Classic Traveller Character Generator

[james_davis_nicoll]

Scout Jack Wen A547B3 Age 22
1 term

Service History:
Attempted to enlist in Scouts.
Enlistment accepted.
Death in service.

Comments

[ironyoxide]

>Death in service.

Ah, yes, the good old days.

[rdm]

Not so old. Funnily enough, I am running a classic Traveller game at the moment!

[kgbooklog]

There's an extra " in the URL.

What does it mean that most of my characters are denied reenlistment after their first term?

[graydon]

Bad luck; the mechanism has pluses and minuses for re-enlistment but it's just a dice roll, it doesn't come with any more explanation than dying in training does.

[thewayne]

I was always mystified when shepherding a character up through the ranks, retiring as an admiral, and getting a blaster pistol as their retirement package when some shlub who was in for eight years gets a scout ship.

Sorry about your "training accident", you shouldn't have seen what the supply depot sergeant was doing. These things happen.

Did you know that when the first invasion of Iraq happened, Operation Desert Storm, back in the '90s: death in the U.S. Army actually went down? They lost fewer people in combat than they did in training accidents, and when they switched to a war footing, they stopped training exercises.

[rwpikul]

I've never interpreted the mustering out benefits as a retirement gift but rather what the character has acquired over the years that he can keep.

So, an admiral who musters out with only a blaster pistol and a pension¹ simply never got, (or was able to keep), a lot of stuff. That scout who gets the loan of a ship, OTOH, simply happened to muster out in a subsector with a surplus of scout ships.

Also, the good chance of a scout getting to borrow a ship is balanced by the lower number of benefit rolls they get and the possibility of losing rolls to multiple results of "Scout Ship"².

1: Not that that can happen in the classic rules. The Book 1 mustering out table doesn't even have 'gun' as an entry for navy characters, (plus an admiral would get at least 9 rolls for pure Book 1 generation, 7 if using Book 5).

2: Plus the fact that it is a standing adventure hook. "You will take your ship, yourself, and such supernumeraries as you may have accompanying you to {insert planet here} to investigate {insert incomplete description of adventure setup here}."

[james_davis_nicoll]

Merchant Captain Victor Anderson 831BB2 Age 46 7 terms Cr85,000

Skills: Electronics-1, Gunnery-1, Jack-o-T-2, Mechianical-2, Navigation-1, Pilot-1, Steward-3, Streetwise-3

Benefits: 8,000/yr Retirement Pay, Free Trader, Free Trader, Free Trader, Low Passage

Service History: Attempted to enlist in Merchants. Enlistment accepted. Commissioned during first term of service. Voluntarily reenlisted for second term. Promoted to 3rd Officer. Voluntarily reenlisted for third term. Promoted to 2nd Officer. Voluntarily reenlisted for fourth term. Promoted to 1st Officer. Voluntarily reenlisted for fifth term. Promoted to Captain. Voluntarily reenlisted for sixth term. Voluntarily reenlisted for seventh term. Mandatory retirement after seventh term.

Traditionally one would take each roll of Free Trader as shares in the same ship but it might be interesting to have this guy be someone who went massively into debt to take advantage of a chance to own his own fleet of ships.

You know, if they're all old ships (which greatly reduces the cost) then the GM gets to roll multiple times on the old ship table. So our hero picked up three century old ships from the Warehouse of Empire:

Ship One:
Vessel contains concealed smuggling
compartments.

Damaged sensors -2

Well maintained: Reduce all
maintenance costs by 10%.

Damaged thrusters -2 pilot checks

Cargo bay is tainted by chemical spills
and leaks. Vulnerable cargos may be
damaged in transit. x 3

Increase all maintenance costs by 50%

Ship 2
Well maintained: Reduce all
maintenance costs by 10%.

Increase all maintenance costs by 100%

Damaged sensors: –6 DM to all Sensors checks

Cargo bay is tainted by chemical spills
and leaks. Vulnerable cargos may be
damaged in transit. x 2

Ship 3

Ship is a famous and respected trader,
with a good reputation.

-2 to all repair attempts

Increase all maintenance costs by 100%

Library computer contains erroneous
information.

Vessel contains disturbing psionic
echoes.

Library computer contains secret or
unusual information.

Vessel contains concealed smuggling
compartments.


Ship 1: cost reduced by 35 ship shares
Ship 2: cost reduced by 43 shares
Ship 3: cost reduced by 48 shares.
LikeShow More Reactions · Reply · 12 mins

[ironyoxide]

9 people to fly, minimum (Pilot, Navigator, Engineer), as many as 18 if you're going for the full complement of 2 gunners and a Steward.

Are there really 17 people your character hates that much?

>Soc: 2, Streetwise-3

OK. You fly the least annoying ship (Ship 1 would be my pick), live on one of the other two ships--negotiate some kind of long term berthing arrangement with the port; and keep the third ship somewhere out in the sticks for parts.

Congratulations, your character is now Fred Sanford.

Int: B, Edu: B

Uh...Fred Sanford with multiple Ph.Ds?

[chomiji]

The first female character I rolled was a dead Marine.

Am I correct in assuming that GMs also use these for NPC backgrounds? (Like, someone's fridged sister?) Or can you re-host the characters in robot bodies or something?

(I am all but certain that I played Traveller at least briefly. The first year I was at UVa, D&D had just arrived, and in the years that followed, the Historical Simulation Society [game club] did a lot of very short campaigns with all the new, shiny tabletop RPGs that were coming out.)

[kgbooklog]

What is "Low Passage"? I had two characters get double of that.

I also had 3 consecutive characters get promoted to Lt Colonel and then immediately denied reenlistment.

[metahacker]

Basically, you have two free tickets to paradise, but you're flying steerage--frozen for travel.

[james_davis_nicoll]

It's lifted from the Dumarest books. One chance in six of dying but it's cheap. As I recall, a shot of Fast drug would have the same effect without the risk of death.

from the traveller encyclopedia

[james_davis_nicoll]

So named because it makes the universe (to its user) appear to move much more quickly, the drug slows down personal metabolism at a ratio of approximately 60 to 1. Users are extremely vulnerable while living at such a slow rate, but physical aging is also slowed, and the need for consumable supplies is reduced which thus allows conservation of air and food. Fast drug takes effect immediately upon ingestion, one dose lasts for 60 days, making that time appear to be only one day.

An antidote is available to end the effect before 60 days.

One dose of fast costs cr2,000 while the antidote costs cr900.

The price of low passage varies depending on how far you want to go:

Parsecs Travelled    Cost
1                  Cr. 1,000
2                  Cr. 1,200
3                  Cr. 1,400
4                  Cr. 1,600
5                  Cr. 1,800
6                  Cr. 2,000

Re: from the traveller encyclopedia

[viktor_haag]

Low Passage probably also (mercifully?) renders you unconscious or un-sensing for the time of your passage, where as the poor slobs on Fast are experiencing every agonizing moment of the trip while feeling the track of drool creep it's way down one's chin... 8P

[ffutures]

† Scout Thaddaeus Silva 879888 Age 26 2 terms Service History: Attempted to enlist in Scouts. Enlistment accepted. Voluntarily reenlisted for second term. Death in service.

Army Lieutenant Jacob Pérez 566396 Age 22 1 term Cr20,000 Skills: Electronics-1, Rifle-2, SMG-1, Sword-1 Service History: Attempted to enlist in Army. Enlistment accepted. Commissioned during first term of service. Denied reenlistment after first term.

Navy Starman Judas Reyes 7244C8 Age 34 4 terms Cr27,000 Skills: Body Pistol-1, Electronics-1, Engineering-1, Fwd Obsvr-1, Gunnery-1 Service History: Attempted to enlist in Navy. Enlistment accepted. Voluntarily reenlisted for second term. Voluntarily reenlisted for third term. Voluntarily reenlisted for fourth term. Denied reenlistment after fourth term.

† Scout Juan Ivanov C788C6 Age 30 3 terms Service History: Attempted to enlist in Scouts. Enlistment accepted. Voluntarily reenlisted for second term. Voluntarily reenlisted for third term. Death in service.

I'm pretty sure that these results are worse than I used to get just rolling dice - or maybe I've just blanked out on how much time I wasted getting good characters. But this, in a nutshell, is why a lot of second-generation games dropped random character generation.

[dsrtao]

Dropped random character generation: because on the whole, people prefer to have more say in who they are playing.

Dropping death-before-game is also very popular these days, except in games where death does not end your useful playtime.

[viktor_haag]

I tended to treat char-gen-death as "emergency mustered out with a half term", and required the PC to come up with the reason for which they had to leave in a hurry ("lost arm in ice-hauling accident" or "court-martialed because caught black-marketing naval supplies", for example).

[ironyoxide]

*looks sideways at the RNG*

I'm not getting any "Other" careers, and very few draftees. This *is* Classic Trav, right?

Ground control to Major Sun...

[(Anonymous)]

"† Army Major John Sun 79B588 Age 26 2 terms

Service History: Attempted to enlist in Army. Enlistment accepted. Commissioned during first term of service. Promoted to Captain. Voluntarily reenlisted for second term. Promoted to Major. Death in service."

Your scout doesn't surprise me--a low endurance scout needed 7+ on 2d6 to live for each term, giving just a 2.3% chance of surviving a full 7 terms, assuming reenlistment.

Riderius