Had a spare half hour tonight, sat down with my 1977 Traveller rulebooks and a couple of dice and rolled up a few characters with the lifepath generation system.

In case anyone doesn't know the system, stats are rolled on 2d6. For one character, I got Strength 8, Dexterity 8, Endurance 4 (pretty bad), Intelligence 7, Education 5 and Social Standing 2 (worst possible).

I randomly decided to try him for the Navy where you get a higher chance of joining if you have high Int and Edu. Failed, unsurprisingly, and got drafted into the Marines.

He just makes Survival (despite lack of bonus for the relatively tough save, given his low Endurance), no commission or promotion throw because drafted. He gets Cutlass by default because he's a Marine. 2 skills thrown: Blade Combat, which I'm sinking into Cutlass, and Gun Combat, which I take as Shotgun, because Marines would be trained in boarding shotguns and because they are badass weapons in Classic Trav.

Failed his re-enlistment throw, so he's turfed out of the service at age 22. 1 benefit throw, which gives me +1 Education.

Marine (1 term) 884752 Cutlass-2 Shotgun-1

While I'm throwing dice I'm getting a picture of this guy from a tough background, maybe a low-tech world where he got exposed to some disease as a kid accounting for the low Endurance, but still fairly brawny and athletic. Maybe he was born into more-or-less serfdom and had to escape the plantation; he smuggled himself to the world's spaceport to try and sign on to some offworld service to get the hell out of there. The Navy would get you offworld right? They had no need for a farm kid, but a desperate Marine recruiting sergeant signed him right up. Urgent need for warm bodies for whatever police action was going down a few systems over. He's an ambitious kid and he hits the books during the downtime between missions, but he's seeing plenty of action as well (a skill level of 2 in Classic Trav is a pretty high level of expertise). But his poor health eventually gets noticed and he's discharged with an education credit. He's standing outside the demobilisation office on whatever world where play starts, duffel bag over shoulder, with a lot to prove.

I really want to play this guy now. In game terms this is an underpowered character; his stats are in aggregate well below average and 1 term is about the worst you can do without actually dying during chargen, but I don't care.

My point is, I wouldn't come up with any of that background if I was designing a new character in a point-buy system. Even if I did think of something like this, and gave him [pissed off about getting punted from the marines -5] in return for [education enhancement +5], I don't think I would be excited about this character in the same way.

I also love the way the system just gives me plain results for things like getting recruited, promotion, re-enlistment, skills acquired etc. It's up to me to build the story around that. I don't find more detailed narrative systems that give you scripted "life events" to be as engaging.

Probably comes down to the way your brain's wired; for me, the Classic Trav system gives me just enough detail to work with to get interested.

I adapted a javascript classic Traveller character generator to include the Citizens of the Imperium professions. You can try it here.
http://www.batintheattic.com/traveller/

One result

Noble B Knight Sir Mohamed Shin    6C337B    Age 46
7 terms                        Cr250,000

Skills: Auto Pistol-1, Brawling-1, Engineering-1, Grav Vehicle-1, Leader-1, Navigation-1, Pilot-1

Benefits: 8,000/yr Retirement Pay, Auto Pistol, High Passage, Travellers' Aid Society, Travellers' Aid Society, Yacht

Service History:
Rolled attributes: 8B637A
--------------------------------------------
Term 1 age 22
Commission roll 5 + 0 vs 10
Commissioned during first term of service as B Knight.
Promotion roll 8 + 0 vs 8
Increased dexterity by 1 to C
Learned Grav Vehicle-1
Learned Leader-1
Survival roll 7 + 0 vs 5
Reenlistment roll 6 vs 5
Voluntarily reenlisted for second term.
--------------------------------------------
Term 2 age 26
Promotion roll 5 + 0 vs 8
Learned Pilot-1
Survival roll 7 + 0 vs 5
Reenlistment roll 8 vs 5
Voluntarily reenlisted for third term.
--------------------------------------------
Term 3 age 30
Promotion roll 9 + 0 vs 8
Increased dexterity by 1 to D
Survival roll 7 + 0 vs 5
Reenlistment roll 7 vs 5
Voluntarily reenlisted for fourth term.
--------------------------------------------
Term 4 age 34
Promotion roll 4 + 0 vs 8
Increased dexterity by 1 to E
Survival roll 3 + 0 vs 5
Aging strength throw 8 vs 8
Aging dexterity throw 7 vs 7
Aging endurance throw 3 vs 8
Decreased endurance by -1 to 5
Reenlistment roll 5 vs 5
Voluntarily reenlisted for fifth term.
--------------------------------------------
Term 5 age 38
Promotion roll 5 + 0 vs 8
Learned Navigation-1
Survival roll 8 + 0 vs 5
Aging strength throw 4 vs 8
Decreased strength by -1 to 7
Aging dexterity throw 6 vs 7
Decreased dexterity by -1 to D
Aging endurance throw 3 vs 8
Decreased endurance by -1 to 4
Reenlistment roll 10 vs 5
Voluntarily reenlisted for sixth term.
--------------------------------------------
Term 6 age 42
Promotion roll 6 + 0 vs 8
Learned Brawling-1
Survival roll 6 + 0 vs 5
Aging strength throw 5 vs 8
Decreased strength by -1 to 6
Aging dexterity throw 5 vs 7
Decreased dexterity by -1 to C
Aging endurance throw 8 vs 8
Reenlistment roll 9 vs 5
Voluntarily reenlisted for seventh term.
--------------------------------------------
Term 7 age 46
Promotion roll 5 + 0 vs 8
Learned Engineering-1
Survival roll 3 + 0 vs 5
Aging strength throw 9 vs 8
Aging dexterity throw 8 vs 7
Aging endurance throw 6 vs 8
Decreased endurance by -1 to 3
Reenlistment roll 4 vs 5
Mandatory retirement after seventh term.
--------------------------------------------
Mustered Out
100,000 credits
100,000 credits
50,000 credits
Yacht
High Passage
Travellers' Aid Society
Auto Pistol
Learned Auto Pistol-1
Travellers' Aid Society


One thing I love about Classic Travellers is the disconnect between the RAW and the popular expectations.

To whit:

Popular expectation - "Traveller is all about paying the starship mortgage."

RAW - A mortgaged starship is the least likely outcome of character generation.

Popular expectation - "Traveller is HardSF."

RAW - Psionics. Gravitics. FTL travel.

Popular expectation - "Traveller is about nonviolent solutions, always."

RAW - most of the chargen careers offer not only weapon skills, but the opportunity to receive a weapon as a mustering out benefit.

There are likely others.

Granted, a Referee and their gaming group can house rule to get the game experience they want. Same as with any other game. Making claims about the game that are contradicted by the RAW, however, is simply lying.

I agree.  I find LBB Traveler chargen incredibly evocative.  It's like one of those minimalist Japanese paintings:  there's just enough detail that your brain fills in the rest of the picture, and the result is beautiful and something neither you nor the artist could come up with alone.  Now I want to see if I can come up with something similar for the game I'm writing now.

Nicked from the owner of Independence Games....

Quote from: John WattsI tend to run a lot of games at conventions. Over the years, when I tell people that I am running "Traveller", I've gotten a lot of different responses from people. I've posted this in the past and the list is a little dated as I rarely say that I am running "Traveller" these days and instead say I am running "Clement Sector" or "Cepheus Engine".

However, in order of frequency, these are the responses that I have heard from people when I say I am running Traveller.

1> What's that?

2> Isn't that the game where you die in character generation?

3> I remember that. Do people still play that?

4> Oh yeah. My Dad/Grandfather used to play that game. I've never played it though. What's it like?

5> Isn't that the game where they had a kickstarter and it came back with this giant book full of charts and everyone was pissed?

6> I played that once! It was boring! The GM and the guy playing the captain of the ship sat there and filled out forms while the rest of stared at the wall.

7> Isn't that the science fiction game that's supposed to be in the future and the computers are less powerful than my phone?

8> I know that game. I bought a copy of it a few years ago, got online, found a forum/Facebook group and asked some questions. A bunch of old guys just shouted at me/told me I was doing it wrong/was stupid/didn't understand and I decided I'd rather play D&D/Pathfinder/Star Wars

9> Traveller? Why the F&*^ would I want to play UPS in Space?

10> Isn't that game where, instead of just going somewhere and having an adventure, you have to figure up your vector movement and do a bunch of math?

11> OMG! You're running Traveller. I've not played that in forever. I just use it to make characters/make spaceships/create planets on my own. When does it start?

12> Isn't that the game where all of the ships are flying gas cans?

13> Isn't that where Firefly came from?

14> I played that with some guys once. It was awful because your character never gets better at anything. You just get more stuff.

CharGen is still one of the best ways to do a Session Zero with that game, because you do get a person out of it in the process.

Quote from: jeff37923;11146022> Isn't that the game where you die in character generation?

Thats the one that I remember.

Quote from: estar;1114554I adapted a javascript classic Traveller character generator to include the Citizens of the Imperium professions. You can try it here.
http://www.batintheattic.com/traveller/

Sweet! I ran about a hundred characters up real quick to use as NPCs. Did not get any characters with a Naval background?

I would love to play this game sometime. I only have the 2008 edition, whatever version that is, but this game seems like it would be a lot of fun.

Quote from: estar;1114554I adapted a javascript classic Traveller character generator to include the Citizens of the Imperium professions. You can try it here.
http://www.batintheattic.com/traveller/

Merchant 4th Officer Martha Cohen    464A75    Age 22
1 term

Service History:
Automatic Enlistment accepted.
Commissioned during first term of service as 4th Officer.
Death in service.


Alas, poor Martha, we barely knew you.

Quote from: GameDaddy;1114630Sweet! I ran about a hundred characters up real quick to use as NPCs. Did not get any characters with a Naval background?

Pick navy from the drop down. The main issue is that the enlistment requirement are pretty stiff so most time the random pick winds up failing and getting drafted into another service.

Quote from: estar;1114554I adapted a javascript classic Traveller character generator to include the Citizens of the Imperium professions. You can try it here.
http://www.batintheattic.com/traveller/

Oh, sweet!  How did I not know about this!

Quote from: Aglondir;1114635Merchant 4th Officer Martha Cohen    464A75    Age 22
1 term

Service History:
Automatic Enlistment accepted.
Commissioned during first term of service as 4th Officer.
Death in service.


Alas, poor Martha, we barely knew you.

Quote from: jeff37923;1114602Nicked from the owner of Independence Games....

I still get similar questions.  Hasn't changed much in the two years or so since I updated that list.

Character generation is still, IMHO, the best thing about the game.  As much as I enjoyed previous versions of the character generation method, I think the improvements that Mongoose made to it is their primary contribution to the game as a whole.  Thankfully that method was included in what Marc and Mongoose made OGL.

The Events and Mishaps just take what was great and made it even better.  While the other Cepheus Engine publishers decided to go back to something closer to Classic, I kept the expanded character generation in Clement Sector.  By far, my favorite part of the game.