How do you generate child characters?

[TrippyHippy]

The character generation is one of my favourite things about Traveller.

However, we've been playing through a Pirates campaign for several months and the current player characters have hired on some extra help in an expansion of their crew. Initially we just had them as PCs, and one of them was basically a scrappy kid (I think we may have randomly generated that, somehow but the momory is hazy). In the last adventure, as the main crew where split up into different scenarios, we fleshed out the scenes by having players playing the NPCs. It worked, so the plan is to now flesh out the NPCs to full characters in order to create troupe style play moving forward.

This is great, except I can't actually generate workable skill stats for characters below 18 years in the rules. The kid is about 13 years, I'm thinking. Any suggestions?

 

[Reynard]

People under 18 generate Characteristics and Background skills and that's it. At 18 someone can attend college or military academy for 4 years gaining a few more skills then begin adventuring. Yes, they have very little that early in life.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

It wouldn't be out of the question for a 13 year old to have piloting skill so he could fly a spaceship. especially if he grew up on one. Basically a Weslie Crusher type.

 

[Epicenter]

This is great, except I can't actually generate workable skill stats for characters below 18 years in the rules. The kid is about 13 years, I'm thinking. Any suggestions?

Traveller doesn't do a good job simulating people who aren't from the mid 20th century (and possibly later) America very well. In fact, it doesn't really simulate anyone who is younger than, say, 25 or so. It doesn't represent well at all kids who don't grow up in nice, safe places and just go to school until they're 18. It doesn't do things like a society where kids are learning their trade from their dads even starting at like 8 years old or something - maybe the education doesn't get serious until the kid's like 13 or something but he's still learning and likely knows more than just the background skills.

Reynard's suggestion is good. Your party likely hired the kid because he's scrappy, not because he has amazing engineering skills. Just start him with stats and background skills, and then use the learning rules as your PCs teach the kid new skills. You could even give the kid a 2x bonus for learning to represent that younger brains retain new information easier.

If the kid actually has been taught something, like maybe instead of going to school he was learning how to repair vehicles from a mechanic since he was 10, maybe you could give him a Engineering-0 or even -1.

 

[Reynard]

Remember again the Traveller system does not use huge numbers for task modifiers compared to most other games. The mechanics are favorable to success even when you have only one or two points in a characteristic or skill. You have a good grasp of a subject with 1 point, you're well trained with 2 points and professional grade with 3. Anything above becomes outstanding in your circles.

Having a 0 in a skill means you know the basic working in that topic, more than the general population. VERY few people in the world are renaissance types with several high level skills while still relatively young. Wesley Crusher as well as everyone else on any Enterprise class ship are extreme exceptions to the rest of the galaxy.

We're also very spoiled by other games that have characters level up in weeks or months when reality you can't do in a life time. For this I commend Traveller 'keeping it real' by focusing on the game play and adventure than becoming supermen. Even still, Traveller is a game about heroes and cinematics so you are always a little better when it come to upping skills over time.

As an example of real life, I have a college education and graduated with honors granting me an EDU of probably 8 or 9 and skills in Science (biology) 2, Science (chemistry) 1 plus maybe Science (genetics) 0 and Science (physics) 0. Add in a few background 0 levels skills from my youth. This got me a job in R&D for a couple decades. For the past 15 years, I've been performing publically as an actor which would give me Art (performer) 0 as I successfully made it work but not as a paying job EXCEPT the organization decided I was good enough to hire me and train me at low level. That would be good to take me to Perform 1 and I'm probably still at that level after so many years. Count them up and I don't have many skill points but I can also say those few point have served me successfully plus maybe picking up a couple other skills at level 0 over the years.

 

[paltrysum]

I have a recurring child character in my campaign. If you're familiar with the Mongoose adventure, "Last Flight of the Amuar," it involves finding a lost Leviathan-class merchant cruiser that purportedly has the nephew of the patron aboard. I changed that so that it was the ex-wife and child of one of the PCs who was purportedly aboard. When they finally found the ship, of the two key NPCs only the child, a girl named Kiirsas, had survived. So going forward in addition to playing the ship's engineer, the player had to play the role of dad. I have to say he's done a fine job, although being a real-life dad obviously gave him an edge. In addition, another player volunteered for the role of Kiirsas' tutor which was really cool and lent the child subplot a greater level of verisimilitude. So the kid was "home schooled" aboard a starship.

As Epicenter pointed out, Traveller isn't really designed to create child characters, so I just fudged it. I gave her the following stats:

Kiirsas Dimuui, 364759, age 10
Engineering (Power Plant)-0, Athletics (Dexterity)-0, Vacc Suit-0

I wouldn't normally give a child three zero-level skills, but I wanted her to be interesting and possibly even useful during the ongoing campaign. Normally, I might give a child one zero-level skill or perhaps even none with just an interest in certain skill types. Maybe give them the ability to perform a skill with a -1 or -2 DM. In Kiirsas' case, I had determined that she was a shipboard brat, a precocious child who worked along with her mother (who was also an engineer) for several formative years, and therefore acquired a few skills that could then be used in the travellers' story.

Presumably her stats are pre-adolescence so they would change over time depending on her activities. Her social standing was a reflection of her mother's SOC characteristic.

 

[Reynard]

Fudging an NPC is how one creates a plot device.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

This is great, except I can't actually generate workable skill stats for characters below 18 years in the rules. The kid is about 13 years, I'm thinking. Any suggestions?

Choose a homeworld to generate a character from. Starting age is 13 +1D4 - 1D4. Don't give them a career or anything. Done.

 

[steve98052]

Traveller skill levels are a bit different from a lot of games. They're based on die modifiers for a 2d6 roll, so each step means more than a step in a 3d6 or 1d20 roll. But they still span a wide range:

-3: inexperienced
-2: inexperienced, but Jack of all Trades-1
-1: inexperienced, but Jack of all Trades-2
0: competent, or Jack of All Trades-3
+1: fully qualified
+2: advanced
+3: advanced professional
+4: master
+5: outstanding master
+6: legendary

Except for extreme, Mozart-grade prodigies, even a +1 skill level is irrelevant for children. So consider the -3 to 0 range instead. By the rules as written, the only time one sees the -2 or -1 skill level is with Jack of All Trades. But why not fill in those levels? Notation on a character sheet seems like the only real impediment. So how about this notation:

-3: default, so it's blank on the character sheet (except maybe to indicate a rudimentary skill in something that's impossible by default instead of just very difficult (such as a completely alien language)
Skill-(-2): early novice
Skill-(-1): semi-competent
Skill-0: competent

Then consider the levels an age-18 character gets as background skills. Three level 0 skills, plus or minus characteristic adjustments, right?

In early childhood, kids learn languages first:
Age 2, Language-(-3), just barely able to communicate with words
Age 4, Language-(-2), competent, but thin vocabulary and grammar
Age 8, Language-(-1), competent, but vocabulary still growing
Age 12, Language-0, pretty much like an adult
(One might draw the steps differently, but how often do we expect a language roll for a child?)

In addition to the three level 0 background skills at age 18, one also reaches the Skill-(-3) level with everything that allows any inexperienced roll. That's probably a matter for common sense, rather than formal rules. Can a 13-year-old roll a TL6 artillery piece off a flatbed truck, remove all the packing seals, load it, compute a firing angle, and hit a fortification 3000 meters away, solely on the basis of seeing war movies and reading the manual? Would that qualify for a -3 roll? Or just a "Sorry, the manual skips over too many details that would have been taught in artillery school before you get to touch a live round."?

Anyway, the standard of three level 0 skills is equal to nine steps: -3 to -2, -2 to -1, and -1 to 0 in one skill, and the same in a second and third skill. So it's reasonable to say that someone under 18 has three or fewer skills at 0 or worse, depending on age.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

This is great, except I can't actually generate workable skill stats for characters below 18 years in the rules. The kid is about 13 years, I'm thinking. Any suggestions?

Traveller doesn't do a good job simulating people who aren't from the mid 20th century (and possibly later) America very well. In fact, it doesn't really simulate anyone who is younger than, say, 25 or so. It doesn't represent well at all kids who don't grow up in nice, safe places and just go to school until they're 18. It doesn't do things like a society where kids are learning their trade from their dads even starting at like 8 years old or something - maybe the education doesn't get serious until the kid's like 13 or something but he's still learning and likely knows more than just the background skills.

Reynard's suggestion is good. Your party likely hired the kid because he's scrappy, not because he has amazing engineering skills. Just start him with stats and background skills, and then use the learning rules as your PCs teach the kid new skills. You could even give the kid a 2x bonus for learning to represent that younger brains retain new information easier.

If the kid actually has been taught something, like maybe instead of going to school he was learning how to repair vehicles from a mechanic since he was 10, maybe you could give him a Engineering-0 or even -1.

You know, you don't have to go to college to learn how to pilot a starship, this is somethig one learns to do with practise, just like driving a car or flying an airplane. A 13 year old could also learn to pick up a gun and shoot it, that is a skill that does not require much of an education or experience, and much of Traveller occurs out in the frontier, no one is going to care if a 13 year old flies a starship, the Third Imperium is not going to have cops flying around pulling starships over to check to see if the pilot is of legal age to have a starship piloting license. There is no way to tell who is in the pilot's seat anyway, if the ship is interdicted, someone could always switch seats with the kid by the time ths ship is boarded.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

+5: outstanding master
+6: legendary

Ha! Player wants to win all the RPGs.

 

[TrippyHippy]

Thanks for the thoughts. Most of them were useful. I'm thinking that the child will get a few bonus skills as part of a skills package, which may give them a bit of utility as the have limted access to education or career. It would also justify why the child managed to man a turret in the last session...

The other possibility would be to give them an opportunity of latent psychic ability (undeveloped), which may manifest at some point or other.

 

[Reynard]

Remember the Toonces Effect, you can still use a skill you have no levels in just not very well. There's a penalty but it's not like you can't perform a task. The kid could still operate a turret. You might not want someone performing surgery when they don't know what a laser scalpel is.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Remember the Toonces Effect, you can still use a skill you have no levels in just not very well. There's a penalty but it's not like you can't perform a task. The kid could still operate a turret. You might not want someone performing surgery when they don't know what a laser scalpel is.

Do you really think a kid needs formal education to operate a turret? How many kids have you seen at a video arcade? I think what a kid needs to operate a turret is two things, first basic instructions to learn where all the controls are, and lots and lots of practise! I think a kid could get pretty good with a turret weapon with lots of practise, and there probably are video games that simulate operating a turret and firing at targets. Now fixing a ship's engines probably requires lots of formal training, but operating a turret weapon probably does not! Flying a starship is probably a similar concept, there are video games that would help a kid learn to fly a starship, there is probably one in the ship's computer more than likely. A kid can also pick up a gun and shoot it with a few basic instructions. Firearms aren't designed to be difficult to use, so basically the operating proceedure is fairly simple, and after that the kid needs lots of practise to become good at it. Since a kid has lots of time on his hands, since he is not earning a living, he can spend all of his time practising firing a turret, and shooting firearms, he can learn to hit the target pretty well. and a simulator and actual practise will get him to learn how to fly the ship. Fixing the ship is another story, but flying it, sure!

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Some guy wrote a book series on genetically modified kids that played pew-pew in war simulators that really weren't war simulators, or some such nonsense.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Some guy wrote a book series on genetically modified kids that played pew-pew in war simulators that really weren't war simulators, or some such nonsense.

Then again there was a movie called The Last Starfighter.

 

[steve98052]

The skill Gunner includes both firing the weapons and maintaining the equipment on proper working order. It also includes the complicated business of putting missiles on a path that will intercept the target after what can be a long trip, and putting sand clouds into position where they can intercept incoming fire.

So can a minimally trained person (child or adult) target laser fire? Probably pretty easily. But collimate laser targeting optics? Finding a firing solution for a missile that needs a mid-course delta-v conservation coasting period? Placing a cloud of sand between the enemy and the ship's next planned sequence of evasive maneuvers? Repair combat damage, or even neglect? Not so much.

 

[Reynard]

With a -3DM Unskilled penalty, they can try but... This is why Toonces the Cat keeps flipping the car off the cliff.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

The skill Gunner includes both firing the weapons and maintaining the equipment on proper working order. It also includes the complicated business of putting missiles on a path that will intercept the target after what can be a long trip, and putting sand clouds into position where they can intercept incoming fire.

So can a minimally trained person (child or adult) target laser fire? Probably pretty easily. But collimate laser targeting optics? Finding a firing solution for a missile that needs a mid-course delta-v conservation coasting period? Placing a cloud of sand between the enemy and the ship's next planned sequence of evasive maneuvers? Repair combat damage, or even neglect? Not so much.

guiding a missile is comparable to piloting it. So you fire a missile and you are either controlling it remotely so its a drone, or the missile has on board software and sensors that allow it to home in on the target. Probably remote control doesn't work much further that 150,000 kilometers, because beyond that distance you get light speed time delays of greater than 1 second.

 

[Condottiere]

Usually you don't have enough character development points for kids to be outstanding in any or a number of skills or characteristics, unless the game sort of focuses on these overgrown rugrats.

You could somehow figure out what they sacrificed to devote ten thousand hours to develop that skill.

If they are spacebrats, it would be irresponsible for parents not to teach them basic space skills.