In My Traveller Universe

From MegaTravellerWiki

Contents 1 Character Generation 2 Combat 3 Aircraft 4 Universe

Character Generation

Generally speaking, I believe the onus of the true roleplayer is to be able to take a set of numbers that have been thrown at you and convert them into a living, breathing character with a unique personality. If you can mould your character from scratch, the character is actually inferior to one that was generated using a series of formulae that the player had no control over, specifically because the character is less bound to the constraints of realism if they can make up a character catering to each and every whim.

• Navy, Army, Marine, and Merchant characters are always generated using the Enhanced (year-by-year) rules. Flyer characters are also generated this way, using the rules from COACC. I make use of David Jaques-Wilson's Police Characters and Ministry of Justice Characters as well, although I have not yet generated characters using these rules to see how they balance with the others (but heck, the bibliography is almost as long as the rules so I imagine he's worked hard to get it balanced).

• All other characters are generated using the Basic rules by necessity. I intend eventually to write Enhanced rules for all careers.

• New characters are not allowed to serve more than eight terms. To justify this, when a character "musters out" in my campaigns, he is still serving actively in his character generation career before circumstances intervene; he can either choose to have his character continue its normal career after the adventure ends (effectively, he simply played an NPC for that session) and roll a new character after the adventure, or choose to keep the character going if he likes how it feels.

• If a character is forced to muster out after three terms or fewer, the player may opt to reroll his character if he so chooses.

• Characters who fail survival rolls during character generation muster out immediately. The minimum of four successful terms applies here as well.

• Characters are committed to the player for at least one adventure; thereafter, the character may be returned to a civilian life as an NPC. Other player characters may want to keep this character as a contact. This rule is specifically intended so that a player may not roll up a dozen characters and choose the best one: he has to roll just one character.

Combat

• All combat is done on the same scale, using The MTWiki Revised Combat System.

• I harmonize the damage-to-vehicles system with the d6-based damage-to-lifeforce system by multiplying vehicles' hulls by 10, even outside of personal combat. For instance, a 1-point blow inflicts 1d6 Damage Points to one of a person's characteristics, and it likewise inflicts 1d6 Damage Points to a vehicle's hull (note that effective damage is calculated *after* penetration percentage has been calculated).

• There is no such thing as a "pinpoint attack". I use a complicated personal hit location system instead: "called shots" allow a person to aim high, low, left, or right; "aimed shots" allow a person to aim at a specific body part. For called shots, rolling the to-hit task successfully but failing the to-make-called-shot task means the shot hits randomly. For aimed shots, the order is reversed -- rolling the to-make-aimed-shot task successfully but failing the to-hit task means the shot misses, while vice versa means the firer does not shoot at all, waiting to "draw a bead" instead of pulling the trigger.

• Danger Space is modified to evenly divide through the radius specified in the weapon table instead of dividing on a "per-square" basis. See my Danger Space is Broken analysis.

• Danger Space is assumed to be zero metres, not one metre, if not specified. This applies only to the impact site -- along the line of fire, the danger space applies during rapid fire, burst fire, or automatic fire as usual.

Aircraft

• Aircraft engines are computed using my aircraft durability revision. Specifically, their engines gain hit points based on how much thrust they produce and how advanced they are.

• Aircraft hulls are also altered by my aircraft durability system. Aircraft "disabled" hull ratings are logarithmic, so bigger aircraft are considerably weaker than before.

• Zeppelins/dirigibles/airships are easy to disable (proportional to their size, anyway: it still takes a lot of firepower to disable one), difficult to destroy. Crash-landing an airship is only a Routine task.

Universe

• Civilian vehicles on any given world of a given tech level include all vehicles from previous tech levels. For instance, on a TL13 world, wheeled vehicles are still commonplace (though they will likely be powered by fusion instead of hydrocarbons unless the designer deliberately uses hydrocarbon engines for the "feel"), and you can even find TL1 animal-drawn wagons (usually as a matter of tradition or entertainment moreso than a legitimate transportation type) on a high-population world. People on higher-tech worlds learn Grav Vehicle as a rule and do not learn Wheeled Vehicle, but there is ready access to Wheeled Vehicles if they choose to.

• Floating grav cities are extremely uncommon, and are unheard of on any planet except a gas giant. Though cinematic, wasting that much energy for supporting the city on a daily basis is just not economically viable on a terrestrial world, even though fusion power is cheap and plentiful. However, floating platforms do exist in worlds where it is profitable or necessary to do so; for instance, in a gas giant, a gas-mining facility can pay for itself, and in an oxygen-nitrogen gas giant a floating city can give excellent tourist revenue.