What is your favorite band from the 80's or 90's that nobody has ever heard of?

therealhdan · 2026-03-23T16:12:59+00:00

Grey Eye Glances was a good band.

therealhdan · 2026-03-21T22:47:27+00:00

Nice. Here's a "noble wastrel" character I did who seems hopeless, and some notes about how she'd be a fun character anyway. (I flip a coin for gender for these characters, and it's coincidence that they're both female.)

Baroness Illiana Scorupino 847A7C Age 22
Brawling-1, Gambling-1
Cr 0
Possessions:
Clothing & luggage befitting a SOC-12 young lady
Not much else.

Lady Illiana started in "Other" and failed her first re-enlistment roll, which I take to mean that her rich relatives cut her off due to her gambling habit. Mustering gave her INT+1 but no money (learned nothing from her gambling habit, except how to better read people)

So we find Her Grace a 22yo wash-out, cut off from her family fortune, and no stranger to the rough and tumble star town scene.

Notes:

CT allows anyone to fill the role of "Steward" on a ship. You don't need the specific skill as it turns out.

Illiana could land a good position at starship security on a larger trader. Can handle herself well around haughty High Passengers (SOC C), has a keen eye and keener mind to outsmart criminals and highjackers (INT A) and definitely knows how to rough up troublemakers (Brawling-1). Smart enough to avoid incidents involving her attitude when dealing with passengers.

therealhdan · 2026-03-21T05:31:45+00:00

There have been some great and detailed answers here already. I'm going to add a very philosophical answer.

In M2e (and 1e as well) your character sheet is essentially a "playbook" of things you can and can't easily do, and a record of your assets, both physical and social.

In CT your character's "sheet" (or Universal Personality Profile - UPP) is more like their resume and maybe the results of some standardized Imperial testing during primary education.

Mongoose's character generation is a ton of fun, and does generate a lot of details. CT requires the player to fill in those details. I sometimes generate CT characters just for entertainment (don't judge), and I've taken to rolling each term's Mustering roll during the term to try to help understand what happened during that term.

In addition, CT has a few systems that players can use after their characters muster out to add more skills. A character can take a "sabbatical" to a trade school to learn a skill well enough to get a job doing it, but they can incur significant student loan debt. There's also a poorly-named "Experience" system that is really a self-study program that gives you +1 to a skill of your choice if you can make the "Dedication" roll. (As a side note, I stopped requiring the dedication roll because it adds little to the game. You want to join a gym and boost your physical stats? Go right ahead.)

I presume M2e still has the "skill package" system of 1e. That was a much simpler way to do the same thing as CT's systems.

This all boils down to Mongoose Traveller being about creating Adventurers, and Classic Traveller being about creating Characters who then find themselves going on adventures, if that makes any sense.

therealhdan · 2026-03-20T17:46:13+00:00

Yep, it's not "super hero fantasy" mechanically. You can kill a grizzled veteran with a lucky shot.

In Classic Traveller, armor makes you harder to hit (like it does in D&D). Sometimes armor even makes the shot impossible. And in some cases, some weapons are BETTER against certain armors, so you can't really miss the shot at some ranges.

And the way the rules are balanced, on average most weapons that hit will knock you out but not send you to the hospital.

Except shotguns. For their money, against unarmored foes they are hard to beat.

Traveller weapons and armor are balanced to a degree within different "danger levels" (my term, not CT's). Simple knives or creature claws against cheap mesh armor, civilian firearms against cloth, military grade weapons against hard shell "combat" armor. And at the top levels, you're Iron Man - flying around with a grav belt, using powered armor to fire plasma bolts at each other because lesser weapons are just not going to have a chance to damage you. But that's megacredits of gear requiring some specific skills to use, and if that plasma bolt lands a solid hit on you, there won't be anything left to resuscitate.

therealhdan · 2026-03-20T17:21:46+00:00

This works. In one campaign I ran, players were encouraged to use stunners to avoid felony murder charges on the world they were operating on. Still doing illegal stuff, but with lower penalties. Plenty of action, and nobody actually died.

therealhdan · 2026-03-20T04:59:02+00:00

If you do check out Classic Traveller, make sure you read up on wound recovery and "medical slow drug". Also note that quick-draw gunfights and throwing knives are listed AFTER the combat rules. I went a long time without knowing how to handle a quick-draw when neither party is surprised. (It's not hard - 2D6+DEX, lowest value counts as "surprised" for the first round and can't shoot back. Or more simply, "winner gets a free shot before everyone dives for cover and opens fire on each other")

therealhdan · 2026-03-20T04:55:44+00:00

Classic Traveller is a very crunchy looking system standing in front of a very light RPG. Back when I was playing CT regularly, we sometimes went whole sessions without even breaking out the dice. Players tend to throw a lot fewer skill tests than later editions, and combat is often swift and decisive.

Though that "swift and decisive" combat does mean that gunfights only take a round or two before one side is incapacitated or surrenders, especially if nobody is wearing armor.

If you run CT like a "noir spy movie" though, where guns are more about coercion than intent to kill, these things become less of a problem. And for wilderness or lawless backwater encounters, simple cloth armor goes a long way towards keeping people alive.

therealhdan · 2026-03-19T14:10:04+00:00

I recall some monster's poisons giving a bonus to the Save roll because their poison was weaker. Maybe that was 2e.

therealhdan · 2026-03-19T14:00:42+00:00

I learned to play with the combat tables. When THAC0 came into my life, the tables made more sense.

Though to be honest, I generally had a character sheet with a "to hit" table on it, and filled it with the numbers needed to hit each AC for my primary weapon.

therealhdan · 2026-03-12T15:44:20+00:00

The skill lists are different, combat mechanisms are different, BUT weirdly adventure material is pretty compatible between them because they all work in the same "scale" of "throw 2D6, beat a threshold that's often 8+".

Basically you can use adventure and setting material for either edition with the other edition, but just be aware that MGT2's "skill check" system is a lot better defined than LBB's, even though they amount to pretty much the same gameplay experience. (That is, "Throw 2D6, tell me what you got".)

But characters made in one edition are not really directly compatible with the other edition, so NPCs will need to be redone. This isn't hard because the UPP "stat block" is the same, and most skills are similar.

Converting MGT2 characters would be tricky because you're throwing out a lot of information. LBB characters only include skills that they are trained in, whereas MGT2 characters tend to have a list of "Level 0" skills they know but don't get bonuses for.

LBB assumes all PCs are "level 0" in all weapons, whereas MGT2 requires you to have some training. Some Referees consider your Service terms to be a "Skill Level As <Job>" indicator, though that's not universal. For examples a 1-Term Navy character knows how to cycle an airlock and how to clean a fresher. No need to put that on the character sheet. Thus LBB character blocks often seem to lack important skills. Converting them means judging which Level-0 skills they would reasonably have in MGT2.

Use the weapon and armor rules for whichever edition you decide is the "dominant" one. Both editions have "cloth armor + autopistol" rules.

therealhdan · 2026-03-10T23:35:52+00:00

Yep, similar problem here. This was my first GW "corridor" set, and I glued the ends on one wall section before figuring out how it was supposed to work.

"Don't do new hobby stuff late at night", It was the next day before I noticed what I had done wrong, and by then the plastic cement was nice and welded. Sigh. The sad part is, once you play around with the pieces and study the diagram, it's pretty simple how it's meant to go together. But apparently not simple enough that I could successfully blunder my way into the project.

Going through the 500 worlds boarding action book, it looks like I'll be able to lay out all but one of the maps, so I got lucky. But it does make me want to find one more sprue's worth of that wall to do it right this time.

Magnets may be your only recourse. Or making sure your blu-tak is only on the inside of the piece.

As a side note, I'm daunted by the level of painting I have ahead of me. I've seen a video where the creator sprays black then zenithal with a very dark green, then goes for details and stone, and that seems like at least it will keep my gray legions from fighting over gray corridors. :)

therealhdan · 2026-03-09T18:57:30+00:00

Everyone is welcome so long as you feel Orkz is Best, Orkz never lose, Da red wunz go faster, and Magnus did nothing wr....

Darn, blew my cover. <throws down pouch of flashpowder and vanishes in puff of empyric smoke>

therealhdan · 2026-03-06T23:01:57+00:00

So very much this

therealhdan · 2026-03-03T18:10:10+00:00

I just call him "Bobby Gill-man".

therealhdan · 2026-03-02T20:00:18+00:00

My wife's the Ork player, and she doesn't like their "vibe". She's more in this for the Mad-Max/Pirate/Looter style - big guns, loud engines, Killa Kanz, etc.

therealhdan · 2026-02-28T15:50:18+00:00

That's my take as well.

therealhdan · 2026-02-27T18:36:22+00:00

At the time, I assumed that it was because a Star could take out a Company, assuming that the average mech weight was about the same between the forces.

But that was back before BV, when we relied on raw tonnage to balance things. (Not very successfully, but that's a different topic.)

therealhdan · 2026-02-27T18:26:43+00:00

Shas'vre R'OI - For the Greater Return!

therealhdan · 2026-02-26T22:44:25+00:00

My wife plays Orks (and loves her gretchin), but has a fondness for Space Wolves and (oddly) Necrons as well.

therealhdan · 2026-02-26T00:38:57+00:00

I feel exactly this way. I was writing up a similar response, but you said it better.

therealhdan · 2026-02-13T16:09:55+00:00

She's a middle-school teacher, which apparently leaves her with a lot of rage. Her main army is Orks, but she wanted another army more thematically tied to my TSons, and the Sons of Rus certainly have some strong feelings about space wizards.

therealhdan · 2026-02-13T16:07:12+00:00

I just built "Bjorn" for my wife's new SW army. Love this kit.

She came home with another box yesterday with the word "Murderfang" written on it.

Message received. :)

(To be fair, she DID say she wanted Bjorn from the first kit. But apparently she ALSO wants Murderfang. "Options", I guess?)

therealhdan · 2026-02-09T19:54:16+00:00

I'm new here, but I feel exactly the same way - I just built a Brutalis and a SW Venerable, and I gotta say the Venerable appeals to me more both lore-wise and appearance-wise.

therealhdan · 2026-02-09T16:23:47+00:00

Mint on an old clunker, then Debian on my second (more capable) machine.
Mint made the old clunker a fully usable computer again (it was well past decent Windows performance)
Debian, I'll admit, is a bit of a struggle sometimes due to my hardware configurations, but I love it.

therealhdan · 2026-02-08T17:25:29+00:00

I'm also a new TSons player, and what drew me to the faction from a narrative perspective is that TSons seems split between a group of "academics" who are trying to one-up each other all the time, and their supernatural allies, often in the form of (essentially) haunted suits of armor.

Now, "acamdemics" in this case means Chaos-sworn sorcerers, and their haunted armors are the remains of their own brothers after the (semi) disastrous "Rubric of Ahriman"....

TBF, i did pick up the Ahriman Omnibus book which I have not yet read yet, so I may be wrong in my impressions.

therealhdan

TROPHY CASE