How do you know each other?

Sounds good.
Maybe Lio dated my sister ;) We could have a bit of a rivalry/friendship thing going on.

I just noticed that everyone did exactly 5 Terms, was that a coincidence or we do that deliberately? :)

This does make for some nice lining up of things.

Nice overview.

Coincidence on my part.

That table doesn't mean we did those careers at the same time, right?
It could be arranged like this.

Technically it does mean that. You all started your first 4-year career at age 18 and are now 38, so they are supposed to align.

We could adjust that a bit, but your example table has 8 years difference, what was happening in those gaps, how can we get these lives to align? I could see a year or so's difference (one of you is not 38, they are 37, and someone else is 40) but much more than that breaks/changes the rules, so we would need good reason for it.

We have no relativistic time effects --else too much travel becomes a problem.

Yes, we all started at the same age. But did we all start in the same year?
Ronny could have started his first career in 7012, but Lio in 7016. Or does that mean that Ronny would have to take 4 more years as a drifter?

Since you finished at the same age, and in the same year (which is 'now') yes. By the rules they line up.
No, because Drifter is a Career and you did not take it. (and it would be two more Terms, by your table). Maybe you could drift (no capital letter means not a Career?:) or be in a coma.

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Is this all hypothetical, or do we need to work out how to change the rules (if they even matter)? I am happy to change/ignore this rule if we want to, the only thing it will really affect is Ageing rolls.

Unless it causes problems I am fine with ignoring the exact time of the Events and Connections to make things work. Especially if they can be explained by, "near the end of one Career Term and near the beginning of a Career Term for another" to get them to fit. Maybe some Terms may have ended up being closer to 3 years, and others closer to 5, so they average out at 4?

At this point, yes. I just thought it might make it more flexible, in terms of lining up our events, if we don't really need to stick to events that happened in the same term. But it might not be necessary at all.

So I guess we don't need to worry about it until someone has an idea to connect 2 events. However, with the explanation you gave, I just won't bother trying to connect the 1st event of one person with the 4th of another. ;)
Yeah, that was kinda my reasoning of it. Maybe one character spent a few years taking care of their sick mother. I'm sure we could come up with some sort of explanation for a gap. I'll try to avoid it either way then :)

Made another overview, with some links we can use.



What else do we need to get started, vagueGM?

Very nice.
• We need to know how you know each other. This can be as simple as the Character Creation Connection and its free Skill, which could be a single meeting, or could be a whole backstory and history and extensive time working together. You might be a well-oiled crew, or you might be thrown together by chance and find you have randomly met before while being forced to work together. This is a player choice about style and we can make it work either way.

• Skills Package: We need to decide on a Skills Package and allocate those Skills. This could depend a lot on what our ship and first mission situation is.

• We need an answer from @TrailHead about whether they want to go after their lost ship and seek answers to their mystery. If so I might suggest some (Engineering) Skills, or you would need to hire crew. But that may need to wait for the week ()unless I missed an answer).

• Ship If we are not going for Benny's ship, then we need to decide how you get a ship. Do you buy one (we can go through the process of making one, but we can also start play before working out the technical details of what you bought or are buying, we only need to know that when we get to the ship) and pay it off, as is the default assumption in Traveller; Or do you 'get one for free', which could be the first mission (or second if you want to do a lower stakes 'tutorial' mission), or we could assume you got it and move on to other missions, finding out the 'price' as we play.

• Worlds: We need to make at least enough world to start play in. How much that is will depend on the scope you want to start playing at. It might be a neighbourhood if you are stuck in one place, or it might be a planet if you are far-roaming but shipless, or it might be a system if you have a ship and can move around, or it might be a sector (or a few systems in it) if you want to start jumping right away. I can make all this if you all tell me what scale you want to start at.

• Tech Level (TL): The World creation above will depend a lot on the TL we settle on for our game (at the start). I think it is choice between TL9 and TL10, right?

• Aliens: We need to decide on aliens. I have a very rough idea for a few missions in 'alien space' if we want to do the Benny start. But I don't want to put pressure on TrailHead. They might be 'alien humans' who live very different lives to us, a TL or two removed from what we are used to, maybe, or just 'foreign'. They might have been the enemy during our years of military service, but now with an uneasy truce. You might have to find you way back home through their space, maybe you are spies (in space!) behind enemy lines.

I can make Polls for these questions if we want to quick way to answer, we have discussed a bit, but I don't think there was a clear decision on these.

Did I miss anything?

The mechanic link is the easiest way for Lio and Benny to know each other, or know of each other. They could have been in the same class, or training centre.

Where can I find other player's character sheets? Wanted to see if they have the same skill level, to make the terms match.

The red bar at the bottom, click "Characters"

That is too easy. Can't be it.

Short suggestion:
Raf and Lio might know each other from University.
Cat and Lio might know each other from their social status

Maybe they moved in the same circles once or their parents know each other...

Just some ideas to work with... Or not 😉

Makes sense, you were both med-students.

You can know as many of the others as you want, but two of these Connections have mechanical effects on your Skills, making two a minimum. We can decide which is mechanical after seeing the options.

It is alright from some of you to not know each other and to have been brought together by the rest of the party. We know you will each know at least two of the others, so no one will be left out.

I would think that Ronnie and Cat would have a passing familiarity with one another through their Merchant connection. Perhaps they have crossed paths before.

That sounds good to me. How about we say we worked on a job together once?

Just 'worked a job together' or did you serve together for a while on the same ship or something? A lot could have happened in those eight years.

@TheGenerator, do you have an updated table of events for everyone? It might inform this, but will definitely come in handy when we finalise things and make Connections and get Skills.