a quick note on character generation

DON'T forward this to GEnie, Carl: I sent a copy to Rob, and then realized
that the TML might want to see it..... [Metlay, I nuked GENIE from the
subject line.  That's the flag that Carl looks for -- James]

metlay
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One other small matter that I hope will be addressed by the new character
generation system in TNE: multiple career changes as a legal part of the
rules. The average person in our society changes careers over twenty
times in his or her life; in Traveller you're not allowed to do it at all,
unless you're a Vargr. You're a Navy man when you're 18, and the only way
you can try something different when you're 26 is to muster out and
become an adventurer, with a big set of gaps in your skill lists as compared
to the 42-year-olds out there. My personal bias would be to state that a
person can only serve in one MILITARY establishment in their career, and
would then need to move to paramilitary or civilian organizations. This
would lead to careers like the following:

"Well, I was a bomber pilot in the War-- got a bunch of decorations. Then
I decided to give civilian life a try, so I used my piloting experience
to hire on as a commercial pilot hauling passengers and cargo. After some
years of that, it got kind of old, so I decided to give writing a try.
And now I make a living doing writing and mass media production, with my
skill base as a means of qualifying me as a technical consultant."

Sound like the typical sort of random hashing around that you'd expect
from an easily-bored Vargr? Well, surprise surprise: as anyone who
wears plastic ears to conventions could tell you, that was Gene Roddenberry's
resume at any point in the last two decades of his life. Think about it.

metlay