Request for ideas: PoD and Ship Shares.

cunningrat

Banded Mongoose
We're playing Pirates of Drinax. Ship Shares in PoD (since there is no mortgage per se) can be used to repair the Harrier. My players have used up all their Ship Shares, threw in some money, and have fully repaired the Harrier.
I'm adding a new player, and the guy rolled 17 Ship Shares on the Mustering Out tables. I'm kind of having trouble figuring out what to do with them, since they are not likely to ever come into play (at least until the group hits the Treasure of Sindal and those two stripped-down Harriers, which is going to be a while in the future.)

I've had a few ideas, but I am not particularly happy with any of them.
  • Use the standard "investment" rule: the traveller receives 17,000 credits a year. Given the amounts of money likely to be floating around in this campaign, that seems to be a drop in the bucket, and unfair to the player.
  • Give him a 17 MCr small craft (medium fighter or something) instead. (Given that they're on Theev, they might immediately decide to turn around and sell it, which I'd like to avoid.)
  • Say that those 17 ship shares represent a "treasure map", leading to a J. Random McGuffin that might be worth way more than 17 MCr if you can find it.

Any other ideas or suggestions?
 
In finance, being short in an asset means investing in such a way that the investor will profit if the value of the asset falls. This is the opposite of a more conventional "long" position, where the investor will profit if the value of the asset rises.

There are a number of ways of achieving a short position. The most fundamental method is "physical" selling short or short-selling, which involves borrowing assets (often securities such as shares or bonds) and selling them. The investor will later purchase the same number of the same type of securities in order to return them to the lender. If the price has fallen in the meantime, the investor will have made a profit equal to the difference. Conversely, if the price has risen then the investor will bear a loss. The short seller must usually pay a fee to borrow the securities (charged at a particular rate over time, similar to an interest payment), and reimburse the lender for any cash returns such as dividends they were due during the period of lease.
 
The Harrier - and those other two - aren't the only ships that the PCs are likely to get their hands on as the campaign progresses, so don't feel shy about it representing (in whole or in part) some other vessel becoming attached to the PCs' developing fleet. This works especially well if it's commanded by an Ally of theirs.
 
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