Combat in Traveller: some tactical principles

[Sigtrygg]

Two choices

run away

get your retaliation in first

Han shot first for a reason.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[ottarrus]

Gun Jesus, the prophet of the Uncaring Buddha of War, approves.

 

[metlk]

Who said that? It is not a game where you assume that combat is the normal activity. So, yeah, if you want a wargame, this isn't it. Or, rather, it is a wargame with a high casualty rate closer to real war than action movies.

But..it entirely possible to have fights and have fights regularly. But you have to actually prepare for them. The game does not automatically level up your combat ability just because you exist.

Your first fight went poorly because
1) You didn't know about how to use defensive moves
2) You didn't know the rules for the weapon you were using, so it was less effective than it should have been
3) You did not have protective gear that you could have had, because you misinterpreted what "armor" means in the law level
4) You overlooked tactical options you may have had, like disarming your foe and using cover.

This is entirely normal because you are new to the system. Part of the nature of being new to a system is not knowing all the rules.

You are asking questions. That's great! We are trying to answer them.

But part of the answer is learning your options and part of the answer is "don't treat this like a combat first game". Combat is an option you will take when necessary. It is not the default action of the game. As I said above, combat is softer than real life, but it is nowhere near as soft as heroic fantasy games. Part of the answer is not to treat every fight as a fight to the death because, again, not heroic fantasy. Not everyone who does fight you wants to kill you, either. In D&D, losing a fight often means you are dead. In Traveller, it usually means you are unconscious and either tossed in the alley or captured or some other thing that furthers the adventure, just in a different way than you planned.

It is hard to get killed in Traveller unless you start playing with automatic weapons or just stand in the open without any protection and fight to the last. But if you play with John Wick style gaming (disguised armored clothing, pistols, knives, and fists) all day long if you learn how to take defensive reactions, use cover, and the like.

But you can also play Slippery Jim DeGriz and avoid fights like the plague. The rules support both playstyles.

We (my son and I) crammed an 8 hour session in today. During today's session, we fought a group of six kidnappers without taking a hit, just because we had the chance to set up in covered positions. (Two well-placed grenades also did the heavy lifting.) Initially I had just wanted some help on how to set up combat scenes, but most everyone's answers have been to avoid combat. I reject that reality and substitute it for my own, as Adam Savage would say. I appreciate the help from people that took the time to walk me through what I was doing wrong. Turns out combat is much more engaging than the D&D method, but just as winnable even when outnumbered. We'll fine-tune our NPC and animal stats and equipment as we learn. I didn't even want to play when I sat down today because thinking I needed to avoid combat (not just avoid looking for combat, but actively avoid it completely) seemed like a terrible way to spend the afternoon. We ended up going for 8 hours and had a blast!

 

[alex_greene]

Where do "random" fights in alleyways come about?
Refs ... they don't. Remember, thugs are part of some sort of seedy underworld, but they never just randomly turn up looking for a fight.
Here's the thing. The Travellers should only encounter a thug fight to slow them down from getting to the objective too soon. Thugs are sent by somebody who doesn't want the Travellers to do what they want to do, but they don't necessarily want them dead. They want your Travellers beaten up as a warning, or they want them scared off the trail.
Similarly, if you've been brought before the boss and the criminal mastermind is offering you a job, guess what? He's not going to ask you to rough somebody up. He's already got a goon squad to do that for him. What he wants is someone with real skills - Electronics to set up a neighbourhood mesh network that's off the main data nets, or someone to sneak around and try and find out who kidnapped his daughter (she's safe, she's back home, but the boss paid the ransom and he's deeply resentful, so he wants to know who did the dirty on her so he can send his goons over to remonstrate, because that's what he pays them for).
Your fight scenes are not random. They will serve a purpose, that purpose being to propel the story along. Kill the D&D mode. I mean it. Destroy that whole mindset. If you're still thinking you're playing D&D, you're doing yourself the worst kind of disservice, because you're missing 90% of the point of Traveller.

 

[alex_greene]

One of the main difference between D&D and Traveller is that the PC are not world-shattering super heroes that are destined to kill dragons and kick Orcus' butt. Just ordinary heroes : a more or less average joe thrown in an exceptional situation.

Oh, the Travellers have the power in them to destroy worlds. They don't need to acquire special moves or weapons. They just show up, often in the most unexpected places. And in their wake, they can leave a trail of disruption across the face of the whole sector.
Their battle cries aren't loud. They are sentences such as "What does this button do?"

 

[Vormaerin]

We (my son and I) crammed an 8 hour session in today. During today's session, we fought a group of six kidnappers without taking a hit, just because we had the chance to set up in covered positions. (Two well-placed grenades also did the heavy lifting.) Initially I had just wanted some help on how to set up combat scenes, but most everyone's answers have been to avoid combat. I reject that reality and substitute it for my own, as Adam Savage would say. I appreciate the help from people that took the time to walk me through what I was doing wrong. Turns out combat is much more engaging than the D&D method, but just as winnable even when outnumbered. We'll fine-tune our NPC and animal stats and equipment as we learn. I didn't even want to play when I sat down today because thinking I needed to avoid combat (not just avoid looking for combat, but actively avoid it completely) seemed like a terrible way to spend the afternoon. We ended up going for 8 hours and had a blast

I am glad that you had fun. I really like Traveller and it can be played in a variety of styles, ranging from quite fighty to totally pacifistic. Despite the bombast of some pronouncements, fighting is a perfectly legitimate activity within the game. It just has to be taken seriously as a threat to your character, not a sort of routine happenstance. You don't have to run away. You just need to be aware that might be the best option if you aren't prepared for the combat at this time.

People overstate the anti combat thing because it is very different from D&D and making that sink in is important. A Traveller character can usually only take a couple hits (or even just one if the bad guys have rifles or you don't have any armor), don't have clerics to heal them, and stay dead if killed. But as you saw, with preparation and tactical play, combat is fun and very playable.