No Starship Campaigns

[Sigtrygg]

Understanding Traveller free booklet:

"Traveller is a game; that is, it is a system of rules which allows players to participate in a situation for recreation and enjoyment. It is a role-playing game, which means that the players vicariously act out, or discuss, their actions in response to some situation; they assume roles as adventurers or soldiers-of-fortune and then actively seek out some goal important to them, such as money, or fame, or power."

LBB0:

"Traveller is a science fiction role-playing game set in the distant future, when humanity has made the leap to the stars and interstellar travel is as common as international travel is today."

 

[swordtart]

None of those would justify low berths being on nearly every commercial transport or the fact that you can almost always find passengers for that transport.

I'm not sure about your assertion of real medical care. The rule in the CRB is a Medic (Int) 6+ or they die. Bonus for the passenger's END, but that's normally 0. The standard for a starship medic is Medic 1 and Int +0. Hence the 1 in 6 chance of death. Yeah, if you have a better TL low berth or the EMT on the ship is particularly good you can get the chance down to like 1 in 12. But even a 1 in 36 chance is commercially unviable, because not enough people are going to take that risk even if you have a dystopian lack of liability issues in the future.

You can, of course, assume the ships have much better medical staff than the rules suggest (a net +3 guy costing basically double the normal salary of a ship's medic. But then I would ask why are you even using the Dumarest low lottery trope if you are working directly contrary to it's intent? At that point, I would just rule that low berths IMTU aren't death traps. Maybe that's the roll to avoid coming out of low berth with severe jetlag type symptons, which would explain why people take low berth and why they'd pay extra to avoid it.

I was basing the level of skill on the NPC table on CRB p92. I also tend to assume some assistive technology (cheap readily available Expert 1 systems will give any trained character +1). That reduces the roll required to 3+ so a 1 in 36 chance of failure. I think people might well take a change on a 1 in 36 chance on not making it out the other end (consider how many refugees accept even worse odds). If you are desperate to move systems (and we are to presume that leaving the system is unusual for normal people so desperation may not be an uncommon driver) and you have little money (and that is often true of desperate people), low is the way to go. Desperate people might prefer even not waking to remaining in the situation they are in.

Employing a skilled medic 2 would only cost you Cr1500 more per month but would allow you to guarantee any healthy passenger will make it through. That would almost be paid for by just one berth. If your Medic-1 happened to be INT 9 you would also guarantee survival and under RAW it wouldn't cost you any extra in Salary. You wouldn't even need to run a Low Lottery. I chose to presume that is the default model for reputable carriers and the vast majority of low travellers. It will tend to skew the odds to the point where the risk of death is more a historic artifact than a credible possibility.

For the few passengers with health issues the medic can always take their time reviving them to cancel out the negative DM for END of 1 or more. Carrying a passenger with END 0 would still come with some risk, but it probably should. As a dedicated Medic wont have much else to do during the trip even having them spend several hours per special needs patient once the ship has landed should not be an issue. Medics could run a pre-check before taking on the passengers and reject anyone that presents special risk.

The Robot Handbook (and MixCorp) provide plenty of ways of getting a built in Medic 2+ capability at very little additional cost to a standard low berth. When considering the costs amortized over the 40 year mortgage this makes sound economic sense. For captains, low berth passengers are the most profitable cargo per DTon you can carry unless you start dabbling in mail or speculative cargo.

A standard Free Trader has 20 low berths that would bring in 26,000 per trip (after life support costs) if fully utilised. If you could guarantee survival buy just paying then I see plenty of people preferring a quiet sleep in a comfortable pod vs the cost and inconvenience of Basic passage. The only real risk they are running is that they have no agency once in the pod. That is a uncommon but still real threat (with skill-jacking, piracy and accidents based on the published scenarios - which we can say are the well publicised exceptions). You also miss out on the experience and a week or more vacation. Those benefits are enough to swing some people to Basic passage.

I also prefer to assume that star ports will offer low berth revival as a service and in that case chose to employ experienced medics which would have a a DM of at least +4 (including INT bonus and technological assistance). As they will see far more traffic, they can afford the higher fees for more experience staff (and of course as they are not shipboard staff their salary might be lower anyway). They can also triage the passengers and tailor the time in care to the particular needs of the passenger. With assistive technology and extra time, even a pleb with Medic-0 can revive a significant proportion of passengers without risk.

You are only subverting the Dumarest trope if you bought into it in the first place. Plenty of SF has suspended animation that doesn't appear to carry the risk. If you want risk, you can run with low grade medical care, low tech equipment etc. but that is a story choice. There has to be a thriving low berth passenger market as the RAW tells us it is so. You can either wrestle with the inconsistency you impose yourself by remaining true to a trope that makes no sense, or you can use the RAW to make it work and have that trope reserved for a special-case story where it does make sense. Any captain who casually accepts the loss of a passenger for economic reasons is already on a slippery slope to piracy.

Maybe your pet oppressive regime exiles criminals out of system that way. The "passenger" doesn't get any say and the regime is only doing it instead of mass executions to avoid censure by other polities. They pay rock bottom prices and don't regulate the ships they contract. You might arrive safe and sound, end up sold off as a slave, be skill-jacked or otherwise indentured, have your meagre possessions confiscated or just be allowed to die randomly (or politically) for want of a decent medic. It is unlikely you would be spaced to save the minimal Cr50 life support costs but when you are operating at this end of the morality spectrum anything is possible.

 

[Vormaerin]

Most of the sci fi involving ship crew the ship costs nothing and has no upkeep costs.

I think it is more accurate to say that the characters are rarely, if ever, shown doing the books. The Serenity crew is doing trading stuff, mostly off screen. And sometimes they don't have money to do repairs. But no one spends screen time on it. Likewise, Nicholas Van Rijn and John Falkayn are star traders motivated by getting rich, but the stories are about their adventures rather than their book keeping.

You can run your campaign with the same nonchalance towards ship finances, but your players have to also accept that their cash flow is a net neutral. If they want to do the trading and money making on screen, then they have to do the book keeping on expenses. Trade off.

The same holds true of no ship campaigns as well. You don't generally see Slippery Jim or most other adventurers doing book keeping either. Even when being poor is a thing, literally tracking money is not usually a story element. But, also, our fictional protagonists are rarely buying more gear to "level up". Characters generally have their iconic gear and that's what they have and if there is gear buying, it's usually to acquire the iconic gear that they then have for the rest of the series.

I don't think that ship or no ship changes the calculation on the importance (or lack thereof) of tracking money. But ships obviously cost a lot more money if you do track it, so if you are tracking cash flow, ships pinch a lot more than no ships.


Oh, and yes, having an adventure on a ship does not make it a "ship" campaign. The issue is whether the the ship is a long term responsibility of the characters that they need to stay near. Likewise, if you own a ship but somehow you can just park it in your space garage and go off whereever without a care, it's not a ship campaign.

 

[Vormaerin]

I was basing the level of skill on the NPC table on CRB p92.

Mongoose has completely tossed the whole skill system into the dumpster, admittedly. Their typical NPCs no longer are characters likely to actually be produced by the Chargen system and they have lots of cheap modifers that swamp the PC's actual skill level.

The basic chance for Low Berth survival are the same in Mongoose as they were in Classic Traveller, but CT didn't have expert programs, extra time taking, and these assumptions of higher stats and skill levels. (technically, they are a little different. CT was 5+, but Medic 1 didn't provide a +1. So that's the same as Mongoose' 6+ with the required Medic 1 helping. Other than another +1 for Medic 2, there weren't any other bonuses you could get originally. Now you get the medic's Int bonus, the extra time, the expert system, the revive'd characters End Bonus (in CT there was just a penalty for low END), and a +1 for the default TL 12.

It's just one of those things that is legacy that no longer does anything and should be removed, like unrefined fuel. I was never fond of low berths in the Dumarest style in the first place. But with the way the rules work now, they should just say "it's fine, unless there's some disaster situation". Because that's the only time you can possibly fail.

 

[swordtart]

*sigh* Why is it difficult to understand that a campaign structure in which the players are the crew of a ship is not a no ship campaign? The players are bound to the ship. They are not free to just go climb Mount Anekthor for a month.

But, anyway, it's clear this isn't a topic anyone is actually interested in. I thought there might be something fun and interesting to talk about in terms of running campaigns where the ship doesn't feature as a centerpiece. But the only posts have been about how can actually do this or that with a ship or can't actually do something without a ship. So, I'll accept that this isn't a topic of interest and let it go.

My campaign was definitely no-ship to start with (actually it was no-career to start with so getting a ship wasn't an option).

The characters started on Tarsus aged 18 (Background and connection skills only) and did a prequel to the Resteff scenario to earn money to get them passage to Collace to look for better opportunities. They could have travelled Low, but made a contact during the Nobble Harvest that owned a scout ship and they managed to negotiate cheaper Basic Passage. This allowed them to solidify that contact.

Once in Collace they tried to enlist in their first careers and had 4 years out of game. Then the plan was they would come back to Tarsus for a few months leave (at which point they would enter the Resteff Scenario proper) rinse and repeat.

Unfortunately the game fell apart due to player availability and possibly because it wasn't D&D 5th edition and I expected players to think about how to use the few skills they had to solve problems rather than "Here are the monsters you need to kill to take it's treasure and level up, woo hoo".

I am trying again with daughter in a single player game. Her character is in the Navy, but as she is a crewmember she is effectively a passenger and all adventure so far have taken place off-ship. The first adventure took place while she was a cadet. Her first solo training mission was to take a ships boat to a remote naval monitoring station (in Tarsus) with supplies while the main ship went to the main planet to replenish. The scenario proper only started once she was aboard the remote station.

For the second adventure I made the mistake of using a pre-published adventure (Faldor) to "save time", but in reality it is harder to stick to someone else's plot (that is often buried in too much new background information) and written in CT terms than it was just make it up myself. We are both struggling as every new section requires extensive research to work out what is supposed to happen and transposing it to MGT2.

So whilst ships are involved in both cases, they are just scene changers in an attempt to show the scenario planet sits in a slightly larger world. I have no intention of straying beyond District 268. As Tarsus and Faldor have multiple story arcs and further adventures I am planning that she spends the majority of time in those two systems (with maybe a trip to Collace for some high-tech shopping).

In my solo campaign (using Cepheus Engine) I just populated the systems within 3 jumps of Collace with 8 random characters that had washed out of the Merchants after basic training. Two failed their survival rolls but managed to keep their benefits (6 on mishap table). That gave them seed capital that they shared equally with their friends who washed out in the same term. Their task was to buy and sell goods on their home planet and when possible shipping exports by carrier to their nearest neighbour(s). Each member of the syndicate would use the sale of whatever cargo they had received to fund their living costs and the purchase and shipping of export goods and no cash would move between members of the syndicate until a quarterly group meet up in Collace where the total cash funds would be re-distributed to ensure any trade imbalance was corrected. I used Zozer Solo to manage their weekly activity and sometimes that threw up additional earnings opportunities that added to the pot.

It started shaky as several of those systems are very poor trade partners (Inchin-Avastan and Avastan-Tarsus) and money was very tight initially. However within a few months enough trade was going around that it showed that it was clearly viable for at least some neighbours (Motmos-Trexalon, Tarsus-Collace). With a bit more cash some of the less favourably sited systems were able to ship goods to systems Jump-2 away and that became far more profitable (e.g. Avastan-Collace). Inchin never really took off and most of the trade there was in common goods, buying them when they were cheap and putting them in storage until the price rose. Eventually the Tarsus rep chartered a Jump-4 ship destined to the Tizon (for an archeological field trip) and installed the Inchin rep on-board as their factor. He would buy and sell goods at each stop along the way to Tizon and back.

After 6 months of in game time most of the factors were chartering ships for regular runs between the various systems as they could guarantee to fill the hold and they were having trouble moving their exports using the available commercial ships. Solo Trader is quite parsimonious about available freight opportunities and CRB doesn't look at freight from that perspective.

Whilst the campaign ran over 8 systems, only one person ever set foot on a ship.

I am not sure if this would work as a regular game, where each character was played by a different player at the table as there is little interaction and the referee would need to focus on one player for a significant amount of time if their random event was crunchy enough. It might work for a postal game though.

 

[swordtart]

Do you remember the Firefly episode where Mal and crew were trying to find loose change to pay for refueling?

Out of Gas.
It wasn't fuel, but he skimped on a component because they didn't have the money and there were consequences.

Your other examples are valid, but there certainly have been episodes of many SF programmes where the shortage of a MacGuffin requires some exertions that could be deemed trade by the characters. It is just another plot driver.

 

[CordwainerFish]

He uses the speculation table and finds a good deal on something that will sell well on a world two parsecs away. He rents some cargo space

You can't do that. No cargomaster is going to rent hold space to you for a price less than what she expects to get for it hauling cargo for herself, so unless you have an inside line on some very valuable cargo (read: adventure seed) you will lose money doing that.

Maybe that's the roll to avoid coming out of low berth with severe jetlag type symptons

Freezer burn, they call it IMTU. (There's a fancy Vilani name but nobody uses it.)

 

[swordtart]

You can't do that. No cargomaster is going to rent hold space to you for a price less than what she expects to get for it hauling cargo for herself, so unless you have an inside line on some very valuable cargo (read: adventure seed) you will lose money doing that.

It depends on if the ship is interested in speculative cargo or they just want to take the fixed fee for freight. The freight table is there so the expectation is that you get to use it. Not everyone has an interest in speculation, wasting time finding a market and there may not be anyone in the crew with the necessary Broker skill to make any money. Even if they do decide to speculate on cargo it doesn't mean they can afford to fill every DTon of capacity that way.

A passenger has the option of hanging around at the port trying every week to get a better price and can wait until they get a good price before selling and reinvesting. The ship probably can't afford to wait around for the ideal price on low value goods as it needs to turn a profit so it can buy the goods for the next system. If all you can afford is common consumables then you are better off taking the freight fee. They may not have the capital to buy higher priced goods as they need to keep feeding that mortgage.

A high passenger gets 1 ton of cargo into the price of their ticket. If we assume that is 1 DTon, it is ideal for well heeled merchants to bum round the sector buying and selling cargo to cover the cost of their passage.

 

[Midas]

It depends on if the ship is interested in speculative cargo or they just want to take the fixed fee for freight. The freight table is there so the expectation is that you get to use it. Not everyone has an interest in speculation, wasting time finding a market and there may not be anyone in the crew with the necessary Broker skill to make any money. Even if they do decide to speculate on cargo it doesn't mean they can afford to fill every DTon of capacity that way.

You answered this much better than I could. Yeah, it has bothered me that a Traveller can get a few tons of Radioactives and pay a simple hauling fee. Why didn't the cargomaster or captain just buy the speculative cargo himself, or at least charge premium? Good answer.

A passenger has the option of hanging around at the port trying every week to get a better price and can wait until they get a good price before selling and reinvesting. The ship probably can't afford to wait around for the ideal price on low value goods as it needs to turn a profit so it can buy the goods for the next system. If all you can afford is common consumables then you are better off taking the freight fee. They may not have the capital to buy higher priced goods as they need to keep feeding that mortgage.

A high passenger gets 1 ton of cargo into the price of their ticket. If we assume that is 1 DTon, it is ideal for well heeled merchants to bum round the sector buying and selling cargo to cover the cost of their passage.

I was today years old when I heard of this idea! I just ASS U ME'd that went for the things a first class passenger would need. Of course this leads to smuggling ideas - and the captain is probably an old hand whatever the Traveller comes up with.

 

[swordtart]

I was today years old when I heard of this idea! I just ASS U ME'd that went for the things a first class passenger would need. Of course this leads to smuggling ideas - and the captain is probably an old hand whatever the Traveller comes up with.

This is another reason why the Travellers might prefer to go the no ship route. If they have a 25% paid off Free Trader they need to find KCr250+ a month to service the mortgage. If they go via High Passage instead, it will cost a party of 6 Travellers 60 KCr and they can spend the other KCr190 on as many as 6 Dton of speculative cargo. That could easily double in value if you are on the right routes. Arriving as a high passenger always creates a good impression.

Even if they don't have Broker skill, they can employ a broker in the Star port on a commission basis. This will cost you 10% of the negotiated price but on average will bump up your score on the trade table by 4* which equates to about 20% price increase so they are a good deal generally. Since they charge a flat fee you might get as much as 30% even with a middling roll and with trade DMs this could well push you into the magic 20+ region where profits are astronomical.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yes, speculation is a money spinner because it is designed to be the reward for an adventure. Freight doesn't pay the bills and is (usually) pretty boring, but if we get our characters involved in shenanigans via speculation, then successfully selling the goods can be the payoff for the adventure.

The problem, of course, is that the trade system is now completely divorced from all the other procedural adventure generation mechanisms that were the core of CT, so you think it is a closed system. But if you look at how the trade system was actually used in CT published adventures, it's obvious that the GM is supposed to be creating those complicated situations.

(rolls dice) "The best deal here is on icewine, but the mega that has the monopoly on regular wine doesn't want you to get it and screw with their profits. So Adventure!"

(rolls dice) "Huh, this planet is known for really awesome wood. Of course, the regular corporate merchants have scooped up all the supply, but you've heard that there's some if you just get out to the boonies for Adventure!"

(rolls dice) "Yeah, it's 6 tons of radioactives....when you take delivery, you notice it is in the form of nuclear anti ship missiles. Adventure!".

You resolve the adventure and you get to sell your stuff as the reward. Yay!

This is why the system has no competition, no failure points other than player incompetence, nothing. It's supposed to be an adventure prompt. Like the patron checks, the law level checks, the encounter tables, and all the rest of the procedural mechanisms that have fallen by the wayside since the 70s.

This does make for interesting opportunities for a no ship campaign, though ship-less characters are generally operating on a lower income level than a merchant ship crew. But there are tons of shenanigans that can happen when dealing with someone else's ship. Aside from all the fun stuff that your own ship can get up to, you have extra fun because the player doesn't control the ship. Maybe the only ship with space for your 60 tons of Denebian Baby Wipes is a freighter that doesn't take passengers, so you need to scramble to get a different ship to the destination. Maybe the ship's crew is engaged in barratry. Maybe the captain is dumb enough to answer that fake distress call from the pirates that the ship owning players never would. Maybe this barely spaceworthy scow that's all that was available forgot to do maintenance for the last year or some other stupidity PCs never do and now you've misjumped to the clone planet where Denebian Baby Wipes are considered sacriligeous obsenities. Now what?

Of course, shipless PCs can also be the characters going into the wilderness to collect the goods that they sell to some hapless speculator that doesn't realize that unprocessed fireberries ferment into a vinegary goo in jumpspace. Oops. Sucks not to have Xeno-Botany, I guess.

 

[swordtart]

Speculation is a lot less swingy under MGT2 than it used to be. Under the Cepheus engine rules my solo traders each had enough to buy a Free Trader with cash after 6 months of trading. Under MGT2 it would be a very different story.

Under MGT2 the margins are much thinner. Making it a 3d6 instead of a 2d6 roll flattens the probability curve so you spend a lot more time in the middle where the profits are slight and Broker being a flat modifier with no stat modifier (and the assumption that your opposition is Broker 2) makes a big difference. The chance of buying at 15% or selling at 400%, whilst still possible, is less likely difficult needing a DM of +7 overall as well as rolling maximum on the 3 dice.

EDIT:
I was reading CT Merchant Prince and the process is far more involved and allows other skills to be used to influence prices such a Bribery via kickbacks and Trader which allowed predicting prices in advance (you roll one dice on the value table before you even get there). It did however mandate that once you roll the dice, you have to make the trade. O tempora o mores

 

[actionman]

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

Both of those were excellent.

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

In the early GDW days, modules were...

GDW produced 29 adventures for CT (exc. TCS), and of them their relationship to ship ownership was (from a quick reading):

In 3 the players crew a scout on detached service (The Imperial Fringe, Shadows and Mission on Mithril (The Central Axis for the latter two), I may have missed one)
In 2 the players are the crew of the Empress Nicolle (Twilight's Peak and Annic Nova)
In 2 the players are crew of the Mudshark (Chamax Plague and Horde)
In 1 the players are the crew of the broken down Long Shot, trying to get money for repairs (The Argon Gambit)
In 1 the players are aboard the Scotian Huntress, but definitely don't own it (Night of Conquest)
In 1 the players possess the trader Empress Marvana (Stranded on Arden)
In 1, the players crew, but do not own, the trader March Harrier (The Traveller Adventure)
Secrets of the Ancients notes access to a ship helps the adventure.

The players are crewing ships for less than half the adventures, and many specifically have the players not crewing ships or provided with transport when necessary. In about 40% the players are in "possession" of a ship (a term often used) which might mean ownership or might mean they are operating it in another arrangement. The Imperial Fringe is clear that the Type S scouts don't belong to the players, but they are on detached service. The Traveller Adventure makes it clear that Subsidised Merchants are owned by the big companies and only operated by the players.

The related 2300AD outright stated that the players would not own a ship, and gave no rules for purchase etc. In none of the modules do independently owned ships appear apart from two ships who are more likely fronts for government intelligence agencies etc.

 

[swordtart]

In many of the CT modules there are also pre-generated characters and were not necessarily required to be part of a campaign. If the players are disposable then it stands that the ship would be also.

Tarsus for example allows either existing characters and other than requiring one of them to be a native of Tarsus to fulfil a particular plot role (though actually you can work round this) it makes no assumptions. It also provides pre-generated characters and some of them are ex-Scout and might have a Scout ship available.

It explicitly covers arrival either in a private ship (either as casual or permanent crew) or as passengers aboard a passenger carrier. The book seems agnostic to whether the characters have access to a ship, though it is clear some scenarios would run very differently if a ship was available and others would be impossible without at least an in-system craft.

However Tarsus is clearly designed to be the location for a lot of long term adventuring and other than the specific scenarios allows a lot of sandboxing. It provides information not required for the main adventures and this may or may not be exploitable depending on the equipment the characters have available.

Faldor puts the characters as employees on a specific ship but as soon as they are landed on Faldor, any form of space travel is taken off the table by events until at least the first main adventure has been completed. Faldor also provides a lot more information than is required for the main adventure so again some of it might be explorable in a longer time frame as and when the characters get access to ships.

These books with some specific adventures but with an entire system described in some depth tends to support the view of not simply moving on next week as part of a trade based game. It is a shame that these detailed worlds are dotted about all over the place and their relationship to local systems is only a sketch. On the other hand running someone else's world can be more work than making it up yourself as it is much easier to remember what is genuinely here-be-dragons that you can extemporise rather than something that later becomes vitally important but that you have inadvertently sabotaged by a random off-the-cuff decision to keep the game moving.

This is the inevitable juggling act between having to hand-crank the entire setting and having full control vs taking some off the shelf product and finding it has boxed you in.

* which implies that even if you have a Scout Ship as a mustering out benefit it might not be available for use at all times.

 

[Bryn the 2300AD guy]

I forgot to include the three "adventure-y" modules.

In Beltstrike there are three options given:

• The players are the Red Ink Trading Company, which owns the Far Trader Go for Broke
• The players arrive by passenger ship
• If the players already own a ship, use that.

Tarsus basically copies the latter two from Beltstrike, and add the option that (instead of the Go for Broke) the players have access to a Scout/Courier.

Alien Realms says nothing. It's eight small adventures each trying to get you to buy one of the Alien Modules.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yeah, one of the default hooks was "You have a pressing need for money so you are willing to take this sketchy job", with "your ship is in need of repairs" being the most commonly given reason. But the actual adventure itself either doesn't care if you have a ship or actively assumes you don't have a ship.

Imperial Fringe & The Traveller adventure require a ship. Leviathan isn't the PC's ship, but it clearly falls into the "Ship based campaign" theme.

Twilight's Peak would be tricky but not impossible without regular access to a ship, so I'd count it as ship based. I'd put Secrets of the Ancients in this category, also.

Annic Nova & Chamax Plague don't technically require the PCs to have any long term relationship to the ship, but they definitely need to be on a ship and in charge of decisions about what it does. So you could run them if your non ship group was temporarily in charge of a ship for some reason. But they are more natural for ship based groups.

The Kinunir only requires a ship for one of the four adventures. That one's an interdicted zone intrusion, so a lot easier if they own the ship.

Horde, Mission on Mithril, Argon Gambit, Stranded on Arden, and Shadows don't use the ship in the actual adventure. It's just a reason you might be where the adventure is and that could easily be changed.

The FASA adventures, the Amber Zones, and the Patrons were basically the same. Only a few relied on the PCs being the controlling party of a ship during the adventure, but some used the 'your ship is out of the picture so you might as well adventure" bit.

 

[actionman]

I tend to discredit the idea of a working passage.

Hrrm, another reason: how much work is done while the ship is in space? I don't think it would be all that much. When the ship departs a world, it would proceed to the jump point, and then its a week in jump space, then travel to the next port of call.

The engineers will be running diagnostics and the bridge crew will be carrying out their duties in preparation for jump, and I doubt they would want working passage types getting underfoot. Once the ship is in jump, I suppose there's cleaning to be done, and checking on cargo tie downs and all that, and probably maintenance and preparation on ship's vehicles, other gear and equipment, and non-essential ship's systems. Still, I doubt it the crew would want working passage people doing this.

I suppose working passages could be something like the ship crew is on a mission from a patron and they need the working passengers' skills or labor for some reason. The labor would take place at the destination, not shipboard, and as payment the ship crew would drop the working passage folks off somewhere mutually agreeable, probably a world that's a hub for interstellar travel hub.

 

[actionman]

it's clear this isn't a topic anyone is actually interested in.

I'm interested.

 

[Vormaerin]

Although the game does not specify what specific tasks the crew are undertaking during jump, I find it highly implausible that they are essentially doing nothing.

There's two types of working passage. The most common use of that term means the character is filling in the role of one of the regular crew who is no longer available. So then that person *IS* the Engineer or the Pilot or the Astrogator until you get back to somewhere you can hire a longer term worker. So they would clearly be doing whatever that person does during jump.

The other type of working passage would be some kind of non standard task, such as additional entertainment, security, or some other role needed because of some peculiarity of the passengers or cargo.

It is important to keep in mind that most of us are used to working for a proper business, in a world with instant communications, and fast travel. This is not the world of tramp traders in a jumpspace universe. If your pilot chokes on clams and dies when you are on some backwater with a type D starport, you are going to hire whomever is available that doesn't seem like a greater risk than going bankrupt stuck on that planet. And most of these free traders are barely staying afloat financially, so saving on crew expenses (salary and any revenue sharing) isn't anything to sneeze at either.

Don't forget that Simon Tam was 'working passage' on the Firefly. Yeah, he was a permanent cast member, but he was serving as ship's doctor to pay for his and River's transport, not for wages. They just never got off.