Unless they played 1e, or RQ - all three published within a year or two of each-other, all quite deadly.

Quote from: Simlasa;1114815I've always used the characters who died in chargen as backstory for the ones that didn't... "Sam's brother died under suspicious circumstances during his first term with the Scout Service, and someday I'm going to find out what really happened!"

The downside of Traveller, IME, are the crusty critters who come out of the woodwork when someone announces they're running the game. Like real world military guys and gun fondlers who want to tell us all how we're doing it wrong.
I've yet to play a game of Traveller that didn't descend into nitpicking AND/OR was run by a GM who really wasn't comfortable with scifi and would drop us into some vaguely disguised dungeon crawl on a backwater planet first chance they got.

Not the fault of the game at all, of course.

I have done this as well. At GaryCon, in one a my Traveller games the year before last one of the players rolled up a marine that died in service. The casket of the dead marine was located on the loading docks of a space station where a firefight erupted, over the coffin, because it contained a Mcguffin (contraband, that the players were attempting to locate, to complete an investigation). Once the players read the name on the casket, they all laughed because they all already knew the entire backstory of the dead marine, and this really drew them into the investigation, as they had to determine the real cause of death!

Had a Rogue character that died in chargen during their 4th term. Probably in an aircraft accident as that was what was training at the time... Bemusing part is they also failed THREE aging checks during that. Strength, Dexterity and Endurance all went down by 1. Was never sure if that was before or after they died though...

I'm a MegaTraveller player, so it's a bit different, but I always wondered what those Classic Traveller characters with only two or three skills actually DO in any given adventure or campaign?

"When all you have is a hammer..."

Quote from: Theros;1115550I'm a MegaTraveller player, so it's a bit different, but I always wondered what those Classic Traveller characters with only two or three skills actually DO in any given adventure or campaign?

Yeah, that's like when you're a fighter, what if you need to open a lock quietly, or detect if something's magical? What if you're a wizard and you need to do some melee fighting? What do you actually DO in any given adventure or campaign?

You know what might work? If there were more than one player, and each of them had a character with a different set of skills. Alone each would be fairly useless, but together they would be really effective.

If they're on a spaceship, we could call this group a crew. Or perhaps among soldiers, a squad or section. If they're just general adventurers, we could call it an adventuring party. And then in any given situation, each would try to make use of their particular skills to advance things, and if they couldn't, well just sit back for a bit while the others did things. And that accomplished, move on to the next challenge.

I wonder if anyone has ever tried such a thing in real life or games?

Quote from: Theros;1115550I'm a MegaTraveller player, so it's a bit different, but I always wondered what those Classic Traveller characters with only two or three skills actually DO in any given adventure or campaign?

What do you DO with a character with lots of skills and nothing to apply them to at the moment, or for a chunk of the adventure or campaign?

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;1115568I wonder if anyone has ever tried such a thing in real life or games?

Look. You are supposed to only spout crazy talk. Stop making sense!

Quote from: Theros;1115550I'm a MegaTraveller player, so it's a bit different, but I always wondered what those Classic Traveller characters with only two or three skills actually DO in any given adventure or campaign?

Back then (Books 1-3), the skills were much wider than afterwards -so Gunnery 1 in book1 is the equivalent of gunnery-7 (1 in each discipline) in book 5. Also, a lot of GMs allowed "extra" skills at 0 (so no bonus but no negatives) for things that characters really needed to do (so Vacc suit-0 was quite common). And Jack-of-all-trades is a thing!

But to answer that question.

What do you do?

Apply what you have as best you can.
Learn new skills.
Use basic skills or just try something unskilled if possible. Some games allow that, some do not.
Shoot stuff! Bash stuff with stuff! Punch stuff with fists!

My diplomat had alot of skills. But were pretty much useless for a fair chunk of the adventure. We were for the most part ground bound on a pretty mountainous planet so my skills at submersibles and vac suit didnt really come into play at all. Other skills like liason and recruiting came up maybee all of once. I mostly just hung back with a pistol and did fire support for the more combat savvy characters.

Oh and this one also at the end of chargen failed 2of 3 aging checks.

Quote from: Theros;1115550I'm a MegaTraveller player, so it's a bit different, but I always wondered what those Classic Traveller characters with only two or three skills actually DO in any given adventure or campaign?

Classic Trav characters are not defined by the skill numbers. It took me a while to get my head around this. For a start, your character has Level-0 in every weapon. Plus, if you look at the skill descriptions, a lot of them - maybe most, I haven't checked - don't specify any penalty for unskilled attempts. Some do, a lot don't. E.g. vehicles - there's a bonus for skill when attempting challenging tasks like evasive driving in a gunfight, but no penalty for unskilled.

Say your guy spent eight years in the Marines and came out with Cutlass-2, Electronics-1, Vacsuit-1. OK, doesn't look like much. But it's up to you to play him like he's a bad-ass ex-Marine. He can pick up any weapon and be passably efficient with it; with a cutlass, he is absolutely lethal. He can hotwire security systems. He's got a better than even chance of surviving a really dangerous EVA incident when most people would more likely than not end up in trouble.

He can pick up any weapon and operate any vehicle. He can get a crew slot on a starship as a cargo hand or steward. And, he can forge documents that stand a near-even chance of passing inspection by officials.  Etc. etc.

Most of us are schooled on RPGs of the 80s, 90s and early 00s that defined more and more precisely what characters are allowed to do based on numbers on their sheets. Classic Traveller, like OD&D, works differently. The numbers are just a beginning. This guy blogs a lot about it, which was an eye-opener for me.

I read a piece somewhere where Marc Miller said when he plays Traveller these days, he just has the players roll up the six stats and they test them on 2D roll under, the only rule being you have to use all the stats before you can circle back to the first one. That's it.

If you know Barbarians of Lemuria it might help to think about it like that - you and your Ref should consider your guy able to do pretty much anything you'd expect someone from his career to be able to do, whether there's a skill written down for it on the character sheet or not.

Quote from: Marchand;1115611Classic Trav characters are not defined by the skill numbers. It took me a while to get my head around this. For a start, your character has Level-0 in every weapon. Plus, if you look at the skill descriptions, a lot of them - maybe most, I haven't checked - don't specify any penalty for unskilled attempts. Some do, a lot don't. E.g. vehicles - there's a bonus for skill when attempting challenging tasks like evasive driving in a gunfight, but no penalty for unskilled.

Say your guy spent eight years in the Marines and came out with Cutlass-2, Electronics-1, Vacsuit-1. OK, doesn't look like much. But it's up to you to play him like he's a bad-ass ex-Marine. He can pick up any weapon and be passably efficient with it; with a cutlass, he is absolutely lethal. He can hotwire security systems. He's got a better than even chance of surviving a really dangerous EVA incident when most people would more likely than not end up in trouble.

He can pick up any weapon and operate any vehicle. He can get a crew slot on a starship as a cargo hand or steward. And, he can forge documents that stand a near-even chance of passing inspection by officials.  Etc. etc.

Most of us are schooled on RPGs of the 80s, 90s and early 00s that defined more and more precisely what characters are allowed to do based on numbers on their sheets. Classic Traveller, like OD&D, works differently. The numbers are just a beginning. This guy blogs a lot about it, which was an eye-opener for me.

I read a piece somewhere where Marc Miller said when he plays Traveller these days, he just has the players roll up the six stats and they test them on 2D roll under, the only rule being you have to use all the stats before you can circle back to the first one. That's it.

If you know Barbarians of Lemuria it might help to think about it like that - you and your Ref should consider your guy able to do pretty much anything you'd expect someone from his career to be able to do, whether there's a skill written down for it on the character sheet or not.

Yea, back in the 80s and 90s I fell into the trap of trying to define characters by their skills. The problem is you really can't represent a modern character's knowledge with a set of skills. In this, I think Classic Traveller is actually better than the "skill" systems. I look at the Traveller skills as the things a character is exceptionally good at. I'd posit that there are things a character shouldn't have to roll for if they have the appropriate skill. Now Traveller does confuse the situation a bit by requiring certain skills for certain positions on a star ship, on the other hand, it doesn't say you can't actually pilot a star ship without Pilot skill, it just says a character hired as a pilot must have Pilot-1. One thing that supports not having to have the skills to operate a ship is that Type-S Scout Ships are designed to be operated by one person, yet it is unlikely that a Scout character has Engineering-1 and Medic-1, etc. (they DO all have Pilot-1 though).

Now the one exception is combat skills, which of course games of the era focused a lot on. But then PCs are all granted level-0 in all weapons. I would suggest that by reading the skill list in 1977 that Gunnery is also included in the automatic skill-0 (and I also add Brawling)... An automatic Gunnery-0 for all PCs is actually great, ships with smaller computers aren't likely running programs to allow adding Gunnery skill so all you really need is a body qualified to sit in the turret.

When we clear our minds of the need to define characters by their skills, it leaves the way for focusing on adventure. The skills are then used to get the PCs out of (and sometimes into) jams and not to limit what actions can be taken.

Frank

Quote from: Marchand;1115611Classic Trav characters are not defined by the skill numbers. It took me a while to get my head around this. For a start, your character has Level-0 in every weapon. Plus, if you look at the skill descriptions, a lot of them - maybe most, I haven't checked - don't specify any penalty for unskilled attempts. Some do, a lot don't. E.g. vehicles - there's a bonus for skill when attempting challenging tasks like evasive driving in a gunfight, but no penalty for unskilled.

That was the impression I got with my only Traveller session so far. My character mostly used a gun and a sort of flail thing as they had a fairly decent strength for a diplomat apparently.

Fear the Boot recently did a podcast covering the character generation in Traveler.

Episode 532 – reasoning out the random

Quote from: ffilz;1115619I look at the Traveller skills as the things a character is exceptionally good at. [...] Now Traveller does confuse the situation a bit by requiring certain skills for certain positions on a star ship

As others have noted, skill-1 in something is enough skill to do it professionally, and skill-3 is a very solid career. Not many people have twelve different professions, nor do many people pick new ones up past their 20s. This is of course the cue for someone to pop up telling us how he's an expert in forty-eight different careers, and picked up half of them after 40 years old, also speaks 6 languages fluently and is a black belt in 14 different martial arts. I don't mean you, Mr Special, I mean the rest of us plebs.

It's not unreasonable that if you're flying in a craft which has you all two inches from death by hard vacuum that you have professionals running the thing.

It helps to consider that a small skill list is effectively a character class system, and a character class is a profession, and a very broad skill. With 200+ skills listed, GMs will tend to make exclusive definitions, thus "yes I know you have Longsword-4, but Shortsword is an entirely different skill." With 20 or less skills listed, GMs will tend to make inclusive definitions, "you're a fighter? well, fighters use all kinds of swords." Many players approach game sessions defensively, expecting GMs to rule against them every time - and coming from having played games with lengthy skill lists, plus feats and spells and all that, and try to protect against exclusive rulings by having Mary Sue characters.

But when playing Classic Traveller, you should begin by assuming the GM is not out to get you.