So, I've been thinking about running some Traveller using MongTrav 1E. Found all the shit I wrote up years back, when I was involved in the playtest and arguing strongly for a few tweaks to the playtest combat system (mainly, I wanted to reverse the way some dice were read at certain points, as a fix for a major statistical issue). When the designer went a different direction, I ended up doing a comprehensive write-up of my preferred version for my own use.

Then, I was reading my official, hardback MongTrav 1E rulebook, and I discovered the entire initiative system in my document was dramatically different to the published version. And I'm like, holy shit, I didn't realise my changes were so substantial. Fuck me, I came up with this initiative system? It pretty damn unique. That's fucking brilliant.

I mosied over to the Mongoose forums this evening, and I found my login no longer worked (haven't been there for 10 years or so). Wouldn't even recognise my username or email to do a reset. I did a forum search of my user name, just to check that it was what I thought it was. Found old playtest threads, and was reading them for some nostalgia.

Turns out I didn't invent the initiative system after all -- my version is merely a tweaked version of the original playtest system, as I had originally thought. It's just that the entire system was ultimately dropped in favour of something safe and vanilla.

I'm sad, now, that I didn't invent something brilliant. Also sad such an innovative and interesting system got dropped entirely. It may well have been a smart from Mongoose, because it was a big change from anything Traveller. It's a system that deserves to see the light of day, though, and worked really well in practice.

Brief Summary of System:
* Initiative is rated 1 - 6.
* During the move phase, you conduct minor actions, which cost ticks. Each tick spent increases your initiative by one, to a max of 6 (no actions after that).
* After the move phase, everyone's initiative drops by 2.
* If your initiative is now 1, you can take a major action (mostly, attack actions). This happens in dex order. You can spend ticks defensively if someone attacks you, but in so doing so, you may move from Initiative 1 to a higher value, and loose your chance for a major action. (In the official playtest version, 6 was good and 1 was bad. Part of my tweak involved reversing this.)

Once you take a major action, your die result is used to determine your new initiative, which will be anywhere from 1 - 6. Generally speaking, you're actually making a decision between your action being more successful, or your new initiative being lower.

And there's all sorts of cool shit you can (and the system did) do with this by applying little initiative adjustments and tick costs, assisting others to reduce their initiative, giving you options to trade of speed for effectiveness, etc ...

I've seen plenty of tick based systems, but never one that works quite like this.

Edit: Reading more of those old threads on the Mongoose boards, a number of people loudly hated the entire system. I guess that's why it was dropped. I still think it's awesome, though.

Aww. Have a hug. "Remember: Great minds think alike." Feel better?

Quote from: Opaopajr;1092734Aww. Have a hug. "Remember: Great minds think alike." Feel better?

But I didn't invent it independently. I copied the person who invented it, then read something that (10 years later, having forgotten the precise details of that elder time) made me think they hadn't invented it at all.

But thanks for trying.

Interesting...  

I'll have to think about that.  

Thanks for sharing.

Sounds like it could be interesting, but seems like for non-rules focused players that it would add significantly to the handling time/difficulty of a round of combat. I'm curious how it would work out in play.

Quote from: Bren;1092825Sounds like it could be interesting, but seems like for non-rules focused players that it would add significantly to the handling time/difficulty of a round of combat. I'm curious how it would work out in play.

It worked well for us when we were testing it, although I agree it requires a group interested in tactical combat. I'm also not sure I would want to use it for melee-focused games. It allows you to do some really nifty stuff with gun combat, but I don't know that I would see much point in a game where melee is primary form of engagement.

Initiative tracking is a bit of a pain, and you need to be organised to do so.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1092732So, I've been thinking about running some Traveller using MongTrav 1E. Found all the shit I wrote up years back, when I was involved in the playtest and arguing strongly for a few tweaks to the playtest combat system (mainly, I wanted to reverse the way some dice were read at certain points, as a fix for a major statistical issue). When the designer went a different direction, I ended up doing a comprehensive write-up of my preferred version for my own use.

Lots of stuff didn't make it into the game because of slowing down the mechanics. But you can still see old hints of those ideas sprinkled in the MgT1 book.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1092830It worked well for us when we were testing it, although I agree it requires a group interested in tactical combat. I'm also not sure I would want to use it for melee-focused games. It allows you to do some really nifty stuff with gun combat, but I don't know that I would see much point in a game where melee is primary form of engagement.

Initiative tracking is a bit of a pain, and you need to be organised to do so.

Thanks.

What makes it better for gun combat than for melee combat?

Quote from: Bren;1092843Thanks.

What makes it better for gun combat than for melee combat?

Keeping in mind that I haven't actually made any extensive use for it in a melee-centric environment:

After taking a major action, you have two dice values in front of you (as you've rolled 2d6). You select one to be Timing and, in combat, this is your new initiative. The other is Effect, and this can provide extra damage or (if you actually failed your skill check), a poor Effect can indicate a weapon stoppage/fumble etc).

One of the advantages of this is that you can apply things like recoil as a penalty to the timing die, indicating it takes a bit longer to line up the next shot. You could actually do the equivalent with a heft value for melee weapons, which should work quite smoothly in principle.

In any case, this new initiative then goes up as you spend ticks, and down 2 points once per turn, until you get back to 1, use your major action and reset again.

Anyway, that's a bit more background. But, essentially you're constantly trying to work towards Initiative 1, so you can get your smack-down on, but doing other things keeps incrementing your initiative higher. This actually provides a really organic way of emulating effective suppressing fire. If you and your buds keep putting rounds downrange at a target, they are going to be inclined to spend ticks on dodging, which (if they're spending enough) means they don't get to shoot, because they can't get their initiative down to 1 (actually, they can, if they take a hasty action, but this applies a big penalty to their return fire, and a big penalty to their new initiative value).

"Dodging" bullets is obviously kinda silly, but I like the outcome here enough that I'm happy to rationalise or handwave what's actually happening when you dodge.

If you do get pinned down, that's a tactical challenge. Have a friend suppress the people suppressing you, or throw smoke, or crawl to cover. You have options.

In a one on one melee, though, I'm concerned that one party could end up with better initiative, and just hold it until they get unlucky, while the other party just remains on the back foot, unable to attack at all. That could well be realistic, but I'm not sure it would be fun. It may actually be more fluid and variable in play; like I said, it's not something I've really used in play.

Between the official abandoned version and my tweaks, I've found excellent ways of representing:
* recoil
* double taps, bursts, walking fire and sustained fire
* inherent teamwork, and individual ability to pass information along, call target indications etc ...
* various other little things

Some of these are semi-abstract, but they all implement quite smoothly, in ways I don't generally see -- they are generally either ignored, implemented poorly, or too complex. Using MongTrav playtest, I've found what I consider ideal balance in representing these sorts of things.

Thanks again for taking the time to satisfy my curiosity. The original Runequest rules used a sort-of tick based initiative called strike rank (SR). Lowest strike rank acted first. Lighter and longer weapons had lower strike ranks. Heavier weapons and shorter weapons had lower had higher strike ranks. It also worked for shooting arrows and casting spells. Get a low enough SR and you could fire your bow or cast a spell one more time than someone else. It also worked for longer duration castings and actions by carrying over SRs into the next turn. So a character might be able to fire 3 arrows every 2 turns.

Quote from: Sable Wyvern;1092850In a one on one melee, though, I'm concerned that one party could end up with better initiative, and just hold it until they get unlucky, while the other party just remains on the back foot, unable to attack at all. That could well be realistic, but I'm not sure it would be fun. It may actually be more fluid and variable in play; like I said, it's not something I've really used in play.

Most of the time and for most players it would be fun if their character was the one who had the better initiative. So systemically not a good match to a fun game.

Some things that occur to avoid the PC being stuck might include:
Maneuver choices feed into the 2-dice system or that force a selection between speed (good initiative) and damage or effect. That might give more of an alternating effect where character A is faster this round, but at the expense of doing less damage or having little or no effect or they could be slower this round to get a bigger effect next round (sort of like winding up for a swing).

A hero point system so a player could spend points to increase their PC's initiative or decrease that of their foe. Thus allowing players to break out of a bad loop.

For me, this is just an intellectual exercise. Mostly I GM. (Like exclusively being a GM for the past 10 years.) The system is too tactical for my current group of players -- and possibly even too tactical for where I see my sweet spot as a player. But I agree it is an interesting idea and thanks again for indulging my curiosity.

There's an unwritten rule, for RPG designers, that if they think of a clever mechanic, then Greg Stafford or Chaosium probably thought of something similar years ago.

Man, houseruled 1e MongTrav is right up my alley.  Is there a full write-up anywhere?

Quote from: Dave R;1093299Man, houseruled 1e MongTrav is right up my alley.  Is there a full write-up anywhere?

What I have at the moment is 10 years old, so I'm in the process of revisiting it. The ground combat stuff probably won't see much change from what I've already got down, but there are some other bits and pieces that need work, including the starship combat rules. I'm ditching Time/Effect for space combat, because timing is mostly irrelevant in that situation, and initiative is on a ship-by-ship basis, not character-by-character.

The other wrinkle in space combat is that I've picked up Pirates of Drinax (the current, for-money version, that uses the 2e rules). I've worked out that 2e ships can port fairly easily to 1e (pretty much, just dump 2 Hull and replace it with 1e Hull and Structure). But I also don't like the way Mongoose chose to deal with tech levels and equipment in 2e (basically, higher tech is both better and more expensive, but it should only be more expensive if you have to import it, not if it's the standard being manufactured locally). Anyway, I've expanded the weapons tables to cover different tech levels for similar items, and space combat is going to end up being my tweaked version of  MongTrav 1E playtest rules meets a few elements from T:NE designed to work with slightly modified 2e ships.

Anyway, I'll be happy to send some documentation your way once I've cleaned it up.

Ok, so here are the combat rules, the equipment list and a few other bits and pieces.

It's pretty much the MongTrav 1E playtest rules. Areas that come to mind that I have changed:

* As mentioned in the OP, I've reversed the method by which Timing and Effect are determined.
* Multiple Actions uses my rule, which I suspect would have been the official rule if T/E were left in.
* I think the hit location rule is mine. It's not a traditional hit location rule, it just determines if you hit an armoured or unarmoured location. I really like the simplicity, and it also makes it very easy to do armour degradation, by reducing the coverage value, which is pretty much the way modern body armour works.
* Issuing orders and various fire modes are mine, I'm pretty sure.
* The grapple rules are mine. I'm not convinced they're good, though. They may in fact be quite shit.
* Rules for bipods, tripods, braced positions, firing posture etc ... are all mine, I'm pretty sure.
* I think the aiming and optical sight rules are not mine, but I don't recall for sure.
* I'm pretty sure most of the grenade rules are mine.
* I expanded the weapon ranges a bit. The base concept is excellent -- swinging a sniper rifle around during close quarters battle is hard (there's a reason pistols, SMGs and carbines exist) and the playtest rules represented this pretty well. Original playtest was something like pistol, assault, long-arm. I kept the concept, but added a finer grain.
* The armour/AP rules are mine. I was going to go with each point of armour just completely negates one die of damage, which is quite realistic and extremely simple, but I was concerned about the potential for situations regularly arising where one side or the other is completely invulnerable. Realistic, within the setting, but less gameable. Applying armour to each die is a little more complex, and allows for some less realistic outcomes, but also a little more variable, and makes it harder to get complete invulnerability.
* I greatly expanded the equipment list, with stats compatible with my version. I think the base list was taken from T:TNE, which had a reasonably comprehensive weapon and armour selection.

Overall, it's got a GURPS level of options and modifiers, so if you want something fast and simple, it won't be your thing. For a group that can handle a bit of mechanical complexity, it still runs fairly fast, though, and makes for very tactical firefights.

Rules: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YHboHSbqIdFsfqicUH55s1pqRPUHBDKn/view?usp=sharing

Equipment: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ymC9v06lpuwUbdBfaneJArZnYUe5_MWr/view?usp=sharing

Thanks!  I may not get to really dig in until the weekend but I appreciate it.