How's it goin', eh?
I started playing Traveller back in High School, but then stopped and
have not done anything until just recently. I wonder if some of you
more up-to-date types might be willing to express some opinions on the
supplementary books, (ie Book i, for i>3, and others like Spinward
Marches) for those of us who have not invested in them yet.
I wrote two quick little programs when I started to get interested in
Traveller once again.
1) A program (in C) to generate characters (based on the procedure in
Book 1.)
2) A program (in MacPascal) to generate sectors and the worlds therein.
>From these projects, I concluded the following:
1) Character generation
I agree with these opinions (from Charles Martin
[email removed])
> Topic for discussion: the expanded service routines (in _Mercenary_, _High
> Guard_, _Scouts_, etc. Opinion: circular file.
> Using these skill generation systems usually results in a whole mess more
> skills than the basic system.
And besides that, it makes the program to generate a player an order of
magnitue more complex (and it's hard to avoid spagetti code...) Not that
I am lazy, but is the extra work worth it? This is covered nicely in
the following: [my comments]
> The original system had the *advantage* (in my opinion) of giving
> characters characters relatively few skills. I think this is a plus
> because
> (1) it gives players a free hand at coming up with a past history
> for their characters...[at which time you may elect to add detail
or specialization to a skill, voluntarily limiting the character to,
say, Computer-3 (Operating Systems) IF YOU WANT IT THAT WAY.
> (2) players easily "encompassing" [grokking] their character descriptions,
> which contributes to roleplaying. [this is the MOST important point]
> (3) I think few skills leads to a basic assumption of competence for the
> character which contributes to fun gaming as characters are willing to try
> most anything.
2) Sector/World generation
As far as Book 6 (which "jamesp" mentioned?) I have never seen this one,
could someone comment on the pros/cons of a more detailed system for
generating worlds?
Other stuff:
> I'd rather run adventures that deal with alien artifacts,
> political intrigues, or even plain space opera (blasters and light sabers).
In fact, I am working on a Scenario where an alien artifact is
discovered in the asteroid belt by some miners...but I am finding that
Traveller is not ideally suited to this scenario, because it presumes a
particular social setting and technology level. I would like to have
this discovery made in the context of (more or less) the present
political and technological situation here on earth (20 minutes into
the future?) Can anyone recommend a character attribute/skill
generation system appropriate to this scenario? (I have been looking
at Top Secret...)
- ---
Tom Malaher - `fortune | jive > .disclaimer`
[address removed]
[email removed]
{allegra,decvax,inhp4,utzoo}!watmath!watale!twmalaher
I'm sorry, my memory has been shredded. - Lt. Col. Oliver North