Traveller Combat - More Ironmongery

TOC

• CT Review Table of Contents

• Introduction

• Generating characters

• Classic Traveller - Combat

• More IronMongery

• Travel

• Starship Economics and Design

• Computers

• Space Combat

• Space Combat - plugging rules

More Weapons

The core LBB rules are a fairly solid system, initiative questions for tabletop minis play aside, but to anyone who’s watched a TV show involving a SWAT raid, or seen a modern-ish war movie, there are a few glaring holes. For starters:

• Grenades

  • Regular

  • Flashbang

  • Smoke (including multi-spectrum at higher TL’s)

  • While we’re at it, laser dispersant

• Other explosives

• Nets or other capture systems like “tanglers” commonly seen in SciFi

• “Less Lethal” options like pepper spray or tazers

• RPGs

And that doesn’t even go into artillery, crew served weapons and other support weapons like machine guns or higher tech equivalents like the PGMP (alternately known as the BFG-9000). Granted, these are more the province of a proper military campaign or mercenary company, but if you happen to be faced with the local equivalent of a third world milita or drug cartel, well… they likely won’t have field artillery, but they will have some or more of the other stuff in the above lists.

There’s good news and bad news.

Some of this is covered in more than ample detail in Mercenary, “book 4” of the original CT little black books, released after the original three books and Traveller Book, along with HIgh Guard and Scouts and Merchant Prince. It is effectively an expansion of the combat chapter, to include a broader range of weapons, mass combat, contracts and some economics for mercenary companies, and unfortunately an updated career track.

I’ve become of two minds of the expanded rules.

First, the more detailed character creation sequence would be welcome if it applied to all of the career paths. But it doesn’t. Even if some of the extra skills are still useful as descriptions on how to handle things.

So what good are they?

The core system is presented well enough, and internally consistent enough, that a Referee could add almost any of the above “missing” elements he wanted with, admittedly, some work. Adding currently available modern weapons not already covered in the main rule categories, their sci fi equivalents like “needlers” or flechette guns, grenades, explosives, and so forth, is fairly straightforward.

Nevertheless, if you do invest in Classic Traveller, one of the ways to get it is (as still available at this time of writing) as a complete CD via Far Future Enterprises, and that CD contains ship descriptions and designs, patrons, and all of the various sourcebooks including the expanded rule books.

And it is completely worth it.

If we’re going to treat the expanded books as optional rules to the core system, which I argue we must - the original system was already a complete and very playable game, and using the newer character generation rules for just Army/Marines (or Navy for High Guard, etc.) undermines the career paths not covered as well as every NPC in the game - then we do gain something in Mercenary.

First, an expanded equipment list that includes gauss weapons, alternate energy weapons, and even recoilless guns where the bullets accelerate themselves, for zero G combat. There are also rules for grenades. Second, there are rules for mercenary contracts, artillery, and abstracted larger-scale combat systems. Looking over those additions as well as the rules for artillery and support weapons not only gives you the option of adding those directly where the original rules don’t cover the specific situation or scope as well, but also gives you a better understanding of how Marc Miller was thinking in expanding the framework so that you can add those features your own way, as well as other things like smoke grenades and flashbangs, consistently to the system.

That said, I likely won’t be doing a detailed review of the combat and other systems in Mercenary, High Guard, and so on.

Update

In some side discussion on this topic, a few neat options were brought up for grenades, all in the area denial category:

• Entanglers (instant spider-web)

• “Instant flypaper” variant that instead of a sticky webbing puts out aerosol (or droplets) of something like superglue. It gets all over the target and area and any pressure of contact between two surfaces results in near instant adhesion. Given how superglue bonds to skin, potentially really nasty if inhaled or on eyes.

• Lubricant grenades (instant frictionless floors).

While you’re at it:

If you like good books, the guys at Pilum Press have a discord server. Drop in, and if you haven’t yet, pick up a copy of everything they have at their website.

If you’re more into games, check out the Arbiter of Worlds channel, and the Autarch Discord server as well. There you will find discussions on ACKs, Ascendant, and a number of other non-Autarch RPGs and games like Traveller and D&D.