Last Wednesday I ran The Rescue, one of the free adventures found in Signs & Portents 55 as a one-off test-run of the Traveller rules system. We had a blast but a couple questions for us non-scientific minded people came up.
First odd part was during the rescue Herik the engineer who was trapped in a mine tunnel. For the characters to save him they need to navigate down an access tunnel that is in danger of cave-ins. The adventure states however that there is only 1/6th gravity. To my understanding that's about what the gravity on our moon is like. So I'm wondering how deadly would this be and how 'fast' are these rocks falling? A 200 lbs rock from the ceiling is only really 32 lb which would hurt if you threw that at me, but is it slowly drifting down and easily avoidable or what?
Our answer when I mentioned this was that the danger was a mix of falling objects and other debris in the tunnel getting kicked around and we just kind of went on. The one character who took damage grinned and bared it and it wasn't a big deal.
The next issue we ran into though was with guns, specifically slug throwers which brings me to the title and real root of this post. We're still in .16 G and now the player is up to the part where they are trying to rescue the space noble (his name escapes me) and run into some kidnappers/murderers. The player got into a quick gun battle with these guys and had a Gauss pistol which he fired into an enclosed hall way. Even on earth the bullet is going to bounce off some walls but what about in 1/6th gravity? Are there any rules for that? Perhaps there was something in the combat section of the rules that I totally mind-farted on when I was reading it and don't remember it?
At the time it didn't occur to us but we realized it afterwards that firing slug bullets, in an enclosed space in micro gravity is probably pretty dangerous as the bullet will probably ricochet a lot more than what is typical on a 1G planet with the possibility of hitting the gunman himself... or any of the other targets in the hall (maybe even a window although I would assume glass that is part of an airtight chamber is probably real strong and can take a couple bullets).
Anyway despite those two questions like I said we all had a lot of fun with Traveller an are all looking forward to playing it in the near future and thanks for any insight you can pass on about this stuff.
First odd part was during the rescue Herik the engineer who was trapped in a mine tunnel. For the characters to save him they need to navigate down an access tunnel that is in danger of cave-ins. The adventure states however that there is only 1/6th gravity. To my understanding that's about what the gravity on our moon is like. So I'm wondering how deadly would this be and how 'fast' are these rocks falling? A 200 lbs rock from the ceiling is only really 32 lb which would hurt if you threw that at me, but is it slowly drifting down and easily avoidable or what?
Our answer when I mentioned this was that the danger was a mix of falling objects and other debris in the tunnel getting kicked around and we just kind of went on. The one character who took damage grinned and bared it and it wasn't a big deal.
The next issue we ran into though was with guns, specifically slug throwers which brings me to the title and real root of this post. We're still in .16 G and now the player is up to the part where they are trying to rescue the space noble (his name escapes me) and run into some kidnappers/murderers. The player got into a quick gun battle with these guys and had a Gauss pistol which he fired into an enclosed hall way. Even on earth the bullet is going to bounce off some walls but what about in 1/6th gravity? Are there any rules for that? Perhaps there was something in the combat section of the rules that I totally mind-farted on when I was reading it and don't remember it?
At the time it didn't occur to us but we realized it afterwards that firing slug bullets, in an enclosed space in micro gravity is probably pretty dangerous as the bullet will probably ricochet a lot more than what is typical on a 1G planet with the possibility of hitting the gunman himself... or any of the other targets in the hall (maybe even a window although I would assume glass that is part of an airtight chamber is probably real strong and can take a couple bullets).
Anyway despite those two questions like I said we all had a lot of fun with Traveller an are all looking forward to playing it in the near future and thanks for any insight you can pass on about this stuff.