Traveller T20 TL level skill question

[Razuur]

I was just wondering...

If you haven't picked up or looked through this great book, do so at your earliest opportunity. It is well worth the cash. Complete rules for character creation, designing vehicles and ship, backgrounds and history, world, system generation... Very nice. I give it an A, and I am a hard sell.

Anyways.....

My question is with TL levels. I really like the TL level differentiation. My question is how it applies to certain skills. Most skills this isn't an issue. Tech skills, though is another story.

A person from a high TL level world has the skill Astrogation or Computer. Another person from a world that is from a world that is 3 TLs less than the first person. They both have 10 ranks in that skill.

Are the 10 ranks congruent?

From my initial look, I didn't see anything on this. If there is nothing official on this, how is everyone thinking of handling this?

Are you noting the TL difference in the skills ( adding ranks due to TL differencee?

Would you add to the DC of the roll for the person with the lower TL, or remove from the DC of the higher TL?

What does everyone think?

 

[Tonguez]

I downloaded the Traveller lite rules yesterday and its the first version of Traveller I'd actually be interested in playing (ie I've seen earleir version (eg GURPS) and not been interested)

Can't really comment on your question but making the TL difference a circumstance bonus so a TL 7 character using TL 5 tech gets a +2 makes sense to me

However I might put a - 4 limit (ie TL 3 is too primitive for a TL 7 character to understand - like me trying to use a Loom)...

 

[Shadowdancer]

It would depend on the character and his background. If the character is from a tech level 7 world, and spends his entire life on the tech level 7 world using only tech level 7 equipment, then a penalty for using higher tech equipment would be appropriate.

But most characters have spent enough time off their home planet, and using higher tech level equipment, that there won't be enough of a difference between a character from a tech level 7 planet and a tech level 9 planet.

Even someone who spends all or almost all of their background time on their home world might have been using higher tech level equipment, depending on their job. The tech level of the world is not the rating of the equipment used on that planet, just the level of the equipment they can build and maintain. There is trade between worlds, and higher tech level equipment can be found on lower tech level worlds. If they are working for the government, or a megacorporation, or any business with ties to the spaceport and/or interstellar trade, chances are pretty good they are using higher tech level equipment.

 

[nsruf]

Hard and fast rules for this are difficult. I'm just surprised that there are no guidelines in the book, given how long Traveller has been around in various incarnations.

And don't assume that a higher TL character always gets a bonus - he could as well have a hard time figuring out the archaic equipment.

 

[Psion]

Can't really comment on your question but making the TL difference a circumstance bonus so a TL 7 character using TL 5 tech gets a +2 makes sense to me

Not me. Depending on the technology you are talking about, the higher tech character might consider the old technology outdated an not learned the nuances of making the older technology work. For example, if you started your computer learning in the DOS days, then command line manipulations may be no big deal for you. If you started learning computers on Windows, then command line may seem a huge hassle.

MegaTraveller had some guidelines (basically both higher and lower tech levels were a problem, but higher tech levels had a much steeper penalty), but I can see why you might not want to inflict too much of a penalty based on the TL of the character's homeworld. For example, let's say you roll up a navy character from a TL 11 world. If he is just part of the system defense forces, he might never see anything much more advanced. On the other hand, a navy character might also serve in the imperial navy where they have state of the art equipment.

As a quick rule, I would only incur a penalty if the character's home TL is more than one tech code different for PCs.