Skill Progression and over-importance of EDU

[-Daniel-]

Anyway, Kaelic, I get where you're coming from. Munchkins being what they are, will always work the system. Remember though that the rules as written don't let you assign stats as you desire. Players take the rolls in order. Of course anyone who has RPGed any length of time knows that's the first rule we throw out!

I have some munchkinesque players and they don't always opt for high EDU. DEX is the other choice characteristic. Oh, and one that loves high SOC.

I also have seen that despite the value of EDU, some players really want gun bunnies or Nobles or what ever and still place their highest stat where it serves their vision of the Character they wanted.

And yes, no matter the rule set there will always be those who love to game the system and try to find all the loopholes. That is just part of the overall RPG environment.

As for your ides, I commented on it already over in the other thread where you posted it. :mrgreen:

 

[alex_greene]

I do agree that 1 year per skill point is probably too long, but the previous system of 1 week per attempt was too short.

The technology of the Far Future should be more advanced than the world today, including teaching technology; and perhaps Travellers being who they are, they are more capable of developing their skills, and far more eager to learn than most.

Not to mention that there is an EDU roll involved. A lot of failures precede success; and Travellers don't have to go brushing up on their skills during Jump the whole time. Besides, they are likely to have jobs to do, particularly in Engineering or if they are Stewards.

Some skills, such as Medic, should only be developed by those who already possess the skill and are licensed - and perhaps only in venues such as Med School and Flight School, which might require even qualified Travellers to put in a few weeks every few years to brush up on their skills and keep their certifications current.

I think that a section on Qualified Skills needs to be set up in the Core Rulebook to differentiate professional skills such as Advocate, Medic, Pilot and Flyer which require a license to practice, from other skills which merely require intensive study.

 

[alex_greene]

As it is now, we have a guy with +3 EDU which means he can potentially dwarf every other Traveller on the team with enough weeks, despite his focus on scholarly and science during generation.

It happens. Pilots who want to develop their Engineering skills, ship's medics who want a stab at command, Chief Stewards who have ambitions to pass the bar and learn Advocate above Advocate 0, Nobles who want to learn Persuade and Diplomat - and where are the Streetwise and Broker schools in pre-career education?

Some skills may require a period of qualification - and here, I am thinking that options for Med School, Flight School, Law School and so on should be required during pre-career education (add +1 term, make a second success roll, gain the required skill and certification to practice) if the character is to develop the appropriate skills beyond level 1.

Requiring the sacrifice of a term or two to gain the appropriate qualifications, and capping the number of terms available, should prevent even high EDU characters from becoming some weird combination of a licensed doctor / lawyer / pilot / diplomat / PhD physicist / Astrogator, etc.

 

[MongooseMatt]

That was way too funny and too true at the same time. I had not seen it before so thanks for posting it. :mrgreen:

Now I am thinking the Companion needs a Montage rule...

Alright, I'm just going to call this for what it is...that was a really conceited and presumptuous thing to say. If he's a software engineer, I would assume everyone he works with has a high EDU.

He may be saying that not everyone has DM+2 to their EDU - which would really be very high. EDU +1 would be perfectly respectable but not game breaking...

 

[Loconius]

I personally like the year interval, but maybe the chance to increase more then one skill?

King Arthur Pendragon RPG comes to mind. You check various skills like was suggested above and then test each one during the winter to see which ones increase. Maybe a check comes around after rolling boxcars and snake eyes in the same year, or link it to something more narratively appropriate.

The realiance on EDU for learning I think makes sense, and the idea of anyone focusing on this attribute for the purposes of exploitation seems odd to me. I've never had a player try to exploit the XP system of the game, just the conflict systems (combat or otherwise). And further more the players don't actually have the choice to do so. Even if you allow players to assign the characteristics as they please, increasing them isn't always their choice to make.

I do want to backpedal on the idea of zero level skills being learned much faster then later levels. If anything learning the foundations of a skill can be the longest and hardest parts of learning a skill, the rest being self study and practice... Not sure how to model this though

 

[Loconius]

The new rules are out and they seem alright but I do have a question. For skill level 2 and above, does each learning check require two checks and 40 weeks of learning in a single year or does it require one check a year, and 20 weeks of study in each year?

 

[CosmicGamer]

The new rules are out and they seem alright but I do have a question. For skill level 2 and above, does each learning check require two checks and 40 weeks of learning in a single year or does it require one check a year, and 20 weeks of study in each year?

I agree that this needs some clarity. Go ahead and clarify what is supposed to happen when a roll fails too.

 

[-Daniel-]

I agree that this needs some clarity. Go ahead and clarify what is supposed to happen when a roll fails too.

I agree, there does need some clarification regarding what happens when a roll fails. It shouldn't be left vague.

 

[Kaelic]

Just wanted to clarify what I meant on Artists and Engineers at my work place. I'm an Engineer, I have an aptitude for mathematics and mechanical systems. This means when I apply myself to Physical Sciences, or Mechanics I find it easy to pick up, because there is a shared mindset in these different skills.

However if I decide to learn to Pilot something, I may find I have poor hand-eye coordination. While I can understand the concepts, my situational awareness and reflexes inhibit my ability to learn at the speed I would learn Mechanics. This to me is different stats. Someone can learn one skill well, but not another well. This is fundamentally why I dislike EDU from realistic-perspective.

I've already expressed my dislike as a game mechanic balance, however with 1-year training this issue is mitigated (though I dislike 1-year training so...).

 

[MongooseMatt]

However if I decide to learn to Pilot something, I may find I have poor hand-eye coordination. While I can understand the concepts, my situational awareness and reflexes inhibit my ability to learn at the speed I would learn Mechanics. This to me is different stats. Someone can learn one skill well, but not another well. This is fundamentally why I dislike EDU from realistic-perspective.

But that would be reflected in your DEX. You learn how to be a pilot, and can safely take-off and land, but you will never be a 'natural'.

I do have a bias here, as I think in a technological society EDU should be of paramount importance. In game balance terms, there are definite advantages to stacking stats in EDU and INT (one reason why I am a proponent of the 'iron man' creation system ), and to an extent SOC. However, players that stack their best scores in these three are immediately going to come unstuck the moment the bullets start flying.

Which is just fine. Traveller needs brawn as well as brains.

 

[Kaelic]

I think players will be disappointed when they realise their chance to progress in skills is significantly worse than their peers. We have a character who with gen and chance has ended up at +2 EDU. With the new skill training, and the rest of the group at +0 EDU, he has essentially become a superman. He can learn all of their skills at a much faster rate than them.

+0 EDU you have a 41% chance of passing the skill progression.
+2 EDU you have a 72% chance of passing the skill progression.

This is a huge leap. Assuming it's a year per skill, to become +3 Gun Combat from nothing on average would take this long:

+0 EDU 9.75 Years to reach +3 Gun Combat
+2 EDU 5.5 Years to reach +3 Gun Combat

This despite the fact the guy with +0 EDU may be a soldier and spending his entire life on the front-lines. The +2 EDU guy is a professor learning Gun Combat with a book while working as a Research Scientist at University...

If you're not going to budge, then there is nothing else I can add. I expect after release you'll find a lot of criticism of this from a wider audience. Players willing to early-access Traveller are a very specific crowd of Traveller players, but I expect this new edition is attempting to broaden the audience.

 

[Kaelic]

Here is a worthwhile question:

How many years are expected to pass in a standard Traveller game?

Since skill progression is tied directly to game-time and not adventure or role-play, this should have a reasonable answer.

 

[MongooseMatt]

That is a good question - and I am not sure it has an answer

The trouble is that if we just take one group (say... mine!), the players might rattle through three or four months as they traipse across the Reach, trading as they go, in just an hour or two. Then they hit a patron and spend the next four weeks of real time going through 2 days of game time.

When you expand this out to other groups, you will find those who concentrate on the faster trading aspect, and others who might spend two years plying through a single month of game time.

This leads us to the question; what progression should there be for skills in a game that covers 6 months real time but only a month in game time?

My initial reaction is that there should be no skill progression in this campaign. It just does not make sense, given the career system and what skills actually represent. Such campaigns should have other rewards for the players. In a wider ranging campaign that stretches across months or years of game time, you absolutely need a skill progression system plus, however little an increment it is, ticking off another box does give players a feeling they are working to something, however far off it may be - if you figure they will also be working towards other goals (paying off the mortgage, fulfilling a patron mission, avoiding an Enemy created during creation, etc), then it becomes one more thing, one more component in the campaign, rather than a sole focus (like XP in D&D, for example). Which I kinda like.

Okay, so, who disagrees with any of that? Let me know!

 

[CosmicGamer]

This leads us to the question; what progression should there be for skills in a game that covers 6 months real time but only a month in game time?

My initial reaction is that there should be no skill progression in this campaign. It just does not make sense, given the career system and what skills actually represent. Such campaigns should have other rewards for the players.

I have posted such and agree.

In a wider ranging campaign that stretches across months or years of game time, you absolutely need a skill progression system plus... [clip] ...Okay, so, who disagrees with any of that? Let me know!

Not me, I agree with the concepts even if I don't always agree with the execution.

As I've posted, skill improvement is very complicated. From a high tech system where your brain is programmed and you learn in your sleep to a typical training course with guided practice to a spacer stranded on an island figuring out how to fish, hunt, build shelters, and forage through trial and error - err, well, maybe trial and success. The trial and error guy may not survive!

 

[MongooseMatt]

As I've posted, skill improvement is very complicated. From a high tech system where your brain is programmed and you learn in your sleep to a typical training course with guided practice to a spacer stranded on an island figuring out how to fish, hunt, build shelters, and forage through trial and error - err, well, maybe trial and success. The trial and error guy may not survive!

This is all true - however, it is also covering areas I really don't want to get into in the Core Book.

I'll be meditating on this over the weekend!

 

[-Daniel-]

In one of CosmicGamer's posts it was suggested driving the post career training back toward a GM issue and less toward a mechanic issue. As I think upon both my personal reactions to the training ideas so far and adding in several people's comments, including msprange's excellent reminder of the vast ranges of time passing in real games, I find myself leaning more and more toward CosmicGamer's suggestion.

Only the GM at the table knows how time will flow in their game. So each GM could/should select the pace that best fits their game table. If you use three months of real time to play out a two week game time, then you might just hand out arbitrary skill increases just because. If your game has four month of game time pas in a few weeks of real time, then maybe the 24 weeks makes more sense.

So where does this leave me? I am thinking it might be best to leave the CRB with something along the lines of what CosmicGamer suggested and move specific mechanic ideas to the TC.

Just my .02 :mrgreen:

 

[Loconius]

while I don't mind the training as is, I too like the idea of simply leaving to the referee's discretion. A ref that wants to keep in line with character generation could just have the players "roll" on a drifter career skill table to increase a skill after 4 years, while others will make it a week of hypnotraining!