Travellerizing Donut RPG Mess
Lately I was thinking of it and came to a conclusion I made my playtest material too simple and too OSRish. I wanted more Traveller in it. At the moment each character starts with one Background (which is basically an old profession) or Ability (something special like High or Wild Magic). And it is straight OSR stuff - character starts as first level with minimum of stuff.
In Traveller your character starts with some experience though, based on their age. And I like it, the gamble between skills and experiences versus aging and mishaps.
So I'd like to make it similar in my Donuteller. But since it is just simplified version there won't be any system for rolling your death on duty or comissions and advances. For your character choose one Background for 15+ age - no Abilities yet though. I thought about it some time, you can be sheltered kid who spent all their life learning to be a wizard or natural psionic talent who grew up on the street but I guess my explanation is - you can't control those things at such a young age. Also having only Wild Magic attribute means you're very bad street urchin. I mean, it's obviously just a designer advise in the end but works in my head - wizards stop being total nerds who know only of high magic workings. They may know other sciences and phylosophies.
And then on ages 20+, 25+ and 30+ choose Ability or Background. Additionally you may take Master advance every third 'term' - get one of your things from +1 to +2. Masters are available at 25+, 40+, 55+ and 70+. "Unused" master advancements are not "wasted" if you choose it after third 'term'. Oof, what a jargon.
Aging is simple - if you start at 35+ and each next term after get the stuff as you did before but also you roll 1d6. On a 1-2 choose physical attribute - Brawn, Agility or Finesse - and get -1 to it. On a 6 choose mental attribute - Wisdom or Power - and get +1 to it. If you start at 50+ roll 1d6, lose one attribute on results 1-3, you can choose mental ones too. Nothing happens on a 6. Attribute cannot be lower than -2 and higher than +2.
The rules for getting Backgrounds and Abilities this way is reserved only for character creation. In game time acquiring them should be organic and diegetic.
I need to test it, because I'm not sure about the chances for aging and wisening. But it feels some wizards may opt for being older.
In the event of changing the rules I'd like to update my playtest characters - Phythis and Ionos.
Phythis is a pirate, quite young I'd say. 20+ maybe? So she'd be a Thief and a Pirate. I'm not sure if Thief isn't too broad background? Pirate is basically giving her Sailing, Intimidation, Melee Combat and Athletics skills. But Thief? Hiding, Sneaking, Lockpicking and also Athletics? A burglar maybe more suitable?
Ionos is an adept wizard and I wanted to make them youngest of the group. So maybe they're 20+ and Phythis would be 25+? Ionos for sure has an Ability - High Magic. But for the background... Scholar? Academic? As in someone trained in sciences first in order to later understand workings of high magic. What does Scholar give them? I guess skills like Philosophy, Mathematics, Medicine and... Reading.
Then Phythis would need another thing for age 25+. And why wouldn't I give her the Mastery in Pirate?
Takrog was to be the oldest of the group but he didn't make it to rules change so we'll never know [*].