Jeffro’s Car Wars Blog

I tried a practice run through of the T4 space combat rules: just a standard duel between two TL 12 10 ton “Light Fighters.”  This really isn’t a fair test of the system– it’d be like judging Car Wars based on a duel between two body armor wearing pedestrians having a long range shoot out using only heavy pistols.  My first impressions were positive.  While not particularly exciting, the rules were fairly easy to follow and relatively uncluttered.  Of course, the fighters are restricted to shooting it out in the point-blank range band, so there are not a lot of options for maneuver.

In my test run, both fighters had to roll a 5 or less on two dice to score a hit.  The fighters lack a lot of fancy equipment, so critical hits tend to not do much.  To completely finish off a fighter it takes 5 hits with the point defense laser.  And with that you have a nice little probability problem for the aspiring actuary: what is the expected number of rounds it takes to finish a fighter duel?  In my case, one fighter scored a lucky hit on the other and took out its laser battery.  While the other attempted to flee, the fighter continually tried to close and keep firing.  It took a total of 37 turns to finish it.  That’s 370 minutes of game time, or six hours and ten minutes!

When opponents have equal maneuver ratings, the initiative is determined by flipping a coin.  To escape a battle, the fighter would have to win initiative three times in a row to get to long range.  Of course, even if he succeeds in breaking off, I think the attacking fighter can elect to pursue.

Anyways, I saw several places where the rules could be improved:

1) Critical Success and Critical Failure effects are not defined for skill rolls in space combat.  Addressing that could go a long way toward adding at least a possibility of a satisfying coup-de-gras moment in the above scenario.

2) The initiative step is more or less geared towards a face off between opposing fleets: the side with the most ships and highest leadership skill can close or pull away as it pleases.  The fifty-fifty approach used above is very unsatisfactory– surely there are other factors that can impact this all-important step.

3) T4 has been criticized for giving too much weight to attributes in its task system.  In space combat, however, attributes have no impact at all!  (This mismatch leads me to believe that these rules were mostly lifted from previous versions of Traveller without much thought to integrating them into a new vision of how things should work.  It looks like an opportunity to provide a “last word” on space combat was carelessly passed by.)

4) The no-effect critical hit results are very depressing.  They ought to at least force the characters of the target vessel to have to make some sort of saving throw to avoid problems.  Think R2-D2 locking down the stabilizer on the x-wing or putting out the fire on the Falcon.

5) The jamming and sensor rules are pretty confusing.  The terms are defined, the step is there, and there’s a table of modifiers… but what really happens here is not spelled out.  Evidently a successful jamming attempt can break an opponent’s sensor lock, or make it harder for them to get a lock to begin with.  But the difference between active and passive sensors are not addressed even though the choice is explicitly referenced.

6) There are not a lot of choices in this vision of space combat.  Perhaps a paper-rock-scissors choice could be made at the beginning of each turn… with a matrix of the results creating bonuses for later steps or creating new contests of skill.  On the other hand, perhaps Traveller space combat is intended to be dry and without a lot of surprises.  I’m not sure about this.

7) There are no effects for morale or endurance.

 Looks like a lot of room for improvement. 

Traveller players are a notoriously difficult bunch to please.  There are so many campaign types: merchant, mercenary, explorer, etc.  There are so many rule sets: classic, MegaTraveller, The New Era, T4, T20, GURPS Traveller, etc.  Most players don’t even play a single ruleset, but pick and choose pieces of each one and/or modify them heavily with houserules.  Then there are even the different types of games: miniatures games, grand strategic, ship combat.  For ship combat there are even 6 or 8 totally different systems of varying degrees of detail.  There are several different regions of space to play in: the Spinward Marches, the Solomani Rim, and Gateway.  There’s countless others that have less detailed support than those major regions.  And all of those regions can be played in during a half dozen hisorical eras.  But even playing in “official” areas/eras, players are still divided on major issues of technology and culture… and they tweak things to present Traveller as they think it really works.

So… if you were going to make a product for this crowd… what would it be?  How would come up with something for such a balkanized group of gamers?  No matter what you do you are likely to enrage some faction.  And the quiet die-hards are more than likely going to use just parts of what you produce to fine tune their personal universes.  For this crowd of picky gaming critics… what can you possibly do at this point to get them excited… to startle them… to even just get their attention?  Haven’t they seen it all by now? 

One wonders if the fans even really want to see something new.  While the Rebellion plot threads running throughout the MegaTraveller materials upset a great many of them, the Virus that debuted in The New Era sent many more over the edge.  Instead of pushing forward with a “ruined” Imperium, T4 turned back the clock of the setting by over a thousand years.  Similarly, T20’s default setting went back a hundred years or so.  The GURPS line went forward from the classic Traveller period… but in an alternate universe where Virus and the Rebellion never happened.  But going forward in that manner didn’t quite sit well… so the 4th Edition GURPS Traveller setting went even further back than T4 to the Interstellar Wars period– the setting derived from GDW’s wargame “Imperium” which wasn’t even technically a Traveller product when it came out!

Going forward seems to be the last thing on anyone’s mind.

And then, onto the scene comes a certain Martin J Dougherty.  A long time player and fan, I first became aware of him via the Citizens of the Imperium site that was more or less a hang-out for T20 fans with a strong “grognard” subculture.  He had this crazy dream of pushing the timeline forward from the New Era… and he’d even written a novel to do it.  I thought this was vaguely lame at the time… I mean, that would be like me writing a Car Wars novel, right?  I was skeptical.

Time went on, and I kept seeing this guy’s name turn up.  He wrote the short story that appeared at the front of QLI’s reprint of the venerable “Classic Books 1-3.”  He’d written the “Behind the Claw ” Spinward Marches sector book for GURPS Traveller.  (In a mix-up, a draft got published by mistake instead of the final version.  Steve Jackson never fixed the problem and quietly let that essential sourcebook go out of print.)  “MJD” wrote a a sourcebook about the Imperial Navy… but Steve Jackson decided not to go with the book.  Not to be dissuaded from his dreams, MJD published it himself… and it can now be purchased at e23.  MJD even had a primary role in launching a new line of “Little Black Books” supporting the classic era with background, ships, and adventures in the years just preceding the Rebellion. 

The guy is prolific, persistent, and not easily discouraged… and somehow he decided to not just talk about it, but he really did go and launch a new line of Traveller products that seriously supported a background set about 50 years after the New Era game.  “1248″ sat in the play-test area of the COTI boards for months.  It quietly got published sometime last year.  I hadn’t heard too much about it, but I had enjoyed the “Little Black Book Series,” so I took a chance and picked it up from e23 recently.  After several pages into the book, I slowly transformed into Sylvester after he’d seen the kangaroo-that-he-thought-was-a-mouse:

“B-b-b-big!  HUGE!  Big!  Big!  L-l-l-large!  Gigantic!”

I’d read the Classic Traveller Adventures and the GURPS Alien Races series, so I knew a lot of the basics of Traveller history and setting.  1248 takes that setting… and then spins the tale of the Rebellion and The New Era.  Even with my cursory knowledge of Traveller, I could easily follow the players and races involved in the tale.  I knew nothing about MegaTraveller, really, or TNE… so this was the first time I’d learned the details of what had occurred in those incarnations of the game.  What a story!  But it keeps going.  GDW’s last iteration of Traveller, “TNE,” was left partly undone and partly as a cliff hanger… but this book finally gives us the answers to wild things like The Black Curtain, The Empress Wave, Longbow, and the Zhodani Core Expeditions. 

As a teenager I’d always been disappointed by how Isaac Asimov had handled his Foundation Series.  When he picked up from the original trilogy, things just got stupid.  I wanted to see the Foundation grow into a real empire… and see the two Foundations work out their differences.  Instead, Asimov delved into the past and worked his robot novels into the background.  Now… more than 15 years later, I can finally have what I was longing for in a clash of space empires.  Oh yes… space ships explode in this one.  After reading lots of Classic Traveller and GURPS Traveller where a decadent status quo was carefully maintainted… now… all hell breaks loose… again and again and again!

70 pages of action packed history.  30 pages detailing the major states.  30 pages of secrets.  A really nifty system for specific generation rules for destroying Traveller settings and then helping them recover… and it’s fine tuned for each of the major interstellar terrains.  Finally, you get the details of part of a subsector, world descriptions for several planets, adventure seeds, and maps for three worlds.  160 pages altogether… and it can be had for a measly fifteen bucks.

All in all, I have to say this is the best Traveller product I’ve ever read.

Outstanding.

I won’t get into the details of the history and background as I don’t want to spoil it.  But for the old fashioned Car Wars fanatic like myself, I couldn’t help but notice that a special attention is given to the starship designs used by each faction each step forward into the future.  Unlike the original Traveller game where the design system came first… and then the background material came later and turned out to be somewhat inconsistent with the “crunchy bits”… this time, the “flavor text” is impacted very much by the implications of the existing design systems.  This is a real bonus to wanna-be gearheads like myself that want to know how developing battle fleets utilize their resources to come up with a coherent ship design strategy.  The text doesn’t go overboard with this stuff and there’s certainly no stats there, but you can tell that the authors really liked space ship designs.

You don’t need to be a Traveller expert to get into this, but you will get more out of it if you’ve read the Classic Adventures and some of the Alien Races series.  If you’ve held off on MegaTraveller and TNE, then you get a pretty good summary of what transpired in those supplements.  If you’ve been thinking of picking up MJD’s Traveller novels like The Diaspora Phoenix, then you might get some spoilers for those in this book.

Cranky Traveller fans are notorious for despising Virus, but there’s nothing in 1248 that forces you to feature it in your game.  Players can safely downplay it the same way I omit the more irritating major races from my scenarios. 

Probably the best part about the background is that there are so many flavors of Space Empire to choose from now, all of which are separated by huge expances of Wilds.  On the battered worlds of those decimated regions, a few PC’s with a ship can have a huge impact.  Games will not necessarily blow up into epic cinematic silliness just because they’re set in 1248… this is still Traveller style “mostly sorta hard-ish” space opera with less opera than most.  But PC’s will easily get in situations where they can transform the quality of life of a struggling culture, topple Technologically Elevated Dictators, or bring peace to two warring pocket empires.

The book is largely system free.  You just need to have a grasp of Traveller’s simple Universal World Profile to use the world data.  Don’t be put off by the T20 markings on the cover: the only reference to those rules is a reminder to T20 players not to confuse Traveller’s Charisma stat for Vargr with D&D’s Charisma attribute.

Highly recommended.  1248 is available from e23… but the entire product line can be viewed on the COMStar site.

I’ve always thought it strange that Interstellar Wars was released without any weapons stats.  The suggestion of just using the standard stuff in the 4^th edition core books always seemed pretty lame to me.  While the lack of any equipment in the new GURPS Space has now been fixed with the release of GURPS Ultra-Tech, GURPS Traveller still remains without any sort of conversion document to 4^th Edition.  This leaves some GT fans feeling somewhat abandoned by SJG.

While GT Demigod Loren Wiseman has recently scoffed at a COTI Poll indicating that a significant portion of fans desired a return to a Classic Traveller or MegaTraveller style rulesets, it ought to be noted that his own line of PDFs are indeed dual statted for those legacy systems.  Nevertheless Loren states he is indeed negotiating several new GT products slated to come out on e23 even as we speak, so hopefully the line is firmly in the “not dead yet” department.

A gaming guru known only as “GamerGirl” on the Steve Jackson boards has done the necessary crunching to translate the weapons on armor of GURPS Traveller into the 4th edition rules.  Her tips can help frustrated GM’s make the best of this irritating situation.  She has kindly given me permission to repost her findings here: 

__________________________________________________________

Well, actually, if you already have 4e, you can still implement the Traveller equipment list as presented on GT2e114-115 and the armor on the preceding page with just a few minor changes. If someone had told me what I’m about to tell you, I never would have had to switch over to G3e, but now that I understand both systems, I know what the main differences are:

1. Calculate Dodge as simply HT+DX/4, like Basic Speed, and drop the frak; that is to say, Dodge is pretty much equal to Move. The Passive Defense of any worn armor (abbreviated PD) is added to dodge or sometimes other defense rolls.

2. You can use the Accuracy as given. Holdout (Hld) is mostly applied to ‘to hit’ rolls with that gun in close combat. You might also occasionally use it to modify a concealment roll when trying to sneak past Starport customs agents, etc.

3. If the attacker’s adjusted (usually, the main modifier is for range, but there are other conditional modifiers on the Ref’s screen and in the Basic Set, but these are pretty much the same as they are in G4e) “to hit” roll is less than the SS number of the weapon, apply an additional -4 to the roll for unaimed shots- if your players crank their Gun skills up the way mine do, you usually don’t have to worry about this rule.

I’ve had a copy of T4 sitting in the attic for some time, and after hearing some positive comments about from people like Martin J Dougherty, I decided to take a closer look.

Character creation looks like a slightly simplified Mega-Traveller approach.  You’ll find the schooling tables and the quick home-world generation to be largely the same.  While several careers such as Piracy, Belting, and Barbarian are missing, it appears that a Psionicist class is tucked away in a later chapter.  There’s a nifty background skills system that appears to be new and fairly expressive.  Also, the “special duty” roll appears to have disappeared, replaced by a simple flat rule of one new skill per year in service.  This last change is of course propelled by Marc’s newer concept for a task system, and not suitable for previous versions of Traveller.

One thing the rules note is that some players will want a completely random generation, some will want as much choice as possible so they can play what they want, and some will want something in between.  This appears to address the numerous house rules and die roll “fudges” that occurred with previous editions in an unobtrusive manner: no particular method is singled out as being the “right way.”

For attributes I rolled, 8, 7, 11, 4, 3, and 7.  I went with the old-school approach and assigned them to my stats in order.  I get a tough but uneducated bruiser.  For home-world I rolled up Starport B, Size small, Atmosphere standard, Wet world, Population 10,000+, Law Level 8, Tech Level E.  That’d be a small advanced world with a lot of traffic.  The only problem with this method of world generation is that now I want the full UWP for it instead of this unweildy gloss. 

For background skills I rolled Business, Language, Gun Combat, and First Aid.  I chose the Rogue profession and easily got in– picking up one level in the Clandestine Cascade and Short Blade-1.  My first term I picked up Streetwise, Camouflage, more Gun Combat, and Jack of all Trades.  My second term I got injured!  Note that even in first edition Traveller this didn’t necessarily kill you.  In T4, you muster out early.  I roll and find that my injury occurred after my 3rd year into the term.  My skills for the abbreviated tour came up as 2 levels in Clandestine and one more level in Gun Combat.  Note, I picked the table I thought fit the character concept and then rolled randomly for the skills in each case– that just seemed to be the fun way to do it.

Mustering out I got one roll… and got the strange result of +1 to Soc!  I started to throw it out and re-roll, but then realized that explaining it would be more fun.

Here’s the final character:

UPP 87B438  Age 25

Terms 1.75 Cr 0

Computer, Trader-1, Language(Vilani)-1, Shotgun-3, Intimidation-1, Short Blade-1, First Aid-1, Streetwise-3, Camoflage-1, Jack of all Trades-1

While a teenager, our hero acquired the bad habit of selling and trading illicit items in the seedy star-town of his home-world.  He opted to make a career out of it, and began working as a “tough” for a major crime boss of the subsector.  Things went well for a time, but one job became a total disaster.  After getting wounded and identified, his boss did what he could to get him sent as far away as possible.  After a long ride in cold sleep, “Eneri” is now on an unstable frontier under a new identity, seeking to make a new start.

I love how two odd results become the lynch-pin of the character’s story….  You end up with things you’d never come up with on your own.  Very nice.

Note that, because of the T4 task system, I focused on skills that were END based and avoided INT and EDU based skilled.  If I’d been aware of Kenneth Bearden’s alternate system, I might have chosen my skills a bit differently.  Also, with the special rules from Dragon #55, I could attempt to take this character through a new career if I wanted to try to pick up new skills.  Note that T4 did allow for such an option, but the Dragon rules are much more textured.

Note that, there’s no reason this character can’t be tweaked a bit to show up in a Car Wars campaign.  All we need is a few careers defined for cyclists, MONDO’s, and duellists!  Also note that Kenneth Bearden’s task system would work perfectly well for role playing with Car Wars characters…. 

I notice that, for myself, I lack the creative drive to sit down and craft a cast of GURPS Autoduel characters to the standard 100 pt. standard.  I know that most GM’s just throw together what they need without regard to balance, but there’s still the colorful variation part.  The Traveller rules give the uninspired referee a lot of things to spark his imagination… and rolling up a character is actually even fun even by itself.

Charles Oines has recently posted some CGI pictures of the new Traveller miniatures for the Power Projection game. 

Yep… those are fakes.  Just pure digital ephemera without one lick of lead.  Those Zhodani ships are beautiful, though….  And isn’t that an Azhanti High Lightning?!  Wow!

Charles is the second greatest editor to take the reigns of everybody’s favorite gaming magazine.  He left at the apex of the Car Wars glory at the moment of the release of the first Compendium.  Issues 7-1 to 7-3 were the first “big” issues of the magzines, and were quite good– he fielded some of the weirdest articles ever in Autoduel Quarterly history, including Mutant Zone, Ob Racing, and Hoverball.  Volume 7 would have been the best year of ADQ of all time had he not quit after issue three.  With his departure, ADQ entered its deplorable revolving editor phase… and Steve Jackson’s standards would soon take a very noticeable downturn in production quality and standards.  I feel like crying just looking at some of those later issues….

It appears that “CAO”, as he was known in ADQ&A, has had his hand in variety of tactical space combat games since his Car Wars days… even going so far as to publish a recent game that he calls Voidstriker.  Don’t confuse it with his other now-out-of-print game that came out in 1993… also called Voidstriker.  (Yeah… it looks like its hard to shake that twisted sense of humor you pick up working with Car Wars….)

Wow, it looks like CAO has done more than a couple space combat scenes:

Somebody buy this and let me know how it is!

It’s big.  It’s bad.  It’s the amazing 4th edition of Steve Jackson’s “end all be all” Generic Universal Role Playing System.  It’s ready to rock on in the new millennium: this baby takes an already flexible design to a higher level of abstraction.  Let’s take a quick sample of what the fans are saying:

“Going through the changes between 3.0 and 4.0, it’s like they read our house rules hand-out.” — Ian Turner

“3e was more like an erector set where you could build a framework and then you spent a lot of time having to fill in the blanks with GM fiat. 4e is much more ‘complete’ where anything that can be done, I can reproduce.” — Mark Skarr

“Ultimately after spending hours and hours on a character I will realize that NOW I have a CHARACTER concept I can use in any game system.”  — LemmingLord

“[It's] the perfect RPG recipe: Here’s a ton of rules and options to cover just about anything. Pick what you want, ignore the rest. Season with whatever house rule additions and mods you like. And feel free to wing things whenever you please.” — tbone

“The 4e rules spell out that each GURPS game is most about genre. Not reality. Not combat, or worlds even, or rules when you get down to it. You think of the style of book, TV show, movie, comic or whatever you want to emulate, and choose the rest based on that. To me that was the key to running GURPS after years of D&D.” — jimminy

While many game masters are thrilled with with new internal consistency and streamlining, there’s always, especially in this age of the internet, a crowd of vocal naysayers ready to pick at it.  Let’s take a quick look at what they’re saying:

“The intellectual buy-in too high, the requirement to build everything yourself too demanding, the learning curve for new players too great.” — Taliesin

“The problem is everything but the kitchen sink is dumped on the new user - it’s like handing a cook a cow and asking him to grill a steak.” — Infornific

“A combination of ‘icky-feeling’ paper, a nasty smell, sub-standard art and a layout that just throws every single advantage / skill / whatever into a messy cross-genre jumble ended up hugely turning me off to the whole 4.0 launch.” — Ian Turner

GURPS Character Assistant software and the free Skills Category PDF can help navigate this gigantic system, but even with that you can’t expect to please everybody.  While some people are erroneously attempting to detail all of their NPC’s to the same standards they require for PC’s, others are getting bogged down at the thought of having develop an entire pantheon of abilities using the moderately technical GURPS Powers toolkit.  However, the real issue is that some people just haven’t had their minds illuminated  to the power of a few simple Enhancements and Limitations.  But once they do… let me tell you, it’s like scales falling from their eyes:

“Not having really used powers in 3e, or the enhancements and limitations, this part was the one that took more time to sink in, but it was also the key to what made GURPS better for me. Something as simple as Attractive (Takes Preparation, 1h) is just an example.” — Gudiomen

That said, there are yet some valid criticisms among the unconverted.  Lo, I say unto you… a crappy index and a mediocre GURPS Lite present not a small barrier to those that seek the true path of gaming goodness.  Fortunately, the imminent Dr. Kromm takes responsibility for this and doesn’t try to pass blame onto the sycophantic proles that Steve Jackson Games has conned into doing the grunt work:

“In an effort to get the GURPS Basic Set, Fourth Edition out on time and have GURPS Lite, Fourth Edition ready to go with it, we had to divvy up tasks. I was busy proofing the final PDFs for rules consistency, so we had no choice but to assign the index and Lite to others . . . and I wasn’t available for those guys, because as I said, I was busy.”  — Kromm

Oh great and powerful Kromm… please tell us more about the genesis of our most esteemed and finely crafted rpg…  Tell us dark secrets….  Tell us, for example… why cinematic super powers get so much emphasis in the Basic Set.

“Books like Psionics and even the much-maligned Supers far and away outsold books like Old West and Espionage. Had GURPS Traveller and GURPS WWII fans been more numerous and bigger spenders, I can assure you that 4e would have looked quite different.” — Kromm

What…?  Huh?  A different game?  Can you be more specific?

“Things That Would Not Be: Less attention to Affliction, Binding, Innate Attack, and exotic and supernatural advantages in general. Fewer cinematic and supernatural skills in the core rules. Possibly no chapter on magic, either. Tech and artifacts chapter would omit enchantment, gadgeteering, and weird science. Iconic characters would have lacked odd abilities and been strictly baseline humans. Lots of little things like Transcendent appearance, wildcard skills, the vampire template, and essays on high-powered and cinematic gaming wouldn’t be there.

“Things That Would Be: Character weight and size would cost points and be tied into ST, HP, Move, jumping distance, etc. A longer list of mundane Talents would compensate for fewer exotic abilities. More templates for generic historical jobs. More and more detailed weapons, especially WWII-era firearms. Mapped-out tactical combat would be the assumed default. Rules for injury and dangerous enviroments would be more exacting and extensive. Tech and artifacts chapter would dwell primarily on vehicles, vehicles, vehicles.

“One could safely say that instead of getting Basic Set, Third Edition plus all of Compendium I but only bits of Compendium II, all heavily influenced by Psionics and Supers with a view to Powers being an early supplement, you would have seen Basic Set, Third Edition plus all of Compendium II but only bits of Compendium I, all heavily influenced by High-Tech and Vehicles with a view to WWII for 4e being an early supplement.”  — Kromm

Thank you great Kromm for revealing these truths to your vile and insignificant fan base….  [Much groveling and bootlicking ensues.]

But mighty Kromm… I’m still overwhelmed….  There’s just so many options in GURPS 4e.  I don’t know what to do with it.  Why did you put all those rules in there?  I have to roll on the Shock and Awe table every time I crack a GURPS tome!

“I put all of those rules in there so that 1,000 different gaming groups could run 1,000 different, custom-fitted rules-light versions of GURPS. I didn’t really imagine that there would be people who would want to turn on all of the switches.” — Kromm

Thanks be to Kromm, for his benevolence truly knows no bounds.  We truly crave such reassurances about the design of our beloved system.  For there can be only one true system, and all others are as unto pale imitations and are as yet feebleminded drivel.  We thank Kromm for his ceaseless efforts to bring true excellence unto gaming.

Check out this gigantic pdf file containing beautiful color hex maps of the Spinward Marches subsectors.  Say it with the Kool-Aid Man: “Oh yeah!”  If you’re at all confused by the cryptic Universal World Profile, each world is fully described in the incredibly large appendix.  You get animal encounter tables, too.  The Linux/Mac scripts that generated this can be yours as well… check out this thread for the latest details.  Bask in the glory that is Mickazoid’s mad programmin’ skillz!

Here’s a really cool old school rendition of the Spinward Marches Map.  (The seventies rock!)

Joshua Bell has brought us the complete map of Traveller’s charted space, while  Jeff Rients has posted about Don McKinney’s complete history of the Official Traveller Universe.  These things are unbelievable.  If you have any doubt about Traveller’s position as the largest shared fictional setting, spend some time with these two items.  Star Wars and Star Trek have their dinky little isolated worlds that are trotted out as needed– but Traveller gives actually gives you a universe!

Kenneth Bearden’s take on integrating Traveller’s character creation system more closely with a specific setting should be required reading.  His Universal Game Mechanic system is also unspeakably cool if you really want to make Classic Traveller attributes and skill levels really matter….  Classic Traveller grognards are the coolest gamers on the internet.

And last but not least, there’s Berka’s Goodies page.  I’m particularly fond of his Counter Generator….

But what do you need, at a minimum, to actually enter this vast universe teeming with adventure?  Classic Traveller’s Books 1-3, Supplements 1-4, and an Adventure or two are really all you need, so don’t be daunted by the vastness and the detail.  All this and more can be had on the Classic Traveller CD Rom….  Get yours today!

I love the “just open the box and start playing” nature of games like Star Frontiers and Gamma World.  Those games were great in their day, but… times have changed.  On the other hand, I hate the “Gamemaster, get ready to spend 100’s of hours before you even play your first game” mentality implied by the new monster games of today.  Even so, for science fiction gaming, I still suggest a blend of Classic Traveller and GURPS 4th Edition.  Here’s my reasons:

Classic Traveller is dated and unrefined, but it’s also got two of the coolest gaming concepts ever invented:

The World Generation System:  The “retro” look of the world maps and subsector maps is completely rad.  I don’t see how people can’t get into that.  There are trade-offs with the “flat space” approach, but there are huge gains in usability and playability.  The coding format creates what amounts to a compact paper “mushware” database.  (An expanded/updated/debugged version of this appears in GURPS Interstellar Wars– the lack of something like this was a major shortcoming in 3e GURPS Traveller, in my opinion.)

The Character Generation Mini Game: You can do character design in half an hour or so and then immediately start playing.  (I hate the preliminary rpg planning session thing– I’m too old to waste a game session on that!)  It’s amazing how such a simple system can produce such characters.  The combination of folks that a whole gaming group rolls up together will imply all sorts of adventure ideas.  (The genre here is basically that of Firefly.  How cool is that?)  All you need here is Book One and Supplement Four.

GURPS is a much more consistent, streamlined, and refined gaming system– but it’s a toolkit for constructing campaigns and not really a full game in and of itself.  Classic Traveller is a full game… but you will likely end up in house-rule hell if you try to use it by itself.  (Hardcore Traveller fans actually get really into that, actually.)  Using GURPS by itself can leave you feeling like you’re in a vacuum.  There’s just no focus to a design that’s built from the ground up to be universal.  A few key Traveller tools like those mentioned above can give you the necessary grounding you need to successfuly pass your sanity checks.

GURPS 4e Characters is very useful for fleshing out character concepts.  GURPS Traveller 3e contains guidelines for converting from previous versions of Traveller.  If you’re overwhelmed by all the options in GURPS, “upsizing” the old barebones Traveller characters will help make sense of things.  And even with just Basic Set you can work up a whole cantina of aliens quickly if you keep in mind that the full details are only necessary for people playing PC’s.

Regardless of what sci-fi rules you’re using, keep it simple.  Ignore advanced combat rules.  Ignore epic space combat.  Ignore physics, climatology and biology.  If you want that other stuff, go play Advanced Squad Leader, Star Fleet Battles, and Battletech between study sessions for the college science classes you’re signing up for.  Focus instead on character concepts and story.  Use the science fiction setting as a springboard into thrilling locations that boggle the mind.  Don’t get wrapped up in details and accounting.  The setting is merely a backdrop for action and adventure.  Don’t obsess over it– you need to let the players become the “stars of the show.”  Game mechanics and setting data are the rpg equivalent to matte paintings and special effects: they’re just tools for communicating a story; don’t get bogged down into them.

Also, don’t feel like you need to work out the nature of the entire universe at one time.  George Lucas didn’t and neither should you.  Make things up as you go.  Work things out in detail only after a game session reveals the need for it.  You’ll work in much more useful directions this way whereas if you try to make everything you need before playing you’ll never get started.  This is another place where GURPS system pays off.  You won’t use but a fraction of its rules when you start, but whatever direction your campaign ultimately goes, there’ll be solid rules there to help you out if you want them later.  In other games you’d be left with working out your own house-rules.

(One last note: GURPS has long had a reputation for being a decent system for “realistic” genres.  With Fourth edition, they retain a lot of that strength, but have put forth a lot of effort to address the fantastic side of things.  Superhero and fantasy monster type stuff has been retooled and integrated into the core books.  This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but the system is much more flexible than before.)

[Adaen of Bridgewater asked me a quick question... and my answer quickly raged out of control, so it ended up here as a blog entry.  Be sure to check out their site.]

Weapon       To-Hit Penetration Sweep Bonus
——       —— ———– ———–
Laser        + 1      0         - 1
Pulse Laser    0    + 1           0
Missile        0    + 6         + 2
Proximity A  + 1    + 3         + 1
Proximity B  + 2    + 0         + 0
Roll Damage/Critical
—- ————————————–
1    NONE
2    1 Hull
3    1 Hull
4    2 Hull
5    1 Turret
6    M-Drive (Weapon Penetration Value + 1 hits)
7    Cargo/Stateroom/Fuel
8    J-Drive (Weapon Penetration Value)
9    3 Hull
10   Power Plant (Weapon Penetration Value + 1 hits)
11   5 Hull
12   Computer (Weapon Penetration Value - 1)
13   10 Hull
14+  Auto Kill
Ship     Scout   Sweep
——– ——- —–
Hull     4       3
C/S/F    3/4/40  3
Power    A       2
M-Drive  2       3
J-Drive  2       3
Computer 1/bis   3      
Weapon   3L      Never
Armor    0       Never
Ship     Patrol Cruiser   Sweep
——– ————–   —–
Hull     4        4       4
C/S/F    25/6/60  25/6/60 4
Power    HCFE     DCB     3
M-Drive  4332     211     4
J-Drive   3 2     211     4
Computer    3     21      4
Weapon   3L 3M    3L 3M   Never
Armor    1        0       Never 
Ship     Merc Cruiser                    Sweep
——– ————————–      —–
Hull     4       4       4       4       3
C/S/F    10/6/91 10/6/92 10/6/91 10/7/92 3
Power    MLK     JH      GF      ED      2
M-Drive  322     22      11      11      3
J-Drive  322     22      11      11      3
Computer 5 4     3       2       1       3
Weapon   3L 3M   3L 3S   3L 3M   3L 3S   Never
Armor    3       2       1       0       Never

Armor:  Armor is subtracted from all damage rolls against the ship.
Penetration:  Penetration value is added to the damage roll for each weapon hit.
Sweep Rules:  If Critical hits eliminate all the items in a location, then roll for sweep.  If 1d6 plus the weapon’s sweep bonus is greater than or equal to the sweep number for that row of the ship’s record sheet then the item on the next row down is also destroyed.  Repeat the process for each row destroyed in this manner.

Example: A Proximity-A missile hits the jump drive of a Patrol Cruiser for 3 hits of damage reducing the jump rating to 1.  (The ‘3′, the ‘2′, and the first ‘1′ are crossed off.)  One complete block on the first column has been destroyed, so the ship is subject to the sweep ‘chain-reaction’ effect.  The sweep target number is 4.  The attacker rolls 2 on 1d6 and adds his weapon’s sweep value of 1 to the result.  3 is not enough, to get the sweep, but if he had rolled more than 2, the computer would have dropped from 3 to 2 and there would have been a chance that the ship would lose weapons after that!
Ship design notes:  The number of columns on a ship’s record sheet is dependent on the number of tons displacement.  Ships that are compartmentailized will have higher sweep values.  Ships with heavy frames will have more hull hits protecting their columns.

Small Craft:  Small craft will not have record sheets, but will use a counter to track their status.  A small craft will either be at 100%, disabled, or killed (similar to Ogre armor units.)

Got a second game of Mayday in with a former Traveller player on Saturday just after playing a quick game of Ogre.  I figured a corsair could take out a scout without breaking a sweat.  Turns out that the scout scored a lucky hit and damaged the corsair’s maneuver drive.  He was able to pull away before the corsair could repair it.  (Because they have the same G rating, the corsair could never catch up.)  The corsair’s missiles were all shot down as well. The scout pulled this off by rolling an 11, a 12, another 12, and an 11– all in succession!

In the Ogre game I played 5 Heavies, 4 GEVs, and 3 Missile Tanks.  The forward force consisted of 3 Heavies and 4 GEVs.  The Ogre came up the middle and my forces positioned for an attack.  We struck first and took out the Main Battery.  The Ogre rammed three Heavies knocking him down 6 treads.  I started firing everything at the treads except the Missile Tanks which targeted Secondaries.  We knocked him down the Move-2 well before the fold.  The surviving Missile Tanks positioned to 4 hexes away on either side along with the GEVs.  With the Ogre moving at speed 2 the infantry could position for maximum effectiveness.  The Ogre slowed down to take care of the infantry problem, but repeatedly made terrible die rolls in attacking them.  The Ogre continued to charge up the middle.  Even with average rolls the Ogre was soon down to M-1 and finally to M-0.  Even with a missile he didn’t come close enough to the CP to threaten it.  I retained 2 GEVs and 2 Missile Tanks at the end– until he shot his last missile to take out one of my tanks.

I prefer the flexibility of 5 heavy tanks over a static howitzer defense.  The heavies serve as bait to lure the Ogre down the middle– they attract the ire of the Ogre away from the weaker units in the early stages of the game.  The more the Ogre rams, the sooner he’s down to Move-2– which gives us a lot more time and increases the power of the weaker units.  If he doesn’t ram, the Ogre gets shot at by the Heavies.

I’m not sure how this approach fares against the Mark-V.  This force works together well, but with more units on the board they may have trouble getting into position.  In any case, an Ogre that’s been kicked down to M-2 can have 3 secondaries or 100 and it still not do much good– except to fry infantry.