(I have been trouble submitting to the list, so forgive me if this
is a bit dated).
I'd like to take the other side of Charles Martin's article. Before
I do that I think that I would like to expound on how I run my own
Traveller. First of all most of the people I run with are wargamers.
This means that in most given situations the military solution is the
first one tried by my players. Therefore, I seek mostly to place
the characters in situations were that is appropriate i.e. the majority
of my characters are Mercenaries working in Mercenary units. At the same
time I try to make the situations more challenging that just straight
shoot'em ups. Second all characters were generated using the expanded
skill books High Guard, Mercenary, Scouts and Assassins (Paranoia Press)
and Merchants and Merchandise (Paranoia Press) (the other service is hand
generated). Note: GDW now has out Scout and Merchant books and since the
Paranoia Press books are out of print you can substatute those. So no
character ended up with a huge advantage over another character. Finally
I never take the rules so seriously that I don't modify them to suit how I
want to run my game i.e. I modify the piss out of them if need be. Also I
let players roll their own characters (and told them to choose the die
numbers if they wished), since I'd match the situation they were placed
in to their skills. I tend to run one-on-one often through the
mail so this works best. If I do run groups then they would most
likely have to justify why they generated the way they did i.e. if
there were Mercs in the group then they would have to expect to
end up in combat situations (otherwise why would you associate
with Mercs?).
In Traveller skills can easily equal survival and the more skills
the more likely the character is to survive. In the original
books you end up with wimpy little characters who kick off at the
first critical point. Characters with more skills are likely to
have a critical skill which will save their lives. As for Mercenary it
was designed to generate professional soldiers, and yes if you hang around
with that type, you're gonna see some action. Yet in a Merc situation
characters without those skills are the first blown away. If you use
Mercenary then you should place the characters in a Mercenary unit
situation or at least in some situation where combat is expected.
As for the emphasis on weapons in GDW's games, find a system that
doesn't have that emphasis. In D&D they describe every medieval
weapon that exists. Why is this? Because that is were the money is.
The majority of people who play these games are looking for a hack
and slash release. If that information is not there then the game
will be useless for portraying any military situations and won't sell to
the majority of the market. How much effect the weapons have on a
given campaign is up to the referee.
Personally I have never really liked the Traveller generation system,
because a character can die while being generated. Any character that
you generate should be assumed to survive. Also much of what you
say I actually agree with i.e. you don't get the diversity of character's
backgrounds that you would like. As an interesting sidelight the designers
at GDW sort of feel the same way about the Morrow Project that you do
about Traveller. Frank Chadwick used describe the MP as follows:
Farmer: What you doing?
Morrow Team Member (MTM): We're here to restore civilization!
Farmer: Great what you got in the truck?
MTM: Explosives.
In my campaigns characters who worked on their background were given skill
bonuses to match their efforts. For these reasons I actually prefer
the new Traveller 2300 system where you take skill points and buy the
skills you want. (Note: I haven't got around to buying it yet, but I
have the Twilight 2000 game on which it is based. In Twilight 2000 your
skill points are divided into three pools background, education and
military and skills are divided into what types of points can be used
to buy them. For example something like swimming can be bought from any
point pool, but heavy weapons skills are only available from the military
pool. Players then buy skills to suit the character they want).
As for breaking down skills or creating new skills why not? In my
campaigns and in some of the campaigns I have played in we did
this freely. Some of the skills we created at need were Self Discipline
and Equestrian. As for the Computer skill why not break it down into
hardware design, maintenance, operations and programming skills?
I don't know about AI and VLSI (hey, but what ever turns you on).
There is surely a common base of knowledge for the two, so you
could always let VLSI count as half AI skill or something.
You obviously have the knowledge to make it work. If you do break
it down then suddenly more skills become really attractive. Oh well,
enough rambling for now.
Hi Ho,
Tom H.