Combat

[Evil Genius]

Hi,

I'm thinking of investing in MG Traveller and have a few questions.

I used to play Classic Traveller back in the 1980's so I'm quite familiar with the background etc. What I'd like to know is things like:

Has the hexadecimal bit been dropped?
How 'tactical' is combat - do you need miniatures or does it play Ok without them?
How many of the supplements will I need to run Third Imperium well?

Thanks.

 

[rust]

Has the hexadecimal bit been dropped?

Hexadecimal bit ? :?

How 'tactical' is combat - do you need miniatures or does it play Ok without them?

A matter of taste, in my view it works well without
miniatures.

How many of the supplements will I need to run Third Imperium well?

The core rules plus the Spinward Marches supplement
cover all you really need for a Third Imperium game.

Whether other supplements are useful depends on the
style and focus of the campaign. The Central Supply Ca-
talogue is almost always useful, and High Guard is nice
if you are into starships and their design. Otherwise it
could be prudent to see how the campaign develops and
to add supplements only as needed. For example, if the
players love to trade, Merchant Prince would make sense,
and it they want to play nobles, Dilettante would be use-
ful.

Mongoose would certainly appreciate if you would buy
all their Traveller stuff right now, but there is a high risk
that most of the material would not fit well into your spe-
cific campaign.

 

[GamerDude]

Has the hexadecimal bit been dropped?

Hexidecimal notation (how Classic Traveller represented the numbers 10 thru 15) is listed along side the standard Base 10 numbers - although still used in the planetary data entries to avoid confusion. The charts for the Planetary Data entries are listed in Decimal with the Hex equivalent in parentheses, i.e. "10 (A)"

How 'tactical' is combat - do you need miniatures or does it play Ok without them?

Like any RPG (except 4th ed D&D) it can be played equally well with or without miniatures - it all depends on your group's style.

How many of the supplements will I need to run Third Imperium well?

It all depends on what you want to do.

If you are going to run only human/Vilani/Solomoni PC's, you don't need a single one of the race books.
If you have one particular sector in mind (of the ones published) then you don't need any of the others.
The Spinward Marches is the most diverse for gov't/interstellar politics - on the same hand it is the sector that has had so many adventures written for it (commercially and otherwise) that it has been "done to death" in some ways. I'd check out other sectors for some fresh air.

Thanks.

NP

 

[Evil Genius]

Hi and thanks for answering my questions.

The amount of stuff that has been written for Spinward is my main reason for wanting to use it. I don't get a lot of time for game prep and being able to pull something out of a book and run with it is just too useful.

I'm glad the combat doesn't require figures - I find that using miniatures really slows things down and shuts off player descriptions of the cool things they want to do. Plus it stops the endless arguments about who was exactly where and what they could and couldn't see. The picture in my head is always better than the one my eyes see.

 

[rust]

We almost never use miniatures for the (rare) combats in
our campaigns, they tend to break the game for us.

We prefer combat as a rather chaotic affair in first person
perspective where the character has few informations on
what is going on around him, for example where all the op-
ponents are, what they are doing, and how well the other
characters are doing against them.

With miniatures this tends to turn into a view from above
where the static miniatures become separated from the ac-
tive characters and the players know exactly where every-
one is and what everyone is doing, hardly a good simula-
tion of a real fight.