Herewith my comments to part two of the TNE character generation
rules.
General Comment and question: This appears to be the equivalent of
the basic character generation procedure. Will there be an advanced
procedure as well?
Question: Is there a limit on the number of skills that may be
acquired? Under the Traveller/Megatraveller system, skill levels
were limited to the sum of INT and EDU; under the TNE system as
presented so far, the sum if INT and EDU will be lower, but the
number of skills can be significantly higher (a character that does
20 years in a service [not improbable] will accumulate a minimum of
14 skill levels, if he does not receive special duty or promotions.
If he promotes every term, and gets special duty in every term, he
will accumulate 33 skill levels.) - potentially almost triple the
sum of INT and EDU, for an "average" character.
Does the new system assume that the skills will be consciously
selected by the player? It seems to read that way, although I
suppose that a referee could decide that it must be done via die
roll...
Why is there a limit of one application of self-improvement to a
particular skill? I'll concede that this will tend to force
characters to be more rounded, but there are unrounded individuals
in the real world, and I always felt that part of a campaign was
dealing with the situations that will arise when you discover "You
mean _nobody_ knows how to drive a ground car? How are we supposed
to get to the city, then?" Also, it seems to me that people can put
a lot of effort into their hobbies, and in some cases will know more
about a subject or be better at a skill than people who have adopted
it as a career (I know people who used to race [street model] cars
as a hobby who are much better drivers than cabbies).
Again, as with part one, I don't see any differences that will have
a MAJOR effect; in fact, I can almost see how the conversion will
go, subject to the revised list of skills.
J/
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* QMPro 1.0 * Any sufficiently advanced magic looks like technology.
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