So, what are your thoughts on vehicles throughout various systems? Pros, cons, ideas, wishlists? Anything particularly cool you've found that you wish other systems would do? Particular things that certain systems do that are a pain?

Mechs? Cars? Sail ships? Starships?

Let's talk vehicles!

Hi i'm w Byrd and I'm a tech head....

I have to admit I really enjoy playing around with vehicles and gear in games. It's always more fun going out and finding the 'neat' toys. Not the most powerful, or perfect addition to my stat/ability/class build..etc..but items and vehicles that just strike me a fun. unfortunately the pickings are rather lean in many settings and games..so I make my own when I can.

My favourite system for vehicle design for many years has been Classic Traveller's Striker. I've made a number of houserules for the system over the decades, and quite often when I need a vehicle I will design it in Striker and then convert its stats to whatever system I need.

I like a formula rather than tables, as a formula is easy to tweak and adapt. I don't like over-simple, but I don't like over-complex either. Striker has the 'Goldilocks Factor' for me.

Im actually more of a stat guy and i need help building vehicles in my game. Id be happy for ideas and advice.

What sort of ideas and advice do you need? Are you looking for a few fleshed-out vehicles, a list of vehicle types, thoughts about vehicle contents, layout plans, 3D artwork?

What game do you play? What era? What rules?

I usually do d20 and futuristic scifi is the game era. However, I'm curious as to how to bring vehicles into a fold as part of the adventuring genre.

How can we give everyone aboard a role in a vehicle without leaving someone out?

How can a pilot-based character still have fun adventuring when everyone is not in a vehicle?

What rules should be set up for vehicle chases and combat?

Clearly using MPH in a game that has FTL travel doesn't work so I'm looking for something more vague but still fun.

Vehicles can be used in sci-fi as a reminder that you're not in Kansas any more. Making them different and special can breathe life to a mobile adventure.

Unfortunately, fact has a habit of overtaking fiction - the way things are going, there may be no such thing as a driver/pilot by the end of the 21st century - everyone will be a passive passenger in a computer-controlled vehicle. Which is absolutely no fun for an adventure game, so we just have to ignore such trends.

In a small vehicle, such as a passenger car, there may be no activities beyond the driver - even the navigator/map-reader role for a passenger has already been overtaken by satnav. However, in a chase, non-drivers can be firing guns out of the windows, or can be looking out for turnings, spotting helicopters, or whatever.

In larger vehicles, such as survey crawlers with built-in accommodation, there may be science mission work for non-drivers - someone might be operating ground-penetrating radar or thermal imaging equipment while the vehicles is moving. If you have a planet with an opaque atmosphere, you may need some form of sonar operator to 'see' where the vehicle is going.

There may also be research functions - where are you going and why? are you looking for a particular place, a particular person, a particular mineral? someone could be checking computer records to locate said entity while you're moving.

Aboard much larger vehicles, such as starships, roles are easier to allocate - navigators, engineers, medics, computer operators, communications operators, even security personnel.

A Pilot can have plenty of fun outside of a vehicle just by having other skills. Presumably s/he can fire a gun, work a computer, carry a load, break a cipher...?

There are plenty of rules out there for vehicle chases and combat. Much will depend on the style of game you prefer. The old Car Wars game is a starting point.

Mph/kph is still viable for surface vehicles, aircraft can use Mach numbers, starships could use things like light-seconds per hour, or more vague things like Warp numbers.

If you can narrow down your needs, I may be able to help further.

From a very generic standpoint... you can step back and view playing at the 'vehicle' scale in a game as one of several options:

One option... the vehicle scale could quite literally be viewed as a different and separate game, with its own rules, not mechanically related to personal scale of the rules.  In this sort of a situation... the vehicle has its own attributes... and when it is moving... firing... etc.  This is what affects the game.

Next sliding down the scale, you might have certain things that bleed over into the vehicle scale part of the game out of the personal scale.  In this example: when you are operating a vehicle, you look up its characteristics and abilities from its entry, but there might be certain things, like a bonus to certain checks that are applied based on the pilot's personal pilot skill.  Or to hit rolls might get a modifier according to the gunners personal gunnery skill.

Next going down the scale... you may have all scales (or at least the given scales) all base things off the personal abilities... and vehicles merely become an adjustment to them.  In such an example... your personal-scale heroes may have a piloting skill and this is used to determine if someone can flee or get chased down.  You might roll competing pilot scores... and the vehicles have attributes which adjust your personal roll, based on its ability.  A fast mech getting a bonus... a tank getting a penalty (or maybe even a cap)

The last part, purely to be encompassing, a game might decide that scale in that sense doesn't matter, and that conflicts between two entities merely reflect their struggle and so any conflict between two people would simply be resolved by a competed skill roll (or whatever other mechanism is in place, such as for a more freeform environment)

As some examples:  I used to play battletech back in my school days.  We played the mech's with the standard rules, but used Gurps to play the personal scales.  We had a way of translating bonuses from the personal scale, into skill levels in the Mech scale.  So, I would categorize this as my second example above.

If my memory serves me, Grid-running in Alternity is more like the third... you jack in, and still have your mental attributes, but there are modification to it according to the hardware you are using.

In theory, you could have a StarTrek game that uses StarFleet Battles for the Starship scale and has not mechanical traces of the personal level, which could be played by any game system you want.  That would be an example of the first example.

You might wish to define which of these concepts you are imagining for your rules.

Lots of really good ideas and good points.

Personally, I'd go with the whole "vehicles vs. personal" scales are entirely different games, but I'd want the vehicle system to either be simpler or comparable in function to the personal scale.

The way I look at it a vehicle may be able to run its self in the future, but that is only taking 10.  Let's say a car is instructed to go from point A to point B on the travel network it will do that, but it won't change its mind and go to point C. That requires a sentient controller even if this is not a driver. if you want to leave the establish presets network, you must be a qualified driver, that may mean presenting the vehical with both your drivers licence and thumb or retinal prints, or such vehicles may have a back up emergency setting to test a driver to allow it to get back on network.

If you have a team in a small spaceship, you don't even have to take over control.
If you are a pilot instead of taking over, and that being what you do. You attempt to assist the ship pilot station giving the ship a bonus by just taking the seat.  While there you can attempt to choose from a set of optional bonuses and roll first to place the bonus you choose, then set it. Having set it you can switch to another bonus place it, then set it. To me placing the bonus means the bonus is working, but if you are dealing with a situation as in attempting out run another vehicle, to point out to the things that could be used to slow the chaser down, giving a manuver based speed bonus.  While another of the member of the team choose to deal with the fuel aspect of the engine and was able to set and place a speed bonus that was power based.
If something goes wrong they can blame the ship if it works they will of course be able to brag about what they did to help.  And of course certain kinds of damage or counters by the other units team can wipe out the bonuses, or undo repairs finished or ongoing.

Often a simple system leaves serious holes in the rules, were there is a lot of room to exploit or run into unexpected pitfalls in the system.
   The problem I have ran into in half a dozen attempts is that to patch the obvious holes in the system, the system quickly becomes unwieldy.

right now I am working with Mongoose Traveller, it keep most of the very simple and lightweight rules for combat but it lacks the support for complex maneuvers and has a relatively narrow range of options for weapons and add-ons to vehicles and space ships.

Now expansions do exist that allow players and GMS to be more flexible and personalize their vessels but the system can get awkward quickly.often I Find myself juggling volume, and cost numbers trying to get the design to work the way I want it to.

fortunately the entire core design rules fit into about ten pages, with fairly simple math involved...nothing like Fire Fusion and Steel.

Fire Fusion and Steel is a monster - and a broken monster at that.
It's so unwieldy that I've only ever used it for designing personal firearms (for the uninitiated, the amount of detail extends to choosing the amount of powder in your bullets...) and I had to houserule it to cope with pistols because it was effectively impossible to build anything shorter than about 15 inches IIRC.

It's amazing for adding chrome to your story, but at the end of the day a 3D6-3 pistol is a 3D6-3 pistol. All that work adds nothing to combat resolution.

I enjoyed playing about with Classic Traveller's High Guard. Yes, it involved some juggling of volume, cost, etc, but that was part of the fun, making it all fit.

The only thing I didn't like about it was the 'negligible wall thickness' problem - the fact that you could fit a 4 ton vehicle into a 4 ton hold. Again, I had to houserule something, but I think I probably spent more time designing ships and vehicles for Traveller than I spent actually playing. Design was something I could do solo when other folks were busy. :)

  the newest version of Mongoose Traveller High guard adds a 30% increase to basic hanger space. If your just carrying a Ships boat int he cargo hold it still only takes up a 10 d tons..
under most of the versions a 10& wiggle room factor was included so you didn't need to detail out every square foot of space on deck plans. Personally I enforce a common sense rule...if it sounds damn silly don't do it. so no shoving 10 x 10 ton boats into a 100 ton cargo hold and expecting to just hop in them and fly out the back...sure you can make them fit, but boy howdy is there gonna be hall to pay wiggling those suckers in and out.

a simple storage slot for an air raft takes p 4 tons...but depending on the shape of the vehicle there's still room for the pilot to wriggle in and move it outside...as long as he isnt doing something silly like trying to pack his spare piano in before he drives around to the back of the ship. or snug up to an airlock and load up the rest of the passenger.


compared to Fire fusion and steel, Mongoose Traveller is a breeze.A mongoose High Guard ship takes about 20 minutes to do if your familiar with them. Whee as an older system you spend a day or more just for a Simple destroyer.
 The Small Starship ( 3000 Displacement and lower) rules are so simple I can about do a ship in my head on the fly...I just need to juggle fuel and ordnance storage to make room for the vital systems.

I bought the Mongoose rules, but I've never used them for building ships - I figured anything I built with a new rule set wouldn't fit with the rest of my fleet, so I never read them in much detail. I've only used Mongoose for chargen (at which it excels) and the occasional abortive game (the combat rules suck for PbP).

Deck planning is another matter entirely, and an art form of its own. One day I'd hoped to deck plan my entire fleet, but realistically I can't see it happening this side of retirement!

Personally, though I've never been fond of GURPS 3e Vehicles, I like GURPS 4th Edition Spaceships 1-8 and various Pyramid articles.