I do starship campaigns when the players want to specifically be the crew of a starship doing something or the other. Usually trading or exploring. When they just want it for travel, but aren't interested in the idea of a ship itself or just don't want one, then we don't.
No Starship Campaigns
- Thread starter Vormaerin
- Start date
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
The idea of owning your own starship is something that rarely survives the balance sheets in space the game becomes.
My players have won their own starship many times, they invariably get sick and tired of tracking monthly costs, so they sell it and invest the money into TAS membership, new gear, and the latest money sink the insurance program introduced in T5
My Culture campaign is different - there is no need to track any costs, the Culture covers them. Having the ship be a PC help too
My players have won their own starship many times, they invariably get sick and tired of tracking monthly costs, so they sell it and invest the money into TAS membership, new gear, and the latest money sink the insurance program introduced in T5
My Culture campaign is different - there is no need to track any costs, the Culture covers them. Having the ship be a PC help too
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
There are tiers to not owning a starship in a campaign.
First one being, never leaving your homeworld, which the vast majority of Imperium citizens never do, and going by ShadowRun and Cyberpunk, is quite feasible to campaign in.
Second one insystem, since a spacecraft without a jump drive, costs a lot less.
Third one car ferry, where you pay for that spacecraft to be transported by one with a jump drive.
Fourth one, have an institution grant you the means to traverse interstellar distances without owning a starship, which includes Space Daddy patron, and the Scout Service.
The fifth one is that you either charter a starship, or buy passage, which if used prodigiously, can become relatively expensive.
First one being, never leaving your homeworld, which the vast majority of Imperium citizens never do, and going by ShadowRun and Cyberpunk, is quite feasible to campaign in.
Second one insystem, since a spacecraft without a jump drive, costs a lot less.
Third one car ferry, where you pay for that spacecraft to be transported by one with a jump drive.
Fourth one, have an institution grant you the means to traverse interstellar distances without owning a starship, which includes Space Daddy patron, and the Scout Service.
The fifth one is that you either charter a starship, or buy passage, which if used prodigiously, can become relatively expensive.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
How it was originally intended:
"Travelling
This volume of Traveller deals with the basic facts of interplanetary and interstellar travel, with the details of starships, their design, construction and operation, and with combat between spaceships.*
TRAVELLING BETWEEN WORLDS
Travellers travel. They move between worlds as well as on their surfaces. The distances such travel covers may be interplanetary or interstellar in scale.
Individuals who decide to travel to other worlds are confronted with the choice of the method and manner in which they wish to travel. Interplanetary travel is infrequent, but is possible using ship's boats, cutters, pinnaces, or other vessels. Because of the widely varying distances, a vessel must be chartered, at a price set by the referee or by the player-character who owns the vessel. Commercial travel by scheduled liner, when available, is provided at approximately 10% of the cost for similar interstellar travel.**
Interstellar travel is more rigidly defined, being divided into levels of passage with specific features and costs."
* take each statement after "with"
This volume of Traveller deals:
... the basic facts of interplanetary and interstellar travel
... the details of starships, their design, construction and operation
... combat between spaceships
**in system cruises cost 10%... so go for a cruise around your system
"Travelling
This volume of Traveller deals with the basic facts of interplanetary and interstellar travel, with the details of starships, their design, construction and operation, and with combat between spaceships.*
TRAVELLING BETWEEN WORLDS
Travellers travel. They move between worlds as well as on their surfaces. The distances such travel covers may be interplanetary or interstellar in scale.
Individuals who decide to travel to other worlds are confronted with the choice of the method and manner in which they wish to travel. Interplanetary travel is infrequent, but is possible using ship's boats, cutters, pinnaces, or other vessels. Because of the widely varying distances, a vessel must be chartered, at a price set by the referee or by the player-character who owns the vessel. Commercial travel by scheduled liner, when available, is provided at approximately 10% of the cost for similar interstellar travel.**
Interstellar travel is more rigidly defined, being divided into levels of passage with specific features and costs."
* take each statement after "with"
This volume of Traveller deals:
... the basic facts of interplanetary and interstellar travel
... the details of starships, their design, construction and operation
... combat between spaceships
**in system cruises cost 10%... so go for a cruise around your system
You keep saying this, but it is absolutely not true. Especially not when you pretend it is more expensive than shipping an entire ship via jump tender. What? (there is also the issue that 2 of your 5 situations are, in fact, owning a ship).
*Maybe* if you have a no mortgage ship and you change worlds every other week and your ship never, ever takes significant damage, you will save money compared to middle passage-ing around the galaxy. But that's not actually how things work unless your table just says "you have a ship and it mysteriously breaks even off screen". Which is fine, but a reasonable basis for comparison it is not.
No ship campaigns are not usually "Planet of the week" because they don't have a giant money sink that has to be traveling to pay for itself center stage. Sometimes you travel a lot, sometimes you spend weeks or months on a planet doing a bunch of adventures.
You can go middle passage everywhere, but there's no reason to do so. The game discusses the options, such as working passage, steerage, favor trading, and lots of other ways to travel. There's also this weird option called actually getting paid good money for the ridiculously dangerous/illegal/adventurous activities that PCs typically get up to.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
I tend to discredit the idea of a working passage.
I certainly don't want to give every Tom, Dick, and Harry, access to my starship, just because they can't afford to pay for middle passage.
In fact, I would find a group of armed humans onboard, who obviously had military training, and have weapons in their baggage, alarming.
Steerage is a recent inclusion, because, I suspect, someone came to the conclusion that not everyone can afford middle passage, and don't want to chance the low berth lottery.
A lot of this leans on pre-existing science fiction tropes, where the protagonists solve the transportation dilemma by signing on on some tramp steamer, that suddenly has a crew slot available.
And, the question tends to be, exactly how much interstellar traffic flows through any particular system, and of what type.
Maintenance costs of a spacecraft seems unrealistically low, at one thousandth of the construction cost, but at let's say Beowulf's fifty megastarbux plus, that's fifty thousand per annum, which is about five high passages.
I certainly don't want to give every Tom, Dick, and Harry, access to my starship, just because they can't afford to pay for middle passage.
In fact, I would find a group of armed humans onboard, who obviously had military training, and have weapons in their baggage, alarming.
Steerage is a recent inclusion, because, I suspect, someone came to the conclusion that not everyone can afford middle passage, and don't want to chance the low berth lottery.
A lot of this leans on pre-existing science fiction tropes, where the protagonists solve the transportation dilemma by signing on on some tramp steamer, that suddenly has a crew slot available.
And, the question tends to be, exactly how much interstellar traffic flows through any particular system, and of what type.
Maintenance costs of a spacecraft seems unrealistically low, at one thousandth of the construction cost, but at let's say Beowulf's fifty megastarbux plus, that's fifty thousand per annum, which is about five high passages.
Fluffy Bunny Feet
Emperor Mongoose
Makes for a good agent campaign. Travel (mostly) arranged by the government or company whose agent you are. Of course they could (all or some) be double agents.
That's nice, I guess?
Btw, working passage exists because it was a real thing that used to happen when tramp steamers and sailing ships were the norm and you need to replace crew at whatever port you happened to be in. Obviously, today, you'd have radioed ahead that your crewman is sick/dead/fired and can you fly someone in to be waiting for us? Thanks!
But tramp ships don't have that luxury in Traveller and, frankly, most tramp ships are barely profitable as the setting is conceived of. So saving a salary for a month is not unreasonable.
Obviously taking a large party on as working passage is unlikely (though there are a number of Amber Zones and Patrons examples that are essentially that), but the game has adventures for solo and duo players just as much as it does for parties of a dozen. So ruling it out because you think a campaign means a big group of paramilitaries is not justified.
Fluffy Bunny Feet
Emperor Mongoose
For a whole team definitely working passage is an issue. How often are you going to find a ship needing 4-6 crew with just the right abilities? But a ship whose steward (or whatever) is in jail for drunk and disorderly might well tell him "If your here when we come back we'll pick you up" and hire the cheapest person with papers they can get and if that person is willing to work for passage to somewhere you will go in the next few jumps most would hire him (barring obvious issues) and keep the wages to improve the bottom line. Might be for one jump or could be several, depends on what the person is after, a specific destination or just time off world while things cool down at home.
If you had good luck and had several high passengers and someone willing to do working passage as an entertainer (or an extra or higher skill steward) it might be worthwhile to keep those passengers happy so they take your ship when they want to return. Doesn't cost you much and at the least gets you happier passengers and at the best possibly future business thrown your way by people you impressed.
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This is certainly true, but used in moderation it isn't an insurmountable problem. Classic Traveller had the following adventures with essentially that premise just off the top of my head:
Amber Zones "Salvage on Sharmun", "Foodrunner", "Last Flight of the Themis", The "Safari Ship" adventure, and several of the 76 Patrons were all 'I have a ship and need a crew to do a thing with said ship'. Sometimes without even needing to bring any NPCs along.
Fluffy Bunny Feet
Emperor Mongoose
I'm not familiar with those adventures but I suspect if I ran them it would be more that the Patrons existing crew are not expendable so the PCs are hired instead. Can't let my nephew Sir Jim get shot at or be arrested when you rabble are available to take the fall.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Adding to the discussion: IIRC, qualified seamen used to carry a booklet that detailed their experience and credentials. They could leave the ship, stay somewhere for months, and when they were ready to get back on the ships they would go to the appropriate office at the port authority and/or the seafarers' union, show their books, and be at the port when a ship came in. Agreed, working passage used to be normal, because there was a lot of manual labor to be done on ships (shoveling coal, spraying for roaches, cargo handling, cleaning, etc.). That said, I think even a tramp steamer captain would be wary of taking on a bunch of scruffy ex-military types with assault rifles and body armor in their baggage.
In a Traveller context, there's a lot less manual labor to be done, and what work there is is far more technical. It's more like being on an aircrew, IMO. There isn't an oiler guy who has to oil moving parts every so often on a spacecraft. The crew is probably a tight knit group who depend on each other, and they may be very reluctant to allow an unknown individual to work on the ship's systems.
Excellent adventure, one of my favorites.
Non-ship adventures.
There is so much to be said for this. When the players don't have a ship, they're forced to interact with the setting in a deeper more engaged way. There can be a long term adventures, planetary romance campaigns, and multi-session adventures in which the players have to resolve the adventure or situation one way or the other instead of just leaving. They have to come to terms with the world they're on and the cultures which inhabit it. They have to mind their behavior because they don't have their interstellar motorhome to fall back on. They don't have ship lasers to get them out of trouble. The outcome of adventures are take on a greater significance because the player characters need to build up a stake to buy passage to another world. The player characters find themselves dependent on others for certain things, and maintaining positive relationships takes on new importance.
I don't know why people keep acting like PCs are "scruffy ex-military types with assault weapons in their baggage". That's one type of group, obviously, but I don't know that they'd be looking for working passage on ships. Sounds more like they'd be looking for mercenary assignments.
The Stainless Steel Rat, Nicholas Van Rijn, John Falkayn, Pyanfar Chanur, and lots of other characters who are not scruffy soldiers are great character archetypes. Merchants, spies, con artists, fortune hunters, off all sorts make good PCs. My players very rarely are former Army or Marines, though Navy shows up moderately often. They certainly aren't spending effort trying to smuggle military weaponry around.
Anyway, you can imagine the future however you want since we have no idea what it is actually like. Traveller adventures routinely present "hired crew positions" and working passage as normal. You are under no obligation to include that in your game if it doesn't make sense to you. But it is absolutely an assumption of the setting as written.
As far as the adventures go, most of them assume the characters are more willing to do dangerous stuff (like safaris or entering interdicted regions) than a normal crewman. Others presume the PCs are able to present themselves as reliable freelance hires. Some do use PCs because they are more expendable. There's a variety.
As I said, you certainly wouldn't expect that a large group could routinely get working passage, though a particularly transient crew structure is not unheard of in sci fi if you wanted to go that way. PCs would have to have some association with whatever tramp spacer/hobo culture you had going, but that's what chargen is for.
The thing is that players aren't going to use the same strategy every time. Sometimes they are going to take an iffy job that includes travel to a destination they want to end up in, sometimes they are just gonna buy a ticket. Sometimes they'll trade in favors or hire a scruffy ship in some hive of scum and villiany. The point is that it is not difficult to travel the stars without personally owning a starship.
Edit: The other thing is that Traveller treats low berth like it is completely insane to do with like a 1 in 6 chance of your character waking up dead. Which is obviously contradicted by the fact that practically every ship has low berth and reasonably expects to fill them. If you treat lowberths as more like Aliens style hypersleep, that also becomes a more financially feasible tranport system (since it's not a cattle car system used by hobos that unscrupulous crews are grudgingly taking for extra cash like the Dumarest stories that concept comes from). And "You wake up from cold sleep into an emergency is always fun once in a while".
The Stainless Steel Rat, Nicholas Van Rijn, John Falkayn, Pyanfar Chanur, and lots of other characters who are not scruffy soldiers are great character archetypes. Merchants, spies, con artists, fortune hunters, off all sorts make good PCs. My players very rarely are former Army or Marines, though Navy shows up moderately often. They certainly aren't spending effort trying to smuggle military weaponry around.
Anyway, you can imagine the future however you want since we have no idea what it is actually like. Traveller adventures routinely present "hired crew positions" and working passage as normal. You are under no obligation to include that in your game if it doesn't make sense to you. But it is absolutely an assumption of the setting as written.
As far as the adventures go, most of them assume the characters are more willing to do dangerous stuff (like safaris or entering interdicted regions) than a normal crewman. Others presume the PCs are able to present themselves as reliable freelance hires. Some do use PCs because they are more expendable. There's a variety.
As I said, you certainly wouldn't expect that a large group could routinely get working passage, though a particularly transient crew structure is not unheard of in sci fi if you wanted to go that way. PCs would have to have some association with whatever tramp spacer/hobo culture you had going, but that's what chargen is for.
The thing is that players aren't going to use the same strategy every time. Sometimes they are going to take an iffy job that includes travel to a destination they want to end up in, sometimes they are just gonna buy a ticket. Sometimes they'll trade in favors or hire a scruffy ship in some hive of scum and villiany. The point is that it is not difficult to travel the stars without personally owning a starship.
Edit: The other thing is that Traveller treats low berth like it is completely insane to do with like a 1 in 6 chance of your character waking up dead. Which is obviously contradicted by the fact that practically every ship has low berth and reasonably expects to fill them. If you treat lowberths as more like Aliens style hypersleep, that also becomes a more financially feasible tranport system (since it's not a cattle car system used by hobos that unscrupulous crews are grudgingly taking for extra cash like the Dumarest stories that concept comes from). And "You wake up from cold sleep into an emergency is always fun once in a while".
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Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
A 1 in 6 chance of death is Russian Roulette and is, in fact, completely insane to do.Edit: The other thing is that Traveller treats low berth like it is completely insane to do with like a 1 in 6 chance of your character waking up dead. Which is obviously contradicted by the fact that practically every ship has low berth and reasonably expects to fill them. If you treat lowberths as more like Aliens style hypersleep, that also becomes a more financially feasible tranport system (since it's not a cattle car system used by hobos that unscrupulous crews are grudgingly taking for extra cash like the Dumarest stories that concept comes from). And "You wake up from cold sleep into an emergency is always fun once in a while".
Yes. It's mildly amusing in Dumarest, but obviously never happens to the protagonist. And, as mentioned, in Dumarest, he's a space hobo riding in a cattle freezer and the crews generally resent that they need the money enough to bother dealing with such.
Other than the survival roll, there's nothing in how low berths are presented in Traveller to suggest that this is in anyway how it works in Charted Space. They are clearly designed for people and are clearly operated by commercially licensed vessels who routinely are able to sell those tickets.
Fluffy Bunny Feet
Emperor Mongoose
Since you are supposed to have a medic on hand if the initial revival roll fails, I allow another roll for the medic to resuscitate before you are formally dead. The new roll substitutes the Medic skill level + Edu as a bonus, You will likely need to be hospitalized and run a medical debt but you will usually live. Even if that fails he can refreeze you and let the highly skilled hospital team make another try (much more medical debt). Still with this a 2 always fails. Also of course a +1 for every TL of the low berth over 11 is added so it gets better with time (barring maintenance issues). TL 9-11 is the range the PCs would have access to so this doesn't really help them.Edit: The other thing is that Traveller treats low berth like it is completely insane to do with like a 1 in 6 chance of your character waking up dead.
So the odds are much better but still most ships in MTU use them more for medical emergencies, keeping one or two on hand. Keep you not dead till you reach the hospital and increase your odds of revival.
Obviously, you have to either make them more reliable or take them off commercial vessels. Or assume the Imperium is even more dystopian because transporting people in a thing that kills you regularly is perfectly normal and folks are bad enough off that they take that chance.
And once you add in that Frozen Watches are a thing... the reality is that they are not failing on any chance that is able to be modeled on a 2d6 roll
Emergency Low berths are a completely different thing in the RAW.
And once you add in that Frozen Watches are a thing... the reality is that they are not failing on any chance that is able to be modeled on a 2d6 roll
Emergency Low berths are a completely different thing in the RAW.
actionman
Emperor Mongoose
Many of them are, given the number of military, agent, and criminal careers in character generation (half) and weapons in mustering out tables. And my comment was in response to a particular reason as to why working passages might not be a viable option. Player characters who are not "scruffy ex-military types with assault weapons in their baggage" and who have skill certifications of use on a starship would most likely have an easier time.
It just seems sort of tautological "If you have a group of PCs who are ill suited for being ship crew, they will have a hard time taking advantage of ship crew opportunities."
Traveller has lots of military options because its a game that is designed to let you play out our Hammer's Slammers or Honor Harrington fantasies just as much as it let's you do your Polesotechnic League or Firefly fantasies. I would imagine that if you are playing the Space A-Team, your decisions about how to travel would be quite different if you were traveling con artists or a band of explorers and daredevils.
I find a lot of these throwaway comments about what gameplay is like to be rather misrepresenting the flexibility of the game. Probably the one style of play that doesn't have a lot of support is an Earth 2 colony building kind of thing.
Mostly, I just find that Mongoose tends to produce certain kinds of adventures and neglect others compared to the variety of things in Classic Traveller. CT had outright mercenary tickets for that kind of play and they had example patrons for single player groups, small groups, or even large groups of like 12 players (god forbid!). They had adventures where you were expected to have a ship and adventures where you were not expected to have a ship. They had a lot of criminal adventures and a lot of help the locals out adventures.
They had a box set Tarsus that was an excellent example of a single world adventure setting where the PCs were being good guys. Another, Beltstrike, was entirely around extensively adventuring in a single system. You had short adventures, long adventures, wilderness adventures, city adventures. Trade adventures, exploration adventures, investigations, etc
Mongoose's adventures are generally better designed and certainly much higher product value. And I'm certainly not saying there is no variety. But there is a very heavy leaning towards "have ship, will travel" planet of the week adventures. I was trying in my opening post in this thread to say "hey, you can do all this other stuff and this is what I think is cool about that kind thing." But seemingly I failed, because almost all the posts are about how this or that is won't work or 'just do all that and have a ship too'.
Traveller has lots of military options because its a game that is designed to let you play out our Hammer's Slammers or Honor Harrington fantasies just as much as it let's you do your Polesotechnic League or Firefly fantasies. I would imagine that if you are playing the Space A-Team, your decisions about how to travel would be quite different if you were traveling con artists or a band of explorers and daredevils.
I find a lot of these throwaway comments about what gameplay is like to be rather misrepresenting the flexibility of the game. Probably the one style of play that doesn't have a lot of support is an Earth 2 colony building kind of thing.
Mostly, I just find that Mongoose tends to produce certain kinds of adventures and neglect others compared to the variety of things in Classic Traveller. CT had outright mercenary tickets for that kind of play and they had example patrons for single player groups, small groups, or even large groups of like 12 players (god forbid!). They had adventures where you were expected to have a ship and adventures where you were not expected to have a ship. They had a lot of criminal adventures and a lot of help the locals out adventures.
They had a box set Tarsus that was an excellent example of a single world adventure setting where the PCs were being good guys. Another, Beltstrike, was entirely around extensively adventuring in a single system. You had short adventures, long adventures, wilderness adventures, city adventures. Trade adventures, exploration adventures, investigations, etc
Mongoose's adventures are generally better designed and certainly much higher product value. And I'm certainly not saying there is no variety. But there is a very heavy leaning towards "have ship, will travel" planet of the week adventures. I was trying in my opening post in this thread to say "hey, you can do all this other stuff and this is what I think is cool about that kind thing." But seemingly I failed, because almost all the posts are about how this or that is won't work or 'just do all that and have a ship too'.
