Epicenter said:
* If he has plenty of money (and more coming in) and the player just feels like he's being clever by being miserly, just have more stuff occur on planet that he has to sit out of because he's in the ship.
Quoting myself. I've really lost it. Or not.
Upon further consideration, as a piece of advice to newer Refs, I don't really recommend this last suggestion of mine. It was a mistake. GMs should never be passive-aggressive.
It's important, I think, as the GM, to get the bottom of this kind of behavior; they're literally writing themselves out of the game.
1. If their Cost of Living as decided by the rules is something they can't afford because the game you're running isn't bringing in enough money, then I'd suggest trying one of the ideas in my first post.
2. If they're sitting in the ship even though they have enough income to cover their lifestyle and are playing some "metagame" where they just want to save as much money as possible by hiding in the ship, the problem may lie in the structure of your game or something with the player.
2a. If there's so little to do during layovers that hiding in the ship is perfectly viable -- there's no disadvantage to it, like there's no danger of the character missing out on RP or anything else -- then why not let him? It appears the structure of your game allows players to do this. Maybe the noble is just reclusive. If you want to get the noble off the ship, then structure layovers to require the noble to get off the ship. I'd think many worlds might require all starships to be docked at the spaceport (eg; you can't use your starship as transportation to get around points on a planet) - the danger of such large starships flying around cities might be a cause, danger of crime (such going to the boonies, loading up on illegal goods/kidnapping locals to use as slaves or you're some interstellar predator who likes doing unspeakable things to the locals in remote areas/poaching local wildlife ... then flying off and jumping out), or the introduction of alien invasive species are all concerns that'd make it logical for worlds to require starships to be docked at the spaceport. In this case, any situation that requires the players to go far from the ship for a few days would require the noble to get out of the ship. Regardless, I'd only allow the "reclusive" character trait to be used once. Don't let players repeatedly make "recluse" characters to get around CoL rules.
2b. There's something with the player. Does the player find your game boring in some way and they're just entertaining themselves / trying to attract your attention by gaming the rules? Do they feel they've painted themselves into a corner by playing such a high SOC character? The only way to find out in this case is to take the player aside at some point and see what's up. Present your side the situation first ("I don't really like your character hanging around on the ship all the time; it bugs me that (voice your concern here)"), then find out what's going on the with the player.
Finally, while it's amusing during chargen to produce a Count, I generally don't let anyone be anything beyond a Knight. Baronets are do-able, but I think even that's pushing it. I think any rank higher than that, and it makes the noble character more important than the other the players (unless they're all nobles) and starts to put stress on the structure of the gaming group, making the group feel more like the entourage of the Count. It is possible of course to get around this by creative explanation of why they're on a tramp freighter (or whatever). However, this means the added burden of coming up with the story and the player of the high noble making it work.
