Large adventuring ship

[RandyB]

ACS? So, then we agree. 3I OTU would not stand up, as-is, in a small ship universe.


But this is a thread on large adventuring ships.


I don't even consider the 1800dt Leviathans to be a large adventuring ship.
MT had 3kdt and larger bulk transports and carriers.

I do not remember where*, but ISTR a definition of "small adventuring ship" as "a group of PCs can suffice for the entire crew", implying a "large adventuring ship" means "NPC crew is absolutely required"; both of which would fit into an overall small ship universe (ala CT Bk2).

This brings up a key aspect of a large adventuring ship - NPC crew, who require salaries. (Shares of profit would be an attractive bonus, but not likely to suffice for 100% of NPC crew compensation.) In this context, the free trader model of "pay the mortgage out of speculative trade profits/adventuring rewards"** starts to look like overkill. Said differently, a large adventuring ship should not, IMO, be simply "free trading in a bigger ship", but a different adventuring framework entirely. Patronage, whether NPC or wealthy/noble PC, would be recommended to address (some) operating costs.




*I am at least certain that it was not in a published work, for what its worth.
**I have read the discussions that conclude that some of the Traveller economic systems allow a free trader to be profitable with less difficulty than this implies.

 

[Hyphen]

Large ship adventurer groups are very feasible.

One option is to run more than one "adventuring party" out of the same ship. One group could be the starship crew who tend to be involved in shipboard operations such as rescues and rendezvous, another the traders and merchants who tend more to ground-based adventuring in the midst of cargo speculation(*), and another could be the Mercs Aboard ship security team/small-scale planetside ops/starmercs.

With crossover scenarios every now and then, just to mix things up. ;-)

(*) i.e. looking for smaller-scale cargoes to fill up the gaps left by the full-time traders aboard - as other commenters have said, that's the boring part which can be glossed over in favour of the "interesting" speculative trading that Our Heroes will be undertaking.

 

[Terquem]

Other ideas

I ran a game with the players in control of (and filling key positions aboard) an 1800 ton Hospital Ship, in the service of the Interplanetary Relief Society.

In MTU, starships often have emergency situations (malfunctions, miss-jumps), and worlds are affected by wide scale disasters that the IRS responds to leading the crews of search and rescue vessels and fast response hospital ships to be quite busy most of the time.

On of these ship, the Hospital Ship "Contagion" crashed on a planetary surface and was used as a location for several of my D&D games in the 1980s

 

[savage]

One option is to run more than one "adventuring party" out of the same ship. One group could be the starship crew who tend to be involved in shipboard operations such as rescues and rendezvous, another the traders and merchants who tend more to ground-based adventuring in the midst of cargo speculation(*), and another could be the Mercs Aboard ship security team/small-scale planetside ops/starmercs.

With crossover scenarios every now and then, just to mix things up. ;-)

(*) i.e. looking for smaller-scale cargoes to fill up the gaps left by the full-time traders aboard - as other commenters have said, that's the boring part which can be glossed over in favour of the "interesting" speculative trading that Our Heroes will be undertaking.

Agreed.
Also, having two characters one on each group.

One thing MgT has done nicely is to provide more large ship plans. Even if they're not perfect. It allows the ref to pull out the blank map and draw a few lines that make sense to players. I think that is the hinderance to some large ship gaming. I'd recommend those MgT products to any ref.

Terquem,
I knew a few refs that intermixed campaigns. It's amusing, especially if the players are in the dark and figure it out.

 

[robject]

Is it viable, by any stretch, for a group of adventurers to turn enough profit to maintain a large (1800-ton) ship?

Yes, assuming they're not doing pure, boring commerce. The referee can throw them all sorts of fun jobs like

* custom (dangerous) delivery services ("take these smoking crates of smallcraft-sized antimatter bombs and discard them at this reclamation site waaaay over in this sector...")

"Good news, everyone. Tomorrow you'll be making a delivery to Ebola 9, the virus planet."
"Good news, everyone! Today you'll be delivering a crate of subpoenas to Sicily 8, the Mob Planet!"
"Good news everyone. You'll be delivering pain medicine to the hive mind of Nigel 7."
"Good news, anyone. The Swedish robot from Pi-kea is here with the super collider I ordered."
"You heard the good news everyone! Save the Earth, et cetera et cetera! Bye!"
"Good news everyone, I'm still technically alive! Yes! But I need to you to dispose of this crazy ass experiment that almost killed me. You'll have to throw it into the sun itself, for only the thermonuclear inferno of the sun has enough energy to ensure its total destruction!"
"Good news everyone! That's what the Professor would say if he weren't in jail facing a life sentence."

* the usual-extraordinary, "I'm getting too old for this sort of thing" mercenary-altruist ops:

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope.

(and yes, Death Stars are permissible in a referee's game if that's what the players want.)

The guardians... gave the stones... to someone they could trust... who-who took another route... she's supposed to contact this person... in a hotel... and she's looking for the address. Easy.

* (dangerous and/or fascinating) scavenging jobs:

"Illegal salvage." The captain says. "Lowlife vultures picking the flesh off the dead."
"Should we deploy gunships and bring her in?"
"Do it."

"You let me sleep while you chased that junk down, matched orbits, grappled it? You realize how much time that wasted?"
"You needed the rest," the small, dark man named Dorphy replied, looking away.
...
"I've got a feeling it's alien," he said.
He entered the small open area before him. Then he had to duck his head and proceed on his hands and knees. He began to touch things—fittings, switches, connectors, small units of unknown potential. Almost everything seemed designed to swivel, rotate, move along tracks. Finally, he lay flat and crawled forward.
"I believe that a number of these units are weapons," he called out, after some time.
He reached the big housing. A panel slid partway open as he passed his fingertips along its surface. He pressed harder and it opened farther.
"Damn you!" he said then, as the unit began to tick softly.
"What's wrong?" Dorphy called to him.
"You!" he said, beginning to back away. "And your partner! You're wrong!"
He turned as soon as he could and made his way back through the lock.
"Ditch it!" he said. "Now!"

(Roger Zelazny)

* exploration jobs ("go and find out if those super-high-tech aliens in that remote sector want to trade or want to burn you to a cinder")

* bug hunts:

They mostly come out at night, mostly.

* repo men (Crime boss Big Daddy "Starkiller" Gaaruudin skipped. Go find his yacht and bring it back to our yards. What could go wrong?)
* running a freighter "escort service" -- and by that, I mean they escort small convoys of traders and freighters, protecting them against pirates and tradewar and aliens and Shivva-class patrol cruisers and...

My favorite: all of the above, under an "Odd Jobs" category.

I would suggest that their actual duties and purpose fall in line with the players themselves. What do they like to do? Based on that, customize a situation that scratches their various itches, with a generous dollop of plot complications and difficult paths to achieving their own goals.

And if they're casual on the whole thing, then give them whatever is going to be the most fun for everyone, via a Patron.