I started a T5 Game and it's really fun.

[Original_Carl]

We went over fill form 1 for the yacht and corrected a couple of mistakes. The first was that I had failed to properly account for necessary hangar space for the ship's vehicles. The second error was erroneously writing down the wrong value for the ship's fuel processing capacity. With those corrected we apportioned cabin space.

We had a lot of discussion about the compartments. We made sure to install two bars, a gym and a dining hall, in addition to an officer's wardroom, a crew wardroom, clinic and emergency low births for passengers and crew.

One interesting design choice came out of the exercise. We opted to put one of the consoles into the owner's luxury suite, leaving three on the bridge. This launched us into some humorous speculation about a paranoid owner growing his fingernails and beard while acting as the ghost of the ship.

We settled on crew, but never rolled them up. We're thinking a couple of ex-Spacers to act as the head pilot/navigator and the chief engineer. The rest will be Citizens.

The final couple hours of the session, we worked on the interior hit location sheet. This was difficult. Choosing whether to put the computer next to the junior officer quarters or a luxury suite was a lengthy discussion. Put the fuel into its own dedicated compartments or scatter it about the ship? It gave us a lot to think about. Maybe too much.

Development of the ship in a group setting has helped us to begin thinking of the ship as a character in itself. The players are beginning to talk about the ship like it's real. They want to fly it places. They're already thinking about how to operate it, and what their roles will be aboard it.

In the latter part of the session, we discussed the combat rules and ran a sample fight. I made it a melee and we used miniatures on a hex mat for blocking. I had written up a post for this site showing an example of using the personal combat system for a fist fight and I used that as the template for this combat.

I wanted to try out a rule whereby you could continue attacking targets by taking on more difficulty dice, but we opted to not do it after some spirited discussion during the fight. The players preferred to keep the more abstract nature of Traveller combat, which one of my players said was reminiscent of AD&D with it's one minute rounds. After running the fight, I think it's the right call.

After the fight, we went over all the injury and recovery rules we could find. Here's a question for the CotI, if you take damage during combat but one of your characteristics is not reduced to zero, how long does it take to recover the points you lost?

Out next session isn't scheduled until late October, I'm sorry to report. Sucks to be an adult sometimes.

 

[Licheking]

if you take damage during combat but one of your characteristics is not reduced to zero, how long does it take to recover the points you lost?

its the severity times itself, so severity 6 is 36.

 

[Original_Carl]

My group met again for our third T5 session.

With the ship completed and a long term goal established, we spent a few minutes on backstory to establish the origin of the characters relationships to one another. This is pretty easy with three players, and it was even easier since two of the characters are nobles who just left the Noble career after serving out their exiles.

The session played well. I have a group of animated, witty players, so it's easy to have a good time Refereeing them. I'd love to drone on about the details of the adventure, but I'm going to focus on mechanics and gameplay for this post.

For what it's worth, I love the roll-under mechanic. One of the characters was piloting the ship's boat to make a daring rescue. He rolled 2d and succeeded. It was kind of an intense scene and so I said, "You succeeded, however, if you want to make that landing in a hurry, you're going to have to roll another die. Otherwise, it takes a minute or two to touch down." I realize this isn't standard gameplay, but it really made the player think and it added even more tension to the scene. He reached for the third die and then declined, opting to deal with a slower landing rather than risk a crash. It was a good moment.

There were many situations in the game where success was virtually guaranteed by the character's C+S and so I didn't even have to roll, which really sped up the action.

Constructing tasks was very simple and straightforward. We were able to move quickly through the action. The drama of adding more dice to up the difficulty of the task and therefore potentially increase the reward of a successful outcome really helps to heighten the thrill of those moments.

We had no combat of note in this session aside from a very brief pursuit of the Yacht and single shot fired from a system patrol boat. We had some melee, but I chose to resolve those as single tasks rather than round by round fights.

Questions?

 

[Dagrill]

A big difference. In the 21st Century, where nobles and royalty have been shorn of much of their power, one might argue that they belong to the same social class, although I think some people would still disagree (After all, Bill Gates doesn't give audiences to Queen Elizabeth). But in a society where royalty and nobility essentially run it because of their titles, they wouldn't be the same social class at all. Mere riches just wouldn't get someone up in the same class as the nobility back in the 19th Century. Unless they used their wealth to acquire a title, of course.
Hans

Hi,

hope this doesn't get me into trouble, but the fount of all honours are actually the leader's of the three main political parties that is to say if
Bill Gates made a large enough donation to the Lib-Dems, Tories or Labour he could get made Lord Gates, or even Knight Commander of the non-existant Empire if he wanted..

Kind Regards

David

 

[rancke]

Hi,

hope this doesn't get me into trouble, but the fount of all honours are actually the leader's of the three main political parties that is to say if
Bill Gates made a large enough donation to the Lib-Dems, Tories or Labour he could get made Lord Gates, or even Knight Commander of the non-existant Empire if he wanted.

Bill Gates might be able to buy himself a British title, but he still wouldn't be giving audiences to Queen Elizabeth. He would be given one by the queen. And I wouldn't be surprised to hear that he'd been snubbed by British nobles with proper ancestors, although I don't know enough about present-day British nobility to say for sure.

Be that as it may, in the Imperium there are no democratically elected parties to dictate to the Emperor what honors he must hand out to whom. In that he's more analogous to absolute monarchs of an earlier era than to Queen Elizabeth.


Hans

 

[robject]

Development of the ship in a group setting has helped us to begin thinking of the ship as a character in itself. The players are beginning to talk about the ship like it's real. They want to fly it places. They're already thinking about how to operate it, and what their roles will be aboard it.

That is something I hadn't considered before. If I had players who liked to geek out over ship locations, then that would indeed be immersive.

 

[robject]

For what it's worth, I love the roll-under mechanic. One of the characters was piloting the ship's boat to make a daring rescue. He rolled 2d and succeeded. It was kind of an intense scene and so I said, "You succeeded, however, if you want to make that landing in a hurry, you're going to have to roll another die. Otherwise, it takes a minute or two to touch down." I realize this isn't standard gameplay, but it really made the player think and it added even more tension to the scene. He reached for the third die and then declined, opting to deal with a slower landing rather than risk a crash. It was a good moment.

Standard or not, that's pretty much how we play it too.

There were many situations in the game where success was virtually guaranteed by the character's C+S and so I didn't even have to roll, which really sped up the action.

When it's interesting enough, I make them roll anyway, saying "just don't roll boxcars".

 

[Supplement Four]

For what it's worth, I love the roll-under mechanic. One of the characters was piloting the ship's boat to make a daring rescue. He rolled 2d and succeeded. It was kind of an intense scene and so I said, "You succeeded, however, if you want to make that landing in a hurry, you're going to have to roll another die. Otherwise, it takes a minute or two to touch down."

I really don't like the roll under mechanic, though I do see a use for a roll under in some situations. Just re-reading my old CT Sensor rules, I used a roll under for that (but in CT, anything goes--a variety of roll types are used).

But, I wanted to comment on you adding the one die difficulty. That is a very nice aspect of the T5 task system. Ever since I became enamored with Star Wars D6, I love the simplicity of just adding or taking away a D6 to make things easier or harder.

You can't do that with d20 or a system like MT or MGT where it's just 2D6 and modifiers. And, adding/subtracting modifiers is just not as elegant because it involves math, even if the math is extemely easy.

In CT, a throw I often use for situations that are attribute based is to have the character roll one, two, or three dice for a number equal to the stat or less. For example, there is no CT skill for shoving open stuck hatches. If I think it's easy, I'll have the character roll STR or less on 1D to force open the hatch (obviously only an issue for characters with STR 5 or less).

If I think it's a fairly well-stuck hatch, I'll have the character roll 2D for STR or less. And, if I think it will take a very strong or lucky character to get the hatch open, I'll have them roll 3D for STR or less.

It's a nice, simple, elegant piece of game design. Like this use in CT, or the same in D6 Star Wars, this is one of T5's strengths.

 

[Draconian]

For what it's worth, I love the roll-under mechanic. One of the characters was piloting the ship's boat to make a daring rescue. He rolled 2d and succeeded. It was kind of an intense scene and so I said, "You succeeded, however, if you want to make that landing in a hurry, you're going to have to roll another die. Otherwise, it takes a minute or two to touch down." I realize this isn't standard gameplay, but it really made the player think and it added even more tension to the scene. He reached for the third die and then declined, opting to deal with a slower landing rather than risk a crash. It was a good moment.

It seems to actually be part of the standard rules. In timed tasks with duration that are not of an absolute duration, you can opt to go Hasty (difficulty goes up 1D), Double Hasty (up 2D) or Cautious to take out 1D. (p. 133-134.) p.141 gives an example where this rule seems to be used to affect landing a ship.


Well done, you're actually running the game and looking impressive with the BIG tome in front of you.

 

[Original_Carl]

That is something I hadn't considered before. If I had players who liked to geek out over ship locations, then that would indeed be immersive.

It wasn't perfect. I've got one player who's a builder like me. Another is an artist and the third is still figuring himself out. The builder and I had the other two zoning out for the math-heavy parts like tonnage allocation, but I tried to engage them by getting them to talk about what they thought the components we were working on would look like, where they would go in the ship, and so forth.

It could have gone better, for sure. However even this level of engagement has contributed to immersion and I'm happy about it. If we could have built the ship with a spreadsheet or some other tool that would have done the calculations for us, it would have been better exercise.