Not having a starship used to be a pretty standard assumption in Traveller, back in the day. It seems to have largely fallen by the wayside. While having a ship does give the players certain kinds of freedom and opens up certain kinds of adventures, it generally closes off others or makes them much harder.
I run a lot of no starship campaigns. I think there's a lot of benefits to it.
The players aren't bound to their ship. If you want to run some kind of wilderness exploration adventure or longer running story on the same world, the players don't have to worry about protecting the ship, paying for berths and maintenance, and all the rest while they are spending 3 weeks on a yeti hunting expedition. And they are free to take jobs where they are the patron's crew for their safari or to transport their yacht to a shipyard capable of remodeling it or whatever.
Speaking of paying, not having the expenses of a starship means that the players can take smaller jobs that don't pay the kind of money you need to bring in if you have a multimillion credit ship to support. There's a big jump between the expenses of travellers and ship owners.
Another advantage on the adventure side is that there is a lot more freedom to run various kinds of adventures when it's someone else's ship. A crash, a hijacking, these things are difficult (not impossible) to do with a PC owned ship. An adventure like Marooned is a lot more feasible when you aren't taking the Serenity forever away by making it a ball of flaming wreckage they have to escape from. You can have assorted shipboard disasters without having to explain how the PCs made the mistake that caused them, because they are the heroic (or not heroic) passengers.
Yes, commercial passage costs money. But it's not /that/ expensive. Middle passage, double occupancy, steerage, low berths like Dumarest, working passage, temporary crew jobs, expense accounts, and plenty of other options exist for making travel affordable. Or, you know, have your patrons pay enough that commercial travel isn't a big deal, even with the crew's custom submersible ATV they "acquired" on an adventure.
Starship based campaigns are a lot of fun and what we see most often in sci fi fiction. But even if you aren't running an explicitly single world campaign or one using some entirely other form of travel (stargates anyone?), they are not the only way to go. Or even assumed to be the default the way it feels like it is in Mongoose Traveller, based on the kinds of adventures they publish.
I run a lot of no starship campaigns. I think there's a lot of benefits to it.
The players aren't bound to their ship. If you want to run some kind of wilderness exploration adventure or longer running story on the same world, the players don't have to worry about protecting the ship, paying for berths and maintenance, and all the rest while they are spending 3 weeks on a yeti hunting expedition. And they are free to take jobs where they are the patron's crew for their safari or to transport their yacht to a shipyard capable of remodeling it or whatever.
Speaking of paying, not having the expenses of a starship means that the players can take smaller jobs that don't pay the kind of money you need to bring in if you have a multimillion credit ship to support. There's a big jump between the expenses of travellers and ship owners.
Another advantage on the adventure side is that there is a lot more freedom to run various kinds of adventures when it's someone else's ship. A crash, a hijacking, these things are difficult (not impossible) to do with a PC owned ship. An adventure like Marooned is a lot more feasible when you aren't taking the Serenity forever away by making it a ball of flaming wreckage they have to escape from. You can have assorted shipboard disasters without having to explain how the PCs made the mistake that caused them, because they are the heroic (or not heroic) passengers.
Yes, commercial passage costs money. But it's not /that/ expensive. Middle passage, double occupancy, steerage, low berths like Dumarest, working passage, temporary crew jobs, expense accounts, and plenty of other options exist for making travel affordable. Or, you know, have your patrons pay enough that commercial travel isn't a big deal, even with the crew's custom submersible ATV they "acquired" on an adventure.
Starship based campaigns are a lot of fun and what we see most often in sci fi fiction. But even if you aren't running an explicitly single world campaign or one using some entirely other form of travel (stargates anyone?), they are not the only way to go. Or even assumed to be the default the way it feels like it is in Mongoose Traveller, based on the kinds of adventures they publish.
