We had an excellent Classic Traveller session this week. You can read the antics here on the campaign blog. .

At one point a player character took a grav bike up above a building and engaged in an exchange of weapons fire with someone on the roof.

In the past I didn’t really have any simple but great rules to deal with this kind of situation. Then Omer Golan-Joel published some great rules on his blog. Then that post disappeared and I was all like “wuut happened to the vehicle combat rules?”

Then I found out Omer published them under the new Mongoose guidelines and you can buy them on Drive Thru RPG.

So, they being the correct size for putting in my 5.5 x 8.5 campaign ring binder, I printed the rules out, put them in sheet protectors, and have them at-the-ready should vehicle-associated violence erupt.

Having the rules right there was super helpful. It went like this…

• No penalty to hit a slowly moving/hovering/relatively close grav bike with a laser carbine.
• No penalty to shoot a submachine gun from the grav bike.
• Rolled to hit. Dude on roof with laser hits the grav bike
• Small arms vs. Soft Skin vehicle (no armor) = surface damage.
• Roll 2d6 and consult surface damage table. 6-7 = “device”.
• I rule that the bike’s little dish antenna is destroyed.
• Since the laser shooter was simultaneously being cut to ribbons by submachine gun fire (2 hits) the combat was over after one round. Simple, easy, fun, effective rules.

I really like these kinds of rules. I’m not into protracted vehicle or ship combat that ends up in a 2-hour tactical miniatures fight, but I also don’t like to hand-wave this kind of thing. Omer’s rules really capture the spirit of Classic Traveller. Well done!