Finding Passengers and Brokers

[smiths121]

Hi All,

Just reading through the trade rules (again). On page 160 of the core rules, it says characters can look for passengers using Streetwise or Carousing. Had a look through the skills section, but I cannot find appropriate tasks.

From the speclative trade section, edging towards:

Find additional passengers: Streetwise Education or Social Standing 1-6 days Average(+0).
Find additional passengers: Carousing Education or Social Standing 1-6 days Average(+0).

Ignored the starport modifier, as this would skew the effects too much.

Ignored the TL 8+ world task with substitute computer skill.

Anyone else GM'd using something different?

Thanks all

 

[rust]

I have replaced the trade rules from the Traveller books with rules
tailored for my setting and use Broker as the skill to find passengers,
mostly because I see the attempt to sell passages as just another ty-
pe of trading, not fundamentally different from trading in goods.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

What is it your PC specifically wants to do? Where is he located at this moment (building-wise)?

 

[alex_greene]

I found myself thinking of all those hotel and holiday destination websites where you can go for those last minute hotel choices. The Starport could have something like that in various servers; the ship turns up, registers on the more popular ones, sets its prices, puts out a blurb showing viewers what luxurious quarters they can expect and posts its itinerary of the next half-dozen worlds it is planning to visit.

Potential passengers can then sort their enquiries by class of ship, star rating, accommodation, price and the time it will take to reach its destination - along with any route changes and stops which the ship is planning to take along the way.

Same kind of deal with cargo space: the ship registers with shipping companies who still have a need to shift those loads which are too small for those generic 20 ton shipping containers used by all the mainstream freight lines. Shippers then compare prices, efficiency of transport, safety, overheads and the time it will take to get the load delivered to its destination.

This could be run from the Purser's hand computer.

 

[Prime_Evil]

Perhaps there are even services that allow passengers to rate different ships and post online reviews of their experiences while travelling on them. These reviews are synchronised from one system to the next by courier, so a ship who gets a spate of bad reviews might find business has dried up when they arrive in the next system.

 

[rust]

The Starport could have something like that in various servers; the ship turns up, registers on the more popular ones, sets its prices, puts out a blurb showing viewers what luxurious quarters they can expect and posts its itinerary of the next half-dozen worlds it is planning to visit.

Potential passengers can then sort their enquiries by class of ship, star rating, accommodation, price and the time it will take to reach its destination - along with any route changes and stops which the ship is planning to take along the way.

This is how I imagine it to work in my current setting, and also why
I do not use Carousing or Streetwise as skills to look for passengers.
The purser does not walk into the next more or less seedy starport
bar and say "Look what a nice guy I am, do you not want to spend
a few thousand credits to travel to Farout Alpha on my ship ?", he
registers the important informations and a bit of advertisement on
the starport's datanet while the ship is in transit to the starport.

 

[CosmicGamer]

This is how I imagine it to work in my current setting, and also why
I do not use Carousing or Streetwise as skills to look for passengers.
The purser does not walk into the next more or less seedy starport
bar and say "Look what a nice guy I am, do you not want to spend
a few thousand credits to travel to Farout Alpha on my ship ?", he
registers the important informations and a bit of advertisement on
the starport's datanet while the ship is in transit to the starport.

How about carousing over the com when contacting possible travelers using a list acquired from a local marketing firm? Like the cold calls I get from cruise lines.

 

[rust]

How about carousing over the com when contacting possible travelers using a list acquired from a local marketing firm? Like the cold calls I get from cruise lines.

This would still be a business deal, the intention is to sell
a passage, not to have fun together, so I would prefer to
use Broker as the relevant skill.

 

[Red Bart]

In one of the Firefly episodes (since Firefly is a very Traveller like series) Kaylee is the one who convinces Shepherd Book to become a passenger on their ship. This only works because they have a connection, they like each other. I figure that the carouse skill is exactly what this would represent. You convince someone who is waiting for passage not to wait for one of the big liners, but to join your ship and depart (almost) immediately.

The streetwise skill can be used to find less savory characters who don't want to attract attention and prefer to travel on a less conspicuous vessel as a major liner. (a separate random passenger table would be nice in this case)

If you are the one operating the big passenger liner, then the broker skill is probably more apt.

 

[CosmicGamer]

There are often many ways to skin a Aslan. Perhaps a crew has a skilled broker. Great. Perhaps a crew doesn't have a skilled broker and has to make do with their other skills.

Computer skill for creating a presence on the net.

Does it take a broker to rent a plane and have it fly a banner "Fly to Utopia on the Crash and Burn". Ok, whoever named the ship should have had some marketing skill. lol

Folks often associate streetwise with understanding the seedier side of things, and much of the writeup and examples do lean in this direction but

understands the urban environment and the power structures in society.

I think it also could cover finding the right country clubs where prospective high society passengers might be sought out.

and so on

 

[IanBruntlett]

There are often many ways to skin a Aslan. Perhaps a crew has a skilled broker. Great. Perhaps a crew doesn't have a skilled broker and has to make do with their other skills.

I agree. Part of the fun in playing games like this is having the players make the most of what they have, despite it not being a perfect fit for the circumstances.

 

[Hopeless]

Seriously up to 6 days to find passengers?

You arrive you deliver your cargo, maybe the mail if you took that option drop off any passengers and then report to wherever you find out what cargo is ready to be moved more importantly how soon it needs to get there.

Unless your ship has some kind of awful reputation then they should be contacting you to speed things up, time is money and if they're really worried you'll steal their cargo they can employ security to go along with it if necessary.

Why do i get the feeling I'm missing something here?

 

[Red Bart]

Seriously up to 6 days to find passengers?

You arrive you deliver your cargo, maybe the mail if you took that option drop off any passengers and then report to wherever you find out what cargo is ready to be moved more importantly how soon it needs to get there.

Unless your ship has some kind of awful reputation then they should be contacting you to speed things up, time is money and if they're really worried you'll steal their cargo they can employ security to go along with it if necessary.

Why do i get the feeling I'm missing something here?

1 - 6 days is the duration if you take enough time to finish the task adequately. According to RAW (Core Rules page 50): "You can choose, before you roll, to move up or down one or two rows on the Time Frames table. Moving up (reducing the time increment) gives you a –1 DM for every row you move; moving down and increasing the time taken gives you a +1 DM for every row you move.". In other words, you can do it faster if you were pressured by the starport, but you would make it harder for yourself.

 

[Mytholder]

My thoughts when writing the rules - if someone takes passage on board a player character ship, they're not going to be the sort of people who'd just book on to a commercial liner or a transport. The corporate executive travelling from one system to another isn't going to hire a room on some little 200-ton merchant/adventurer/tramp steamer run by a mismatched bunch of heavily armed eccentrics - he's going to go via a more reputable, established route. PCs get the dregs, the guys who are trying to stay under the radar of the authorities, or who are running away from something, or who have their own special requirements, or who they picked up at the starport bar and cajoled into booking passage.

It's a rule for PCs, not for modelling all passenger traffic. A 'real' passenger transport would use Broker - and be booked months in advance, and follow the same route every time.

 

[F33D]

My thoughts when writing the rules - if someone takes passage on board a player character ship, they're not going to be the sort of people who'd just book on to a commercial liner or a transport. The corporate executive travelling from one system to another isn't going to hire a room on some little 200-ton merchant/adventurer/tramp steamer run by a mismatched bunch of heavily armed eccentrics - he's going to go via a more reputable, established route.

You are ignoring the OTU reality that the tramp ships provide service amongst worlds that, in many cases, don't have regularly scheduled commercial transports...

 

[alex_greene]

Also, the Free Traders are often cheaper than liners, and offer the same service - more or less.

Your shipload of grungy eccentrics might bring along a bunch of grungy eccentrics as passengers - bohemian artist types who don't mind taking the long way around, kids running away from their lives to go and see the stars, wanderers who don't mind booking working passage and scrubbing out the sumps, as long as it gets them to where they're going, and even the occasional last minute, desperate, suited and booted executive who just missed his liner, and who desperately needs to get to his destination any way possible.

Then there are all the other passengers - priests with dodgy backgrounds, sex-mad female engineers, expensive prostitutes who offer no explanation why they want to travel with a Free Trader rather than take up residence on a liner ... rich doctors on the run with a psion sister ...

Broker and Computer are the best skills to bring to bear for this task; and as for benefits, you can always call upon Allies, Contacts, TAS membership ... and even the Psionics Institute, if you have psion characters.

I'm sure the Psionics Institute would supply plenty of eccentric passengers - Clairvoyant seers compulsively sketching the things they see, practitioners of Awareness with absolutely flawless bodies and a habit of going about everywhere naked, or a bunch of mystic types in orange robes who get up at 05:00 sharp to chant for two hours, every single morning of the trip ...

 

[rust]

You are ignoring the OTU reality that the tramp ships provide service amongst worlds that, in many cases, don't have regularly scheduled commercial transports...

This is the case in my setting, too. Neither are the crew members of the
huge majority of tramp ships heavily armed accentrics nor are their pas-
sengers the dregs. Most passengers actually are new colonists, business-
people or officials, and they use tramp ships because this is the only op-
portunity to travel to the remote frontier colonies which would not make
profitable destinations for any line.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Spica Publishing's "Astral Splendour" has some revised rules for Passengers and includes different rules for ships that are on scheduled routes (subsidized merchants) vs. Wandering Traders.