One of the popular features of the “Advanced Character Generation” systems in books 4-7 was the introduction of new skills. Along with this came the controversy over ‘skill bloat’, which I have addressed elsewhere. I have nothing more to add here; I’m interested in the skills as skills.
Not
all of these advanced skills are equally useful, but many of them are clearly beneficial. I got
to thinking about how to work them back into Book 1 character creation. I have
two ideas to present. Both result in the players having access to a wider array
of potential skills, without the skill bloat.
The
first is to derive the 'advanced book' skills with the skill set from Book 1,
then allow players to choose: if you roll Skill X, you can take it, or
substitute one of the derived skills attached to it.If you're not familiar with what a skill does, the Traveller Wiki is a good resource to explain. (Find the link under "Check out Other Traveller Sites" in the sidebar)
The second is compiling an 'alternate' Service Skills table – or a Table 5, whichever you prefer – for each of the original six services.
It would not be wise, I think, to throw open the gates and let a character in any service take any skill from the full list. That would invalidate the concept of services being distinct organizations doing specific things.