First Impressions from MGT

[PFVA63]

A note on ship shares and modern ship ownership

Hi,

In the real world I'm a naval architect, and before that I had spent some time at school studying a variety of things, trying to make up my mind on what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. Eventually before going away to study naval architecture, I had begun to focus in on a business administration major (primarily considering focusing on accounting). After getting my degree in naval architecture & marine engineering though, I still retained an interest in ship operations and economics, and I collected a number of books, etc in the field of ship finance, accounting and operations.

Although its been awhile (at least 10 to 15 years) since I've looked through them, the discussions on Mongoose Traveller and its ship shares system, had gotten me to dig them out again, and I thought it might be worthwhile to the discussion to provide a little insight into what they say, as well as also provide some more recent info from the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) website.

Here are two documents from the OECD website, that although they deal mostly with ownership and control of ships, how the actual ownership of a vessel can be hidden within these frameworks, and how this may impact maritime security, they give alot of insight into some of these differing types of ownership.

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/53/9/17846120.pdf

http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/62/39/32049167.pdf

In general, modern commercial ships can be owned through a wide array of different institutional devices, not limited to just standard corporations, such as Private Limited Companies, International Business Corporations, Trusts, Foundations, and/or Partnerships.

In accordance with the book "Financing Ship Acquisitions" by Francis Paine its not uncommon for an organization that owns more than one ship to structure itself so that each ship is owned by a separate subsidiary company to help in limiting liability, with separate sister companies often providing the manning, operations support, and other services.

Additionally, the 1st document from the OECD website notes that:

"It is implicit that private companies must have at least one share, and at least one shareholder. Generally such companies are created with a structure that contains more than one share, but compared to public companies there are far fewer shares in private companies (counted in single digits rather than millions) so it is far easier for such private companies to be controlled by a small number of people, or perhaps only one person."​

This paper goes on to note that shares can be 'ordinary' shares, or 'bearer' shares, where ordinary shares appear to include some degree of registration and tracking of the shareholder (though a 'nominee shareholder' can be appointed by an owner to act on his behalf, if he wishes to not expose his idenitity) while 'bearer' shares are not really registered by any means and as such;

"Because of their very nature bearer shares provide a high level of anonymity and are easily transferable ... [which] is especially the case when these bearer shares are issued by private limited companies."​

Anyway, I guess from all this, it seems to me is that even for modern ocean going ships, simple corporations are not the only means of ship ownership, and;

• in some instances individual companies often exist for the sole purpose of owning a specific ship (with items such as operating and maintaining the ship being handled by other sister companies),
• if privately held the distribution of the ownership of shares in the company that owns the ship can be very limited, and
• these shares can either be normal 'registered' shares or 'bearer' shares which can easily be transferred from person to person.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting reading about how convoluted modern ocean-going ship ownership can be and I just wanted to share this data and the two links above, as I thought they may help others in deciding whether the method outlined in MGT for ship shares seems reasonable or not in comparison to modrn real-world practices.

Regards

PF

 

[rust]

Thank you very much for the information and the links !

 

[Xoqortit -nem]

I just got the book and am also posting because I haven't in a bit. I have a few days off and am really looking forward in to digging into it.

I hope everyone is doing well...........o:

 

[tbeard1999]

Anyway, I guess from all this, it seems to me is that even for modern ocean going ships, simple corporations are not the only means of ship ownership...

I never intended to assert that they were.

But at the end of the day, privately owned business assets are either directly owned by people (as sole proprietors, partners, joint venturers, etc.) or by entities that have separate legal existences (corporations, trusts, limited partnerships, limited liability companies, etc.).

The former structures tend to be simple and provide little (if any) liability protection for investors. The latter structures are more formalized and provide limited liability for investors if properly structured and operated. And as you note, it is a common asset protection strategy to divide assets between multiple legal entities as a sort of liability "firewall". In the case of a shipping company, each ship should probably be owned by a separate entity so that plaintiffs who prevail in a lawsuit involving one ship can't reach the other ships. (As a business attorney, I can go on for days about this kind of stuff.)

But unless you really want to roleplay with this kind of detail, something like my Standard Exploration Company will provide a useful in-game analogue to entity ownerships. If you like, call it a "trust", "limited liability company" or whatever.

And MGT's ship shares are still (IMHO) a useless and unnecessary kludge. They also imply a publicly traded market for starship shares, which is absurd IMHO.

 

[mbrinkhues]

20 Skill-Level equivalents(SLE) for a well-trained 40+ year old are not that unrealistic. Let's take me:

• My 15 month as a conscricpt and membership in a shooting club gives me:
  • Maschinegun-0
  • Pistol-1
  • Rifle-1
  • Grenade Launcher-0
  • Survival-0
  • Radio Operations-1 (I can use speach tables, encryption/decription etc)
  • Admin-0 (I was an armed secretary)
• My time at the University / University of applied science studing Computer Science and later my job gives me:
  • Mathematic-1 (Took the same courses as the Math-Students)
  • Computer Operations-2 (I can work as a SysOp if necessary)
  • Computer Programming-3 (I own a living with that)
  • Electronics-1 (Maybe -2, I took 8 courses of 4-6 hours/week each in Electrical Engineering plus 6 month practical training )
  • Physics-0 (Required course, 2 courses of 4 hours/week)
  • Mechanics-1 (Required courses, 3 courses of 6 hours/week) plus multiple times working in a maintenance shop as a temp. I can perform simple welding and blacksmith work
• Privat life gives me:
  • Driving-1 (20 years behind the wheel, emergency car handling training, training in operating 4x4 under adverse conditions, I can maintain it)
  • Farming-0 (We had a part-time farm, I can plow, slaughter pigs and rabits, sew fields etc)
  • Swimming-1
  • Athletics-0
  • Bicycle-1 (I can drive it and maintain it)
• My schooling gives me
  • English-1 (or -2, I can understand Texans and London Cabbies)
  • French-0 (was -1 but has dropped due to not being used)
  • History-1 (Excellent teacher and it interests me)
  • Biology-0 (was my second major in school)
  • Chemistry-0

 

[tbeard1999]

The actual Jamison character is in CT. He's the example character. And, he only has 10 skills after five terms as a Merchant: One at level 3, one at level 2, and five at level 1.

The MGT Jamison served six terms, five as a merchant and one as a journalist (!). So to give MGT a fair comparison, I assumed a six term version of Jamison.

It is a good distribution, and, since the playtest, I've suspected that MGT might have too many skills through character generation.

Looks that way to me.

Do you think my fix for the stat bloat will make the game less enjoyable?

I haven't really thought about it. MGT does seem to recognize that there isn't a lot of room for modifiers on a 2d6 roll. Most advantageous stats will only give a +1, while most skills will range from 0 to +3, so I think that they tried to make skills more important than attributes. I choose to ignore MGT's contention that a skill level of 2 is a "professional" level of skill and stay with the idea that level 3+ is "professional".

I think that MGT misses the boat though, because it gives "too many" skills (an admittedly subjective standard). As I've noted elsewhere, I prefer for there to be relatively little overlap in skills between characters so that each character has a chance to shine. Lots of level 0 and level 1 skills frustrate that.

Also, limiting attribute modifiers creates another problem -- it makes attribute rolls harder to succeed at, compared with skill+attribute rolls. In my Traveller campaigns, you get a +1 for attributes of 8-9; +2 for 10-11, etc. However, attributes seldom modify skill rolls. And if they do, the modifier is only +/-1 for a level of 10+/4-. Thus, the same target numbers can apply to attribute rolls and skill rolls.

Anyhow, at the end of the day, I think that character generation is (so far) MGT's strongest suit. While I've been critical of all the "fawning" over MGT's chargen system, I do think it's pretty well done. It has some major flaws IMHO, but they are not hard at all to fix.

And regarding attributes modifying skill rolls -- I agree with you that it's absurd for someone with Medical-0/Edu of 12 to be as competent as a licensed doctor (Medical 2). However, this would be a very rare occurence, so I'm not as bothered by it.

But I do note that there are ways that attributes can *affect* skills without being a direct modifier. For instance, you could tie maximum skill levels to attributes -- Medical 2 requires Edu of 10+; Medical 3 requires Edu of 11+; or somesuch. Directly modifying the skill roll is an especially crude way to handle attributes in a 2d6 system IMHO.

 

[rancke]

20 Skill-Level equivalents(SLE) for a well-trained 40+ year old are not that unrealistic. Let's take me:

I remember an issue of TD where the DGP people had statted themselves. I've no idea how realistic they were, of course, but it didn't seem unreasonable and every one of them had many more skill levels than their (quite high) Int and Edu would have allowed a Traveller character.


Hans

 

[tbeard1999]

20 Skill-Level equivalents(SLE) for a well-trained 40+ year old are not that unrealistic. Let's take me:

The problem with analogizing to yourself is that you may well have an inflated opinion of your competence (no offense intended; the point is valid for anyone).

There's also the problem that many skills -- especially physical skills -- atrophy with non-use. While one may have the memory of such skills, it may take months or even years to get them back up to their peak. In my case, I trained in Tae Kwon Do for eight years from age 12 to 20. At age 20, I probably had Brawling-3+. But while I remember all those techniques and can still execute most of them competently, I'd be stunned if my Brawling skill is much better than anyone else in his early 40s.

Similarly, I had 3 years of electronics courses in High School (2 class periods per day). By the time I graduated, I probably had Electronics 2. Now, I can't remember squat about Electronics. And so it goes.

Today, the range of skills that I can perform *competently* is fairly short -- Law 3+, Military History 2, Literature 1, Gaming 2, Economics 1, Gun Combat 0, Vehicle (automobile)-0. And my scores on standardized IQ tests place me at INT C (which perhaps speaks more about the limits of standardized tests than about me) and my educational experience would surely place me at Edu C+ (doctorate level degree; about 40% of the way to a PhD in History; more undergraduate majors than I can remember). 24 slots; only ~11 skill levels <sigh>.

I have dim memories of a bunch of other skills I once possessed -- Electronics, Brawling, Computer Programming, Medical (first aid), Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Judo, Athletics, etc. But I'd be fooling myself if I thought I could do any of these things at a respectable level without considerable training. And if I devoted a year to bring some of these old skills up to their former levels, my other skills would begin to atrophy. As would my bank account, but I digress...

The reality is that most skills require regular expenditures of time to maintain. And there are only so many hours in the day.

In any case, my objection to lots of skills in RPGs is a gameplay objection. I prefer for there to be relatively little overlap in skills between PCs. This, IMHO, improves the campaign because it gives every character a chance to shine. If most people can do most things, then this is frustrated.

 

[tbeard1999]

20 Skill-Level equivalents(SLE) for a well-trained 40+ year old are not that unrealistic. Let's take me:

I'd also note that Traveller makes a key assumption about skills that I think is dubious in the Real World -- that all skills require roughly the same amount of time/effort.

But is this really true? A doctor or lawyer, for instance, must spend 7 years of advanced education and at least a year of on the job training to attain a skill level of 3 in Medical or Law. And these skills are full time+ jobs; I'd estimate that a minimum of 40 hours per week must be spent to maintain them.

Is the same true of Brawling? Gun Combat? Admin? Electronics? Computer?Mechanical? Carousing?

If it is, then a person would be hard pressed to maintain more than 2 skills at level 3+ IMHO.

Of course, skills like law or medicine could be subdivided. A doctor with Medical-3 could plausibly be redefined to have First Aid-3, Biology-2, Chemistry-1, Pharmacology-2, Diagnosis-2, and Carousing-1 (bed side manner). A lawyer with Law-3 could be redefined to have Admin-1, Persuasion (or Argumentation)-3, Oratory-1, Research-2, Business-2 (if a Business Lawyer), Legal Procedure-2, Writing-1, and Bribery-1.

Anyhow, my point is that you can significantly inflate "plausible" skill totals by defining skills more narrowly. You can significantly deflate skill totals by defining skills broadly. So at the end of the day, I'm not sure that comparing Real World people to Traveller characters gets us very far.

 

[tbeard1999]

Another thought re: skills.

Skills require a considerable expenditure of time to learn. They also require a considerable expenditure of time to maintain. If we can agree on these requirements, we can derive a reasonable test for RPG character generation systems.

Here are my thoughts:

1. Professional levels of competence require a lot of education/training to acquire. Doctors and lawyers require at least 7 years of college and professional school to get level 3 in their vocations. Engineers, chemists and accountants require 4 years and perhaps another year of preparation and experience to take their licensing exams.

2. Professional levels of competence are full time jobs. So they would require 30-40 hours per week minimum to maintain.

3. Skills are seldom completely lost. Rather, they atrophy to a minimal level. So any skill that you had at level 1+ will probably never drop below level 0 from disuse.

4. Basic familiarity in a field (i.e., Traveller level 1 skills) can probably be maintained at a fairly low cost in time.

So, here are my suppositions:

Each character has about 12 hours per day (after sleeping, grooming, eating and miscellaneous) to spend maintaining his skills. Some time must be spent relaxing or "chilling out" for maximum efficiency. Let's say this time averages an hour per day. Therefore, a character has 77 hours per week to spend maintaining skills.

Level 4 skills require 40 hours per week.
Level 3 skills require 30 hours per week.
Level 2 skills require 10 hours per week.
Level 1 skills require 5 hours per week.
Level 0 skills require 2 hours per week.

Note that these are averages. For instance, a hobbyist mechanic might choose to spend one weekend per month working on his kit car (20 hours per month, sufficient to maintain Mechanical-1).

If I'm right, characters will find it extremely challenging to maintain professional levels of competence in 2+ fields at the same time.

 

[rust]

Level 4 skills require 40 hours per week.
Level 3 skills require 30 hours per week.
Level 2 skills require 10 hours per week.
Level 1 skills require 5 hours per week.
Level 0 skills require 2 hours per week.

I think these numbers are a bit too high. Remember, even a surgeon can go
on a holiday trip for three months without losing a significant amount of his
skill - although I would admit that I would not want to be his first patient af-
ter his return to the job.
So, I think that you could reduce the numbers by 50 % and still get a realis-
tic result.

 

[deniable]

That and allow a discount to getting levels back. Refreshing old levels should be easier than learning from scratch.

 

[Libris]

Can't see skills atrophying that much at all.

I joined the Army Cadets as an instructor and went to the indoor range. After the cadets had finished myself and a couple of others had a go.
After shooting the officer said, "that's pretty good grouping. How often do you shoot?"
"Twelve years ago..."

Even for a surgeon, a scalpel is a scalpel and most peoples parts will still be in the same place. As for a mechanic, a wrench is a wrench and an engine is an engine.

Unless, the technology has moved on I'd expect most skills only to slacken off slightly and even then come back real quick when needed; hours, days, possibly a week or so, at most. So quickly in fact that for game purposes it might just be easier to give a negative DM for "unfamiliarity" with the task at hand.

 

[tbeard1999]

I think these numbers are a bit too high. Remember, even a surgeon can go
on a holiday trip for three months without losing a significant amount of his
skill - although I would admit that I would not want to be his first patient af-
ter his return to the job.
So, I think that you could reduce the numbers by 50 % and still get a realis-
tic result.

Given that the typical doctor (and lawyer) works more than 40 hours per week (probably the average is 50+ hours), he'll still average >30 hours per week in a year even if he takes a 3 month vacation.

Of course, I've never taken a 3 month vacation, so I can't attest to its effect on my skills.

And note that I did not give an opinion on how much of a deficit would be required to reduce a skill level from (say) 3 to 2. I haven't thought about that, but it seems to me that one would lose his edge after, say, six months of relative non-use. So you might say that a deficit of 720 hours will reduce a skill from 3 to 2. You might be able to make up that deficit quicker than you acquired it, so maybe 360 hours of extra practice would restore your skill level. (I'd hate to track that).

In any case, the fact that maintaining a professional skill level is pretty much a full time job makes it clear to me that it's pretty implausible for characters to have very many level 3+ skills in Traveller.

 

[tbeard1999]

Can't see skills atrophying that much at all.

I joined the Army Cadets as an instructor and went to the indoor range. After the cadets had finished myself and a couple of others had a go.
After shooting the officer said, "that's pretty good grouping. How often do you shoot?"
"Twelve years ago..."

That statement doesn't really make the case, though, because it does not compare how well you did with how well you would have done had you spent several hours shooting each day.

And surely you aren't arguing that your skills are the same after 12 years of non-use as they'd be if you exercised them every day for a significant amount of time.

It may also be that some particularly talented people drop to level 1 skill instead of level 0. Or maybe you have a high DEX and got the bonus for that on your "to hit" roll

In my own case, I am certain that (for instance) my current Tae Kwon Do abilities are far lower than they were when I spent ~12 hours per week working on them. The same is true of my skills in Electronics, Chemistry, and so on. And I am sure that my skills as a lawyer would deteriorate significantly if I spent several years not exercising them.

I know a retired Marine sniper who told me that he trained 3-4 hours every day in the Marines, which is what I'd expect to develop and maintain a skill level. He's a very good shot now, but I think he'd agree that he's not as good as he was when he trained daily at it.

 

[tbeard1999]

That and allow a discount to getting levels back. Refreshing old levels should be easier than learning from scratch.

Agreed. But the point is that the maintenance requirements of a high skill level make it unlikely that someone will have very many highly developed skills.

And note that this is explicable in terms of what's required to obtain a high skill level. A US law degree requires 90 hours of law school, which translates to about 1350 hours of classroom time. The rule of thumb was 3 hours of study time per classroom hour, or about 4050 hours of study time, for a total of 5350 hours. Add ~300 hours of preparation for the bar examination and you have nearly 6000 hours invested in Law-3 (plus the ~4000 hours it took to get a bachelor's degree). Doctors spend even more time for their Medical-3 skill, Engineers and Accountants somewhat less. It will take a *lot* of non-use for such skills to completely disappear.

If I'm right, then RPGs should probably have a fairly low limit on high level skills. PCs could declare which skills they're maintaining and reduce the other skills to a lower level. In Traveller, this might work thusly:

At any given time, a PC can have a maximum of X skill levels in skills at level 3+. X might be a fixed number (7 sounds good to me) or might be based on INT and/or EDU. I think that 9 or so should be an absolute limit. I'd probably use the fixed number. Personally, I think that we gamers overrate Intelligence and Education in RPGs...understandable, given the high nerd-quotient in our hobby. So, you could have 2 skills, one at level 3 and one at level 4 if X=7.

If the PC exceeds the limit above, he must temporarily reduce his other level 3+ skills to level 1. It takes about 2 months to bring a skill back up to level 3+.

 

[rust]

A PC can have a maximum of X skill levels in skills at level 3+. X might be a fixed number (7 sounds good to me) or might be based on INT and/or EDU. I think that 9 or so should be an absolute limit.

Sorry for criticizing your numbers again ...

This time they seem somewhat high to me. Seven skill levels at 3+ would
mean that the character is the equivalent of a professional in seven pro-
fessions.
I know a doctor who is also a biologist and a biotech engineer, but this is
about the most impressive combination of professional skills I ever encoun-
tered.
Add to this two more non-professional skills (e.g. weapons, etc.) at 3+ and
some lower skill levels in other skills, plus a high EDU, and you already have a
true "renaissance man", I think.
So, I would think that 5 skills at 3+ could be a quite reasonable limit.

 

[tbeard1999]

Sorry for criticizing your numbers again ...

This time they seem somewhat high to me.

No problem; this is just my first thought about how to go about it.

Seven skill levels at 3+ would
mean that the character is the equivalent of a professional in seven pro-
fessions.

Sorry, I should have been clearer. Seven is the total number of skill levels that can be spent on skills of level 3+. So you could have one skill at level 3 and one skill at level 4.

 

[rust]

Oops ... sorry, my English tricked me - now I get it.

Yes, in this case your numbers of course seem quite realistic to me. A maxi-
mum of 7 to 9 skill levels / 2 or 3 skills at 3+ is what I would expect, too.

 

[mbrinkhues]

The problem with the "It takes x hours/week to maintain a skill at level y" approach is, that you often practice a number of skills at the same time. I.e during programming I am using "Programming, CompOps, Math and English" all at the same time (Writing code, handling the database/server platform, using Statistical functions and English to RTFM)

Another problem is that some skills are learned on a level where it takes effort to UNlearn them. I.e. the Weapons Safety drill and the Weapons maintenance drills I received in the 1980s are still present. Recently won a bet that I could still disassemble a Walter P38 (aka P1) and an HK91 blindfolded. Hadn't touched the guns in more than a decade. Still worked.

Retaining HIGH levels of skill in physical activities takes a lot of time. Retaining reduced levels (Level 0 or 1) in them is a lot easier, often nothing more than keeping a certain level of basic physical fitness.