ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
How do players here handle their characters ending up with more than one ship?
CharGens with more than one ship
- Thread starter ShawnDriscoll
- Start date
Most careers don't get an actual ship, at least in the core book. They get ship shares. Some careers do have a specific ship listed on the mustering out benefits, but that is not an actual ship. They get 5 ship shares toward that specific type of ship, or 2 shares toward any other type of ship.
I believe the Scout is the only one who gets an actual ship, and he doesn't own that one - it still belongs to the Scout Service. However, the Scout can choose to take 1d6 ships shares instead of the scout ship. The Navy career can get a small craft (a ships boat), which can always be sold if not wanted.
Other careers and expanded careers from other books may be different, though.
I believe the Scout is the only one who gets an actual ship, and he doesn't own that one - it still belongs to the Scout Service. However, the Scout can choose to take 1d6 ships shares instead of the scout ship. The Navy career can get a small craft (a ships boat), which can always be sold if not wanted.
Other careers and expanded careers from other books may be different, though.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Jeraa said:
I don't know what game you're playing. But my CharGens, using the Core Rulebook, are getting lots of ships. I don't even have all the careers programmed yet. I'm seeing lots of Yachts, Lab ships, Corsiars, Scout ships. And tons of ship shares.
A noble getting a Yacht as a mustering out benefit does not get an actual ship. From my copy of the main rulebook, page 35, where it explains the mustering out benefits:
Only 2 of those grant an actual ship, and one of those is a small craft (the ships boat). All of the others are shares toward a ship, not an actual ship itself. And ship shares don't grant a ship either, they just reduce the cost of one should you decide to buy it.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Jeraa said:
You answered my question. I had not looked beyound what page 34 said about ships. Thank you, Jeraa. My audit trail was showing ship names for characters mustering out after a career, so my brain got used to them literally being ships.
I'm still getting used to the book printing two separate rules for everything in two locations.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Easterner said:
Serenity does it a little (repeats the same rule differently more than once). But it's not as bad as Mongoose Traveller. I understand the author is trying to first mention an outline of a game play turn at first and then explaining it again in more depth later in the book. But the author fails at doing either. So you end reading a game mechanic twice in the book. Both descriptions being ambiguous. A lot of the GDW games like Imperium where written this way. T5 will be full of such writing.
In Mongoose Traveller on page 5, the Character Generation Checklist outline/flowchart/whatever is broke. Thinks get explained again later in the book, but more questions are created than answers half the time. More house rules, I guess. I still like Mongoose better than previous and future Traveller printings though.
ShawnDriscoll said:
Current game have three characters with ship shares.
The first character completed started off with access to a lab ship which I thought should work fine, but then for the last career he and another player went scout and got the scout ship whilst another player running a lawyer also got ship shares.
So I figured I'd use that as part of the plot.
Dr Jan Van Zeeman spent most of his career aboard the lab ship where he was apprenticed and bought it outright with the help of his lawyer and friend Layla Braun.
However on his second from last tour an old friend deliberately betrayed them and tried to send the lab ship, Jan and its crew to an awful death by means of sending the lab ship down into the depths of Fulacin's huge gas giant.
Fortunately the lab ship had been heavily modified over the years to keep it operational and as self-sufficient as possible so Jan and the crew was able to save the ship and themselves but lost the Pinnace that came with the lab ship.
Jan joined the scouts in his last tour so he could afford the repair bills for his lab ship and met Wulfric the Scout during the last few months of his tour following the death of his uncle.
The pair agreed to terms and bought out the deeds to Jan's uncle's mining vessel and as part his uncle's last request set about delivering a medical supply shipment to the Gaian Medical Facility in Kinorb which also happens to be home to a large mining colony.
The idea is that at some point they will have access to two ships but this will happen further down the line so that they start off building their company, adventure in Kinorb for a while regain the use of the lab ship at which point they have the means to travel out of Kinorb and have a base to operate from depending on what they decide to do.
Sorry gone on another long winded explanation again! :roll:
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
That's a good way to handle it. Put a story behind it. I did that as a GM for one game. Just didn't know how the computer would handle it when CharGens started showing up in the droves with ships/shares. I'll have the computer story it up some. This program may end up just being used for NPC generation and their collected contacts/rivals/enemies (the PCs).
On my first introduction to Traveller, the group was just playing around making characters, and we made the same mistake. We thought we had a fleet for a while, and were wondering what the motive for adventuring was, until someone looked it up.
In fairness to the game, they've got career charts that fit on one page, and the charts are followed very shortly by a section of the rules that explains what the entries on the charts mean. That's not a flaw to me, just a thing to be aware of. Like most games, it helps if someone at the table reads the rules before char-gen. Its just we jumped right in.
I like Hopeless' take, but my approach so far has been the opposite. I'm flexible on ship share types if it'll get players to go in on one ship. Free Trader and Yacht shares become Any Trader, while Lab Ship becomes 2-4 shares plus a free sensors upgrade. And really, if you are tracking mortgages in the first place, players stacking up ship shares is to their advantage, so this is not usually too heavy-handed.
In fairness to the game, they've got career charts that fit on one page, and the charts are followed very shortly by a section of the rules that explains what the entries on the charts mean. That's not a flaw to me, just a thing to be aware of. Like most games, it helps if someone at the table reads the rules before char-gen. Its just we jumped right in.
I like Hopeless' take, but my approach so far has been the opposite. I'm flexible on ship share types if it'll get players to go in on one ship. Free Trader and Yacht shares become Any Trader, while Lab Ship becomes 2-4 shares plus a free sensors upgrade. And really, if you are tracking mortgages in the first place, players stacking up ship shares is to their advantage, so this is not usually too heavy-handed.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
My last Traveller game was a sandbox. So I didn't care what kind of characters were generated or how many ships they had. I let the players worry about how they owned or paid for their ships. I just controlled the NPCs.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
I used to worry if players didn't go to a planet I made the week before for them. Because I didn't have anywhere else for them to visit.GamerDude said:*ALL* RPG's are a "sandbox" - they all have boundaries/borders imposed, if not by geography (rivers seas continents planets galaxies) then artificially by the GM.ShawnDriscoll said:
Now, if I do have any boundaries, the players are not going to reach them during a game session to notice.
In my last few Traveller games, any boundaries for the players were ones they created for themselves. I was always keeping track of where they were going, and trying to lay out stuff ahead of them. Stuff they could see from their current location. And I had sandboxes inside of sandboxes. Not once did a player ask me if they were blocked from going some direction.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
To me, a sandbox is like Fallout 3, but without the boundary lines around the map. Each unplanned for discovery by the players (an unmapped cave or town) becomes a sandbox.
But go ahead and discount what I say, since I don't speak your lingo. I don't want to convert you. You play the way you already want to.
But go ahead and discount what I say, since I don't speak your lingo. I don't want to convert you. You play the way you already want to.
A "sandbox" (also called "open world") is defined as a setting that is
nonlinear and open ended. The characters do not have to follow any
scripted path to reach a specific objective, the players are free to de-
cide what their characters intend to do, where they want to go and
what they want to achieve.
The "boundaries" of the "sandbox" are the limits of the setting's con-
cept, like for example "no aliens and starships in this fantasy setting"
or "no commonly available desintegrator weapons in the Third Impe-
rium".
If you dislike the term "sandbox", complain to the early wargamers,
who - like military staff wargamers - used an actual little sandbox to
build the terrain and deploy the miniatures for a specific tactical si-
tuation - that's where it comes from ... :
nonlinear and open ended. The characters do not have to follow any
scripted path to reach a specific objective, the players are free to de-
cide what their characters intend to do, where they want to go and
what they want to achieve.
The "boundaries" of the "sandbox" are the limits of the setting's con-
cept, like for example "no aliens and starships in this fantasy setting"
or "no commonly available desintegrator weapons in the Third Impe-
rium".
If you dislike the term "sandbox", complain to the early wargamers,
who - like military staff wargamers - used an actual little sandbox to
build the terrain and deploy the miniatures for a specific tactical si-
tuation - that's where it comes from ... :
