In praise of IISS Ship Files

[delrom5]

IISS Ship Files is one of my favourite original Traveller supplements. The designs by Bob McWilliams filled in a lot of nice gaps in the original selection of Traveller ships, with some designs eschewing the aerodynamic aesthetics for more boxey or delicate structures possible in zero-G. Although there were a good selection of deckplans available, the FASA sets were expensive in the UK (due to shipping and import costs) despite their added playability of the 15mm deckplans.

So, several questions. For those who used IISS deckplans, how did you use the designs in your games? Also, whatever happened to Bob McWilliams? (I know of one photo of Bob from one of the early Games Day montages - see http://mabden.blogspot.com/2010/08/el-dia-de-los-juegos-games-day-vi.html)

Three recollections of adventures come to mind;

1) A commercial courier had misjumped and the players were hired to retrieve it from an impound dock - despite allegations from the impounding government that it was carrying drugs.

2) The players were hired to transport an interdiction satellite to a new system. Midflight, the satellite activated and was taking potshots at their ship at point blank range. Cue an urgent EVA to disarm it (think of a mix of the spacewalk sequence in 2010 and the bomb disarming cliche [red wire or blue wire?]) in the middle of a micrometeor shower.

3) A salvage job on a large cargo carrier against a crew of wreckers.

 

[nats]

I liked them - mainly for the little adventure hooks on the paper-clipped notes that are shown in the book from time to time, I like reading that kind of thing - sends your imagination into overdrive, well it did when I had some imagination way back when I was 18.

But also the ship plans are very nicely drawn and very interesting as well. I liked the Gcarrier ship the best I think.

 

[delrom5]

Little vignettes like the notes in IISS or the character pull quotes in the SJ Games line add depth to the Traveller universe. By adding the life events to the character generation process extends this idea to the gaming system - when I get a life event during character generation, I try to (or encourage players to) write a throw away paragraph about it; why did the event occur, what happened etc.

The deckplan design is what I meant about some of the designs straying from the enclosed and aerodynamic paradigm - the racehorse design of the corporate x-boat or the spindly Zho frigate with it's bridge and J drive mounted on booms from the main chassis. In turn, they encouraged the adventures that I mentioned previously.

 

[nats]

Little vignettes like the notes in IISS or the character pull quotes in the SJ Games line add depth to the Traveller universe. By adding the life events to the character generation process extends this idea to the gaming system - when I get a life event during character generation, I try to (or encourage players to) write a throw away paragraph about it; why did the event occur, what happened etc.

The deckplan design is what I meant about some of the designs straying from the enclosed and aerodynamic paradigm - the racehorse design of the corporate x-boat or the spindly Zho frigate with it's bridge and J drive mounted on booms from the main chassis. In turn, they encouraged the adventures that I mentioned previously.

The char-gen is what brought me back to MgT, I find CT char-gen stale now compared to MgT. I also love the little bits of news items and rumours that Mongoose have thrown around the Core Rule Book. I would like them to start adding these things into their other books which are getting to be very dull by comparison to the fantastic Core Rule Book.

 

[GypsyComet]

In retrospect, the one weak spot in the IISS Ship Files is that it was done before the alien races had really taken on all of their character. The Zhodani ship is not really a problem in this way, though it shares all of the worst characteristics of my own early "stacked geometry" attempts, but the Vargr ship is really an odd duck. I'm sure there are flying communes amongst the Vargr, but they are hardly common, given that the pack mentality requires not only a leader but potential challengers for his position.