High and Dry and a Lab Ship

[jrmorgan56]

Hello All!

New Traveller fan here and about to run my first adventure. I just ran our character creation session and one of the characters had an amazing Field Researcher career and has earned a Lab ship. I plan on running High and Dry and for the life of me can't think of a good way to substitute the Scout ship for a Lab ship.

I thought about substituting the Scout for the Lab ship's Pinnace but, compared to the Lab ship, why go through the trouble of finding such a small craft? I thought maybe finding the Pinnace might be the only way to discover the location of the Lab ship? Or maybe have the Scout ship replace the Pinnace? Any suggestions from experienced GMs out there? Thanks all!

 

[Reisender]

I only know this adventure from Seth Skorkowskys review.

Spoiler: If you want to keep it as original as possible...

...you can make the players rescue the scout ship for somebody else. Maybe they knew somebody from the former crew or they do it as a favour for somebody or just for money.

Spoiler: For a bigger re-writing...

...you can replace the scout ship with the Lab Ships Pinnace as you have proposed. But then you have to come up with an explanation how this pinnace ended up where the scout ship would have been. Maybe it was getting something from the volcano it needed for whatever experiments where done on the Lab Ship. You can place something in the Pinnace that the owner of the Lab Ship needs as well, to get the players motivated.

 

[JustEastOfTheEdge]

So, the adventure says this:

OTHER TRAVELLER SHIPS
If another Traveller has gained a ship as a Benefit, you can simply swap the scout/courier for the appropriate vessel. In this case, the Traveller owns the ship (or whatever percentage of it they managed to accrue as a Benefit) but it will not be as simple as picking it up from the nearest starport. Instead, the Scout Service will inform the Traveller of where the ship actually is. Changing the type of ship the Travellers are sent to collect has no fundamental effect on the adventure but the ship must be capable of entering an atmosphere.

So the problem is the Lab ship is not streamlined, yes? You could say it's a streamlined ship, as there is no need to say all lab ships are clones of each other. In game terms it just means the hull would have cost 20% more to build, which means monthly/repair costs are up a little is all.

 

[Vormaerin]

You'd have to ignore that the shape of the lab ship and being streamlined don't actually work together, but that may not be something that your group cares about. Another possibility is saying that your lab ship is in need of repairs/refits that the group can't afford and the scout service says "hey, if you go get our scout ship, we'll pay you by fixing up the lab ship in the meantime."

 

[JustEastOfTheEdge]

There is no reason whatsoever in a far future it could not be streamlined, It is not 2023. In any case, your lab ship does not have to be the standard one from the Core book, you could have a different one, and rearrange the shape however.

 

[CordwainerFish]

I've always suspected the Lab Ship is the shape it is because someone liked James Blish' Cities in Flight books and/or Niven's essay "Bigger than Worlds". I would not hesitate a second in reconfiguring it into a lifting body and whiting out the 'experiments that won't work around artificial gravity' business (which raises problems all of its own).

 

[Saladman]

Say to the player, "hey, we'll bring the lab ship in later."

Hired to get the scout ship as already suggested, plus the patron has the money or the unique widget to fix something on the lab ship.

They start on the lab ship but the drives are disabled for some reason. Can still use it as a base but need to do a couple of adventures in system before fixing it and really Travelling.

Player has the title to the lab ship, but it needs cleaned out and powered up before departing. And by "cleaned out" I mean bring flamethrowers for the hostile xenos. That's a session right there.

 

[AndrewW]

There is no reason whatsoever in a far future it could not be streamlined, It is not 2023. In any case, your lab ship does not have to be the standard one from the Core book, you could have a different one, and rearrange the shape however.

The Galileo Research Vessel could make an alternate lab ship and is streamlined. Though 800 tons and 1st edition (Merchants and Cruisers, page: 71).

 

[Vormaerin]

There is no reason whatsoever in a far future it could not be streamlined, It is not 2023. In any case, your lab ship does not have to be the standard one from the Core book, you could have a different one, and rearrange the shape however.

Sure, you can redesign the ship or just ignore the rules completely. Its your table. I was just pointing out that the lab ship with its existing floorplan is a dispersed hull, not a streamlined hull shape. A 360 ton streamlined hull is MCr21.6 vs the MCr9 for a dispersed hull. Some other factors like hull points and whatnot are different between the two hull configurations as well.

Redesign the ship seems like a big ask as advice for a new referee.

 

[NOLATrav]

You could substitute the Lab Ship for a Safari Ship. It has “multi-environment spaces” for alien animal capture which can be suitable for scientific experiments, enough staterooms for a crew and some workshop/research/library spaces and is streamlined.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

I rebuilt a Survey Scout as a Laboratory ship (it carries a non-jump capable Type-S instead of the other ships). Would you like me to share that with you, @jrmorgan56 ?

 

[jrmorgan56]

Thanks all for the suggestions! I'll give it some more thought.

@ProfGrizzlyJon sure I would love to see it.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

Thanks all for the suggestions! I'll give it some more thought.

@ProfGrizzlyJon sure I would love to see it.

I have deck plans, but they are not finished.

 

[Condottiere]

Generally speaking, there's good reason that writers include specific spacecraft, especially the ones that the players can then acquire.

The next step should be game balance, whether in the spacecraft cost and/or capabilities.

As a goto, the hundred tonne Scoutship is fairly innocuous in this regard, especially if it's a forty year old write off.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

Generally speaking, there's good reason that writers include specific spacecraft, especially the ones that the players can then acquire.

The next step should be game balance, whether in the spacecraft cost and/or capabilities.

As a goto, the hundred tonne Scoutship is fairly innocuous in this regard, especially if it's a forty year old write off.

Completely agree, the Scout is a near perfect "entry-level" starship that can dabble in almost any type of mission.
That doesn't change the fact that there are many-sub 1k starships that are well within the means of a group of players to operate.

 

[Condottiere]

It's a legacy design.

If we made it more pickup truck then jeep, the Scout Service (and the players) could more easily customize it.

 

[Brasak]

I will be using High and Dry as a starter adventure for my new campaign and I know for a fact that one of the players is hoping to get a far trader as a mustering out benefit. Rather than rewrite the adventure if they do get a far trader I was thinking of dropping the group as innocent accessories to a bar fight where the scout team leader assigned to recover High and Dry is injured and requires hospital attention. The scout commander of the station, who incidentally was releasing the far trader to the characters as in its previous life it was used by the ISS to supply scout facilities in the subsector, is enraged and refuses to release their ship unless they undertake the mission in place of the injured scout officer. Might be worth considering something like this rather than redesign the adventure.

I’m also thinking of dropping in some hooks too to juice things up…..

 

[PeterFdH]

Just running this now with a party of 6 and so there were a few that had a ship share (though no one had a scout ship). I had them meet to discuss how they wanted to pool their shares and what kind of ship they wanted - a Safari ship was the preference. And lo and behold, it just so happens that Mr Casarii has the very thing...

 

[Arkathan]

Hello All!

New Traveller fan here and about to run my first adventure. I just ran our character creation session and one of the characters had an amazing Field Researcher career and has earned a Lab ship. I plan on running High and Dry and for the life of me can't think of a good way to substitute the Scout ship for a Lab ship.

I thought about substituting the Scout for the Lab ship's Pinnace but, compared to the Lab ship, why go through the trouble of finding such a small craft? I thought maybe finding the Pinnace might be the only way to discover the location of the Lab ship? Or maybe have the Scout ship replace the Pinnace? Any suggestions from experienced GMs out there? Thanks all!

One of my players got 25% of a lab ship. I went over the mortgage and maintenance numbers with him and he was sweating bullets.
So I showed him this ship:
Small lab ship

Much more affordable and of a size with the scout. As in, by selling off the 400 tonner, you pay this one off. Bonus, it is streamlined and can be loaded with two advanced base modules, which its arm can deploy.
Instead of the Scouts giving the quest, it could be a university.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

One of my players got 25% of a lab ship. I went over the mortgage and maintenance numbers with him and he was sweating bullets.
So I showed him this ship:
Small lab ship

Much more affordable and of a size with the scout. As in, by selling off the 400 tonner, you pay this one off. Bonus, it is streamlined and can be loaded with two advanced base modules, which its arm can deploy.
Instead of the Scouts giving the quest, it could be a university.

That was exactly why I loved the Type-SX Frontiersman