Small Arms notes - action and magazine

The rules for Twilight: 2000 ignore some methods of firing guns and means of loading/storing ammunition in the gun that were obsolete by the time of that game, but would still be in use during the Vespers War era. As such, here's a quick summary of types of action and types of magazine.

Germany's Panzer I - the worst imported tank of the Spanish Civil War

The Treaty of Versailles forbade Germany from developing tanks. However, by 1926 the German government had contracted with multiple manufacturers to produce experimental heavy tanks, the Grosstraktor. By 1930, they decided to also build a light machine-gun armed tank for training.

The Italian CV tankettes - the baby tanks of the Spanish Civil War

The Italian contribution to the Fascist incursion into Spain were the CV 33 and CV 35 tankettes (CV standing for carro veloce, or “fast car”). Tiny, lightly armored two-person vehicles armed only with machineguns, they were the result of one of the competing philosophies about armored vehicles in the 1920s and 30s and indirect descendants of the Ford 3-ton tank. 

The BT-5 - the fast tank that served in the Spanish Civil War

Developed from John Walter Christie’s designs, the BT series of tanks were the fastest tanks in the Soviet garage.

T-26 - The primary Communist tank of the Spanish Civil War

Developed from the British Vickers 6-ton tank, the Soviet T-26 was the USSR's standard light tank of the 1930s. More than 11,000 were built over a decade. 

Other Universes: Silhouette Skills in MegaTraveller

One of the concerns when moving between game systems is allowing for differences in skill lists. While a decent GM can make rulings on an ad hoc basis, there's always the risk of those rulings changing over time. So, to allow for conversion between Silhouette and the various Traveller systems, I sat down with a list of skills and the MegaTraveller Players' Manual and came up with what I consider to be a decent conversion from one system to the other. Converting will require the Players' Manual and (for House Rules systems) a copy of Survival Margin or some other document to convert from MegaTraveller to New Era.

Other Universes: Silhouette Characters in GDW's House Rules system

I'm a fan of Dream Pod 9's old role-playing games, Heavy Gear, Jovian Chronicles, and Tribe 8. These games use a custom system called Silhouette that utilizes only six-sided dice, with stats ranging from -3 to +3 and skills ranging from 1 to 5. This post is the start of a means of converting these characters to either MegaTraveller or the House Rules system used in Dark Conspiracy, Twilight 2000 v2.2, and Traveller: The New Era. Planned future posts will look at personal weapons and armor.