Stacking level 0 skills

[Ol'Weedy]

I never really liked the mechanic of getting no benefit from gaining a lvl-0 skill you already had. This generally just leads to players picking skills that don't make sense for their backgrounds, just to maximize their PCs. It also never seemed fair to me, that someone who had spent their youth learning to be a mechanic, would be at exactly the same skill level as a noob, after they both finished the same basic training.
I have to concede that letting 0+0=1, does tend to create overly rounded characters.
The solution I hit on (while in the shed, cough), is kind of forehead slappingly simple.
Whenever such a situation happens, just let the player roll an EDU check to see if they learned enough to reach lvl-1.
Also makes sense when you enter university with, say, electronics-0, if you choose electronics as your minor (lvl-0) skill.

 

[NOLATrav]

I never really liked the mechanic of getting no benefit from gaining a lvl-0 skill you already had.

This has never sat right with me either. I recently started just bumping to lvl-1 but an EDU check is a great idea. Cheers!

 

[ottarrus]

I'm of two minds about the whole thing...
I remember being in Basic Training and being taught how to do a lot of things very much by rote... first aid, radio procedure, weapons cleaning... and NONE of that qualified me to be an EMT, a radioman, or a gunsmith. It was the just the simplest basic functions of the task. But it was better than nothing. A service-member really ought to know how to patch up a bleeder, not sound like an idiot on the radio, and how to clean his own weapon, right? This is the level of knowledge that I equate to '0-level skill'.
OTOH, getting Vacc Suit 0 in character generation three times does kinda suck. I really do see where you're coming from on that.
I like the idea of rolling an 8+ EDU check to get one level of the skill, but not more than one. The instances where you get a zero level skill imply a quickie course of instruction, not in depth study.
Generally, when a character gets a skill roll I let the player roll the die and then choose between their eligible tables and select one of those skills... For example, 'Bob' rolls a 4. He looks up the 4 result on the Personal Development, Service Skill, and Branch Skills tables and can select a level in one of those three skills.
This tends to mitigate the 0-level skill problem a little.

 

[Condottiere]

You could make it accumulative, as a game effect, not necessarily a reflection of getting refresher courses.

You have skill/zero, and if you get two more skill/zero by dice roll in the same skill, consider that an automatic skill/one raise.

 

[MonsterX]

The existing mechanic is totally annoying from a narrative perspective. Narratively, it makes sense that the high-school science nerd will take sciences as a background skill, but then it's utility is completely erased by going into the Scholar career, which of course is exactly where that character would be headed. Or the boy from the backwoods whose pappy taught him to shoot should NOT choose Gun Combat, as he'll get that anyways when he heads off to the Marines.

 

[Condottiere]

Plus one to the qualification roll.

 

[Saladman]

Generally, when a character gets a skill roll I let the player roll the die and then choose between their eligible tables and select one of those skills... For example, 'Bob' rolls a 4. He looks up the 4 result on the Personal Development, Service Skill, and Branch Skills tables and can select a level in one of those three skills.

I've done this. I paired it with term limits so it wasn't coming on top of geriatric admiral skill rank counts, but other than that it works fine.

Plus one to the qualification roll.

Whenever such a situation happens, just let the player roll an EDU check to see if they learned enough to reach lvl-1.

I will keep both of these in mind next time I get to start a game. I do like Weedy's, it's got some elegance, and Edu, while not truly a dump stat, isn't overpowered by giving it a little bump.

I never really liked the mechanic of getting no benefit from gaining a lvl-0 skill you already had. ...

This has never sat right with me either. ...

The existing mechanic is totally annoying from a narrative perspective. ...

I could have guessed before this thread I was in the minority, but this is the part I don't give a flip about. Careers generate playable characters by the end; I've never been outraged when a 0 hits a 0 or a rank skill 1 hits a rolled skill 1. Players are almost always fine by the end, and if they're not we'll talk about re-rolling, or I'll eyeball other character sheets to see if they can use a bump to bring them up to average.

But, I don't mind any of the solutions above either.

 

[Geir]

I'm of two minds about the whole thing...
I remember being in Basic Training and being taught how to do a lot of things very much by rote... first aid, radio procedure, weapons cleaning... and NONE of that qualified me to be an EMT, a radioman, or a gunsmith. It was the just the simplest basic functions of the task. But it was better than nothing. A service-member really ought to know how to patch up a bleeder, not sound like an idiot on the radio, and how to clean his own weapon, right? This is the level of knowledge that I equate to '0-level skill'.

Yes, I imagine Basic Training is not the place to get 'extra credit', just to do what you're told to do. But If the background skill makes sense for a character because of a world background (like a water world for seafarer, or a wilderness world for survival) then making to instruction received in Basic more in depth wouldn't be out of place for that particular world's training.

Generally, when a character gets a skill roll I let the player roll the die and then choose between their eligible tables and select one of those skills... For example, 'Bob' rolls a 4. He looks up the 4 result on the Personal Development, Service Skill, and Branch Skills tables and can select a level in one of those three skills.
This tends to mitigate the 0-level skill problem a little.

Yeah, I've been doing that since the 70s... definitely not RAW. But if allowing that, the trick when designing tables then is to not line them up so a 4 is the same skill across all or most of them (or that's the trick to deter that, depending on the desired outcome.)

 

[Arkathan]

Another suggestion on this theme:
On a duplicate zero skill, do an 8+ Edu check and add (effect) number of weeks to their post generation skill advancement.

 

[alex_greene]

I never really liked the mechanic of getting no benefit from gaining a lvl-0 skill you already had. This generally just leads to players picking skills that don't make sense for their backgrounds, just to maximize their PCs. It also never seemed fair to me, that someone who had spent their youth learning to be a mechanic, would be at exactly the same skill level as a noob, after they both finished the same basic training.
I have to concede that letting 0+0=1, does tend to create overly rounded characters.
The solution I hit on (while in the shed, cough), is kind of forehead slappingly simple.
Whenever such a situation happens, just let the player roll an EDU check to see if they learned enough to reach lvl-1.
Also makes sense when you enter university with, say, electronics-0, if you choose electronics as your minor (lvl-0) skill.

Skill-0 means basic competence in that skill. You don't get a bonus, but you don't get the untrained penalty either. You can use that skill in a routine situation, such as Drive to go to work, Pilot to make a simple Jump, and so on.
Anyone with skill-0 can bolster the 2D roll with the following advantages, available to every Traveller.

(1) Positive characteristic DMS, typically +1 for characteristic 9-11, +2 for characteristic 12, with the next jump to +3 at characteristic 15 and so on - +4 at 18, +5 at 21, +6 at 24 etc. Even Ancient-augmented humans would not need to go above 24, because pretty much every task check would be virtually guaranteed a success even if it were Formidable.

(2) Device Assistance might provide a positive DM, such as a translator program that decodes a written script to Galanglic.

(3) Task chains, either internal from one's own efforts, or external aid from teamwork.

(4) Taking the time, by expanding the timeframe one level and taking that +2 DM.

What you haven't taken into account is the breadth of some of these skills. Cascade skills - Art, Flyer, Gun Combat, Language, Melee, Science - assume that the Traveller is competent in all of the specialisations. If you have Melee-0, you are competent in Unarmed, Blade, and Bludgeoning; if you are skilled in Science, you know Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geology and so on, and can operate basic lab equipment, even at a rudimentary level, enough to poke something with a stick and record what it does.

Now ... Language. You might know Galanglic enough to go on. But this also infers, not implies, that you'll know Zdetl, Gvegh, Trokh, some VIlani, and enough to recognise any of the languages of the Solomani, of which there are hundreds.

But also, if there are sign languages, and languages for the visually impaired such as Braille ... your Traveller will have enough language to recognise them, and maybe scan them to feed them into a translator.

Without the untrained penalty.

Animals-0, Art-0, Drive-0, Seafarer-0, all of these also have the same blessing.

And if any one speciality of one of those cascade skills goes to skill (speciality)-1, your Traveller still retains knowledge of all of the level-0 skill specialities which haven't made it out of the zero zone yet.

No wonder Mongoose didn't want Jack-of-all-Trades promoted. Your Travellers won't need it, if they build up enough skills at level-0 to really impress the Patrons, who probably would never think to study so broadly.

 

[Condottiere]

As I recall, Mongoose decided on the composite aspect of skills.

I tend to think you can fine tone GURPS more precisely, but as can be noted, that requires a comprehensive overhaul of the game mechanics, or just adopting a new system.

 

[ottarrus]

Guys, I think we're kinda over-thinking this.
Zero-level skill represents a rudimentary level of knowledge, the result of a short course of instruction [say, a 4-6 hour class]. This is specifically NOT enough to 'make a living' at a skill, nor is it enough to get any kind of certification [pilot or navigator's papers for example]. This is a hobbyist's level, 'just enough to get in trouble' to coin a phrase.
That right there makes JoT a worthwhile skill to have... but the 2022 rules update also specifically says that JoT 3 IS NOT 'zero-level in everything' and that there are situations where, say, Pilot 0 is going to be the applicable skill instead of JoT 3. This makes sense to me.
As for getting Skill 0 multiple times, how many of us have had the annual refresher at work and just sat there waiting for the afternoon to be over? You've been through it 5 years running [or more] and there isn't any new information presented. The instructor is as bored as you are and he's teaching with the enthusiasm of a gym teacher trying to teach a literature class. Every person in the room is going through the motions for the required 2 hours so you can tell HR you did it.
This is not the kind of instruction that skill levels are made of, right?

I like the idea of making a raw EDU 8+ roll on the second occurrence of the same skill at zero. But I also think that the max you're ever going to get is one skill level. A course just to get skill level zero isn't gonna teach the in-depth knowledge one needs to reach skill level 2.

I also think that fudging the mechanics to reduce the instances of skill level zero results is entirely reasonable.

 

[Condottiere]

Gun combat/zero - you know enough to hurt the intended target, and not yourself and third parties.

 

[Arkathan]

The instructor is as bored as you are and he's teaching with the enthusiasm of a gym teacher trying to teach a literature class. Every person in the room is going through the motions for the required 2 hours so you can tell HR you did it.
This is not the kind of instruction that skill levels are made of, right?

Hey, when I taught the Electro Muscular Disruptor Shield recertification, I zapped myself every time and brought up a volunteer to energize the shield while I took it away from them and for them to take it from me (simulated energization on them), in order to demonstrate both retention and how to get the shield away from a criminal every time should it wind up in their hands. Also gave tips on how to avoid having zapped criminals heads hit the corners of things. Because, you know, if we were lucky, we wouldn't be in that line of work. We'd be making money suing or stitching up people in that line of work.

 

[Saladman]

Zero-level skill represents a rudimentary level of knowledge, the result of a short course of instruction [say, a 4-6 hour class]. ... This is a hobbyist's level, 'just enough to get in trouble' to coin a phrase.

That's a thing people bring to Traveller rather than something inherent to it.

Skill 0 is explicitly competent, enough to avoid rolling until opposed in your effort or working under adverse circumstances. Drive 0 is a competent if inexperienced driver; Flyer 0 can pilot an aircraft.* You'd rather have a pilot with Flyer 3 if geese take out all your engines, but the pilot with Flyer 0 isn't getting himself into trouble by getting behind the controls; in the absence of geese, he'll be fine. Each full skill rank after that represents several years of experience (or perhaps, unstated, the equivalent thereof in talent or aptitude).

*Which in our time implies at least 40 hours flight time plus a little book work and a test for a private pilot's license; minus the certification there'd still be that much time or more.

4-6 hour intro course isn't really modeled by the rules anywhere, but if for some reason I needed it I'd probably give out a Skill -1 or something.

That right there makes JoT a worthwhile skill to have... but the 2022 rules update also specifically says that JoT 3 IS NOT 'zero-level in everything'...

What makes the real skill 0s valuable is that you do assume enough competence they get the "don't even roll" benefit of the doubt, whereas mechanically it's the Jack of all Trades who's tempted to get into trouble by thinking "with a stat bonus I got this," but still having to roll.

 

[Condottiere]

A recent meta-analysis by Case Western Reserve University psychologist Brooke Macnamara and her colleagues found that deliberate practice and skill are related – but far from perfectly related. Deliberate practice hours predicted 26% of the skill variation in games such as chess, 21% for music, and 18% for sports. This is the second biggest flaw of the 10,000 Rule: It leads to a misconception that anyone can become an expert in a given area by putting in the time. But clearly, since deliberate practice hours predicted only 20-25% of skill levels, there are other factors at play. Researchers have been able to pinpoint a few of them, including age and genetics.

The age at which someone gets involved in an activity seems to play a role in their ability to achieve mastery. As with language learning, there may be a window during childhood when specific, complex skills are most easily acquired. Cognitive psychologists Fernand Gobet and Guillermo Campitelli found that chess players who started early reached higher skills levels as adults than those who started later, even after taking into account differences in deliberate practice hours.



Instruction skill.

Pre career training.

 

[Midnightplat]

I'm really curious how quickly a Traveller surpasses their life's skill development once they leave their careers and begin Travelling.

Level 0 skills are not 4-6 hour seminars. In the game's terms, after their careers level 0s take 8 weeks of training to try the EDU roll. They're the equivalent of licensures (pilot 0 means you know how to pilot). The training rules make those 8 weeks sound pretty intense, like what you'd see at a particularly monastic facility. So "realistically" those 0s are probably gathered through something more akin to academic quarters or semesters, maybe even multiple.

Sticking with the rules, it seems pretty clear over the lifepath a level 0 skill is gun combat is the skill of a professional soldier (arguably law enforcement and "agents" but those fields get less trigger time than military) who hasn't either used those skills and learned from them in actual combat or received more advanced gun combat instruction via an elite unit or high speed training opportunity. That or the motivated gun lifestyle/enthusiast (either gun competencies are key to surviving their environment or they have a self-motivated interest in developing gun skills).

Of course, jumping back to pre-career, the skills that pay out from universities or academies, especially if you graduate, seem a lot more generous than careers' basic training in terms of DM awarded. I guess that's privileging the privileging of elite education structures.

 

[WHULorigan]

Sticking with the rules, it seems pretty clear over the lifepath a level 0 skill is gun combat is the skill of a professional soldier (arguably law enforcement and "agents" but those fields get less trigger time than military) who hasn't either used those skills and learned from them in actual combat or received more advanced gun combat instruction via an elite unit or high speed training opportunity. That or the motivated gun lifestyle/enthusiast (either gun competencies are key to surviving their environment or they have a self-motivated interest in developing gun skills).

I would say that based on the fact that characters receive an initial battery of 0-levels skills when they enter their first career as "basic-training", you can use military basic training as a loose standard of comparison. If an Army character gets Gun Combat-0 in Basic Training, this is comparable to what a modern soldier gets at basic training in the military. So if said soldier goes on to be assigned to the motor-pool, or a company clerk, or the catering-corps for his tour of duty, and receives no further formal training or experience with his firearm, what is his level of Gun Combat going to look like?

 

[Ol'Weedy]

Zero-level skill represents a rudimentary level of knowledge, the result of a short course of instruction [say, a 4-6 hour class]

I've taken enough corporate IT courses to know where you're coming from...

The instructor is as bored as you are and he's teaching with the enthusiasm of a gym teacher trying to teach a literature class. Every person in the room is going through the motions for the required 2 hours so you can tell HR you did it.
This is not the kind of instruction that skill levels are made of, right?

And this is so DEFINITELY familiar, that I now have coffee in my nose.
Basic training though, for all careers is 4 years long. If you could achieve 6 level 0 skills in 36 hours of classes, what is happening the rest of the time?

I think rolling an EDU check (perhaps with modifiers based on homeworld), is logical. It still allows for a roughly 50-60% chance of failure in most cases, which sort of factors in the times you have to sit through a endless droning seminar you already know the material for, except for that 5% nugget you still need to know.
In retrospect, I think the whole idea coalesced in my mind after picking up my car at the shop the other day. The mechanic's 16 year old daughter was cutting a muffler off the car next to mine, like she'd been doing it since she could walk.

 

[ottarrus]

I've taken enough corporate IT courses to know where you're coming from...


And this is so DEFINITELY familiar, that I now have coffee in my nose.
Basic training though, for all careers is 4 years long. If you could achieve 6 level 0 skills in 36 hours of classes, what is happening the rest of the time?

I think rolling an EDU check (perhaps with modifiers based on homeworld), is logical. It still allows for a roughly 50-60% chance of failure in most cases, which sort of factors in the times you have to sit through a endless droning seminar you already know the material for, except for that 5% nugget you still need to know.
In retrospect, I think the whole idea coalesced in my mind after picking up my car at the shop the other day. The mechanic's 16 year old daughter was cutting a muffler off the car next to mine, like she'd been doing it since she could walk.

If you're speaking of the military, at the end of a 4-year hitch, you also have Janitor 3, Shamming 2, and Admin 0
Also, the assumption is that 'Basic' is that first full year in the military... military training, getting acclimated to military life, getting to your duty station, and so forth. In modern US Navy terms, that would be Basic [about 12-18 weeks], A-School [where you learn the skill you joined the Navy to learn, some USN A-Schools are two years long], reporting to your first duty station, and getting into the swing of Navy life aboard ship.
Jokes aside, you're doing all the 1000 little niggling details of military life... taking care of your personal gear and living space, maintaining major equipment [your vehicles in the ground military, your ship in the Scouts/Navy/Merchants], the actual doing of your MOS [that one skill you got out of Basic with at Skill-Level 1], etc. In civilian careers, you're also looking at the by-rote day-to-day side work that has very little to do with job you were hired to for. As you say, you've been through corporate IT courses, so let me ask you: how much of your time is actual computer programming and how much of it is filling out forms, getting the right parts, and keeping someone on the end of the phone placated [all of which adds up to 'Admin 1']?