Characters, Levels and Getting Into Character

We've been playing the Star Trek RPG. While I love Star Trek, a lot because of both the essentially optimistic view of humanity as well as really cool spaceships, playing as Starfleet characters can be fairly limiting in many ways. Of course, this all depends on the type of game play: for exploring strange new worlds, it would work pretty well. In interacting with things outside of the Federation, sometimes trying to maintain the Starfleet codes as portrayed in television, can be difficult. TV episodes do not translate out well as an adventure I fear: if we have to make die rolls and fail (and I fail a LOT of my die rolls!) then it becomes either a railroaded adventure to get to designated end point or we're no longer following the episode (rarely do characters get the same plot armor as TV characters!).

Anyway, we're switching to Klingons which opens doors a bit more, as long as we act with honor! The game master figure this will take most of June, so I need to finish the work on at least the possibilities for the Cowboy & Dino game (there are a few posts detailing my somewhat zealous approach to game prep!) But what comes to mind as I am getting the player's characters is that a couple of them are playing older characters. As in grandfather aged characters. 

While this is great - variety in characters is good. What makes it complicated in my mind is that we're using the Apex rules, which is a class & level game. I want the players to at least start on the same level (either 2 or 3 - waiting to see what other world-building they bring in; see this post for my reasoning for that).

My issue stems in how a 60+ year old can have the same basic skill set as a young 20-something year old (one of the players is playing a young woman). You would think that an additional 40 years or so of experience would have given him more skills. While I applaud the character and what he wants to do, to me there is a mismatch in skills vs age. 

Now admittedly, age does not always bring on more wisdom and knowledge. But he is playing an Indian grandfather in the Old West, so one would think Jack Looking Horse would be a bit more skilled than young Miss Molly Slade. Of course, perhaps the age is getting to him, and he is actually declining in skills and abilities - in Traveller-speak, failing his aging rolls.

(an interesting  image choice - that was my Call of Cthulu character I used a few years ago - the joys of character art searching!)

While Traveller handles this nicely: you want an older character? Survive your terms of service and don't fail too many aging rolls, and you have an older character. Traveller is in many ways a bit more balanced in terms of mixing and matching characters: while skills are important, I truly believe Traveller is much more about the role-playing versus skill checks. While skill checks are necessary, they are not as dominant as they are in other games. Case in point: the Star Trek game we seemed to be rolling for everything. It may have been a quirk of the game master, but the way the game is mechanically set up seems to want to make rolls for a lot of things. While some people do like that, I tend to run mostly rules-lite games and rolls are mostly in combat or doing something extraordinary. In Traveller, while I do make them roll a navigation (sorry, astrogation!) check, it is used more for chrome: the higher the roll, the closer to the 100D mark. A failure does not equate with a mis-jump (well, unless they are within the 100D or they have not kept up with ship maintenance), it just sets you much further out (and may be adding that 10% time spent in jump space).

For Apex and most games that have character levels, you level up as you experience life and adventure. Perhaps old Jack has led a very sheltered life, and Molly a much more exciting one (well, I did read her backstory and yes, it is a bit more exuberant than Jack Looking Horse's written background at least). I am still thinking about how to reconcile the wide age ranges I am expecting in this game. The 3rd player has promised me his write-up, and I've a feeling it too is an older character. I may end up having the older characters level 3 and Molly level 2, but that does not seem entirely fair.

In looking at other games, OSE for instance, a single level difference does not make a whole lot of difference per se (though level 2 OSE characters are not likely to die from tripping over their own feet!) But 2 or more level differences leads to an imbalance of characters. While I am pretty sure my current group can handle it with aplomb, I wonder if this is an issue for other gamers. I do know in one of my Traveller games we had a multi-term characters as well as a single term barbarian. While the barbarian could not do a lot, it was a matter of how the players embodied their characters and played them. I'd like to think we all had a good time. See this initial post of the roster of characters, and the character cards I made here. Osrum the barbarian only has Survival-2, yet the player and the rest of the group had a good time despite some major skill (aka level) differences. 

And finally: this is not really an issue other than my interpretations of the mechanics. Where older characters should have higher levels. And saying that out loud, maybe it does not really mean that. Levels are really indicative of experience. So perhaps I am making a mountain out of a mole hill.

Regardless. one of the great things about my group is their characters. We all try and come up with interesting characters that usually get along (we had a rough start with a new player who was trying too hard in some of his character portrayals, but eventually he figured out how to play in our group and has had some delightful characters). In fact, one of my favorite character groupings was our Conan game: we played a family, designed that way while we were doing character creation. And this is where the level issue also came into play: I was an older veteran, getting back home after years abroad as a mercenary. Yet skill-wise, I was the same as the not yet 20-year-old nephew and twin nieces. While I did not mind that at all, one would think a veteran would be a bit better at fighting. Of course, with my dice rolls, it does not really matter!

Sorry - re-reading this I seem to have meandered even more than usual. In the end, for me, it is not the character sheet telling me what the character can or cannot do, but it is about discovering that character as you play. The supers game was a good example of that: Verner was mostly a blank slate to begin with, then the backstory grew along with his powers. And R'Rell was starting to take shape in my mind. I'm just slow to get into character, and hoping to slip back into some of my older characters at some point.