Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Must have been in Mercenary...

Finally, for the first time in around 20 years or so, I have a copy of the revised edition (1981) of Traveller Book 1: Characters and Combat.

This is like the one I originally had, back in the day. I loaned it to a guy and never saw it again. Bastard.

Anyway, I could have sworn that it was in there somewhere, that if a Marine character got Blade Combat as a skill and wanted to specify it as any blade weapon other than the Cutlass, that he had to roll something (11+ if I recall) to "buck the customs of the service" and do so -- otherwise, he had to take the skill as Cutlass.

I loved that little rule. It said so much about the Marines as a whole, right there.

Anyway, I also got a copy of the rules and map (but not the box or the counters) for Snapshot, which was the boardgame of personal combat aboard spaceships.

I'm going to use Snapshot to expand the individual combat rules and Beyond Book Two to expand the spaceship construction/combat rules.

I haven't decided yet if I'm going to set this in the Official Traveller Universe or not, but I really don't want to use any of the expanded character generation from Book 4 and beyond.

Also, I really don't know when (or even if) I'm going to run this. But it'll be nice to know I have it, in case an opportunity comes up.

4 comments:

James Maliszewski said...

Ironically, I lent my copy of the CT rules out to a friend, so I can't check, but I'm almost certain you're correct, at least in general. I also seem to recall that Marines, when they mustered out, could receive a cutlass as a benefit, which further reinforces the notion that it pretty much expected that all Marine characters would have some skill in its use.

Alexis Smolensk said...

Are you looking for any other old traveller books?

I might be able to help.

Will Douglas said...

Actually, I'm stalking a couple of supplements on ebay right now. I owned a few of them, but not the whole set.

Also, I've started picking up the adventures when I can get them cheap.

Why, are you looking to get rid of some?

Alexis Smolensk said...

Not rid of, but copies can be made.