Let's Read: Traveller, 1977 Edition, Characters & Combat, page 20

We’re coming to the end of the skills section, with Engineering, Medical, and Jack-of-all-Trades being saved for last. Engineering covers ship power plants and propulsion drives. Medical means exactly that. Beginners can be ship’s medics, Medical-2 helps deal with reviving low passage characters (which can be lethal?!) after a journey. Yikes. Throw a 5 or better, or you don’t come out of suspended animation because you’re dead. I will never use low passage. Ever.

Medical-3 makes you a doctor (I guess 1 and 2 are first-aid and medic training, then). The skill also covers curing diseases. High dexterity means the doctor can actually be a surgeon (until he crashes his car in a rain storm and loses all nerve control in his hands, causing him to seek in the far East for a mystical cure…nah. That idea is just too strange). All careers get this as higher education, although Scouts and Merchants can get it as regular advanced education.

Last comes the Jack of all Trades skill, which works as a general ‘I can do anything better than you’ skill bonus, levels can be added to just about anything at the referee’s discretion. Sounds fun. Interestingly, the Marines and Army can’t get this skill, while scouts have it on three tables (Navy, Merchants, and Other have it on one each, and the latter two can only get it with high education). That does make some sense, really; Scouts are used to working in small groups or even alone, so they are more likely to pick up a wider knowledge base. Not as specialized as the other careers, but they have to be able to handle lots of jobs at once.

We close out the skill section with a general warning that these are only guidelines, and there are lots of other possible ways to use these skills. For that matter, the skills themselves can be altered or added to, if necessary. However, the referee is advised to keep notes on any changes for consistency’s sake. Well, I'm sure that green light gave lots of players and referees a lot of ideas on what to change. For me, I'd rather just play the game as it is first, then decide how to change it.

So, skills are done! What's next? Tune in tomorrow, and find out!

Oh, and there's one additional sci-fi related note: my Thursday reviews of Amazing Stories are going to slow down, probably to bi-weekly for the time being, because I've started a new job, and I don't have the reading time I had during COVID-mania. Huzzah! Something's got to give, though, and it's going to have to be Amazing for a while.