Hoi,
There was a question about experience rules for traveller:
Way back, this used to come up all the time ... anyone who moved over
from D&D to Traveller wanted to know where the experience rules were.
So we all developed our own house rules for experience points. When the
instruction skill came out alot of this went by the by - if you wanted
a skill you got someone to teach you it. The group I used to referee
had by this time got used to the house rules, however ....
I have a somewhat complex system I developed back then, based on the
fact that Traveller and Runequest were my favourite RP games (still
are).
Basically:
- - each game session the player might be awarded an experience point in
a particular skill. A natural 12 on a 2d6 for any roll gets a bonus
point. In practice the expectation is that a point WILL be awarded
unless the player's character really screws up, or dies.
- - the points went into a pool, but a list was kept of the skills
where each characters' points had been gained
- - when the player has enough points, he/she can expend them on a skill
roll in any one of the skills on the list. To qualify for a the roll,
the player needs (3*(S+6)) points, where S is the hoped for new skill
level (so for skill-3, you need 27 points).
- - the player rolls once on 2D6, modified by Int. The modified result
must be greater than or equal to S+6.
In practice, given that the interval between gaming sessions tended to
be 1 week of game time (another house rule was that the session
finished after the players went into jump), the result was a decent fit
for the progression of skills acquisition during character generation.
Once this fact was explained, failing the skill role after all the
scrimping and saving was not a big issue - the players were fairly
philosophical about it. But it did allow a character to muster out in
his/her 20s and continue to progress. When instruction came along, that
allowed characters to move up to level-0 or 1 in a new skill and then
use the skills system to progress further. I also kept track of a few
key NPCs during the period, so that they also developed along with the
player characters.
For lengthy periods of rest (eg one character is recovering in a
meditank), characters could also develop via practice: provided the
referee agrees that facilities are available (ie no swimming practice
on a desert world) the character needs to pass a Det roll to pick up a
skill point. Back then I had a Det characteristic (called Motivation)
but I rolled it separately - I don't think the basing of it on Int/End
in MT is a particularly bright idea. Characters with low Motivation
picked up interesting contacts down the bar instead ...
A few fairly sedentary skills could also be practiced while in
jumpspace, but in fact most skills are difficult to develop in the
confines of a small ship, effectively travelling on autopilot.
The intention was to take the Runequest idea of making moving up in
skills more difficult the further you wanted to go. It worked out OK
for me, but it requires a little maturity on the part of the players to
take those failed skill rolls.
How you'd do it under TNE I've no idea ...
Mark