Traveller-digest       Tuesday, June 24 1997       Volume 1997 : Number 1470



(R)1996. Traveller is a registered trademark of FarFuture Enterprises.
All rights reserved.

The following topics are covered in this digest:

Re: Vargr Tech
RE: Latest Vote Count (Dont forget me!)
Basic Skills (Was Re: Munchkins)
TrTools v0.93
re: technology demonstrators
Skills = Stats? I don't think so
Cheap copies of T4, AA, Starships and CSC available
Re: Deckplan Question?
Re: Being Honest.
PE Questions
Minimum TL for Dirigibles
Re: T4 Task Rationale
Characteristic vs. Skill claim
Re: T4 Task Rationale

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 14:51:12 +0200 (METDST)
From: Hans Rancke-Madsen <rancke@diku.dk>
Subject: Re: Vargr Tech

Douglas E. Berry writes:
> At 11:17 AM 6/21/97 +0100, Simon wrote:
>>Just a quick question until the Aliens Hardbound appears. Im just begining a
>>M0 campaign in the Antares/Lishun sectors, <Boy, I love the Jag-II-Jagd> and
>>need a few Vargr corsairs to spice up proceedings. What tech level have the
>>Vargr achieved? Have the Vargr also suffered the effects of the long night? 
>>Apart from not having fusion+ do some Vargr have the technological edge?
> 
>In a an adventure I'm working on, the Vargr are TL 9/10.  Their ships are
>mostly fusion rockets armed with HE missles and weak (by Imperial
>standards) lasers.

Information is scanty, but in _Alien Module 3, Vargr_ we hear of a Vargr
wanderer who sometimes between -2800 and -1800 (I could possibly refine
that if I read the information carefully, but I've only had time to skim it)
visited the Zhodani and obtained a Jump-3 ship. He eventually gave it to a
prince who successfully copied it. His neighbors only had jump-2 ships, so
he used the advantage it gave him to found a large (by Vargr standards) 
empire. Knowing the Vargr it seems likely that the new technology would
disseminate fairly fast, so by Year 0 many Vargr would be at least TL 12.
If any of the ones in contact with the Imperium had TL 13, some enterprising
lone Vargr would have sold the Imperium a jump-4 ship fairly quickly (Anybody
believe that the Imperium wouldn't be able to obtain a jump-4 ship from the
Vargr in some way?). So the Vargr would range up to 12, but not up to 13.


      Hans Rancke
University of Copenhagen
     rancke@diku.dk
- ------------
        "The referee should determine the nature of subsequent
         events based on the individual situation."
                                _76 Patrons_, p. 8


 

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 08:52:04 -0400
From: maverick@castlegate.net (Steve Brengard)
Subject: RE: Latest Vote Count (Dont forget me!)

Count me for the MT system.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 09:57:00 -0400
From: Bill Prankard <BPRANKARD@theiia.org>
Subject: Basic Skills (Was Re: Munchkins)

>Favourite open line for a session containing all manner of Marine, Navy
>and Merchant Characters.

>"Okay - now who can drive"

>Nobody could - they had to hire somebody to drive around town.   They'd
>already brought the car and planned the activity (not legal of course).

>Brody Dunn

I'm not sure if this was common in CT, but MT had some "default skills" in 
which evey 18 yr old knew how to do defore character creation, based on his 
worlds culture and technology. I believe this rule has been caried over into 
TNE and T4 as well.   A pre-Stellar world (TL-7 or 8) would know Computer 
and Ground Vehicle, A belter would know 0-G Environment and Vacc suit and Hi 
tech(stellar) societies would know Grav vehicle but not Ground vehicle. 
Imagine something like in Classic Trek when Kirk didn't know what a clutch 
was! :-)

Of course if they wanted to role play someone who never learned to drive, I 
would let them take the 'default' driving skill and use it as a background 
skill point in something else.  Maybe their world had a mass transit system 
and a low pop (I can think of a domed monrail system on a small vacc world). 
 Anythings possible :-)

Commander X

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 19:15:52 +0800
From: Michael Bailey <mickb@opera.iinet.net.au>
Subject: TrTools v0.93

Tired of wimpy windowed front ends and icons?

Hold that any true program runs from the command line?

Man, have I got a deal for you *g*


Two Short Planks software announces the next version of TRTOOLS, a set of
command line utilities for Traveller.

Version 0.93 of TRTOOLS covers the following:

* Sector and subsector mapping
* Hard Times effects on sector data
* TNE Collapse effects on sector data
* Regression of sectors from M:1100 to M:0

and comes complete with source code (in Pascal 'messycode' format)...

How much for such an ill-omened piece of software, you ask?

ABSOLUTELY BUGGER ALL...all I ask is that you send me bug reports, so I can
fix problems as they arise...

Version 0.93 will be ready on about 14 days...email me to reserve your copy
NOW !
Michael T. Bailey (mickb@opera.iinet.net.au)

"F**k you, I'm sick!"
			Hunter S. Thompson

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 15:44:27 +0100 (BST)
From: "mark.wilkin" <aa4mwi@zen.sunderland.ac.uk>
Subject: re: technology demonstrators

> Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 16:05:07 -0400
> From: "Peter H. Brenton" <brenton@psfc.mit.edu>
> Subject: Re: Technology demonstrators
> 
> >Perhaps this is already addressed somewhere in the length and breadth of
> >the reams of rules that exist for the Trav universe, and I just missed
> >it... but is it possible to hand-build items one TL higher than the
> >predominant one in that field? and do it at a greater cost multiplier?
<snip snap about TL's and prototypes>
> Most importantly, any 'prototype' will, contrary to TV or Movie examples
> (usually), have "bugs".  In game terms that is a random chance of failure
> whenever the item is used, and especially when it is pushed to its
> operational limits.  I would probably, in the case of Battle Dress, roll 2D
> secretly every ten minutes or so to see if a breakdown occurs (It would
> occur if I rolled a 2).  Under extreme conditions (heavy lifting by BD, or
> operation in vacuum perhaps) the chance would be greater (according to my
> mood).  The first breakdown might be relatively minor (radio burns out, HUD
> goes down, etc) or not, but each subsequent breakdown would be an order of
> magnitude higher in likelyhood and severity until the thing was brought
> back to the lab and repaired (or the bonds in the bonded superdense broke
> down, leaving the character standing in his/her underwear in the middle of
> a pile of metallic dust).  Oh, and did I mention the unavailability of
> spare parts outside the lab?

Or If you're in a Paranoia kind of mood, role every five minutes on the 
catastophic (yet rather amusing) failure table.

1d10
1)item explodes killing user
2)item explodes killing user + close friends
3)item electrocutes user leaving his'her hair standing on end.
4)item destroys universe
5)item awakens the Great Old Ones who devour 
party/ship/planet/system(delete as applicable)
6)item becomes self aware with annoying personality and voice to match or 
even a sense of humour. (for example so The Lazy Gun in Iain M. Banks book
Against A Dark Background)
7)item 1000% better than expected (not as fun as you might think, grenade 
vapourises city, armour so good you can't get out of it as it wants you 
to be safe, jump drives which jump you straight into the galatic core.
8)item goes fizzz and disapears in a puff of smoke appearing some days 
later in the same place.
9)item is entirely different to what was intended, i.e. gun is in fact 
cream dispenser.
10)item works(re role table every five minutes).  

> 
> Technological prototypes are an excellent example of the need for Game
> Balance(tm).\
heh heh heh :-)

mark wilkin
"Damm talking out loud again" The Maxx

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 15:50:41 +0100
From: "Silburn, Luke (Exchange)" <SilburnL@logica.com>
Subject: Skills = Stats? I don't think so

David:
<<Well, no. If you have most of the people coming out of
the stat generation (ie you acount for the fact that
stats are non-linear, and so don't have as big an
effective range) with numbers that vary just as much
as skill (ie skills are, say 0-6 and most of the
characters have stats in the 4-11 range.) then
skills and stat _are_ equally weighted.>>

I have to disagree. Lets say that stats are mean 8, SD 3. That means
that for the roughly 60% of the population that fall within one SD,
stats vary by a range of seven points. In my opinion your point that
this is the same as skill variability is flawed for two interlinked
reasons.

Firstly skills do not follow Normal bell curve. They are a Poisson
distribution with a mean somewhere around 1. Loads of 0s, a fair number
of 1s and 2s, but precious few 6s. Secondly, you are comparing the
*full*, 0-6 range of skills against a partial range of stats (5-11). A
more appropriate comparison would be a 'typical' stat range 5-11 versus
a 'typical' skill range of 0-3.

Even if you inflate the top of the skill range from the CT standard of
5-6 to, say, 9-10 (so the mean goes to between 2 and 3); you will still
find that the 'typical' skill range is lower than the 'typical' stat
range because of the way that skills cluster to the left of the curve.
You will have to stretch the top of the skill range a *long* way to the
right to get a typical spread of 0-6.


David:
<<The only reason Dex 7 and skill 4 vs Dex 11 and
skill 1 is seen as a problem is the desire to
see skill weighted more heavily than stats.  But
that is matter of personal opinion.>>

The reason I find this situation a problem is that to me Skill 4 means
'skilled professional', whilst skill 1 means 'apprentice/intern'. Those
numbers are based on CT admittedly, but there are lots of places in the
T4 rules that use skill levels in the same way as they were used in CT
(the revival from cold sleep modifier for Medic-2 is the obvious one).
It doesn't jibe with my sense of reality that someone at the top end of
the 'typical' range in terms of innate talent, should outperform an
averagely talented person who has put the time in and aquired the
equivalent of a professional qualification via training or experience in
the field.

This would be less of a problem if it was declared that Skill 4 isn't
anything special, but as I mentioned before there are lots of places in
the T4 rules where the CT assumptions (2 = competant, 4 = skilled, 6 =
notable master) are being maintained.

Luke
SilburnL@logica.com
Suggestions for a witty .sig gratefully received....

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 03:07:49 -0700
From: Eric Nolan <ericno@MICROSOFT.com>
Subject: Cheap copies of T4, AA, Starships and CSC available

This is just a quick note which might interest any of you that held off
buying the earlier T4 supplements because they were too expensive.

Round Table Games (to whom I am in no way connected) are having a
special on some Imperium Games stuff.  Their web page is at
http://www.rtgames.com/ -  They also have a selection of cheap 2300
books (which is how I heard about the sale).

I've pasted in the IG section from their catalog so you can see the
prices ('1 at this price' must mean 1 per customer, at least I hope so,
or I've just wasted several million electrons).

Eric.

IMP 1000 $6.50 Marc Miller's Traveller *Special* 
- - The return of the Classic SF RPG, 1 at this price
IMP 1100 $7.50 Starships *Special* 
- - 1 at this price
IMP 1200 $7.50 Central Supply Catalog *Special* 
- - 1 at this price
IMP 1300 $7.50 Aliens Archive *Special* 
- - 1 at this price
IMP 1400 $17.20 Milieu 0 
- - Details the opening years of the Third Imperium
IMP 1410 $17.20 First Survey 
- - Reference and adventuring log for Milieu 0
IMP 1500 $15.00 Emperor's Arsenal 
IMP 1510 $9.70 Game Screen 
IMP 1600 $15.00 Pocket Empires 
- - rules for managing star empires
IMP 1700 $17.20 Anomalies 
- - 9 adventures
IMP 1710 $17.20 Psionic Institutes 
IMP 3001 $9.70 Long Way Home 
- - adventure into unexplored territory

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 17:50:03 +0100
From: Simon Early <sre@taz.compulink.co.uk>
Subject: Re: Deckplan Question?

As C3P0 would say, "don't get technical with me".

>  A displacement ton
> is 14 m^3 _not_ 13.5 m^3


Depends on the version of Traveller :-)

I did once look up the specific volume of L-Hyd in the CRC databook at 
work.  I'll try and find the data again tomorrow, but it is somewhere 
between 13.5 and 14.


Simon

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 17:46:52 +0000
From: "Martin F C Pickett" <ceemfcp@cee.hw.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Being Honest.

Bruce Johnson wrote:
>> 
>> <SATIRE MODE ON>
>> 
>> QUASTSYS V.01
>> QUick And Stupid Tas SYStem
>> 
[SNIP]
>> <SATIRE MODE OFF>
>
>All right...I can't let this OBVIOUSLY BROKEN system go on!
>
>You completely forgot step 1.5: The GM Cackles gleefully as he/she 
>rolls a HUGE handful of dice, including the DM special Death Die (A 
>10-sided with a skull and crossbones on every face), then gasps as 
>he/she looks at the results.

Hmm...I admit, I use this system - although there was one memorable 
occasion where I totally forgot to roll the dice before I started the 
'GASP! Oh dear, that looks bad' routine that comes next.

As the person who originally asked the question about being honest 
and fudging things, what I really wanted to know was how well people 
stuck to the rules about stat division when using the MT task system. 
Any takers?

Martin Pickett 
ceemfcp@cee.hw.ac.uk
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are alive, well and living on Sylea 

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 16:11:16 +0100
From: "Silburn, Luke (Exchange)" <SilburnL@logica.com>
Subject: PE Questions

This cropped up as I was going through the IRC walkthrough materials.
The metatasks for infomation gathering about other starsystems mention
the highest available Survey skill as an asset for achieving the task,
but gives no mechanic for deriving this stat or any guidelines as to
what kinds of values might be typical. Ideally, having high levels in
this stat should involve some kind of sacrifice in the game (I can
understand that it may have been axed to keep things simple); but a
couple of sentences of guidance would have been nice.

Can the designers/playtesters share their thinking behind the Foreign
Investment costs? I think they are too high, but I'd like some insight
into why they were set as they have been before I start tinkering with
the values. Also, did you consider relating the cost to a PEs highest
jump rating rather than making it a flat per parsec cost? This would
give a nice edge to a TL12 J-3 capable PE over its TL10 neighbours when
it came to developing scattered/sprawling empire. Something similar
could be extended to maintaining political control of a large polity (to
give a game-mechical reason for the quasi-feudal structure that the I3
develops as it expands), but I'm starting to free associate in a most
undisciplined way... so I'll stop now.

Luke
SilburnL@logica.com
Suggestions for a witty .sig gratefully received....

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 17:55:07 +0100
From: "Silburn, Luke (Exchange)" <SilburnL@logica.com>
Subject: Minimum TL for Dirigibles

Tom:
<<1)    This is a suggestion that seems to fall (as far as TL) between the
NC (navigate currents) method mentioned and the IC (internal combustion)
ideas that were posted....though you were looking for lowest tech, I'll
throw this in just for thought.  The idea is for there to be a
cable/good stout rope extending between any two of your mountain-top
towns.>>

[Fun cable-ship idea with interesting club-hauling descriptions snipped
for brevity]

How about having low-tech dirigibles 'sailing' the different airstreams
found at different altitudes? Either float big kites up above your main
hull or drop a 'keel' into a lower stratum. Probably use a mix of both
for a true 3-dimensional 'fighting sail' feel (Wooden Ships, Iron Men,
Explosive Envelopes....). This could avoid the need for IC or steam
power (although the arrival of steam powered paddle ships could be an
interesting innovation if the planet is on the cusp of TL4). Having
hand-crafted, ultralight components is a nice idea IMO and would fit in
with a highly skilled and idiosyncratic craft based society that is
nevertheless suprisingly effective (at least to chauvenistic high tech
outsiders) at what it does.

'Geneered (or naturally ocurring) flora/fauna that could assist in the
fight against weight could be thrown in for good measure (hmmm...
Liftwood anyone?) and you could have quite a groovy setting for a few
sessions (or even a lot of sessions). Yes... I'm getting all sorts of
nice Age-of-Sail inspired ideas for events and plots. I think I'll go
and reread some CS Forester or Patrick O'Brien for and start cogitating.

Luke
SilburnL@logica.com
Suggestions for a witty .sig gratefully received....

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 08:24:53 -0400
From: James Garriss <jpg@langley.mitre.org>
Subject: Re: T4 Task Rationale

At 01:30 AM 6/21/97 -0400, Marc Miller wrote:

>Sure it makes sense, but Traveller just isn't going to adopt D100's, or 12
>characteristics versus the current 6, or etc.

I understand this, although it's unfortunate.  Folks should want a system
because it's the best system possible, not because that's the way it's
always been.  But like I said, I understand.

>So then, you say decrease trhe value of characteristic versus skill. What is
>the current value (in terms of percentage chance of success) for one level of
>characteristic? Quantify it.
>
>Then quantify the value of one level of skill.
>
>Then express it as a ratio.

<cough> Well, um, actually, this is exactly what I did.  I completely threw
out the current task system and created my own.  For any given skill level
vs. any given task difficulty, I determined how hard it should be and
expressed it as a percentage (ie, a ratio).  I then mapped the effects of
having above/below average characteristics and other modifiers (being
hasty/caustious, not having the right tools, working in the dark, etc.)
onto that.

So I wound up with a series of tables and a bunch of modifiers that dictate
*exactly* how hard I think each task should be.  It's very simple to
understand and use.

So why haven't I posted this to TML or sent it to you?  Because it's a
percentage.  It requires 1D100.  I don't think this crowd could stomach
that.  And it has incremental skill levels (ie computer 4.3) to provide a
smoother transition from level to level.  I *know* this crowd couldn't
stomach that.  And most folks won't like looking up numbers on a table (the
tables map to exponential curves, but most of your T4 audience won't want
to fool with the math behind them either).

So you (Marc Miller) are left trying to use an artificial mechanism to
squeeze the percentages you want into a certain curve.  That's very hard to
do.  I wish you luck.

>But right now, we're just saying characteristics range from 1 to 15 and
>skills range from 1 to 6 (and we don't agree on that).
>
>I've run mountains of spreadsheets on the probabilities, and it just doesn't
>seem to me to be worth the effort of dividing characteristics by something,
>or multiplying skills by something to get different, but not too much
>different range ofprobabilities.

So don't change anything.  Referee's with any spark of imagination (this
list is full of 'em) will modify your system to fit their needs anyway.
Don't worry about it and spent your precious time working on something else
(like a better Starships book :-).  Maybe some of them will write JTAS
articles with alternate task systems, giving other players even more
choices.  That way you don't have to rewrite the "official" rule book.

 James Garriss           Information Systems Engineer, MITRE
 jgarriss@mitre.org           http://www.cs.odu.edu/~garriss

    True Multitasking = 3 PCs and a chair with wheels.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 24 Jun 1997 09:08:55 -0800
From: Richard Hough <rdhough@orca.bc.ca>
Subject: Characteristic vs. Skill claim

>Well, no. If you have most of the people coming out of
>the stat generation (ie you acount for the fact that
>stats are non-linear, and so don't have as big an
>effective range) with numbers that vary just as much
>as skill (ie skills are, say 0-6 and most of the
>characters have stats in the 4-11 range.) then
>skills and stat _are_ equally weighted.

First of all, characteristics can range from 1 to 15. In the character
generation system it is very easy to get characteristics above 11.
Character generation includes both positive and negative modifiers to
characteristics, which spreads the expected values considerably from the
initial 2 die roll. It is not correct to base the range in characteristics
on the probability distribution of a single 2 die roll. Characters in my
campaign which were generated with the T4 generation rules have
characteristics from 2 to 15, though most are in the range from 4 to 13.

Secondly, skill levels are both non-linear and don't have as wide an
effective range as characteristics. Characters typically have many skills
at level 1 and only a few at level 2 or 3. I have fewer characters with
skill 6 than I do with a characteristic of 15. This is not some aberration
of my campaign, it is the way character generation in T4 works.

Even if the range of skills and characteristics were the same, they would
still not be evenly weighted. There are fewer characteristics than skills,
and each characteristic applies to more tasks than each skill. Getting a +1
Dex (for example) will add around two dozen total points to your target
numbers. Getting +1 in a skill will add only 1. Moreover, there are many
game mechanics that use characteristics but do not use skills. In these
cases skills have no benefit at all. It is not valid to ignore the effect
of characteristic rolls and personal pools when comparing skills versus
characteristics.

>The only reason Dex 7 and skill 4 vs Dex 11 and
>skill 1 is seen as a problem is the desire to
>see skill weighted more heavily than stats.  But
>that is matter of personal opinion.

It is not merely an "opinion" that the current task system is unbalanced.
Let's compare a Dex 7 skill 5 and a Dex 11 skill 1 character, since they
would take the same number of rolls to generate. If you go through the T4
rules and calculate the target numbers, personal pools, and DMs for these
two characters you will discover that the Dex 11 character is far more
powerful in every respect, except for the target number the Dex 7 character
has skill 5 in, and in that case they are tied.

Yes, in my personal opinion, I would like to see skills weighted more
heavily than characteristics in task rolls, since this would allow players
to choose between a character that is good in many tasks (high
characteristic) or excellent in a few and poor at most others (high skill).
I think this would add an interesting tradeoff to character generation and
provide a more varied mix of character types. You may disagree.

A separate issue is the fact that, in T4 currently, it is as easy to get a
characteristic increase through character generation as it is to get a
skill increase, and the benefit of a characteristic increase is vastly
greater. This is what I see as a problem.

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 23 Jun 1997 12:37:00 -0700
From: Scott Ellsworth <Scott_Ellsworth@alumni.hmc.edu>
Subject: Re: T4 Task Rationale

At 09:56 PM 6/21/97 -0700, Dave Summers wrote:
>Sat, 21 Jun 1997 20:50:33 -0400, Ethan Henry <ehenry@magmacom.com>
...
>>Hm, well, I dunno about age or youth, but I think it's
>>unfair that having a high stat like DEX improves your
>>chances at performing 26 different skills, while
>>having a high skill level improves your chances at
>>doing only one. Weenie min-maxers will throw for or
>>pick stat increases over skills every time, which
>>makes for unintersting characters.
>
>I don't agree it's "unfair".  Some people are just
>better at alot of things than others.  I do agree
>that in game terms a stat increase should be harder
>to get than a skill increase.  But that is character
>generation issue.

It looks like character generation is not going to change appreciably, so
how to make Traveller characters behave the way they should becomes a task
system issue.  With that in mind, the question becomes how many things
should a superior character be better at, and how easily should they
achieve that mastery.

When I went to HMC, I was amazed at the number of things that the typical
student was good at, compared to students that did not have the stats that
the HMC students did.  (I am not going to argue what those stats were, just
that the entering students for a technical/engineering school with a rough
selection process tend to have higher EDU or INT stats...)

For example, almost all of them were musically inclined.  Most had some
feeling of history, and virtually all liked all sorts of sciences.  When
they took into classes in other fields outside the sciences, they tended to
do very well.  What they could not do, though, was outperform people who
had been in the field for years after taking just one intro class.  They
often could skip prerequisite classes, but they could not jump straight
into graduate studies.

So, I have no problem with stats being a big influence, and a high stat
leading you to success in more fields, I just cannot believe a system that
makes a high stat so incredibly superior to years of training in so many
fields at once.

The current system leads to both of the following situations:

A PhD (12 EDU) Psychologist with a one year course in Botany is as good as
a high school trained (EDU 8) forest ranger field botanist who has spent
five years building up a skill 5.  Clearly, the advanced education will
make them more capable of learning, and will give them superior research
skills, but it should not make them that much more effective.  I could
believe a one year course making him better than any other one year
trainee, and better, even, than man experienced two year people, but I have
met and worked with too many academics in the business world to believe
that the high EDU gives them much more than that in an area outside their
specialty.

From a different perspective, a three term character starting with EDU 7,
which is the average, has 19 skills.   Should they take graduate work, or
just do a master's degree to get a target number of 13 in various business
skills?  Said character could have either EDU 12 + 14 skills 1s, or they
could have an EDU 9 + 4 skill 4s.

(I think this should be a hard choice, as the first character would have a
wide range of skills, which the second character does not, but the second
character has a very credible amount of skill.  While the adventurers do
not know their own stats, the world as a whole produces people who have
used the system as best they can.  Consider: 1 in 36 people will have an
EDU 12, while I suspect far fewer will have stuck with a five year
intensive program in a single skill.)

As an aside, you have said several times that skills and stats will vary in
roughly the same proportions, thus a 12+1 being equivalent to an 8+5 is
fair.  Based on a quick check of the tables, the average character is going
to have attribute 8+/-3 after generation, and will either have skills of
1.5 +/- 1.5, based on several dozen characters.

(I did not work out the underlying probabilities of hitting a given skill
slot once, twice, and so on, during chargen, and would not mind seeing such
an analysis.)

Across a spread of characters, the range of characteristics will be at
least twice as big as that of skills.  Further, they will have a lot of
skills which they will have at base level, so the character's real
capabilities can be determined almost entirely by the characteristics.
Skill is a much smaller influence, as you can describe a person more
completely with "fast reflexes" than "good pilot".

Gurps works this way, while Ringworld went in the opposite direction.  It
is not necessarily bad, but it is different than classic traveller, in
which high levels of skill were meaningful.

Scott
Scott_Ellsworth@alumni.hmc.edu   http://users.deltanet.com/~fuz
"When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment 
results" - Calvin Coolidge, (Stanley Walker, City Editor, p. 131 (1934))
"The barbarian is thwarted at the moat." - Scott Adams

------------------------------

End of Traveller-digest V1997 #1470
***********************************
