SWBaxter said:
CT didn't have a universal task resolution mechanic, but many rolls were 2d6 + skill against a target number of 8 and some players have adopted that as a standard system. Depending on the character, it wasn't too unusual to see skills as high as 4 or so but it also wasn't unusual to see a character with no skill higher than 1.
MT had a standard task resolution mechanic, in which the target number depended on the task difficulty: 3+ for simple tasks, 7+ for routine, 11+ for difficult, and 15+ for "formidable". Characters can reduce the difficulty by taking longer on the skill check, or increase the difficulty by rushing the attempt. Appropriate skills are added directly to the roll, and so is the appropriate attribute divided by 5. MT's character generation made it easier for characters to load up on desired skills, so the modifiers were often a bit higher.
That's it. My books are buried
deep in the closet, and that's how I remember it. But since stats were what, 1 to 15, average of 7, most players got at most +3 to those rolls. And again, skills may have been "up to" +4, but using the random terms-of-service character generation, getting anything higher than +1 was kinda hard, and I've never seen (in my admittedly limited experience) anything as high as +4. I understand that for the vast majority of tasks, just having the skill at all was enough, and rolling dice was not something done for every little thing, it still seems that on a 2d6 roll, the average person (7 stat = +1 to the roll) trained in a skill (+1) will only beat a 7 (and IIRC, you had to
beat the target number, not match it) would fail at a "routine" task 10/36th of the time, and would fail 30/36 times at the next higher difficultly level. Ouch!
SWBaxter said:
Er, what? Using the same system for every roll, as MegaTraveller does, is pretty much the definition of universal task resolution. And it always seems pretty streamlined in play to me, faster and more flexible than most skill systems. The system is not at all unlike the standard d20 skill rules.
I guess I wasn't articulating myself well. What I meant was not that 2d6 for every action wasn't universal, but rather that every single use for every single skill was, at least in MegaTraveller, defined by a 2 line summary, which included the skill, the target number, and the time increment to try it. I found it very frustrating that all these pre-determined tasks weren't found under the skill description either, but instead sprinkled all over the rules and adventures. I suppose I just like how the d20 skills are clearly defined but open for interpretation/extrapolation, and easily found.
Even with these points about CT/MT cleared up, I still feel the 2d6+skill/stat>TN method is too choppy and rough, and would have hoped that in 30 years of game design, they would have found something they liked better. I was a fan of the GDW "House System", as clunky as it actually was, because it was pretty clear and it scaled well (or, so we thought at the time) from personnel weapon scale to vehicle scale to starship scale. But that
was a looooong time ago as well....
