I've always been peripherally familiar with Traveller, and got to play CT once or twice back in the early 1980's but that was about the extent of my experience. I have read Mongoose Traveller, and looked over T20 some years back. Recently I have been able to acquire a bunch of CT items at my FLGS. I got Books 1-8, 9 of the Supplement books, about 8 or 9 of the Adventure and Double Adventure books, Starter Traveller and all but one of the Alien modules. Really digging it. I'm an old school gamer at heart and whether it is nostalgia or preference, my systems of choice are typically older games. CT has the right amount of old school charm, enough crunch and plenty of room for GM interpretation and rulings. I like the minimalist nature of the setting, leaving it very open for the GM to develop.
I'm starting a CT game this weekend for my regular face to face group. At least one of them has quite a bit of experience with CT. I've decided to use Books 4-7 and the advanced character generation from those. A couple of the players just love all the bells and whistles! I have a couple of initial questions, although certainly I will discover more later.
I have noticed that most example characters I have seen that are created using Book 1 only have at most 6-8 skill ranks. I've created a couple of characters using Book 4 and Book 5 and these characters end up with between 12-20 skill ranks (assuming they survive to complete approximately 4 terms). Is that pretty typical of the difference between the basic and advanced character creation?
Next question. Book 1 expects that a character receiving Gun Combat must take a specific weapon like Body Pistol. Book 4 changes that to Handgun for all pistols, Combat Rifleman for all rifles, carbines, etc. Book 5 does something similar but with fewer choices (laser weapons, submachine guns and handguns only). Book 6 mentions selecting a specific weapon as in Book 1 when receiving Gun Combat. So does this mean that the characters generated in Book 4 and Book 5 have the broad categories for Gun Combat like Handgun-1 where they would be able to use any pistol with that same skill level? But a character generated from Book 6 would have to select a specific weapon when receiving Gun Combat like say Revolver-1? Am I reading that correctly?
Also, I think I saw mentioned somewhere in Starter Traveller that you could not have more skills or skill levels than your Int + Edu. Does that mean that if for example you are in term 5 and your Int and Edu total 18, and you get another skill level that would take you to a total of 19 levels, you just don't get that skill? Or is this rule just an optional rule that not everyone uses?
At any rate, I am looking forward to my first time GMing CT and appreciate any answers to the above that the community here can provide. I have found many threads here to be very informative!
I'm starting a CT game this weekend for my regular face to face group. At least one of them has quite a bit of experience with CT. I've decided to use Books 4-7 and the advanced character generation from those. A couple of the players just love all the bells and whistles! I have a couple of initial questions, although certainly I will discover more later.
I have noticed that most example characters I have seen that are created using Book 1 only have at most 6-8 skill ranks. I've created a couple of characters using Book 4 and Book 5 and these characters end up with between 12-20 skill ranks (assuming they survive to complete approximately 4 terms). Is that pretty typical of the difference between the basic and advanced character creation?
Next question. Book 1 expects that a character receiving Gun Combat must take a specific weapon like Body Pistol. Book 4 changes that to Handgun for all pistols, Combat Rifleman for all rifles, carbines, etc. Book 5 does something similar but with fewer choices (laser weapons, submachine guns and handguns only). Book 6 mentions selecting a specific weapon as in Book 1 when receiving Gun Combat. So does this mean that the characters generated in Book 4 and Book 5 have the broad categories for Gun Combat like Handgun-1 where they would be able to use any pistol with that same skill level? But a character generated from Book 6 would have to select a specific weapon when receiving Gun Combat like say Revolver-1? Am I reading that correctly?
Also, I think I saw mentioned somewhere in Starter Traveller that you could not have more skills or skill levels than your Int + Edu. Does that mean that if for example you are in term 5 and your Int and Edu total 18, and you get another skill level that would take you to a total of 19 levels, you just don't get that skill? Or is this rule just an optional rule that not everyone uses?
At any rate, I am looking forward to my first time GMing CT and appreciate any answers to the above that the community here can provide. I have found many threads here to be very informative!