Addicted to Classic Traveller
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Most RPG have not hit locations, just general damage, either in HP, stat reduction, or whatever they use.
In any case, if you want hit locations, you can use On Target (published on Withe Dwarf 28), where you not only know where the hit has gone, but also other damage (broken bones, limb loss, etc) that can cripple a character (for a time, at least) without outright killing it. I think there are more rules for similar hit locations, but that is the one I know.
In any case, if you want hit locations, you can use On Target (published on Withe Dwarf 28), where you not only know where the hit has gone, but also other damage (broken bones, limb loss, etc) that can cripple a character (for a time, at least) without outright killing it. I think there are more rules for similar hit locations, but that is the one I know.
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mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
In CT your to hit roll is your attempt to strike your opponent somewhere it will do damage to them.
You as the referee get to describe the actual wound, if you want to. What I use is:
Dex hit - damage to sensory and nervous system
Str hit - damage to musculature
End - blood loss, internal organ damage
The severity of the hit allows me to add more detail to the above.
And yes I allow player characters to snipe, but so can NPCs...
You as the referee get to describe the actual wound, if you want to. What I use is:
Dex hit - damage to sensory and nervous system
Str hit - damage to musculature
End - blood loss, internal organ damage
The severity of the hit allows me to add more detail to the above.
And yes I allow player characters to snipe, but so can NPCs...
Hey, Mike. So when a PC shoots at an NPC (or another PC) wearing combat armor and rolls a hit, what do you (as a ref) do next in that situation as far as damage/injury?
pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Please see page 46 of LBB 1 for details.
CT doesn't have a unified skill resolution mechanic.
Combat uses 2d6+Skill±Mods for 8+, both for personal and ship, but several skills have specific mechanics that are rolls for other target numbers, and a couple adventures specify other throws, including one multi-die vs Combined Strength of attempting characters.
I find it interesting how some of the Classic Traveller skill descriptions mention what their roll numbers are. Not every skill uses 8+, for example.
The target goes down or not. That's all that needs to happen as far as the players are worried about. Any detailed info is needless chrome that muddies the waters and slows down the game. In fact, in over 3 decades of running and playing the game I've never had anyone worry about such things.
Now if you want to take armor out of the to-hit equation and make it a question of hitting the target vs. actually penetrating whatever is between the target and you to cause injury then use Striker or AHL. I've used Striker since it came out - off and on - and still no worries about hit location.
The beauty of CT, to me, has always been the simplicity of the rules (with some minor quibbles about consistency across editions and supplements notwithstanding) allowing me to make up my TU from whole cloth. I've never even felt the need for using canon since the game made it so easy to invent everything in my game. Running the system is a breeze since there is hardly ever a need to look up some obscure rule or myriad tables for working up characters. Any generation system in the rules is a blast to use and the thing is fun to run even solo so I can game out scenarios before adding them to active play. I can teach anyone to play to less than 30 minutes - try that with a D20 game! And modifying anything in the game can be done easily without upsetting the balance; the game system is that robust in its simplicity.
To me RPG playing is about using the imagination and not relying on canon unless the game environment relies on it for some reason adn the canon is then an extension of the rules in themselves. Like sanity in Call of Cthulhu and the Mythos background as canon - you can separate canon form the rules in that game. In CT you can actually run anything you want - scif, sword and sorcery, modern era, and even wargaming without any RPG. CT is generic enough that I can run what I want with the rules. Only Chaosium's BRP rivals it (though I haven't played much GURPS - it is just too much in there) for intuitive game play in my experience.
I did get the MT rules with the intention of expanding the ship design in the game but I realized that nobody had ever wanted more complicated ship design and rules than maybe myself sometimes. And I could add pretty much anything to CT with a few die roll modifiers and using the 8/10/12 system for tasking that I already did. So I didn't need MT.
But I also understand the allure of chrome, hence my mountains of widgets from Striker, complicated rosters n' details about the workings of ships and houserulings of same, and detailed description of alien environments and lifeforms. But most of that is largely for my own amusement, and doesn't needlessly complicate the game mechanics. Nor get in the way of smooth playing by interrupting our imaginations to look something up - something I hate about the more 'modern' game systems that seem more about selling rules by the pound than providing room for imaginative play and story telling.
Well said, and my experience pretty much. I find CT combat the bar upon which I judge other combat for speed and ease of use; somewhere along the line, the other end of slow, dense combat became D&D style. So the saying for judgement was always between the two, such as: "It's not CT fast, but not as slow as D&D", which isn't exactly true, because of games like rollmaster.
Ditto.
I often describe my 'rational' for unusual roll targets, allowing Players to remind me of any forgotten aspects. Like a prior injury, a skill, background or recent roleplay I forgot. The latter is extremely rare, given how concisely a CT PC is defined by just a handful of skills.
My players don't really worry about mechanics - that's my job. Its also my job to make sure they don't have reason to worry about the mechanics...
If the adjusted target roll is met on the 'to hit' roll, then an attack has penetrated the opponent's combat armor (i.e. - it is an effective hit). Roll for damage and apply as appropriate.
My take on characteristic relationships is different from Mike's, but the essential concept is the same. In my games, DEX, for example, often involves joints - relative amount and roleplay determines where and to what extent, ex: spranged vs. broken wrists; cut thumb vs. dislocated; etc. END can involve blurred vision and concussion which is more roleplay elaborated - but can affect NPC actions 'mechanically'. The rules provide for END to limit effectiveness via 'weakened blows', for instance.
If the 'to hit' fails due to the range of the combat armor DM - then I will often describe some 'damage' to the combat armor. Depending on the nature of the attack, actual roll and roleplay, such 'damage' may result in changing the DMs or impairing the owner in future actions.
Failing a 'to hit' just means no effective hit - glancing blows, cloth snagging munitions, hair searing lasers, etc. can still be described for close rolls.
Upon exposure to the unified task mechanic and expanded skill aspects of MgT, I thought - wow, this is great stuff. It seems like CT should be harder because it defines less for the Ref. But then, after playing and trying to codify what I had been doing with CT for decades, I came to the realization that a number of others seem to share... CT's simple and vague rules, and less expansive chargen, have some really nice inherent properties.
Either ruleset, and probably most, can be made to work - but, for myself, the effort with CT is minimal. Maybe I'm forgetting difficulties, but I don't think so. I remember flipping through the books in the first two or three games - but since then everything just seemed natural. A handful of pages for table reference, some pre-genned NPCs and worlds, and I'm good to go... heck, given familiarity with UPPs, skills and UWPs, one can wind everything.<shrug>
No, CT is easy to use because it is simple. It's just doesn't provide a level of detail that is satisfying to me.
The game system I eventually evolved to suit me has a character sheet roughly as complex as that of GURPS and game mechanics somewhat between CT and GURPS in complexity.
One very early change I made was to use 3D instead of 2D for skill resolution. I doubled the limit on skill levels and increased the number of skill levels received somewhat (Later I used advanced character generation for a while).At that point I think it could still be called a CT variant. Later I switched to D20s and changed the skill levels completely (a professional was skill-12+) and used a point buy system for character generation.
Hans
The lack of uniformity makes it actually MORE complex in play than MT or TNE. At least when playing with rule-lawyering munchkins like I've been known to do.
Ah, well, it was a long time ago and I can't remember the details. I do remember that the resolution provided by two dice wqs too crude for me.
Hans
Crude vs complex: two relatively unrelated elements.
Crude, in this case, implying lack of precision.
Complex being, in my case, more to remember.
Crude seems to, based upon your statements, imply granularity size is too large of a probability shift for a given level, presumably the minimum shift from a modifier.
Granularity is readily adjustable...
Taking the CT combat rolls as example... 2d6+Skill (-4 to +4, roughly)+Armor vs Weapon (+4 to -8) + Range vs Weapon (+4 to -8 roughly)... for a skill+(+8 to -16)... vs a TN of 8+.
Apply those same modifiers to 3d6 and 12+ instead of 2d6 and 8+, and you get a much less dramatic exclusions, but reduce strongly the impact of the minimum modifer for extreme cases, but much greater for central range cases. Switching instead to 2d10 makes the steps much smoother, but minimalizes skill. Using 2d12, and double skill, and you neatly halve the effect of a minimum or maximum modifer, but retain skill's impact almost exactly.
Me, I like the granularity of 2d6. I also like the nifty difficulty labels of MT which clearly fit based upon default Stat 7 and Skill 1. Sure, it reduced effective granularity for tasks even further, but simplified the game overall by no longer needing special rules for many skills. And made it possible for me to run the game much faster.
Yeah, rule-lawyering munchkins would have less to argue with CT rules - and feel compelled to argue with the Ref's decisions more.
Suspect a good 'Referee Primer' book would also have helped a lot of folks - without codified skill checks, a lot more depends on a Ref's experience and ability to deal with dice odds - and players.
Yeah, rule-lawyering munchkins would have less to argue with CT rules - and feel compelled to argue with the Ref's decisions more.
WRONG. DEAD WRONG.
CT, with its multiple discrete subsystems - including a dogfighting rule buried in Ship's Boat rather than in ship combat, gives the gorram munchins MORE to argue about, because the rules are incoherently buried in various places.
And then, some rules in CT are weakly worded... Just take a look at the threads on how damage is applied...
For example, Understanding Classic Traveller Combat Damage
S4 is (rather arguably) one of the better informed CT rules-lawyers out there... and even he gets it wrong... at least according to 5 other canonistas - Hans, Myself, Arthur Pollard, Ty Beard, and Dan (FarTrader). 5 Canonistas who frequently disagree on subtle setting points, but all of whom agree on how the CT damage rules read.
Damage is one issue. And that's just "how to understand the rules"... with all of us using TTB as our quote-source. And ignores that CT 1E has different damages entirely!
Worse, CT has multiple sub-editions... 2 readily identified editions (CT 1E and 2E), plus two more that are subtle variants of 2E (TTB and Starter), and half-a-dozen printings of 1E, each with some subtle changes from the prior. Get a group where the rules lawyer has 1st printing Bk1, another has 5th, another has 12th (which is 2E), another has TTB, and another has Starter, and you have multiple versions of the rules, with subtle variations introduced in odd places.
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pendragonman
Absent Friends Margrave
Sadly, due to experience, I have to agree with Aramis here. Let us not forget the combined books reprint, which differs from any edition of the LBBs and TTB...
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
The combat system in Traveller is probably its biggest headache, which is why I use something else.
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