I'm working on a conversion of Eclipse Phase to Traveller, which is going remarkably well. EP is a d100 system with a plethora of skills (Add Aptitude+Skill value, roll under), Traveller is a 2d6 system with few, but broad skills (Add Attribute mod + Skill mod, roll 8+). But in both cases, the Attributes (Aptitudes in EP) add to the skill value when rolling.
One place, however that is tricksy, is the Aptitude Maximum rating on morphs.
In EP every morph, or body, has a limit on how well its brain/body system can perform. Human baseline is 15 and your basic pod morph has physical and mental 'room' for aptitudes up to 20, while specialized combat morphs and others have a maximum of 40, better than twice as good on a linear scale.
Now, this is fine: you want to take advantage of that 35 INTuition aptitude your Ego has? Sleeve into a Menton, not a Pleasure Pod.
But!
Given a design goal of The conversion must be 100% backwards compatible with MgT (and to a lesser extent, CT):
How could one go about modeling that in Traveller, where human baseline is 7, physical characteristic max is C (barring the occasional +1 Str from personal improvement tables and avoidance of negative aging rolls)
Options I've come up with:
1. Don't. Just give morphs bonuses to stats.
Pros: Easy, both mechanically and psychologically: you're never taking away from anyone, a Baseline morph (a Flat in EP parlance) has no bonuses, whereas an expensive Ghost morph gets +2DEX, +1END, +1EDU and +1 to one other stat of the player's choice.
Cons: Morphs limiting your attributes is firmly in the 'rule of awesome' and really should be modeled.
2. Flats have an attribute max of 9, others have higher.
Pros: We now have two degrees of design freedom in creating morphs: attribute max and attribute bonuses. So, your ego having a Dex of C(12) does you no good when sleeved into a stock synthmorph or flat. Your +2 bonus is reduced to a +1. Get a better morph, brinker.
Cons: It seems to break backwards compatibility with the rest of MgT. A poor thug from a backwater TL5 world can have DCC777 as stats and using these rules, it seems that he'd have to be in something other than a Flat or Synthmorph to take advantage of that.
Either exotic morphs are easier to come by even on low TL worlds than would seem plausible or we end up telling GMs to either sleeve everyone in flats unless it's reasonable otherwise (more work! breaks backwards compatibility because we have to reconfigure stuff) or just ignore it and play as written (breaks verisimilitude, the whole point of the exercise is to let the players be able to make largely correct assumptions on the capabilities of others based on their morph)
3. Some other idea I haven't thought of yet.
One place, however that is tricksy, is the Aptitude Maximum rating on morphs.
In EP every morph, or body, has a limit on how well its brain/body system can perform. Human baseline is 15 and your basic pod morph has physical and mental 'room' for aptitudes up to 20, while specialized combat morphs and others have a maximum of 40, better than twice as good on a linear scale.
Now, this is fine: you want to take advantage of that 35 INTuition aptitude your Ego has? Sleeve into a Menton, not a Pleasure Pod.
But!
Given a design goal of The conversion must be 100% backwards compatible with MgT (and to a lesser extent, CT):
How could one go about modeling that in Traveller, where human baseline is 7, physical characteristic max is C (barring the occasional +1 Str from personal improvement tables and avoidance of negative aging rolls)
Options I've come up with:
1. Don't. Just give morphs bonuses to stats.
Pros: Easy, both mechanically and psychologically: you're never taking away from anyone, a Baseline morph (a Flat in EP parlance) has no bonuses, whereas an expensive Ghost morph gets +2DEX, +1END, +1EDU and +1 to one other stat of the player's choice.
Cons: Morphs limiting your attributes is firmly in the 'rule of awesome' and really should be modeled.
2. Flats have an attribute max of 9, others have higher.
Pros: We now have two degrees of design freedom in creating morphs: attribute max and attribute bonuses. So, your ego having a Dex of C(12) does you no good when sleeved into a stock synthmorph or flat. Your +2 bonus is reduced to a +1. Get a better morph, brinker.
Cons: It seems to break backwards compatibility with the rest of MgT. A poor thug from a backwater TL5 world can have DCC777 as stats and using these rules, it seems that he'd have to be in something other than a Flat or Synthmorph to take advantage of that.
Either exotic morphs are easier to come by even on low TL worlds than would seem plausible or we end up telling GMs to either sleeve everyone in flats unless it's reasonable otherwise (more work! breaks backwards compatibility because we have to reconfigure stuff) or just ignore it and play as written (breaks verisimilitude, the whole point of the exercise is to let the players be able to make largely correct assumptions on the capabilities of others based on their morph)
3. Some other idea I haven't thought of yet.