Any info would be welcome but esp wrt the numbers & ethnic distribution & also the numbers of francophone vs anglophone units.Also any info concerning the impact upon other minority groups.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On Tuesday, July 21, 2020, 03:19:45 AM MST, <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:In theory....They both speak French like Aussies and Scots speak English.The claim here is continental french has mutated and Quebec french stayed closer to 1700s french.Je ne sais pas rien!What info are you interested in re WWI conscription here?On Tue, Jul 21, 2020, 04:11 Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list), <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:Interesting, do you have any info wrt WWI conscription?Also, in either war the Quebecois(sp?) would come in handy to liaise w/ the allied French forces.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On Sunday, July 12, 2020, 11:56:37 AM MST, <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:That's how I understood it, but that's not accurate it seems.(Note there is a pop down navigation menu, so if you are having trouble seeing the article, look for a double caret to close the popdown menu or just maximize your browser).It appears we did authorize registration for conscription for home defence (never used), and post D-Day, we did in fact conscript a few more than 12K conscripts of which only about 2600 or so ever got to the active theaters.Quebec didn't want it, which made it a political football, but there was enough support (demand?) in the rest of Canada that the PM eventually caved.That's two new things I've learned today (the other being that my friend who is waiting on his final bar exam to become a lawyer did not become a Notary Public yet and gets that capacity once he is called to the bar).On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 9:40 AM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:Well the USA only conscripted in wartime until 1940 saw the first peacetime draft & it was almost killed (passed by ONE vote in the 435 seat House of Reps!) in the summer of '41.After WWII the draft was ended but then restarted in '48, I believe, & it ran until early 1973.The UK kept their WWII draft going until , ISTR, 1964.Interestingly, way back in the UseNet days, someone from Canada posted that they didn't have a draft during WWII cuz' of "bad memories related to the WWI draft".--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------On Saturday, July 4, 2020, 02:52:48 PM MST, <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:It's interesting that the Traveller model is not 'apply to a bunch of schools or find a job in essential areas or else get drafted'. Instead, it is 'try getting a job somewhere, and when you blow the first one... the government steals you!'. <rolls eyes>Even peace-time work can lead odd places. I was a tech nerd and I joined an infantry unit because several of my friends from university (games club) were infanteers at the local reserve unit. So thus I became. I was so green I had no idea there was more than one trade and the intake NCM was all 'You want to be infantry, don't you? Of course you do!' so I wasn't going to say much. I'd have been a much better fit to be trying to get into a support role like weapons maintenance or going to the local comms/EW unit which would have been right up my alley (I even studied Russian in uni).Drafts, on the other hand, make for less effective militaries - or at least that's the theory of most advanced democracies (not all - the Swiss and Israelis and Swedes have national service). On the other hand, the UK, the US, and Canada don't. It would never have flown with Quebec in Canada and now with our cultural diversity, a lot of subsections of the society would have concerns about it and where they might be sent.Usually, military reserves can be filled (to peacetime levels) with volunteers and a few retired regular force NCMs and officers. It's a good way to make some money for school if you aren't in the middle of a war.And even if involuntary drafts make sense. they'd still only typically run half or one whole Traveller hitch (a Swedish friend was in their Air Force unit - kind of like Rangers - that worked in teams of 7 to 11 members with a dog - that were let loose in the rough lands around airbases if their was a crisis as they expected to have to hunt and kill Spetsnaz infiltrators - so they learned tracking, small unit combat, comms, animal handling, etc - 1 or 2 years training, a couple of years of active duty with the teams).After that, you should have a choice.... nothing in the real world precludes me from applying for 20 careers and prior failures don't impact my chances.Again, if you want to allow people to build towards what they want.If your goal is to place something in front of them that they will be challenged to do something with, that's another perspective.On Sat, Jul 4, 2020 at 5:00 PM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:On Thursday, July 2, 2020, 04:19:05 PM MST, <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:On Thu, Jul 2, 2020 at 6:37 PM Frank Filz <xxxxxx@mindspring.com> wrote:I had not seen “pick your skills” until the past few years poking around the boards. No one who has played my games has expected to pick their skills (well, I suppose some might have, since my gaming is either play by post or Roll20, I don’t require people roll their characters up in front of me).
For the way I play, I don’t think I’d like having players pick skills, it would seem to lead to too much optimization.
Counterpoint: For most folk, at least some sizable part of our skills are a result of choices we made (sometimes the choices were 'learn this or not eat' but still a choice). Some people in our world are really thinly focused (others are all over the map).Funnily enough, my main group had one or two that would focus on a key skill, but all the rest typically wanted 1 or 2 level 2+ and 1s and 0s in a lot of other skills. This was in the generous brownie-point enhanced MT expanded character generation. They could have built skill-4 and skill-5 focused characters with fewer skills, but after playing long enough, you tend as a player to want to be of general utility in almost every situation a) because you can't always tell which PCs will end up in the soup (so good to have broad skill ranges) and b) because they you can participate in more scenes effectively (vs. kind of watching from the sidelines).My own self portrait:Electronics-2 (college)Computers-3 (college plus 15 years of work)Mechanics-1 (my dad, spare time since)Languages-2 (bits of many, some idea of parts of linguistics) (interest, some in university - French and Russian)Physics-1 (university)Chemistry-0 (university but not my best subject)Brawling/Martial Arts-1 (5 years of 2-4 times a week 3 hour training sessions - karate and aikido)Wheeled Vehicle-1 (owned a sports car for 13 years, didn't die)Small Watercraft-1 (basic cruising, intermediate cruising training and practice from the CYA)Handgun-1 (pistol club member, have a friend that's a gun guy)Tactics-1 (wargaming, infantry training, studying spec ops and SWAT for a long time as a hobby)Rifle-0 (infantry training, gun guy friend)Small Blade-0 (interest ongoing in knife fighting)Instruction-1 (taught at a college, learned how to do it right first)Liaison-0 (contractor working with many different clients and government agencies)Medical-1 (emergency first aid, CPR, lots of wound treatment practice, grew up with a nurse for a mother, looking at full EMT training)Navigation-1 (coastal navigation course and grounside nav training)Recon-0 (infantry training, paintball, and just generally learning how to be quite and watch in the wilds)Stealth-1 (known for being sneaky - co-workers stuck me with 'the savage' because I constantly scared them just by my silent approach, plus military training, plus paintball)Robotics-0 (college, pneumatic and electrical industrial robots and logic controllers)Steward-1 (3 meals from scratch per day for a long time plus lots of practice and reading/watching chef shows)Survival-0 (military training, survival training)History-1 (major hobby focus, courses during my university time, study of classics from various eras, etc)Of those, I chose to go to the schools (uni and college), to join the infantry reserve, to have a wide range of interests and friends with military, police, medical, and tech friends, worked in tech programming for many domains/projects, interested in sailing and going offshore (Lake Ontario, not the oceans). Interest in history pursued, ditto Steward. I chose to teach courses. I chose to go to gun ranges.I can't think of much that I was just forced to take or that randomly came up. So pick the skills might not be crazy given that, though I have never done it as a GM or player.^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^I think MM's experience with the 'draft' system in the USA may have influenced him here.I heard so many a "stranger than truth" personal stories about how draftees wound up with their primary MOS that I finally had to believe them.However, remember this, the 'draft' was only for 2 years active duty plus some years of reserve obligation that so many guys just blew off that it really was optional.If a guy 're-upped' (3 years min for Army) then there almost always would be an option to apply (take a test) for something that you picked.-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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