[Retired] TrailHead Character Generator

I survived so now for my term 1 event.

Event 10 =

"You spend a great deal of time on the fringes of Charted Space. Roll Survival 8+ or Pilot 8+. If you succeed, gain a contact in an alien race and one level in any skill of your choice. If you fail, roll on the Mishap Table but you are not ejected from this career."

This should be interesting. I have a 0 in both skills, I’ll go with Survival. It seems like the appropriate characteristic would be END, also +0. So a straight roll.

Okay, so I made an alien Contact!

Advancement check will be EDU 7+

It is irritating that the Character Creation minigame uses (and, more importantly, teaches) different rules to the actual game. You don't add a Characteristic to these rolls, they are literally exactly what they say, 'Roll Survival' means that is all you roll here.

I don't know why they went with this, but it does simplify the balance and prevent high Characteristic rolls from swamping the rest of the Creation process (I am not sure how I feel about those Characteristics not helping (or hindering) you more in these test, though, would be logical that they did, but 'balance'.)

Nice result though, you can tell us about the alien species (they don't have to be sophonts) whenever you are ready (or would if this was real and not just a dream:), and you can pick any Skill to set to 1 (or increase by 1, but taking something from -3 to plus +1 might be better than from +1 to +2).

Passed Advancement so now I’m rank 1 Scout, and receive Vacc suit 1.

Since I rolled a natural 12, I must continue in this career.

I have completed Term 1 and am now 22 years old.

I’m not worried about the redundancy of the background skills and by basic training. It fit my character concept to have those background skills.

Cool.

END is what I meant but EDU is what I typed. Sorry. Either way it was +0. And thanks for the rules clarification. I looked at the skill check rules and thought I had to add a characteristic. I did not realize there was an exception in character generation.

What? You typed the wrong thing wrong? What are you? Some sort of overachiever? :)
Sometimes. Sometimes you only add a Characteristic, and sometimes you only add a Skill, but I think those situations where you don't add both will be so few and far between that we can forget about it. Maybe there will be situations where no Characteristic makes any sense, but I don't see it happening often, and it will be clear when it does.

Things like Athletics are a problem, there are athletic situations where logic would say the Skill should apply, but not being 'trained' should not apply a -3 penalty to most of them (surely STR, DEX, and END already cover 'fitness'). Either we might just ignore it where it would be bad, but allow those with training the benefit (meaning a +0 is pointless?), or maybe we should set it to a default 0 so anyone getting increases will benefit from them? Maybe we can find a sweet-spot where specific training applies, and only use it then? It looks like a rules oversight. We will work something out.
It's a pain and causes confusion. But then I am not a fan of 'tutorial levels' that try to 'simplify the rules', in the longrun it makes it harder to learn, which should not be tutorials purpose.

I forgot about gaining a level in a skill for the event. Let me think about a story to describe the event and see what skill might apply.

Cool.

Did you do the Skill Table roll that you get for Advancement?

Hmm. No. I got Vacc Suit 1 from increasing my rank because of Advancement.

So I still need to roll for the Advancement success? And also pick a skill to increase one level due to the event. Seems to make sense to roll on the Explorer skill table. I'll do that first.

Okay, a 2 on the Explorer skill table is Pilot, and since this requires specialization, I move Pilot (Spacecraft) up to 1. All other Pilot skills remain at 0.

As for my event with the alien, we haven't settled on the details of our setting, so I won't name what kind of alien at this point (also, this is likely a test character). But the event reminded me of the Darmok episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation and the movie Enemy Mine. So I'm envisioning something like that, where my character and an alien had to work together to survive in a threatening environment. I choose to increase Survival from 0 to 1.

So, at this point, to summarize, my character grew up in space, was homeschooled by his parents. Tried to get into university and qualified to enter, but due to a paperwork mixup, did not enter, but instead joined the Scout service as an Explorer. Went through basic training and was promoted to Scout rank 1. Was sent on a dangerous mission on the edge of chartered space and made contact with an alien. Due to the sensitive nature of this mission, was required to re-enroll in the Scout service for another term. Is now 22 years old.

You mean the Skill Table roll you now did? Yes, I believe that is all you needed to do.
That is how it works, yes. If you did not have any Pilot, you would set Pilot (Spacecraft) to 1 and all the other Pilot Skills to 0.
Indeed. Though 'naming' them is less significant than establishing what sort of relationships we have with 'aliens'.
I don't know the ST reference but Enemy Mine was a great movie for its time. :)
Nice. Working 'events' together into a story is the appeal of this character creation system.

Do you want to roll your next Term now?

@TrailHead, any movement on your next Term?

Probably far too late. But in a YouTube video about character creation the player rolled 2 characteristics with 3d6, discarding the lowest die.

@vagueGM, Sorry last week was rough. Getting back to it now.

I did have Pilot at 0 already, from basic training, so I had 0 in all Pilot skills. Now that I gained a rank to 1, I had to specialize, according to the Specialities rule on p. 58, and I chose Pilot (Spacecraft).