I'll reflect my own CT experience, which differs from others:

Our group came out of D&D, Car Wars, Star Fleet Battles, SPI Wargames, etc. into Traveller.

For us then, if someone took the time to write a rule for it (I think James and some other folk would call it a suggestion), we used it as is because that's what the designer intended and, the thinking went, if you played the game as presented, it would be closest to what the creator intended. We didn't have, back then, a lot of house rules that I recall. We died in chargen. We had somewhat unsatisfactory characters because of short terms and very small skill lists, and so on. We played the game as close as we could to what was written.

Now I know that, in AD&D, Gary said 'change what you want to' and I'm sure Marc would say the same, but we were trying to play the game we imagined the creator wanted us to experience. We didn't even temper what we all felt were really rough or insufficient parts.

If the game said, this task had this roll with these contributing DMs, then that's what we went with.

Thus, we round the lack of completeness in identifying tasks and explicitly describing them to be not so much a freedom as a sense of incompleteness. In Wargames and in SFB and even to a fair extent in Car Wars, there were a lot of fiddly rules and subcases but most things were described. They felt complete (although sometimes hard to play and rules presentation was like reading the obits...).

We only filled in parts we totally had to. When the original game didn't really provide much, we had to fill in, but we were never daring nor did we stray off into swords and sandals, or any other fantastical elements (even psi was usually not a part). We figured a game with complex combat, specific equations for a lot of stuff, and suchlike meant that the game was meant to be as close to hard science as anything seen at the time.

We did not try to fill in the uses of zero level skills nor try to figure out why space marines could come out of training with only Cutlass and no other key space skills to any great degree. We just felt it must have been like Dune, where it was more important to have those sorts of skills (though without the shield belts, oddly).

We found the combat to be odd (as described when it came to similar weapons, but also a lot of DMs and such were seemed very arbitrary yet we, being trying to be true to the game we thought it was, tried to tell ourselves that the creator had carefully though out and calculated all the effects those DM tables provided with great care and attention. We felt sure there were equations and probability curves and so on behind it all.

We FOR SURE did not see the 'dice mechanics' (if we aren't calling them a skill or task system) as a license to do what you wanted as GM. And that made the examples, which I accept as you say it now were examples to show the breadth of ways to choose to resolve things, a bit problematic because each was different and you always had to look up the particular task if it existed because there didn't seem to be an identifying common mechanic or effect of modifiers which we wondered about given how much calculation and attention was put to ship building, travel times, etc. It felt like there was supposed to be a structured task system, they just were light on describing it. Now, as you say, I recognize it probably was much more flexible and open ended than that for the GM to figure out, but to us it felt oddly incomplete compared to the other areas of the game where they spent exceptional amounts of time.

And when the 'advanced' careers came out, we saw it as 'more specificity' and thus more completeness, not really thinking that it was a bit of a patch on that didn't balance with the basic system (in terms of outputs). We expected that level of detail everywhere (as you got in wargames) because a) they did it for systems, ship building, space combat, etc. and they b) did it for careers and c) they had wargames (Mayday, AHL, Striker) so all those things moved towards a particular view of what Traveller was - it was an RPG with (poorly integrated) wargaming and with great detail in all parts of the game.

That is NOT what I hear from a lot of you others who took it up. I hear science fantasy, swords and sandals, a lot of home brew and inclusions beyond the norms for the Travellerverse later (as it took shape), and so on. I hear about its great flexibility and how wonderful the simple skill system was and so on... and complaints about all the detail and changes that ensued from enhanced characters and so on that, to us, were the only sensible direction given how much time was spent on ship construction, building vehicles (how long did it take to build a Striker vehicle on pen and paper?), and in all the finicky bits of the game that were so detailed.

It really, really feels like we were playing different games by a long shot, drawing from the very same corpus of books. And of course, we all remember how we saw it as how it was.

I didn't live in the UK - whatever may have come out focused on the RP side in White Dwarf and other places, we never saw. We were lucky to get the core rulebooks. And they were written in a style that was very ... sterile. Not much for describing the narrative or the excitement, but great at providing mechanics for solo trade fuddling and ship muddling. Our Traveller experiences from the CT era were VERY different, from what I see.

I had little or no idea (except a vague hint in COTI the supplement) where all the inspiration came from. Most of the books in question never hit my library so I couldn't read them. And books were pricey for a kid back then, so I couldn't buy many and so until someone mentioned Dumarest and some others recently, I hadn't looked at any of that. So we were trying to play what the sterile sounding, mechanic heavy (for some parts) game of hard science fiction was meant to be. We had not an inkling it was meant to be freer, the approach to tests and skills and DMs was essentially almost freehand for the GM and go-figure-it-out-but-stick-to-it, nor did we recognize the swords and sandals - Retief and others, Dumarest, and likely many others.

So when we moved to MT, we found the complete, integrated (also broken in lots of ways, but so was CT's intrictate bits, so nothing there different) game that we thought CT was supposed to be. Task system, enough skills to represent the things that had seemed to be missed and consolidations (for the weapons) into groups of similar ones that made sense. HERE was the game that CT we imagined had finally been laid out in all its finished (well except for bugs in every LAST table or paragraph) glory.

And yet, for many of you, it obviously felt like a 'WTF?!!' moment - the emperor was dead, the character and ship mechanics were sizably different, and so on. For us, it felt to be the entirely logical progression and for those who had played that very different version of CT, it must have felt like a whole other, and likely unwelcome, set of changes. 

That's my takeaway from many conversations of late and some of the negative focus on MT and DGP. We stick to what we enjoyed, the version that made sense to us, and felt complete to us, and played like we expected the game to play (noting there are some very divergent answers to that).

Now my breaking point was Hard Times and then TNE and Star Vikings with an entirely different rules engine. If they'd used that engine from the start, it might have been fine, but we had a long history of 2D6 and a particular general shape of how we did characters and that was a lot different in TNE.

So, thanks for showing me your experience (and the same to Rupert and Phil and others) which was so very, very different to mine and my group's in the middle of the the Canadian West, a good 7 hours away from GMT.

I can see it may have been quite fun, if so very different. It just was not in so many obvious senses not the same game.

And I think, to me, that is not a strength in presentation. I think that if presentation had leaned a little more into the breadth of source material and if the presentation had been a bit less sterile to hint at a flavour of what a game might look like or if the 'resolution mechanics' didn't seem like they ought to be as formal, complete, and specific (and consistent) as the various construction and trade systems... then maybe our group might have had a more common experience with a lot of you on the list.

I guess, maybe the DGP guys were like us. I don't know. One way or another, they wrote what we felt was the (rules wise) obvious successor and more complete version of CT. The Rebellion... that might have been something we'd have lived without, but it was different and offered different challenges if you wanted that kind of thing.

TomB

On Sun, Jun 21, 2020 at 2:18 PM James Catchpole - jlcatchpole at googlemail.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
A well put explanation of your view, and one I fully understand and agree with in context, because I spent a long while thinking like that myself. If looked at from the point of view of MT, I would say you are correct.

However, my point after going back to original CT is that the system isn't broken, in part because it *isn't* a fixed system with skills at the centre. The examples scattered through the rules are just that, examples, and of different ways skills and attributes can be used to resolve problems. In particular they make clear that there is *no* rule that DMs are limited to +1 per skill level, nor that skills even give a linear bonus - a minimum skill level can be required to even attempt a task, or a roll may not be required if a character has sufficient skill and no complicating factors. It may seem chaotic, but it's really akin to a Kriegsspiel rather than a rigid system. The system relies on the referee being consistent and impartial, but beyond that it's up to them.

Yes, the skills are coarse-grained, but it is only trying to represent really important differences, rather than distinguishing between fine levels of competency.

The combat system is the *only* place where there is an 8+ target roll, with fixed DMs for skills, and I actually think it suffers in some ways for it.

The assumption in the rules is that players and the referee would understand that and just roll with it (literally and figuratively!). I do think, with hindsight, that they should have included more advice on how to run the game, bits and pieces of which did appear here and there. Lacking that, people started looking for ways to create a universal mechanic, which became cemented in stone with MT. At that point, with the fixed +1 DM per skill level and the character generation systems all giving way more skills than CT you have a *very* different game, even though it looks superficially similar.

For the record, in CT I would map the levels you summarised as:-

Level 0 - few weeks training and basic practice. Enough knowledge to generally handle basic tasks safely - and enough to get into trouble trying things they shouldn't!
Level 1 - a couple of years training and  practice. Probably rather longer if just learning on the job. Competent apprentice. Able to handle routine tasks without difficulty.
Level 2 - basic professional competency. At least 4 years training and regular practice (could be a lot longer if learning on the job). Journeyman. Medical school graduate. Good degree.
Level 3 - well rounded professional. At least another 4 years practice and learning on the job. Master. Doctor post-residency. PhD.
Higher - lots more practice, learning on the job over several years per skill level. Anything at this level or higher, progression is not guaranteed.

I would probably say most professionals stop at level 3 (and many never go higher than a 2), any additional skills being acquired in other areas related to their job.

On present day earth, level 4 is well known in their area, possibly a leader in the field, level 5, you are talking about potential nobel prize winners, anything over that you are talking household names world wide...

Characters rarely achieve those levels, because they are generalists rather than specialists.

Btw, I also agree entirely about the weapon skills - that always seemed a bit weird to me. You can have a character who is a crack shot with a pistol but is barely competent with a revolver?! Or one who is a trained sniper with a rifle, but struggles with a carbine... I'm not sure what the idea here was, maybe they wanted to make players pick favourite weapons and stick with them?

Cheers,
Jim

On Sun, 21 Jun 2020 10:10 , <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
I'm going to say I don't see that.

First, I don't honestly see raw intelligence as the be all end all (or the physical abilities). It just doesn't seem to reflect the people I've met and what I've observed in my own life.

Most tasks in this world, as opposed to a strict physical or mental feat (stunt), are resolved largely by training or experience or both moreso than any physical or mental capacity.

Skill over attribute:
Medicine
Almost any technical or scientific skill (I'd say all, but maybe there is one I can't think that mostly attribute driven)
Even most interpersonal stuff can be and is learned (trader, broker, interrogation, investigation, diplomacy, negotiation, streetwise, etc)

Then there's the notion that you can get away with zero level skills and very few other skill levels. If you want to play a binary game (has it/doesn't), then maybe.

Our world is full of gradations.
Look at any trade: Newbie/student, apprentice, journeyman,master.
Look at martial arts: Many have at least 10 ranks, some have as many as 20 (10 sub-black, 10 black belt degrees). There's a big difference between no training, a two week introduction, the first two years of training, the next two years of training, and the next 10 years of training.
Look at technical skills: No training, a student that knows only some broad things (or someone who just took a two week course intro to a much larger subject), then a year course, a 3 year course, someone who has done that then 4 years apprenticeship, then someone who has been doing it for 15 years after schooling.
In medicine: No training, a weekend first aid course, a several month first responder course, a couple of year premed, a graduate doctor from medical school, said doctor after a 4-5 year residency, that doctor after another 10-15 years of experience.

And mechanically, if I look at it from a CT point of view (not my favourite of the skill mechanics, but a point of discussion I suppose):
8+ for most things
So if I was to gain only the removal of the -3 penalty for not having a skill, yes a zero level skill gives you a much better chance, but it stil makes routine but still risky things a challenge to succeed at. And really hard things ought to be a lot worse. If you only had a couple of medical levels beyond 0, then there's lots that would fail a lot more often.

If I look at this in MT:
7+ for routine, but skills for a full fledged doc might well be 3-4 and a 5 would be a very well trained or experienced specialist, but then difficulty might be 11+ for tough stuff and that could reduce it to something fairly accomplishable without other negative circumstances.

The amount of change in a single 1 level of a skill (other than non-linear gains like voiding the non-skilled penalty) is NOT very large in the probabilities of 2D6 resolution.

In my many times at the Traveller table, a bunch in CT, but later and still a lot in MT or MgT a bit now, I find that a single skill level above level 0 is not enough for any sort of feeling that the character is significantly better than level 0. You need at least a +2 from skills to being to feel like harder tasks are notably simpler. And to feel like you are a very competent and well trained individual, +4 is more like it.

Further, more skill levels serve two functions beyond the dice mechanics that are useful to a *game*:

1) More gradation gives players things to grow into or to be rewarded with over time (for a lot of skill use) - If we play a game where a +1 is a full professional and a +3 is pretty much the best out there, then the players have less chance to show development over time without really changing their impact. If +3 is a full professional and +5 is the best out there, then the range to grow through is longer.

2) With assigning difficulties and deciding how many things to roll for, if you have a wider skill range and thus more impact on the 2D6 curve in rolling, you can afford to throw more rolls in to keep players having fun throwing some dice. You can make more drama out of more parts of a complex op. With fewer skill levels and more perilous die results, you ought to be more careful about how many rolls you want to make the players risk (because there is more risk). For any complex chain task, your odds of screwing up the operation go up with the fewer-skill level setup.

It's not that you can't make CT's (to my mind) early and showing its age now resolution mechanic work - we've all proven at one point or another that one can have fun playing games where the mechanics aren't so much helpful as an additional challenge to wade through - but it just feels to me like the real world has a lot more gradations in it and that the advantages offered by that sort of a system offers a few other utilities in how a game is run.

Plus my other complaint about CT, some see as an advantage, is that unless I had the book handy, I'd never have come up with the various example values for rolls because some of the DMs attached to those examples seem very arbitrary and there isn't a lot of consistency across those examples IMO. This is, to me, where a more complete task system can provide a more consistent set of modifiers and mechanics and has more information about degrees of success (but handled again in more consistent ways).

I realize some of that is personal taste. I prefer worlds with deep variations and an accurate ability to describe people I know and CT could never quite get there in my experience.

I think we'll all agree though that this is a personal taste issue. Some groups rarely like to use their dice, others like to roll something regularly. Some don't do much fisticuffing or shooty-shoot-shoot. Some use those as 'plan A'. And some want the most spartan of character sheets with minimal numbers of stats (I've seen some examples of having 1 physical and 1 mental attribute instead of groups of attributes in each of those folders) and that prefer very minimal fleshing out of characters mechanically. Many seem to hate enhanced generation (some for more skills, others maybe for the process) whereas my groups ALWAYS wanted the metagame that the advanced systems brought into play (it wasn't even the skill levels, it was the whole process of building your character in detail).

So there isn't a wrong here, I don't suppose. There's just some as are attracted to the simplicity of CT, but I'm more interested in a nuanced world and nuanced PCs and NPCs and I find a greater variability (more skills, more levels) gives the game something good.

And in the name of all that is holy in game design, if you are going to go with a short list of skills, making every type of gun or blade a separate skill is hard to defend (handgun, rifleman, large blades, small blades are much more reasonable). And having steward and vacc suit skills but being very short on interpersonal skills is an odd choice in CT that also always felt strange. 

Anyway, that's my perspective. I know there are a fair few die hards from the same era I started that still think that was the best. I've liked most of them (except T4 - gosh that art put me off...) and that may make me unusual.

TomB



On Thu, Jun 18, 2020 at 5:52 PM Evyn Gutierrez <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

On May 20, 2020, at 13:30, xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:

>
>
>I never liked the 'INT+EDU' skill limit. It always fell short of describing the people I knew.

Ok, coming late to this discussion, it really depends how large a range skills cover.

As now I am using attribute bonuses. Zero level and 1level skill are that much better for covering a breadth of skills.

Even

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