Originally posted by Supplement Four:
Tbeard, you know, with my simple CT combat system, I've basically done two things:
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Doesn't that suit your quest for a non-broken 2D6 system?
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Doesn't that already do what you're trying to accomplish?
No, but that's not the fault of your system. Your system looks fine to me; maybe not what I'd design from scratch, but that's just a matter of taste.
And I too have a combat system derived from Striker that I am quite happy with. It, at least for now, is a 2d6 system.
So maybe I haven't been as clear as I should -- I am not arguing that 2d6 (or 3d6) systems are inherently flawed. Rather, I am arguing that they contain serious limitations that are often ignored by game designers and proponents of such systems.
Regarding your combat system, the problem is that I have a specific goal in this exercise -- to *fix* the problems in CT, and to avoid wholesale replacement of entire systems. Your combat system (and my Striker derived one) would violate that goal. As would almost every mod of Traveller that I've seen (including my own).
And when I asked myself what Traveller really is, I decided that whatever it really is includes the game system itself, at least the system contained in the original set. That's what I started with long ago. It also includes the technology assumptions -- guns instead of blasters, swords, huge variations in tech between worlds*, no FTL communications, relatively slow FTL, etc. I exclude the setting -- I'm don't even use the Third Imperium most of the time.
This brought me to the contention that my "real" Traveller campaign would be fake if I ditched the combat system. Or used GURPs. Etc.
So I explicitly set out to keep the existing mechanics intact as much as possible, though acknowledging the need to fix them.
This goal required me to actually define what specific flaws exist in CT (in my opinion anyhow). I ultimately concluded that the problems mostly derive from the 2d6 system.
Or more accurately the fact that CT contains a regime of inappropriate modifiers for a 2d6 regime.
An unintended consequence -- I respect Marc Miller's design abilities even more now, because the 3 LBB original version of Traveller works pretty darned well. The problem is that it has no room for expansion. So more powerful weapons broke the system. Ditto with character generation systems that doubled the number of skills a character was likely to get. And even with "reasonable" changes like allowing a generic Pistol skill in lieu of skills with specific weapons.
And to my surprise, it turns out that it *is* possible to fix the worst problems that *I* have with CT without replacing the combat system or utterly re-writing the character generation system.
By simply altering the gun data, I was able to make the original CT system work, even with Mercenary weaponry. Or so it appears.
Is it better than your combat system (or mine)? Doubtful, since I design the games *I* want to play. Presumably you do likewise. I wouldn't expect an off the shelf system to compete with a system designed from scratch to fit my desires.
For character generation, the key realization for me was that Books 4+ chargen is the problem. The key problem is that the 2d6(8+ success) system is very sensitive to even a modest numerical difference in skill levels. A chargen system that churns out characters with twice the number of skills on average as Book 3/COI will unavoidably tend to produce characters that have higher skill levels (and more of them) than CT's mechanics can handle. The grouping of weapon skills into logical categories is part of the problem as well -- it allows you to more easily obtain higher skill levels in a variety of weaponry. That stresses and then breaks the 2d6 system. So my fix for that is easy -- at the end of each 4 year term, you discard skills in excess of what you'd get in Book 1 (1 skill per term + 1 per promotion). And weapon skills are taken for individual weapons.
*I wanted to compliment you on your excellent defense of wide tech level disparities. You're right -- Traveller travel is very expensive and costly. Assuming cr1 equals a 1978 dollar, a middle passage for a single jump costs the equivalent of $25K+ in today's money. Even the humble low passage isn't cheap at the equivalent of $3600. And like you say, you'll do this on a cramped fishing boat. Technology isn't gonna spread all that quickly in this kind of setting.
