Just a random thought

[Condottiere]

You could only really maintain a refined hydrogen monopoly system wide, and as long as your prices are competitive and indiscriminate in your customers, there's little cause for complaint from mercantile corporations most likely to use this service.

That does set up whether it's economical to bootleg fuel from neighbouring systems.

 

[fusor]

If it can be made to work, it can be turned into an adventure, or even a full campaign.

If it can be made to work, why has nobody in several thousand years of space travel thought to do it before? Why would the PCs always be the first among trillions of people to come up with implementing an idea?

 

[Hopeless]

Well there was Traveller the New Era and that Virus problem of theirs... then there is that longest night plot that keeps popping up.

Guess its not it hasn't been done before its just that usually its forgotten by the time you beat your players around the head with it!

A better question is why isn't there a Traveller podcast series?

I can see an Order 66 style audio series being passed around like gold dust let alone a radio broadcast system that might be trafficked to other systems because they're that popular and entertainment is really that important!

 

[Reynard]

I say it has happened numerous times in the past, is happening and will happen over and over and, on very rare occasions, worked. Problem is it is doomed to fail over and over. There are probably rumors and stories going through startown bars of those who tried. how they did it and a hundred endings why it failed. One thing for sure no one actually knows about ever seeing a working operation that lasted more than a week or so.

 

[SSWarlock]

The path to riches is over the bodies of others...

Especially if one remembers to go through their pockets for loose change.

 

[fusor]

I say it has happened numerous times in the past, is happening and will happen over and over and, on very rare occasions, worked. Problem is it is doomed to fail over and over. There are probably rumors and stories going through startown bars of those who tried. how they did it and a hundred endings why it failed. One thing for sure no one actually knows about ever seeing a working operation that lasted more than a week or so.

If it's doomed to failure all the time then there's a reason for that, and that reason will be discovered - and then people will either stop trying, or figure out a solution to that and try successfully (or perhaps wait until the situation has changed enough for the attempt to succeed).

 

[alex_greene]

The path to riches is over the bodies of others...

Especially if one remembers to go through their pockets for loose change.

Corpses only drop treasure in the other game.

 

[Condottiere]

Not all guns are rigged to explode in your hand when you pick them up without authorization.

 

[PsiTraveller]

Wow, 2 pages of posts from a random thought late at night.

A new company trying to fight its way onto the fuel selling market has happened before. The trade war of sabotage and assassins and piracy can be an adventure, even a campaign. It may or may not be doomed to failure, it depends on who wins the fight. it has likely been tried many times in any system, the same story over and over. Someone decides they can do a job cheaper and make a living and the status quo is upset. There is a response and counter response ad infinitum. Insert plot points and you have your Traveller session for the day, week month campaign.

Maybe the players make some money and then get bought out as a corporation wants to take over the territory and not have to be in a fight, they buy out the competition.

There have been ships posted on this board that has the cost of harvesting and refining fuel being really, really low. Reselling refined fuel to outbound ships makes millions of Credits a month. A Class B Starport needs to be able to make 1000 tons of refined fuel a day. That is half a million credits per day of income. You can pay off a pretty serious mortgage with that kind of money.
The adventure part will be in preventing any harm from coming to the ship, and defending your market share when your competitor sets up shop in orbit around the same gas giant with a fleet of drones.

Look at the Beltstrike module. They made an entire system and campaign based on rolling on asteroid mining charts. Sheer brilliance.

You can make an adventure, and have a fun time with your friends over the most mundane things. Finding ore, filling a fuel tank, finding a cargo to go from one place to another. Look at Firefly, a duel was fought and the payoff was a hold full of cattle.

And if a player comes up with a creative way to make a few bucks, let them!, then have competitor come along and make his life miserable.

 

[Condottiere]

Seven year audit and back taxes. And penalties.

 

[Hopeless]

Like the crops being supplied to a colony or buyer which has been modified to deliver some drug intended to either hook the user or set them up for a specially modified virus that will only effect them?

There's plenty of nasty stuff that can be pulled and if carefully planned can't be traced back especially if they have access to their transmitter so after it goes quiet because their mayday broadcasts have been carefully deleted or blocked at source they send in whatever forces they need to secure what they want or covertly contact a suitable catspaw to go in so they can have them caught in the act so to speak...

Usually that catspaw is the player characters of course! :shock:

 

[Reynard]

Psi, that's what role playing games (and not a few movies and books) are all about, the protagonists doing the impossible or at least highly improbable. There's no reason players can not somehow find the will and finances to set up a station in a system to provide fuel. The Random Thought here is selling fuel in a way not normal therefore more profitable and probably a lot more... interesting. Fuel bladders can be the Travellers' best friend if they find a small niche market. Not sure how profitable being a St Bernard fuel ship might be.

 

[AndrewW]

Look at Firefly, a duel was fought and the payoff was a hold full of cattle.

Or you could end up with a wife out of a deal.

 

[Hopeless]

Or return to find your refuelling depot has either been destroyed, stolen by rivals, claimed by the bank you owe money on your starship repayments to... the list can go on...

Makes me think the real money is finding inhabitable worlds only to have the corporates or the government snatch it from you so they can profit from that newly discovered treasure planet!

Been thinking of setting up a game set around the Corporates are sealing up most of the more lucrative trade systems forcing the free traders to venture around those systems to avoid being left bankrupt by their efforts to monopolise the entire trade rights.

So various desert worlds, asteroid communities and a series of small space stations home to a Free Trader franchise that's their only means to stay afloat.

Throw in the discovery of a stable wormhole you know the various corporates and governments would annex the first chance they can get, but if they can keep it quiet the profit alone might help them not just survive but perhaps find a new home somewhere on the other side of that wormhole and safely free of the growing might of the Corporates and the warring nations they keep in that state because war pays...

 

[alex_greene]

What you're describing is intensely limiting, all black hat thinking. Yellow and green hat thinking would be welcomed.

Yellow Hat:-
• What are the benefits?
• Why could it be preferable?
• What are the positive assets?
• How can the Travellers make this work?

Green Hat:-
• creative thinking
• Additional alternatives
• putting forward possibilities and hypotheses
• interesting proposals
• new approaches
• provocations and changes
• Does the idea lead to any other ideas?
• Are there any additional alternatives?
• Could it be done in a different way?

 

[fusor]

What you're describing is intensely limiting, all black hat thinking.

I prefer to call it "reality".

 

[Condottiere]

The second thing anyone will do after discovering a stable wormhole is annex it and establish military garrisons at either end.

 

[alex_greene]

What you're describing is intensely limiting, all black hat thinking.

I prefer to call it "reality".

If everybody thought like that, we'd still be living in the Stone Age.

 

[fusor]

If everybody thought like that, we'd still be living in the Stone Age.

Well sure, let's all not point out the problems with ideas and just have happy huggy positive thoughts instead!

Sorry, but no amount of "positive or creative thinking" is going to make something work when it doesn't. All you're going to have with that kind of thinking is a ridiculously unlikely set of circumstances where everything conspires somehow to make it work when it shouldn't. (which, come to think of it, explains some of the arguments that people come up with here to a tee).

 

[alex_greene]

If everybody thought like that, we'd still be living in the Stone Age.

Well sure, let's all not point out the problems with ideas and just have happy huggy positive thoughts instead!

Sorry, but no amount of "positive or creative thinking" is going to make something work when it doesn't. All you're going to have with that kind of thinking is a ridiculously unlikely set of circumstances where everything conspires somehow to make it work when it shouldn't. (which, come to think of it, explains some of the arguments that people come up with here to a tee).

Tell that to NASA.

"New Horizons is on its way over to Pluto."

"Pluto isn't a planet any more."

"Oh, well, let's send a signal to the probe. Its mission's been scrubbed. Come about. Time to come home."

Excessive black hat thinking kills creativity, stops innovation, destroys inventiveness ... and can be liberally ignored by the creative, innovative and inventive.

Assume that the ideas suggested here are all wildly successful for various reasons.