Being Alright with Getting IT Wrong
Plenty of folks feel a lot of pressure to try and run games as awfully close to the way it's written down in the book. The pressure to play RAW or do it right by the designer is something that smothers a lot of good play. That said there is a lot to be learned from doing something "by the book" to try and understand why it was presented that way to begin with. Last March I started running Classic Traveller and it's been a blast. Lots of great sessions across many different tables. But until a few weeks ago I was doing Damage and the Dealing of Wounds wrong! Even though I was doing it wrong we still had frantic shootouts and tense stand offs. I did want to understand the rules better and try it how it's meant to be rather than how I originally interpreted it.
The big issue with how I was handling combat before was that I was allowing PCs to divide the damage on a given die and ignored the 1977 damage rolls in favor of the 81 values. So an SMG deals 3d6-3 damage. If the result comes up all 6 it would then look like this: 6, 5, 3. In person I would roll different colored dice to reflect the ones being reduced, online with a dice roller I just go from right to left. So if it's the first hit of the combat the affected characteristic is rolled at random and the Player must take all the damage to that stat. And then randomly until they either die or all the damage has been taken.
If it's not the first hit in combat though players can select where each DIE of damage goes to. My big mistake was in letting them take it as a lump sum an divide it up with no regard to what the rolled value on the die was. So then they must choose where the 6 points, 5 points, and 3 points of wounds go to among their characteristics. These values can not be divided at all!
While this is a slight difference in procedure I have found that running the wounds closer to how they're intended to be more exciting.
There are other things I've gotten wrong as well!
- Not realizing about berthing fees for ships at starports until a few weeks ago.
- That unrefined fuel contaminates the engines until they're flushed out entirely.
- My players have never really wanted to deliver mail or ship cargo. Not really something I got wrong but just part of the book we've never used.
And I'm sure there will be more I get wrong along the way but I'm not gonna let it get in the way of having fun with the game. Don't feel obligated to get things right the first time. Getting it wrong is also fun and you'll figure it out at some point! And just maybe the way you did it wrong is better than the way it's meant to be.