Character Generation CheckList

[bolive]

I am running some games next weekend at our local convention. I made up this Character Generation CheckList to help the players get started. Could someone take a look at it and see if i have any problems with it.

Thank You
Brian

Character Generation Checklist
1) Characteristics
a) Roll your 6 characteristics 2d6 and place them in any order on your character sheet.
b) Determine characteristic modifier (Page 6 of the Core Rulebook).
2) Home world
a) Determine home world. Choose 2 from the list (page 6).
b) Gain background skills. Character gains 3 + Education modifier background skills at Level 0. The first two have to be taken from your home world the rest are taken from the education list (page 6). A description of the individual skills can be found starting on page 51.
3) Career
a) Choose a career (pages 10 – 33) you cannot choose a career you’ve already left except Drifter.
b) Roll to qualify for that career. This can be found at the top of the first page of every career.
c) If you qualify for this career go to step 4.
d) If you do not qualify for that career, you can enter the Drifter career or submit to the draft. You may only enter the draft once.
4) Specialization
Choose a specialization. Each career has three specializations.
They can be found at the top of the first page of every career.
5) Basic training
For your first career, you get every skill in the service skills table at level 0.
For subsequent careers, you may pick any one skill from the service skills table at level 0.
6) Skills and Training
Choose one of the Skills and Training tables for this career and roll on it.
If there is no level indicated for the skill, take it at level 1. If you already have the skill, increase your skill by one level.
If the skill has a level after it, and you do not have the skill, take it at that level. If you already have the skill and your skill is a lower level increase it to that level. If you already have that level of skill or greater you skill will not be increased.
7) Survival
Roll for survival it can be found on the bottom of the second page of the career.
If you succeed, go to step 8.
If you did not succeed, events have forced you from this career. Roll on the mishap table and go to step 10.
8: Events
a) Roll for events.
b) Establish a connection to another PC. If this is done, then you both get one extra skill.
This can be any skill you like at level 1, although it is good form to relate it to the connection you have just formed. You may gain a maximum of two free skills from this rule, and each connection must be with a different player character.
9) Advancement or Commission
a) Roll for advancement or if you are in the military you can choose to roll for Commission. You cannot do both.
b) If you succeed, choose one of the skills and training tables and roll on it. Increase your rank and take any bonus skills from the ranks table for this career.
c) If you wish to continue in this career, go to step 6.
d) If you wish to leave this career go to step 3, unless you rolled a natural 12 on ether advancement or commission. In that case you won’t be permitted to leave and must continue for another term go to step 6. You are just too good for them to let you leave. 
10) Aging
a) Increase your age by 4 years.
b) If your character is 34 or older roll for aging (page 36)
11) Benefits
If you are leaving the career, roll for benefits. A character gets one Benefit Roll for every full term served in that career. You also get extra benefit rolls if you reached a higher rank.
12) Next term
If you’re leaving your current career go to step 3 to choose a new career or to step 13 if you wish to finish your character.
13) Connections
Finalize any connections with other characters.
14) Campaign skill pack
Choose a campaign skill pack (page 38) and allocate skills from that skill pack.
15) Buy starting equipment
Purchase you’re starting equipment (page 86) and, if you can afford it, a spacecraft

 

[zero]

All good, except I'm sure the Core Book mentions that establishing a connection with another PC replaces an Event roll. The player must choose one or the other each term.

 

[Hans Rancke]

This is a purely personal opinion, so please don't take it for anything more. When running convention scenarios, I've found that the time it takes players to create characters is much better spent gaming. Using pre-generated characters saves time and has the added advantage that you can make sure that skills that are crucial to the scenario are available to the party.

Also, unless a ship is irrelevant to the plot, I can't imagine any scenario where the difference between having a ship and not having one would not be a huge handicap for the groups that weren't lucky enough to get one. YMMV.


Hans

 

[bolive]

Thanks guys for looking at it for me. I just wanted to make sure i didn't have something totaly messed up.

 

[GamerDude]

It looks good. You could also check the Mongoose Traveller Aids elist on yahoo (see my signature below) for anything to help you like other checklists, blank character sheets, fillable character sheets, etc. We have stuff for Mongoose Traveller, Chthonian Stars (Traveller version) and terra sol (Traveller version).

 

[fschiff]

All good, except I'm sure the Core Book mentions that establishing a connection with another PC replaces an Event roll. The player must choose one or the other each term.

Nope.

You get an Event roll.

Then you OPTIONALLY get to make a connection with another character.

What you do in your game is your own businness of course.

 

[nats]

a) Determine home world. Choose 2 from the list (page 6).

Don't know what the sentence means. You only get one homeworld.

7) Survival
Roll for survival it can be found on the bottom of the second page of the career.
If you succeed, go to step 8.
If you did not succeed, events have forced you from this career. Roll on the mishap table and go to step 10.

You lose the benefit roll for that term of you fail the survival throw.

a) Roll for advancement or if you are in the military you can choose to roll for Commission. You cannot do both.

You can do both (well according to CT you could), it is vague in MgT. But you can advance twice if you get it as an event before the advancement throw, so I see it that you can certainly also get a commission and then promotion. Commission roll is also optional, the advancement roll is not.

d) If you wish to leave this career go to step 3, unless you rolled a natural 12 on ether advancement or commission.

Just relative to the advancement not commission roll. Commission throw has got nothing to do with advancing in the career or not.

11) Benefits
If you are leaving the career, roll for benefits. A character gets one Benefit Roll for every full term served in that career. You also get extra benefit rolls if you reached a higher rank.

Lose the benefit throw for the last term if you lost that terms survival throw or were chucked out because of a mishap (I allow the mishap table to do this in my games). Get a +1 on money table of you have Gambling-1 or higher. Get a +1 on all throws if you have a Rank of 5 or 6.

If you don't want to get a contact, ally, enemy, rival with another player character you can always throw on the table on page 76 or just make up one as an NPC - doesn't have to be a player character.

 

[fschiff]

a) Determine home world. Choose 2 from the list (page 6).

Don't know what the sentence means.

Its talking about the trade codes that determine which 0 level skills are available to you prior to your career.

 

[nats]

a) Determine home world. Choose 2 from the list (page 6).

Don't know what the sentence means.

Its talking about the trade codes that determine which 0 level skills are available to you prior to your career.

Should probably say 'choose a maximum of two skills from the list on page 6' then.

 

[BFalcon]

It says to pick from the list only if your character doesn't come from a planet that the referee (and/or the books if in the OTU, which is much the same thing) has already created.

Most referees will insist on an existing planet, so it's more a case of look them up. You can have any number, by implication, from the list if picking, but a wise referee will be making up the world for the player rather than let players just cherry pick the skills they want. In practical terms though, the vast majority of planets have 2 codes at most, so that's why, I think, Bolive said "pick 2". Picking more than 3 would be either a very special planet or the referee should be seriously questioning the player as to how the planet has all those codes - especially if he chose contradictory ones.

Certainly, as a referee, I'd be either handing the player the Spinward Marches book or map or ask the player what kind of world he wants and assigning a number of planet choices to him so he can choose - I think most referees will agree that knowing where a character comes from is important - not least so that they can drop it into the plot at some point (after all, why waste a potential plot-hook).

Leaving it to the player to make up a planet should really only be done, IMO, where you're making up your own traveller universe, in which case it'll be best to work with the referee and either have him make up a world with the right codes for you or have the player do it and the referee place it randomly in an area he has yet to populate.

 

[Scalding]

There's a Character Generation Checklist in the rulebook that closely matches yours. One difference is that in yours you don't get to roll for benefits if you leave a career when you advance. (Step 9d)

In the MGT rulebook you don't age when you advance unless you leave the career. In your checklist you don't age when you advance.

As a first-time player, I made (or am making) an Agent. He's been through the Intelligence specialty and advanced 6 times (never failing to advance), making him a Director. But according to the flowchart, he's never aged and will be 22 when he leaves the agency! If he aged 4 years for each advancement, then he'd be 42, which is still remarkable but not outlandish.

So, if you advance, do you age?

 

[zero]

^ Its usually 4 years per term. 6 terms is 24 years of a career, add to the base age of 18 means a character of that many terms would be 42 years old.

 

[bolive]

There's a Character Generation Checklist in the rulebook that closely matches yours. One difference is that in yours you don't get to roll for benefits if you leave a career when you advance. (Step 9d)

In the MGT rulebook you don't age when you advance unless you leave the career. In your checklist you don't age when you advance.

As a first-time player, I made (or am making) an Agent. He's been through the Intelligence specialty and advanced 6 times (never failing to advance), making him a Director. But according to the flowchart, he's never aged and will be 22 when he leaves the agency! If he aged 4 years for each advancement, then he'd be 42, which is still remarkable but not outlandish.

So, if you advance, do you age?

I will fix it. You age 4 years for every career term. no mater what happenes. Thanks for catching that. and thanks to everyone who checked it out I will go throught all the posts and make the updates.

 

[GamerDude]

I will fix it. You age 4 years for every career term. no mater what happenes. Thanks for catching that. and thanks to everyone who checked it out I will go throught all the posts and make the updates.

Um check again, I believe it's 4 years for a full term, if you miss your survival roll (and the mishap doesn't say you get to stay in the career) you get out after 2 years.

 

[bolive]

I will fix it. You age 4 years for every career term. no mater what happenes. Thanks for catching that. and thanks to everyone who checked it out I will go throught all the posts and make the updates.

Um check again, I believe it's 4 years for a full term, if you miss your survival roll (and the mishap doesn't say you get to stay in the career) you get out after 2 years.

Do you know where you saw that in the rules. In the Character Creation example on Pages 38 to 40 of the core book. Alexander Jamison had 6 career terms, surviving all but the last term. It said his final age was 42. 6 terms x 4 years + 18 starting age. If you ages 2 years for a failed survival roll then he would have been 40. If you can find where it says otherwise I will be happy to change it. It would help out one of my players when he rolled up his character to failed every survival roll ended up with no mustering out benifits and a load of debt. It was funny the other players loved it. Made for a great demo.

Brian

 

[GypsyComet]

Back when a failed survival roll was "you enter play" I used to determine the year of exit randomly. Under MGT I assume a full term passes regardless as the PC does clean up after the mishap, spends time in hospital, or is simply denied re-up at the usual time.

 

[GamerDude]

Back when a failed survival roll was "you enter play" I used to determine the year of exit randomly. Under MGT I assume a full term passes regardless as the PC does clean up after the mishap, spends time in hospital, or is simply denied re-up at the usual time.

Well in CT it was "failed survival roll = character death start over".

In MGT it's "Fail survival, roll mishap event. If the event doesn't say 'you don't leave the career' then you exit after 2 years/half a normal term and no muster out rolls for that failed term"

 

[bolive]

Back when a failed survival roll was "you enter play" I used to determine the year of exit randomly. Under MGT I assume a full term passes regardless as the PC does clean up after the mishap, spends time in hospital, or is simply denied re-up at the usual time.

Well in CT it was "failed survival roll = character death start over".

In MGT it's "Fail survival, roll mishap event. If the event doesn't say 'you don't leave the career' then you exit after 2 years/half a normal term and no muster out rolls for that failed term"

Where can I find that rule in the books or Errata. I have looked for it and all I find says if you fail the roll you still spend 4 years.

Brian