So I just rolled up this gentleman…
Starman Davon Fynnegun, Age 22, 1 term.
686BAC
Ship’s Boat-1 Pilot-1
CR. 20,000
The navy didn't like him enough to let him stay on, apparently.
What have you done with one-term characters like this? I'm honestly tempted to use him in a solo game and see how he does—he has a ready-made place as a pilot if only he can find a crew to sign on with.
Per the Classic
Traveller rules, Davon also has an expertise of 0 in
all weapons (most folks have a DM -5 for weapons) which puts him as quite capable in a fight. He's a pilot, knows his way around ships. We could assume he's traveled a bit in the four years in the navy and thus knows his way around starports and encountering new cultures and people.
He is
very smart and very educated, which means he can figure things out on the fly and the Referee can often feed the player "things your guy would know."
He's a noble, which means he can tap resources and contacts on occasion. He's young and healthy, with an about average build. He can handle himself in a fistfight.
Questions abound: Kilemall already noted several in terms of his social standing. And what did happen in the navy? He clearly had the goods to make an officer. What is his temperament? Who did he piss off? He's still young, perhaps hot-headed. Or perhaps he has a moral compass that prevented him from doing something he knew was wrong?
Is he already in trouble? On the lamb from authorities? Is his noble house in crisis? Is he an adrenaline-junky who needs to keep getting into bad situations, which means trouble with both the navy and at home?
Who is this guy? What will happen to him? What does he want to accomplish? What will he do with the characteristics and skills he has at hand?
As for skills, if the Player wants, he can have Davon take advantage of the Experience rules, allowing him to improve his capacity with a firearm and a melee weapon, allowing him to receive an expertise of 1 with each. Alternately he could increase his Pilot and Ship Boat expertise to 2, making him quite valuable as a pilot.
********
I know that lots of people look at the
number of skills a
Traveller character possess to determine his worth -- but that's not how the game was designed to work and certainly not how I judge the character.
The
Player can use this character to accomplish a great deal -- an exciting amount of activity, in fact.
The thing to remember that original
Traveller, like the rules for original Dungeons & Dragons or Basic D&D, wasn't built to create a character with skills to handle every situation. The
Player was supposed to be creative, come up with solutions -- often without ever even rolling dice or rolling Throws created by the Referee on an ad hoc basis. The sparse bonuses of characteristics or skills were to be used on occasion to help in those Throws, not to
define what a character could or could not do.