A hard transition: How do you move new players more easily from 5e "superhero" type play to Mongoose Traveller?
I've played Traveller off and on since the 80's, and have always loved the involved and beefy character creation process. My wife and I also play an ongoing 5th edition D&D game with friends online. She's only ever played 5e; hearing me talk about Traveller got her very interested in trying Traveller out, and I was excited to help her through the lifepath-style character generation as a session zero. I did very briefly talk about this being different than 5e: the character concept comes along as you build, or not even until the end sometimes; you just need to see what the tables say. I didn't come back to that and didn't go on about it - it's a lot.
Very quickly, it turned kinda sour for her. Bad rolls on stats. One failure to qualify for her chosen career, and then a mishap roll that dropped six points off her endurance and kicked her out of her secondary career. She'd started with a character concept in mind, and half a backstory, both of which were ruined in her mind. Frustrated, we took a break for the day.
I love the emergent style of 'Old-School' games like Traveller and AD&D 1e play. Failures and setbacks, unexpected good luck all make a much more interesting and challenging character story for me. Like a hardy pioneer, I know better than to name my character until they're safely done with their careers and ready to travel. But for her, it was the opposite. Every 'bad' roll was the game telling her she couldn't have what she wanted.
I get that not every game is going to be someone's cup of tea. Is there a way to sort of ease players into Traveller that are not also familiar with the idea of emergent play and 'letting Tables take the wheel' to see what happens? I've thought that maybe pre-gen characters for the first couple of sessions might help. Also maybe using one of the online character generators to get through the process without having to dwell on results.
Ultimately, if she doesn't like it after session 2, we'll let it go. But I do want to give her a chance to experience Traveller. And I can't help but think others who are new to emergent play might run into the same frustrations, and your advice could help others as well.