Belter Starting age
- Thread starter whtknght
- Start date
Rikki Tikki Traveller
Cosmic Mongoose
There are probably several reasons or careers that might start at 14 or 16 rather than 18.
Barbarians could probably start at 14.
Even many modern societies only have schooling until kids are 16 or so. If you start working, you have a career.
Cultural differences would also allow younger (or older) starting ages.
Imagine a society that does not consider you an adult until you are 20 or 21. You don't get to do anything that would be considered a career before that age. Maybe you get an extra Background skill or something.
Different races are going to start at different ages too. As Referee, you will have to adapt for that idea as well.
Barbarians could probably start at 14.
Even many modern societies only have schooling until kids are 16 or so. If you start working, you have a career.
Cultural differences would also allow younger (or older) starting ages.
Imagine a society that does not consider you an adult until you are 20 or 21. You don't get to do anything that would be considered a career before that age. Maybe you get an extra Background skill or something.
Different races are going to start at different ages too. As Referee, you will have to adapt for that idea as well.
Starting different careers at different ages is a nonsense. By doing that you're saying that you learn skills at a different rate depending on when you start that career - ultimately this isn't true. You would expect people to learn skills at the same rate regardless of whether they have a career, they're at school, or they're playing video games (tho I doubt the value of Trade (Video games player) for most Traveller characters).
If you want to start Belters at 14, you should start all characters at 14 and introduce a range of new careers like "High School" (with service branches of Nerd, Jock and Layabout if you so wish!). To do otherwise creates an illogical difference.
If you want to start Belters at 14, you should start all characters at 14 and introduce a range of new careers like "High School" (with service branches of Nerd, Jock and Layabout if you so wish!). To do otherwise creates an illogical difference.
I do not see that problem. :?
In my opinion it makes no difference whether a character begins to learn
the skills of his future career at age 14, 15, 16, 17 or 18 - after the four
years of his first term he has had exactly the same four years to learn
those skills.
However, I think it would be prudent to take a look at homeworld skills,
background skills and the advanced education skills of the first term, be-
cause someone of age 14 will hardly be able to aquire the same of these
skills as someone of age 18.
Besides, I do not quite understand why a colonist should start his career
at age 14, at least not on any mid to high technology world.
I see no convincing reason why the school system on such a world should
be inferior to the school system on a developed world, especially since co-
lonists are likely to have to learn more - not less - than their counterparts
on a more developed world.
In my opinion it makes no difference whether a character begins to learn
the skills of his future career at age 14, 15, 16, 17 or 18 - after the four
years of his first term he has had exactly the same four years to learn
those skills.
However, I think it would be prudent to take a look at homeworld skills,
background skills and the advanced education skills of the first term, be-
cause someone of age 14 will hardly be able to aquire the same of these
skills as someone of age 18.
Besides, I do not quite understand why a colonist should start his career
at age 14, at least not on any mid to high technology world.
I see no convincing reason why the school system on such a world should
be inferior to the school system on a developed world, especially since co-
lonists are likely to have to learn more - not less - than their counterparts
on a more developed world.
rust said:
But careers starting at 14 will, on average, know at least 1 skill and possibly 2 or 3 more skills than any other 18 year old. Not including up to 6 basic training skills at level-0. Why? It's not a question of one school being better than another, it's that if you allow early career entry you create disparities in the number of skills known depending on the character background.
rust said:Well, yes - but that is just "realistic", at least when it comes to careerphild said:
skills, I think.
But when career skills include such things as Social Sciences, Physical Sciences and Athletics - all things one potentially learns at school - that argument doesn't follow. Alternatively, you should give anyone starting a career at 14 a significant EDU penalty, representing the loss of formal and informal knowledge in favour of physical skills.
Two comments:
First of all, I think one should take age as a more approximative notion, what really is important in terms of gameplay is the number of terms of service and the age roll being a function of it.
I would accept a PC changing the final age of his character of one or two years, or even up to 10 years if he is at least in his thirties, so long as it has no effect on rules. You can justify it by saying colonists, belters etc start earlyer but *age* faster, not mentionning different sub species of humans and extra-terrestrial environments.
However, introducing an optionnal variable starting age (with consequences on aging roll) can indeed be interesting in some cases. BUT I agree with Phild: it should, for gameplay issues, but also for realism's sake, be balanced in game by a healthy penalty or bonus in Education, and also to some extent in intellect (as school is also about training one's intellect) and maybe even Social standing. Some very rare people leave school early because they are very bright, I know a guy like that who got the final school degree at 14 instead of 18 or 19, but most cases of people leaving school early because of having to work (as would be the case for belters, colonists, family trader) are *handicaped* in intellectual domains (at least at first, they can allways catch up later, that would be personnal development).
My mods would be something like:
Starting age approx 14 : Edu -5 or -4 or -3 (tricky because of higher edu skills at Edu 8+), Int -3 or -2,Soc-1
Starting age approx 22: Edu+3 or +2, Int+1
EDIT: Actually the late starting at 22 is pretty cool. sacrificing a term of service for a Edu/Int bonus. Balanced and very real world believable (except in real world there should be a minimal Soc requirement).
First of all, I think one should take age as a more approximative notion, what really is important in terms of gameplay is the number of terms of service and the age roll being a function of it.
I would accept a PC changing the final age of his character of one or two years, or even up to 10 years if he is at least in his thirties, so long as it has no effect on rules. You can justify it by saying colonists, belters etc start earlyer but *age* faster, not mentionning different sub species of humans and extra-terrestrial environments.
However, introducing an optionnal variable starting age (with consequences on aging roll) can indeed be interesting in some cases. BUT I agree with Phild: it should, for gameplay issues, but also for realism's sake, be balanced in game by a healthy penalty or bonus in Education, and also to some extent in intellect (as school is also about training one's intellect) and maybe even Social standing. Some very rare people leave school early because they are very bright, I know a guy like that who got the final school degree at 14 instead of 18 or 19, but most cases of people leaving school early because of having to work (as would be the case for belters, colonists, family trader) are *handicaped* in intellectual domains (at least at first, they can allways catch up later, that would be personnal development).
My mods would be something like:
Starting age approx 14 : Edu -5 or -4 or -3 (tricky because of higher edu skills at Edu 8+), Int -3 or -2,Soc-1
Starting age approx 22: Edu+3 or +2, Int+1
EDIT: Actually the late starting at 22 is pretty cool. sacrificing a term of service for a Edu/Int bonus. Balanced and very real world believable (except in real world there should be a minimal Soc requirement).
Agreed, this is basically what I did mean when I mentioned homeworld,phild said:
background and advanced education skills, although I would prefer an ap-
proach based upon the specific setting instead of a mechanics approach
by reducing EDU.
For example, a young colonist in my setting may well have been a mem-
ber of the Federation Scouts (= boy scouts) and thereby have had an op-
portunity to learn skills like First Aid and Survival, but he has had no chan-
ce to learn Drive in my setting, because no sane adult would allow a kid
to drive an ATV (the only available ground vehicle).
Dave Chase
Mongoose
rust said:
rust beat me to it
I was going to say that when we used the Belter and Barbarian age 14 rule you rolled d6 +3 for your EDU stat instead of 2d6. This reflected that they started life earlier but gave up school learning instead.
Dave Chase
Dave Chase
Mongoose
phild said:
True but here is my reasoning behind it.
Do you think a stupid person, nonlearning individual would survive that type of enviorment very long? I know that Education is not INTelligence but if you couldn't learn new things, or additional skill as needed then you could be screwed the older you got.
But that is just my reasoning.
Dave Chase
If you're going to allow early/late career initiation, then personally I'd say allow it for all careers. No more than one term earlier than normal should be allowed - starting at age 14 can be considered reasonable from either a frontier society standpoint or from the standpoint of a wunderkind, but starting at 10 or younger would be too unbalancing. If you really want to start two or more terms later than normal, that could be allowed, but it seems to me you'd be giving up an awful lot...
Now, as to what you'd be trading for this flexibility... I'd suggest that the "early starters" should be assessed a -2 adjustment on EDU and a -1 adjustment on INT. For each term you give up as a "late starter", I would suggest that the player have a choice of EITHER +1 EDU and +1 to a characteristic of his/her choice (representing suboptimal self-improvement efforts) OR +2 EDU (representing "general studies" on a community college level or the equivalent). The idea is to allow something similar to, but not quite as good as, the preenlistment schooling options already present in the rules.
Personally, if I were a player using these options, the only one I'd be likely to take would be the fourteen-year-old, and then only if his EDU and INT were high enough to adequately compensate. And I'd likely use the "extra" term for whichever school corresponded with my preferred career - an "Ender"-type character if military, or a child prodigy in one of the civilian careers. That, however, is a personal choice. I can certainly see many people opting for the "young" belter/moisture farmer/barbarian warrior/whatever.
Now, as to what you'd be trading for this flexibility... I'd suggest that the "early starters" should be assessed a -2 adjustment on EDU and a -1 adjustment on INT. For each term you give up as a "late starter", I would suggest that the player have a choice of EITHER +1 EDU and +1 to a characteristic of his/her choice (representing suboptimal self-improvement efforts) OR +2 EDU (representing "general studies" on a community college level or the equivalent). The idea is to allow something similar to, but not quite as good as, the preenlistment schooling options already present in the rules.
Personally, if I were a player using these options, the only one I'd be likely to take would be the fourteen-year-old, and then only if his EDU and INT were high enough to adequately compensate. And I'd likely use the "extra" term for whichever school corresponded with my preferred career - an "Ender"-type character if military, or a child prodigy in one of the civilian careers. That, however, is a personal choice. I can certainly see many people opting for the "young" belter/moisture farmer/barbarian warrior/whatever.
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