I'm really interested in the Boon or Bane dice they have knocked up for their new version. In the latter part of our tabletop Traveller campaign I introduced "Situation" difficulty to work parallel to "Task" difficulty. The difficulty of a Task was still based on the standard rules. A routine task would still provide a DM of +2 for example. The main difference of our house rule was that the situation wouldn't apply a DM. Instead it would modify the number of dice that you roll. So if the Situation was "Routine" then you would roll three dice and take the highest two. If the Situation was "Simple" you would roll five dice and take the highest two. If the Situation was "formidable" then you'd roll 5d6 and take the lowest two. So the bell curve of probability shifts on your two dice either up or down, but you're still capable of success or failure. So things that could potentially make a task either impossible or or impossible to fail at were still DMs. Things that would affect the probability of success but NOT make something impossible or impossible to fail at modified the number of dice you rolled, Not the total of the dice themselves. You still end up with the total of two dice when attempting tasks. Lets just say a surgeon is attempting surgery. If She's in a sterile environment with a nurse swabbing the swear of her forehead then her situation would be "easy". The "difficulty" of performing surgery would be the same but the random events that threaten success have been minimized. The surgeon would roll 4d6 and take the highest two for her roll. Lets just say the same surgery was performed in zero gravity on a spacecraft that was evading incoming fire... in the dark. The "Task" is just as difficult but the random events that threaten her success are "formidable". She rolls 5d6 and takes the lowest two as her roll. Again, lets just say a newly employed security guard spots some Travellers lurking around in a dark warehouse he is guarding. Budget cuts - so he doesn't have a flashlight. He whips out his pistol and takes a shot at them. He takes a DM -3 on his roll because he doens't really know how to use a gun. In regular Mongoose Traveller a DM of -4 would be imposed for trying to shoot in the dark, making it impossible to hit. Logically however, there should be at least a slim chance of hitting. And that lucky hit should have a chance of having a high effect. So instead of a DM -4 to hit the difficulty of his situation is raised two levels. He rolls 4d6 (instead of 2) and takes the lowest two for his roll. He still has a chance to hit something, but it's a pretty slim one. If he is really lucky he could roll four 6s and score a good hit. From what I hear the guys writing the second edition of Mongoose Traveller saw the same problem in the current system that our group tried to fix. "Boon or Bane" dice looks like what we were trying to do with "Situation" difficulty. I think? When I have money I'll have to buy it and have a look.
