First Impressions from MGT

[Supplement Four]

There have been advances in the state of the art in the last 31 years, and some of them actually have merit.

What advances are you speaking of? Does MGT or any other version of Traveller implement these advances?

Traveller's chargen system was revolutionary at the time, and aspects of it still hold up, but the cold, unrelenting randomness of it is one aspect that hasn't aged well. Game mechanics that force you to create your character a certain way either sometimes saddle players with characters they just don't want to play, or else get ignored.

That hasn't been my experience at all. In my last CT campaign, I brought in two players who were gamers but had never played Traveller before. When I explained chargen to them, they took your stance above. "Whaddya mean I can't play what I want?"

Then...we went through chargen. I role play through CT chargen. I play it like the game, except dice rolls represent multi-year happenings instead of multi-second events. And, guess what. Both new players had a blast! Their opinion of CT chargen changed--in fact, one said it was the most interesting, most fun character generation session he'd ever had. The other agreed.

I find CT chargen rather addicting. This type of chargen is not appropriate for all types of games. The James Bond game, or the Star Wars rpg would suffer with a system like this. But, for Traveller's "atmosphere", it works well.

And I really don't peoples' attachment to CT's survival rolls...

From a mechanics perspective, it is a limiter having the effect of keeping skills low. Any 2D mechanic is easily broken with too many modifiers.

From a role playing persepective, it offers the same thrill in character generation as one gets in a dangerous gun fight. If the player becomes attached to his character, he's got a decision to make? Does he want to risk another term, with the reward being more skills? If he fails, this character he likes is dead. It's not unlike a game situation where the GM says, "There's someone with a gun around the corner. You know he's there. You heard him cock his weapon. Are you sure you want to dash across the room? It may end ugly...".

 

[Supplement Four]

For those of you that don't have the book, the deck plan is available as a free PDF here http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/pdf/travpreview4.pdf

BTW, those aren't the corrected plans. On the 1.5m scale of the plans, the vessel represented is only half the size it should be: 100 ton vessel with only 45 tons of interior volumn. 45 + 24 tons for the fuel tanks is 69 tons, leaving one to wonder where the other 30% of the ship is.

I understand that Mongoose will be offering corrected plans as a pdf--but it's not quite out yet. Should be soon.

 

[rust]

But, for Traveller's "atmosphere", it works well.

It may work well for the kind of "atmosphere" you prefer for your Traveller
games, but my players would hate it and refuse to accept it.
They want to play a certain kind of character with a certain role in the set-
ting (e.g. a belter or a scientist), because they expect that character to be
the most fun for them.
And since roleplaying is mostly about fun, not about rules, I think they are
right to build exactly the character they wish to roleplay.

From a role playing persepective, it offers the same thrill in character generation as one gets in a dangerous gun fight.

From my point of view, the aim of character generation is to create a cha-
racter the player wants to play within the setting and can play in the set-
ting over a long campaign.
To me, the momentary "thrill" of a "dangerous" character generation has a
tendency to ruin the long-term fun by producing characters unsuitable to
the setting.

 

[Golan2072]

Impression from the Combat System
The MGT combat system is merely 9 pages long, including tables (and thankfully not too many of them) and even vehicle combat (and repair) rules. This is a great thing for an RPG combat system as long as the system works - as it means that the system is simple, and, hopefully, efficient. And, expect for two major pitfalls (problematic armor rules and unclear vehicle movement rules), it actually is quite a good and efficient system. And it covers quite a lot of subjects as well, all without being overly complicated.

Unlike the playtest rules, initiative doesn't use Timing dice, but instead a roll of 2D6+the Dexterity DM at the beginning of the combat encounter. This base initiative stays for the remainder of this encounter (and whoever has the higher initiative acts first), BUT several factors may change initiative temporarily (for one combat round at a time), such as using heavy melee weapons or firearms with serious recoil (especially in full auto), or trying to hasten one's action at the price of a negative DM to all actions.

Each round you could perform one minor action (such as movement, driving a vehicle or aiming), one significant action (such as firing), and any number of free actions (such as speaking a word or flipping a switch within your reach). Alternatively, you could forgo all your actions to perform an extended action - any action taking more than one combat round (such as first aid). You could also react to attacks (by parrying or dodging) any number of times you want, but each such reaction gives penalties to task rolls until the end of the current round.

The attack roll is a task roll, and thus very similar to CT to-hit rolls: skill, plus the appropriate characteristic DM and any relevant other DMs. 8+ hits. An interesting thing is that you could now use DEX in lieu of STR in order to provide the DM to hit in melee. At first glance it looks as if the role of Strength in combat is diminished, but it isn't - STR now helps dealing with heavy melee weapons or with firearm recoil; a weak but agile character could aim a heavy melee weapon well, but would take longer than a stronger character to recover and get the weapon ready again (in game terms, heft or recoil penalizes Initiative for the next round).

There are two types of automatic fire: bursts and auto-fire. Bursts simply increases damage by the weapon's autofire rating while wasting ammo than a single shot and having a larger recoil penalty. Auto-fire means that for the attack roll you roll a number of dice equal to the weapon's auto-fire rating and assign two of them to each target (BEFORE rolling, I hope!) as long as the targets are close to each another - so you get multiple attacks; but recoil is very heavy in that mode and it spends a lot of ammo.

Unlike CT, thrown weapons now use attack rolls like any other ranged weapon, but use the Athletics (Coordination) skill instead of Gun Combat.

You could now use Tactics or Leadership to increase the initiative of others, but while tactics allows you to increase the initiative of all characters under your command, Leadership only increases the Initiative of one character at a time.

Cover works by giving a negative DM to hit, and if you're prone behind cover the DMs for both cover and being prone stack - up to DM -6 when being prone behind full cover!

MGT uses range-bands by default, though there are rules for using square-grids as well. Range gives a DM to hit as in CT, but is per category (e.g. Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun, Assault Weapon and so on) rather than by individual weapon.

At first glance, MGT damage looks like CT, but a closer look reveals that it is quite different. Damage is deducted from the physical characteristics, alright, and you die when all three characteristics reach zero, but here the differences start. For starters, damage is taken first from Endurance and only then from a target's choice of Dexterity or Strength (though there is an optional rule to choose any physical characteristic to be the first instead of END). Also, you don't fall unconscious when your END reaches zero, only when BOTH your END and another physical characteristic reaches zero (though there is an optional rule with which you fall unconscious when your first physical characteristic reaches zero). And, weapon damage is - apparently - applied as a whole to one characteristics, and if it reaches zero any left-over damage goes to the next one. This makes combat quite deadly, as you can't split the damage dice between different characteristics. So gun-shots HURT!

Armor now absorbs damage points rather than giving a DM to hit or absorbing damage dice. The thing is that most armor types presented on the p.87 table are quite weak in comparison to weapons, especially with Effect added to their damage.

Look at this that way: most pistols do 3D6-3 damage. On average, a D6 result is 3.5; 3D6 on average is 10-11 (let's say 11), and thus 3D6-3 is around 8 points of damage on average before applying Effect. Cloth armor, which is the equivalent of an RL Kevlar vest, stops only 3 points of damage - hardly stopping a pistol bullet even with Effect 0 and an average roll. A dagger does 1D6+2, which is on average 5-6 points of damage even with Effect 0 - and Jack Armor, which is supposed to be helpful against melee attacks, has only Armor 1, which is hardly effective against it.

The vehicle rules are very simple and seem to be written with "what happens when I fire my PGMP-12 on that G-Carrier" or a car-chase in city streets in mind rather than tank- or aircraft-squadron engagements. Movement rules are very vague; the vehicle descriptions have speeds in KPH, but there are no rules for movement or acceleration/deceleration within a frame of a combat round. However, there ARE quite cool rules for chases, up to and including "weaving" your vehicle between obstacles in hope of getting the pursuer to crash into them. There are also rules for crashing, ramming, evasive maneuvers and so on.

The vehicle damage system is good, and there is a table for converting personnel damage (i.e. gun damage) into vehicle damage. Hits themselves are resolved on a damage table, a bit similar to CT-LBB2 ship damage tables but with an "internal damage" sub-table instead of a "critical" sub-table. There is also a robot/drone damage table - robots/drones behave like characters in combat but take hits like vehicles. All vehicles/robots/drones have two damage-related attributes: Hull and Structure. When hull is reduced to zero, any further hit is rolled on the interior damage table, where all the juicier bits are (e.g. power plant, passengers and so on, as well as Structure hits); until then you roll only on the exterior table which has weapons, drives, Hull hits and so on. When Structure reaches zero, the vehicle is destroyed; if a single attack applied to Structure causes more hits than there are Structure points, the vehicle explodes!

The repair rules are very short but extremely cool, essentially measuring damage in "hits" and allowing you to cannibalize other vehicles for spare parts - effectively causing damage hits to their systems! There are also rules for replacing completely destroyed systems.

 

[tbeard1999]

Impression from the Combat System
Look at this that way: most pistols do 3D6-3 damage. On average, a D6 result is 3.5; 3D6 on average is 10-11 (let's say 11), and thus 3D6-3 is around 8 points of damage on average before applying Effect.

It appears then that some legacies of that horrid playtest combat system remain. Including the infatuation with effect and the desire to shoehorn it into every system, regardless of the consequences.

Adding effect to the damage roll seems to me to add more hassle for little benefit. As a ref who prefers fast-moving combat, I don't look forward to having to remember the effect when rolling damage. Especially when the base damage has modifiers. "Okay, you rolled an 11 less 8 which is an effect of 3. Roll weapon damage of 3 dice minus four plus three." Ugh. I'd almost certainly eliminate effect from the damage roll.

The autofire rule (doubling damage) is another dubious legacy from the playtest (and previous versions of Traveller). Since damage is doubled, but armor is not, it has the effect of making automatic weapons unreasonably effective against armored targets. A simple fix would be to double damage *after* armor is taken into account.

Cloth armor, which is the equivalent of an RL Kevlar vest, stops only 3 points of damage - hardly stopping a pistol bullet even with Effect 0 and an average roll.

This was true of the playtest combat system. I suspect that crappy armor is one of the things that slipped by them when they replaced the playtest combat system at the end of playtesting. I also suspect that Mongoose had little opportunity to playtest this system before it went to press. This kind of stuff slips through when you skimp on playtesting.

Also, having armor just absorb damage effectively equates damage and penetration. This means that armor piercing weapons will be unreasonably lethal against unarmored targets. I predict a MGT version of GURPS' clumsy "blowthrough" rule (i.e., a maximum amount of damage that the weapon can do) will be adapted to mitigate the problem. Unfortunately, as with GURPS, this won't really mitigate the problem much.

 

[Echo]

What does MGT offer that makes it "more accessible" that what CT offers? Because it's new?

No. Because it communicates in plain, non-technical language, and provides more choice in the various systems for players and referees. I mean, taking the chargen system as an example, each career is now spread out into a 2 page spread, including illustrations. That hasn't been done before.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

I mean, taking the chargen system as an example, each career is now spread out into a 2 page spread, including illustrations. That hasn't been done before.

T20 did that. For the important bits, so did MT.

 

[The Hinterworlds Rambler]

Crappy? No.

A game from 1977? Yes. With its own quirks and flaws? Yes. It's not as big as a phenomenon as D&D, but it is a phenomena all its own. Travellers have stuck with it through many ups and many downs, and it doesn't have anything to do with versions, which publisher, what rules are "broken" or any of that. I'm not sure if anyone really knows.

That's what got me into it early on. The "classy" like someone said. I remember distincly liking the "in character" approach that the JTAS magazine took. It added a depth to the Traveller OTU that made you want to play it, or at least see what it was all about. If things like Warhammer and RIFTS can have a defined baseline universe then why not? It's not like you are required to use that part at gunpoint. (Well, Warhammer... i dont know..)

CT was bare bones enough to do whatever you wanted to do with it, and my group I was in did. We had a Star Wars one (which ruled, we still talk about it), a Dune one (way before movie), and then the House Otu-ish one, where we went from Basic out of the book characters to subsector-controlling pirates over the span of several years of playing.

 

[Klaus]

Including the infatuation with effect and the desire to shoehorn it into every system, regardless of the consequences.

Ah, but Effect is so damn useful, mechanically and from a storytelling standpoint.

I've certainly been enthusiastic about MGT, but I'm not uncritical and I'm not sure 'fawning' is accurate (but I do have a weakness for superlatives which perhaps does make my praise seem a bit total ).

But I would suggest we leave the playtest experience aside and look at MGT as published. Because I think even the fiercest critics will find something nifty in it.

I'll try and evaluate some of your critques as per the core rules as best I can.

S4, your concerns over chargen are really more a matter of style rather than rules. Traveller chargen has always been very flexible in it's interpretation so you can really be as strict or as loose as you want. For instance, I prefer a mediated random, so instead of picking a table then rolling for a skill, I roll and then pick a table, giving me a random choice of 3 skills (or 4, or possibly 5 in some cases).

However, straight up you get as you roll still works fine. I rolled up an entertainer: she was promoted twice (not officer ranks, but an abstract of rising thru a career) and then rolled a 2 for advancement, in the third term, meaning she mustered out at the end.

It's in the extra stuff MGT provides that the cool stuff happened. On the career event tables, in the first term she (I rolled gender randomly too) went on an interplanetary tour, but then in the second, a 2!, meaning roll on the mishap table but not be ejected: she ends up with controversy, or scandal. On her final term, she had the opportunity to undermine the world leader in some political shenanigans, which she did, earning a skill.

The events table really helped round off the character. She was a rising star but then her career was stalled by a scandal. She grew cynical of 'the system' and fell in with some subversives, using her remaining celebrity to attack the establishment. She leaves her career bitter but excited by her new life as a revolutionary.

MGT does 2 things with classic chargen. Firstly, it rationalises and rounds out the different careers. Skills are balanced and increased a bit in number but are still nicely general. Skill acquisition falls between LBB1 and LBB4+, and now none military types have as much emphasis as the soldiers, including mundane Citizens.

Secondly, there's the added value of events, that, as well as giving extra story hooks, can also add additional skills that the regular career tables don't give, but that there should realistically be a small chance of acquiring in that career (I expect these to be expanded in Mercenary and High Guard to allow for things like intelligence school and attache assignments, for example). Events tables are basic but it seems the Ref should be encouraged to expand on them and make them more specific to his campaign.

Then there's the connections rule, that uses events to tie pc's together and give them a bonus skill level, useful to allow a player to boost his/her favourite skill (tho not above 3). Old CT pure random chargen produced too many characters with just lots of level one skills. MGT allows for characters to be at least professionally competent at one skill.

I don't think any version of Traveler has a better chargen system.

As for attributes equaling skills, well we do have our differences over this but I will say that in your example, Medic 0 + Edu 12+ would be as useful as Medic 2 /no bonus in a particular task, but if the former had to care for a severely injured patient they'd probably die (the healing rules are fierce!). Higher skilled folk are less likely to be called upon to make a skill check by wise refs, and the lower skilled would therefore have more opportunities to fail. There should be more commentary to make this more explicit, but it seems to be implicit in the written rules.

TBeard, Effect ain't that complicated. Subtracting 8 for when you need it should not be hassle; anyone that can't do that easily will have trouble playing any rpg. But if you don't want it you can eliminate it quite simply by not using it.

Burstfire doesn't double damage, it just adds the auto number for that weapon (4 or 6). Full auto increases the number of attacks, not the damage itself, and no more than skill 1 is of benefit (max 1 bonus for skill).

Actually I would agree that armour looks a bit underpowered at the moment, and no there are no rules per se for armour piercing ammo, but given the leanness of MGT overall these could possibly be expected to appear in Mercenary, along with an expanded weapon list. Shotguns firing pellets double armour at the target, for a slight increase in the chance of hitting at some ranges (slug rounds work as normal), so there is a hint for what might be coming.

AP can easily be added by just ignoring so many factors of armour rating before applying damage. Easy enough.

I've not had a proper look at the trade rules but they do on the face of it address some old problems, in that there is a per parsec element to earnings and that the types of cargo available is related to the trade classifications of the world at hand. I would like to see some account from the folk that like to run trade solitaire games and see if they can keep a far trader in operation for more than a few weeks.

WorldGen has variants/options which will almost entirely mitigate those impossible worlds the old system was wont to throw up (20-40% of the time).

I'm not saying MGT is perfect. There are mistakes, the deckplans being the worst offenders but also in how ship shares are to work. I have a few quibbles, like where certain science specialisms appear in which skills, but that's easy to fix with a pencil, or thinking some of the art could be presented better. I have slight concerns over a lack of commentary which would express the rules more clearly. For instance, I think there could be more about how initiative works, as I can see a little confusion appearing in the nitty gritty.

But overall, my impression of MGT is as something that expresses the elegance of CT, but is in many ways even leaner. That it also integrates equipment into tasks exceptionally simply (tho, again, computers need more commentary - the rules are ultimately clear, but require a few read-throughs).

There's always going to be things we want to house rule in any game, but I do not think MGT needs to be house ruled to play properly.

S4, TBeard, I would invite you to look at the rules for themselves with an open mind rather than rely on secondhand feedback on this board, as you might be pleasantly surprised. In any case if you can justify the dollars it would be good to get a proper overview from the playtest's most critical eyes to see if there's something we've missed.

Mongoose themselves seem to be a bit overwhelmed by the success of MGT - it's been their bestselling game yet. They are committed to supporting this in a big way, and it is often in the supplements that Mongoose is at their best.

 

[Echo]

T20 did that. For the important bits, so did MT.

OK, then, the reason for Mongoose's apparent success with Traveller, is that they've taken the core elements of Classic Traveller and made them accessible to a new audience. I don't want to go into threadjack about d20 though, and generally thought that MegaTraveller had a lot of issues with regards to plain english and accessibility.

 

[Echo]

like where certain science specialisms appear in which skills

Yeah, I actually complained about these in my playtest report - but they had basically stuck with the skill system after the second playtest I think. My basic complaint was upheld though - which led to four seperate science skills being created. It is easy to adjust the various specialities but anyone who has studied psychology knows that it really isn't 'the study of thought and society', I don't get why they used a made-up term of 'sophontology' rather than simply calling it 'anthropology' like everybody else, and I can't see the point of having a 'Space Science' skill if it doesn't include Astronomy as a speciality.

 

[tbeard1999]

No. Because it communicates in plain, non-technical language, and provides more choice in the various systems for players and referees. I mean, taking the chargen system as an example, each career is now spread out into a 2 page spread, including illustrations. That hasn't been done before.

Actually, it has. But this seems an awfully dubious reason to fawn over the character generation system. I mean, it isn't like CT's character generation system is hard to follow. And LBB1 (2nd ed), Starter Traveller and The Traveller Book put *all* the chargen charts on 2 pages.

My take is that the system is a workmanlike derivative of Book 1 character generation. It achieves largely the same result in a somewhat shorter time. Its probabilities are (IMHO) defective -- they make it highly unlikely that a veteran of the combat arms will survive 3 terms, even if he has an above-average key attribute. (An Army tanker has a ~34% chance of surving to Term 3, ~20% of making it to term 4; 52% and 38% respectively if he has a DEX of 9-11).

By comparison, noncombat troops will make it through 3 terms about 70% of the time, 4 terms about 58% of the time (84% and 77% respectively if he has the applicable attribute at level 9-11). So if you want the better character, looks to me like the non-dangerous jobs are the way to go.

Can't see the admirable quality in encouraging adventurers to take non-adventurous careers. So all the hoopla about the character generation system seems a bit forced to me...

 

[tbeard1999]

Mine finally arrived today. <cracks knuckles> Can't wait to get started.

 

[tbeard1999]

Ah, but Effect is so damn useful, mechanically and from a storytelling standpoint.

Well, I don't object to it per se. In fact, I suggested the exact system they wound up with (the degree of success determines effect), although its such a straighforward notion that I'm sure others also suggested it.

What I object to is shoehorning it into mechanics when the result is to increase the hassle factor without providing a significant benefit. Having to remember the result of a math exercise performed on a previous roll, then applying that result to a new roll is clumsy IMHO.

I've certainly been enthusiastic about MGT, but I'm not uncritical and I'm not sure 'fawning' is accurate (but I do have a weakness for superlatives which perhaps does make my praise seem a bit total ).

I haven't named names; "fawning" is just the tone that I perceive in general from many fans of the game.

But I would suggest we leave the playtest experience aside and look at MGT as published.

Well, now I can do this because I just got my preordered copy...

Because I think even the fiercest critics will find something nifty in it.

No doubt. But a game stands on the sum of its systems. A few neat ideas will not (IMHO) save an otherwise execrable game.

I don't think any version of Traveler has a better chargen system.

I'll agree, but I don't think that most versions have chargen systems that are worse than the MGT system. It's workmanlike and solid, though hardly the stuff of legends. And it does have some glaring flaws IMHO, such as the fact that exciting careers produce characters with fewer skills (due to absurd survival rolls).

TBeard, Effect ain't that complicated. Subtracting 8 for when you need it should not be hassle; anyone that can't do that easily will have trouble playing any rpg. But if you don't want it you can eliminate it quite simply by not using it.

See above. You appear to have misunderstood my complaint. I contend that including effect in weapon damage is a fiddly idea that produces little benefit to offset the fiddliness. I do not object to effect per se.

Burstfire doesn't double damage, it just adds the auto number for that weapon (4 or 6). Full auto increases the number of attacks, not the damage itself, and no more than skill 1 is of benefit (max 1 bonus for skill).

Neither "burst" nor "autofire" is in the index. Not a good sign...

The post I replied to stated that bursts doubled damage, hence my reply. However, my point doesn't really change. Adding damage is a poor way to represent the effect of a burst.

And the autofire mechanic is wretched, IMHO. It appears to be a barely changed version of the playtest mechanic. Basically, you dice equal to the Auto rating of a weapon. You pair the dice up as you choose to determine hits. The weapon fires rounds equal to the total of the dice. Ick.

First of all, this is a mechanical hassle, especially when you have to remember that the Effect is added to the damage rolls.

Second of all, the benefit is stunningly modest. An autorifle, assault rifle, or ACR gets 4 dice. That means that they will hit a maximum of twice, while expending an average of 42(!) bullets.

Neither of these mechanics seem to model automatic weapons fire (either Real World or Cinematic). And they appear to require far too much effort for such a mediocre result.

Actually I would agree that armour looks a bit underpowered at the moment

Yeah, a "bit". TL7 "cloth" is worth 3 points. A pistol is 3d-3+Effect, which will probably average about 1-2. That means that cloth armor will stop about 25% of a pistol's damage, leaving an average of 9 points to penetrate. Glad our boys in Iraq have better armor than what exists in the MGT universe.

<shakes head>

I can't imagine how this could have slipped through playtesting. Assuming, of course, that there actually was any playtesting.

and no there are no rules per se for armour piercing ammo

A particularly galling omission IMHO. In MGT, the mighty ACR's main advantage over a humble assault rifle is that the ACR has a 40 round clip rather than a 30 round clip (and slightly lower recoil). Damage is the same. I also note that the assault rifle, ACR, Rifle and Autorifle all do the same damage. This is curious; the designer was made aware that assault rifles fire bullets with significantly less energy than rifles.

Of course, I am surprised that someone who was tasked to design a Traveller version would have to be told this, but far more surprised that nothing was done about it. (Technically not true; one of the playtest drafts had assault rifles doing more damage than rifles; at least that was changed after a lot of complaining).

Also, no description of the ACR... And no SMG, and no carbine.

but given the leanness of MGT overall these could possibly be expected to appear in Mercenary, along with an expanded weapon list.

It's hard to be optimistic here. Unless, of course, Mercenary re-rates the current weapons and armor as well. And that will no doubt raise the issue of how such an obvious flaw got through the extensive playtesting that was surely done on MGT...

But overall, my impression of MGT is as something that expresses the elegance of CT, but is in many ways even leaner.

I think it's the translucent paper that it's printed on that's throwing you off.

My impression is of a hastily thrown together product that had several core systems changed at the last minute which did not allow for proper playtesting. Of course, that's just a very initial impression and is subject to revision.

That said, even in its current flawed condition, MGT's combat system appears to be *far* better than the playtest system. Which unfortunately, isn't saying much.

S4, TBeard, I would invite you to look at the rules for themselves with an open mind rather than rely on secondhand feedback on this board, as you might be pleasantly surprised.

Since I hads to wait a month after the game was released for my preordered copy, I had no choice but to take the word of those on this board. Now that I have a copy, I will assess MGT by its own terms. Your plea for an "open mind" is unnecessary. I'll evaluate MGT fairly. I'll not hesitate to remark on things it does well; nor will I hesitate to criticize it for things it does poorly.

Mongoose themselves seem to be a bit overwhelmed by the success of MGT - it's been their bestselling game yet.

I find that surprising; MGT always seemed to me to be a sure thing (at least regarding the core book).

They are committed to supporting this in a big way, and it is often in the supplements that Mongoose is at their best.

We'll see.

 

[elstreak72]

What advances are you speaking of? Does MGT or any other version of Traveller implement these advances?

Yes, allowing the player to assign stat rolls rather than having them strictly in order would be one of those advances; one that, your isolated case aside, has been generally well received.

That hasn't been my experience at all. In my last CT campaign, I brought in two players who were gamers but had never played Traveller before. When I explained chargen to them, they took your stance above. "Whaddya mean I can't play what I want?"

Then...we went through chargen. I role play through CT chargen. I play it like the game, except dice rolls represent multi-year happenings instead of multi-second events. And, guess what. Both new players had a blast! Their opinion of CT chargen changed--in fact, one said it was the most interesting, most fun character generation session he'd ever had. The other agreed.

I find CT chargen rather addicting. This type of chargen is not appropriate for all types of games. The James Bond game, or the Star Wars rpg would suffer with a system like this. But, for Traveller's "atmosphere", it works well.

Glad to hear it. It has been my experience and that of everyone I've played with. Neither of which is statistically rigorous, so I suppose we'll emerge from this point with our respective opinions intact.

From a mechanics perspective, it is a limiter having the effect of keeping skills low. Any 2D mechanic is easily broken with too many modifiers.

Yes, but having a nonlethal survival fail that simply dumps you out of the career with no further skill gain (and probably some kind of penalty on top of it) accomplishes the same thing without the frustration of losing all the work and having to start over.

From a role playing persepective, it offers the same thrill in character generation as one gets in a dangerous gun fight. If the player becomes attached to his character, he's got a decision to make? Does he want to risk another term, with the reward being more skills? If he fails, this character he likes is dead. It's not unlike a game situation where the GM says, "There's someone with a gun around the corner. You know he's there. You heard him cock his weapon. Are you sure you want to dash across the room? It may end ugly...".

I think it's reasonable that a basic tenet of RPGs should be that your character actually survived his background up until the start of play. Why waste time on the ones that didn't? As mentioned above, failed survival rolls can still have consequences without killing the character. That's just throwing the baby out with the bathwater. And since I'm pretty sure the single most common house rule in CT was to modify the effect of a failed survival roll to something less fatal, it would seem that most players agree.

Don't get me wrong. I love CT, and I bought the MGT rulebook because I wanted a system that did justice to the great concepts of the original but smoothed out some the ugly parts. As to how well MGT did, I think some things are better and some aren't.

As an aside, Mongoose clearly needs to hire editors that are better at math. Last time I checked, 1% of 27,040,500 was not 2,704,050... they've carried the same error through the entire Ship Shares table on p. 36. While the 1% number gets mentioned enough times that I'm sure the intent isn't for a ship share to actually be worth 10% of the ship's value, this is going to create needless rules-lawyer situations for a great many Referees.

 

[elstreak72]

BTW, those aren't the corrected plans. On the 1.5m scale of the plans, the vessel represented is only half the size it should be: 100 ton vessel with only 45 tons of interior volumn. 45 + 24 tons for the fuel tanks is 69 tons, leaving one to wonder where the other 30% of the ship is.

I understand that Mongoose will be offering corrected plans as a pdf--but it's not quite out yet. Should be soon.

Actually, 45 tons of internal volume plus 40 tons of fuel tanks is 85 tons. IIRC, the guideline from CT was that if it's within 20% it's acceptable.

 

[Echo]

I'm just wondering when the day will be when tbeard1999 can actually respond to people with differing views to himself, without slapping a derogatory label on them.

 

[tbeard1999]

Don't get me wrong. I love CT, and I bought the MGT rulebook because I wanted a system that did justice to the great concepts of the original but smoothed out some the ugly parts. ...

Aye, that's the rub.

So far -- and this is based on the playtest docs, so there may be more -- the only thing that I think MGT "smoothed out" is starship design. I'm a little concerned about some of the chatter involving computers, but we'll see.

The combat system, so far, appears to have defects that make it no better than any other version of Traveller (and markedly inferior in some respects like comparative weapon capabilities and in armor handling).

The character generation system does offer a bit more detail than the LBB1 system, though nothing like the detail of LBB4+ character generation systems. It's an adequate re-do of LBB1, but nothing to write home about IMHO.

And even in the areas that MGT may have gotten right, there were pre-existing fixes that I think did as well or better (High Guard, for instance, on ship design; AHL/Striker and T4 for damage and armor; AHL/Snapshot for combat sequencing). So comparing MGT solely to CT is a bit dubious IMHO.

 

[Supplement Four]

To me, the momentary "thrill" of a "dangerous" character generation has a
tendency to ruin the long-term fun by producing characters unsuitable to
the setting.

Just different strokes, I guess. I've played games both ways. As I said before, it depends on the game. In my James Bond game, my players created the agent they wanted to play. CT's chargen system would be a bad match for that game.

As to your comment above, I've run more than one multi-year game using CT characters. We had a blast.

Here's an example. I had a player whom I knew would be a good role player, but he was new. I had actually played with him for years in a D&D game. When I finally brought him to Traveller, he was aghast at the chargen system.

He ended up rolling up a noble character (a Baron) with physical stats 555. Poor guy was pissed. He didn't want to play such a "weak" character, but, being the GM I am, I was adamant. If you play in my Traveller game, them's the rules, you know.

This guy totally blossomed in my game. I showed him how to play a "character" and not just a set of stats. "This guy is sub-par physically. He's a small, mousey guy. But, look at that SOC! He's powerful! He's a noble!"

This character became one of the most talked about characters in all of my multi-decades of gaming. The player really "got into" this character. I remember, during one encounter, Kafers (I had imported Kafers from 2300) were storming this small research station in far orbit of the Pysadi system. As the aliens were breaking down the doors, this guy--the owner of the ship and 'leader' (in a mobster kinda way) of the crew--crawled up into the ceiling duct while the rest of the characters were busy defending his scrawny, sniveling butt!

Man, what a time that was. What a game! (You can actually read about some of our exploits from that campaign at Freelance Traveller.)

And...what a character! The noble wasn't a cardboard, one-dimensional hero. He was a "real person". He was someone we still remember, even though the character wasn't a "real good guy", to this day. We still talk about him when we talk about old times.

And, guess what. This guy would have never been created had it not been for CT character generation system.

If I had allowed stat rolls to be arranged to taste, that "12" he rolled for SOC would have been moved to one of his physical stats. In fact, since the character's INT and EDU were high (his stats were 555A9C), I can almost guarrantee you that they woud have been re-arranged to something like AC9555.

If that had happened, then most likely, I wouldn't be telling you about him today.

It was the way the player accepted and made use of the stats he rolled that made the character great.

Yes, allowing the player to assign stat rolls rather than having them strictly in order would be one of those advances; one that, your isolated case aside, has been generally well received.

For the fourth time now--I don't have a problem at all with GMs and players who want to re-arrange stats. It's not my taste, but more power to you if it floats your boat.

I'm a firm believer that GMs should make their games fun, first and foremost.

My gripe has been that the default of MGT has not be like the previous versions of Traveller. The arrange to taste option, in my opinion, should have been an optional rule (as the point-buy system is).

Yes, but having a nonlethal survival fail that simply dumps you out of the career with no further skill gain (and probably some kind of penalty on top of it) accomplishes the same thing without the frustration of losing all the work and having to start over.

Don't forget that Classic Traveller also has an Optional Survival Rule, where failing the Survival roll does not kill the character--it simply stops character generation.

 

[Supplement Four]

Impression from the Combat System
The MGT combat system is merely 9 pages long, including tables (and thankfully not too many of them)...

What are the tables used for?

Unlike the playtest rules, initiative doesn't use Timing dice, but instead a roll of 2D6+the Dexterity DM at the beginning of the combat encounter. This base initiative stays for the remainder of this encounter (and whoever has the higher initiative acts first), BUT several factors may change initiative temporarily (for one combat round at a time), such as using heavy melee weapons or firearms with serious recoil (especially in full auto), or trying to hasten one's action at the price of a negative DM to all actions.

This sounds interesting. I'd like to see an example of how it works. While I actually like the idea of the Timing and Effect mechanic in the playtest, I didn't think it was well-thought-out mechanically.

This may be a better way of doing things. An example would better help me understand how this works.

Each round you could perform one minor action (such as movement, driving a vehicle or aiming), one significant action (such as firing), and any number of free actions (such as speaking a word or flipping a switch within your reach).

How long is a round? 6 seconds?

And, only pull of the trigger per round? There's no way to stick your autopistol in someone's gut and pull the trigger three or four times (thinking of one of the scenes in the Leathal Weapon movies).

Classic Traveller defaults to one shot per round (and, its a 15 second round), but the Panic Fire rule in LBB4 allows the Lethal Weapon maneuver I describe above.

An interesting thing is that you could now use DEX in lieu of STR in order to provide the DM to hit in melee.

I like this.

Are there any weight limits for weapons? For example, it seems to me that DEX could be swapped if the weapon is light--like a switch blade knife. But, if we're talking a big honkin' sword, STR should be used.

I was wondering if the designer thought to put some weight restrictions on the DEX-STR swap? Your description sounds like he did--but I'm trying to clarify.

There are two types of automatic fire: bursts and auto-fire.

I'm curious about the differentation among weapons in the same class in MGT. This is a MAJOR requirement for me--one of those make or break questions that I evaluate when looking at Traveller systems.

It's best I explain what I'm asking with an example:

Take three characters, each firing at a target at 10 meters (Medium Range. (I'll ignore the CT armor DM as it doesn't compute with MGT. I'll also set the DEX of the example characters to DEX-8 so that no DEX penalty or bonus is affecs the example.)

Joe, DEX-8, Pistol-1, with AutoPistol.
Fred, DEX-8, Pistol-1, with Revolver.
Jane, DEX-8, Pistol-1, with Body Pistol.

Joe fires throwing 2D -3 for 8+ (plus target armor DM)
Fred fires throwing 2D -2 for 8+ (plus target armor DM)
Jane fires throwing 2D -5 for 8+ (plus target armor DM)

See how each of those attack throws for each of those weapons reflects the characteristic of the weapon? The small, low power body pistol is least accurate. The trusty heavy revolver is solid and true. And, the autopistol, a hair less reliable than the revolver, is just a tad less accurate?

I love that about Classic Traveller combat.



When MT came out, I was hugely disappointed when I realized that all weapons in the same class have the exact same to-hit throw:

In MT, Joe fires the autopistol, throwing 2D +2 for 11+.
In MT, Fred fires the revolver, throwing 2D +2 for 11+.
In MT, Jane fires the body pistol, throwing 2D +2 for 11+.

See? There's no differentation among the weapons in the same class. All the handguns have the same chance to hit, no matter their characteristics.



So, my question is this: If you run this exact test with MGT, what happens? Do we get a CT-like result? Or do we get a MT-like result?

...so you get multiple attacks; but recoil is very heavy in that mode and it spends a lot of ammo.

BTW, I like the attention placed on recoil.

You could now use Tactics or Leadership to increase the initiative of others, but while tactics allows you to increase the initiative of all characters under your command, Leadership only increases the Initiative of one character at a time.

This sounds like a good rule. I've used something like it in the past.

Cover works by giving a negative DM to hit, and if you're prone behind cover the DMs for both cover and being prone stack - up to DM -6 when being prone behind full cover!

I'm assuming that means if the shooter knows the target is there or can see him partially? Certainly its impossible in MGT to hit someone with a slug throwing when the target is completely behind a downed tank on the battlefield. The rules don't read that a -6 DM is used to hit someone behind a tank when the target cannot be seen, right?

For starters, damage is taken first from Endurance and only then from a target's choice of Dexterity or Strength (though there is an optional rule to choose any physical characteristic to be the first instead of END). Also, you don't fall unconscious when your END reaches zero, only when BOTH your END and another physical characteristic reaches zero (though there is an optional rule with which you fall unconscious when your first physical characteristic reaches zero). And, weapon damage is - apparently - applied as a whole to one characteristics, and if it reaches zero any left-over damage goes to the next one. This makes combat quite deadly, as you can't split the damage dice between different characteristics. So gun-shots HURT!

If I read you right...

Damage is taken from END first and then either STR or END, at defender's option. Two stats at zero means character is unconscious. And, damage cannot be split among the characteristics--it's applied to only one stat at a time.

Correct?

Cloth armor, which is the equivalent of an RL Kevlar vest, stops only 3 points of damage - hardly stopping a pistol bullet even with Effect 0 and an average roll.

I agree with you. Armor does seem "under powered". Especially when you consider (A) what cloth armor is available in the real world today, and (B) that Traveller is set in the future (so other advances in cloth armor tech is to be expected).

I'll have to slop this point into the negative MGT pot.

The repair rules are very short but extremely cool, essentially measuring damage in "hits" and allowing you to cannibalize other vehicles for spare parts - effectively causing damage hits to their systems! There are also rules for replacing completely destroyed systems.

You didn't give us any idea of how this works, but, I'm with you here too. It does sound cool.

And, that one goes in the postive MGT pot.