Skill Package Question

[-Daniel-]

So you gather a group of friends, you get out the new Traveller and they agree to play. Each builds a character with you and all is ready except the skill package. One is selected and the selection begins. Each player selects one for their character until each has one. Now they look at you, the GM. Why?

There are five of them and three skills left on the table.

So I am curious what you all do.

Do you use the package? If so, how do you divide the remaining odd number among the players?

Do you randomize it? Let them figure it out themselves? Give them to the characters with the lowest number of skills? Change the package so everyone gets the same number?

Just curious.

Daniel

 

[AKAramis]

My grasp is that everyone gets one skill from the package, period.

When we divvied out the whole package in the playtest, it was a bit too powerful.

I did choose fewest skills picks first, ties by oldest picks first.

 

[AKAmra]

Good question dafrca.

Jamison, the example character in the book, gets Gun Combat (slug pistol) 1 and Sensors 1 out of the Skill Package (last paragraph pg. 39). So it would seem that RAW allows more than one skill per character.

Picking in order of lowest to highest skills is a neat idea, gives an unlucky character a chance to gain some ground on the luckier ones.

I think I would either limit it to one skill per character or use the low to high skill method until all skills were gone. I don't like the idea of players dicing against each other during character creation as it sets the wrong tone - they are supposed to be a team.

 

[tneva82]

We solved it by group concensus and trying to give everybody useful skills that a) rounds them down b) gives everybody something to do.

As mentioned players are team so there wasn't much of a problem. And whole lot of skills were easy to allocate anyway(most having said skill already etc. If you have gunfighting 3 you don't care about gunfighting 1 skill anymore ;-).

 

[GypsyComet]

We used the list more to make sure that all the skills were represented, so if a skill in the package was already present in the group, it didn't get handed out.

 

[-Daniel-]

My grasp is that everyone gets one skill from the package, period.

When we divvied out the whole package in the playtest, it was a bit too powerful.

I did choose fewest skills picks first, ties by oldest picks first.

The book does say to keep going until all of them are handed out. But I do agree that in some cases this may just be the skills that put them over the top into "too powerful" range if not handled correctly.

Daniel

 

[-Daniel-]

Thanks for the replies folks.

Just to share what we did do for fun: We let everyone have a single skill. Then the remaining skills were given based on who would be best to have them. To be fair to the others, they were real fair about it so it was not like I had to go all Dictator on them anyway. :lol:

Anyway, I admit that when we were done I looked at some of the characters and were interested to see how many skill levels (I did nto count the Zero level skills) everyone had. The average per term was not that different accross the characters. It seemed to range from 3.5 to 4 per term.

After that, I think next time I will have them make characters, then create my own skill package based on the missing skills I think they should have.

Just my .02 credits worth. 8)

Daniel

 

[Myrm]

I thought about limiting the skill packages somehow - taking out skills that are represented in the party at lv2 certainly - possibly those at level 1 as well.

I also considered that each skill might go out one by one to the person with the current lowest skill total (whats the phrase they using in the training up new skill Skill Rating(?)).

That way there might be a reason for players who are min maxing to not take 5 terms and stop at 2 or 3. Or a patch up for someone who had to stop early.

Still ideas in the making there...