Traveller Companion Alternate Careers

[alex_greene]

I've just opened Traveller Companion again, and went for the alternate careers. It took me three goes before I realised that I was looking at them. I honestly thought they were some sort of weird filler text, and the careers were in some other part of the book.

What can I do with a Truther or Believer character? How can I get a ... a parish priest or tinfoil hat nut out into space? Accident? Stowaway? Stuck in a box and put into cargo by a rival?

Also, people, what alternate careers would you have put into the Companion? Keep it civil.

 

[Condottiere]

Duke Norris of Regina runs a human trafficking ring in the cellar of a Pizza bakery, next door to the Palace.

 

[alex_greene]

Duke Norris of Regina runs a human trafficking ring in the cellar of a Pizza bakery, next door to the Palace.

Did somebody say something about adrenochrome?
Also, here's your tinfoil hat.

 

[Geir]

Searching for the holy space grail? Wanting to talk to the Star God really up close? Hunting down the fraud who robbed the parish bank account? A crusade? A missionary? A disgruntled, disillusioned priest wanting to get away from it all? Lots of fun ideas.

 

[Saladman]

Really the weakest part of the book, and should have been cut in editing. Particularly surprising after the alternate character generation system, which is almost solid gold (though I drop the final step "raise any skill to 4, or..." which does not balance against randomly rolled mid-term count characters). Could have been replaced with a paragraph or half page on doing your own custom careers, making sure to balance them against existing ones, and resist the temptation to stack all the sexy skill results on one single table.

I think of custom careers more as campaign-dependent rather than universal, a way to say something about how your game world or local sub-sector works. So I don't have any particular concepts I preferred to see in the Companion, so long as they're playable. For a 1e game I ran I worked up some different Drifter careers, splitting Scavenger into separate Belter and Scavenger [groundside] careers, and replacing Wanderer with Working Passage and an Ex-Pat careers. Or they could have gone cyberpunk, with a Rigger career (Remote Operations/Electronics/Mechanic/Drive), a cyber-doc career (Medic, Life Science-Cybernetics), and a combat class heavy on cyber implants on the benefits and rank table.

 

[alex_greene]

Searching for the holy space grail? Wanting to talk to the Star God really up close? Hunting down the fraud who robbed the parish bank account? A crusade? A missionary? A disgruntled, disillusioned priest wanting to get away from it all? Lots of fun ideas.

 

[CordwainerFish]

View attachment 1171

 

[alex_greene]

Now we're getting somewhere.

 

[Geir]

Oh! No wait, I know: Geonee Ancients artifact hunter: "All of those artifacts belong to me and my people. If you ever touch my stuff again, my little invisible friend will urinate in your beer."

 

[Condottiere]

Eventually, Smith starts a Martian-influenced "Church of All Worlds", combining elements of the Fosterite cult (especially the sexual aspects) with Western esotericism, whose members learn the Martian language, and thus acquire the ability to truly "grok" the nature of reality, granting them psychokinesis.

 

[alex_greene]

Eventually, Smith starts a Martian-influenced "Church of All Worlds", combining elements of the Fosterite cult (especially the sexual aspects) with Western esotericism, whose members learn the Martian language, and thus acquire the ability to truly "grok" the nature of reality, granting them psychokinesis.

One of my favourite Heinlein novels, Stranger In A Strange Land.

 

[NOLATrav]

Didn’t really care for Truther or Believer either.

Honestly, the old Spica Publishing Career Books for 1e are still great. I’ve built a D66 table for Drifting and the Draft that incorporates my favorites. They really do flesh out the universe in that they put a face on things that are normally just fluff in the background. Had a character that got booted from the Scouts, drifted into working as a stevedore for the Port Authority for a term and had an event (opportunity to smuggle - yes or no?) that led to him becoming a Rogue for a couple terms. Great stuff and one of my favorite characters.

I had one player looking over the Draft table and saw Space Patrol (which I had renamed System Patrol - interplanetary police forces) and she said “Can I just like, do that instead of Agent?” Which of course she did and was quite happy with her grizzled old Spat* who had never left her home system until the game started.

I think the Companion could have used those pages lost on Truther and Believer and expanded the Profession skill even more than what was done. Better yet, a big expansion of Drifting where you could be a bartender at the high port, a small craft pilot making runs to the Outsystem, a mechanic on a mid-tech world or even some staff lackey for a recalcitrant low-ranking Noble. There’s a lot of good backstory and connections/hooks to be found in doing odd jobs on the drift.

*Spat: extremely derogatory term for local law enforcement, derived from System Patrol (SysPat)

 

[Saladman]

Honestly, the old Spica Publishing Career Books for 1e are still great.

I really appreciated the expanded life events charts. Careers alone are easy enough I'm just as happy to knock them out myself when I'm the GM, but event charts for every one is a larger commitment.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Going back to the CT Other career
I allow a player to select from the NPC encounter tables (the 2 patrons lists and the NPC encounters) for the actual nature of the Other career.

 

[Condottiere]

One way is to adopt a pregenerated non player character, so you more or less get what you want.

Or use the point system, to buy the skills and benefits you want for your character concept, at a slight disadvantage then if you diced it out.

 

[JustEastOfTheEdge]

Sea Navy and Air Force should be there somewhere. Especially as both are mentioned in the new Imperial Navy book - but choosing that as a career will not get you much in the way of skills for those 2 professions

 

[Vormaerin]

Sea Navy and Air Force should be there somewhere. Especially as both are mentioned in the new Imperial Navy book - but choosing that as a career will not get you much in the way of skills for those 2 professions

They would be separate branches of the Army, which is really "Planetary Forces Command".

 

[Condottiere]

I am the Captain now.

 

[Shadowblayde99]

I feel like there is a big gap in the Traveller careers: Health and Safety Manager. Skills should include admin and advocate and persuade. I wish gun combat was also a required skill LOL.

 

[Sigtrygg]

It's a specialisation for either the Bureaucrat or the Administrator...