Jump Into Empty Hexes, Y/N?

[jawillroy]

I think that for me, Book 2 economics should be used for adventure-seeding. If there's a ridiculous low price for something the PCs want to buy on spec, there should be other ships attracted to the deal, too - and attempting to get in on it, be it by counterbidding or by force. If the PCs have something to sell and the price is crazily high, there should be a reason presented... and there should be obstacles placed in their path to overcome.

I agree that the mad fluctuations of the LBB2 trade table don't model the rationalized markets of the OTU Imperium all that well. I do think they suit a much smaller, much younger, more fragmented TU with fewer ships and smaller trade organizations.

(Naturally, since MPTU is best described this way, I have few problems with LBB2 trade.)

As I envision MTU, ships are few enough and much of the 3x3 subsector pocket empire is undeveloped enough that the arrival of a ship with full holds is enough to have a drastic effect on a local market; as I rationalize it, the coming and going of starships is itself a cause of the massive fluctuations that occur.

 

[Plankowner]

1 - Trivia Fact #11653: Jonas Grumby is the Skipper's name on Gilligan's Island. It was only mentioned once and then during the first episode. (Yes, I have no life.)

Sorry, but I believe his name was also mentioned one other time. In the episode where they reenact the "murder" of a man that everyone (except Gilligan) knew and had a reason to kill just before they left on the "Three Hour Cruise". There were several radio reports that came out during the reenactment and one of them mentioned Skippers name. I know this because I have NEVER seen the first episode and still remember his stupid name (yes I have no life too).

 

[pendragonman]

It is a good answer if it's true. Which, IMHO, it isn't.

...SNIP...

2. It's economically absurd. In a free market system like CT envisions, super lucrative trade routes would attract hordes of ship operators, which would quickly eliminate the lucrative profits because of competitive pressures on pricing. So, such routes would exist for very short times, like "boom towns" on Earth in the 19th century.

The CT economy works fine. The trick is to make the requisite die rolls every time the ship tries to trade, not once for each item until you find the super-lucrative deal. I quote from book 2:

"This throw indicates that a search by the characters has determined
that this type of trade good is the best item available for the purpose. A
throw may be made once per week."

This implies that the result changes every time you do trade, thus there is not really a "sweet spot" super lucrative permanent trade route.

 

[Golan2072]

There is a reason why a broker would sell a cargo to a small-time operator (read: PCs' Type-A) at a good price and not use the safer, cheaper, more reliable transport corporation's multi-Kdton megatrader; there is a reason why someone would move his cargo through a Type-A rather than by YTU's equivalent of FedEx; there is a reason why a passenger would risk taking an ill-maintained, smelly Free Trader rather than a comfortable megacorp liner.

More often than not, these goods are not 100% legal or 100% working as advertised; this package's contents are too sensitive to ship by FedEx-equivalent; and the passengers either has something to hide, is running from something or is trying to get somewhere undetected. And all of these spell adventure for the PC crew.

Alternatively, the route is so backwater that the bigger operatives (who profit from shipping mass bulk amounts at low costs) find it unappealing, and only a few opportunists such as the PCs visit them from time to time. And in these backwater you'd find more pirates, inhospitable worlds, and other dangers than in the well-travelled, well-policed Core areas with the lucrative routes.

And the prices fluctuate wildly because we're talking about shady deals, black-markets, and/or unstable frontier economics - not high-volume legit trade between well-established hyper-industrialized economies. And if someone is offering you to buy good at 40% the listed price or is trying to buy your cargo at a 400% markup, something's fishy and adventure is afoot...

 

[Whipsnade]

Sorry, but I believe his name was also mentioned one other time. (snip) I know this because I have NEVER seen the first episode and still remember his stupid name (yes I have no life too).

Plankowner,

Drat, I'd forgotten about the murderer epsiode!

The first episode is rather odd because the Professor, Mary Ann, and Ginger were recast and the roles rewritten afterwards. (Another useless trivia fact is that Carrol O'Connor of later "Archie Bunker" fame was up for the role of the Skipper and was not chosen.)

I suppose I should further derail the thread by bringing up that Question For The Ages: Mary Ann or Ginger?

I'm a Mary Ann fellow myself. She's much less maintenance and can cook both of which are vitally important for someone like me; a lazy fat man who dislikes scenes.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[tbeard1999]

Plankowner,
I suppose I should further derail the thread by bringing up that Question For The Ages: Mary Ann or Ginger?

I'm a Mary Ann fellow myself. She's much less maintenance and can cook both of which are vitally important for someone like me; a lazy fat man who dislikes scenes.

I think that it is unfair to be forced into a choice. Therefore my answer is "both"

 

[Whipsnade]

No, I'm not forgetting that. You'll note that my solution was to ignore the system in favor of a more reasonable one.

Tbeard,

Not exactly. Because there was no other Traveller economic system until the release of MT, your solution meant you needed to do some heavy lifting while my solution simply let me side-step the issue.

What I am saying is that the CT economics system is badly flawed, in terms of both realism and in terms of the effect it has on a campaign.

Again, not exactly. Traveller is about "adventure in the Far Future" and not about making buckets of money as traders, the trade system is meant to facilitate adventuring and not act as an economic model.

I'm sure my players would agree that I am willing to ruthlessly ignore or modify obnoxious rules.

I didn't ignore or modify the rules because I remembered the primary rule, the one that is repeated over and over in the LBBs. The rules are meant as a guide and not as a set of handcuffs.

But that does not exculpate a lousy rule or its designer IMHO.

Again, you're judging the trade rules against a completely inappropriate yardstick. The trade rules are there to facilitate adventuring and not act as an accurate economic model.

Me neither. I knew that (and I knew that the professor was "Roy Heinkley" before that Brady Bunch movie spilled the beans).

I saw Russell Johnson many years ago at a car show and he had a perfect answer for a questino I'm sure he's answer over a million times. It goes like this:

Q: Why can the Professor can make a geiger counter out of cocoanuts but not build a raft?

A: Hey, if you were lost on a desert island with Mary Ann and Ginger would you want to be rescued?


Have fun,
Bill

 

[jawillroy]

Golan, I like your rationale a lot - which is one reason I've opted for a more frontier-ish feel for a lot of MTU. But one thing that's been nagging at me for ages is this notion of the "Smelly Rustbucket Free Trader," when in fact we're discussing a multi-million credit piece of flying real estate which - in the frontiers, anyhow - outstrips the naval budget of many of the worlds it visits. Now, it may be that some Free Traders on hard times might be more worse for the wear. But it seems to me that many traders operating a vessel might be in a position to carry themselves as a sort of minor nobility, rather than, you know, a bus driver.

 

[tbeard1999]

...Again, not exactly. Traveller is about "adventure in the Far Future" and not about making buckets of money as traders, the trade system is meant to facilitate adventuring and not act as an economic model.

...

Again, you're judging the trade rules against a completely inappropriate yardstick. The trade rules are there to facilitate adventuring and not act as an accurate economic model.

If you are correct, then they are a complete failure. Far from "facilitating adventuring", they provide an easy way of player characters to make serious amounts of money. This makes it hard to come up with a credible reason to adventure at all. These rules can also produce campaign-wrecking payoffs when the dice and trade routes align.

And while I can always overrule my players and their die rolls, I've found through the years that players resent being interfered with like that. And I resent a game mechanic that requires me to do so.

 

[aramis]

Bill: Bk7 came out well over a year before MT, since I got it Fall, junior year, and MT came out after I graduated...

Personally, I've no problem with Bk2 T&C. It's fun, it works in play, and it isn't a "detailed economic model"...

Further, GTFT, "realistic" as it is claimed to be, is a lot more work for lower benefit to PC's in my games, making T&C worthless as anything other than a simple narrative; my players don't find GTFT to be worth their session time.

 

[Jame]

If you are correct, then they are a complete failure. Far from "facilitating adventuring", they provide an easy way of player characters to make serious amounts of money. This makes it hard to come up with a credible reason to adventure at all. These rules can also produce campaign-wrecking payoffs when the dice and trade routes align.

Which is what happened to the campaign I'm in...

 

[far-trader]

It's not that I doubt any of you saying you got filthy rich overnight using the B2 trade rules as written, it's just that I can't recall it happening in our games except once. One time out of several attempts that I can recall. So I'm trying to understand how the larger experience seems to differ so much from my memory.

The first hurdle is even getting a Free Trader in the first place. The odds are so long as to be practically impossible.* So how many of your games began on the wrong foot there by just giving the players one? Or did you simply let the players roll characters until they got one that had a Free Trader?

Or maybe it is memories at fault. Mine or some of yours and the reality is different than how we recall it?

* "practically" in the sense of a typical service career, which certainly supports the idea of a level of privileged nobility mentioned

 

[Fritz_Brown]

I suppose I should further derail the thread by bringing up that Question For The Ages: Mary Ann or Ginger?

I think that it is unfair to be forced into a choice. Therefore my answer is "both"

I have to side with tbeard on this one, Bill. Though I prefer Mary Ann, why should I have to choose? Do in the other castaways as necessary and live happily with both of them in your tropical paradise! :smirk:

Oh wait - wasn't this thread supposed to have something to do with jump?

 

[far-trader]

...Oh wait - wasn't this thread supposed to have something to do with jump?

No it's about Trade now :smirk: Or is it about Pirates I can't keep up...

And you and tbeard are crazy, or too young to know better. You'd be dead inside a week (insert obligatory mcp "but what a way to go" quip) or wish it so trying to please both of them and keep them both from being jealous enough to kill you or the other.

 

[Golan2072]

If you are correct, then they are a complete failure. Far from "facilitating adventuring", they provide an easy way of player characters to make serious amounts of money. This makes it hard to come up with a credible reason to adventure at all. These rules can also produce campaign-wrecking payoffs when the dice and trade routes align.

Remember that when you roll each time the PCs visit a planet - not only at the first time they do so - the roll doesn't represent the local market price, but rather a one-time opportunity the PCs or their broker (more accurately "fixer" or fence) have spotted. Extremely profitable results on the percentage table - such as buying at 40% or selling at 400% - are adventure seeds on their own. No one would sell at less than a half of the market price or buy at four times the market price without a reason, especially when you're selling to/buying from a shady, fleety Free Trader. In most cases this will get the PCs into trouble.

Imagine, for example, that someone is offering the PCs to buy a tank (Armored Vehicle, a roll of 55 on the table and 1 out of 1D6 for quantity) at 40% of its listed price. It's probably either stolen, defective, or involved in a (war?) crime - the seller is definitely trying to get rid of it. And if the PCs buy it, they'll get into trouble (read: adventure). Similarly, someone willing to pay 400% for their 3 tons of radioactives (a roll of 16 on the table and 3 out of 1D6 for quantity) is probably up to something nefarious, or, alternatively, is stuck so deeply in the frontier that there is no other source of supply other than a passing merchant - in these places pyrates await (especially if they hear rumors that someone is carrying a profitable load) - AVAST YE MATEY! - and local criminals and/or competitors would try to steal the load.

Megacorps don't buy an Armored Vehicle from a shady seller at the back of a starport bar. They sign a long-term contract with both the factory and the buyer (or simply own the factory and take orders from customers) and start shipping en-mass. They buy and sell very close to the market price (actually the buying and selling of all the local megacorps together creates the market price) and make mass profits not from the profit margin of each sell but from the enormous bulk of their trade. PCs don't have that advantage of size - and thus get involved in shady business.

In short, almost every profitable roll the PCs make should have consequences which could easily lead to adventure. Think Firefly...

 

[Icosahedron]

The first hurdle is even getting a Free Trader in the first place. The odds are so long as to be practically impossible.* So how many of your games began on the wrong foot there by just giving the players one?

Yes, my group crew a Trader, but they don't own it.

The ship is owned by a frontier line. The owners periodically examine the ship's records and cross-refer with the records of the planets visited, just to ensure deals are on the level. The owners want the cargo bay full of goods (freight or speculative) and take the profits. The crew do their jobs and get paid salaries for it. Defrauding the Company would be an adventure in itself, and one with a low success margin and a high risk factor!

Each crewmember has his own cabin and a statutory 1dT personal cargo allowance, so if they choose to travel light, they may be able to pool together a few dT of space to take on some additional speculative cargo and share the profits - when such is available - but the hold, and everything in it, belongs to the Company, not the crew.

And, in case I'm seen as too lenient, like other GMs here I figure that there is no such thing as a free lunch - if a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. :devil:

 

[rancke]

Apropos my initial post, I just got around to actually reading Leviathan. (1980! Heh.) Which explicitly assumes jump into empty hexes as an option.

But The Traveller Adventure uses jump into empty hexes as a crucial plot element.


Hans

 

[rancke]

if the bank would just loan him the money, he could jump from Mora to Pallique via Grille, getting there in two jumps instead of three and at roughly the same price, giving him a steady income with which to service the loan.

Well, there's the rub. The number of people with enough swing and credibility (or the credits) to rate a loan for a long-jump ship will be small indeed.

They're a small percentage of the population, sure. After all, Cr160,000 is roughly 16 years' income for an average citizen. Even if you assume economically reasonably rates (~Cr3,500 per parsec), we're still talking several years' income for an average citizen.

But a world with 10 billion inhabitants have a LOT of people with incomes considerably above that of the average citizen. There will be many millions of people who could afford to vacation on Pallique and vice versa. Perhaps 99.9% of them would rather stay home or visit some other world, but a fraction of one percent of many millions is still a lot of people. And that's before we factor in business trips. When I assume that there will only be a few thousands passengers between Mora and Pallique per year, I'm being extremely conservative.


Hans

 

[jawillroy]

Never did lay hands on The Traveller Adventure...

"But a world with 10 billion inhabitants have a LOT of people with incomes considerably above that of the average citizen"

Well sure, but that's Mora and Palique. Looking at the straight LBB3 (handrolled!) 9-subsector TU I've cobbled up, there's plenty of worlds that don't command that kind of population. Sure, they'll have their super-rich, too - but I think it's fair to say that when ships arrive at a low-pop world, anybody with any kind of swing there will be paying attention - and the ship's master will be in his rights to demand it.

 

[rancke]

"But a world with 10 billion inhabitants have a LOT of people with incomes considerably above that of the average citizen"

Well sure, but that's Mora and Palique. Looking at the straight LBB3 (handrolled!) 9-subsector TU I've cobbled up, there's plenty of worlds that don't command that kind of population. Sure, they'll have their super-rich, too - but I think it's fair to say that when ships arrive at a low-pop world, anybody with any kind of swing there will be paying attention - and the ship's master will be in his rights to demand it.

MBut I was specifically speaking about Mora and Pallique (as one of many examples)?

I think I misunderstood you previous post. I thought you were arguing that there wouldn't be enough passenger traffic between Mora and Pallique to make a direct passenger route between the two profitable. Upon rereading it I gather that you don't think there would be anyone who could persuade a bank to loan them the money to buy a such a passenger ship. If that's what you were saying, then I disagree vehemently. If you can show a bank a plan that will allow you to service the loan, you should be able to secure a loan... a good deal easier than a PC-type free trader captain can get financing for the plan "I'll jump round the subsector and pick up stuff the corporations miss".


Hans