Freelance Traveller

Quick Character Generation for Conventions

by Marc Miller with Jeff Zeitlin

This was one of the featured articles in the November/December 2017 issue.

The process and tables here are Marc Miller’s and are taken with permission from the workshops that Marc ran at TravellerCON/USA in September 2017 (“Can You Survive Traveller Character Generation?”). Commentary, explanations, and analysis are Jeff’s work.

Introduction

It has often been said that Traveller character generation is a game in itself. However, the normal process (especially when using the advanced character generation represented by Classic Traveller Books 4-7, or MegaTraveller, or later versions where birthworld or homeworld characteristics can affect character development) can be time-consuming, especially as some of the target numbers for rolls can change if a character attribute changes.

Such processes waste time when you are playing in—or refereeing—a “one-off”, especially when you have hard limits on the available time, such as at a convention. But, players tend to like characters that are rich in skills, rich in money, and/or rich in possessions—one reason for the popularity of the advanced generation processes. How do you reconcile the seemingly opposed desires/constraints?

Marc Miller has worked up a process for character generation that maintains the “feel” of the standard character generation, but produces results much faster. With his permission, it is described and reproduced here.

As written, it only handles human characters, only in Imperial service, and no psionics.

For convenience, there is a Character Generation Record Card (form 1A) that you can use and reproduce, or you can record the information in any convenient format you choose.

The handout for this process at TravellerCON/USA 2017 included a worksheet similar to the one below. Use it, or whatever convenient method you choose for tracking your character’s progress through the process.
 

The Process

You will need two six-sided dice. A roll that is done with both is notated as ‘2D’; a roll that only requires one die is notated as ‘1D’. You should have a pen or pencil and some scratch paper to keep notes on your character-in-progress.

1. Start Your Character. Form 1A is provided to record your character information.
   1. Select a Name. Even if your character dies during generation, he or she deserves a name to be remembered by.
   2. Roll Characteristics. Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, Social – each is rolled with 2D.
2. Select a Career. Choose a career from Table 1.

   Table 1: Careers

   Army (Military Career)

   Marines (Military Career)

   Navy (Military Career)

   Scouts

   Merchants

   1. If the Career is a Military Career, choose a branch from Table 2, and record the skill for that branch.

      Table 2: Military Branch and Skills
      Army/Marine Branch	Skill	Navy Branch	Skill
      Infantry	Fighter	Crew/Line	Vacc Suit
      Artillery	Heavy Weapons	Engineer	Engineer
      Cavalry	Vehicle	Gunnery	Gunner
      Protected	Hostile Environment	Flight	Pilot
      Commando	Fighter	Medical	Medical
      Technical	Explosives	Technical	Sensors

   2. If the character has SOC 11 or greater, the character is a noble. Note the noble rank from Table 3.

      Table 3: Noble Rank
      Social	Noble Title
      11	Knight
      12	Baron
      13	Marquis
      14	Count
      15	Duke

3. Resolve the Career. Career resolution is done term-by-term (one term is four years).
   Each term:
   1. Choose a Characteristic. This is called the Controlling Characteristic (CC) for the term. You must choose a different CC for each term, and may not use a characteristic for a second time until all characteristics have been used once.
   2. Roll 2D for the value of the CC or lower. You will do this up to four times for each term.
      1. Survival: If you succeed, your character has not died this term, and you may continue character generation. If you fail, immediately go to D. and choose skills.
      2. Commission: if your character has not been commissioned, and this roll succeeds, your character is an officer from this point forward, and uses the Commissioned Rank section from table 4. Scouts do not have ranks, and do not roll Commission.
      3. Promotion: if your character has been commissioned, and you succeed at the promotion roll, your character’s rank increases by one on the Commissioned ranks section of table 4. Scouts do not have ranks, and do not roll Promotion. Characters that have not been commissioned do not roll Promotion; their rank is based on how many terms they have survived, and is read from the Non-Commissioned Ranks section of table 4.

         Table 4: Service Ranks
         Enlisted Rank				Commissioned Rank
         Term	Army Rank (Marine Rank)	Navy Rank	Merchant Rank	Rank	Army Rank (Marine Rank)	Navy Rank	Merchant Rank
         1	Private	Spacehand	Spacehand	O1	2nd Lieutenant	Ensign	Fourth Officer
         2	Corporal (Lance)	Able Spacer	Drive Helper	O2	1st Lieutenant	Sublieutenant	Third Officer
         3	Sergeant	Petty Officer 2nd Class	none	O3	Captain	Lieutenant	Second Officer
         4	Staff Sergeant	Petty Officer 1st Class	none	O4	Major (Force Commander)	Lieutenant Commander	First Officer
         5	Master Sergeant	Chief Petty Officer	none	O5	Lieutenant Colonel	Commander	Captain
         6	Sergeant Major	Master Chief Petty Officer	none	O6	Colonel	Captain	Senior Captain
         				O7	General (Brigadier)	Admiral	none
         Marine Rank is the same as Army Rank except where shown in parentheses.

      4. Re-Enlist: If you succeed, your character may serve another term. Go back to C.1 and choose a different Controlling Characteristic. If you choose not to serve another term, go to D. and choose skills.
4. Determine skills and benefits:
   1. For each term your character has survived, choose four skills from the appropriate columns in Table 5. You may choose the same skill multiple times. However, you may not choose any skill more times than you have served terms. Scout characters choose eight skills per term, and may choose any skill up to twice as many times as terms served. (The chosen branch skill from table 2 may be at one level higher.)

      Table 5: Skills
      Army	Marines	Navy	Merchants	Scout	Non-Officer	Anyone	Everyday	Officer
      Admin	Explosives	Admin	Admin	Animals	Biologics	Hi-Grav Environ.	Athlete	Advocate
      Explosives	Fighter	Astrogator	Astrogator	Astrogator	Craftsman	Hostile Environ.	Commo	Bureaucrat
      Fighter	Forward Obs.	Engineer	Broker	Engineer	Electronics	Jack of All Trades	Computer	Counsellor
      Flyer	Heavy Weap.	Fleet Tactics	Designer	Forensics	Fluidics	Vacc Suit	Driver	Diplomat
      Forward Obs.	Navigator	Flyer	Engineer	Gambler	Gravitics	Zero-Grav Environ.	Language	Leader
      Heavy Weap.	Recon	Gunner	Fighter	Gunner	Magnetics	Medical	Streetwise	Liaison
      Navigator	Sapper	Naval Architect	Gambler	Pilot	Mechanics
      Recon	Seafarer	Pilot	Gunner	Recon	Photonics
      Sapper	Stealth	Sensors	Pilot	Seafarer	Polymers
      Strategy	Survival	Strategy	Seafarer	Sensors	Programmer
      Survival	Tactics	Survey	Sensors	Survey	Steward
      Tactics	Teacher	Teacher	Trader	Survival	Animals

   2. For each term your character has survived, record the benefit for that term from Table 6.

      Table 6: Benefits
      Term	Army/Navy/Marines	Scout	Merchant
      1	Weapon	Weapon	Weapon
      2	Bonus Money: 1D × Cr10,000	Bonus Money: 1D × Cr10,000	Bonus Money: 1D × Cr10,000
      3	Medal	+1 EDU	+1 INT
      4	Bonus Money: 1D × Cr20,000	Bonus Money: 1D × Cr20,000	10% Share in a Merchant Ship
      5	Knighthood/+1 SOC (see notes)	Scout Ship on Loan	20% Share in a Merchant Ship
      6	+1 SOC	Scout Ship Grant	30% Share in a Merchant Ship

Jeff’s Notes and Comments on the Process

Because the player chooses the order in which to use the characteristics as Controlling Characteristic for a term, he/she can manage the choices to maximize the probability of survival in any given term, or to maximize the length of the career. This will have an effect on the number of skill levels that can be earned over the career. Note that, unlike MegaTraveller, there is no cap on the total number of skill levels that may be earned; even a character with low Intelligence and Education can end up with a comparatively high number of skills, if other characteristics are high and the character has a long career.

When I was at TravellerCON working through this process, the other players at the table all used the same decision process I did for choosing the Controlling Characteristic for each term: We started with the highest, and worked our way down. This maximizes the chance of survival in early terms (minimizing dead characters), but it also “encourages” the player to decide to retire before weak characteristics become the Controlling Characteristic for future terms. You end up with more characters that survive, but they may not be as skilled.

An alternative that some players might wish to consider is the reverse – start with the weakest characteristics, and work up to the strongest, if the character survives the early terms. You’ll probably end up with more dead characters, but those that survive will probably be more skilled. In a sense, you’re trading between quality (high skill levels) and quantity (greater number of characters that survive). There’s no downside – on a per-character basis – to going for quality, the way there is in most versions of the game, where characters must also worry about losing characteristic points due to aging.

The table below indicates the chance of success (rounded to the nearest 1%) for a roll with the indicated Controlling Characteristic.

Table 5: Skills

The skills listed on this table are from Traveller⁵. It is certainly possible to rework the tables to reflect the skill set from other versions of Traveller. If this is done, the referee may also wish to customize the skills to fit the particular adventure or campaign, and if the version includes skills for which a subskill must be chosen (e.g., Gun Cbt or Vehicle, from the MegaTraveller skill list), remember to have the player declare the subskill for each level earned.

Skill Eligibility

When selecting skills, players may choose skills from the following columns:

The five career service columns (Army, Marine, Navy, Merchant, Scout) are open only to those characters that went through the respective careers.

The Non-Officer column is open to characters that have not received a commission. Referees may choose to allow characters who have received a commission to choose from this column to a limit of four skills per term before the character received a commission – for example, if a character received a commission in Term 2, the character may choose up to four skill levels from the Non-Officer column, because the character was a non-officer in Term 1. It is up to the referee’s discretion whether to allow Scouts to choose from this column; it was not clear at TravellerCON whether this was permitted.

Any character may choose from the Anyone or Everyday columns.

Only characters who have received a Commission may choose from the Officer column. If the referee chooses to use the suggested modification for the Non-Officer column, the ‘reciprocal’ modification should be used for this column (that is, only allow choosing from this table to a limit of four skill levels per term in which the character received or previously had a commission). As with the Non-Officer column, it is up to the referee’s discretion whether to allow Scouts to choose from this column.

Table 6: Benefits

The weapon and medal benefits were handled by Marc at conventions through drawing cards from a custom deck, which is not reproduced here (Freelance Traveller neglected to get permission to do so). Referees are encouraged to come up with their own alternatives. Some possibilities:

Weapon Benefit

Allow the player to choose from a list. The process as written doesn’t have any personal combat skills other than ‘Fighter’, so the field is wide open.

If you alter the skill list to include personal weapons skills, and especially where you need to declare the weapon the skill applies to, simply granting the weapon that the character has the highest skill in might be the way to handle this benefit.

Medal Benefit

Have the player roll 2D and compare to the Controlling Characteristic for term 3 (the term that the medal is a benefit for).

If the roll is higher than the CC, the character gets the low medal (in standard games, the Meritorious Conduct Under Fire (MCUF)).

If the roll is less than or equal to the CC, the middle medal (Medal for Conspicuous Gallantry (MCG)) is awarded.

If the roll is less than half of the CC, award the high medal (Starburst for Extreme Heroism (SEH)).

Alternatively, calculate the average of all of the characteristics, and use this as the number to compare a 2D roll to, as above.

Ship Benefits

Scout Ship On Loan and Scout Ship Grant do not seem properly cumulative the way the other Scout benefits are, and neither has been properly defined. Previous versions have treated a scout ship benefit as a ‘permanent’ loan, with the ex-Scout and the ship subject to recall, but while not on recall, the ex-Scout may use the ship as he/she sees fit for his/her own purposes, but may not sell, give away, or lend the ship to anyone else, and may get fuel, maintenance, and repairs done for free at any Scout base. I would read this as Scout Ship On Loan, and treat Scout Ship Grant as similar, except that the ship is removed from the Service’s rolls as an active ship, and no longer subject to recall – but the fuel, maintenance, and repairs are still free.

Merchant Ship Shares are not clearly cumulative – a reading on whether a six-term Merchant owns 30% or 60% of a ship was not requested during the session I participated in. Recommendation: If the referee wishes to have other shareholders able to exercise restraints on what the character does, make the Merchant Ship Share benefit non-cumulative (six terms = 30% share); otherwise, make it cumulative (six terms = 60% share).

Knighthood

Characters who have received a commission and are not already noble receive the knighthood if they complete five terms. This raises Social to 11. Characters who have not received a commission, or who are already noble, will receive +1 Social instead. After six terms, all characters will receive the +1 Social. This may make a character noble or raise the character’s Noble title if the Social becomes 11 or higher.

Customizing the Process

Some ideas for customizations have already been discussed. Other customizations are possible, but you want to keep a few things in mind:

The idea with this process is to be quick and easy, without a lot of calculation or table lookup. Most non-humans in Traveller have advantages or disadvantages in characteristics; to address that in this process would add complexity. However, if you want to, you can make that change – or, just change the skill tables to reflect species-specific skills (such as dewclaw for Aslan, or scrounging for Vargr) and ignore the characteristic differences.

The setting is assumed to be compatible with the official Third Imperium setting. If you wish to use this with a different setting, check the available careers and skills, and adjust them if necessary.

In the official Third Imperium setting, psionics are discouraged. If you wish to include psionics in your campaign setting, you will need to modify the skill tables, and you may want to modify the career tables as well. Make PSI a seventh characteristic. You would then treat it like any other characteristic, and allow it to be used as a Controlling Characteristic for a term. Then, add another column to the skill tables, ‘Psionic’. This column would only be open to characters who have psionic ability above a certain level. Alternatively, add ‘Psion’ as a career, and make the ‘Psionic’ skills available only to characters who choose this career. The details of the Psion career would be up to the referee.

Some versions of Traveller impose limitations on the number of skill levels a character may have, or make it more difficult to accumulate skills. This process can be used to generate characters compatible with those versions simply by adjusting the number of skills awarded in each term – perhaps only three, or even two, would be enough.