Of course Book 4 and Supplement 4 predate The Traveller Book. Supplement 13 does post-date it, but I could imagine whoever put it together was not thinking about the new rule...
frank
Noob questions
- Thread starter Toric
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Of course Book 4 and Supplement 4 predate The Traveller Book. Supplement 13 does post-date it, but I could imagine whoever put it together was not thinking about the new rule...
frank
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
Actually, I view guns differently than other skills. A Pilot, regardless of Tech Level, is going to be looking at a similar sets of controls for a starship. I am not a fan of having someone with Pilot skill operating Small Craft at a lower level than star/spaceship skill. Now, I might consider a massive difference in size of ship as a possible factor, but it would have to be fairly large, like someone going from a 200 dTon Free Trader to a 5,000 dTon cargo liner, but then primarily with respect to landing or docking at a High Port. For docking at a High Port, a High Port Pilot may be required regardless, I have not really considered that, focusing more on smaller ships. I have flown 4 different single-engine light planes along with an ultra-light, and the controls and handling of the light planes, one of which was a float plane, were not that different. The ultralight was much more of a seat of the pants type flying.
During World War 2, pilots were going from twin-engine Beechcraft and Cessnas to 4-engine Fortresses and Liberators without a whole lot of training. The biggest headache with respect to the Pilot skill that I know of was trying to train helicopter pilots to handle fixed-wong aircraft. The controls are totally different as are the reaction of the Pilot. The other direction was about as bad.
As for Aramis comments, I have had some different experiences, so it depends on what a Game Master has seen and had experience with.
In the Real World, having a standard Driver's License does not qualify you to drive a n 18-wheeler. A single-engine pilot license does not qualify you to fly a Boeing 747 or an F-15. Sometimes, some differentiation is needed. I view starship pilot skills similar to wet nautical vessels skills, where pretty much everything is the same except size.
Along those lines, I've gone simpler.
Just Gun, Blade, Heavy Weapon (crew and direct fire guns) and Artillery (Indirect Fire).
Within those then I'll have lower degrees of skill, so say someone has Gun-2, their weapon of choice is at 2, next one 1, rest 0.
So Gun-2 can be
ACR-2
SMG-1
Gun-4
Laser Rifle-4
Snub Pistol-3
PGMP13-2
LAG-1
and so on.
The weapon ranking depends on what they habitually shoot and practice with, so the skills may change over the years but the base ability is still there, without overpowering by granting gun skill on everything, the individual model thing which always seemed constraining, or maintaining those Merc definitions.
Also makes chargen a lot faster and gives players flexibility over time.
Vehicles, Engineering and other overarching/cascade skills are also amenable to this approach.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
That is true up to a point. It depends on what a person has seen and had experience with. I have seen men do fine with the M16 on semi-auto fire, but who froze on the trigger when firing full-auto and burned through the magazine in one burst. Needless to say, the 50 meter target was untouched. I had a ball at ROTC summer camp firing the .50 M2 HB in semi-automatic mode, until it was decided that I had to change over to full auto, and fire my 75 rounds. None of the other cadets had any idea that you could fire the .50 semi-auto. Not everyone is a weapons bug.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
The rules was a reaction to the advanced character generation systems, so wasn't actually in place for LBB4.
Timerover51
SOC-14 5K
I am thinking more of the individuals from high Technology Worlds with high Law Levels. Any Law Level of 5 or higher would make any hands-on knowledge of firearms quite limited, and the character would have knowledge only of what he/she/it has been trained on. That is where I think that having a character have a home world will give some idea as to what he/she/it might know from growing up and prior education.
As for the total number of skills, I tend to look at how many terms does the character have, and add that to the Intelligence and Education roll. Also, if there are related skills, such as in Gun or Blade Combat, or Air/Raft and ATV skills, I will fudge the total skill numbers up a bit, assuming some cross-skill benefit.
The boxed set I started with in 1983 was probably the 1981 edition, since a member of the group had gotten it as a Christmas present. I had The Traveller Book for some time and eventually ended up with a used copyof the starter set. In short
I have not read and may never have seen the 1977 version.
The Int+Edu limit first appears in Book 6.
The boxed set I started with in 1983 was probably the 1981 edition, since a member of the group had gotten it as a Christmas present. I had The Traveller Book for some time and eventually ended up with a used copyof the starter set. In short
IIRC, significantly less than half of all CT Boxed sets were pre-81.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I go with a simplified weapon skill list too; handgun, rifle, heavy weapons, brawling, 1-h melee, 2-h melee, bow, sling
Traveller's 2d basic roll makes it too course to worry about individual weapon difference.
For more detailed skill systems such as GURPS or BRP then having something like:
.45 ACP 14, handguns 12, guns 10 makes sense - the task resolution can stand that level of detail, similarly in a % system
.45 ACP 60, handguns 55, guns 50 works for me too.
Traveller's 2d basic roll makes it too course to worry about individual weapon difference.
For more detailed skill systems such as GURPS or BRP then having something like:
.45 ACP 14, handguns 12, guns 10 makes sense - the task resolution can stand that level of detail, similarly in a % system
.45 ACP 60, handguns 55, guns 50 works for me too.
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