Questions about Point Buy in Companion 2022

[Arkathan]

Hmm. Sorry... Probably why I never picked up any other editions of GURPS passed the mid Eighties.

 

[Vormaerin]

It certainly produces viable characters, even if they are a bit blah comparatively. It just doesn't do any of the things that Somebody was asking about. It lets you get an array of stats and skills that are decent. It severely nerfs mustering out, imho. And completely ignores psionics. And the fact that it costs points from your stats & skills to have ranks doesn't make sense to me. The vast majority of the campaigns I've been aware of over the last 40 years didn't really care much what your former career rank was. Certainly not to the extent that being a former Colonel is worth 10% of your build points.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on how you use it your rank.

With Mercenary, you tend to get minimum levels of responsibility, with requisite compensation.

GURPS is a bit more specific, when combined with reputation, does allow access to influencers.

 

[Alqualonde]

IIRC the Naval Campaign book had simplified rules for character creation. You might poach it and tweak it for other careers.
It's not a true point-buy system like GURPS or Hero Games, but you have some control on your character, at least on the age/terms, rank & skills. And rank doesn't cost you points. it's just a matter of age (unless your concept call for it & the master agrees).
You can create a 46 years Marine Colonel. Your characters will have skills for it. But the 22 years old pilot will not be as skilled as the Colonel.

 

[paltrysum]

It certainly produces viable characters, even if they are a bit blah comparatively.

Exactly. My female Aslan character has no Events, no Mishaps, none of the Advance rolls to show her climb to the top (or the failures that caused her to switch careers), none of the I-wanted-Astrogation-but-got-Diplomat rolls that turn out to be fortuitous, none of the Mustering Out rolls that add the finishing touches and possibly grant me a ship. I had to pay points to get my money. I had to buy my rank, which was basically meaningless, except as window dressing.

Random chargen is a game within the game that makes it more enjoyable. Having the built-in aspects of Traveller character building is an essential part of the game in my book.

 

[Vormaerin]

Depends on how you use it your rank.

With Mercenary, you tend to get minimum levels of responsibility, with requisite compensation.

GURPS is a bit more specific, when combined with reputation, does allow access to influencers.

Yes, but that's a very specific style of compaign. And your former service rank only sort of corresponds to your actual rank in the mercenary unit.

You can, as GM, structure your campaign so that former service rank matters. And that being a former Colonel is worth dramatically more than being a former Sergeant Major. But, unlike GURPS, there is absolutely no support for that in the game mechanics of Traveller (outside of former Army/Marine rank helping get better jobs if joining a mercenary unit).

 

[CyborgPrime]

Our house rule for some increased player agency during character gen: you always qualify to enter a career and when you roll for skills you roll first then take the best option from any of the tables you qualify for. works for us

 

[Vormaerin]

Exactly. My female Aslan character has no Events, no Mishaps, none of the Advance rolls to show her climb to the top (or the failures that caused her to switch careers), none of the I-wanted-Astrogation-but-got-Diplomat rolls that turn out to be fortuitous, none of the Mustering Out rolls that add the finishing touches and possibly grant me a ship. I had to pay points to get my money. I had to buy my rank, which was basically meaningless, except as window dressing.

Random chargen is a game within the game that makes it more enjoyable. Having the built-in aspects of Traveller character building is an essential part of the game in my book.

I understand why people might not like random chargen, but examples like the OP gave of wanting to be a Marine and ending up a hobo aren't my experience with how it actually works in practice. It is theoretically possible. But its super unlikely.

In my current campaign, of the six players... 3 got pretty much what they were aiming for, two got basically what they wanted but via a roundabout path, and one got totally derailed by rolling a psionics testing event in college and choosing to run with it. Once you factor in the connections rule and the campaign skill pack rule, it's quite hard to get a character that doesn't do the kind of thing that you want your character to do, no matter how the career rolls go.

Obviously, if you have a very specific concept (Former Navy Commander ace fighter pilot), that's not likely to be how your character turns out exactly. But if you are a little less specific "I wanna be a hotshot small craft pilot", it's going to be pretty hard not to get that out of chargen.

TravCompanion chargen is functional. But if you want a strong link between the basic game mechanics and the various externalities of chargen, you need to use a dedicated point buy system like the GURPS or HERO versions of Traveller.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Going all the way back to Classic Traveller days as I think this is still relevant to MgT:
there are three major social interaction modifiers
Soc - higher the better in most circumstances, but can be a disadvantage when dealing with the underbelly of society
Rank - again a high rank can open doors, grant influence up front, but again can be a disadvantage when dealing with the underbelly of society
applicable skill - streetwise, liaison, carousing, even admin all have their benefits or hinderances depending on the situation

I dislike points buy games, GURPS most of all, but I do get the desire to play a certain type of character. There are plenty of ways the random Traveller generation can be fudged to get the skill set, but it is the random stuff that often makes the defining moments of a character's career history.

I find it much easier to take all the rolls and results form random generation and describe a character's history rather than just allocate points and make up a backstory whole cloth.

I have never made a GURPS character come alive in the same way as a three term ex-Other

And every Vampire I ever played in WW had exactly the same initial points allocation cause I am not stupid.

 

[Vormaerin]

While that is good guidance for how to think about things, there's no actual mechanics to go with Rank, unlike SOC and Skill. So, as I said, unless your GM creates situations to make it useful, its not actually a thing.

The way modifiers worked in CT was quite different, as you know. It was all ad hoc and situational. Actually, I don't think the SOC modifier is ever reversed in MgT per the straight rules.

 

[Somebody]

Going all the way back to Classic Traveller days as I think this is still relevant to MgT:
there are three major social interaction modifiers
Soc - higher the better in most circumstances, but can be a disadvantage when dealing with the underbelly of society
Rank - again a high rank can open doors, grant influence up front, but again can be a disadvantage when dealing with the underbelly of society
applicable skill - streetwise, liaison, carousing, even admin all have their benefits or hinderances depending on the situation

I dislike points buy games, GURPS most of all, but I do get the desire to play a certain type of character. There are plenty of ways the random Traveller generation can be fudged to get the skill set, but it is the random stuff that often makes the defining moments of a character's career history.

I find it much easier to take all the rolls and results form random generation and describe a character's history rather than just allocate points and make up a backstory whole cloth.

I have never made a GURPS character come alive in the same way as a three term ex-Other

And every Vampire I ever played in WW had exactly the same initial points allocation cause I am not stupid.

For me it is the other way round. I never liked characters that where forced onto me. Be it pre-gens at conventions (Solution: I do not go to conventions) be it dice forced characters. I tried DSA and CT and HATED them (Solution: Do not play them). Only reason I went back to RPG was when I joined a Cyberpunk 2020 group where the GM had killed of even the (thankfully few) dice elements of the character generation(1). Instant love, finally got to play my concept instead of being dictated by exterior forces what I have to play. And soon after came the bliss named GURPS 3e.

All MY GURPS or CP2020 characters are different when it comes to attributes and skill sets. Even if they have the same class/role/template as a starting point. Freedom of point buy allows me to tailor a character to fit the scenario and my current interests/ideas. Also I never needed dice rolls to "define" my characters history. That was always the character concept that did it. A short one (we have a "maximum 1 page, 12pt Times New Roman, standard word margins and justified/Blocksatz rule for backstory)! Never needed the game system for doing that.

Only returned to Traveller with T20 and GT. Again, used a T20 variant that killed the dice roll (Attribute array/points for attrib gen). Only problem I have with GT is the effort needed to convert conventional source material to GT otherwise I would not have even look at MgT.

As soon as "tweaking the rules" comes up - a system is "no longer of interest" these days since there are systems that work and the effort to "tweak and check" is better spend in converting stuff

(1) Using "point buy" for attributes was already in the books but normally for "NPC", killing the "role for Cyberware effects" by substituting a fixed value was easy and later versions of Cyberpunk actually did it officially (making dice a "if you absolutely want, not the standard") and did it the exact same way that GM did in the 1990s

 

[Vormaerin]

I play both kinds of games. My three favorite systems are Traveller, City of Mist, and Ars Magica, the latter two have no randomness in Chargen. I played GURPS and HERO long ago. Hero was fun for Champions, but I never much liked GURPS. But that was 1e. It may be different now.

What I've found is that games generally work best for the mechanic that it is designed around. Games like Traveller and Shadowrun, that have a certain style of Chargen and then try to have a point buy system as an alternative, rarely succeed at being a good point buy system.

As far as which is better, that's just personal preference. Some people like prompts that lead them into things they hadn't considered before and other folks really want to play exactly the character they imagine. As long as everyone at the table is on the same page, either works.

 

[Condottiere]

The real issue with point buy systems would be absurd min maxing.

With GURPS, I'd say that requires Unusual Background.

Otherwise, a mandate that requires some balanced distribution.

 

[Vormaerin]

That's a player issue, not a game issue. Your min/max inclined player is going to be pushing those boundaries whatever system you use. Trying to charge them extra or whatever isn't going to solve an out of game problem. And the OP says he doesn't have any of those sorts of problem players, so it is a non-issue for his group.

 

[Somebody]

It certainly produces viable characters, even if they are a bit blah comparatively. It just doesn't do any of the things that Somebody was asking about. It lets you get an array of stats and skills that are decent. It severely nerfs mustering out, imho. And completely ignores psionics. And the fact that it costs points from your stats & skills to have ranks doesn't make sense to me. The vast majority of the campaigns I've been aware of over the last 40 years didn't really care much what your former career rank was. Certainly not to the extent that being a former Colonel is worth 10% of your build points.

The mustering out problem would have been okay. The concept in the group is "if the group needs certain thinks the GM has to provide them. After all - it is HIS scenario(1)" So stuff like ship shares are not important

(1) And yes, in 30+ year I never had a female GM. Mixed groups where common, even with an almost 50:50 split. But no female GM

 

[AndrewW]

(1) And yes, in 30+ year I never had a female GM. Mixed groups where common, even with an almost 50:50 split. But no female GM

I have one now, but it isn't a Traveller game.

 

[Vormaerin]

The mustering out problem would have been okay. The concept in the group is "if the group needs certain thinks the GM has to provide them. After all - it is HIS scenario(1)" So stuff like ship shares are not important

(1) And yes, in 30+ year I never had a female GM. Mixed groups where common, even with an almost 50:50 split. But no female GM

Not sure what prompted that aside, but an interesting bit of information. I'm almost always the GM, but some of the women in my gaming group do GM and I've played in a few of their games.