Am I surprised that Mongoose were apparently unable to work out the effects of their new-fangled aging roll? Not really. I had suspicions it looked dodgy, but never took the time to work it out. Then again, I've always thought that the aging rules were kind of superfluous once chargen is over, since the odds that both a campaign and the characters therein will survive long enough for aging rolls to be needed seems to be very small.

I've also always thought that the basis is rather dodgy, since while real life aging and mortality does have effects on strength, agility, etc. there is little to no correlation between youthful levels of these and life expectancy. A simple rule of thumb is to say that mortality is very low until the age of 30, after which it seems to roughly double every 10 years, so you could just have players roll for (a very small chance) every year to see if their character has a life-threatening illness. Whether that would improve the game is another matter...

Anyway, if you want to stick to published rules, one option is to use the rules out of CT. These give a life expectancy of around 74, but are easily tweaked to adjust that up or down (if you want to bring it more in line with current mortality, just drop the penalty in the top bracket from -2 to -1, for instance, which should add about 8 years if I've got the maths right).

On Sun, 7 Mar 2021 18:03 Alex Goodwin, <xxxxxx@multitel.com.au> wrote:
At least under MGT2 aging rules, it is.

If you're an ordinary, adventure-avoiding, NPC who goes out of their way
to do nothing exotic (might eat some cream cheese the day after the
best-before date once a year or so), you can expect to go ass-up from
natural causes shortly after your 58th birthday (give or take about two
months).

Quoth The Eddles: "58 years. With all the wonders of super science
medical progress, we chop 25-30 years of the average lifespan..."

His complaint is quite justified, in light of MGT2's apparent implicit
assumption it's Golden Age or GTFO - TTL12 medical care widely
available, fair amount of Vilani ancestry running around, unlimited rice
pudding for all, etc.

To fill in background of Eddles' quote, AU life expectancy at birth (TTL
8 medical care, undiluted Terrans) was just shy of 83 years in 2018. 
16.25 terms, in Trav terms.


If you're hoping I have a way to reconcile such wide disagreement
between the MGT2 aging rules and actual experience, join the club.


Jeff Zeitlin (at least) should not be surprised to hear I took a Monte
Carlo approach to figuring that out - writing some (in this case,
Python) code to simulate the number of terms lived for each of 10,000
such Traveller NPCs and averaging the results.  This also gives me a way
to explore ideas to try to reconcile such disagreement - without much
luck so far.

Giving boons on all aging rolls (+1.5 to expected result) gave no major
surprise on the results - roughly another 1.5 terms (64.1 years , give
or take six weeks).

Applying the mods Daryen characters receive on aging rolls (p6, MGT1
AM3: Darrians) - applying half the terms to date, rounded down, as the
penalty to the aging roll, gets Traveller NPCs to 87.1 years, give or
take 3 months (roughly another 8 terms over the base 10-term case -
approximately doubling).  For comparison, JP female life expectancy at
birth was 87.3 years in 2018.

Mashing both together resulted in no major surprise - 99.6 years, again
give or take three months.  Three extra terms was about what I expected
(1.5 extra terms out of the gate, then doubled).


Some Wombat: "Per GT:ISW p 74, a good Vilani workingman starts to retire
at age 110 (and takes 9 years to fully bugger off), so that's problematic."

Quoth The Eddles: "Especially as on average the fellow will be about 30
years dead before that. hell of a retirement plan."

ISW-era Vilani are getting approx TTL7/8 medical care.

I grok the ISW figures are coming in from GT, but should not a human
population that is known for its longevity, oh, I don't know, have
significantly higher life expectancy than the baseline?


In the immortal words of that great biomedical gerontologist, Dr Animal,
FACS, FRCSC, "WHAT DO?"

I suspect the good doctor's initial response ("EAT DRUMS!") will not
apply here.


Alex

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