Being "Hidden" in MT

[jec10]

I'm interested in how others play the "hidden" rule in MT. For example, the adventurers are trying to escape a sticky situation through a path in the woods. They encounter a heavily armed group of Marines. Discretion being the better part of valour, the adventurers quickly duck into the bushes and declare themselves "hidden". Game over?
Or, they are in foxholes when an enemy grav tank approaches, they declare themselves hidden. Game over?

 

[sfchbryan]

Remember, ANYTHING in MT can be made a task. Just off the top of my head:

Task:
To hide from a heavily armed group of Marines or a Grav Tank
Difficult, Recon, Cbt Engineering, Gun Cbt (halved) 30 min, Confrontation.

Add a minus DM based on what the characters are wearing. (If you are attempting to hide in the woods, your clothing had better be some type of woodland camo, otherwise raise the difficulty level from difficult to formidable.

Note: Gun Cbt represents the training in cover & concealment one receives during military service.

Keep in mind, one does not "quickly" dig a foxhole.

 

[jec10]

Remember, ANYTHING in MT can be made a task. Just off the top of my head:

Task:
To hide from a heavily armed group of Marines or a Grav Tank
Difficult, Recon, Cbt Engineering, Gun Cbt (halved) 30 min, Confrontation.

Add a minus DM based on what the characters are wearing. (If you are attempting to hide in the woods, your clothing had better be some type of woodland camo, otherwise raise the difficulty level from difficult to formidable.

Note: Gun Cbt represents the training in cover & concealment one receives during military service.

Keep in mind, one does not "quickly" dig a foxhole.

Interesting, so you'd tell the adventurers that although the rules seem quite clear that "hiding" is merely a function of being in the right kind of cover and declaring you are hiding at the start of a combat round, it is actually something requiring a task roll as well as being in the designated types of cover?

 

[aramis]

Interesting, so you'd tell the adventurers that although the rules seem quite clear that "hiding" is merely a function of being in the right kind of cover and declaring you are hiding at the start of a combat round, it is actually something requiring a task roll as well as being in the designated types of cover?

Yep. I sure would. Tho' I'd use Recon & Int, Unskilled OK.

 

[Zparkz]

Interesting, so you'd tell the adventurers that although the rules seem quite clear that "hiding" is merely a function of being in the right kind of cover and declaring you are hiding at the start of a combat round, it is actually something requiring a task roll as well as being in the designated types of cover?

As there is a long time since I read the MT rules, I think the purpose of this rule that hidden means behind cover out of LOS. It is then up to the ref to decide wether the enemy is aware of where the character/unit is.

 

[jec10]

The wording of the rule is (not surprisingly for MT) almost exactly the same as in the CT/Striker miniature wargame rules, so the emphasis is on LOS for targetting purposes I suppose.

 

[sfchbryan]

Interesting, so you'd tell the adventurers that although the rules seem quite clear that "hiding" is merely a function of being in the right kind of cover and declaring you are hiding at the start of a combat round, it is actually something requiring a task roll as well as being in the designated types of cover?

Yep, I would. I spent 25 years in the Army so I do have a fairly good idea of what is involved with cover and concealment. This gives me an advantage over the DGP guys.

One of the things that I took away from the CT to MT conversion is the concept that ANYTHING can be made a task. The DGP folks constantly stressed this.

As the referee, this makes covering a player's action that I know nothing about real easy to referee. By always keeping this principle in mind, everyone can get back to ROLE-PLAYING, not ROLL-PLAYING.

If the task isn't predefined, I'll ask the player what they think the modifiers should be. Because they have some say-so in the task, they never complain.

Last point, never let the rules get in the way of common sense. If the characters are in prison orange, they are going to have an incredibly difficult time hiding in the woods, regardless of what the rules say.

As for the example of the grav-tank, I would suspect that the tank has neural sensors and a driver or operator that has sensor ops skill. Man-portable anti-tank weapons are a grave danger to any tank and tank designers would take that into account.

 

[jec10]

Man-portable anti-tank weapons are a grave danger to any tank and tank designers would take that into account.

Except of course in MT the good folks at DGP did away with manportable tac missiles

 

[sfchbryan]

Just because they missed something in the cut-and-paste doesn't mean that it can't exist.

Furthermore they did add them back; see Megatraveller Journal 3.

The problem from my perspective is that DGP never ran military adventures. Because of this, they overlooked some things

Look as FSOSI. No way to recreate the ships in supplement 9. They didn't copy over construction times for ships and starport construction capacity from TCS.

 

[jec10]

Just because they missed something in the cut-and-paste doesn't mean that it can't exist.

Furthermore they did add them back; see Megatraveller Journal 3.

You've said that before, and as Don said on the original thread, its hard to charactrise the "buzz bomb" in MTJ 3 as a set of rules for using tac missiles in MT. It is an entirely non-standard cruise-type weapon with a nuclear warhead. It doesn't seem to need any roll to hit a target, and goes where you aim it. Frankly, it is a nice piece of chrome for that adventure but nothing like useful for general rules.

 

[kaladorn]

One of the things that I took away from the CT to MT conversion is the concept that ANYTHING can be made a task. The DGP folks constantly stressed this.

As the referee, this makes covering a player's action that I know nothing about real easy to referee. By always keeping this principle in mind, everyone can get back to ROLE-PLAYING, not ROLL-PLAYING.

I'd like to thank you for that. That sums up, incredibly eloquently, exactly why I prefer MT to all other Traveller games (in terms of skill resolution - combat has some points it could have been better and ship construction is a catastrophe).

I actually added (or made more generally available) the Stealth skill. So in my formulation, I would have said

To hide from searchers, Routine, (Off=Stealth, Int), (Def=Recon, Int), Confrontation. Having camouflage that nullifies technology of the searchers (phototrophic, thermoptic, thermal, whatever) makes the task one level easier. Thick cover (industrial pipe maze, thick woods, overgrown swamp, etc) may decrease level one level, but this may be nullified by enemy technologies. Hiding force uses the worst Stealth level among its members, Spotting force the best Recon level.

That's how I'd knock it up on short notice.

Also, the omission of TAC missiles was awful.