Single Roll Character Gen

From: pierre-louis constantin <Pierre-Louis.Constantin@DMI.USherb.CA>
Subject: Single Roll Character Gen
To: xboat@MPGN.COM
Date: Fri, 28 Jun 1996 19:15:40 -0400 (EDT)


The Single-roll career generation:
==================================
Instead of rolling separately for survival, commission, promotion and
special duty, I find it faster to use a single roll with the
results indicating wether this was a good or bad term.  It removes a
bit of generation details on the one hand (for example, you can't
have
both a commission and a promotion in the same term, but on the 
average the number of skills should be about equivalent.  I haven't
done the maths to prove it though)  but it can add a lot more details
on the other hand.

The base roll is 7 for ALL careers.  I picked that because it seems
to be a fairly good average of all the other rolls for all the careers.
It might seem like it removes the danger from taking the more daunting
careers but in fact, what matters are the DM's applied to the dice roll.

Here they are:
Career          DM+1 for each of
Navy            Edu 8+,Int 7+,Soc 9+
Marines         Edu 7+,End 8+,Soc 8+
Army            Dex 7+,Edu 7+,End 8+
Scouts          Str 8+,End 9+,Int 6+
Flyer           Dex 7+,Edu 6+,End 7+
Sailor          Edu 6+,End 6+,Int 7+
Law Enf         Edu 7+,Int 7+,Dex10+
Doctor          Dex 8+,Int 7+
Diplomat        Edu 8+,Int 6+,Soc 9+
Bureau          Edu 6+,Int 6+,Soc 5+
Scientist       Int 7+,Edu 7+
Noble           Edu 9+,Int 10+
Merchant        Str 6+,Int 6+
Belter          +1 per term
Pirate          Str 9+,Int 8+,Soc 7+
Rogue           End 7+,Int 9+,Soc 8+
Hunter          Str 7+,Dex 7+,End 7+
Barbarian       Str 7+,End9+,Int 6+

The roll of the dice determines how good/bad your term was.
(Roll+DM)-(Base+Setbacks)       Result
-3                              Major Setback (counts as two)
-1                              Minor Setback
0                               Survives and reenlists
+1                              Special Duty (+1 skill)
+2                              Promotion    (+2 skill)
+3                              Special Duty (+3 skill)
+4                              Comission    (+4 skill)

Where Roll is your dice roll, DM is the DMs above, Base = 7 and
Setbacks is the total number of setbacks this character has had.

When 12+DM < Base+Setbacks, then your character MUST quit active
duty.

When you roll a +2, your character receives BOTH a promotion and a 
special duty.
On a +4, only a Commission is received.

Term Effects: (added to improve role-playing depth)
=============
When you've determined what kind of term you got, you must choose
from the following tables what exactly happened: (note, these aren't 
complete! :) 
Never pick the same result twice. 
Retirement is only possible if you had a positive result on this
term.

Major Setback: (things that happened to you. These are very BIG
screw-ups,
that go beyond simple career effects, and should be part of the
adventures/background/etc).  
So as to avoid heaping too much trouble on the PC (it would be
unrealistic) the referee can decided to change further Major Setbacks
to either Demotion, Forced Retirement or something appropriate.
The point is to convince the PC to quit while he's ahead. :) 
1- PC dies: PC is a clone, or has had a stroke, brain damage, etc.
2- PC screws up on a galactic scale: Might lead to 1, as she's made
        a major ennemy.
3- Excommunicated: You did something that really pissed the Intemporeal.
        (ex: Mentally undressing a Zhodani Woman in a Zhodani church :)
4- Racial group victim of genocide: You had to drop everything and escape.
5- Comitted a crime.
6- Became allergic to your homeworld environment.
7- PC crashed a ship on a major urban center.
8 - PC part of a Scandal involving members of the Moot and a group of, mh,
   'entertainment' androids. 
9- The PC's whole family dies.

Minor Setbacks: Things that happened to your career and affected
no one else.
1 - Wounded; Reduce one stat by 1, unless PC has enough money at the end
    to pay for a repair job, cybernetics/cloning/etc at homeworld TL.
2 - Demoted:  Lose a rank
3 - Chased out of office, no more promotion until Commission rolled again.
4 - Routine: No more special duty until Promotion/Commission.
5 - War: You get drafted into military service.
6 - Bad investment: Lose benefits for this term.
etc etc.

Promotions REDUCE Setbacks by 1 (minimum 0).
Commissions CLEAR all setbacks.

Special Duties are treated like the Service Skills in MT advanced
character generation.
Each career gets his list of services.  Roll the service the PC gets
enrolled into.  Then consult THAT Service's skill table, and let
the player PICK the skill in that table.
The rationale is that you might not be able to choose where you end
up (unless you volunteer :), but once you're there, you try your best
to retain the skills you were interested in.

Anyways - obviously that's not a complete system but I find it interesting
and fairly well-balanced.  It gives the player the chance to have
some control over the direction the character is taking, and adds a 
layer to the role-playing background.

I see this as a middle ground between point-based systems and completely
random systems.  Random systems should be ancient history - they don't
really let the character evolve in your mind as you're creating it,
so you end up playing a character that might be cool, if you're lucky
or which you might not like at all.  Anyways. :)

Here's a few generation traces:
===============================
Underdog 444444,Average Joe 666666,GI Joe, 888888
The characters keep going till they can't possibly do anything good
anymore, which isn't exactly how things go during normal generation.

In the Navy:
The first number is the dice roll, the 2nd is the DM, the third is
the base (7) and the 4th is the setbacks.
Underdog:  Final score: 6 terms (he could have quit before)
                     7 skills. (reasonable, especially since even losers
                     as supposed to be VIP's in Traveller).
                      2 setbacks, 2 major setbacks.
                                           
Average Joe:  Total: 3 terms, 6 skills. 2 major setbacks.

Gi Joe:  Total: 13 terms (70 years old), 4th rank, 26 skills (more than
                HIS maximum.  Not taking into account the aging
                process. 1 minor, 3 major setbacks (by stretching things)

Three Joes as Diplomats:
Underdog Joe: 
       total: 4 terms, 6 skills.  Pretty good. 3 major setbacks (stretching)
       
Average Joe: 
            Total: 3 terms, 4 skills.  Poor guy. 3 major setbacks.
            
GI Joe: 
       total: 5 terms, 9 skills.  Not very good. 2 major setbacks.

Three barbarians:
Under: 
      Total: 3 terms, 6 skills. 2 major setbacks.
      
Average: 
        Total: 10 terms (not bad for a barbarian!), 19 skills.
                2 minor, 1 major setback.
                
Conan: 
       Total: 12 terms, 30 skills!!! 1 minor setback, 3 major setbacks.


The morale is, don't get into a career you're not suited for, cuz you'll
screw up before you're 30!


Real Example:
===============
Now we'll see how the system helps us be creative, and is really a 
lot faster than having to roll 4 times for everything.

Merchant A48B78, 
Term Roll/Target        Result
I - 6/7 -       Setback: No benefit this term. 2 skills:
                +1 Dex (to 4), vacc Suit-1.
II- 7/8         Setback: Routine. 1 skill.
                Electronics-1
III- 12/9       Special Duties: 4 skills.
+1 End (to 9), Computer School(Computer-1), Geer School(Engineering-1), 
+1 Dex (to 5)
IV-  6/9        Major Setback: Ship misjumped to a Red Zone system. 1

                skill. +1 End (to A), Lost to aging.
V - 12/11       Special Duty. 2 skill
Space School(Ship's Boat-1), Space School(Tactics-1), -1 Str, -1 Dex,

-1 End
Retires


Aklaphon Steroi, Merchant 949B98 Age 38 5 terms         Cr10,000
Vacc Suit-1, Electronics-1, Computer-1, Engineering-1,
Ship's Boat-1, Tactics-1

Steroi, an opportunistic, boisterous man, hoped to make a quick buck
selling inferior goods to inferior minds.  It didn't go as easily as
he'd hoped.  Eventually, his bad trading habits came back and bit
him hard - he was sold inferior replacement parts for the ship he
was serving on, which misjumped into a Red Zone system.  Out of this
event, he made 3 major ennemies - the folks he'd double-crossed and
who'd quadruple-crossed him, the local Imperial Noble who had not
recommended a Red Zoning for nothing, and the Ship's Captain
because they had to abandon ship, and took the ship's boat back to the
local noble's place, for evacuation.  

Massive and lumbering about slowly, he has become more tolerant of
others as he ages.  However he's been planning to get back to 
his ennemies, and been studying ways to do it in secret.


Anyways, I hope you like it.  Please comment/etc as I'm sure you
will.  The results are probably very skewered, in the sense that
it's easy to make a total failure or a killer-char, so if you notice
it and think of a fix, let me know. :)
There are a few scenarios that aren't possible anymore (say, get
a promotion and then be thrown out) but usually that's for the
best (why promote someone if you're going to fire him?)


-- 
Pierre-Louis Constantin, ift. a. 	"He whose name was writ in E-mail."
	Independentist: My Canada excludes the federal bureaucracy :)
(: "I hate fanatics with a passion; all extremists should be shot." :)