Supplement Four
SOC-14 5K
Though I've never put a lot of directed thought on it, I've often daydreamed about a system like the Striker design sequences or TNE's FF&S where one could go through the system and end up with output that exactly matches all the stats the CT uses for weapons and equipment. With Striker, you can make an ATV similar to the one in the Traveller Book. What I've always wanted is way to create a generic shotgun and have it match exactly the shotgun stats in CT.
The old James Bond RPG by Victory Games has one of the best systems I've ever seen for this type of thing. Within just a few pages, you could take a real world weapon, input the weapon's real world stats, and have game stats outputted by the system. This allowed you to bring in all types of real world weapons into the game using the same system that was used to create the other weapons in the game.
Of course, with Traveller, we're not always talking about real world weapons. We'd need a method to create FGMPs.
The reason I've never put a lot of thought or effort into creating such a system for Traveller is that I thought it would be near impossible and a real bear to tackle such a mountainous problem. I saw Loren once say that many of the stats used for CT weapons were just their best-guesses, back in the early days of GDW. They weren't created, as the weapons in the James Bond RPG, using any type of system--rather just educated guesses that felt right to them.
It's dawned on me, though, that there is a way to create such a system for CT. You could copy what Marc has done with the Makers in T5.
The Makers, really, are just lists. If/Then statements. If your shotugn is an assault shotgun, then use this number for this stat. If your shotgun is not assault and is a basic weapon, then use this different stat instead.
In order to make a CT "Weapon Maker", all you'd have to do is use the pre-existing weapons as the baseline, and then extrapolate from there for different types of weapons.
For example, following through the system to make a basic shotgun, you'd end up with the exact stats from CT: It does 4D damage, weighs 3750 grams, with Required DEX 7 or a -2 mod, etc.
Then, you could just go through the various CT supplements and adventures, looking for other base-line material. I remember shotgun-style rounds for revolvers. New miliary weapon in Book 4. Loren's Laster-Pistol example from JTAS. We've got stats in the Traveller Book for scopes and extended stocks.
Gather all this data. Use it as a baseline. Then extrapolate the rest: How different from the standard CT shotgun would an auto-assault shotgun be?
Boom.
You've got a CT Weapon Maker.
Yeah, it'd be alot of work, but if done properly, it would be a tool that GMs could use to bring into their CT games just about any type of weapon the GM could dream up.
Just a thought.
The old James Bond RPG by Victory Games has one of the best systems I've ever seen for this type of thing. Within just a few pages, you could take a real world weapon, input the weapon's real world stats, and have game stats outputted by the system. This allowed you to bring in all types of real world weapons into the game using the same system that was used to create the other weapons in the game.
Of course, with Traveller, we're not always talking about real world weapons. We'd need a method to create FGMPs.
The reason I've never put a lot of thought or effort into creating such a system for Traveller is that I thought it would be near impossible and a real bear to tackle such a mountainous problem. I saw Loren once say that many of the stats used for CT weapons were just their best-guesses, back in the early days of GDW. They weren't created, as the weapons in the James Bond RPG, using any type of system--rather just educated guesses that felt right to them.
It's dawned on me, though, that there is a way to create such a system for CT. You could copy what Marc has done with the Makers in T5.
The Makers, really, are just lists. If/Then statements. If your shotugn is an assault shotgun, then use this number for this stat. If your shotgun is not assault and is a basic weapon, then use this different stat instead.
In order to make a CT "Weapon Maker", all you'd have to do is use the pre-existing weapons as the baseline, and then extrapolate from there for different types of weapons.
For example, following through the system to make a basic shotgun, you'd end up with the exact stats from CT: It does 4D damage, weighs 3750 grams, with Required DEX 7 or a -2 mod, etc.
Then, you could just go through the various CT supplements and adventures, looking for other base-line material. I remember shotgun-style rounds for revolvers. New miliary weapon in Book 4. Loren's Laster-Pistol example from JTAS. We've got stats in the Traveller Book for scopes and extended stocks.
Gather all this data. Use it as a baseline. Then extrapolate the rest: How different from the standard CT shotgun would an auto-assault shotgun be?
Boom.
You've got a CT Weapon Maker.
Yeah, it'd be alot of work, but if done properly, it would be a tool that GMs could use to bring into their CT games just about any type of weapon the GM could dream up.
Just a thought.
