Characters in Traveller

Characters

The character generation system helps create characters who essentially consist of a series of characteristics and a set of skills, plus a few other details such as age, and how much money and other things they might start out with.

A typical Traveller character created with the generation system might be written up something like this:

Army Lieutenant Colonel   877C84  Age 34

4 Terms                                    Cr 20,000

SMG-4, Auto Pistol-1, Rifle-1, Gambling-1, Tactics-1, Grav Vehicle-2

2 High Passages, Submachine gun

OK, so what does all that mean?

Well first off this character has served in the Army and reached the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. The series of numbers 877C84 are their characteristics and finally their age. First off, why is there a letter in there? Well it is a convention in Traveller to translate two digit numbers into letters, known as the 'hexadecimal' notation. The number 10 becomes A, 11 becomes B, 12 is C...and so on.

They have served 4 terms in the army. Each term is 4 years. They have 20,000 credits in their bank account, which the character can use to buy things.

The characteristics are listed in order and are Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education and Social Status. The average value for any characteristic is 7. So this character is a bit stronger than average (strength 8), average in terms of dexterity and endurance. The C value, which is hexadecimal code for the number 12, is their Intelligence and is well above average in fact the highest level that can be generated in initial character generation, this character is very intelligent. The next characteristic is education, for this character it is 8, slightly above average. Finally is Social Status, for this character it is 4, well below average, this character obviously came from a poor family.

Characteristics are basically just descriptive. They help players get a feel for their character to help them role-play. The original rules did not have a lot of use for characteristics after the character generation system was completed. They left it up to the referee to work out how to use these characteristics in actual gameplay, including just to ignore them. Certainly there is no need for players to get too worked up about having the 'best' characteristics. Skills are more important.

The next line in the character description shows their skills. These are shown as a word or words followed by a number. This character was in the Army and their first three skills are weapon skills. The first is SMG-4, SMG means submachine gun and the skill level is 4 which is very high, so this character is very deadly with a submachine gun. The next two skills are Auto Pistol-1 and Rifle-1, meaning the character is proficient with an automatic pistol and a rifle. The next two skills are gambling and tactics which give them bonuses when gambling or in situations where military tactics are a consideration. Finally they have the skill Grav Vehicle-2. This means that they are trained and qualified to operate a grav vehicle, a class of futuristic vehicles in Traveller. They have skill level two, which means they are very highly trained and experienced, which will come in handy in very tricky situations.

Finally they have two 'High Passages' and a submachine gun. High Passages are tickets for interstellar travel, and they also own an actual submachine gun.

So how is all this information and in particular skills used in the game? Well for this we need to look at the Task System.

If you are interested in how you actually create characters there is a section on Character Generation, but it might help you to understand the Task Roll System first.