Sample Character: Alexander Lascelles Jamison

I like sample characters and examples of play. Growing up as a 9-10 year old trying to learn to play games, these were a window into a world I wanted to be part of.

I still love them. I couldn't wait, upon re-reading Traveller via my first read of The Traveller Book, to get to Alexander Lascelles Jamison.

I wasn't disappointed re-reading him.

Some reactions:

- andi jones pointed this out at a game session along time ago - ALJ is 38, and when we started gaming this was so old. It was hard to imagine even playing somone who was 20. In my 20s, "35" was code for a character who was a long-time old-timey vet. 38? 38?

Doesn't seem that old, now. Stopped seeming that old when I hit 30, actually. It seems like a good age to go solo and really go for it in the Traveller universe.

- What's the average human lifespan in the TU? It lacks a lot of modern technology, being a now-retro version of the future, but it does have some pretty good medical tech. How long do people live? You must retire after 7 terms unless you keep rolling 12s on Reenlistment, which is 46. That implies you have a relatively low lifespan for such good technology.

- I like how much emphasis they put into the number rolls. When the player rolls a 5, +2 DM for intelligence, to get a 7, the minimum to join the Merchants, he "just barely manages" to talk his way onto a merchant ship crew. A 3 (+2 for intelligence = 5) on 5+ survival roll means he experienced danger, but a 9 (+2 = 11) means a quiet 4-year period. The rolls tell the story just as the results do. Something like this is fun, but I'd rather hand-roll (or VTT-roll) up a guy and have the numbers matter.

- I know there is a house rule somewhere for surviving a failing Survival roll instead of being dead (and thus needing a new character.) Anyone know of a published one?

- I never really deeply loved randomly rolling for skills. Don't get me wrong - it's fun as hell, and it keeps everyone from min/maxing around certain weapons and skills . . . but it does seem like you should get to choose some. If I set out at 18 to be a pilot, I could have had a pilot's license by now. I learned a lot I didn't expect to learn, but I also learned things I set out to do. I didn't randomly roll "Japanese" on my language list - I had to make that happen and did a lot of work and spent a good bit of time and money to make it happen. I'd like some of that.

- I need to did up my GURPS Traveller book and look at conversions. It would be a lot of fun to make people roll up Traveller guys and then manually convert them - probably with customization - to GURPS since it's an easier game system to run at this point.

- I'm still a litttle annoyed with the merchants for forcing ALJ into retirement. One more term and one more roll would have paid off that ship!

- Maybe Kevin Murphy could play ALJ in the Traveller movie.



- I have no idea how to pronounce "Lascelles" but I know I'd do so differently than 10-or-11-year old me would have done so.

I really enjoy this game, for as little as I got to run it.