Somewhere I read that you can't die during character generation any more. Is this true? While that could be a good change for actually generating one character to play, it would really nerf the try to roll up ancient characters to kill time solitaire game.
I haven't played any of the lder Traveller editions. I played one game with T4, so I have that edition and the Mongoose one. In T4, you basically don't die or get injured - during character creation anyway. But since you start aging in the game somewhere in your thirties, I think there's an incentive to stop while you're ahead. Plus you get one skill per year, so you can actually be competent at something before the age of sixty.
In the Mongoose edition, there's the 'Iron Man' option in which you can indeed die. As it is, in their standard version your character still runs the risk of being severely injured if unlucky, and incurring the relevant medical expenses. In that version, however, you get one skill per four year term, so you're pretty much required to try and make it to old age. Plus I found it frustrating that aside from missing promotions, I might completely screw up my ex-military character by losing several points from the one good stat s/he had.
I dunno. It's one of my pet peeves that too many systems give you the wonderful opportunity to make a character who isn't actually very good at anything. character limitations? Great! But it's annoying to come up with the idea of an agent character, and then arbitrarily get forced out of service in the first term. (I'm clearly not Traveller's target audience!).
