Thanks, man, I really appreciate it.
I’m not sure how to address the skills issue in Traveller. Whether life path is still the way or switching to point buy.
I’ll be testing out things running a Culture game in a couple of weeks.
Some thoughts on this,
In situations where a character gains a skill with a set value where they already have the same or higher skill level, treat it as a +1 skill level rather than losing the skill level. IE, you take a skill for your background at level 0 and then in basic training gain that skill again at level 0. Normally, you would just lose the skill but if you use this alternative it becomes a level 1 skill. This applies to skills from rank bonuses too, since that is the other common place this happens.
If you gain a skill level that would be wasted, like gaining a skill level in a skill you already 4 levels in, you may choose a different skill to gain the level in or reroll until you get something different. GM preference to which to use, since picking any skill is pretty powerful
During each term, you always get a roll on the career skill table in addition regardless of anything that happens during that term and in addition to the normal 1 roll on the table of your choice.
Use the Connections rule, and if they are still skill poor, allow more connections.
Use the crew skill packages rules to fill gaps the group might have.
You might also allow an additional random skill at level 1 to be added to the background skills to allow for those folks that grew up in such a way as to be exposed to some profession or intense interest in some subject enough to be more familiar with it than the normal background skills. It doesn't have to be a random roll if the player has some background idea that works for the character and the GM is ok with it
Any or all of these ideas will greatly expand the skills of the characters but may lead to skill bloat if running a game where high skills is disruptive, which can be easy to do in a 2D6 system when you start stacking DMs.
