Running Merchant Campaigns

[hdan]

Although I've played a lot of traveller in the past, we usually stuck to exploration or mercenary/adventurer sorts of campaigns. Any cargo carrying or passengers were generally plot elements, as the focus of the campaign was not on commerce but adventure. The GM often didn't even worry about time or location too much, and would sometimes start an adventure off with, "You find yourselves relaxing in the TAS lounge on <World Name>, when...."

Consequently, I'm not really sure how most folks run merchant campaigns.

My biggest question is this: do free traders generally only load up cargo for their next jump destination, or do they usually carry cargos on very long hauls?

Or do people check for cargoes for all planets on the ship's proposed route, limited only by your patience for rolling?

Secondly, I assume that most "off the track" action occurs with special cargoes or odd passengers, or when the crew tries to make a few extra Cr during their week of R&R, and gets into trouble. I can see a variety of run-ins with the local law enforcement, distress signals, pirates, customs officials (see the old Exit Visa adventure) and such, but how do you keep such a campaign "fresh"?

Thanks for any insights.

 

[Zowy]

One way is to have their ship be a Subsidized Merchant ship in the 300-600 dTon range, make it 50-80 years old with a clear title. But remember it is still subject to mobilization. :wink:

 

[rust]

My biggest question is this: do free traders generally only load up cargo for their next jump destination, or do they usually carry cargos on very long hauls?

In my experience it is best to decide this on a case-by-case base. Some-
times it pays to accept a cargo for a distant destination, for example to
fill an otherwise too empty cargo hold or because the high profit for the
cargo on the destination world pays for transporting it several jumps.

I can see a variety of run-ins with the local law enforcement, distress signals, pirates, customs officials (see the old Exit Visa adventure) and such, but how do you keep such a campaign "fresh"?

It depends a lot on your players' preferred style of roleplaying. In my
campaigns I try to develop a very detailed setting with lots of specific
(= generated by me, not rolled for on some charts) passengers and car-
goes, all tied into the background in some way, with many interesting
NPCs (brokers, customs officers, rival merchants ...) and with a network
of political and economic relations between governments, corporations,
and so on.

The more the characters get involved in all that political and mercantile
"wheeling and dealing", the more the campaign usually begins to take on
a life of its own: The players decide which "moves" to make next, and I
introduce the setting's (NPCs, organizations ...) reactions to these charac-
ter activities.

But this is how we do it, your players may have completely different ideas.
Therefore, my best advice: Discuss it with your players, let them describe
the type of campaign they would enjoy, and work from there.

 

[kristof65]

I GMd a very satisfying 1 on 1 CT merchant campaign many years ago. I don't think there were more than a half dozen combats in the four months we played, it was mostly roleplaying and book keeping.

Most of the cargo bookkeeping I was able to put off onto the player, since he enjoyed that portion of it. He would generate tons of cargos for me, write them on index cards, and just kept giving me piles of them I could choose from and embellish as I saw fit. On my part, I created a network of cargo brokers, customs agents, port authority officials, ships crewmen, bartenders, etc for him to interact with - most of whom were created on the fly.

If I had to do it all over again, the one thing I would do different would be to create and partially detail as many NPCs out in advance as I could. I would probably also set something up for handling the cargos and trade via index card or similar forms again, and pregenerate as many of those as possible as well.

 

[MrUkpyr]

the biggest thing about running a merchant game is that you have paperwork and loads of details.

YOU as the GM simply must have cargo's ready for your players.
Freight cargo at the usual 1000cr/ton.
Freight cargo at *more than* the usual 1000cr/ton (can you say plot hook).
And speculative cargo for the merchant PC to hopefully buy low and sell high.

The PLAYER has to be willing to do the paperwork. If not, you are the GM will be stuck doing it yourself, and that can add a whole lot of extra work on your end.

 

[Tipsy]

I thought the 'paperwork' would suck the joy out of my mercantile oriented campaign. But then at the end of one of my first sessions this fall, I busted out the core book's tables and my players and I rolled up all the frieght tables, passengers (including who they were) and whatnot. Now they're hooked.

So that piece of it has been a big help and I've found that a little bit of work in excel can make the rest of the mini-game fly quite smoothly.

 

[Fireflame]

I would have to say that my current campaign is a merchant based campaign which begun with The Traveller Adventure, using their own ship and is spanning the top region of the Spinward Marches.

Generally, as far as cargo and passengers go, the crew decides there next destination and look for cargo/passengers ther, and destinations are often based loosely on where the plot is driving them. It's very rare that they look for cargo for more than one destination, and in 6 months I have not had to provide details for more than 2 destinations. Of late, speclative is there cargo of choice, so I don't have to worry about cargo so much, having pre prepared the spec cargos at each port.

For passengers, because they only have a jump 2 ship, that is as far as the passengers want to go. Why book 2 jump 2s when a jump 4 liner can go to the same place in less than half the time for often cheaper than they can offer. It is rare that a passenger will meander their way across the subsector unless it's a plot device.

My players do much of the work themselves. The Doctor has Broker 2, so he scours the port looking for spec cargo, then spends a bunch of time studying the charts around to find where they can make their money. I've pre-prepared cargoes for every planet in the subsector they are in and worked out all the passenger bonuses to and from planets, so the players do the investigations and roll for the number of available passengers themselves, and the buy and sell prices of the cargo (all under my supervision). They actually seem to enjoy doing it and I think it adds a level of realism and control over their own destinies. They are making plenty of cash too.

The campaign doesn't have much combat at all, they've had a fist fight in a bar and one creature combat, in 6 months! This is my first merchant campaign and we all actually rather enjoy it, it's more roleplaying than combat.

Keeping things fresh is about interesting opportunities to make more money. They can't get such n such cargo unless they make a trip our into the middle of nowhere to collect it themselves, or have an overall plot that they are following but are still allowed to trade while doing it. An example, may be to do with the Ancients. Artifacts can be worth millions! What good merchant will turn up the opportunity to get there hands on one of these babies? They find rumors of a hidden base somewhere (even one of the CT adventures) which has them treking across the sector to find it they can be trading. Of course, other small adventures, patrons, encounters with rivals, enemies keep them busy as they go, and for me, the ever present threat that the 5th frontier war will break out, so having to deal with Vargr mercenaries and of course, the Zhodani. The important thing to do is replace gun battles with situations that can be talked out of, roleplayed out of or have them spend their hard earned cash buying their way out of. Do leave a couple of battles in there though, just to keep them on their toes.

Hope some of this helps in some means...

 

[PoppySeed45]

That is awesome and will be stolen. I have a feeling I'll end up with a small crew (3 players) and at least one of them will be interested in this sort of thing. We'll see.

 

[Sangrolu]

In my experience, you have to really have a good reason to hold a cargo for more than one jump unless you own the ship or otherwise don't have a mortgage (e.g., a scout ship). The mortgage payments don't wait for you, and they pile up. You sort of need a good turnover.

Re: bookkeeping,

I find it funny that some players enjoy it, but they do. You just have to watch out to entertain the other players while the "purser" is taking care of details.

I have a semi-functional spreadsheet I intend to use to speed things up (it does cargo and passengers. It determines trade good availability and lot sizes, but I have more work to do before it calculates trade code based modifiers. If you hand enter the appropriate modifier, it does buy and sell prices.