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Posted

Hello all,

 

I'm trying to implement a Travelleresque lifepath character creation system (thanks once again goes to Soltakss for the idea) and I'm running into a little snag in regards to education.  I have no idea what it actually means.  I mean, yes of course, the higher the stat the more education, but at which point does it represent, say a Bachelor's Degree, or graduating high school.  Or am I looking at it wrong?  I never really grokked the Education stat in BRP, either.

 

So perhaps someone will take pity on me and try to enlighten me?

Posted

I think it was years of school somewhere I read, EDU 12 would mean high school graduate. But I think you have to take it with a grain of salt. You could rationalize it and say it's whatever education you've absorbed, so you could have an EDU 5 and still be a high school grad, if that's what you wanted. Avg edu for the culture should be the usual 9-12.

 

On the other hand, I know I've been frustrated in Call of Cthulhu where I wanted to play a PhD, but had a low EDU score. You just have to go with it.

Running: 1e AD&D. Playing: 1e AD&D, Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea.

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Posted

If it is straight years of school, then an average person might have between 10 and 12, starting school around 5-6 and finishing around 16, so that makes sense. A holder of a Bachelor's degree in England would probably have EDU 16, a Master's EDU 19 and a PhD EDU 22. 

 

Of course, you could have a high EDU and not have the qualification, or have the qualification and not have the EDU, depending on the life story.

 

In the RQ SciFi document I put together, it gave Adventurers an EDUx5% boost to their skills, but this had to be applied to a certain list of skills.

 

As for the LifePath idea, it looks good, but I didn't really understand it well enough to give it a full treatment. When I played Traveller, I was guided through it by experienced hands, so didn't need to understand the whole process. I only rolled up 2 Traveller PCs when I played and that was over 20 years ago. Having said that, it should b e easy enough to do. I suppose I should buy the Traveller rulebook, to see how it works properly, as the Mongoose Traveller SRD is not that complete.

 

I am glad that you are trying this, Layec, as you might be able to work out any issues in it.

Simon Phipp - Caldmore Chameleon - Wallowing in my elitism since 1982. Many Systems, One Family. Just a fanboy. 

www.soltakss.com/index.html

Jonstown Compendium author. Find my contributions here

Posted

6E COC says this about EDU: A score of twelve 'suggests' a high school graduate. A 16+ indicates graduate level work or the equivalent.  So, yes, in a industrial/post-industrial  society with a formal, institutionalized educational system the EDU score does pretty much map to  'years' spent in the classroom.

Posted

There's probably not much  you need to change really:  Traveller  will have a range of 2-12 vs.  COC's 3-18; but Traveller's career track really starts with the characters just coming into adult-hood at age 18, so your 1st term would begin with each character as they leave 'high school' or its equivalent. As Traveller is very militaristic, there's few career tracks that would require an EDU 12+, and I assume that undergraduate and graduate coursework is included in the 'Scholar' track.

Posted

So thinking a little more on the topic:  each four year 'term' yields 80 skills points to be spent among a list of select skills particular to that service/career track. So think of each 'term' as a kind of occupational block. You could, for some career tracks, even allow  characters to exchange skill points for characteristic increases (20/+1, for instance); i.e., a character  on the entertainment track could buy APP (Charisma).

Posted

No help to the subject at hand but I am really interested in the mechanics of this. I love Traveller and have thought about a port / term advancement for skill progression.  I would really be interested in your final results.

 

If you need any info from the Traveller books let me know.  As a fan I have amassed copies of the original LBB, Mega traveler, Traveller New era, GURPS Traveller (I think) and Marc Millers Traveller4.

Posted

That's actually simpler than I thought.  Thanks much!

 

Cdr Vimes:  I'm actually doing an overhaul for the system that grew in the doing... what started as a couple of tweaks is turning into a pretty big project, including: lifepath character generation, adding a penetration mechanic to weapons, importing and tweaking the Madness Meter from UA (and integrating it with character generation), a magic system heavily influenced by Traveller's Psionics and The Elder Scroll's magic system, streamlined skills and a more codified implimentation, and generally formalizing exactly which optional rules I'm using and what tweaks I've made to them.  Once/If I got done, I was planning on making it available to this board, but if I finish the Character Generation, I'll PM.

 

But don't expect much from me.  My job is exhausting and I can't afford to spend that much time working on it.

  • 9 years later...
Posted

(Thread necromancy in progress)

Traveller education (2d6, avg 7) is a general attribute for a broadly applicable knowledge set, usually from formal education.

So, numerical scores would imply:

2   -   Low literacy, little to no knowledge outside of their personal sphere of contact.  Any schooling was lost on them.
4   -   Functionally literate.  Personal knowledge is limited to their regional culture and personal subculture.  Some knowledge of family professions.
6   -   Literate.  Experiences periodicals of personal interest on occasion.  Has a functional knowledge of their world culture, but focuses on their regional culture.
8   -   Educated.  Well-rounded personal education with continuing educational interests.  Good knowledge of their world culture, basic science, history, and local systems.
10  -  Very educated.  Actively seeks out news and knowledge.  Broad knowledge of home world local systems both current and recent historical, good knowledge of humaniti cultures.
12  -  Highly educated.   As 10, but with greater depth of knowledge, and some basics of uncommon technical knowledges.  Actively analyzes news of current events.  Within their personal field(s), they are a walking source of knowledge regarding impactful events, their implications, and the people involved.
14  -  Cutting Edge.  As 12, but to the extent that they rapidly become an influencer in any relevant society, often sought out by journalists for their perceptions.

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  • 1 month later...
Posted
On 8/23/2014 at 4:37 PM, soltakss said:

If it is straight years of school, then an average person might have between 10 and 12, starting school around 5-6 and finishing around 16, so that makes sense. A holder of a Bachelor's degree in England would probably have EDU 16, a Master's EDU 19 and a PhD EDU 22. 

Of course, you could have a high EDU and not have the qualification, or have the qualification and not have the EDU, depending on the life story.

I've got a PhD and a lot of experience from various areas not covered by my study path, but I'd hesitate to say that my Edu is 22 (it may be so when speaking of education sciences etc. areas that I'm interested in, but I have very little interest in current politics or pop culture figures, for example). I think Edu represents a more general education role - a person who is interested in and follows the current worldwide news, science papers (or at least magazines targeted at general audience) meticulously enough to accrue a vast general pool of knowledge and understanding.

There are usually separate Science skills for specific areas of science and I see them as representing Masters, Licentiates or PhDs etc.

Posted

I have sort of mixed feelings of the Traveller character creation system.

On one hand, it allows you to design a life path system that takes into account the political and cultural changes in your game world right before the beginning of the campaign. The players get to learn where their character was during "that coup" and whether they joined "this war" or how they fared during the "recession" (or whatever happened in the world right before the start of the game). Of course, it also means that you have to spend a lot of time making the system really take into account all of these things: the game should be set in a specific time and location, so that you do not have to create a lot of different versions of the system for characters born and raised in different countries, for example.

On the other hand, it is not to be used if you have a strong idea of what kind of a character you want to play, because the system always destroys those plans one way or another. Your character is created through random dice rolls - you might have thought to play a scholar, but it turns out that you plagiarised your first essay and was kicked out of uni. You think of turning to another profession, but random dice roll tells you that you were not accepted into the necessary school etc.

The Traveller system is great for quickly made characters not meant to live long or mean a lot to the players, but it is less good in situations where you, as a player, really want to create/imagine your character's life path in your own way.

Posted
On 5/29/2024 at 1:50 AM, Susimetsa said:

...

On the other hand, it is not to be used if you have a strong idea of what kind of a character you want to play, because the system always destroys those plans one way or another. Your character is created through random dice rolls - you might have thought to play a scholar, but it turns out that you plagiarised your first essay and was kicked out of uni. You think of turning to another profession, but random dice roll tells you that you were not accepted into the necessary school etc.

The Traveller system is great for quickly made characters not meant to live long or mean a lot to the players, but it is less good in situations where you, as a player, really want to create/imagine your character's life path in your own way.

It's a very old-school vibe.
There's a train of thought that one "should" random-roll a character and play what you get; that's part of the challenge, part of the fun.

Horses, as they say, for courses.

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Posted
8 hours ago, g33k said:

It's a very old-school vibe.
There's a train of thought that one "should" random-roll a character and play what you get; that's part of the challenge, part of the fun.

Horses, as they say, for courses.

True. As I said, I have mixed feelings about it. I think RQ Glorantha's character creation takes the great from the Traveller idea, but still allows the player to design their own character. Of course, as I said, it is a very demanding process to design for the game designer / GM, and is currently designed only for human players coming from a certain geographic area in games set in a specific time.

Traveller has it easier, since it is a relatively stagnant universe (only changing from one edition to another) where randomly generated backgrounds don't have to follow a specific history or timeline.

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