The Traveller Skills

[robject]

One question that hasn't been clearly addressed is, once you have your pared-down list of 36 skills (or whatever number floats your boat), how do you divide them among the careers?

That could be a different thread entirely, since the career list varies as well. But there's a good point in there:

36 skills might be a bit light, if you have 18 careers.

Yes, I think these two go hand-in-hand to some degree. MegaTraveller may have 100+ skills, but it's got all 18 of the classic careers.

I seem to fuzzily recall doing some very rough math on this, and postulating that the skill list should be 5 to 7 times the number of careers, give or take.

If you have 6 careers, aim for 30 to 40 skills; with 10 careers, aim for 50 to 70 skills.

 

[robject]

How about
<Survival> Desert, Icepack, Jungle, Temperate, Alpine

I like those.

 

[robject]

After reading the new posts here, I decided I didn't like many of the conflations I had to do. My list was becoming too speculative (and it was already biased by me anyway).

So, I've changed my list to reflect what I think are the "common" skills, the skills seen most often in Traveller rules. I selected 40 skills I think fit that bill.

 

[atpollard]

One question that hasn't been clearly addressed is, once you have your pared-down list of 36 skills (or whatever number floats your boat), how do you divide them among the careers?

A career is really no more than a defined subset of the master skill list. How many skills should be available to each career, on the average?

What mechanism are you going to use to make sure that characters who roll on the tables for Career X receive the basic skills that define Career X?

The classical solution is twofold: default skills are given free without the need to roll for them (for some careers, anyway), and important skills can appear more than once in the chargen tables, which increases the probability of acquiring them. Do people think this is sufficient, or does anyone have other ideas about how it could/should be done?

I have an IMTU system that I like:
First, I enjoy using the character generation process to create a backstory and I like to link rolls in chargen to opportunities to learn a skill.
Second, I find that 2 skills per term works well with the LBB1-3 friendly 2D6 roll 8+ core mechanic.
In advanced chargen, each career has access to several tables ... Military Life, Career Specialty, Advanced Education ... and I use those tables as a starting point.

Taking chargen one term at a time:
1. If the character passes his ENLISTMENT roll for the term, then he rolls for a skill on the CAREER SPECIALTY table ... this is the skill that he was exposed to during four years of working in his career.
2. If the character passes his SURVIVAL roll for the term, then he rolls for a skill on the MILITARY LIFE table ... this is the skill that he was exposed to during four years of free time in his career.
3. If the character passes his PROMOTION roll for the term, then he rolls for a skill on the ADVANCED EDUCATION table ... with new rank comes new responsibilities, so he was sent for some training and this is the skill that he was exposed to during his special training for that term. (It could also have been learned working with a higher ranking mentor that took an interest in your career).
4. If I want a more detailed background, steps 1-3 can be done for each year using the advanced chargen rules ... the END OF THE TERM detailed below will take care of the extra skills.

END OF THE TERM: Since I want to maintain the 2 skills per term average and I want to create a back story, here is where the player gets to use his imagination, control his character development and have some fun ... From the up to three skills that he has been exposed to (or up to 12 skills using advanced chargen) the player selects two skills that he gets to keep. These are skills that the character both had an OPPORTUNITY to learn, and CHOSE to study. This gives the player some control over who his character becomes while still preserving an element of chance in the opportunity to learn a skill. The third skill (or ONE of the remaining skills if advanced chargen was used) is converted to skill-0 ... representing exposure and familiarity with a task without completely mastering it.

Using all of these rolls and decisions (plus any of the chrome from advanced chargen like specific assignments and decorations), the player has plenty of inspiration to create a sentence or short paragraph outlining those 4 years of his life to serve as a background to the character.

[Repeat for each additional term.]

This gives the player two skills per term (like a Scout) plus one additional skill-0 per term (since the CT rules are vague on how to gain skill-0 other than referee fiat).

With respect to increasing the probability and gaining skills in your career specialty:
The CAREER SPECIALTY table would contain the skills preferred in that career (the technical skills needed to do your job) and Characters can gain one every term they serve. This is loaded up with all of those skills that you want linked to that specific career.
The CAREER LIFE table would contain the skills generally available to all characters and Characters can gain one every term they survive.
The ADVANCED EDUCATION table would contain the skills that you want the character to have a chance of getting but not to dominate his skill list and Characters can only gain one if they make a promotion roll.

With respect to having 36 skills and dividing them among the careers:
My thoughts tended towards creating 6 Career Groups (Perhaps NAVY/SCOUT; ARMY/MARINE; MERCHANT; POLICE/CRIMINAL; CORPORATE; TECHNICAL) with 6 skills assigned exclusively to each group as CAREER SPECIALTY. The CAREER LIFE and ADVANCED EDUCATION tables would allow limited access to the 30 CAREER LIFE skills not assigned to your specific career. The actual CAREERS would need to be created based upon the available CAREER LIFE skill lists, so my speculative list of 6 'Career Groups' will probably need adjusting.

 

[PFVA63]

Other games, for their purposes use even less skills and still proclaim them to be all inclusive of what can be done in the entire universe. As an example, the current Doctor Who game only has 12, count them, 12 skills.
...

Hi,

I believe that the Primeval RPG uses the same system modified a bit for that setting. Looking at its rulebook, there appear to be 13 skills, as follow;

Animal Handling (Dogs, Horses, Reptiles, Insects, Fish, Primates)
Athletics (Running, Jumping, Acrobatics, Climbing, Parachuting, Scuba, Swimming)
Convince (Fast Talk, Bluff, Leadership, Seduction, Interrogation, Charm, Lie, Talk Down)
Craft (Building, Painting, Farming, Singing, Guitar, Woodwork, Metalwork, Dancing)
Fighting (Unarmed Combat, Parry, Block, Throws, Feints, Sword, Club, Knife, Chainsaw)
Knowledge (History, Anthropology, Law, Psychology, Language, Literature, Sociology)
Marksman (Bow, Pistol, Rifle, Automatic Weapons, Thrown Weapons, Tranquilliser Gun, Mounted Weapons)
Medicine (Disease, Wounds, Poisons, Psychological Trauma, Surgery, Forensics, Veterinary Medicine)
Science (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Botany, Biology, Quantum Physics)
Subterfuge (Sneaking, Lockpicking, Sleight of Hand, Pickpocketing, Safecracking, Camouflage)
Survival (Desert, Jungle, Swamp, Mountain, Arctic, Wilderness)
Technology (Computers, Electronics, Gadgetry, Hacking, Repair, Robotics)
Transport (Cars, Trucks, Helicopters, Aircraft, Boats, Motorcycles, Submarines)

Here also attributes range only up to 5 or 6, but here there are also 34 good "traits" and 31 bad "traits" (plus a couple special ones) which also affect how the characters are played and may impart die roll modifiers in certain instances. Such examples include;

ANIMAL FRIENDSHIP (Minor Good Trait) Animals like and trust you.
Effect: When encountering an animal for the first time, the character may attempt to show it that they mean no harm and distil any aggressive tendencies, giving a +2 bonus to any Animal Handling rolls when trying to tame or calm a creature.

BY THE BOOK (Minor Bad Trait) You follow the rules, even when it’s against your best interest.
Effect: You follow proper protocols at all times. This has good and bad points—on the plus side, you’ve got a +2 bonus to Resolve rolls to resist
influences that might distract you from your duties. The downside is that you’re a stickler for following written instructions and official policy—if you disobey the orders of a superior officer, breach the rules of your organisation, or even skip the boring paperwork, it costs you Story Points.

And as noted in the example above, this game also makes use of story points.

Overall, I'm not sure that all the above would necessarily be good in a Traveller type game, but I have thought that maybe fewer skills perhaps combined with stuff like "traits" or something similar might be interesting in a Traveller like setting.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Yep, Cubicle 7. Same rule system as Doctor Who. Some differences like Animal Handling is not used in Doctor Who. But then, you are not likely to have Time Lord or Experienced Time Lord as a Trait in Primeval.

As a task skill system, it is very similar to Mongoose Traveller. Even has success and failure levels. Just the specific numbers are different. What I was trying to illustrate was an alternate system of compressed skills. In the case of DW/Primeval, it is more along theatric sort of game. Well Doctor Who is. So Transport covers any vehicle. Period. For the purposes of compression, even here, some might argue that Science and Knowledge be combined together into one skill. Or perhaps Craft and Technology.

For those who don't know the game, combat is in order of action taken by characters
AllTalkers go first
then all Movers
then all Doers
then all Fighters
then by attribute value used to take your action (even if players are using different ones), then skill level (even if it is different skills). If you are still tied, its simultaneous.
Just like the TV show!

 

[Nathan Brazil]

I don't have, but I have skimmed Primeval.
Doctor Who between the main box and the Aliens and Creatures box would not be to bad for a skill system. Not enough crunch for many Traveller systems. And people might not like the compression of Technological Levels.

Technology								Trav
Level	Label			Technology Available			TL
1	Primitive		Stone Age				0
2	Metalworking		Bronze Age to Middle Ages		1
3	Renaissance		15th-17th Century Earth			2
4	Industrial		18th-20th Century Earth			3-5
5	Space Faring		Colonization of the Solar System.	6-8
6	Star Faring		FTL Travel				9-21
7	Advanced Interstellar	Transmat. No Time Travel		22-27+
8	Time Faring		51st Century - Vortex Manipulator	35?
9	Advanced Time Faring	Daleks					36?
10	Time Lord							37?
11	Ancient Time Lord	The Dark Times,Rassilon and Omega.	38?
12	Beyond Comprehension	Technology only available to the Eternals

 

[PFVA63]

Hi,

I agree that neither system is necessarily 'right" for a Traveller type setting but, they do give some neat ideas for some things that could maybe be incorporated into Traveller type rules.

 

[Fox's Master]

General Skills

Like the Dr. Who game which has been mentioned a few times, Serenity too includes a list of about two dozen main skill headers (Athletics, Guns, Pilot, etc.) with a dozen or more specific skills underneath each one. for instance the main skill, Perception would include, for greater specificity Intuition, Sharp Hearing, Gambling, etc.

As a current game designer much of the decision on the type and number of skills you have is directly tied to the die-system in place. For instance, as Traveller in all of its iterations has used 2d6, you have a very shallow bell curve compared, for instance with a 3d6, 4d8. or 8d10 system. Each point earned as a skill 'rank' in Traveller punches way above its weight class in terms of significance to the result.

I personally like the idea of a smaller group of general skills, underwhich you can list areas of expertise.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

That is one difference in how skills are addressed.
In MgT one skill gets the benefit of the high numberic value, the related specialties all level 0. An implication that the other skills are "distinct but related".
DR Who skills are implied to all be part of a broad knowledge base, with the Area of Knowledge just something you are better at.

 

[McPerth]

IMHO, skills must be divided in those frequently used by players (in Rolemaster would be th primiray skills) and those rarely (or only in specific campaigns) used (in Rolemaster would be the seccondary skills) and cascades (in MT sense, skills that allow you to choose among several).

Examples of primary skills would be pilot, gun combat (even being a cascade), engineer, medic, JOT, etc...

Examples of seccondary skills would be what is Trade in MgT, forward observer (unless you're playing mercenary campaigns, never used, despite I've seen many characters having it), etc...

Primary skills should be available as such, even if also in some cascades, while seccondary skills should only be in cascades, so allowing players to receive them only if they want them.

This will allow to be a relatively short primary skill list (I guess among 30-40), while also allowing further detail for the player who wants to know a specific skill, even if only for game colour.

 

[HG_B]

IMHO, skills must be divided in those frequently used by players (in Rolemaster would be th primiray skills) and those rarely (or only in specific campaigns) used (in Rolemaster would be the seccondary skills) and cascades (in MT sense, skills that allow you to choose among several).

I totally agree with this assessment.

 

[aramis]

To be honest, I think TNE was the best at handling "related skills" - take your primary, and the related skills are half that value. So Engineering (Jump) at 4 gives Engineering (all others) at 2.

 

[HG_B]

To be honest, I think TNE was the best at handling "related skills" - take your primary, and the related skills are half that value. So Engineering (Jump) at 4 gives Engineering (all others) at 2.

Yeah, that was a good mechanic.

 

[McPerth]

To be honest, I think TNE was the best at handling "related skills" - take your primary, and the related skills are half that value. So Engineering (Jump) at 4 gives Engineering (all others) at 2.

Also MgT uses a similar method (if you have the skill, you have the related skills at 0, higher if you later develop them).

As for increasing all related skills by increasing the primary one (as you say), I'm afraid it's too powerful when skill is more relevant that stat, something that don't uses t obe in TNE, T4 or T5, where stat uses to be more determinant than skill to determine the target number.

This also needs a good determination on which skills may be so used. E.g. in MgT trade skill is specifically excluded for this, but language skill is not (IMHO an error, as discussed in this thread).