Aging effects
Aging effects (Do we apply the aging effects?) posted in Rules & Errata forum comment posted by Myridian Having recently discovered
William Hope Hodgson (arguably the originator of Cosmic Horror), I've become interested in WWI - all the regular horror of that war + Cosmic Horror.
To that end I've statted up Hodgson, who was killed on the battlefield, but no remains were ever recovered. At the time of his death he was 35 - Mature in Alternity for that PL.
That got me looking at the Aging rules in the GMG page 21. I could envision him travelling about the war zone with a ragtag group, one of which would probably be the stereotypical fresh faced farmboy, perhaps even too young to honestly enlist - Young Adult in Alternity.
So making the youth a higher level doesn't make sense. I could go with the imbalance and just say that's what you get for playing a young character. I could ignore the bonus Attrib points for the Mature character, but there's a page and a column devoted to Aging. Seems important.
So I thought giving them something like Accelerated Learning might even things up a bit as far as the skill points go. And letting them discover they have a knack for something, say -
repair, and picking up the skill when they need it, could represent them discovering their abilities/talents. Whereas a Mature character has their easy learning behind them and rarely exhibit spontaneous abilities.
I thought topping out the Accelerated Learning and free spending of skill points at level 5 would indicate that by then they've had their baptism of fire, spent their extra skill points and are now a Jedi. They grow up so fast when _death_ is involved.
I guess ignoring the age categories and just making the Mature character higher level could work; the lower-level character would level up quicker and catch up. But, thinking as a player, would it seem an unfair advantage? The Mature player would always have a skill point advantage. Would this apply to everyone who takes a Mature character? If 4 players are playing Mature characters, and one is playing the Young Adult...seems harsh. Especially if you were trying to recruit new-to-the-game players. And just requiring everyone to play the same age group seems limiting.
I'll have to think on the other age groups, and things such as the effect of a Young Adult becoming Mature - Maybe they "forget" a rank or 2 they haven't used in a while? Needs more thought. It doesn't seem balanced as written but hadn't given it much thought before.
Oh, and I _love_ Traveller's lifepath system. Bunch of old out of shape military folks turned merchants getting in way over their heads. But Traveller doesn't really (or didn't really) have skill progression/acquisition like Alternity does, and I never ran into a situation where things seemed unbalanced (But haven't played a lot of Traveller, so it might be a thing)
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