Swimming/Diving

[skeezerpumba]

I was planning a Traveller game where the players will have to go diving to a sunken spaceship to retrieve a cargo, but the main core rules don't seem to cover the tasks of swimming or diving.

Should I add a separate skill for the players to spend points in, (Athletics - Diving) or should I use say, Athletics-Endurance or Athletics-Coordination from the book instead. To me however, they don't see like they fit the task really. What would you other referees do?

 

[rust]

For my water world setting I introduced a skill Athletics (Swim) for swim-
ming and scuba diving and a skill Hardsuit Diving for diving with a powe-
red hardsuit, and this works just fine.

 

[SSWarlock]

I use an old CT supplement by GameLords Ltd. called "The Undersea Environment". Still often found on eBay and also available on CD from Far Future Enterprises, it covers in very good detail every aspect of swimming, diving, and the gear needed for both activities. By "very good", I mean enough detail to help players immerse themselves (pun intended) in the adventures and guide a GM in making fast yet information decisions during play but not enough detail to overwhelm the GM.

Now keep in mind that the supplement was written for Classic Traveller so a little bit of conversion work of the task rolls is necessary. I've found the conversion work to really be minor. CT doesn't have the difficulty levels or the characteristic modifiers that Mongoose Traveller has but both are relatively easy to figure out (or ask about on this forum).

Personally, I'd go with the $35US CD from Far Future Enterprises since it has all the environmental supplements for CT published by GameLords as well as a ton of deckplans published by FASA, all of which cost much more than $35 if you buy them separately from eBay. Of course, buying them separately gets you printed material rather than electronic copies. Different people like different formats.

Alternatively, you can go with your idea of Athletics (Diving) or even Athletics (Endurance). Having a Diving skill separate from the generic Athletics (Endurance) one makes more sense to me because Diving is quite different from the Endurance skill of running a marathon and requires some additional technical knowledge of equipment as well as underwater survival techniques.

 

[BP]

... planning a Traveller game where the players will have to go diving to a sunken spaceship to retrieve a cargo ...

If its just one element of one game - a new skill (or specialty) seems rather overkill. (rust has a campagin/setting I believe...)

Consider - normal diving certification for recreational dives generally upto 60 ft takes as little as 3 days. In many countries this means a 10/12 year old can dive with another certified 10/12 year old. (*And this is just a technical thing for safety and legality... nothing (other than brains) prevents less time and less restrictions )

Your 'sunken' cargo may, of course, be deeper or in 'alien' liquids - but if TL is higher, then Vacc Suit skill should be useable (and perhaps the suits as well)... Athletics would just provide added DMs in the event of unusual skill checks. The suits specifically designed for underwater environments might be in order (if things are deep or the caustic).

Players might be encouraged to find a 'salvage specialist' (this NPC could have an adhoc Trade(Technical Diving) equivalent).

(BTW: Athletics(Dive) is a poor choice as a 'requirement' - arguably use a separate 'Dive' skill just like 'Seafarer' or 'Flyer')

 

[rust]

(BTW: Athletics(Dive) is a poor choice as a 'requirement' ...

Yes, indeed. This is why I decided to use Athletics (Swim) in my setting,
this skill is as general as Climb or Jump and can be used more often than
a very specialized Athletics (Dive) skill, and with a normal Swim skill the
use of scuba gear should be no problem.

Vacc Suit as the skill for Hardsuit Diving has the problem that a diving
hardsuit on a futuristic technology level almost certainly would be a po-
wered suit, while a vacc suit normally is not powered. Someone with the
Battle Dress skill should find it easy to use a diving hardsuit, but some-
one with only Vacc Suit skill could well run into problems.

That said, I would see no problem to give someone with Vacc Suit skill
a Level 0 in Hardsuit Diving after some hours of familiarization, provided
that all tasks during the first few dives are treated as difficult.

 

[skeezerpumba]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not sure how my players will go about doing the mission: all they know is a patron will hire them to get a valuable cargo from a ship that crashed into a fresh water lake, on an earth-like planet, populated by a forgotten and technologically regressed human colony. It's in about 150 feet of water.

The problem is the locals are paranoid militants, so the players, if they wish to avert staring a war, or getting themselves killed, have to get to the sunken wreck stealthily, or at least "blend in" with the locals and get to the ship without attracting attention.

If they wish to buy the proper gear for the mission, say a boat and some diving gear, I'll probably throw in diving lessons and give them Athletics-Diving 0 (since Athletics doesn't have a DM penalty). They all have zero-g training as well (which in the real world is done in a water tank) so I might just allow them to apply their zero-g DMs to the diving checks.

If they blend in with the locals, acquire some local currency, they could probably buy or rent all this stuff right on the planet. They just have to hide the fact they're from space and there is an advanced alien spaceship sitting at the bottom of the lake (and their ship will probably be orbiting the planet).

In any case, it should be pretty interesting to see how they'll handle it. :lol:

 

[Jame Rowe]

I would say use "Athletics (Swim)" for normal swimming (indeed, I thought of this myself before I heard that Rust did), with Diving being a more difficult, Endurance-stat-based variation of it.

 

[evo]

I will use a passive skill named "underwater", like 0G, battle dress armor, space suit, jack-of-all-trade and discipline.

 

[GamerDude]

(assuming a 1g world for all of this)...

Swiming
Diving-Scuba/Snorkling
Diving-Deep

I won't speculate on the suitability of using a Vacc suit underwater, except that it's designed to keep air in, not designed to keep water out. That could be a major factor, might not.

Movement in space is different that underwater.
SPACE:
- Nothing causing resistance to your movements
- Nothing holding you to whatever surface you wish to be on (without like mag boots)
- Anything you 'drop' or let go of just drifts away
- The pressure 'on you' is more 'what is the suit pressurized to'. There's nothing pushing in on the person in the suit.
- The lack of pressure from the outside means no depressurization needed, no worries about the 'bends'.
- Jet packs/maneuvering units can help you move around/be stable on a surface with a lower gravity.
- Full field-of-view, no distortion from atmospheric/hydro-graphic distortion effects.
- Communications with 'base' or others done through simple two-way radio.
- Suits generally easy to provide proper heat to keep occupant warm enough

UNDERWATER:
- Water resists movement, takes more effort to walk, move, you don't have the same ability to put torque into turning a wrench etc.
- The deeper you go, the more pressure crushing in on you
- Water gives you 'buoyancy' meaning you need to wear weights to help keep you from floating up to the surface (or a heavier suit).
- Hazards on the bottom, as in creatures just under the surface of the sand/muck, rocks, unstable surfaces.
- Severely reduced visibility. Don't matter how many 100 megawatt lights you have turned on, stuff in the water will keep you from seeing very far.
- Distorted visibility. objects appear approximately 34% bigger and 25% closer in salt water than they actually are.
- Distorted visibility means total field-of-view is significantly reduced and eye–hand coordination must be adjusted.
- Communication with others by hand signals only. Sound/radio waves do NOT travel very far underwater. Communications with surface must be over a cable, which presents other problems, but once you can't use SCUBA gear the diver will be tethered anyway.
- Not many ways to assist movement without a very bulky expensive hard suit with assist servos in it (but that does reduce flexibility for the person inside)
- No matter how well designed and built the suit is, you have to deal with the Bends. Limits on how long it takes to come up (not just travel time, but the stops to let your body adjust to different pressure), and then there is depressurization once you are out of the suit.
- Keeping wearer warm always a problem as the water transmits cold more efficiently to the suit.
- Past a certain point you can't use SCUBA gear/Wetsuit you have to go to the diving suits (which require the cables).
- Entering any structure, wreck etc in a diving suit risks getting the cables getting caught, or even severed.

Well, that's my quick off the top of my head thinking on this. I used Wikipedia to get some points (like the refraction problem) but I couldn't find what is considered the maximum depth for safely using SCUBA gear etc.

 

[BP]

If the players don't come from a water world - and don't do their homework... salvage at 150 ft depth could prove 'interesting'

(Hehe - can you say hyperbaric chamber... I knew you could (hope one of the PCs has Engineering(Life support) and Medic skills) :twisted: )

 

[GamerDude]

If the players don't come from a water world - and don't do their homework... salvage at 150 ft depth could prove 'interesting'

(Hehe - can you say hyperbaric chamber... I knew you could (hope one of the PCs has Engineering(Life support) and Medic skills) :twisted: )

Um... you mean they have to wait until 150 ft depth for it to get interesting? :roll:

 

[BP]

Nah. 149 ft. should do.

 

[GamerDude]

Nah. 149 ft. should do.

LoL... ahh the sweet sound of someone else posting and having a sense of humor... *GRIN*

 

[rust]

Recreational Diving, the scuba diving learned by amateurs, usually has a
depth limit of 40 meters, beyond which Technical Diving with special gas
mixes begins. The 150 feet mentioned are already beyond the reach of a
normal hobby diver, in fact the Open Water Diving training usually given
to hobby divers is designed for a maximum depth of 18 meters / 50 feet.
So the 150 feet mentioned require either a lot of training and experience,
a diving hardsuit, or the intention to commit a very painful suicide. :twisted:

 

[DFW]

Um... you mean they have to wait until 150 ft depth for it to get interesting? :roll:

Yep, the ND time @150' is only 5 minutes.

 

[GamerDude]

Um... you mean they have to wait until 150 ft depth for it to get interesting? :roll:

Yep, the ND time @150' is only 5 minutes.

"ND" (wanted to say "Enn Dee?") I'm not familiar witht hat abbreviation. Then again the closest I've ever come to diving is snorkeling and watching Jacques Yves Cousteau (growing up I owned his biography, must have read it like 20 times over the years).

 

[rust]

ND time = No Decompression time, the maximum time a diver can stay
at a depth without having to go through decrompression procedures du-
ring his return to the surface.

If the diver stays longer at the depth and returns without decompression
procedures (= returning slowly, with pauses at different depths, etc.), he
risks a couple of unpleasant consequences, up to and including his death.