If you could "Fix" Classic Traveller how and what would you do?

[Murph]

If you could fix it somehow, what would you do to "fix" or "update" Classic Traveller to keep it more relevant or playable.

Me, I would consolidate all the Mercenary, High Guard, Scouts, Merchant Prince character Gen into Book 1, and add the Task System from Mega Traveller which was excellent. I would then add the High Guard ship design to Book 2 and provide a couple of sample ships. For worlds, I would add the world building parts from Scouts.

 

[atpollard]

Pretty much what MegaTraveller (and Mongooge 1ed) did ... integrate and combine. I would just start with different starting assumptions than they did.

• For STUFF, Striker was too complex (MegaT) and LBB2 was too simple (Mongoose) ... I would have chosen High Guard Small Craft design as the right level of complexity.
• For CHARGEN, balancing BASIC and ADVANCED to yield similar skill sets is essential.
• For COMBAT ... look outside the LBBs ... there must be a fun, workable, easy to use system that falls between impossible vector math on infinite playing surfaces, and abstract range bands.

 

[mike wightman]

So MegaTraveller.

Sticking to mostly Classic Traveller:
clarify how the saving throw system resolves situations, expand on the single paragraph from 77 edition and the use of die rolls from The Traveller Adventure.
Add special duty to the basic character generation tables, include the careers from S:4.
Use armour as damage reduction system rather than the combat matricies.
A section on wound recovery and medical treatment would be useful

LBB:2 add the options from 77 back into 81 (clarify what the stats for a missile and the effect of a crew hit are)
amend the standard hulls table
RPG focussed ship combat (range band with momentum, something for each crew member to do during ship combat)
damage dice for ship weapons so armour as damage reduction can be integrated.
Flesh out the experience rules with personal trainers, augmented training programs etc.
Add more skills as DMs to the freight, passenger and speculative trade resolution

LBB:3 put the trade lanes rules back in.
add a paragraph for vehicle combat.

 

[kilemall]

On careers, I upped the base skills to 3 per term, first skill is Skill-0, and added an additional skill table with INT 8+ for the original plus COTI careers. Ruthlessly consolidated skills so almost no cascading, and added in key social and specialty skills from Mongoose.

This yields a character more like LBB4+ characters and later versions without being superhuman.

On combat went Striker with hot location and sliding hit die. So a dagger could hit in the head and kill, but usually will require several stabs to finish.

MgT2 Vehicle and gun design, handcrafted to fit Striker values. Fast build and plug in.

LBB2/5 starship builds, HG combat rolls with custom tonnage damage table and distance/maneuver LBB2 style degrading range to hit and kinetic missile pen/damage.

 

[Murph]

Pretty much what MegaTraveller (and Mongooge 1ed) did ... integrate and combine. I would just start with different starting assumptions than they did.

• For STUFF, Striker was too complex (MegaT) and LBB2 was too simple (Mongoose) ... I would have chosen High Guard Small Craft design as the right level of complexity.
• For CHARGEN, balancing BASIC and ADVANCED to yield similar skill sets is essential.
• For COMBAT ... look outside the LBBs ... there must be a fun, workable, easy to use system that falls between impossible vector math on infinite playing surfaces, and abstract range bands.

Oh totally agree here Striker and MegaT made the design system useful or enjoyable only for the simulation people, the role players got left behind. Cyberpunk 2020 has a great combat system.

 

[atpollard]

Use armour as damage reduction system rather than the combat matricies.

This

 

[mike wightman]

I should add that the armour as damage reduction scales from personal weapons to starships.

Careers with no rank structure get 3 skills on the first term, and 2 per term thereafter, enlisted personnel can be promoted from E1 to E"6" - so that they get the chance of the promotion kill even if they have not been commissioned yet. If they achive a commission they recieve an O rank one less than their E rank, if E1-3, two less if rank E4-6.
Careers with no automatic skill may select one skill fro their skill lists as their signature skill and gain it at rank 1 automatically.

And that completes the summary of my CT+ house rules

 

[Enoki]

My big fix would be to make the character generation more like other RPG's where the character can acquire new skills and such as they are played. Keep in aging and make that a definite part of the system to prevent someone from becoming overwhelming.

 

[casquilho]

Ok, if we are going to dream, here it goes. I would remove all the inconsistency between CT official products. If something was meant to replace an earlier release, then say so clearly. Remove the inner-edition BS. Then remove anything you did not intend to be part of the CT ruleset or fix it to be part of the new consistent core rules. How is that for a dream. Of course, I know I neither have the power nor the intelligence to do so, thus why I call it a dream.

 

[Badenov]

I'm not sure it's fair for me to say anything since I've never had the chance to play CT, but I've been through Book 5 in excruciating detail recently and some of the conclusions I've arrived at make that part of the game seem broken. But if I could press a magical fix-it wand, I would make the game play more like the narrative.

 

[Tobias]

• For COMBAT ... look outside the LBBs ... there must be a fun, workable, easy to use system that falls between impossible vector math on infinite playing surfaces, and abstract range bands.

If you mean for movement in starship combat: There is. It's called Mayday. Its system of implementing 2D vector movement on a hex map can be implemented by use of position counters or hex number notations.
(Were you alluding to that?)

 

[mike wightman]

Use the Movement rules from the Traveller Starter edition (I tried to post it as a quote but the pdf is so bad it's not possible)
Then use what's hidden in the ship's boat skill description
Pilot- Throw 8+ to avoid being hit by enemy fire... DM +2 per skill level
(you can apply computer program DM instead)
and add
Gunnery - Throw 8+ to hit, DM +1 per skill level (or you can apply computer program DM instead)
Navigator - selects computer programs and rolls for ECM
Engineer - damage control, repair 1 hit of damage Throw 9+ +1 DM per skill level
other - damage control, repair 1 hit of damage if you have a relevant skill - engineering, mechanical, electronic, JoT - Throw 9+ +1 DM per skill level

 

[spank]

Integrating HG and LBB ship construction rules would be great.
I really like the LBB2 style tables for quick ship construction.
Adding a formula for drive size to this for more customized results and you're golden.
The big issue is that the two use different formulas for the dives.
All it would take is deciding which paradigm you want to go with, Large J drive/Small M drive, like LBB2 of Large M-Drive/Small J Drive like HG.
And producing a few charts with "standard" drives that fit that paradigm.
Jump drives are fairly easy to make a HG compliant table in LBB2 format.
Maneuver drives might take a little more work,
HG power plants would have to have 4 different brackets for tl 7-8, TL 9-12, TL13-14, and TL 15 sized drives.

 

[Ildefonse]

My general approach would be:

• Take the “Traveller Section by Section Comparison” and decide which version I prefer (usually 1977 over either 1981, Starter or TTB). Using the 1977 version as a baseline also implies excising any Third Imperium content: keep it generic.
• Apply Don’s consolidated CT errata
• Apply house rules
  • Fewer careers, all focused on adventurers: no Bureaucrats, Entertainers, Commoners, etc.
  • Allow multiple careers, and no penalty for having multiple careers. Each career once only, unless drafted into a prior career.
  • A smaller list of broader skills: for example, in a game where “Engineering” represents all disciplines of engineering, I see no need to have “Gun Combat" or “Blade Combat” cascade to anything.
  • Some form of unified task resolution system. I go back and forth on this one, which is why it’s vague.
  • Use the Double-Tap house rule for combat: I like the different weapons vs. armor detail, and think splitting the roll into two rolls (to-hit and to-damage) is elegant.
  • For standard games: two skills per term for all careers, and no “automatic” skills for rank
  • Options for Heroic (3D6 for characteristics, drop lowest die, 3 skills per term for all careers) and Epic (4D6 for characteristics, drop lowest two dice, 4 skills per term for all careers) characters, to model those fictional characters of more heroic or epic stamp represented in S1 and S4.
  • Psionics don’t use a separate system to acquire, but are embedded in the careers, and use a skill system like other skills.
  • The Tech Rule of Three: for each fraction of three difference in two numbers the higher gets a favorable (+1/-1) modifier (e.g., a TL8 rifle against TL9 - TL11 armor would get a -1 DM). While I’m interested in tech, I’m more interested in general effects when gaming.

I've started down this path countless times...cheers!

 

[Tobias]

Integrating HG and LBB ship construction rules would be great.
I really like the LBB2 style tables for quick ship construction.
Adding a formula for drive size to this for more customized results and you're golden.
The big issue is that the two use different formulas for the dives.
All it would take is deciding which paradigm you want to go with, Large J drive/Small M drive, like LBB2 of Large M-Drive/Small J Drive like HG.
And producing a few charts with "standard" drives that fit that paradigm. View attachment 5701
Jump drives are fairly easy to make a HG compliant table in LBB2 format.
Maneuver drives might take a little more work,
HG power plants would have to have 4 different brackets for tl 7-8, TL 9-12, TL13-14, and TL 15 sized drives.
View attachment 5702

I just switch the tonnage column for M-drives and J-drives in LBB2, calculate the difference in cargo tonnage for those canon LBB2 ships where there is one (not that many actually) and call it day.

Small m-drives makes no sense to me, especially wrt LBB5. Battle riders are OP enough as is.

 

[kilemall]

I just switch the tonnage column for M-drives and J-drives in LBB2, calculate the difference in cargo tonnage for those canon LBB2 ships where there is one (not that many actually) and call it day.

Small m-drives makes no sense to me, especially wrt LBB5. Battle riders are OP enough as is.

That’s a rational choice, although the fuel hit for the power plant rule on small ships and the lack of extra EP gimps the LBB2 ships to an extent. Will hit the small craft a bit if you are using the A-drive house rule.

I always justified that with letter drives being more rugged and frontier ready at the cost of being fuel hogs.

I would calc extra power for higher power plants, such as B on 100 ton being power plant 4 and thus double EP over a normal Type S.

For broader ranges where a higher letter power plant won’t increase the power plant value, I would use a percentage point value and use that for EP and fuel use calc. Sort of puts in an LBB5 version of the double fire mechanic.

 

[Murph]

I also make one other change, I drop fuel requirements for J drives from 10% to 5% which makes a big difference for merchants being able to survive.

 

[Grav_Moped]

All it would take is deciding which paradigm you want to go with, Large J drive/Small M drive, like LBB2 of Large M-Drive/Small J Drive like HG.

Note that the "HG Small Jump Drive" came along with the Pn=Jn requirement, so at lower TLs the total machinery required for Jump isn't quite so unbalanced.

Small m-drives makes no sense to me, especially wrt LBB5. Battle riders are OP enough as is.

They make sense when you consider that the canon ships in LBB2 were under 1000Td, with most under 600Td. In that size range, the 10Td per Pn (flat amount, no tonnage adjustment) for power plant fuel was the main design "penalty" for high acceleration. Above 1000Td, that 10Td per Pn is a "cheat code" freebie (basically becoming a rounding error), with only the TL constraints in LBB3 putting a cap on it. (IIRC, you need TL-15 to get 1G in a 4,000Td ship...)

In HG, it was the M-drive size and the power plant output committed to sustaining Agility that did that.

 

[Enoki]

Integrating HG and LBB ship construction rules would be great.
I really like the LBB2 style tables for quick ship construction.
Adding a formula for drive size to this for more customized results and you're golden.
The big issue is that the two use different formulas for the dives.
All it would take is deciding which paradigm you want to go with, Large J drive/Small M drive, like LBB2 of Large M-Drive/Small J Drive like HG.
And producing a few charts with "standard" drives that fit that paradigm. View attachment 5701
Jump drives are fairly easy to make a HG compliant table in LBB2 format.
Maneuver drives might take a little more work,
HG power plants would have to have 4 different brackets for tl 7-8, TL 9-12, TL13-14, and TL 15 sized drives.
View attachment 5702

This is another peeve of mine... Simple linear algebra. Come on! Mix it up some with some exponentials and other non-linear stuff! Throw a little calculus in there for all us ultra-nerds!

 

[spank]

This is another peeve of mine... Simple linear algebra. Come on! Mix it up some with some exponentials and other non-linear stuff! Throw a little calculus in there for all us ultra-nerds!

I can see using simple linear growth if you use only formulas for ship building, But if you're going to have tables as a alternate go ahead and make the formulas more complex.