-Daniel- said:
This reflects real life IMO. Look at George Burns, man smoked every day of his life and lived to a ripe old age of 100. Yet my poor uncle who never smoked died at 50 from cancer. Both lived in the same country, same TL, same medical resources, just one rolled better so to speak. The table adds a level of random because that is the way life is. Random.
That TL has no influence on aging rolls is a bit silly, I think.
I wouldn't base arguments on outliers, especially in a game based on 2d6 which has basically no granularity - there's just not enough granularity to model anything that has worse than a 1-in-36 chance of happening.
In a world without any healthcare at all where "things happen" everyone should be required to make a survival roll to even get into chargen. There's A LOT of diseases that kill children, many of which modern health care have largely suppressed to the point where few people in places like the United States even give them much thought. That we don't have to roll for these kinds of diseases, in my opinion, is an assumption of a certain level of healthcare, an assumption in Traveller which may not be accurate (a world with TL0 might not have these failsafes) and child mortality claimed a lot more children than 1-in-36 so there definitely should be rolls made for it.
Similarly, I am sorry to hear about your uncle's passing, it's probable he did benefit from health care in his life before his passing. I agree that "things happen" and people do get struck down by diseases and events that others don't, I think at some point the possibilities should drop to the point where players don't have to roll for them. For instance, various critical and deadly medical conditions occur - because I used to hang around internet roleplaying games I know quite a few people whom I can verify had conditions like cancer in the 20s and 30s. Two have, unfortunately, died of it or complications thereof. We don't have to roll for these kinds of conditions in Traveller either, because I think the chance of these happening is pretty remote; again, events where there's a lot less than 1-in-36 chance of it happening you can make an argument against rolling against it as simply being vindictive.
alex_greene said:
A lot of science fiction authors used to posit a Far Future where rejuve treatments and increased lifespans were available through some sort of socialised health care, available to all citizens, ensuring not only that every citizen would enjoy an increased lifespan, but that a higher proportion of that lifespan would be a time of reasonable health and physical fitness.
There's an argument, and a strong one, that Social Standing should probably be a modifier for aging rolls as well - a person on a TL5 planet, if sufficiently wealthy in the Traveller Universe could likely afford to get treatment at a TL14 facility. Similarly, it's entirely possible that someone who is poor on a world with TL14, even one with socialized healthcare, might suffer from aging rolls in a way that someone who is "more equal" (and there's always elites in any society) wouldn't because that "more equal" person has access to more health care, the ability to get second and third opinions, and generally get more personalized healthcare.
I've recently been giving bonuses for the aging table for Social Standing instead of TL; even in some organization like the Marines or the Navy, it's likely someone with a Social Standing of A or B or something is going to have better care taken of him or her than others (if only because when the family of said person hears their child is ill they're going to pull strings and get their child transferred to a better medical facility than the Marines can offer).
