Yep. If you're willing to look beyond mustering out benefits there's a lot of room for creative set-ups where the characters have a debtless ship. Traveller is a wide-open RPG, and the Third Imperium is a big place, with lots of room for lots of different kinds of adventures.
Millionaire Adventurers
- Thread starter Werner
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Yep. If you're willing to look beyond mustering out benefits there's a lot of room for creative set-ups where the characters have a debtless ship. Traveller is a wide-open RPG, and the Third Imperium is a big place, with lots of room for lots of different kinds of adventures.
If the OP was talking about why characters who own a zillion dollar starship wouldn't just sell it and retire, the answer is...
Of course they would. They would sell that flying piece of garbage and live in luxury for the rest of their lives.
It falls to the players and the referee to come up with plausible character motivations why they wouldn't.
Players play to have adventures, so it's incumbent upon the players to create characters who are motivated to go on adventures instead of staying home.
So, here we go:
* They don't own the ship, they are hired crew, and roving the spacelanes is their job.
* They're on the run from the authorities for crimes they did too commit.
* Their ex-wives are demanding alimony, and each separate 'girl in every port' is demanding her child support money, and selling the ship won't be enough to pay them all off. Imperial child support laws are enforced within boundaries of all Imperial starports, don'cha'no'.
* They're on a mission for some shadowy organization. They might want to quit, but the 'business' doesn't want them to quit. The 'business' could be organized crime, intelligence work, or ex-military still fighting the war after the politicians screwed them over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_armée_secrète
* They're veterans who can't adjust to civilian life, and they need action to feel alive.
* Their families were all keelled by (insert whoever here) and they cannot rest unteel they have reevawnge.
* After years and years of military service and/or roving the starlanes, they've grown apart from everyone they've ever known, and nowhere feels like home anymore, so they keep doing what they're best at (like being space murder hobos, except with a space Winnebago instead of actually being space-homeless).
* Everybody laughed at them when they bought a used starship, and they won't go home until they 'make it big' and prove everyone wrong.
* They're obsessed with a myth, a legend, a space conspiracy theory, or some other stupid thing, and they're determined to find it and prove it to the whole galaxy or die trying. Their wives have all left them, their kids have forgotten who they are, and their families hurl recriminations at each other for not getting them 'the help that they need'. Oh wait, they're space murder hobos so they don't have wives or children, so change it to they can't talk to a space girl at a space bar for more than ten minutes without talking about their 'life's work' while the girl watches the bar mirror for some other guy to talk to and buy her space drinks.
* They're all in the pay of a GM character who's super cool and good at everything, who also has a ship.
* They were lost in space beyond the Imperium having adventures for a long time, and their wives/relatives/whatever have already been paid the insurance money. If they turn up alive, everyone will be tried for fraud or will end up in poverty at the least.
If a GM just wants the party to have a ship so they can go places and have adventures, just give them one that will be the best fit for what the GM has planned and don't worry about how they got it. Tell them it doesn't matter, they just have one. If they're not going to keep track of their ammo, they're not going to keep track of ship payments either. Abstract it all.
Of course they would. They would sell that flying piece of garbage and live in luxury for the rest of their lives.
It falls to the players and the referee to come up with plausible character motivations why they wouldn't.
Players play to have adventures, so it's incumbent upon the players to create characters who are motivated to go on adventures instead of staying home.
So, here we go:
* They don't own the ship, they are hired crew, and roving the spacelanes is their job.
* They're on the run from the authorities for crimes they did too commit.
* Their ex-wives are demanding alimony, and each separate 'girl in every port' is demanding her child support money, and selling the ship won't be enough to pay them all off. Imperial child support laws are enforced within boundaries of all Imperial starports, don'cha'no'.
* They're on a mission for some shadowy organization. They might want to quit, but the 'business' doesn't want them to quit. The 'business' could be organized crime, intelligence work, or ex-military still fighting the war after the politicians screwed them over.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organisation_armée_secrète
* They're veterans who can't adjust to civilian life, and they need action to feel alive.
* Their families were all keelled by (insert whoever here) and they cannot rest unteel they have reevawnge.
* After years and years of military service and/or roving the starlanes, they've grown apart from everyone they've ever known, and nowhere feels like home anymore, so they keep doing what they're best at (like being space murder hobos, except with a space Winnebago instead of actually being space-homeless).
* Everybody laughed at them when they bought a used starship, and they won't go home until they 'make it big' and prove everyone wrong.
* They're obsessed with a myth, a legend, a space conspiracy theory, or some other stupid thing, and they're determined to find it and prove it to the whole galaxy or die trying. Their wives have all left them, their kids have forgotten who they are, and their families hurl recriminations at each other for not getting them 'the help that they need'. Oh wait, they're space murder hobos so they don't have wives or children, so change it to they can't talk to a space girl at a space bar for more than ten minutes without talking about their 'life's work' while the girl watches the bar mirror for some other guy to talk to and buy her space drinks.
* They're all in the pay of a GM character who's super cool and good at everything, who also has a ship.
* They were lost in space beyond the Imperium having adventures for a long time, and their wives/relatives/whatever have already been paid the insurance money. If they turn up alive, everyone will be tried for fraud or will end up in poverty at the least.
If a GM just wants the party to have a ship so they can go places and have adventures, just give them one that will be the best fit for what the GM has planned and don't worry about how they got it. Tell them it doesn't matter, they just have one. If they're not going to keep track of their ammo, they're not going to keep track of ship payments either. Abstract it all.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
They're on semi-permanent vacation like some RV'ers or the owner of a yacht that moves port-to-port. You know, bermuda shorts, hawaiian shirt, straw hat, 35mm camera, white knee socks...
Money is just something you have and spend to them, not something you spend your time making. You have "little people" to do that or your investments are reeling in more cash than you can use... That is until there's a "hostile takeover" (captured in a war, etc.) of where those investments are and you are left penniless...
Money is just something you have and spend to them, not something you spend your time making. You have "little people" to do that or your investments are reeling in more cash than you can use... That is until there's a "hostile takeover" (captured in a war, etc.) of where those investments are and you are left penniless...
Out the box/character generation, the players don't actually own or have enough equity to where selling the ship make them instant zillionaires. They either control a ship they don't own, or it's mortgaged to the teeth and there's no equity in if they did sell it.
This. The mortgage is a game mechanic the same way having a Detached Duty Type S is a game mechanic. You can use it but you have an obligation that provides adventure hooks.
Enoki
SOC-14 1K
And then offers to let them trade it in on a much better model resulting in their bankruptcy!
And then offers to let them trade it in on a much better model resulting in their bankruptcy!
Aha! Presenting the players with the opportunity to make meaningful choices!
The OP said own, I thought that's what he was talking about.
Edit: If they have a mortgage, they can skip out and sell the ship in a non-aligned or hostile polity and never go back to the 3I or wherever. That might be a fun campaign, a crew with a mortgage trying to make ends meet while coming up with their big plan to skip out and spend the rest of their lives in luxury on resort planet somewhere. Getting each step of the plan in place could be a separate adventure.
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Or, if there is partial equity in the ship, sell it legally, pay off the mortgage, and adventure on the proceeds.
If there is no equity in the ship, there will be no mortgage. Banks don't speculate. Banks middleman for speculators, and take their cut no matter what.
Gray Lensman
SOC-13
Now I have to write up a mini campaign where my 5 players are the captain/pilot/navigator/engineer/gunner of a patrol cruiser and the rest of the crew are unruly midshipmen. ;-D
Every loan is a form of speculation... a speculative endeavor that the payments come in, not an early payoff nor a runner...
Many banks also own stock in a variety of other companies. And, in the age of sail, many banks invested in speculative endeavours...
So one may conclude that the player characters would have had to have been deemed a good credit risk to have a Starship loan that they are paying off.
A good analogy is that Traveller characters begin play having just won the race and have trophies in their closet, or they begin play as a gold medal winner in the Olympics, and some of their friends ask him how he won it, the character just shrugs his shoulder and says, "beats me!"
It would be nice if an adventure could be designed in which a neophyte at the end of a successful adventure could end up with a Starship, rather than starting play with one and paying off a Starship loan he somehow got.
Might as well begin play in the lottery office, the referee says, "You have the winning ticket in your hands, the lottery official looks it over and he hands you the check for Cr34,543,208, and wouldn't you know it, there is a shipyard right across the street selling starships."
That's what a down payment is for.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Has anyone tried crowdfunding a starship; backers get a plastic replica and a monthly vlog update.
You could have the 5 players in the crew positions you described, and then the unruly midshipmen and ratings would act like player characters or show protagonists.
* Your PC's have a mission to complete, but a quartet of critical midshipmen go off on an adventure to discover the truth about a land conflict between two alien races on a contested planet. They get in over their heads, because they're not actually player characters, and then the PC's have to juggle extricating their crewmen from the situation, resolving the situation, and then completing their original mission.
* Your PC's are ordered to conduct a lightning raid to arrest pirates, but the midshipmen are upset about the 'injustices' that the planetary government has inflicted on 'innocent people' while trying to suppress the piracy problem for the last few years. Your PC's can see the bigger picture, but that doesn't satisfy the midshipmen. While your PC's are racing against time to raid the pirate base before they lose the element of surprise, some of the midshipmen take the ship's boat, return to the planet, and lead a revolution which has the potential to topple the government the PC's are trying to support. A midshipman who is normally a stabilizing influence among the crew loses his mind because his girlfriend went down to the planet to fight against injustice, and "... that's my baby she's carrying!" He takes the ship's grav carrier right before the ship jumps and chases after his girlfriend. The PC's can either continue the mission with no grav carrier or ship's boat to land the assault team or abort the jump to retrieve the ship's vehicles and lose the element of surprise. Then there's the difficulty of getting the stray midshipmen to give up their fight for 'justice' and come back and do their jobs. The planetary government now regards the PC's and their navy as a possibly hostile force, since no crew would be so undisciplined and insane as to mutiny and start a revolution on a planet they've never been to before. The planetary government starts withholding support, refuses to accept assistance from the PC's navy, and focuses on suppressing revolutionary movements. The planet descends into civil strife and piracy flourishes Several systems along the main become no-go zones due to pirates roaming unchecked.
* The ship becomes a flying menagerie because many midshipmen have pets, mascots, and animal companions like arrogant psionic six-legged cats, fuzzballs which reproduce rapidly, beaker monkeys that take shiny but important objects, space ferrets that do the same and chew on cable insulation, and weird black squirrel-like creatures that are smarter than everybody and say things like 'Just so!'. Pandemonium ensues when somebody's winged tree python eats somebody else's beaker monkey. The crew falls to blaming each other, with one faction firmly adhering to the idea that the guy whose beaker monkey it was should've kept it in his stateroom if he didn't want anything to happen to it, and another faction vociferously accusing the guy who's flying python it was of failing to train his python to be respectful of other people's cute animal mascots. When the PC's are in the middle of dealing with the situation, a third faction arises which appeals to ecological moral superiority and advocates that the PC's have no right to hold back the natural circle of life which has evolved on board the ship. The strife becomes violent and bitter and the PC's mysteriously decide to organize boxing matches between the angry parties to 'blow off steam'. Various dramas are addressed in the ring, like the guy who thought it was his baby fighting the guy who his baby actually looks like. The PC's maintain a tenuous sense of order until a colony of moon rats gets into the ecological faction's happyweed hydroponics section. The ecological faction arms itself and is out for blood now that they're personally affected, but the other factions interfere with them by spouting their own moralizing rhetoric back at them. Sooner or later someone gets clocked and then all hell breaks loose. The ship is engulfed in a three way riot which renders a significant portion of the ship and crew non mission capable. After three days, everything calms down, and the female psionic six legged cats are discovered to be pregnant. Accusations of irresponsibility are hurled back and forth between the factions, but a coalition of the ship's doctor, the six legged cat owners, and the ecological faction determine that the crew was affected by the telepathic caterwauling of the psionic six legged cats as they went through their mating cycle. Everyone has a good cry and a team building teachable moment, and the girl who went to play revolutionary while carry a baby makes a heartfelt statement about how it takes a community for everyone to be okay, with the subtext being that all the midshipmen need to take care of her and her baby, because even she doesn't know who the father is. The PC's set course for the nearest port where they can get the ship repaired, a paternity test, and a qualified cruelty free moon rat removal specialist to take care of the problem holistically.
* The PC's are embroiled in a murder mystery when one of the scheduled replacement crewmen assigned to the ship to replace the crewmen who stayed behind on the planet to fight the revolution is found dead. After a long involved investigation which goes into people's personal drama, sordid crimes, conspiracies involving a family legacy and infants switched at birth, it is discovered that everything is as it seems, and the crewmen hanged himself because he'd rather die than do a tour on the PC's ship.
All valid points.
It's not that hard to design an adventure that will leave a spaceship in possession of the PC's. Season 1 of The Expanse does just that. A ref will need the cooperation of the players to come up with the general outline. If the ref wants to create the situation organically, then have the PC's be hired crewmen on a ship they don't own until the crisis point where the ship falls into their hands.
For merchants, they group could be trading along the Imperial fringes, and run into trouble planetside. The crew and passengers could fight their way out of a bad situation, but the crewmen who outrank the PC's are lost. The PC's then have to organize the remaining crew, survive, and make ends meet while trading their way along the mains to get back to corporate offices.
The PC's could be merchantmen who are captured by pirates, forced to crew a pirate vessel, and then get abandoned when the pirate ship is destroyed. After struggling for survival, they get picked up by somebody or other and after many adventures on working passages, they make it back to somewhat-sort-of civilization. They're down on their luck and desperate, but they know where the pirate base is. They'll be the people in the startown bar talking about a big treasure with a space map inscribed on a chunk of space scrimshaw.
For military, the PC's could be on the losing end of a war and take their ship and turn rogue. They could have many adventures travelling across devastated subsectors trying to survive and maintain their honor as soldiers while launching attacks on enemy forces and getting back to the last known rally position only to find a graveyard of radioactive debris and shattered hulls.
Back in the day, I once had some very enterprising player characters -- inspired by the tales of Al Morai and my relating a similar adventure I had played in -- form a Limited Liability Corporation and issue stock shares to fund a Free Trader. (I suppose that this sort of thing is what happens when you recruit Business School students into your tabletop RPG gaming group.)
They developed a business plan, drew up revenue and cost projections, polished their résumés, reached out to venture capitalists, charter-defined shareholder rights regarding operational decisions, calculated insurance premiums, the whole shebang. Months of role-played wheeling and dealing right there.
Once they had the down payment, they commissioned the build, and after that (plus more wheeling and dealing to establish more brokerage contacts), moved to a profit-sharing model for the investors.
The key selling point was that there was no 40-year limit on the investment; the profit-sharing would continue for the life of the hull, and past investors would get the right of first refusal to invest in new hulls as the company grew and expanded.
The whole campaign struck me as kind of a busman's holiday, but they really got into it.
The highlight was always the sincere debates that erupted every time gunplay became a possibility, typically centering around which course of action would have the most favorable impact on share price and insurance premiums.
The characters ended up with their own little mercantile empire. Then, they infiltrated the biggest corsair band in the sector and occasionally paid the pirates to conduct tradewar-by-proxy against legitimate business competitors, while paying them (and any government officials who looked too closely into the arrangement) off to guarantee free passage for their own assets, only slitting throats as a last resort. ("It's just business, you understand!")
That was an unusual group of players, I must say...
I think you're describing the ultimate "spreadsheets in space" campaign.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
