Pre-18 year old careers...

[Spinward Scout]

Hey Everybody!

Has anyone done anything with pre-careers? I was looking on the T5 pages and it looks like there's going to be something about Space Cadets in the next incarnation of Traveller. I've seen something similar in the LUG Star Trek game - Early Life History. The way I was thinking about it was Minor Early Life History from age 10-14 and a Major Early Life History from age 14-18. Maybe a small advantage in the Minor one like a +1 and a bigger advantage in the Major one - like a +2 in something. If you take the same for both Minor and Major, you end up with a +3 total. Examples from the Star Trek game are:

Academic Upbringing
Affluent
Athletically Inclined
Colony/Frontier Upbringing
Criminal Upbringing
Exploration/Research "Brat"
Failed Colony
Famous Parents
FIMA Training (Psionics Exam and Training)
Grease Monkey
Kidnapped!
Legal Upbringing
Mercantile Upbringing
Military "Brat"
Normal Upbringing
Occupation/Labor Camp Upbringing
Orphaned
Performer
Political Upbringing
Privateer
Religious/Ideological Training
Savant
Scientific Upbringing
Wealthy Upbringing
Well Travelled

For one of my characters I'm working on, I'm giving him Star Cadets (same as Space Cadets - like Boy Scouts) for a Minor and Psionics Training as a Major one. What are some of the things that kids get into?

Boy Scouts/Cub Scouts
Girl Scouts/Brownies
Sea Scouts
Pathfinders
Young Republicans
4H (Agricultural)

You could make both Space Cadets and Star Cadets to reflect the difference between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts, etc...

Let me know what you think,

Scout

 

[wa11eye]

what would you do with the general background where would you put the +'s
like failed colony would you give that pc survival skills or hunting skills.

walleye

 

[Spinward Scout]

That's it exactly: a + to a Survival Skill for a Failed Colony, a + to an Academic Skill for Academic Upbringing, a + to Diplomacy for a Political Upbringing, a + to Streetwise for Orphaned or Criminal Upbringing, etc... But I also want to be able to show that just because your parents were into it, doesn't meant you were. So then you can show a hobby or something else. When I was looking at T5, there is a "Career" called Citizen - I think I would put it in as a before age 18 Term - not everybody has to take it. Or maybe only PCs and special NPCs CAN take a pre-career type of thing before 18 years old. I mean, from the looks of it, in T5, the Scout Career AUTOMATICALLY gives a Scout Ship if you muster out after Term 4 - so there is some kind of precedent for having an automatic type of career issue... (Or is that future precedent? - I hate Time Travel hehe)

Just tossing ideas around,

Scout

 

[wa11eye]

how would you run the teenager who thinks he/she knows everything and everbody old dosen't

wa11eye

 

[wa11eye]

I like your idea and i think i'll use it in my t20 game. it will help pc get more skills with out getting older and it will put a little more background into a sometimes flat pc.
later i might have the gamers randomly draw a pre 18 life to give them a roleplaying challange.

thanks for the idea
wa11eye

 

[Spinward Scout]

Hey wa11eye,

I think that teenager could be done. Very high Intelligence and a ton of Jack-of-all-trades. Too bad there isn't an Intuition or Harmony with the Tao type of thing in Traveller - maybe a port over from GURPS: Martial Arts to GURPS: Traveller for the Harmony of the Tao is in order. Although Bluff or something similar might work to an advantage.

Something else I was thinking was to give skill points for the formative years. 1 Point for the first 5 years of life, 2 points for the second 5 years, 3 points for the third 5 years of life, and 3 points for the 3 years to age 18. That's 9 extra points to spend before getting into play. Would explain a 12 year old computer hacker or something.

The way I see it, an Interstellar society like the Imperium should have some standard schooling. In T20, you could give a point for history, computer, gaming (chess, sports, or others), linguistics (or language), acting, music, art, or whatever, ad nauseum. But think about it this way, to graduate high school in the US (or maybe just Illinois, I don't know), you have to pass a Civics class/test. You have to have so many minimum credits. I'd think there should be some minimum Knowledge skills that would apply to anyone that graduates.

Glad you like the ideas!

Later,

Scout

 

[wa11eye]

Dameon toth detached scout,

would you think of giving the pc + to abilities also
your right you should get a little more to represnt the early years. It should reflect their envirement better. so i'll give a limited list of things the gamers can choose from.

wa11eye

 

[jatay3]

How about a young clerk at some important place coming across an evil plot to...?

 

[jatay3]

A lot could be done just by giving an unusual lack of experience. Several interesting jobs can be given out simply by saying, "he lied about his age" or "his culture finds nothing unusual about it". There could easily be adolescent spacers for instance. After all they had "cabin-boys" "Midshipmen", and "powder-monkeys" in old sea stories. Or the hero could be a spy as in Kiplings "Kim". Or the hero could be forced by circumstance-a refugee for instance. Or one can simply do the clasical Nancy Drew type adventure story.

 

[eiladayn]

I have a campaign mapped out in some scattered notes that would call for four to six players who would be on their midshipman (cadet) cruise aboard a frigate size ship (800T mercenary cruiser, maybe like the Broadsword). The midshipmen would serve aboard the ship as very junior officers, fighter pilots, squad leaders with ground troops dirtside ala "Space,Above and Beyond" (anyone remember that series?).
The players would try their hand at shipboard tasks, small craft piloting, and troop command and get a basic idea of what type of character they would like to play.
I designed this campaign to try and intrigue my son and his friends and get them to try Traveller.
I thought that I would place the campaign on the border of the Imperium--either Zhodani, Solomani, or Vargr, so there would be plenty of small unit action rather than a full scale war. This should get them a good look at the game and how various character types might interact with each other in a gaming situation.
It also would let them develop a character they like slowly while they all get to know one another's character.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Giving a kid ability increase would be great, but in moderation for anything below age 18. An ability increase is more powerful than a skill increase in T20 for example. Increasing 1 skill affects only that skill. Increasing an ability could possible affect 10 different skills if you increase the ability at the right time. That seems like a lot for a kid, to me.

Having a kid in an adventure has been seen in a lot of stories - but then there's also the stigma (that's really only been around for about 100 years) that a kid shouldn't work, that it's bad for the kid. Is that going to be around in 3500 years? I don't know. I think that it should be up to the Referee to toss an unusual background in for a kid. It's a very tough call and could be abused. Yeah, the British (not trying to pick on you Brits) had 15 or 16 year old midshipmen (according to some stories), but then there were always conscripts and people who didn't have birth records even. I don't know if trying to find every permutation of being a kid is the best answer, but I do think that there should be something other than a few background skills and homeworld skills.

At one point, I was trying to figure things like this (for T20):

Homeworld Skills & Feat
bonus for Vacuum world, Hi Pop world, etc...

Minor Early Life Background Skills & Feat
+1 to a skill for age 10 - 14

Major Early Life Background Skills & Feat
+2 to a skill for age 14 - 18

Early Life Education Skills & Feat
High School Graduate knowledge skills
Vehicle skill

Advanced Education Skills & Feat
College, Tech School, etc...

Career Skills and Feats
Normal Prior History

There were some feats created for the d20 Star Wars game to reflect certain types of homeworlds and other details of a background. Artistic, Cosmopolitan, Merchant Trader, Political Pull, Rogue Heritage, and Street Smart, to name a few would work great for something like this.

Later,

Scout

 

[eiladayn]

Originally posted by Dameon Toth Detached Scout: [QB]

Having a kid in an adventure has been seen in a lot of stories - but then there's also the stigma (that's really only been around for about 100 years) that a kid shouldn't work, that it's bad for the kid. Is that going to be around in 3500 years? I don't know. I think that it should be up to the Referee to toss an unusual background in for a kid. It's a very tough call and could be abused. Yeah, the British (not trying to pick on you Brits) had 15 or 16 year old midshipmen (according to some stories), but then there were always conscripts and people who didn't have birth records even. I don't know if trying to find every permutation of being a kid is the best answer, but I do think that there should be something other than a few background skills and homeworld skills.

Exactly, I think,considering the sheer size of the Imperium and the places military personnel might serve in comparison to their original home in terms of distance and the time and cost of going home on leave would keep personnel from going home on leave, for example, and would, instead force those people to form a new and fairly insular society, perhaps even clannish in some respects. Naval crews and marine companies would become more like an extended family, of sorts.

I don't think that the feelings involved would be quite so strong as those within the family, but the loyalty to the unit and the esprit de corps would keep those members depending upon one another for more than just attaining the objective of the day. Good officers would become father figures,capable NCO's would be teachers as much as authority figures.

Being so far from home and so interdependent the unit would need some way to gain recruits and good officer candidates. Coronets, cadets, midshipmen...whatever, would become necessary to keep the unit as an entity cohesive.

So far as the stigma against child labor, well, children below the age of say 13 to 14 years still need too much in the way of nurturing to leave their family, so I don't think the coronet-midshipman should be any younger than that and a legitimate handicap in stats would represent the reduced abilities of such a character (5-10% reduction in strength,endurance, and social standing,and as much as 30% reduction in education while dexterity and intelligence would remain fairly unchanged).

I don't think this type of campaign would be for everyone, but for those fans of Jerry Pournelle Legion stuff and "A Mote in God's Eye" et. al. it might be fun.

eiladayn
Pappy Bill

 

[Pwyll]

seems like rogue hasn't been considered as a teen profession is this thread...

in our world today we have many examples of professional teens, and many of them would fall into the rogue profession in traveller terms.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Something else I thought of is a kid that's been sent off to a private school or military-type academy. But I'm not sure how to handle it. Rogue, I think would be be like the Criminal Upbringing that I had snagged from the LUG Star Trek game. I take you are thinking gangs and such? The problem with pre-careers is I don't think it should be a full 4-year term type of thing. What I mean is the skills aquired when younger might take a full 4 years, but would be less skills than you would aquire in a professional career term. But I can't quite figure out the best way to handle it.

Later,

Scout

 

[ACK!!]

Megatraveller back in the day I believe tried to take a life before 18 years of age into account where you had background skills.

They just did not regiment it out formally into pre-careers. I think the most obvious are:

Space Cadet,

JROTC,

Skaterpunk, (Streetwise, carousing, and such)

rouge,

nowhere job (Admin, Steward etc)

 

[Jame]

Trailer trash who ran away in 10th grade and spent 2 years in the starport before joining the scouts. Especially the female version...

 

[Spinward Scout]

Hey - I think I dated her. But she went in the Navy, not the Scouts.

Scout

 

[Jame]

So you probably dated someone else...

 

[clementk]

Originally posted by ACK:
Megatraveller back in the day I believe tried to take a life before 18 years of age into account where you had background skills.

They just did not regiment it out formally into pre-careers. I think the most obvious are:

Skaterpunk, (Streetwise, carousing, and such)

rouge,

nowhere job (Admin, Steward etc)

The Entertainer career (CT) allowed for starting carreers at age 14 but with -2 to Edu and -1 to Soc. For t20 that would be Edu -3 and Soc -1 or 2.

Instead of Skaterpunk I'd just have Streetkid. And labor laws are not universal even within the Imperium. The local McKrees may be quite different than a McKrees two sectors over.

/me notes that Les Telepaths Rouge have struck again

Casey

 

[Straybow]

rouge,

That would be the French Communist Youth League?