CSC and skills proliferation

[MongooseMatt]

There is a difference between the weapons you are familiar with and the weapons you are actually rated for.

Indeed - this is why it is a speciality skill. Once you have gained skill in one firearm, you can use them all with _some_ degree of familiarity, and have the option to specialise in more.

For everyone else, remember, these rules are _optional_. If you feature a lot of guns on your games, they may be useful. If not, you'll find the vast majority of weapons slide quite neatly into one of the original specialities.

 

[MongooseMatt]

So, if one would most probably see it as unnecessarily complicated to intro-
duce dozens of subskills for all the other skills, why should one want to in-
troduce a lot of subskills for the gun combat skill ?

Because it is a fair assumption that Gun Combat will be used somewhat more than the others.

Now, the Pilot skill, there is a good argument there for breaking down a speciality for every type of ship (and variation of ship).

Not that we will

 

[MongooseMatt]

One of my gripes about MGT is that PCs receive too many skills. All those modifiers tend to stress a 2D6 system, since there are only 11 outcomes to a throw, and less than that are likely and useful (2.7% chance of 2 or 12 wipes out two results right there).

And groups still seem to lack the one skill they need when they hit an issue. . .

 

[rust]

Because it is a fair assumption that Gun Combat will be used somewhat more than the others.

I do not quite see how the fact that a certain skill is used more often trans-
lates into a necessity to split it into a higher number of subskills ... but in the
end this does not matter, as it is optional anyway.

 

[Supplement Four]

And groups still seem to lack the one skill they need when they hit an issue. . .

If you think that every play group should have at least one character with the exact skill needed to do a job, then you've hit on a specific major difference in gaming philosophy between you and me.

Because, I believe, the characters shouldn't always, 100% of the time, be equipped to deal with a situation. Sometimes, they need to be underdogs when it comes to making a throw.

 

[ThunderChilde]

Mmmmm, just a GM ruminating here. In the curent arc of my campaign I can go several ways. Most of them require skills the pc's don't have, and a series of nights with a -3 to your throw challenges will get very frustrationg and perchance lethal.

One pc managed to get JOAT/2, which means they have one asset that might not screw the pooch every time they touch the dice.

So, I can make one player serve as a crutch for some of the situations, and everyone else will be on thier own the rest of the time.

Or I can, if the players follow the drift of the adventure at hand, work it in another direction where they have better chances.

 

[Sturn]

Looking at the police, they're only going to give basic sidearms training, taser and melee weapon (night stick or stun baton) training to their beat cops, and assault shotgun and sniper rifle training to their Emergency Response Unit troops.

My department gives shotgun training and assault rifle training to every officer, since every car including even investigations has a shotgun and M4 or M16 assault rifle. The North Hollywood shoot out I believe was a large impetus to change from the old ways which made your statement true in many departments in the US a decade ago.

 

[Sturn]

One pc managed to get JOAT/2, which means they have one asset that might not screw the pooch every time they touch the dice.

I've never allowed Jack of all Trades skill.

 

[rust]

My department gives shotgun training and assault rifle training to every officer, since every car including even investigations has a shotgun and M4 or M16 assault rifle.

It is similar over here. A SMG, usually a Heckler und Koch MP 5, is a part of
the standard equipment of every police car.

 

[rancke]

Slug Pistol: Snub Pistol, Auto. Pistol, Revolver, SMG w/collapsed stock.
Slug Rifle: Carbine, Rifle, Auto. Rifle, SMG w/stock.
Machinegun: Bipod and tripod mounted machineguns.
Energy Pistol: Laser Pistol, Plasma Pistol, Laser Carbine w/collapsed stock.
Energy Rifle: Laser Rifle, Laser Carbine w/stock, Plasma Guns.
Launcher: Grenade Launcher, RPGs, Missile Launcher?
Mortar: Only the kind that are a tube mounted on a ground plate.
Artillery: Heavier true "cannons", not mortars. Includes tank guns and howitzers fired directly. Perhaps Indirect Fire and Forward Observer would handle any indirect weapon (mortar, howitzer, grenade launcher) fired with a spotter?

With caveat that I don't have the MGT Core Rules (the only MGT book I have so fat is MGT:The Spinward Marches, though I'll be putting some of the others on my birthday wish list), I will suggest that it'd be easy to make weapon skills as broad as other skills. Simply distinguish between skills and familiarities. Whenever someone gets a level of a skill you think ought to be a familiarity, he gets a level of the "parent" skill and a familiarity with that weapon (Second and subsequent reciepts of the same weapon just gives him another level of the parent skill). Whenever someone gets a level of a skill that you think ought to have familiarities, he gets a level of that skill and has to chose a familiarity (So someone who gets 'Biology' has to chose a field).

Extra familiarities should be easier to get than extra skill levels (though not trivial). They should also be easier to lose (if the character stops using a weapon regularly, he'd lose his familiarity with it eventually) albeit even easier to reacquire.

Use of a skill with an unfamiliar weapon or field or whatever should incur some sort of 'unfamiliar' penalty, though not as big as the 'unskilled' penalty.


Hans

 

[rust]

By the way, the Central Supply Catalogue also has rules for "Understanding
Technological Items" (p. 16 - 18), and they could easily be adapted to the
understanding of unfamiliar types of weapons, I think.

 

[MongooseMatt]

If you think that every play group should have at least one character with the exact skill needed to do a job, then you've hit on a specific major difference in gaming philosophy between you and me.

Umm, my point is that they wouldn't. . .

 

[aramis]

My department gives shotgun training and assault rifle training to every officer, since every car including even investigations has a shotgun and M4 or M16 assault rifle. The North Hollywood shoot out I believe was a large impetus to change from the old ways which made your statement true in many departments in the US a decade ago.

It is similar over here. A SMG, usually a Heckler und Koch MP 5, is a part of
the standard equipment of every police car.

Locally, every police car has some form of autorifle (Some are M1, some are CAR-15/M-16), a Shotgun (Semi-auto.)

Umm, my point is that they wouldn't. . .

I found that the packages make it possible to "take for granted" that a particular campaign baseline is covered... but a multi-subgenre campaign will have lots of gaps.

 

[LiamKerrington]

Reactivating topic and trending it towards Zero-G-Weapons

Hello everyone,

yeah, sorry for reactivating this thread. But I thought: Since I have a specific questions on "Zero-G-Weapons" it might be alright that I raise this question in this particular topic instead of starting a new one.

Today two friends and I sat together and created three Traveller characters based on the (German version of) Traveller Mongoose Edition. We also used the CSC as a sourcebook for euqipment; but we were heavily troubled by this particular supplement.

Since neither the foreword in this book nor the rules section did mention anything about 'exchanging' the skill-specializations for Hand Gun Combat of the core-rulebook, we had some trouble how to deal with the new weapons - especially with the Zero-G-Weapons as a sole category of guns or kind of a new family of weapons or chimera of weapons or whatever.

Now, considering your thoughts in this topic I think it is safe to assume that with the CSC the "Zero-G-Weapons" are meant to be an own class / specialization of weapons under the general skill of Hand Gun Combat. But I would like to discuss a different solution for this new category of guns.

Since Zero-G-Guns are meant to be weapons which are supposed to minimize or even nullify their recoil-effects in zero-g- or free-fall-combat, would it be a a solid or valid means of applying rules in the following way:
Normally using guns in zero-g-environments or during free fall is influenced by your Zero-G-skill; if you don't have any rank (not even 0) in Zero-G, then according to the Mongoose Traveller rules any action suffers a -2 on its role - which means: any actions including firing guns.
But since Zero-G-guns are meant to be performed in those specific situations they also could minimize (reducing it by half to -1)or nullify the negativ effect of the missing skill making it easier for anyone to shoot this kind of weapon in the given situation - even without any rank in his or her Zero-G-skill.

This 'solution' would a) solve the issue of having too many too detailed specilizations for general skills in Traveller, b) raise no questions of consistency regarding the specific Zero-G-guns and their comparable brethren in the standard-weapon-categories, and finally c) cover the interaction of various skills in certain situations (Zero-G-skill influencing gunfights in zero-g-environments).

What are your thoughts on this?

Best wishes!
Liam

 

[atpollard]

Zero G Weapons

Normal Rifles (like a German Mauser or an M14/M16), Normal Pistols (like a Colt 1911 or Glock-17) and Accelerator Pistols are each Held and Aimed very differently from each other.

A marksman trained in the Rifle will grip the weapon to absorb the recoil without sustaining injury, and aim to compensate for significant bullet drop and possible crosswind conditions and other factors critical at 500 to 1000 meter shots in the great outdoors.

A marksman trained in the Pistol will grip the weapon to steady the sight, control barrel rise and quickly regain aim for another shot (double shots often being critical to assuring success with a 9mm round), and aims for center of mass since both the range and accuracy are usually fairly small, rendering most of the Rifle shot factors meaningless.

A marksman trained in Zero-G Weapons will grip the weapon with a complete disregard for recoil (since there is none for accelerator rounds) and may well be accustomed to a Vacc Suit HUD aiming system to locate where a projectile will hit, and accustomed to dealing with a minimum effective range, a maximum effective guided range, and a maximum effective unguided range. He may also be trained to compensate for the difference between zero-G shots in an atmosphere and zero-G shots in vacuum and variable gravity conditions.

These seem like VERY different skill and training sets. A Rifleman firing a zero-G weapon, may tend to shoot high as he instinctively compensates for a gravity that may not be there or may be different than his home world. A Pistol shooter may not remember the minimum effective range of accelerator rounds and suffer ineffective shots as well as suffer unnecessary limitations and delays ignoring his HUD and aiming/bracing the weapon.

Ironically, a person trained in Laser weapons might have a skill set very similar to the skills needed in Zero-G, since light has no recoil and no range drop.

Those are my thoughts.
Good luck.

 

[LiamKerrington]

Hi there,

thank your for your explanations. I think that helps me understand things a lot better.
On the German 13Mann-Forum I joined an insightful debate about skills and sepcialization in Mongoose Traveller. And currently I am more willing to accept that new specializations, although they are not necessarily called as such, are to be treated exactly like that. This means that my solution I mentioned above is quite pointless. Zero-G-Weapons is supposed to be a specialization. Period.

I am fine with that.
Yesterday, when my friends and I discussed it, I think we got too heavily involved with thinking and questioning the not so perfect German translation which actually made us assume and misunderstand things.

Best wishes!
Liam

 

[CosmicGamer]

What are the books rules regarding the negative aspects of firing a non zero G weapon with recoil in zero G.
- The aforementioned -2 DM to any skill check if the character doesn't have the skill.
- The fact that recoil can still reduce initiative. Although I'd think this would be based on dex instead of str for zero g.

Is there anything else in the book?

It seams there should be some other negatives. I guess this is something for the GM and players to role play perhaps with a zero G skill check needed each time the gun is fired?

 

[atpollard]

Hi there,

thank your for your explanations. I think that helps me understand things a lot better.

Those were just my thoughts on the way the rules reflect reality within the game.

Personally, I think that there are too many specializations over all and I do not really accept that being an expert marksman with a German Mauser (say Rifle-4) would grant absolutely no benefit when shooting a gauss rifle. It seems to me that the individual has 99% of the skills needed to be an expert marksman with a gauss rile and just needs to spend some range time running 1000 rounds through the gauss rifle to become fully as proficient in the gauss rifle as his years of practice have made him in the Mauser.

Strictly IMTU:
I like to start with the broadest possible category for Skill-1 and require some narrower scope for each additional level of skill. As an example, the character might gain Rifleman-1 which grants skill 1 with all two-handed long arms (CPR rifle, gauss rifle, ak-47, laser rifle, accelerator rifle, etc.). For the next skill level, he adds CPR Rifleman-2 which grants his skill-2 with any CPR long arm and allows him to keep skill-1 with a gauss rifle or laser rifle. The third skill level requires him to narrow his expertise to Bolt-Action CPR Rifleman-3 which allows skill-3 when using any bolt-action rifle, skill-2 with any other CPR rifle and skill-1 with any non-CPR rifle. At Skill-4, the specific make of bolt-action rifle makes a difference in achieving optimal performance, and at skill-5 he needs his specific weapon balanced to his precise specifications to achieve top performance (like an Olympic marksman).

I would allow him to practice with about 1000 shots to retrain for a new make or a new specific weapon ... say 100 carefully aimed shots per day for 10 days.

I would also allow a character the choice to broaden his skill rather than deepen it. For example, the character with CPR Rifleman-2 (+2 with CPR rifle & +1 with any other rifle) who gains another skill level, might not choose to specialize in Bolt-Action CPR Rifleman-3 but choose instead to broaden his skill from CPR Rifleman-2 to CPR/Gauss Rifleman-2 and gain skill 2 with any CPR Rifle or any Gauss Rifle and skill-1 with any non-CPR/Gauss rifle (like a laser rifle, for example).

But those are just my personal preferences.

 

[LiamKerrington]

Hi there,

@atpollard: I think the what I grasp and actually embrace is the way of your thinking, because it is quite close to my personal wishes and ideas about things. I only know Classic Traveller theoretically, it is very long ago that I gathered some experience with Traveller TNE, and Mongoose Traveller (which seems to be very close to Classic Traveller to me) I only have some basic understanding about; I totally lack the proper understanding of the skill-concepts and the rich details of the game which - after all - makes it different from the core of Classic Traveller.

What I draw from your postings is, I guess, one major feature of the whole Traveller-gaming: you (the gamer, the gamemaster, the gaming-group, or who/whatever) need to evaluate and decide things; and since many concepts are kind of concepts there is at least some little room for some 'houseruling' which would not even conflict with the general rule concepts of the game.

And that is what I take from your postings when I simply write I would understand things more properly. Thank you again.

Best wishes!
Liam