Failing Career Qualification Rule

[Shadowblayde99]

The rule: failing the qualification role for a career means that you either submit to the draft or take the drifter career.

Does this still make sense? Is there any logical reason why the character can't apply to other careers?

Example: Bobby wants to join the scouts but fails the qualification role. Why can't they try to join the merchant marines? Terms are 4 years so why would the person want to join the military or bum around for 4 years before trying again.

Does anyone use a different rule for characters failing qualification roles ?

 

[WHULorigan]

The rule: failing the qualification role for a career means that you either submit to the draft or take the drifter career.

Does this still make sense? Is there any logical reason why the character can't apply to other careers?

Example: Bobby wants to join the scouts but fails the qualification role. Why can't they try to join the merchant marines? Terms are 4 years so why would the person want to join the military or bum around for 4 years before trying again.

But even if I would use dice based - I would simply ignore the rules since I believe in the player building the character that is wanted.

I tend to agree with Somebody: Help a player generate a character that he wants to play, even when using random CharGen. In general, most people don't want to be forced to play the random results of the dice for a long-term campaign character (unless they got lucky and got something they liked). At least, that is not the reason I role-play . . .

But you could modify the rules as follows: Presume that when a Character is applying for a military or government career, they are signing-off on a contract up front and agreeing to submit to a "draft" of sorts - you get to try for what you want, but if the service can't find a spot for you or doesn't need you there, they will assign you somewhere else (and they have already got you bound by contract to a 4-year term). If they can't use you anywhere (or perhaps the implication is that you fail some type of fitness for service qualification), then you are ejected and your contract is voided, and you carry the stigma for a term. Perhaps that only leaves you with the Drifter option, or Career options other than Drifter have an enlistment penalty for that term. Let each enlistment attempt represent 1 year's-worth of job-searching, during which time they are treated as a Drifter for that year.

You could use the latter for general non-draft military career enlistment as well. You get 4 chances for enlistment per term (represented a job-searching). Each failed attempt is treated as 1-year as a Drifter.

Also, I prefer a slightly different draft table:

1. Navy
2. Army
3. Marine
4. Merchant Marine
5. Scout
6. Citizen (Colonist or Worker)

I found the idea of being drafted into Law Enforcement somewhat odd. But (at least in the OTU setting-fluff going as far back as early CT), the Imperium (or its member worlds) has had both "make-work" programs as well as "deals" to get people to consider moving to a new colony world overseen by the Ministry of Colonization in exchange for something from the Imperium or local government (like payment for major medical care, commutation of criminal sentence, cancellation of debt, a property or land grant, etc.), so it seemed like a good fit for the final slot of the draft.

It also made a little bit more sense of the Draft/Drifter dichotomy:

"So you don't want to do military service (Army/Navy/Marines), you don't want to do government or civilian service (Scouts/Merchant-Marines), you don't want to learn or work at a skilled trade (Worker) or build a new life for yourself helping start a new colony world . . . , so just what DO you want to do?"​

 

[WHULorigan]

As for being drafted into law enforcement - for a cold war german that feels less odd. Back then all males where drafted. You had four ways to evade that (five with "be physically or mentally unfit")

I was actually thinking about this one after I wrote it. In Classic Traveller this slot was occupied by the ubiquitous "Other" Career, which in the original Basic LBB game was the generic undefined catch-all career for anything that wasn't defined by any of the other 5 careers. When CT: Sup 4 (Citizens of the Imperium) came out with all of its Basic-style career options, the Other Career became somewhat of an orphan looking for an identity.

My choice in my above post was primarily for a generic OTU-based option. But in a sense you could use this slot (i.e. "Worker") as a stand-in for something worked-out between the GM and the player based upon the homeworld-choice of the player for the character, which might be different form world to world (or even something bizarre depending on where they came from, or for a different campaign-setting). So the point you make above about "Law Enforcement" might work as a stand-in for "Worker" on the right homeworld with the right Law and Government types.

 

[shammond42]

I've been using a system to try to balance player choice while still retaining traditional feel of character generation. At the start of character creation I give each player 3 tokens. Then during the creation process they can turn in a token to select the result of a d6 or to reroll a 2d6 or d66 after the fact. There are some other details, but that is the important part.

My players usually don't like random character creation, but they have been pretty satisfied with this method.

 

[Rel Fexive]

I have considered letting players use their character's Luck by spending its stat points to modify the qualification, survival, promotion, and commission rolls, and their skill table rolls too. So you get a set number of Luck points to modify the rolls over one character creation sequence.

 

[Condottiere]

It's a game mechanism to ensure that the character you create has some useful skills.

At an interstellar scale, unless some humans have skills existential to the polity's survival, I rather doubt anyone would bother with a draft, or conscription.

At a planetary scale, say with planetary (para)military services that need warm bodies, it's plausible.

 

[Vormaerin]

In my experience, the randomness of Traveller character creation appeals to players who wants a character who *does* a certain thing. It struggles with players who want to have *been* a specific thing. If you want to make a character who can be the ship's engineer during play, then there's enough paths to that and failsafes in the system that this result is practically guaranteed. If you have a player who is set on playing a former Imperial Navy Engineering Officer, then there's going to be potential for conflict. It might work out, it might not. Setting expectations is pretty important in my experience.

Personally, if I'm aiming for the latter sort of thing, I'd prefer to just use a point buy system rather than trying to apply bonuses to tweak the existing system. Either the bonuses still make it possible to fail to get the desired outcome or they overwhelm the mechanics to the point that I'd wonder why we are using them.

 

[Anstett]

I have considered letting players use their character's Luck by spending its stat points to modify the qualification, survival, promotion, and commission rolls, and their skill table rolls too. So you get a set number of Luck points to modify the rolls over one character creation sequence.

This is what we do for our campaign.

I call it Character Discovery. You get your basic roll your six stats. Then you get 6 luck points to spend over the course of your rolls discovering your character. You can use them to help get into the career you want, or to make that advancement roll, or to move up or down on the benefits.

The players get to guide the randomness of the rolls but we still end up with travellers that are not quite what you expected most of the time. Then we roleplay the why you are part of the group, connecting the dots of "oh you served during the Two Suns operation? I was on the...." connection rules to get an extra skill point as appropriate.

 

[Rel Fexive]

This is what we do for our campaign.

I call it Character Discovery. You get your basic roll your six stats. Then you get 6 luck points to spend over the course of your rolls discovering your character. You can use them to help get into the career you want, or to make that advancement roll, or to move up or down on the benefits.

The players get to guide the randomness of the rolls but we still end up with travellers that are not quite what you expected most of the time. Then we roleplay the why you are part of the group, connecting the dots of "oh you served during the Two Suns operation? I was on the...." connection rules to get an extra skill point as appropriate.

It has occurred to me that an above average Luck might lead to a lot of manipulation that could take away much of the "expected randomness" of character creation. Maybe.... a set number (e.g. six) points modified by the DM of the Luck stat would be better?

 

[ottarrus]

I'm of two minds about this.
On the one hand, yes, help the players get the kind of toons they want. Everybody is happier that way.

On the other hand, one of the great things about the Traveller character generation from the LBBs to today is the possibility of failure. If you did get into the academy, graduate with honors, and make it all the way to Captain /Colonel at retirement, the player feels like they accomplished something even before the game actually begins. Many players also get invested in a character that's had mixed luck in their careers... the character has already suffered the slings and arrows of life and has some interesting skills to show for it.

IMTU, I already give the players a break by allowing them a lot of freedom in focusing their skills, so it seems to me that a character that had to submit to the Draft isn't in such a bad situation. Maybe a 'middle of the road' solution is to allow the player to pick the service he's drafted into... but they can't pick the one they failed to enter.

Note: on the 'focusing their skills' thing... When a character become eligible for a skill, I allow them roll the die and choose which skill among those on that die pip. For example, 'Eneri' is eligible for a skill roll. He rolls the die and gets a 2. Eneri's player can choose which skill on the Service, Branch, and Physical Development Tables are under the 2 die result. So, instead of getting Drive for the third time, he can choose between Drive, Electronics, and +1 Dex [or whatever].

 

[Saladman]

Is there any logical reason why the character can't apply to other careers?

You are applying simulationist logic to a non-simulationist game mechanism.

Does anyone use a different rule for characters failing qualification roles ?

No, I run it by the book. Although...

...Help a player generate a character that he wants to play...

My failsafe here is I'm open to a player handing over their first sheet for an NPC and re-rolling. I still prefer they roll it out and see where it goes, on the off chance it all comes together in the end. (Which can happen from multiple gear benefit rolls, for instance.)

On consideration I would be open to a rule that you could always try for Worker, or always try for Colonist. That doesn't break anything. I see it more as a setting/campaign decision than something that needs fixed in the core rulebook though - what your campaign is likely to be about, both in backstory and in skills in play might influence your choice of what backup career to use more than logical, simulationist concerns. Maybe one game's backup career is Pirate, and another's is Belter.

 

[Sigtrygg]

When my daughter et al made characters for their introduction to Traveller I used CT generation tables with 2 changes
1 - they rolled boon rather an 2d6 - people still failed the odd roll and there were a couple of survival roll scares still
2 - when they rolled for a skill they had the choice of which skill to take from any of the three or four tables they were eligible to roll on - so if they rolled a 4 for a skill they could pick from the three/four skills that could be, if that makes sense.

Note I always allow a character to enter as many careers as the player want to attempt (S4 CotI is opened up for this) , so it is not unusual for a 3 term Army to go into the Police or some other career, provided they don't roll a 12 on re-enlistment, and then possibly a third or fourth career.

It is a game for the players, let them do what they want to.

After all it explicitly states in 77 CT the referee can do what they want with the game.

He must settle disputes concerning the rules (and may use his own imagination in doing so, rather than strictly adhering to the letter of the rules).

So if the player wants more than one career who am I, or the rules, to stop them.

The aim is to have fun.

 

[metlk]

When my daughter et al made characters for their introduction to Traveller I used CT generation tables with 2 changes
1 - they rolled boon rather an 2d6 - people still failed the odd roll and there were a couple of survival roll scares still
2 - when they rolled for a skill they had the choice of which skill to take from any of the three or four tables they were eligible to roll on - so if they rolled a 4 for a skill they could pick from the three/four skills that could be, if that makes sense.

Note I always allow a character to enter as many careers as the player want to attempt (S4 CotI is opened up for this) , so it is not unusual for a 3 term Army to go into the Police or some other career, provided they don't roll a 12 on re-enlistment, and then possibly a third or fourth career.

1. We use Boons for two characteristic rolls. I might start adding it to their first career choice. I'd reluctant to make it for every qual roll though, as we've more than once had players fully retire from one career, do well enough on the aging rolls, and pick up a term or two of a second career.
2. We do this as well. It really helps make a more rounded character and avoid ending up with a mostly useless character due to a handful of bad rolls.
3. Unless I've misread something somewhere, I thought the rules always allowed you to take as many careers as you wanted, so long as you could pass the qualification roll and barring something happening which would prevent it.

I've not had any complaints with the character generation overall and really enjoy learning who my character was. More than once it's forced me to adjust my playstyle in ways class-based systems never do.