In Traveller, you need to do the lifepath creation system for a character. This is pretty much a game in and of itself for many people. While I think it's neat, I'd love a version of Traveller where you could just point-buy your character. I'm kinda bored with lifepaths, so maybe that's all it is. It would be nice to have a list of all the stats and skills and say, "Here's 10 points, spread them out".

Quote from: danbuter;417709In Traveller, you need to do the lifepath creation system for a character. This is pretty much a game in and of itself for many people. While I think it's neat, I'd love a version of Traveller where you could just point-buy your character. I'm kinda bored with lifepaths, so maybe that's all it is. It would be nice to have a list of all the stats and skills and say, "Here's 10 points, spread them out".

As long as you are willing to assign the points yourself, you can extract the suggested skills from the tables in Traveller and the various supplements.  MongTraveller is set up in very much the same manner, so it is easy there, too.  The difficulty you may run into is in assigning the points.  There are a number of skills presented in the tables that are not necessarily choices players would make, no matter how cheaply you priced them.  Depends on your players, really, but I would count on rather bland characters that have bought up all their career specific skills and just about nothing else being the norm.  

At which point, you would likely be better off just spending the effort making templates for the careers with a few skill points to round things out, rather like WEG Star Wars.  Part of the appeal of Traveller is that you don't have total control over how your character turns out, so in some sense, it is a bit more challenging to play that character.

It sounds condescending, but a lot of the Vintage Games kind of expected you to bring your A-game every time, not just when you had a character that is perfectly tailored to your precise specifications.

EDIT:  Almost forgot, GURPS Traveller is exactly the "template/point-buy system" I suggested above.

I sold my Gurps Traveller stuff. I don't care for the system. I understand about power selection issues, so I suspect your archetype + 2 or 3 skills just might be a great idea.

Quote from: danbuter;417780I sold my Gurps Traveller stuff. I don't care for the system. I understand about power selection issues, so I suspect your archetype + 2 or 3 skills just might be a great idea.

Too bad, I was skimming it earlier, and the GURPS templates looked like they had a pretty good selection of skills set up.

If you want to hash out some good templates, let me know, I would be happy to throw some ideas back and forth.  In fact, if you come up with some workable templates, I might even be interested in turning that into an article for an ezine I am working on getting back off the ground.  

One idea you might consider is to not allow the players to use the extra skills as boosts for current skills; ie, you can't dump the three extra skill points into the already existing Rifle or Nav skill.  Assuming they are all "fresh out of the academy", it is reasonable to assume they have a similar level of skill to anyone else in that career, and they would have to build up their core skills in the course of adventuring.  If they are still intended to be 'old timers', then allowing them to boost current skills would make more sense as a reflection of their experiences.

For Mongoose Traveller, under the section on Alternate Character Generation, there is a point-buy system described.

There is also the system in Classic Traveller Ultralite, which I am attempting to attach as a PDF, that might interest you since it is also point-buy.

I stole the whole lifepath idea for my Bladerunner homebrew cyberpunk game.
I had 3 character build options. Point buy, Lifepath and full lifepath.

The first option was quick using rolled stats with points for skills (inc option to try to increase stats)  then rolls for background. Skills came from your career option Char gen = 15 minutes
The second was much like Traveller. 4 year career slices. Rolled stats. Picking skills off the skill table for each career. Background rolls. Char gen = 40 mins
The last option was a DM & PC lifepath subgame if you like. You ran through each year and you explained events with backstory, so you were a cop for 4 years but got no pormotions and picked up an 'enemy' from the background table. Well the lack of promotuion was due to the hatred of a Captain that you pissed off on your first day .. etc. Char gen = 4 hours


The characters you get out of the back end are all pretty similar in terms of skills, stats, and stuff. It's the depth of the background and the PC input that varies. You do get variation in the range of skills but that is largely because a point buy character tends to specialise more and only pick from a single career (you never roll your skills you always pick them but different skills have different costs in different careers - Core (1/rank) and Secondary (2/rank) ,  and you get a list of hobby skills you can always draw off, so Pilot is a hobby skill but costs 5 points per rank, whereas if you can get into the airforce you can buy pilot for 2 points per rank and if you get promoted to the fighter pilot sub career you can buy it for 1 point per rank etc )

Quote from: jeff37923;417889For Mongoose Traveller, under the section on Alternate Character Generation, there is a point-buy system described.

There is also the system in Classic Traveller Ultralite, which I am attempting to attach as a PDF, that might interest you since it is also point-buy.

You and your damn expertise.  

Quote from: StormBringer;417970You and your damn expertise.  

Expertise? I thought I was just being obsessive-compulsive...

Quote from: jeff37923;417972Expertise? I thought I was just being obsessive-compulsive...

They end up being the same thing in the end.