The last couple of sessions have been post-Big-Adventure/Setup sessions. Giving the players a chance to do some housekeeping, pursue some loose ends, and fiddle around a bit in-character.
After opening up the Mongoose 2e Central Supply Catalog to the players, I have already “but the brakes on it” a bit. A lot of the stuff in the book is fine to add to Classic Traveller. Survival gear, tools, etc. All good. The weapons and armor? Not so much. For one thing, Mongoose uses a totally different system for to-hit and damage. The weapons assume this. One of the players discovered the section on buying finely made weapons that do higher minimum amounts of damage, give bonuses to hit, etc. Initially I said fine, but after talking about it we decided against it. I do think having really nice weapons be a little better than a stock weapon is fine in CT, but I will have to come up with some suitable rules for it.
I feel like Mongoose 2e potentially really opens the floodgates for powerful weapons. Also, since Classic Traveller is nearly 50 years old, it is of course true that even the ideas involved in science fiction are a lot different now.
The guys found the Universal Translator program in the catalog. In my game, it was a big deal when the PCs found an alien artifact that functioned as a universal translator. Clearly, based on that, a UT would be at a very high tech level in my universe — beyond what the PCs have access to. So we backed that out too.
The Mongoose stuff is very cool. It is just not what our campaign is about. For the most part I want the PCs to stick to the Classic Traveller weapons and armor. I’ll just use the Mongoose stuff to embellish the game.
A couple of my players, running Caliban and Flint, have offered up some ideas that are helping make the setting seem a bit more fully realized. Very happy about that. I love it when players think about the game and their characters. Both are super cool about it — offering the ideas up but totally good if I change them a bit or say “no, that’s a bit too much collaboration.” But it is a big universe, and one Ref can’t possibly think of everything.
Back when they were dealing with the bugs on Chamax, Barney displayed evidence of arachnophobia. His player just came up with that, based on the many disgusting bug monsters they have encountered. It makes sense, and it’s cool. The character gets no points for it. There is no advantage. It’s just fun and good roleplaying. I liked it.
But yeah, I am threading the needle with regard to available tech and whatnot. So far we’ve had a good campaign without going hog wild about new tech, but I’d like them to have cool stuff available and to take the initiative. I liked it when they wanted a drone, so they built one. That was cool. We figured it out.
I have created character record sheets for each of the PCs grav bikes in Roll20. I’d love it if they each customize the bikes with software and whatever they want. Where you get into trouble is at higher tech levels onboard computers can be intelligent agents. Not sure about that. Not sure I like it. Probably won’t go there. But improving the control systems on the bikes, installing databases — that is all good.
I decide we’ll use the Cepheus Engine Vehicle Design Guide for vehicle design details and the very simple systems it contains for low-speed fights, dogfights, and chases. It seems to be very compatible with Classic Traveller, and I like the aesthetics of the vehicles.
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