Ships cost an Insane Amount
- Thread starter Chuckhazard
- Start date
superc0ntra
Mongoose
Ector said:
Balanced against what? If they need a starship for the adventure I usually make some way for them to acquire it. It can always be taken away when the plot requires it. Breakdown, hostile takeover, the legitimate owner shows up etc.
Chuckhazard
Mongoose
BP said:
And behind door number 3, a NEW STARSHIP! Unfortunately contestant, you chose door number 2, enjoy your six-legged abraxan goat!
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
Wasn't there a world in the 3I OTU that had no tax, instead every citizen was required to buy lottery tickets and one a day bacome an instant multi millionaire.
Balanced against PCs' duties, risks and possibilities. For purpose of realism and motivation.Somebody said:
Bank Loan: No duties, high risks (a bank can grab your ship if you won't pay in time), everything is possible (you can become RICH in a few months if you find the right goods and right customers).
Joint Stock: Light duties (if PCs are leading the company), medium risks, medium possible gains (even if you earn a lot of money, you will get only your percent of it).
Subsidy: Medium duties, low risks, low-medium possible gains.
Free ship: No duties, no risks, immediate huge gain (a starship!) Where is the balance?
justacaveman
Mongoose
A starship is usually just convenient transportation that gets the PCs around the Imperium so that they can be where the adventures actually are.
Unless you're running a Merchant or Military campaign, the type of ship is generally irrelevant (A faster ship is more efficient.). Even a scout ship is quite large enough to transport your typical group of PCs (Up to 8.).
Unless you're running a Merchant or Military campaign, the type of ship is generally irrelevant (A faster ship is more efficient.). Even a scout ship is quite large enough to transport your typical group of PCs (Up to 8.).
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
justacaveman said:
:shock:
Bet these guys land on planets a lot just to get some fresh air in and let the smell out
I have no idea what kind of balance you are thinking of, and I doubt thatEctor said:
the idea of balance really makes much sense in this context.
For many types of campaign, a ship is a necessary piece of equipment.
For a free trader a ship is not any kind of "bonus", it is the required tool
of his trade, and without that tool he is out of his trade. Likewise for a
star mercenary, a freelancer scout, and so on.
In a fantasy or historical campaign I do not force a knight to take a loan
to pay for his horse, armour and weapons, although their relative cost
should be even higher than that of a starship in a science fiction setting
- the knight just has the stuff, because without it he simply would not be
a knight.
In a Call of Cthulhu campaign the wise old scholar who can translate cu-
neiform script and knows what Aristarchos wrote about sky demons has
this knowledge as a tool of his trade. I do not ask the scholar to pay a
mortgage for the costs of his extraordinary education, although it doubt-
less was much more expensive than that of the other characters of the
group.
And so on ...
Baeron Gredlocke
Mongoose
Somebody said:
Very true- the last thing my players want to do is waste game time being accountants.
When it comes to character wealth, balance is the perogative of the GM. A GM who has no idea nor means of providing balance probably shouldn't give the PCs a starship.Ector said:
That doesn't necessarily mean that no GM should give a starship. Let's say I wanted to run a scenario where the PCs would be ambushed while refueling near a Red Zone world, forcing them to crash land on said Red Zone. If the PCs have scrimped and saved all their credits and ship shares to buy said starship, the players are going to be pretty pissed off if I, as the GM, simply destroy it out of hand. OTOH, if I gave them the starship up front, no strings attached, they won't be nearly as miffed when the GM taketh away.
Among the people I game with, it's pretty well established that certain "freebies" come with unseen strings attached. At the time of the "gift", the GM may have no idea what strings they're going to attach, but it will come some how or another. One of our fantasy GMs has established a reputation of killing or otherwise removing horses from the player's possession by various means - not always on purpose, but often enough that he's got the reputation. As a result, any player who wants to can start with a horse for free in his campaigns, the unspoken understanding being that the horse isn't likely to survive the entire campaign.
If he were running Traveller, I guarantee you the PCs groups would be going through starships just as fast, and he'd be giving them away as required by his plans. And the players would never, ever assume they were true freebies without risks or duties attached.
rust said:
What he said!
My traveller games have always been about star travel - ground pounding occupies less than 1/2 of the game time. My players have always started with a ship. Not to say they didn't, often, end up losing it
Credits and resources come largely from patrons (and, sometimes from three fingered discounts - though generally of a take from a thief variety).
Upgrades and the like could happen, but that was more on a services for product type arrangement. Always found the whole bank loan thing hokey, and just as unrealistic as anything else. (Ok - yeah, you 6 ex-marine/army types with pilot and small arms skills - you seem like a good bet for a 40 year multi-MCr loan - no problem - sign here...)
If some players are motivated by making mortgage payments for an imaginary ship, in an imaginary universe, with imaginary coin - uh, okay.
I will try to open your eyes with a simple question: what for your PCs are adventuring? Just because adventure is fun? Then your players aren't playing their roles well, and you don't support good roleplaying.justacaveman said:
Most PCs are adventuring for money, reputation or some personal reasons. That's why the most popular sharship is Beowulf, a Free Trader, not Scout ship. A Trader simply gives you and your PCs more options, and makes their life more realistic. In the real life adventures aren't always available, and if the PCs can earn some money in the meantime, that's good.
I have no "problems". I just want to play the game seriously. My game isn't just another "blatantly unbelievable space adventure". There are wonders and miracles, but I have to define "normality" to make the miracles really wonderful. And in the normal universe people don't get starships for free.
Remember, economics cannot be avoided. It's very important for every single person. If you're trying to avoid it, you're getting another space tale (like Star Wars). But tales are awful stage for roleplaying: they aren't logical, and players cannot predict the consequences of their deeds in any way. Your examples of David Falcayn and NickVanRyn are also sort of tales.
Take Andre Norton's "Queen of Sun" series for good roleplaying stage. Her space traders are very limited in money, and money is the thing that drives them to adventuring. I could move the novels into Traveller almost unchanged
Actually, many knights took loans to pay for their horses and weapons
And no, the relative cost of all knight's equipment is still much lower than a starship cost. According to GURPS, a suggested starting wealth for TL3 (medieval) is $1000, and a heavy warhorse costs $5000 - just five times more. A suggested starting wealth for TL12 is 100.000, and starship costs a lot of millions.The actual difference is whether you want and need economics in your game or not. In a medieval game you can skip the economics, since the noble knights usually weren't merchants. Same about CoC game. But in a Traveller game you CANNOT skip economics, since it's everywhere!
Then the last thing your players want is the real roleplaying. No "real" Traveller character can forget about money. Even the Emperor itself cannot.Baeron Gredlocke said:
I agree, if you are planning to destroy their ship, then you can (and probably should) give it for free
But if you aren't, then giving them a free ship is just "stealing" some good adventures where they could earn enough money for the ship. Your PCs are going to LOVE their ship if they worked hard to buy it. If they didn't, they aren't going to feel how precious it is, they are more likely to take the unnecessary risks, and when they lose the ship, they will expect Referee to give them another.
In other words, they are willing to partake in adventure just for adventuring - something the real characters are very unlikely to do. Can't you see that's a bad roleplaying?
Then the players start to believe that all these things are NOT imaginary. Which is the base of all roleplaying.
Yep, which was my point - they did, but hardly any roleplaying game everEctor said:Actually, many knights took loans to pay for their horses and weapons
forces the characters to make this a part of the campaign.
I think we are both aware that this is ridiculous and was introduced to ma-
ke life easier for the player characters. During the real TL 3 the huge ma-
jority of the population was dirt poor and owned not much more than their
clothes and a few everyday items.
If you allow a medieval peasant to start with 1,000 $ you can just as well
give a Traveller free trader two starships.
In a medieval or early modern society the economy was just as every-
where as it is in a Traveller setting, and one can just as well play a medi-
eval game with economics (see Harnmaster's and Pendragon's supple-
ments for this) as one can avoid economics in Traveller.
Because the common imagination of medieval times is unrealistic. Which isn't true for Traveller.rust said:
It's not ridiculous, since PCs aren't assumed to be the ordinary people. An outstanding medieval man could have 1000 crowns that were 20% of the horse price. An outstanding Traveller man has ~100.000 Cr and few ship shares, but generally has just 1-5% of starship price.
Yes, it was. But common imagination "doesn't know" about it. That's crucial. For an average man, knights were gallant and wasted all their time on seeking fame
This is far from reality, but such myths form their own reality This cannot be done in Traveller, since everybody knows that most characters work for money, not for glory or honor.Ector, if you please.Somebody said:
There is no such thing as "my style of roleplaying". It's universally known that good roleplaying is doing what your character would do, and, if possible, even thinking what your character would think. And bad roleplaying is doing what your character wouldn't do, or very unlikely to do.
If you play another way, then you're just not roleplaying.
Did you ever think about the difference between a good tale and a good fantasy novel?
Good tale doesn't care about realism. Good guys win just because the teller wants so. Good fantasy is all about realism, with some changes, of course: good guys win only if they perform unbelievable things and have some luck. Thus, for the majority of adult players, good fantasy is better than good tale, even if it forces them to learn some details of the world.
BTW, no player is forced to have a degree in economics to play Traveller. You calculate the mortgage once, and even a child would easily calculate profit from the simple trade operations. But if you don't want trade, just pay your PCs for their heroic deeds, and make sure they're getting enough.
That's a crap! Would you call a good game of poker "role-playing"?
Why not, if everybody had "a lot of fun"? Roleplaying is the activity defined above, everything else isn't roleplaying at all.I somewhat doubt that a realistic imagination of a fictional Traveller uni-Ector said:
verse is possible at all.
The medieval equivalent to a Traveller free trader would be a sea trader
who owns a part of a cog or hulk, the Traveller equivalent to a knight
would be a noble with a TAS membership and a yacht.
The people who work for the money are the background population of the
setting, rarely the player characters. The colonist who settles on a newly
dicovered planet, the rebel who fights the local dictator, the scout who
makes first contact with an alien species and all those other typical Tra-
veller player characters are not in it for the money - the money grubbing
merchant is just one player character option, and it is the one I have seen
least often in thirty years of playing Traveller.
