by then your character (assuming we're playing a standard human) would be pretty darn old, at least pretty old in comparison to what some players prefer. I mean sure the drawbacks to picking too many terms are aging effects, but I still gotta ask: what exactly are the benefits of not picking many careers? Say you only pick two: even then, by the core rule you'd be 26 by then, which certainly isn't unreasonable, but again there remains players that would find the idea of being a much younger traveller appealing.

One more question: what are some pitfalls newcomer GMs fall into for Traveller?

 

[Gray Pennell]

I dont have Mongoose traveller but CT really doesnt provide a good way to advance characters so there was never a mechanical reason not to stay in as long as you can. This got worse when computer generated characters came out and you just had to push buttons to do it all. Your character dies start over. Unless MGT has a good experience system let them keep going because its all they will get. Now if you are looking at role playing well than its up to them. I like 36-44 year old characters myself. Still young but experienced.

I ll let someone else answer the other question.

 

[Dragoner]

My opinion is to look at character skills more as a resume/CV and not a play book, plus allow for learning more skills.

 

[AndreaV]

Hey folks!

So I've only recently heard of Traveller, and I've been ready to start getting the Mongoose edition. I've gotten the core rulebook and have a rough grasp on the rules, but something about character creation nags at me a bit.

It seems that in order to get decent skills you need at least four careers, and by then your character (assuming we're playing a standard human) would be pretty darn old, at least pretty old in comparison to what some players prefer. I mean sure the drawbacks to picking too many terms are aging effects, but I still gotta ask: what exactly are the benefits of not picking many careers? Say you only pick two: even then, by the core rule you'd be 26 by then, which certainly isn't unreasonable, but again there remains players that would find the idea of being a much younger traveller appealing.

One more question: what are some pitfalls newcomer GMs fall into for Traveller?

Well there are a couple of options for this
1) Use T4 char gen which gives characters far more skills per term.
2) House rule increased skill rolls (doubling or tripling the skills per term).
3) Keep the MgT chargen but house rule the term length down while retaining the number of rolls. (eg reduce each term to one year). Here you likely will need to tweek the promotion tables.

 

[Icosahedron]

1. If you want really young characters, houserule that instead of annual skill increases within four-yearly terms, they are quarterly skill increases in annual terms.

2. Billionaire galactic overlords get bored - fugitives on the run don't...

...So, don't let your campaign get too big. Set your early games within a single subsector (possibly even on a single world).

Don't give your players their own ship (unless it's a wreck or an economic liability) Make them work for everything.

Beware Combat - it's deadly!

 

[ShapeShifter]

Welcome to the boards!
Chargen in Trav is indeed a unique experience, to put it mildly.
I've no familiarity with MgT, but Classic Traveller, so I can't address your concerns with the recent version.
However, if you are the referee you can invent other, creative ways to create PCs, like a point-buy system for skills (INT+EDU = total skill ranks to distribute among whatever skills are desired/appropriate).
Thus Mr. Joe Average Guy would have 14 points for skills, and Mr. Stupendous would have 24 points with which to buy skills.
Remember that all PCs have weapon skills at rank 0 to start with:

All player-characters have an innate weapon expertise, in all weapons, of zero. Acquisition of a weapon skill boosts this to level-1. Additional acquisitions of expertise in the same weapon increase the present level by one.

 

[Murphy]

I would say, adjusting the system so that youngsters have more skills is kind of missing the point. If you want to go that way and cheat the system, why not just give them skills arbitrarily, at the referee's discretion?

IRL, only the most talented can become experts in their field at the age of 22. It's fairly logical and realistic that a young traveller would only have a couple areas where he's fairly good at (skill-1) and a few areas where he is knowledgeable but has no real expertise (skill-0).

To avoid trouble due to this, remember that your adventures should match the player characters in challenge. For once, they wouldn't realistically be trusted with jobs as difficult as hardened vets, and if they get in trouble, there should be a way a clever adventurer could make up for his lack of skill.

Truth be told, after they've been through some assignments, I'd house-rule consulting the career tables and picking an additional skill or two for them. I would also try to keep this in line with years of game time passed. Don't know if this would suit you, since not everyone likes long campaigns.

P.S. If you really, really want characters that are high-powered and young, try giving them better attributes. Being naturally gifted is more plausible than having pilot-3, computer-3 and electronics-3 by the time you are 22.

 

[LiminalMask]

It seems that in order to get decent skills you need at least four careers, and by then your character (assuming we're playing a standard human) would be pretty darn old, at least pretty old in comparison to what some players prefer. I mean sure the drawbacks to picking too many terms are aging effects, but I still gotta ask: what exactly are the benefits of not picking many careers? Say you only pick two: even then, by the core rule you'd be 26 by then, which certainly isn't unreasonable, but again there remains players that would find the idea of being a much younger traveller appealing.

I assume when you say "careers" you are actually meaning "terms". You can spend 4 terms (16 years) in the same career, provided there are no mishaps. And I have found that for my MgT (Mongoose Traveller) campaign, 4 terms is about right for the level of difficulty I have chosen. However, you can definitely choose to scale things back if you want to play with young characters (Space Cadet Harry Potter, anyone?) or ramp up the difficulty if you want to have an adventuring group of grizzed vets. Are the bad guys inexperienced thugs with cheap guns or highly trained mercenaries with combat armor and ACRs?

Also, don't forget there is the "Skill Packages" provision that if your adventurers are lacking certain skills, they can select additional skills after CharGen to round out the party and ensure you have someone in the group who can handle most problems that might come their way.

Incidentally, with good die rolls for promotion and life events, a 2-term character can end up with 6 skills at level 0, and at least 4 skills at level 1, plus a few extra (assuming no duplicate skill rolls). I have a 3-term character in my current group (the youngest) who happens to be the best shot on the team, due to a really high DEX and solid weapon skills.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

One more question: what are some pitfalls newcomer GMs fall into for Traveller?

#1 is probably letting the PCs get too powerful too soon (ie a nice ship, loadsa money, and enough firepower to fight a medium sized war). Make 'em work for it.

 

[CosmicGamer]

I mean sure the drawbacks to picking too many terms are aging effects, but I still gotta ask: what exactly are the benefits of not picking many careers?

Did you mean careers here or terms?

Benefits I see to multiple careers is one level 0 basic training skill and perhaps a more diverse range of skills.

Benefits I see to sticking to one career are gaining higher rank, a better chance to become extremely competent or famous in a certain skill if you keep rolling on the same skill table, and for some careers you can receive retirement pay after 5 terms.

One more question: what are some pitfalls newcomer GMs fall into for Traveller?

#1 is probably letting the PCs get too powerful too soon (ie a nice ship, loadsa money, and enough firepower to fight a medium sized war). Make 'em work for it.

Equipment, money, and such are perhaps a method of "improving" a character? A side effect of people playing RPGs with experience points, leveling and such?

No reason a game can't be about the struggles to keep and maintain what you have, trying to bring peace to a region of space, a problem that needs to be solved that will require "a nice ship, loadsa money, and enough firepower to fight a medium sized war", a mystery that needs to be solved which requires abilities and skill and not resources, and so on.

For me a crappy game that I didn't enjoy isn't suddenly worth while because my character gets some tangible reward at the end.

The typical trope is a scrounging to get by group of Travellers and many adventures do depend on this for motivating the group. So if these type of adventures are planned, it is wise to not give away the carrot too soon.

 

[hdan]

If you're coming from a game like D&D, I wouldn't think of Traveller skills as being the same as D&D skills. The way Traveller's 2d6+Skill math works out, +2 is a pretty big deal. +4 is crazy big. Instead, think of them more like weapon proficiencies or feats, though broader in scope. (See Page 51 for the "Skill Levels and What They Mean" if you haven't already.)

You do indeed need to take a few terms to get a large skill set though. In practice, players generally carry on in the same career until they get booted out for whatever reason. Then, if they want more skills, they can pursue another career.

When choosing a career, look not only at what stats will help you advance in that career, but also what the Service Skills are, since your first career will give you Level 0 in all of those skills.

A 1 term character from the right service can be very useful, especially when you consider the "Learning New Skills" rules on page 59. You could find yourself with only a few levels of skill after one term, but that means you could increase your skill levels with a few weeks of study. (Often, that's a good use for the 1 week "down time" during a Jump. Or if you can't make a gaming session, you could "stay back on the ship studying" or something. "C'mon Jad, let's hit the Startown!" "Nah, I have to brush up on my Astrogation." "Spoilsport! Fine, see you later.")

As a side note, I think you should only be able to increase skills you already know this way. To get a completely new skill, you should find a tutor who can get you to Level-0.

 

[Talon7]

Yeah I meant terms, not careers. Sorry 'bout that!

How I figure it is, if you're relatively younger (20s) then you don't get as many skillsets as more experienced people do (people who have served more than four terms in any one career), but the trade off is that perhaps you learn skills faster. I'm not asking for ridiculously young, just 22 at the very least. That way you have travellers that are green and young, but still having a fresh slate without medical debts or too many enemies/adversaries to worry about.

With that said, I'm seriously considering using some of the rules and suggestions offered here. Thanks guys!

If you're coming from a game like D&D, I wouldn't think of Traveller skills as being the same as D&D skills. The way Traveller's 2d6+Skill math works out, +2 is a pretty big deal. +4 is crazy big. Instead, think of them more like weapon proficiencies or feats, though broader in scope. (See Page 51 for the "Skill Levels and What They Mean" if you haven't already.)

All of my players are used to D&D, and I am as well. I've made it very clear to them that in Traveller, the combat rules are lethal, reward is in material wealth, prestige and status rather than simply leveling up, and that most travellers are simply humans (or aliens, or robots), nothing more...even if they are a cut above the average person.

 

[saundby]

There are two important ways of getting extra skills to round out characters in MgT:
Connections
Skills Packages
Traveller SRD: Careers

I've had groups with an average of two terms per character set out on adventures (the "old man"--a she, actually--had 3 terms, the "kid" had one.) Remember, a skill of 1 or 2 is enough to be getting on with for a normal adventure. No need to max out the skill points for an adventure of appropriate difficulty.

CRB page 37:

Finalise Connections
The connections between characters rule (see page 8) can give you
bonus skills. At this stage, you may make (or finalise) a connection
between your character and up to two other player characters. For
each connection you make, you may gain one level in any skill, but
you cannot bring a skill above level 3 using this rule nor may you
take the Jack of all Trades skill.

CRB page 37-38:

Skill Packages
As a group, select one of the following skill packages, which are
collections of basic skills you will use while adventuring and
travelling. Taking a skill package ensures that your group will at least
have basic competency in the situations that will come up in the
game.

I work with players to customize the skills packages to the adventure we've got planned.

Then, after chargen, don't forget the "Learning New Skills" rule on pg 59.
Traveller SRD: Skills

I linked to the tops of the sections in the SRD, since the hypertext anchors in-page put the relevant text a bit outside the view.

 

[Limburger59]

Hey folks!

It seems that in order to get decent skills you need at least four careers,

I'll take a different tack on this question.

(A) You don't need one character with four different careers, but four players with characters that have four different careers. (Or at least different departments of the same service.) This way the party has to rely on each other, or at least keep each other alive. Also it could force them to hire a NPC to serve as Engineer for example; which allows you to interject opinions/leads/hassles into the party.

The team of characters need each other's skills. As the song goes, "Sophonts, who need sophonts, are the luckiest sophonts in the Imperium..."

(B) Instead of four careers there are four sources of skills:
- HOMEWORLD - I have players roll on different tables based on their homeworld's type, law level, tech level. Sometimes the skills may never be used during any adventure (for example Animal Husbandry-1 on an Ag planet) but it fleshes out the character and adds filler to the sheet.
- EDUCATION - most players try to go to college in MTU. Besides usable skills it can also generate filler for the character's sheet.
- CAREER -
- CONTINUING EDUCATION - there hasn't been a demand from my players to gain new skills or develop existing ones (yet)