Wherein your humble scribe presents a group of characters for (classic) Traveller. All of these were rolled up by-the-book using Book 1: Characters And Combat and/or Supplement 4: Citizens of the Imperium.
Jaunting about the sector aboard his private yacht, El Alma y La Cruz, Baron Pedro Miguel Ramirez and his lovely companions (mís ángeles, he calls them wryly) take on missions and causes that otherwise might go unaided. The Baron feels that he and his friends are destined to help those who cannot otherwise help themselves. This sometimes puts the gang on the wrong side of the law, of course – especially when the law itself is the problem. But there’s something to be said for having strong ties to the Imperial family.
Baron Pedro Miguel Ramirez
89A86C Age 30 3 Terms (Service: Noble, Final Rank: Baron)
Hunting-1, AutoPistol-1, Bribery-2, Engineering-1, Pilot-1
Yacht
Cr250,000
Lady Solara Marte
5A348B Age 26 2 Term (Service: Noble, Final Rank: Knight)
Hunting-1, Hovercraft-1, Pilot-1, Jack of All Trades-1, AutoPistol-1
Cr150,000
April Murphree
958B37 Age 34 4 Terms (Service: Marines, Final Rank: Lieutenant)
Cutlass-1, Revolver-1, Mechanical-2, SMG-1, Ground Car-1, Jack of All Trades-1, Tactics-1, Electronics-1
Travellers’
Cr25,000
Louise Helms
3659A8 Age 34 4 Terms (Service: Scientist, Final Rank: -)
Computer-1, Survival-1, Navigation-1, Electronics-2, Jack of All Trades-1, AutoPistol-1, Medical-2
AutoPistol
Cr6,000
I used to spend hours (and hours and hour…) rolling up Traveller characters. I spent a heck of a lot more time doing that than actually playing. I still like to pull out my LLB (and CotI and Mercenary and High Guard) and roll up a few every now and again.
Oh, and a lot of the characters ended up the around the same age as I am now. I thought they were soooooo old back when. I wish I was a few ranks higher now and ready for retirement.
I’m with ya, Narmer. I did play quite a bit of Traveller way back when, but I’m pretty sure I racked up more time rolling up characters (and subsectors) than I did at the game table.
Oddly, despite having Mercenary, High Guard, etc., I never really got into the extended character creation approach. Maybe I should give those a shot again and see if they click better for me these days.
I think back about the time I was nearing what would have been my first “aging crisis” I was all annoyed that Traveller made those assumptions about aging. Now that I’m a couple more down the road I’m afraid I have to admit they might have been right after all 🙂
I just hope I muster out with a ship. Or at least a TAS membership.
What annoyed me about the aging assumptions of Classic Trav was not that the human body started really going phfft around 40. (As you both note, that’s a fact.) No, what bothered me was the seeming inability of GDW to imagine that a society capable of FTL travel was not also capable of inventing inexpensive anagathics.
Amen, Rob. That’s the real root of my complaint, too.
Also, shouldn’t we have some serious anagathics of our own by now? I mean, we’ve got a society that’s capable of free, always-on porn, after all 🙂
I have always felt that Mercenary and High Guard produced overpowered characters. I had fun creating characters with them but I did not use them for play.
Yeah, these aging crises are no fun. Mustering out with a ship would be cool or, depending on the exchange rate, 50,000 to 100,000 credits would good too. Dice give me 6’s!
I’ve heard that about characters made with the supplements before. Then again, as much as I love Classic Traveller, I always kinda thought that most standard characters were underpowered, so there’s that.
I was always a sucker for the semi-official Paranoia Press Scouts & Assassins supplement and the characters you could create out of it, which were probably overpowered, too. But the “Unfit For Service” option in that book, which gave you options other than just dying on a failed survival roll, made it into regular use for my group back in the day. And really, who doesn’t want to play an Assassin in a SciFi setting? 🙂
50k-100k in Cr would be a lovely thing indeed. And probably more useful to me these days than a ship.
I don’t know, a ship would, particularly a scout-ship, would be nice. Just think how much NASA would pay to shuttle men and material to orbit and beyond. And with scoops you could just jaunt out to Jupiter for fuel and a vacation.
As our pal G-Man well knows, with a ship at my disposal I’d be headed for Saturn, not Jupiter. It’s just a cooler planet 🙂
My problem with your supposition about making money off of NASA, amigo, is that NASA doesn’t have the funding they should just for the basics, let alone paying for rides in my flametrick hotrod scout ship 🙂