What Do Citizens Do?

[alex_greene]

Here's a question for you.

The different career strands in Traveller Core Rulebook each outline a certain characteristic at which the person excels. Army and Marines live to fight; Navy, likewise, with the emphasis on ship-to-ship combat; Scouts explore; Agents track down and apprehend miscreants; Rogues, Psions and Drifters are the miscreants; Scholars study Science; Entertainers and Nobles maintain their public personas and, by their presence, reassure the masses that All Is Well, and Please Don't Rise Up And Eat Us, Thank You Very Much; and Merchants, of course, keep the economy going and rake in the credits.

What, my learned colleagues, do you think Citizens do?

They aren't Nobles or Entertainers, singing for their supper or trying to talk around the silver spoon in their mouths; they are too honest to be Rogues, too settled to be Drifters, they are not the Law, they are not vested in making money to the extent that Merchants are, any more than they feel a particular need to explore the cosmos as Scholars; and if they wanted to fight the enemy they would sign up and put on a uniform with all the other grunts, space cadets and ground pounders.

Entertainers entertain; fighters fight; poets po. What do Citizens do?

Discuss.

 

[Hopeless]

They do the regular jobs?

Had one player have his character start off as a Citizen working in a starport until he could try to join the Scouts which he explained was because he caught their attention due to his work I suppose sort of how Geordi La Forge got brought aboard the Enterprise by Picard when he first met him whilst he was a shuttle pilot.

I wonder how many different ways this could be handled or explained?

Isn't there a book on Citizen Careers or am I mixing that up with that third party product who also did their own version of the Mercenary adaptation?

 

[alex_greene]

I wonder how many different ways this could be handled or explained?

Isn't there a book on Citizen Careers or am I mixing that up with that third party product who also did their own version of the Mercenary adaptation?

Mongoose have covered almost all of the careers apart from Scholars; but they have not done a Citizens career book.

Yet.

 

[Old timer]

Build. Citizens are the ones who build that city the rogue is running around in, the soldiers are fighting over, the theatre the entertainer performs in. Citizens are the ones who are maintaining that space station you keep visiting, or running its flight control to try and prevent any accidents. Citizens are the ones who go to a new colony world to find a better life than the drudgery of their 9-5. Citizens become colonists, who build that new colony, who hunt and farm on this new world.
Citizens are the ones who have to deal with sudden unexpected events (like invasion, natural disasters) long before the professionals turn up to try and sort out this mess.
This is how i view them in context in traveller, last points are bit 'Hollywood' but make for good adventures for the 'ordinary' folk of traveller.

 

[Reynard]

We often judge characters' functions on relation to space travel and focus on skills related. Citizen aren't therefore seen as flashy, no big guns or super pilot. They are Joe Average.

What people think about them and what they can do are different. I see skills in the three assignments that are just as useful as any high profile career wrapped in the package of The Normal Person. Remember, Traveller characters are people who have worked in a profession a good portion of their lives and now have decided to walk away and adventure. Tell me that isn't the dream of many blue collars? Tired of your 9 to 5 routine with the Supervisor from Hell, the Citizen hands in their notice, gathers their life savings and hooks up with some buddies to get on one of those ships heading for the stars. This isn't an ordinary citizen but one out of trillions with the guts to give up the safe life. Compared to the other careers, citizens are everywhere doing everything. What do citizens do? Everything else and a few do a bit more.

Don't diss the Citizen.

 

[sideranautae]

Entertainers entertain; fighters fight; poets po. What do Citizens do?

Pay taxes.

eot

 

[CosmicGamer]

Entertainers entertain; fighters fight; poets po. What do Citizens do?

At first I was going to say everything else. Then I thought, it's not everything else, they do everything!

This is more of a conceptual thing than a by the rules as written what do they do as a career (that comes later). Is a Nobel or a scholar not a citizen? Are those in the army or marines not citizens? Even the rogue and drifter are probably still citizens. So citizens do everything.

For the by the book answer, well, go by the book. It describes citizens as "Individuals serving in a corporation, bureaucracy or industry, or who are making a new life on an untamed planet."

But with that Trade skill one could gain skill as a daycare provider, cook, accountant, salesman, banker, mechanic, home automation installer, materials fabricator, package delivery, hunter, circus sharp shooter, publisher, editor, playwrite, newsman, mime, opra singer, school music instructor, school administrator, daycare manager, bank manager, lobbyist, campaign manager, paralegal, lawyer, translator and anything else.

From the trades above, these everyday citizens could have comparable skills to steward, broker, mechanic, drive, gun combat, art, admin, advocate, language and so on.

So while not in the description, if you look at what citizens could be capable of doing,
by the rules... Everything.

 

[rust]

What, my learned colleagues, do you think Citizens do?

They establish, maintain and expand the entire social and technological
infrastructure which serves as the background for the activities of the
members of the various other careers. No Citizens, no civilization.

 

[sideranautae]

What, my learned colleagues, do you think Citizens do?

They establish, maintain and expand the entire social and technological
infrastructure which serves as the background for the activities of the
members of the various other careers. No Citizens, no civilization.

Good summation. And, therein lies the problem. If too many are allowed to adventure, the entire civilization will collapse and the campaign must then change to a post apocalyptic genre... :wink:

 

[CosmicGamer]

Good summation. And, therein lies the problem. If too many are allowed to adventure, the entire civilization will collapse and the campaign must then change to a post apocalyptic genre... :wink:

Please don't play god and destroy worlds just to see what the citizens do.

One could use the citizen career from the book. Citizens can be adventurous colonists.

 

[sideranautae]

Please don't play god and destroy worlds just to see what the citizens do.

One could use the citizen career from the book. Citizens can be adventurous colonists.

Killjoy

 

[Reynard]

Too many? Go sum up the Population of all the worlds in a single sector. A miniscule fraction of a percent are adventurers and part of that are citizens. You will never see so many citizens take up an adventuring life to somehow collapse civilization any more than scout adventurers wreck the scout service or military adventurers cause the ruination of their respective branch. Nobility? Sometimes good to clean out the deadwood.

 

[phavoc]

They are cooks, scanner operators, truck drivers, interior decorators, fungi farmers, space suit repair guys, etc.

Just because they are citizens doesn't mean they might not be well-rounded jack-of-all-trades at something or another. But usually they aren't going to be gun-toting adventurers waiting to make the next big score.

Plus, and let's be honest here, what PC wouldn't be afraid of the Imperial Tax man citizen, with the power to impoverish them with the swipe of a stylus? The pen truly IS mightier than the gauss rifle!!! :lol:

 

[dragoner]

What, my learned colleagues, do you think Citizens do?

They establish, maintain and expand the entire social and technological
infrastructure which serves as the background for the activities of the
members of the various other careers. No Citizens, no civilization.

Pretty much, they are the every-sophont. :mrgreen:

 

[rust]

Citizens can be adventurous colonists.

Indeed, which is why they are the huge majority of player characters in
my colony settings, average people in extreme situations who become
"heroes" by facing the dangers without the training and experience of
the specialists.

 

[Reynard]

"Plus, and let's be honest here, what PC wouldn't be afraid of the Imperial Tax man citizen, with the power to impoverish them with the swipe of a stylus? "

Again we see the citizen career made fun but I do see skill set that are useful to a party. Not every character need be a gun bunny. An engineer is an engineer. That's the roleplaying part again. Why is an regular person out gallivanting through the galaxy risking life for the possibility of a few credits? The Citizen career may actually be the most interesting one.

 

[dragoner]

You can also do multiple careers, where citizen fits right in. 8)

 

[Reynard]

Got out of college and got a job at Megaburger (over 10 trillion served) then went back for a Masters and found a profession in an institute. Decided to go into the military to pay back my loans and serve my Imperium. I'm out and really don't want to go back to those old jobs so I linked up with some military buddies and going to see the galaxy!

 

[JRoss]

* Citizens make money, but not as much as Nobles and Merchants.
* Citizens make contacts, but not as many as many as Nobles and Merchants.
* Citizens make very few Enemies and start with the cleanest slate of any Career.
* Citizens gain useful bureaucratic, schmoozing, crafting, survival and general knowledge skills.
* Citizens survive longer than anyone else.

 

[Galadrion]

The Imperial Tax Man would be an Agent, not a Citizen. Or possibly a Noble-as-Bureaucrat type, although I tend to think of those more as the policy-setters, not the auditors. The auditors are definitely Agents... or maybe Rogues of the organized crime type!

Citizens... Citizens are the everyday producers and servicers. They're the ones working to produce raw materials, down in the mines or out in the farm fields. They're the guys actually on the factory floor or construction site, building the things everyone uses. Or they're the repairmen, the installers, the real technicians - the ones who get things to work, keep them working, and get them working again when they stop working. (The guys in the white coats with clipboards aren't real technicians, no matter what their job titles. Unless more of their job involves touching machinery and tools than paperwork, they're an engineer, and mostly a theoretical one to boot... which translates in Traveller terms to a Scholar.)

So how do these guys get involved in adventures? Well, you might ask Jack Burton. Or Luke Skywalker. Sometimes, adventure just come looking for you...