Jak Nazryth said:
This is meant to be a fun, sci-fi role playing game and not a reality simulator, at least not the way I run my games
I think there's a few ways of resolving Robert the First's death and the situation with his ship shares.
* Ignore it. Robert the First is dead. Going through his personal effects, nobody could find any way to contact any next of kin. Or perhaps they do box up the personal effects and send them off with a letter explaining the circumstances to the next of kin and their only reply is: "Thanks for telling us" and the matter is closed. I
highly recommend this method unless there's a
good roleplaying reason to use the others as I feel it well defines the stereotypical Traveller as a drifter without roots.
* Make a Symbolic "weregild" payment. I honestly think the fear and recourse of lawsuits and legal wrangling hanging over EVERYTHING is a reflection the 21st Century we live in (especially in the USA). The Traveller universe is not like that - there is no instant communication, a simple legal negotiation between parties on two separate planets is likely to take the better part of a year - something complex that takes years on presently would take decades - it's just not worth doing unless one party or the other travels in person to negotiate in person. Planets can have vastly different laws and even planets with mostly similar laws can have very different results with just a few legal differences. People in a tramp freighter could just drift off to the next subsector or Sector over and never be seen again. I think all of this would make the next of kin less grasping unless the players are always hanging the same few worlds. In Traveller the New Era where I believe the idea of Ship Shares first got started, you could convert Ship Shares to cash - this was useful for a number of reasons. Ship shares had a low value (10,000Cr, if I recall) so unless there was no other recourse you never actually wanted to convert Ship Shares to cash. However, in the case of Robert the First, this may be handy. Simply convert his ship shares into cash at a certain rate, perhaps 10000Cr per share. Robert the First had 10 shares, so 100,000Cr. If this sum is paid out to relatives (this doesn't have to be a single lump sum paid at once) by some spacer custom, the affair is considered closed and the next of kin will not bug the players about their n'er-do-well drifter uncle. You could also reduce the amount of the symbolic payment, perhaps each ship share is only worth 1,000Cr or something.
* Make an adventure out of it. Perhaps Robert the First had powerful relatives he never told the players about. They come looking and want part ownership of the ship. Of course they don't really want the ship, so they're planning to sell off the shares - the players now have to liquidate their ship and pay these powerful relatives their share or scrape up millions of credits to buy them out. Or they can sit on Regina for years in expensive court proceedings the characters are unlikely to be able to afford. However, they're willing to waive the whole thing if the players help them resolve a certain
pesky situation. Or the players become caught in some interfamily struggle that's been going on independent of Robert the First's death and certain factions in the struggle are willing to basically forget the whole thing in return for support.
As for Robert the Second's ship shares:
* I don't usually let replacement characters come on board with ship shares in the current vessel because it's hard to explain. The idea that some new guy wins part of the ship in a card game then wants to sign up as a crewmember gets old really fast.
* I personally have always felt that Ship Shares are something that you should be concerned about in the initial party creation phase. For replacement characters, I usually let the player reroll any Ship Share results that come up. This is my overwhelming solution to it as it is neat and quick and resolves the issue cleanly.
* Alternatively, Robert the Second might have part ownership in another, wholly different ship. When he returns to some starport on an agreed-upon planet, he periodically gets a sum of money representing his share of the profits of that ship. As a GM, I assume this ship is some typical Free Trader plying a trade route that brings in low but reliable profits operated by a reliable, unexciting captain just trying to make a living without any interest in excitement or adventure - in my view, the typical Free Trader. It
may lead to adventure - though I usually don't bother. Or perhaps the owners have run into a spot of trouble and would like him to pony up credits for expensive repairs. Perhaps the ship skipped/was lost/got repo'd and there's either a lump symbolic payment from lawyers or the naval authorities want to interview the character to see what he knows. Or the ship was paid off, and something terrible happened and everyone on board the ship was killed. The somewhat intact hulk was towed into orbit by the Navy pending resolution of the situation - if Robert the Second can pay for the recovery cost the Navy will leave it in the 'long term hangars' of the downports of some starport somewhere and let him deal with it. Or he can just give the ship up and the Navy will sell it off to shipbreakers who'll send him a check minus their share and the Navy's cut (for the recovery operation).
