Traveller 5.10 Book 1 - Part 8: The Senses

Book 1: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8

The Senses

Teere are 14 pages dedicated to the senses. The benchmark tables help put things into scale, so to speak. Like a lot of Traveller-isms, it is not a linear scale. Size 5 is an average-sized person, 4 is half-hiding, such as taking cover. This sort of distinction plays into the combat chapter, which is the next chapter.

We start with the commonly encountered senses: vision, hearing, smell, touch, awareness and perception. The last two start to veer into the paranormal world, or at least aliens with a different set of senses. We further define just what those senses detect: vision detects energy, in humans between certain bandwidths (the visible light spectrum), hearing vibrations, and so forth. Smell and taste depend on the environment: in the air, smell is what we use, but in water or another solution, taste. But they are grouped together as sensing volatiles. 

And another acronym: SOARN. Sense Only As Really Necessary. Meaning don't get bogged down, which seems somewhat ironic considering the size of this ruleset! Regardless, there may be cases where this detailed analysis could come in handy. And of course, a handy sense options table. Which I feel we need a Traveller Degree to read and interpret some of these rules (note to self: a Traveller PhD Thesis is just waiting to happen! It sort of exists for electronic gameselectronic games apparently). Though we do get an entire page per chart to hopefully explain how it works.

Vision, for example, breaks things out, and with that we need to have the vision ranges are well to see if we can see or notice something.

We also find humans have a constant of 16 for the constant. A lot of this really reminds of of calculus, and not in a good way! Higher numbers = better vision, lower = worse. So, let's see if we can figure out how to see something. The formula is nD < Constant + Benchmark + Mod + Mod. Our constant is for a regular human, so 16. First, nD (number of dice) = the range. We'll go with VL, very long or range 5. Next, the benchmark is the item size - range. If this is less than or equal to zero, you cannot see it. For instance, at a vision range of 5 (Very Long, 1km), anything the same size or smaller than the average human we cannot see. I think we can adjust the vision range with things like a sniper scope or binoculars, but not there yet! But let us see about a grav tank which is size 6, so our benchmark is 1. So far, we have 5d6 < 16 + 1. There is mention of a master mod table, which I've either missed or not gotten to yet. Sadly, no reference to where this table is (be nice to say p. xxx) but alas, we find it in the Appendix. Let us just say there are a LOT of mod tables. Some of which really look more like random generator tables. Though interestingly, I see a QREBS table for the various Megacorporations which is interesting: Tukera has a -1 for quality but a +2 on reliability. But sadly, nothing that sticks out in those 21 tables specifically for vision. However - the example given in the text indicates that something moving very fast is +2. And in chart 08, typical mods, VFast is +2. Let us also say our grav tank is moving very fast, so the final task to see this is:

5d6 < 16 + 1 + 2 => 5d6 < 18

Which, now that they have moved the dice tables from chapter 1 in the original 5.0 version to an appendix, we can see that 5d6 < 18 has a 10% chance of rolling 18 exactly, and (if I am reading it correctly) a 60% chance of seeing it. Going to an online dice tool online dice tool, I get the same results. Always good to get a 2nd opinion! Plus helps to make sure I am reading the table correctly. The explanations for the various columns and what they mean seem (at least to me) more obtuse than they should be. Again - the books would have really benefited from a professional editor (and yes, I think Marc is an editor but as I have pointed out previously, you really cannot proofread [or code review!] your own work well!)

I will note that the example given in the book has the range of 6 and the loader, also a size 6, at zero for the benchmark, but allows the task to be done. So, there is a difference between the text and the example. Could be only less than zero but the text says zero or less. The T5 errata discussion is pretty long on COTI but will see if I can find if anyone else has noticed. And they did, and the search function there has been greatly improved!

We have several more pages, 2 pages per sense, going into the details of each sense. Like the QREBS and pretty much a lot of the rules, this is something you won't use all the time, just as in a lot of RPGs you don't roll for everything you do, just the things can have some sort of impact on the game. 

Next post - personal combat!

Notes from another blog   

I was reading through a few other blogs and this one came up from bastionland.com with a matrix for game rules. I'd have to say Traveller 5 is all deep/niche pretty much!