Misc. questions I've come up with over the past couple weeks

[Woas]

Hey all. Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday. Just got electricity back after 6 days here in upstate New York just last Wednesday. Otherwise it certainly is starting to look like Christmas!

Anyway... as before in the other threads I've started, I have come up with some questions to bounce off you all. This time around it's more rules-orientated and ref advice questions, although still with a hint of opinion! Without further ado...

a) What are the rules for dual weapons? I don't see anything in the chapter on Combat about someone using say, two pistols or two daggers.

If rules for this are right in front of me and I am totally missing them please direct me to them, but if not, what sort of rules would you suggest to handle this?

b) Are there any rules for equipment that is by the book equivalent in stats/TL but may differ on pure quality of manufacture?

Using a current-day example, I can go buy Brand X tires for my car for $50 or I can throw down $90 for top of the line tires. In the grand scheme of things in a rule-book sense, both tires are TL 7ish tires and would probably share the same stats in a game book, but in reality one is far 'superior' than the other. Would in game stats change? Grant a +1 DM for superior quality sort of like how Masterwork items work in Dungeons & Dragons?

c) It's not something I have had to deal with yet in a Traveller game (although I have in D&D games), and I think I've asked this before but handling character death is still something that still sturs in the back of my mind. It may be just pre-gameplay speculation on my part, but it seems that Traveller characters can have a lot riding with them during a game. Shares in ships, debts, contacts, families, fortunes... and is it just me or does it seem as though Traveller has the potential for high body counts?

When a character kicks the bucket how do you handle this shift in wealth? The problem sometimes occurs in games of D&D where one character dies, the party splits the fallen comrades loot and the new character (assuming the old one was not raised from the dead) that is brought to the game is equipped with further gear appropriate to the character creating a sort of power spiral.
I certainly don't want to have the players write Wills for characters. This is a game after all. Is there something different in handling character death/new character introduction for Traveller that you guys do?


Again, thanks for reading and replying. It's getting late and my eyelids are getting heavy so I'll post these three questions for now but I have a couple more I'll ask later.

 

[Alan Hume]

WOW,

My friends uncle live s in Upstate New York (Holmes)

hope its all better there now
(we went up to visit him one winter, and check out the Rangers, it was
VERY cold)

 

[Woas]

Bueller? Bueller? 112 views I see and nobody has any food for thought to spare?

 

[rust]

Sorry, but I cannot answer a single one of your question, these topics
have never played any role in any of my settings. :?

 

[Woas]

Sorry, but I cannot answer a single one of your question, these topics
have never played any role in any of my settings. :?

Hrmm...

How about theoretical answers? Say I was a player in a game you were refing and we came to a situation where guns were the only answer and I looked up after a couple combat rounds plinking away with my revolver and ask, "My character grabs a second revolver with his other hand and starts firing dual-pistol style. What should I roll?"

 

[GypsyComet]

Don't have the books in front of me, so I'll leave [a] aside for now, except to say that CT had some mechanics in place for other purposes that would have taken care of dual-wielding fairly well.

For , the Traveller universe (and in fact most SF games) tend to ignore such things. The assumption you can take from this is that the "standard" items in the equipment section are at least average and possibly top-of-the-line from a reliability point of view. Spacers are unlikely to buy a shoddy item twice, for a variety of reasons, so the junk gets weeded out.

CT had a long-running sub-plot regarding the manufacturing quality of a particular megacorp's products. In practice, there were really no mechanics to handle breakage, but equipment bought from that company could brick on you at the worst times.

Along those lines, you could certainly give an option to spend more for simple reliability. How this manifests will be up to you, really. Firearms may jam less often or clear very quickly, or fire in conditions most others would not. The vacc suit could provide just a tad more air time, penalize dexterity less, or give just a few percentage points more radiation protection, or simply not stink as much after a long EVA...

TNE had maintenance rules and a "wear value" rule for handling breakdown of starship components. Something similar could be adopted, I'm sure.

As for [c], you bring up a couple things.

The game is deadly, yes. The side effect of this should be fewer firefights. In practice, however...

Wills are for planet dwellers and those involved in ship mortgages. A normal breakabout is unlikely to have a will on or about his person, as he would hardly expect the people around an event like his death to honor such a document. If he has family somewhere, they will likely have a will in his name that takes care of the property he doesn't have with him, and assume that, in most cases, anything he has with him away from home is simply lost to the family. The exceptions ("I am his son. Did you recover his ring?") make for adventure potential.

The sheer size and length of ship mortgages pretty much demands that the mortgage contracts have post-mortem clauses built in. Will the bank claim the ship, or does a crew member take over? Up to the contract and its signators. The ship's comp may inform remaining crew once the death is recorded, or it may all come as a complete surprise seven months later when an agent of the bank asks for an appointment...

 

[kristof65]

What should I roll?"

Dice? :twisted:


sorry, couldn't resist.

Haven't played MgT yet, so I don't have an answer for you. I would probaly go with something like a -DM for using 2 guns, and a further -DM for the second gun.

 

[kristof65]

Wills are for planet dwellers and those involved in ship mortgages.

Not necessarily.

While the rules concerning wills, and the frequency that they get honored will vary from place to place, more people will have wills than that. For example, the US military highly encourages all of it's service members to make wills. There was even talk of it being mandatory.

Now, updating those wills is another thing completely. I got a will when I was in the Navy, and didn't bother to update it until I had kids with my second wife. If I had died while I was with my ex-wife, she would have had to fought with my sister over things.

So it's highly likely that ex-military have a will of sorts, possibly highly outdated. For the most part, it's probably a standard form will, so you can create 'boilerplate" wills for the service members.

Given the nature of interstellar travel, it's also likely that larger ships and firms will require personnel to file updated wills with them - possibly even requiring release forms giving them permission to liquidate your assets to cash as they see fit for easier "return" to your bequeathed. Things like insurance policies to pay for the return of your body/belongings to your home of record may be required or available.

Well respected free traders will probably also have customs and policies in place to deal with things like wills and possessions upon the death of a crew member.

Now, interpreting wills and inheritence in a society like the Third Imperium will be a legal nightmare. The TI itself would probably turn things over to your home of record (after taking their share of estate taxes, I'm sure). But if you die anywhere but an area under control of your home of record, or the TI, your family can probably pretty much kiss anything you owned and had with you at the time good bye.

Insurance policies would be likely be held on the planet where your kin are, and once proof of your death was recieved and verified, would be paid out under the local inheritance laws.


Ship mortgages could be relatively straightfoward in dealing with an owner's death, or relatively complicated. Straightforward would be that upon death the bank takes possession of the ship for immediate resale. After it's sold, any profit above the balance owed would be dispersed according to the owner's will. More convoluted mortgages will have things like insurance policies for the primaries, and payouts according to ship shares, continued operation clauses, etc.

Pretty much any situation you want/need could probably come into play, and as gypsycomet points out, a lot of it can make for good adventure material.

But when it comes to players, you don't really need to get all that complicated, unless you or they want to. I would start by coming up with "standard" will and/or inheritence law that applies to your campaign, and simply apply that when/where needed. It doesn't have to be complicated - three or four lines can pretty much sum up the "law" of your campaign. You could go further and create ones that apply to various careers/governments, etc if you so desire. Create exceptions where you need/want them, but rule that any situation not covered by an explicitely defined exception falls back to campaign default.

Your players can then choose to go with your standard will, or create their own. They could come up with a blanket one that covers them all, or each player could create one as they like - let them have the freedom to determine how detailed they get. I know people who routinely make wills for their RPG characters - for them it's part of their fun, while many other players don't give a rat's arse.

Do remember that just because a character has a will, and/or it applies to a situation regarding a PC or NPCs death does not mean the will itself will be carried out. And that's ok, too, because it leads to all sorts of potential andventure and RPG material.

 

[rust]

How about theoretical answers?

Unfortunately, in my kind of setting it is highly unlikely that a character
has even one handgun with him. :lol:

My current setting is a young colony on a hostile world undergoing terra-
forming, and the still quite small population lives in domed habitats. To
bring a handgun inside a habitat would be considered a capital crime, I
think ("Want to cause a hull breach and kill us all, yes ?").
We have now played 12 game years of this campaign without a single
combat scene, and I have not even studied the combat rules closely,
we just did not need them ...

As for superior quality items, I agree with what Gypsy Comet wrote, and
this is the way we handle it, too.

Wills ... it depends a lot on the setting. In my colony setting almost all
characters have well known family members who would inherit without
any legal problems, and the stuff owned by the few loners among the
colonists would become the property of the colony, I think.

 

[Elysianknight]

How about theoretical answers?

Unfortunately, in my kind of setting it is highly unlikely that a character
has even one handgun with him. :lol:

My current setting is a young colony on a hostile world undergoing terra-
forming, and the still quite small population lives in domed habitats. To
bring a handgun inside a habitat would be considered a capital crime, I
think ("Want to cause a hull breach and kill us all, yes ?").
We have now played 12 game years of this campaign without a single
combat scene, and I have not even studied the combat rules closely,
we just did not need them ...

Can i ask what sort of campaigns you run? my group are far to gung-ho. would like to challenge their roleplaying with a spell without guns...

 

[cbrunish]

As to the two weapons bit. Star Frontiers uses -10% with off hand and an additional -10% with firing two weapons (off hand -20% and good hand -10%). This would correlate to a total of -2 with off hand and -1 with good hand (total numbers is 11 and 10% of that is 1.1 rounded down to a 1). 8)

 

[Woas]

Yeah I gotta hand it to you Rust. If what you say is true (and I'm not doubting you) than your deserve an award! 8)

The draw to violence has always been very strong with my gaming group. :lol:

@ cbrunish: So you would grant the character using two weapons an additional significant action* in a combat round? See that's one of the areas where I'm personally puzzled. On one hand giving a character two attacks with negative DM seems one way to go, but seems like it would become one of those situations where EVERYONE would just start picking up two weapons to get another action.
On the other hand (no pun intended:lol I was thinking maybe using a second weapon be resolved like a 'mini' version of auto-fire where you roll pairs. But it gets kind of hairy, especially with melee weapons I think, and not sure my expertise with the system is strong enough just yet...

There's also on page 51 the small paragraph about Multiple Actions. -2 DM for doing two things at once. Under that rule a character would be "firing a weapon while firing another weapon". How does that work out? Fall back on giving the character two attack rolls at -2?

*Obviously it would be a 'special case' significant actions where only attacks would be viable. It's certainly ridiculous to allow someone to pick up a second knife so they can make a second mechanics check or something silly.

Edit: Posted same time as cbrunish and didn't see it.

 

[Dave Chase]

I would not give the individual 2 attacks as in two seperate attacks to resolve.
Unless the individual has either ambidextrous or the skill 2 handed attack.

What I would allow would be

The player declares they are attacking with both weapons.
Take 2 different dice (color, size or both) and declare which is the primary handed and which is the secondary (or weak) handed one.
Roll both at the same time and apply modifiers.

If the player does not have the 2 handed attack skill
I apply the following DMs
-2 primary
-4 secondary
roll both damages at the same time secondary weapon gets -4 damage

If the player has the 2 handed skill and they don't declare two attacks
DMs
-1 Primary
-2 secondary
roll both damages at the same time secondary weapon gets -2 damage

If the player has the 2 handed skill and they declare 2 seperate attacks
DMs
0 primary
-4 secondary
roll damages seperately with no minus to damage roll

The above is mainly melee weapons

For range I apply the same to hit mods but change the damage/location rolls

If the player does not have the 2 handed attack skill
I apply the following DMs
-2 primary
-4 secondary
roll both damages at the same time secondary weapon can not get a critical and depending on the way you determine damage location add or subtract 4 (or 20%) to the location roll

If the player has the 2 handed skill and they don't declare two attacks
DMs
-1 Primary
-2 secondary
roll both damages at the same time secondary weapon can not get a critical and depending on the way you determine damage location add or subtract 2 (or 10%) to the location roll

If the player has the 2 handed skill and they declare 2 seperate attacks
DMs
0 primary
-4 secondary
roll damages seperately

Dave Chase

 

[saundby]

My current setting is a young colony on a hostile world undergoing terra-
forming, and the still quite small population lives in domed habitats. To
bring a handgun inside a habitat would be considered a capital crime, I
think ("Want to cause a hull breach and kill us all, yes ?").

The bravo whose sidearm has just been challenged pulls the wad of chewing gum from his cheek and brandishes it. "This is for your 'hull breach', dirtfoot."

 

[saundby]

How about theoretical answers? Say I was a player in a game you were refing and we came to a situation where guns were the only answer and I looked up after a couple combat rounds plinking away with my revolver and ask, "My character grabs a second revolver with his other hand and starts firing dual-pistol style. What should I roll?"

Roll for random damage to whatever is in the area for the off hand. Difficulty level for the primary hand now goes to Very Hard, at least. Unless they're pressing both muzzles into the target, in which case hit rolls aren't required but you might roll for jams.

If they practice two-handed, maybe let them get to Very Hard with both hands after a term.

Two hands looks good in movies, but for use I recommend put both hands on one gun and aim for results. I run Trav the same way. If I'm running a different sort of game, I may let it work like it does in the movies, but not in Trav.

 

[saundby]

Hey all. Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday. Just got electricity back after 6 days here in upstate New York just last Wednesday. Otherwise it certainly is starting to look like Christmas!

Anyway... as before in the other threads I've started, I have come up with some questions to bounce off you all. This time around it's more rules-orientated and ref advice questions, although still with a hint of opinion! Without further ado...

a) What are the rules for dual weapons? I don't see anything in the chapter on Combat about someone using say, two pistols or two daggers.

b) Are there any rules for equipment that is by the book equivalent in stats/TL but may differ on pure quality of manufacture?

c)When a character kicks the bucket how do you handle this shift in wealth?

Glad your power's back! I hope it stays on. We get a lot of that here, too (Sierra foothills.)

A) As above for handguns, random effects for both if both are long arms.
For hand-to-hand, I have it that they train in a two-weapon style, e.g. broadsword/shortsword, rapier/dagger. Getting a 1 skill in one gives a 0 in similar styles. Same for just offhand weapon use with a max skill of 1 with the offhand weapon. If they don't already have the offhand weapon skill when they train two weapons they get 0 with the weapon in the off hand.

B) I only consider item quality when it's a plot element, otherwise skill dominates. Trav tends to be a skill-dominated game.

C) Depends on the character and the campaign's plot. Things go smoothly for characters who prepare, not so well for the live-for-the-day sorts, assuming there's any wealth worth fighting over. As with life, if you're worth something you've got a lot more relations than you knew.

Sometimes when it would be a problem to the campaign I'll allow a retroactive settlement of some sort if the players can sell me on it and if I feel it's in character. A will or some other legal transfer.

More often, if there's ship ownership involved there's already a corporate entity to which the ship shares have been turned over, with rules about deaths of shareholders, etc. that pretty well allow whoever's left to keep operating the ship and dispose of things as they please.

 

[rust]

Can i ask what sort of campaigns you run?

Running in the background of the campaign is a simulation of the colony's
development, using material like World Tamer's Handbook and Pocket Em-
pires.
The adventures include wilderness exploration (including some alien ruins)
and prospecting, trade missions, first contacts with neighbouring alien spe-
cies, rescue missions during and after natural and other desasters, diplo-
matic missions ... in short, all the more or less challenging events that
can happen when a colony is established on a hostile planet.
Some good examples for such adventures without any combat are, in my
opinion, Type S and One Crowded Hour for Mongoose Traveller and Out-
post 19 for BRP.

The bravo whose sidearm has just been challenged ...

The poor guy would have to do this during a starport security check, and
the security officer he calls "dirtfoot" and the other members of the se-
curity team are armed ... :wink:

 

[Woas]

@ Dave Chase: I'm not really clear on what you are saying. Unless I am mistaken there is no "2-handed attack skill" that I can see described in the rule book.

And to clarify, I did mean using two weapons (firing two pistols or slashing with two daggers, etc) against a single target. I realize that wasn't clear in the original post.

As to the quality issue. My original idea was for a very basic sub-TL classification system. All items would function as per normal rules but with three sub-classes for items. Take a computer for example. There would be computer- (real cheap, brand x item), computer (run-of-the-mill, standard quality), and computer+ (really name brand, top quality). All of them would function normally as per the rules written. The differences come first in price, and then variable "unwritten snake-eyes rules".
What I mean by that is, currently the rules state if you fail using a piece of equipment with an effect of -6, you really botch the job and the piece of the equipment is likely to suffers some consequence (pg. 50). So in the circumstances that a player gets a -6 effect, a - item would nigh fall apart in their hands rending it totally useless. Using the computer as an example, a situation like this would be like having shoddy capacitors on the motherboard go at once or something. Trying to fix it would be a long and difficult processes (10-60 hours) and probably would be easier just buying a whole new item outright. A standard item would break but not nearly as severe and require say 10-60 minutes and be routine to fix. A + item goes even further and only needs 1-6 minutes to fix.

 

[Shiloh]

And to clarify, I did mean using two weapons (firing two pistols or slashing with two daggers, etc) against a single target. I realize that wasn't clear in the original post.

Given Traveller's generally gritty ambience, two-gun shootists aren't really catered for. Accurate pistol shooting is best done from a two-handed grip: paired pistols are suppressive at best. If you want to get all Jon Woo on it, then best make up your own set of modifiers to suit the power level you want paired pistols to have. Think, though: there has to be a downside to it, or *everyone* would be doing it. Which might be fine for you, or you might want to invent a new skill to cover two-gun shooting. Something like Jack-of-Trades which only offsets the negative modifier imposed...

 

[Tipsy]

Howdy,

My 2 cents...all of which should be qualified by the statement that one of the things I love about MongTrav is its simplicity. There aren't a million grillion rules and subsystems to learn and the cardinal rule seems to be 'do what it takes to keep the game rolling.' I actually think it is far more cinematic than many give it credit for.

a) I would use the multiple action rule and give the player a -2 on the first weapon in their dominant hand and a -4 for the weapon in their off-hand. Unless they are a combat monkey this would be a sufficient challenge to me...especially with an initiative hit as well.

b) As I said, I dig that MongTrav has opted to keep things simple. The absence of a highly detailed equipment list and/or quality subsystem is a feature, not a bug to me. I actually think by keeping the equipment list basic and abstract MongTrav is less likely to date as quickly than many of the earlier iterations of Traveller. So yeah, cheap equipment makes it more likely to cause plot related complications. Expensive stuff is pretty and may, just may, give a bonus under some situations.

c) This has come up in my game. None of my players realized how deadly the game was (or how tricky it was to fire into a skirmish involving another player) and, well, this came up.

I actually made my players declare who is set to inherit their ship shares. This was made easier by the fact that two of my group's PCs have daughters (thanks life events!) who are of adventuring age and would likely step into the campaign should their parent die.

Another character has decided his shares will revert back to the company he was an agent for (a company that made him pay for his own limb replacements needed due to serving them as an agent).

So my advice is simple: don't bring it up until the first serious fight...and then mention to your players if they don't mention it first. Figure out what will work of for your group and run with it!