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Post by Red Baron on Jan 18, 2021 19:37:45 GMT -6
Traveller has a bunch of skills that don't seem to work very well.
1. Admin, bribery, gambling, steward, and streetwise replace roleplaying opportunities with skill-based die-rolls.
2. Tactics replaces player wargaming skill.
3. Air/raft, ATV, and ship's boat are overly specific. What about the pinnace, cutter, etc? What about submarine, gravity-bike, helicopter, jet?
4. Forgery seems better suited for NPCs.
5. Jack-of-all-trades is extremely ill-defined.
-Air/raft, ATV, and all other terrestrial (non-spacecraft) vehicles seems like it should be group into 3 skills: Watercraft, Groundcraft, and Aircraft.
-Ship's boat seems like it should either 1. be expanded to include all "Intra-stellar Spacecraft" or 2. combined with Pilot to include all intra-stellar flying using the maneuver driver.
The following skills seem to be very solid as they are:
Blade cbt, Brawling, Computer, Electronics, Engineering, Gun cbt, Gunnery, Mechanical, Medicine, Navigation, Vacuum suit.
"Performing a surgery" is not easy to roleplay out (unless you have the board-game "operation"), so medical is a good skill.
"Repairing a ship's powerplant" is not easy to roleplay out, so engineering is a good skill.
"Moving around in 0-G" is not easy to roleplay out, so vacuum suit is a good skill.
You get the idea.
However that is a very small skill list so characters would lack a bit of flavor if condensed to only these items.
I haven't made up my mind about "leadership".
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Post by Piper on Jan 18, 2021 21:02:47 GMT -6
Traveller has a bunch of skills that don't seem to work very well. I usually used these when role-playing didn't provide a clear resolution to the situation. Even then, I typically modified the die roll based on the player's "performance" and the appropriateness of the attempted action for the PC in question. |
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tec97
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 157
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Post by tec97 on Jan 19, 2021 14:07:29 GMT -6
IMO, JoT is really the biggest offender of ill-conceived, mostly in that there is no real description of what to do with levels of it above "1". The idea that JoT lets you attempt anything without a penalty to your roll is a decent one, and IIRC, the rule book says that JoT never gives you "skill" in anything, so what do extra levels actually do? In my head, I've been kicking around the idea that for each level above 1, you get an additional unmodified attempt at a task - thus an extremely difficult task (13+ to succeed) would still be beyond a JoT, but something merely "very hard" (12+), while not achievable by an unskilled character would be possible for a JoT-1 and a JoT-3 would have three cracks at rolling the boxcars necessary to do it.
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Post by hamurai on Jan 23, 2021 2:37:40 GMT -6
Traveller has a bunch of skills that don't seem to work very well. I usually used these when role-playing didn't provide a clear resolution to the situation. Even then, I typically modified the die roll based on the player's "performance" and the appropriateness of the attempted action for the PC in question. Either that, or (how we mostly do it): "Noteworthy" encounters are role-played and good role-playing substitutes a skill roll. Pure skill rolls are mostly used for "side actions", so when we're heading off somewhere and need a permit, we might just make a Bribe skill roll instead of playing the situation out, to get things moving. If that's a really bad roll we might end up role-playing the results in detail, or just up the needed bribe and be done with it. IMO, JoT is really the biggest offender of ill-conceived, mostly in that there is no real description of what to do with levels of it above "1". The idea that JoT lets you attempt anything without a penalty to your roll is a decent one, and IIRC, the rule book says that JoT never gives you "skill" in anything, so what do extra levels actually do? In my head, I've been kicking around the idea that for each level above 1, you get an additional unmodified attempt at a task - thus an extremely difficult task (13+ to succeed) would still be beyond a JoT, but something merely "very hard" (12+), while not achievable by an unskilled character would be possible for a JoT-1 and a JoT-3 would have three cracks at rolling the boxcars necessary to do it. Incidentally, your rule is pretty close to what MegaTraveller does: Jack-of-all-trades: The individual is proven capable of handling a wide variety of situations and is resourceful at finding solutions and remedies. Jack-of-all-trades allows the character one free retry per level of Jack-of-all-trades on any task that fails. This represents the character’s resourcefulness when finding solutions. The latest (2E) Mongoose Traveller has a negative Dice Modifier for unskilled attempts, depending on the missing skill. JoT works reduces this: The Jack-of-All-Trades skill works differently to other skills. It reduces the unskilled penalty a Traveller receives for not having the appropriate skill by one for every level of Jack-of-All-Trades. For example, if a Traveller does not have the Pilot skill, he suffers DM-3 to all Pilot checks. If that Traveller has Jack-of-All-Trades 2, then the penalty is reduced by 2 to DM-1. With Jackof- All-Trades 3, a Traveller can totally negate the penalty for being unskilled. |
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Feb 18, 2021 21:24:51 GMT -6
Character skills compensate for things the character cannot roleplay effectively due to lack of knowledge or differential personality. In high school, I had a character with Admin-5 but I had zero idea what that even meant. I couldn't roleplay it, I couldn't even visualize it.
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Post by rsdean on Feb 27, 2021 13:45:21 GMT -6
Character skills compensate for things the character cannot roleplay effectively due to lack of knowledge or differential personality. In high school, I had a character with Admin-5 but I had zero idea what that even meant. I couldn't roleplay it, I couldn't even visualize it. Ha! I agree with your statement, but I do get to laugh now, as, after 39 years of working for the Federal government, I probably have Admin-5... |
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Post by tkdco2 on Mar 4, 2021 19:31:48 GMT -6
What I'd like to know is how Forward Observer would work aboard a starship. I can see its use in the army or marines. Is the navy counterpart like the Electronics Warfare Officer?
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Post by Punkrabbitt on Mar 4, 2021 21:52:50 GMT -6
What I'd like to know is how Forward Observer would work aboard a starship. I can see its use in the army or marines. Is the navy counterpart like the Electronics Warfare Officer? It's probably being aboard a forward observer ship, calling in choice targets for missile barrages and such. |
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Post by tdenmark on Mar 4, 2021 22:07:51 GMT -6
What I'd like to know is how Forward Observer would work aboard a starship. I can see its use in the army or marines. Is the navy counterpart like the Electronics Warfare Officer? As a forward observer in the Army, I can tell you there is always a need for eyes on the target far in front of the battle. I can imagine AI, or drones in the future being advanced enough to do the job -- but that isn't really in the spirit of Traveller. |
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Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
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Post by Deleted on Mar 6, 2021 8:26:48 GMT -6
Traveller has a bunch of skills that don't seem to work very well. I usually used these when role-playing didn't provide a clear resolution to the situation. Even then, I typically modified the die roll based on the player's "performance" and the appropriateness of the attempted action for the PC in question. This is how I feel Skills in RPGs ought to work in general. Preferably the player gives a thorough description of what he or she is attempting. If it makes enough sense and is particularly inspired, I won't even ask for a roll in some cases* because I'm a big ol' softie who loves a good plan. *But not all. There's always a chance of failure, especially in tense or time-limited scenarios. |
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eris
Level 4 Theurgist
Posts: 161
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Post by eris on Mar 9, 2021 15:19:17 GMT -6
I think I'll make a reply here with how I handle some of these skills in Traveller. Traveller has a bunch of skills that don't seem to work very well. 1. Admin, bribery, gambling, steward, and streetwise replace roleplaying opportunities with skill-based die-rolls. Yes and no. I use rolls in most of these to "inform the roleplaying" that the player does, or to replace it when the game needs to move quickly. By "inform the roleplaying, I mean the player has to roleplay the situation and I use a skill roll against these tasks to to help me decide how well they do. I'd personally be terrible at ALL of these skills based on my background/personality, as would a friend I play with. When he needs to, say, bribe someone, we'll roll and then he and I will do some role playing...if the roll was good, he'll be successful no matter how badly we stumble through the roleplaying went, if the roll was bad, but we actually crush the roleplaying he might have barely succeeded anyway. As above, but generally, I have a player move the Tactics skill to some Weapon and just roleplay it. Well, IMTU, Ship's Boat is all non-starships. Air/raft or Grav Vehicles are all grav vehicles. IMTU and IMO, ATV, Submarine, and Helicopter are different from general ground and water and air craft so that's okay. NO! I have PC's that use Forgery all the time. Combine it with Computer and you have "hacking" too...IMTU. Here I fully agree with you! I think every Ref has to come up with their own way of handling JOT. So, if you can drive an auto you can handle all ground craft? Can you? Um, well, here I think a few are too broad.  But for ease of play I generally go with it. Oh, I hate Leadership as a skill!  |
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But for ease of play I generally go with it.