TTRPG Roll 26-9 ~ Marc Miller’s Traveller #charactercreationchallenge

Using Marc Miller’s Traveller (aka Traveller 4) (Imperium Games, 1996).

Traveller 4 has always been a strange Traveller incarnation. It is so much like Classic Traveller yet so different. While character generation in Traveller 4 was basically the same as Classic Traveller (using the “advanced” versions found in later books) the core game mechanism was a Task Roll with the number of dice rolled dependent on the Task Difficulty with a “roll under” requirement. That is about as far from the Classic Traveller 2d6 ≥ 8 as one can get.

When making a Traveller character, I really love the randomness. There is an entire game to be played just dreaming up what the various die rolls mean. For example take my character, Tarb Uckks. Although hailing from a relatively well-off world Tarb is—how shall we say it—a bit clumsy (Dexterity 5). His family, however, appears rather well off (Social Status A).¹ He ends up in the Military Academy (barely as he rolls a [2] with a +2 die modifier from his social status and must roll a 4 or less). He then barely gets into Graduate School and then barely survives his first term. Yet, he is also a legendary Grav Craft driver with Skill Level 5.

I imagine that Tarb used his family’s social status to gain an appointment at the Military Academy and then Graduate School. Maybe that is a bit of a stain on his reputation because he was detached from the Army after a single term. By today’s Department of War standards that is early as he easily “owed” the government six years of service (Academy + Grad School) yet was “let go” after only four. [There has to be a story (hook) there.] Now that his is out, Tarb, who has no personal combat skills, likely is looking to turn that Grav Driver skill into a job opportunity. Can anybody say Hammer’s Slammers?

---

1. Traveller uses hexidecimal notation so A = 10. ↩︎

Feature image courtesy RMN

The opinions and views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone and are presented in a personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Navy or any other U.S. government Department, Service, Agency, Office, or employer.

RockyMountainNavy.com © 2007-2026 by Ian B is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0