Benefits of playing a Noble PC

For years as a Referee I beat my head against a metaphorical and game-mechanical wall trying to resolve a conundrum. Traveller allows PCs to be high ranking members of interstellar society. But there are exactly no rules or directions on how playing a Noble confers any advantage.

High Status in the Far Future

 

Much of my thinking about his amounted to “how much money should I give a Noble PC? Is this too much? Is this too little?" I used to think the cash handouts from the Robe & Blaster article were tiny and pointless. I have revised my thinking on this somewhat. Nobles in Traveller have their money tied up in land, properties, investments and ships. The benefits given below are the dividends, the residual free cash.

I now also see these dividends as small enough to not break the game. If a PC gets rich by adventuring, great! Travellers can and should seek High Level play. That should happen in the game, not because of meta-game artifacts like huge cash grants. Eventually Nobles will have connections with all sorts of VIPs, own ships and direct large-scale ventures. But beginning Noble PCs don't have all that. Not yet, anyway.

Below are the likely benefits from the R&B article.

Definition of Nobility Benefits 

These are the ones available to Knights and Barons:

• Pension: Same as standard additional service pension. Roll ld6 X 1,000 Cr./Pt.
• Merchant House Holdings: Stock/bond portfolios yielding annual value of ld6 X 1,000 Cr. dividends. May be sold at market value.
• Space Lane Carrier Holdings: As per merchant holdings, except player rolls 2d6 X 10,000 Cr.
• Court Influence: Used as a+DM on Reaction Rolls as allowed by Referee. May also be used as a DM in dispensing patronage.
• Ancestral Lands: Planetary holdings held by player in perpetuity. Roll 3d6 X 10,000 Cr. for value. Lands yield 10-60% total value (1d6) annually in revenues and cost 10-60% of value for maintenance once every four years.
• Immediate Inheritance: As per Ancestral Lands but player additionally rolls 3d6 X 10,000 Cr. For immediately available cash.

Instead of cash, the Referee can use other already available force multipliers. I mean, of course, henchmen and vehicles. A PC with a Noble title enters play with one or more loyal retainers, one of whom can operate the vehicle they may own.

Set the Heads'l! It's the Sailors Career

This time out we are looking at the Sailor career from COTI. 

Sailors: Members of the Nautical Force Command (the wet navy) of a world.

Naval Force Command is informally called the Wet Navy, to distinguish them from their space-faring counterparts. The descriptive text gives us nothing else about the service.

Any world with a Hydrographic rating above 1 could have a Wet Navy, and above Hydro-5 is likely to do so. Worlds technology levels at or below contra-gravity would still make use of sailing vessels. The conventional wisdom is that a new settlement will go next to a body of water. Transport of people and especially goods by water is an order-of-magnitude less expensive than by road, rail or air. even in the Far Future, sailing the ocean blue will be a thing. And we all know that sailing the seas can lead to Adventure.

Career Figures

Enlistment throw is 6+ with DMs for END and STR. Not a difficult career to get into. Survival is 5+ like the Flyers, with an END DM. Not too dangerous, but more risky than Doctors.

Getting a Position/Commission is also 5+ with a DM for INT 9+. Promotion is at 6+ with a DM for EDU 8+. These numbers are not high.

First observation: of 40 pregen characters, there is only one Admiral (rank 6) and three Captains (rank 5). Odd. 22 of the list are unrated ordinary seamen, including several with four or five terms.

Duelling in Space

In our last session, a player brought a character to the table, which was a product of this online generator: https://www.batintheattic.com/traveller/

Barbarian Warrior Logan Singh B5A758 Age 46 7 terms Cr4,000 

Skills: Brawling-1, Carousing-1, Mechanical-1, Recon-1, Short Bow-2, Sword-7

Yeah, I put that last one in boldface on purpose. I have remarked before on this blog about how high levels of skill are possible. See Enrique Salazar for one. Now there's one in play in my TU.

About Dying in Character Creation

If you’ve read this blog, then you have some familiarity with Traveller. If that’s the case then you are also familiar with the well-worn criticism of the Classic rules whereby a character can die before the creation process is finished. "Oh, how quaint and old-timey. Ha, ha, modern games made sure to avoid that mechanical fault, didn’t they?" (Can you tell I’m tired of this attitude?)

Or maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way ‘round.

In most RPGs, classic or modern, character creation is something that is done above or prior to the game beginning. You determine your attributes, get your skills and otherwise fill out your character sheet, acquire your gear and then your PC is ready to have his first adventure.

Traveller does not work like that.

Roll the six attributes for the UPP and you have a playable character, right there. For an example, I refer you to Dane Buckminster. As soon as you decide on the career your PC will pursue, you are playing Traveller. Don’t believe me? Consider this:

From Front Office to the Frontier - the Bureaucrats Career

 Adventures in the Office? Or maybe more than meets the eye?

What are Bureaucrats?

“Individuals serving a government or organization in a management or executive capacity.” From The Spinward Marches Campaign version of the COTI careers. In the Supplement book we find the same. The only useful addition is from the pages of sample Bureaucrats: “They are assumed to have mustered out of their particular bureaucratic service and have embarked on some sort of activity within the universe.” [As opposed to outside of it?]

I have long regarded the Bureaucrat career as a placeholder. Something to round out the COTI tables to a multiple of six entries. Paper-pushers at the Department of Redundancy Department. Why would anyone from this background become a Traveller?

The usual answer is “they got bored with the desk job.” I suppose that serves well enough for now. I cannot think of any examples from adventure literature of a cubicle-dweller deciding to live a life of Adventure, except perhaps as a comic relief or buffoon character that the actual heroes have to protect. If you know of a good example, please share in the comments!

Let's take a look at the nuts and bolts of the Bureaucrat career.

Enlistment: 5+ (83%) plus DMs for EDU8+ and STR 8-. This is the only career that grants a DM for a physical stat below a target level. Pretty low bar for entry. Education is the key characteristic for this career. It pays to know stuff.

More on Skills - Steward Skill

Ah, the Steward. The Dump Stat of Traveller skills. Even less popular than Jack of All Trades. Why is this skill here? Here's the skill description from TTB:

The individual is experienced and capable in the care and feeding of passengers: the duties of the ship's steward.

The responsibility for the welfare of passengers aboard a starship falls on the ship's steward. Although anyone can be hired as a ships' steward, this skill represents training in the various duties necessary, and serves as an advantage when attempting to get such a job.

Referee: Steward skill represents a general awareness of cooking, personal care and attention, and other areas of experience which will make passengers and crew happy and content with their conditions of passage.

As given, this does not tell the player much about what the Steward lets you do, or how it can lead to adventures. But it can, and like every other skill, it should.

What does the Steward skill do? The Steward skill turns NPCs into revenue, or into adventures.  

A High-Level Traveller Character

I have written before about High Level Play in Traveller, and what that might mean. Today I want to share a character I've created, to illustrate what that might look like. 

Here is the character, right after character generation finished:

Jackson Law     Age 22   7A87B5     Ex-Army Captain
Tactics-4, Rifle-1, SMG-1, CG Vehicle-0, Carousing-0
Cr 2,000        

Our good Captain. Still a young pup. That will change.

Quite the junior tactician, eh?  But out of the service after only one term. What's that about?  Was it because of his low SOC that the other officers didn't approve of the young man?  Well, could be a lot of things.

Skip ahead 20 years.

More on Careers - One Rogue Too Many

I have not played any of the versions of that other RPG from the 1970's, where they re-named the Thief class to the Rogue class. Why, I wonder, did GDW feel it was necessary to use the vague and dissembling nomenclature 'Rogue' when 'Criminal' would have been more accurate? Or would it have been?

Something shady is going on here.

The text description of the Rogues reads as follows: "Criminal elements familiar with the rougher or more illegal methods of accomplishing tasks." I guess it would be more accurate, then. But wait. The word rogue is defined as: 1) a vagrant or tramp, 2: a dishonest or worthless person, a scoundrel. There are a few more connotations, but none are specifically criminal in nature. So, many Traveller PCs could be characterized as Rogues, regardless of what career they went through.

Let us speak truth, a great many Traveller PCs from back in the day were essentially criminals regardless of their chosen background career. They were smugglers, bandits, thieves, hired guns, burglars, and so on. Why the need for a separate career to breed them? Most player, myself included assumed that if you wanted a criminal PC, you went with the Other service. So this ground has been covered already.

Most of the skills the Rogues career offers (discussed later) are not specifically criminal, and with the random skill allocation process, there's no guarantee a PC will come away with a criminal CV. The free Service Skill is Streetwise, not a necessarily criminal skill. This would have been the time to introduce some new skills for the criminal class, but Supp4 does not do this. 

Later editions of Traveller introduced more criminal skills like Intrusion or Lockpicking. I suggested elsewhere that espionage activities (criminals on a payroll) could be handled with Basic skills and attributes. That way any PC could try their hand at clandestine activity

I actually have the chronology backwards. Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium, in which the Rogue career made its appearance, was first published in 1979. This is several years before that other game made the change. So why did they go along with GDW?

Let's have a look at the Rogue career, shall we?

Scurvy Space Dogs - The Pirate Career

Scurvy Space Dogs – the Pirate career

Now that Piracy & Privateering is out, it's time to have a look at the CT Pirate career, as found in Supp:4 Citizens of the Imperium. Is a pirate's life for you?

Yo Ho . . . HOLY CRAP WHAT IS THAT?

Piracy is harder to get into than you might think. At 7+, it's tougher than Bureaucrats, Sailors/Flyers or Scientists. Pirates will take lower-class types than Rogues (+1 DM for SOC 7-, instead of 8- for rogues).

All pirates learn Brawling. Well, maybe that's more on-the-job training than a planned course. I expected Gun combat. When you're raiding a ship, is there more brandishing weapons than actual fighting? Plus the bottom rung of the pirate ladder is likely considered expendable. Why waste time training them?

That could explain the 6+ survival throw. This is tougher than sailors/flyers, the Navy, the Army, and as tough as the Marines. Is this saying that Pirates and Marines (natural enemies) are evenly matched? It's INT that helps the pirate survive. This makes sense, given the chaotic nature of the career. But brains are not the first characteristic many think of when considering pirates.

In Defense of Older Adventurers

On occasion, some gamers like to remark on the fact that Traveller characters are mostly middle-aged by the time they begin play (assuming they survive character creation). Is it really necessary for me to point out that the off-screen prior service is simply glossing over the “low level play” of level based systems, or the “few character points” stage of point-buy systems?

Don't harass us middle-aged guys who go off in search of adventure. We're not old, we're experienced. It's at this time of life when you finally know what you want, and go after it. And you're not taking any guff from punks.

Like this guy – he took no guff, and took names.

Samuel Whittemore

57A879 Age 80   

Army (militia) 3 terms, Captain

Brawling-1 Percussion Rifle-1 Survival-2 Badassery-3 Percussion Pistol-2
Leader-2

As another old soldier said "I could do this all day."

With thanks to Jed McClure on G+

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Whittemore

High Level Play in Traveller

Lucas Trask, Space Viking Extraordinaire

First let me set the framework for my topic. High Level Play (hereinafter HLP) in Traveller is a particular type of play. It is play that goes beyond a random patron hiring PCs to do a random thing. HLP is about PCs with power.

Many game systems will have obvious mechanical cues when the players engage in HLP. Level based and point based systems are the most obvious and telling systems.

In level-based systems, like D&D, HLP is obvious. What level of fighter or magic-user are you playing? Tenth? Fifteenth? Twentieth? As everyone begins the game at 1st level, the differences from low level to high are very plain.

In point-based systems, like GURPS, HLP is also obvious. Look at how many character points your PC has. GURPS suggests starting out “potential heroes” with 100 points. PCs can increase their CP up to 400, 500 or even more points. The differences in skill and power are extensive. GURPS Supers has characters built on 1,000 points and more – into the realms of the gods!

Dice pool systems, like the eponymous D6 system are also plain. Count the number of dice your PC has in attributes and skills. Anyone who understands probability can tell at what #D rank a character can begin to do the impossible with ease. For those who don't: the highest difficulty number is 30. A PC with 8D in an attribute or skill can beat a 30 1 time in 3. At 9D, it's 2 times out of 3.

Traveller does not have dice pools, or character points, or levels. The central mechanic is “roll 2D6, add modifiers and beat a target number from 1 to 15”. The main modifier is skill level, but this is most commonly 1, sometimes 2 or 3, rarely 4 or better.

One can tally up a PC's total skill levels and call that a measure of high level play, but that's not the way to do it. I point out that Fenton Tukachevski has a grand total of 3 skill levels, and yet he could engage in HLP. See below.

Session Report May 2018

In this session, we finally wrapped up the airship race. See this post for how the fight got started.

Blasterson chased one assailant out onto the catwalk and through a porthole. The assailant hit him with a Tranq gas grenade, but Joe shook it off. He dove through the window and chased him into the hallway when . . .
 
McGee remembered that he had an infrared scope on his laser rifle. He started shooting the invaders through the walls (I added a -DM for aiming at a heat signature instead of a visible target). It is hard to survive a laser rifle shot in CT. He got Joe's quarry in the hallway.

Reaper slashed and parried with the assailant who had stabbed Ca'al, until McGee shot him. Reaper was not pleased that the shot had come so close to his own head, and said so in a colorful tirade. Ca'al grasped feebly at the attacker's legs, and believed (until later) that he had brought his man down. 

Up in the rigging, Jay, fearful of hitting Longfinger with a shotgun blast, used it as a cudgel, but the assailant's body armor stopped it. So Longfinger dug his claws into him and vaulted backwards over the railing, pulling the assailant down with him.

Upon announcement of this move, the entire table stopped dead quiet.

Pilot Ace Enrique Salazar

While reading the section in The Traveller Book on computer programming, I spotted something of great interest. One of the requirements to write the program Maneuver/Evade-6 is that someone has to have the skill Pilot-7.

I have never seen this in play before. Yes, there's the Other character in Supp: 1 1001 Characters who has Electronics-8, but that's non-standard creation.Still, it's there in the rules so the possibility is valid and canon.

Is it possible, though, to be this skilled via normal character creation? I decided to find out.

Yes. It is.

Meet Enrique Salazar, The best pilot in the Royal Talaveran Scout Service. 

777587 Age 30 Scouts, 3 terms

Pilot-7

Under the Stethoscope - the Doctors Career

Somebody call a Doctor!


This time out I will examine the Doctors career, introduced in Supplement 4, Citizens of the Imperium. Can a Doctor become an heroic adventurer? Let's find out.

My first impression is that the Doctors career models a University Medical school or Major City Medical system. The first thing that suggests this to me is the fact that the Doctors career is not easy to get into. The enlistment throw is 9+, one of the hardest. Only 28% of applicants get in. Intelligence and Dexterity are the key characteristics; odds of getting in improve to 72% (6+).

Once you're in, on the other hand, Reenlistment is easy, only 4+. Survival is almost automatic at 3+ (97%). With the Intelligence DM, survival IS automatic. This is the second indicator. The low Survival throw points to a safe, stable environment.

This by itself makes the Doctors career a desirable one. Will this encourage players to stay in service longer? Doctors get the automatic 2 skills per term, after all. With no worries about Sudden PC Death Syndrome (SPCDS)^tm, players may want to pile on the terms for that sweet pension and loads of skills.

What skills are available?

Medical skill has the most slots. This is no surprise. Four tables with six slots makes twenty-four skill entries. Six of them are Medical. If Medical-3 makes you a doctor, what does Medical-5 or -6 mean? Yes, this could happen.
Actually, the odds are even greater than 1-in-4 that a character will get Medical several times. Table 1 has only characteristic bonuses. Skip Table 1 and Medical becomes 1-in-3.

Note well though, here's another reason to stay on at The Hospital. Starting in term four, if you take one skill slot on Table 1, the aging table throws could be mitigated or neutralized!

The Scientist Career Revisited

Citizens of the Imperium introduced the Scientist prior career. My first thoughts (years ago now) when I looked at it were "Who wants to play a lab-coat wearing test tube jockey [not a direct quote]" and "why are there no Science skills for a career called Scientist?"


Time for a re-evaluation. Is it really that bad of a choice of career?

It's gonna be for him, as soon as he gets a case of that super-virus.

Not all scientists are laboratory Researchers - lots of of Scientists are practically applying what's already been discovered/learned. A quick look over the skills list for scientists tells you these are not lab-coat wearing office dwellers. Traveller scientists are probably practitioners, or possibly field researchers.

All of the UPP characteristics except social standing can be improved. The service has a blend of technical skills, interpersonal skills, social skills, and a few slots for vehicle and weapons skills. This service does have it all. There's even Navigation skill, which will come in handy as one of the benefits is a laboratory ship. A scientist with Navigation can claim to be familiar with shipboard life, and be able to manage the ship. In the advanced education table there's an entry for Leadership skill, which will also be useful for directing a crew of NPCs.

Navigation suggests a focus on Astronomy. Electronics or Mechanical skill can mean degrees in those Engineering specialties. Gravitics and Computer are also engineering specialties. You could argue that the Scientist career is really the Engineers career.

But it is only for the exceptional and clever! The enlistment throw is comparable with sailors flyers and rogues, but the DMs are hard to get: INT 9+ and EDU 10+ and this is the only service that depends entirely on brain power. Survival is harder (5+) than bureaucrats, nobles, doctors and diplomats; and as hard as for sailors and flyers. Clearly these scientists do more than hang about in laboratories.

For comparison, I searched around for examples of scientist or scientifically-minded heroes in literature and television. Here's a sampling of what I found:

Casual Encounter - Dane Buckminster

Here's a Traveller character who never went into the Services. Will this work? Let's find out.

Dane Buckminster
4B78C2     Age 22     College     Homeworld: Dimitrov/Holtzmann's Corridor
Streetwise-2 Brawling-0, Auto Pistol-0, Air/Raft-0, Administration-0

The man with the plan.

Chris over at Tales to Astound! suggested this concept. Yes, he's 22. I rolled up characteristics then went straight to the 4-year Sabbatical for Education. The rules do not say you must enter a Service, only that you may enter a service.

He's got Cr 500, and Cr 70,000 worth of debt. He has a reason to go adventuring!

Traveller is not a Power Fantasy

Omer the Lizard King has written another post elaborating what skills mean in Traveller. We've both talked about this in multiple places. Traveller PCs can be powerful, yes, but it doesn't look that way from the character sheet. 
A commenter on his post sums it up well:

"I think the problem (to the extent that one can say a game with so many fans has problems) is that a certain segment of players *wants* granularity, *wants* special powers, and *wants* character advancement.

In a sense, Classic Traveller still offers the sort of characters that OD&D offers - lean, streamlined, not very differentiated mechanically. To a gamer who is used to 3.5E, 4E, or 5E, the old OD&D characters feel bland, like they are missing something."

In Traveller power comes from player ingenuity, and an understanding of how the Traveller universe works.  Traveller does not provide the power fantasy of easily overcoming enormous obstacles and defeating large & powerful enemies.

Let's face it. When you compare a 'competent' Traveller character to a character from most other RPGs, especially D&D in its later editions, the Traveller comes off looking, well, lame.

Yes, we know that my 4-term Marine with UPP 9998A8 and Cbt. Rifleman-3 is a tough hombre in a fight, but even so he can still get capped by a thug with an auto-pistol. A Barsoomian White Ape will make dinner out of him quickly, unless the PC is lucky and the player is smart. 

Compare this to a Pathfinder character with his feats and bonuses and class abilities, and huge hit points pools. Plus those games have more dramatic interior artwork. Behold:

I always assumed this was Battle Dress. It is not.

Versus:

TL-3 version of Battle Dress. Probably magical.

See what I mean?


The power creep in D&D and in video games has left Traveller behind. I wonder if even John Carter could keep up with the dizzying spiral of power-ups that define a lot of action/adventure games. There's also the trend in first person shooters and action/adventure movies where the protagonist mows down waves of mook opponents - like the main characters in Star Wars, or Jason Bourne. Traveller is not set up to produce those kinds of scenes. It is very hard to produce on the tabletop the visuals currently popular in other media. Traveller was never meant to do that (but there are lots of games which are); it was meant to bring the worlds of classic/pulp sci-fi literature to life.

Video games also have 'save game' functions that make character death merely a pause in the game play. In Traveller, there is no 'raise dead' spell; once you're gone, you're gone. Combine that with all of the things in the Traveller universe that can kill you, and merely surviving should be considered a major accomplishment. Survival in other media is assumed, but not in Traveller.

What is to be done about this? I say: Nothing. Nothing at all. Let Classic Traveller be what it is.

Acknowledge up front that Traveller is not a video game, or an adolescent power fantasy. What it might be is an adult power fantasy. Let me explain.

I know I'm not cut from the mythic cloth of John Carter or Dominic Flandry, and my alter ego/PC is also normal guy. With just a few skills and some moxie, this normal guy can go out into the TU and (with determination and luck) make a big fortune, or get a peerage, or control a fleet of ships, or any number of other accomplishments. Successful Travellers are those who use their brains more than their brawn, who out-think and out-maneuver their opponents. But it takes planning and careful play, because Traveller doesn't offer power-ups as shortcuts. All it offers is a universe in which to make your plans. It's up to you to make those plans as big as possible.

Traveller not-BD image credit David R. Dietrick, taken from Starter Traveller rules booklet. 

A Traveller meme poster for your amusement

This was shared on Google+ yesterday. It was too good to not pass along.
 

Happy Travelleing, y'all. 

And remember, characters who die in pre-game come back as NPCs!

The Curious Case of the Other Service

What can you do with the Other service?
 

This man might be a criminal, or maybe a millionaire. Or Both.

While working on some yard work recently, my older son and I were discussing a group of characters he had been building. His group consisted of one PC from each of the six basic services. We use the services from Supplement 4 (Actually from The Spinward Marches Campaign book) and the advanced services in Bks 4 & 5. I've built scores if not hundreds of PCs over the years. After the conversation it struck me that out of all those, I've created only a dozen or so characters from the Other service. I've never used one in a Traveller game, no matter how brief. That struck me as odd. I decided to have another look at this least popular service. Is it really that bad of a choice?

Clerics in my Traveller Universe

As priests have higher social standing at least in the Empire, it makes sense to use my popular revamped Nobles career tables to create a Priest career.

St Augustine

These tables assume that the priest is a Christian, ordained by the Orthodox Catholic Church. There are of course other religious groups IMTU, all of which do things differently.