A Sound of Sheer Silence

As a game, Traveller is best known for its character creation system.  Most games, modelling themselves off of D&D , build out the character as it is at the time play begins.  In other words, character creation determines how strong the character is right now , what abilities he or she has right now .  Traveller , instead, pioneered the "life path" system.  After rolling up some basic stats, the player moves the character through a series of "terms"--four year chunks of time starting at age 18 in which the character takes on a particular job and develops new skills and abilities.  At the end of each term, the player making the character rolls to see if the character is promoted within that career, and rolls to see whether the character is allowed to continue in that career into the next term.  If the character is kicked out of the career, or wants to go pursue something else, they have to roll to see if they qualify for the new career--otherwise, they h...

Everyone has their thing.  Mine, more or less consistently since I was 12 years old, has been tabletop rpgs.  For those not familiar, the best known (and first) tabletop rpg is  Dungeons and Dragons , but there are thousands of similar games out there.  The basic concept is that all of the people playing save one take on the role of a protagonist character, usually one that the player has created.  The remaining person (known variously as the "gamemaster," "dungeon master," "storyteller," and a host of other titles) defines and plays out the rest of the world--the environment, the other people in the world, the antagonists, etc.  Imagine a play or a movie where the main characters, instead of being given a script, were allowed to improv everything their characters do, and the script writer responds in real time in reaction to the actions of the main characters, and you have some idea of what a tabletop rpg is or can be. As I said, tabletop rpgs got their h...