> Neon Sun Games
>
> Someone mentioned that even changing the traveller prior career
> system to an
> after character generation option would still violate d20 license because
> levels and experience would be involved. I think that isn't true, based on
> the spirit of traveller's system.
Levels and experience aren't the issue. The Traveller system of Careers is
self-described as a method for generating characters. The d20 STL
explicitly prohibits this with the phrase "No Publication distributed under
the terms of this License may contain information on creating characters
compatible with the D20 System Reference Document v0.0". The specific rules
in question are the basically those on pages 4 & 5 of the PHB. In the
original Traveller they were whole booklets unto themselves. No matter how
you slice it, Traveller-style rules for character creation are prohibited
under the d20 STL.
The system offered for granting XP for each term of service is interesting,
but it has its problems as well. Specifically, you must either supply an XP
chart with linear progression or you must scale the XP award in some way to
ensure that a new level is gained (and thus new Feats & Skills) at the
appropriate times. I think we can do better.
Essentially what the Traveller system is doing is granting Feats and Skills
to characters based on their prior careers. One way to do this would be to
create a Career Feat that grants a number of skill points (with associated
class, cross-class, and prohibited skills) and has the possibility of a free
Career Feat (to reflect re-enlistment). Each Career feat would add 4 years
to the base age for that character. Every character would get a free Career
Feat instead of their starting skill points. This would be perfectly
acceptable under the d20 STL, since we would not need to explain how to pick
feats or use skill points.
A more true-to-original (and more elegant) method would be to recreate the
concept of 'Career Terms' which would be more like the original Traveller
system of Terms, Promotions, Decorations, and Survival, and would not be
shoe-horned into the Feat system. It could either grant skill points or
skill ranks.
Still, one must explain how to use 'Terms', as in 'pick a number of Terms'
or some other, more detailed system. In the past when we discussed add-on
stats, the acceptable method for generating them was to use a phrase like
'Generate a score for Moxie in the same manner as other Ability scores'.
This won't work for more complex systems like the one used in Traveller,
since d20 has no 'usual manner' to co-opt. We run into the same situation
with mustering-out benefits, and I'm sure there are plenty of other
examples.
Now, it might be that WotC is only concerned that all third-party d20
products maintain a basic dependency on WotC products for character creation
& advancement, and aren't so concerned with the details so long as that
dependency is maintained. In this case an add-on character generation
system would not be of much concern. Allowing the basic system to be
extended but not abridged is, IMO, best for all. I think the d20 STL should
be modified to allow it.
-Brad
