Death in character creation was reintroduced in Traveller Companion book as an Iron Man mode, but I felt it didn’t bring anything new to the table, so below is my modest attempt to spice it up a bit.
Death in character creation
In classic Traveller, if you fail the survival roll during the character creation mini-game character dies, and the player needs to start over and generate a new one.
Later, in Mongoose editions dying was replaced with a roll on a mishaps table, where the worst outcome is a roll on an injury table. The neat idea behind this change is that accumulated injuries will accumulate medical debt, which then acts as a main motivator for characters to seek risky jobs and get themselves on adventures.
Mongoose Traveller Companion book - a compilation of additional and alternative rules, reintroduces death on a failed survival roll under the aptly named Iron Man mode.
The Problem
There is no problem per se, the rule does what it says on the tin, but looking at how the mishap and injuries tables affect the game it seems like a missed opportunity to spice things up a bit.
Soft Iron Man Mode
On survival roll fail, roll on the mishap table as usual and then hand over that character to the GM. This character is now an NPC and may be used as GM sees fit.
Instead of wasting characters, we hand them over to the GM for repurposing. These NPCs once introduced to the game again, will hopefully truly feel like old friends, tough rivals or bitter enemies as players already know them well, and were emotionally invested while creating them.
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