MyTraveller Personal Combat
Content Warnings: violence, weaponry
Where it all comes from
When it comes to combat rules I am not really a fan of tactical and strict rules. They make the tense and chaotic moments into slow grind. I hate it. I have learned by playing Forged in the Dark games to keep the combat chaotic. When you run combat in Blades or any other similar system there are not many variables. You will roll the same type of action, the same amount of dice each time. Running it straight would be boring, that's why it is important to change the situation after every player round. Enemy gets confident and careless after they hit you. Or they get careful and seek escape after you hit them. There are other things - environment, reinforcements, change of weapons, distance - that should play into the combat and twist it.
Also the grid changes the thinking of players. When you are said what happens and cannot see it it creates this chaotic feeling that you don't know everything and cannot remember it all. When you see a grid you think of strategic games, maneuvering and distances. It's not bad, just different. I can see grid combat in games about soldiers or in Alien, games where positioning and strategizing makes sense. I don't see a game about space tramps from various walks of life to be that type of game.
Yet another thing in this combat debacle is damage. I hate variable damage. Estimating on the fly how much damage attacks do or referring to large tables of equipment (or even inventing such tables) is a hassle. I want to focus on narration and events happening and not subtracting numbers. To I had to come up - or rather find - some other way.
Baseline of Hurting
In MyTraveller there are four attributes: Brawn, Agility, Finesse and Education (I don't like "Intellect" stats, and think of Social Status as a separate thing). I like the notion of heroes losing something as they are wounded. The tons of HP + being full capable until you get almost dead is very CRPG way of playing and it doesn't jive well with my idea of TRPG games. I mean, it is a way and if I wanted to emulate like World of Warcraft game feeling I would take it. I am actually hunting a WoW inspired game, I almost enrolled in one a few years back but the group chose the day of the week that I couldn't play.
So how does it go? Well, there are three or four levels of damage. First is actually negligible, these are minor cuts and bruises, things you do to each other in a drunken bar fight. It is also something happening to you when armour absorbs the blow. Kind of like stamina or will or resolve. This could be small pool of "HP" that slowly drains with hits you take and a consequence each time you fill it. From this perspective it is more like a FitD clock than HP.
Another type of damage I can see is light. It hurts but doesn't require immediate attention. Like a well struck hit in a jaw or nose from that drunk person you fight. It might take you out in if you're unlucky, it might cause some bleeding but if you can take a moment you can still fight. Mechanically it deals -1 to all rolls for this combat unless you take a round to gather yourself. Once you get to four light wounds you are in shock and each next light wound requires you to immediately stop for one round BUT the modifier doesn't get erased until you get help.
Then the next type of damage is heavy. Yeah, you're right, we're getting straight to the heavy stuff, there are no middle or mediocre wounds. This type of damage is serious. Blade or bullet that causes heavy bleeding, crushed bone, vast burn. Injury that incapacitates you in some way and not taken care of may lead to serious consequences. Continuing to exert oneself can lead to worsening of the wound or even dying. It requires specialist care to heal well, leaves a scar, badly taken care of may cause lasting consequences. Mechanically each does -1 to all rolls unless taken care of by someone who knows medicine. Once you get to four heavy wounds you are unstable, you'll be treated as having mortal damage.
Last type of damage is mortal. It is critical wound that not stabilised in short amount of time will lead to death. Blade or bullet in critical organ or artery, whole body burn or shock, cut off limb. Even stabilising it requires medical knowledge. Mechanically you're incapacitated, sorry.
Any damage above that is instant death. That's it.
Tools of Violence
Okay, I got rid of numerical damage. What next? EVERYTHING! But not really. When it comes to weapons and armour I always liked tags. Like those in PbtA games. They are simple, they are easy to apply. Your gun is 'small'? You gotta hide it easily. Your halberd is 'heavy'? You're not going to walk around with it for long. The things can easily differ by tags - stuff from lower tech level will just have one or two more negative tags. When it comes to similar weapons I'll say this - it's a game, not military simulation. There is no important for the game reason to differentiate between one type of pistol and another. They all are: 'close' range, 'small' and 'loud'. Oh you have a pistol with silencer? Drop the 'loud' tag. Got the six-shooter? Take the 'low-ammo' tag. Bow? 'arrow' and 'difficult'. Crossbow? 'arrow' and 'slow-reload'. Sniper rifle? 'bullet' and 'very far' range. Shotgun is 'bullet', 'close', 'loud', 'area' and 'messy'. Blaster is 'laser', 'close/far' and 'small'.
There is a whole table but it is very intuitive and you can easily improvise a new weapon or give different property to one. Differentiating between weapons based on tech level is easier - Tech Level is lower? Their laser guns are all 'heavy' then. Or 'volatile', 'unreliable' or 'overheating'. Better Tech Level? Make it 'small', give better range or armour piercing ability. What about the damage? Well, all personal weapons are made with heavy damage in mind. There is no gun that is outright dealing mortal damage unless you hit someone well enough (head, heart, large artery, any other vital organ), most of their damagability is about overcoming armour.
So what is it with these armours anyway? There are really two ways it can work mechanically. One is reduced damage, the other is reduced chance of hitting. I don't like variable difficulty numbers in games, it is a heavy cognitive load on me as a GM so I tend to avoid it. And since damage (as explained above) is not numerical I think to reduce damage is a simple thing - the biggest problem with the whole damage reduction mechanics is counting at the table and we threw it out the window long time ago. So what are the armours then?
Well, armours also have tags. Main ones are ballistic/lasertic and vest/helmet/full body. Ballistic armours are protection against projectiles and melee weapons. I'm not going to differentiate between bulletproof and stabproof because I don't care enough about it in space. I understand that some modern ballistic vests don't protect well against stabbing but you can just cover it with a tag 'stab-vulnerable' Which is why I have up to three defensive pre-modern armours (we'll get to that). Lasertic armours are inventions that came after first laser weapons became a thing. It is a ballistic type enhanced with materials and technologies that help dispersing heat and energy. Blasters and fusils basically ignore personal ballistic armour which is why lasertic technologies came to be. As for 'vest', 'helmet' and 'full body' tags I think they are intuitively understandable. In mechanical terms wearing proper helmet negates one critical hit (the one that makes heavy damage into mortal). We assume most hits are in the torso aside of called and area shots, so you count the vest for lowering damage. Full body protects against critical, area and called shots too.
This is why I'd like damage "type" be marked with a number to suggest how tough armour it can pierce. So bow is 'arrow-1' because it reliably pierces through 'ballistic-0' and 'ballistic-1' armour, but crossbow has 'arrow-2' which means it gets through even thicker stuff (these are the three types of premodern armour, the 'ballistic-0', 'ballistic-1' and 'ballistic-2' XD). At the same time basically any modern firearm will shot through old timey ballistic armour, so even the weakest modern firearm (shotgun) has a 'bullet-3' tag. I guess antique guns could have 'bullet-2' as plate armour used to protect from them too. If armour tag beats damage tag then weapon instead of dealing heavy damage it does light or even hits the "stamina" clock. As for slug throwers tag 'bullet-X' goes up to 7 (3 for shotguns, 6 for sniper rifles, 7 for gauss cannon) then we get to 'laser-X' tag that starts from 'laser-1' for blasters, 'laser-2' for fusils (energy rifles) and automatic fusils, up to 'laser-3' for sniper fusils and 'laser-4' for cannon fusils. Any 'laser' gets through any 'ballistic' armour. Combat is dangerous.
Initiative and Action "Economy"
There is no individual initiative. We have group initiative. There is no OSRish rolling every time - the pulse of battle beats evenly, first group, second group, then first group again. Who starts? Whatever emerges from the fiction. If there is surprise then suprise goes first (no extra rounds). If there is a standoff the one who escalates first goes first (note to self - mention to GMs to frame it as "escalation" and not CRPG/DnD murdernecessity). If there is a surprise on both sides or any other contentious situation - roll 1d6 with half odds for either side. Stop rolling more than necessary.
What about actions? Each person from each side has one action to do. One action. If you want move + do something you better make sure your doing something is a part of moving (like running and striking with a blade or running and firing). Assumption is that after you move you cover, hide or raise shield. You might think that it makes the rounds slower but this is a game with guns as a regular element of combat. When you're under literal or potential fire you first run behind cover and then potentially shoot or provide cover fire. Not all at once. Each moment you're changing magazine or aim is a tense moment when someone can get you or get the high ground! I need to explain it well to my players because they somehow always lean on 'heroic fantasy sword combat' and want to move + do significant stuff each time. DnD really screwed us all.
So there is no action economy. Instead as a group you work together to overcome obstacles. And hopefully avoid fights whatsoever, because healing heavy damage requires at least a month of rest, potentially even surgery.
Oh but what about bonuses for cover and aiming and stuff? Either do it in fiction or grant someone advantage/disadvantage (roll 3d6 and drop lowest/highest). Don't add or substract anything, make this shit smooth and dynamic.
What about grenades or other weapons?
What about them? Regular frag grenades use 'explosive' as damage so unless your armour is 'explosive proof' you take damage. If grenade is right next to you - mortal. If is a little bit further - heavy. If a little bit further - light. If you just got pushed and heard noise - the weakest damage. Fiction First.
Flamethrowers? They use 'fire' as damage so unless your armour is 'fire proof' blah blah blah, we can do this all day. Fiction first again. Oh your xenomorphs sprayed acid? Well, maybe armour protects you but is destroyed? Or if there is too much acid it doesn't matter. We don't have to tag EVERYTHING or assign damage type to everything. I was serious with the fiction first, mechanics should only reflect what happened if they're relevant.
Conclusion
Yeah, so that's it for personal combat. When it comes to space combat I have my thoughts but it is so complex with large speeds and such. Also I have heard it can be fun in regular ass Traveller but it might take time to get to it. Next time in MyTraveller saga probably world generation and potentially interstellar cultures and religions maybe.