Who PLAYED IT but doesn't like it. (Classic Traveller)

[atpollard]

Point of Inquiry:
Is talking positive about CT on a thread about "why I dont like it" thread-crapping?

So back on topic ...

What is with all of those stupid LBB1-3 weapon skills? I mean a Pilot-1 can operate pretty much anything that flies (pilot-1 = Ships boat-0 and Grav-0 is assumed for a starfaring TL), but I can either learn to shoot a rifle or a shotgun. Even if I master rifle-3, I still have -4 to hit with a shotgun. If I pick up an auto-rifle instead of my semi-automatic rifle, then I get the same -4 to hit as the axe wielding barbarian trying to shoot an auto-rifle.

I know about the later skills and the may house rules, but that's not what is presented in the LBB 1-3 'official' rules. I find that far more probematic than the artillery ranges in MgT:Mercenary. The CT weapon skills are sloppy and bloated. Given the wargamer background of the writers, they shouldn't have been.

 

[mike wightman]

Emm - no.

All characters have every weapon skill at 0.

 

[dean]

Ty - Love the graph.

I tend to the use 68A interpretation and "wing it" to (1) keep the pace moving (2) be able to fudge things as I see fit (3) give the players the illusion I know what the hell I am doing.

 

[atpollard]

Emm - no.

All characters have every weapon skill at 0.

Ok, bad choice of penalty on my part.
I stand corrected, but this [slightly revised] statement ...

Even if I master rifle-3, I still have the same skill-0 with a shotgun or an auto-rifle as the cutlass wielding soldier (TL 3 army?) trying to shoot a shotgun or auto-rifle.

... still seems wrong. How different can aiming a Laser Carbine really be from aiming a Laser Rifle?

Consider non-weapon skills like Wheeled Vehicle, Tracked Vehicle, Wheeled ATV, Tracked ATV. Mastery in one offers no benefit in in another even though the skills are nearly identical in the real world. Thus the Ref is forced to plaster the characters with skill-0 to keep the game moving.

 

[Jame]

Emm - no.

All characters have every weapon skill at 0.

Which is one of my mild peeves; why would a TL-13 computer operator know how to use a halberd?

(I can see anyone of TL-6+ having most firearm skills at level-0, as well as cudgel, brawling, sword, dagger and blade, but that's about it.)

 

[tbeard1999]

Which is one of my mild peeves; why would a TL-13 computer operator know how to use a halberd?

He's a member of the Imperial SCA, of course.

 

[tbeard1999]

Which is one of my mild peeves; why would a TL-13 computer operator know how to use a halberd?

From JTAS #4:

Old Fashioned Weapons

For completeness, Traveller is forced to include a wide variety of weapons such as swords, knives, spears, and other "primitive" weapons. Dealing with primitive cultures, players could find themselves involved & in a fight with a group armed with such weapons, and the rules must cover the use of edged weapons, spears and such.

Another major consideration is law level. American technology produces nukes, artillery, napalm, machineguns, and dozens of other lethal devices, but the law level makes most of these unavailable and puts obstacles in the way of the purchase of the rest. Anyone, however, E can get a knife, or a tire chain, or a louisville slugger. A significant number of killings every year are accomplished with weapons that a caveman would have no trouble with.

As far as the military goes, tradition and esprit de corps can be used to justify the inclusion of some blade training. Perhaps arbitrarily, marines in Traveller receive training in the cutlass as a service skill; it's justified as a morale-building effort, like bayonet training in the US army. (I received bayonet training, hell, I gave bayonet training, and the army hasn't used bayonets in any real action since 1918) Officers in armies all over the world were taught fencing long after it ceased to have any military significance. Over and above all of this, some training is still given in the use of the knife because it is still one of the more efficient ways to kill silently, always of use to commandos and the like.

Finally, both players and referees should keep in mind that old fashioned weapons are not really designed with the idea that characters will depend on them for their lives. Guns, even without skill, are more efficient in most situations and can be used to great effect. Blade skill is a background skill, and should be put to good use only where it is
needed.

In my own Commonwealth campaign, the various services actually encourage troops to take a wide variety of melee weapons training. The general notion is that this causes soldiers to be more aggressive and fearless in combat. Also, the Commonwealth Army, Marines and various Company armies are stationed in a variety of primitive environments.

Thus, taking (say) halberd is easily rationalized. In my campaign at least.

 

[tbeard1999]

Point of Inquiry:
Is talking positive about CT on a thread about "why I dont like it" thread-crapping?

So back on topic ...

What is with all of those stupid LBB1-3 weapon skills?

IMHO, they are game balance decision. In a 2d6 system, a +4 will mean a virtually automatic hit. By requiring each weapon to have a skill attached, you dramatically reduce the incidence of folks with super high weapons skills. This changed with Mercenary's logical (but system busting IMHO) Combat Rifleman skill.

Also, consider that level-0 is given to every character. And CT pistols will generally hit on a 5+ (84%) at the weapon's most effective range (short). CT rifles hit on a 4+ at short range and a 5+ at medium range. And this is with skill level 0.

These are extremely high levels of skill, compared with Real World gun skills. So you can rationalize the fact that weapons skills are separate by acknowledging that characters already have a relatively high skill with all weapons.

But at the end of the day, it really is mainly for play balance.

 

[aramis]

Emm - no.

All characters have every weapon skill at 0.

No, only Bk2 characters do. Supp 4 characters don't.

 

[Pere Ubu]

Unique problem?

I don't know if this is just a "Traveller" thing or what, but it seems to be particularly bad any time I try to start up writing stuff for Traveller - my simulationist side takes over from the gaming side, and suddenly I'm convinced that I need to not only plot the entire history of the future from now until whenever, I have to make the planetary systems AS REALISTIC AS POSSIBLE which means so much for the proliferation of Terran-type worlds that Traveller is known for and hello Mars-types and Venus-types.

Oh, and then if I roll up a subsector I need to know the full history of every planet therein as well as their influence on the other worlds! What's the society? What kind of religion? What kind of economic system? Politics! Labor! Descent issues! And it has to be CONSISTENT! You never know what plot hooks will come out of the trade issues of the past fifty years between Lanth and Regina!

But I can't be worrying about trade 'cause I need to come up with a viable UNIQUE ecosystem for each world, draw an ACCURATE map based on everything I can find out about geology, wind patterns, temprature and hydrodynamics! Oh, and a full assemblage of beasts & plants, UNIQUE again for every world, and a xenobiology to go with it! Oh, and getting back to the culture - we need to think about how English has mutated over the centuries so the world and PC names can be as accurate as possible!

...and then I think about the massiveness of the Earth under my feet and the idea of how BIG our planet is and what it'd take to detail it and doing this for A COUPLE DOZEN WORLDS AT LEAST and I get all overwhelmed and have to go back to D&D or something.

*sigh* This sound at all familiar?

 

[aramis]

Yes, Pere, it does. Finally, I got over it. Let the worlds be archetypes of 3 to 5 of the 30+ acknowledged terrain types on earth. Blame the prevalence of Terran and quasi-terran worlds on the ancients.

Think Traveller as Anime/Manga, rather than realistic, and you get closer to MTU...

Heck, on most worlds, my players don't even leave the extrality zone, unless the noble in the party calls upon the local Baron. (And that often leads to Adventures...)

 

[tbeard1999]

No, only Bk2 characters do. Supp 4 characters don't.

Page 10, Supplement 4: Most characters have a natural weapon expertise (in all gun and blade weapons listed below) of one-half; exceptions are noted.

All characters have a natural expertise of one-half in all blades and polearms; initial receipt of blade combat boosts the skill in the selected weapon to level-1.

Most characters have a natural expertise in all guns listed; receipt of skill initially boosts this expertise to level-1. However, barbarians, bureaucrats, and doctors do not have a natural expertise in guns; they are treated as totally unskilled in guns (per Traveller Book 1, page 30- DM -5 when
attacking).

(Note that a skill of 1/2 is the same as skill level 0).

I don't enforce the limits on barbarians, bureaucrats and doctors in my campaign.

 

[rancke]

I don't enforce the limits on barbarians, bureaucrats and doctors in my campaign.

I let all arms give a default of 0 (or ½) to all similar arms. So a barbarian with a firearms skill has a default skill of 0 in all other firearms, a bureaucrat with a melee skill have a default of 0 in all other melee weapons, etc. And a character without bow skill has the -5 when using bows, even if he is a Book 2 character.


Hans

 

[beowulf2044]

Blade skill, and perhaps more importantly, Brawling, have their place and practical application. The idea that PC's can trapse about on worlds with a population and restrictive law level while armed and amoured with their pet equipment and gear is ridiculous.

As anyone who plays in my games find out quickly; just because these people only inhabit one world doesn't mean they're stupid.

I usually give out a fair 'warning shot'. Sometimes when PC's make planetfall, they'll see a particularly grusome reminder of 'local justice'.

"What happened to him?"

"Oh, he tired to smuggle in a restricted weapon. Poor Traveller."

 

[Supplement Four]

Due to the disparate methodologies, inconsistent DM's, etc, I was never able to get that level of familiarity with CT.

Well, it just takes practice, like any other game. There are several more out there more complicated than CT.

You're a smart guy, Wil. I'm sure if you ran CT games (I know you play a lot), you'd have that stuff (and more) memorized in no time flat.

Heck, since we don't look up the weapon DMs on the matrices (we write the DMs on the character's equipment sheet, next to the weapon), some of my players have even memorized all the DMs for their favorite weapons. A shotgun, at Short Range, vs. Cloth Armor, fired by a character with DEX-5? I've got a player that can spout off the adjusted DM.

Let me ditto that. All those DMs in CT and all scattered about too. It was nearly impossible to locate and collate them. MT's task system isn't perfect, none are, but it was an immediate and substantial improvement over the "fistful of DMs" method in CT.

Folks...remember that the DMs in CT are only guidelines. They're not written in stone. And, many examples are specific, where the DM provided is not used in all situations.

For example, a character with Air/Raft-3 should know a little something about Air/Rafts and should be able to use his skill when picking out a good craft at the local used Air/Raft lot.

Like most CT throws, there's nothing to look up. It's up the the GM how to task this situation.

Emm - no.

All characters have every weapon skill at 0.

Was going to answer, but Aramis beat me to it.

... still seems wrong. How different can aiming a Laser Carbine really be from aiming a Laser Rifle?

I agree. Again, this is up to the GM, though there is no hard rule about this. But, there is a soft rule (you can infer a rule by following a CT example).

Basic Classic Traveller started out as it is in Book 1, where weapon skills were taken singlely. As you say above, it's not "right" to have Revolver-3 but not be able shoot an autopistol with better than a AutoPistol-0 skill.

Traveller "fixed" this, starting with Book 4.

Note skills like Combat Rifleman--skills that include a lot of skills under one title.

In Book 1, we have separate skills for each hangun: Revlover-1, AutoPistol-3, etc.

In Book 4, we see the Handgun skill, that covers all handguns except snub pistols.

In Book 5, we see a Pistol skill, that covers everything that the Handgun skill covers plus snubs.

There's nothing stopping a GM from making a few more "included" skills like that for things he thinks should be related--like Laser Rifle and Laser Carbine. MT does exactly this with the creation of the Laser Weapons skill.

CT even encourages a GM to make these types of rules (See the notes about creating your own skills in Book 1 and Book 0; plus comments LKW says about interpolation in the From The Management section of JTAS #2.

DGP, in some of their publications (Traveller supplements and Traveller's Digest), suggests related skills to be used interchangeably, as noted above, or at one (or more) levels of skill lower. Therefore, a person might be "specialized" in AutoPistol, but be abel to use Revolver at one skill level lower.

Consider non-weapon skills like Wheeled Vehicle, Tracked Vehicle, Wheeled ATV, Tracked ATV.

Why wouldn't they be cannon? They're listed in the LBBs.

No, only Bk2 characters do. Supp 4 characters don't.

Close! Not quite!

Page 10, Supplement 4:

Ahh...TBeard got it right.

 

[Whipsnade]

Folks...remember that the DMs in CT are only guidelines. They're not written in stone. And, many examples are specific, where the DM provided is not used in all situations.

S4,

It's a shame you weren't there to explain that little dodge to my players.

After that (in)famous Space Gamer article we've discussed here before, I was up to my effing earlobes in DMs. The task system streamlined all that. By "sliding" the difficulty rating, I could obviate the need for multiple DMs without argument; i.e. Hanging upside down from an air/raft during a snowstorm while firing an ACR? That's Impossible. Roll it with skill and Dex.


Regards,
Bill

 

[Icosahedron]

I don't know if this is just a "Traveller" thing or what, but it seems to be particularly bad any time I try to start up writing stuff for Traveller - my simulationist side takes over from the gaming side, and suddenly I'm convinced that I need to not only plot the entire history of the future from now until whenever, I have to make the planetary systems AS REALISTIC AS POSSIBLE which means so much for the proliferation of Terran-type worlds that Traveller is known for and hello Mars-types and Venus-types.

Oh, and then if I roll up a subsector I need to know the full history of every planet therein as well as their influence on the other worlds! What's the society? What kind of religion? What kind of economic system? Politics! Labor! Descent issues! And it has to be CONSISTENT! You never know what plot hooks will come out of the trade issues of the past fifty years between Lanth and Regina!

But I can't be worrying about trade 'cause I need to come up with a viable UNIQUE ecosystem for each world, draw an ACCURATE map based on everything I can find out about geology, wind patterns, temprature and hydrodynamics! Oh, and a full assemblage of beasts & plants, UNIQUE again for every world, and a xenobiology to go with it! Oh, and getting back to the culture - we need to think about how English has mutated over the centuries so the world and PC names can be as accurate as possible!

...and then I think about the massiveness of the Earth under my feet and the idea of how BIG our planet is and what it'd take to detail it and doing this for A COUPLE DOZEN WORLDS AT LEAST and I get all overwhelmed and have to go back to D&D or something.

*sigh* This sound at all familiar?

LOL. Yeah, that's familiar. It's called OCD. You need to discipline yourself (no, put that lash away, that's not what I meant) and just develop what is really essential. This is the spirit of CT. Bear everything in mind, but only generate stuff that you intend to use. Make up a storyline you're happy with for the locale and then backfill just what you need, when you need it, fudging rolls to make everything fit together.
CT is seat-of-pants GMing, you're not meant to use everything at once.

 

[Icosahedron]

I agree about the weapon skills, ATP, one of my earliest houserules was to nest similar skills together, usually with a x-1, x-2 format. I always use LBB5's Pistol skill. I've never known it to unbalance a game - characters are usually only using one weapon at a time and rarely carry more than two similar weapons, so what's to unbalance? I wouldn't go for an overall 'firearms' skill, though.

 

[Supplement Four]

It's a shame you weren't there to explain that little dodge to my players.

It' not a dodge. Your player just have to trust you to be a fair judge. People that can't get with the program and are argumentative with the GM, kick 'em out. That's what I do.

No body works harder at an rpg than the GM, and he deserves some respect for that.

I strive to make the fairest calls I can, which garners respect from the players, too.

When I make a call, they trust it, and we keep moving.

After that (in)famous Space Gamer article we've discussed here before, I was up to my effing earlobes in DMs.

Which one? Refresh my memory?

The task system streamlined all that. By "sliding" the difficulty rating, I could obviate the need for multiple DMs without argument; i.e. Hanging upside down from an air/raft during a snowstorm while firing an ACR? That's Impossible. Roll it with skill and Dex.

Or...

"Wow, upside down with an ACR, in a standard 1G field? You think you're James Bond or the Leathal Weapon or something?

"OK, I'll give you a chance. Roll DEX + SKILL or lower on 4D."

See....it's just as simple.



I understand what a task system brings to the table. I also understand what gets lost when a task system is used.

Task systems are good things.

But, they're not perfect in every situation, which is why I tout CT's non-formal system. It can be perfect in every situation.

 

[aramis]

It' not a dodge. Your player just have to trust you to be a fair judge. People that can't get with the program and are argumentative with the GM, kick 'em out. That's what I do.
[snip]

I understand what a task system brings to the table. I also understand what gets lost when a task system is used.

Task systems are good things.

But, they're not perfect in every situation, which is why I tout CT's non-formal system. It can be perfect in every situation.

Except for the situation of a GM who isn't consistent... or doesn't have the same understanding of it as the players, or has not earned player trust.

It's easier to spot this as a player with a formal task system and robust but not encyclopedic library of tasks. It's true in SWd6, and in MT... a bad GM stands out far faster as "out to get you" when the task system creates a solid grounding.