Yet another thought on the low birth rules...

[pendragonman]

There is a significant portion of Traveller fans out there who embrace the Low Lottery. There is just as large a group who think "frozen watches don't have a significant portion of them killed off every time they are woken, and how does some technology that has been around for 5-6 TL NOT improve its survivability?"

Just a couple of thoughts.

The Frozen Watch is made up of members of the Navy and Marines. Close to, if not peak physical specimens. Using well maintained equipment with the redundancies normally required for military equipment. With military manning levels for medical staff.

In other words, every conceivable bonus to the die roll. So they don't suffer many casualties, if any (the losses due to low birth failure are beyond the purview of the rules themselves and are therefore up to the GM.)

In the normally encountered area of PC playspace, low births are typically older, and have had the maintenance paid to them like your water heater at home: i.e. none until it breaks down.

Payrolls on character playspace ships is spotty at best. Sometimes you have a real medic with skill at least 2, sometimes your medic has JOT and they are winging it. Sometimes they have no skill at all beyond "flip this switch".

Lastly, let's talk about the average civilian getting into a low birth. If they could afford even a mid passage they would do that instead, so we know they are poor. As they are poor they are likely somewhat malnourished. Have health problems either overtly or hiding it so that they can leave, chronic conditions and others.

In other words, if there is a possible DM against their survival, they have it. So the low birth failure rate is conceivable in the character playplace.

Is it possible there are liners running out there whose passengers are close to military standard and whose equipment is state of the art? Sure, but that is up to the GM as it is outside the rules.

Any thoughts?

 

[Otto Harkaman]

Well yes I totally agree. The Dumarest novels were very enlightening on the use low berth in Traveller. There are different levels of maintenance and qualified personal that would effect survival. It was even hinted at that some crew would kill low berth travellers for their possessions.

Ultimately I think its another tool for the GM to write a story with the players. I can't imagine really killing players off with a low berth roll, I would probably just scare them that it could happen.

 

[Condottiere]

It really could be demographics.

 

[whulorigan]

Well yes I totally agree. The Dumarest novels were very enlightening on the use low berth in Traveller. There are different levels of maintenance and qualified personal that would effect survival.

It was also noted in the Dumarest books that the Low Berths carried on Free Traders were meant for livestock, not human use (hence the lower safety standards). In at least one of the books, there are "low berths" at a scientific research facility that were designed for human-use, and it is specifically noted that the survival rate for those units was much higher.

 

[creativehum]

Generalizing from pendragonman's post:

I think it's a mistake to generalize facts about an entire interstellar civilization from the rules, details, and implied setting found in Basic Traveller (Books 1-3).

As noted elsewhere, the setting of play for Books 1-5 is in a interstellar space at a distance from a remote, centralized government. And the ships, trade, and more found in Books 1-3 reveal what live is like for folks traveling in these remote space lanes, far from the best technology (note the TL's and technology scattered randomly across these subsectors).

Higher end ships built from better TL, with more money and regular maintenance backing them up, would change the nature of many things -- Low Berths being only one example.

 

[kilemall]

Hmmm, let the free market decide- mod the low berth tickets generated for X more tickets for Y safe trips without passenger loss, and less tickets for ships that lose passengers.

In the case of say a Free Trader, you have that choice of maintaining a medic and possibly giving up a high passage room for them vs. a full low berth complement every trip.

Course if you enshrine low berths as being safer, you might have the unintended consequences of shorting your mid and high passage desirability, and certainly a LOT more people would be star travellers, such as what happened in the US when deregulation opened up air travel to more people (but with less perks/services).

Another thing to consider is that if you do go the safe low berth route, that a warship can take damage including to medbays/recovery rooms and/or the medstaff.

Our Frozen Heroes may be waken up by the 4th Gunner's Mate to emergency man or evac a dying boat because there are no medics left, and it's unfreeze them now and take risks or they go down with ship destroyed critical hits.

 

[MThompson016]

In thinking about it, I'd say it would depend on how well maintained the Low Berths are (highly regulated core world liners, or military ships will be in better shape), and how skilled the reviver is. The Traveller book gives it a base 5+ to survive, with +1 for a medic skill of 2, and -1 for an Endurance of 6 or less. Maybe major starports have Low Berth revival equipment that would reduce the risk of death?

If you're out on the fringe though, I can see taking the chance for Cr 1000 to leave home though.

 

[creativehum]

Maybe major starports have Low Berth revival equipment that would reduce the risk of death?

I'm more than willing to believe that the berths and medical facilities are much better the closer you get to "civilization."

Also this...

If you're out on the fringe though, I can see taking the chance for Cr 1000 to leave home though.

In the Food and Overhead section of CT, Ordinary food and lodging total Cr400 a month. This means that a Middle Passage for one jump is going to cost about a year and a half of living expenses.

So, yeah... If you have to move, Low Passage might seem like the ticket for the better life you are dreaming of.

With that said, my guess is that prices become more equitable the closer one gets to civilization, and Lower Berths are even a rarity.

 

[Adam Dray]

I totally had a character die in low berth in a convention game.

I had made a huge deal about the rules being so dangerous, but I'd lucked into a high passage perk when I mustered out. However, our adventure led us to want some heavy gun folks awake to take over the ship we were traveling on, and I "took one for the team" and gave my high passage to a marine with gun skills and took his low passage ticket. I think I rolled snake-eyes for my survival roll.

I'm just glad it was toward the end of the game slot.