Traditional Traveller Game costs

[IanBruntlett]

OK, to quote page 2 of the Core Rulebook:-

"The Traveller Campaign The traditional Traveller campaign features a little bit of everything. The characters will go from exploring abandoned alien Ziggurats to rescuing missing pets to taking on the local crime lord in a protracted gang war. Inspiration could come from anywhere"

Mg have done some really good books to support running traditional Traveller games. I've got them and will be using them.

However, ship's mortgages have got me stumped. How could your average patron possibly have enough credits to employ the player's characters? Lets assume that the players are proud (mortgaged) owners of a Scout (Type S). Here are a few monthly costs I came up with...

114,752 Cr Mortgage
2,754 Cr Maintenance
8,000 Cr Life support
200 Cr Unrefined fuel
10,000 Cr / ton spare parts

Thanks

 

[AndrewW]

However, ship's mortgages have got me stumped. How could your average patron possibly have enough credits to employ the player's characters? Lets assume that the players are proud (mortgaged) owners of a Scout (Type S). Here are a few monthly costs I came up with...

Note those are usually on loan to scouts that aren't currently serving, subject to recall. But with no mortgage and free refined fuel at scout bases thrown in.

 

[IanBruntlett]

Note those are usually on loan to scouts that aren't currently serving, subject to recall. But with no mortgage and free refined fuel at scout bases thrown in.

I've done that in the past. And I'll be doing that again in the future.

I wasn't sure if I was just fudging things too much. However, your reply confirms that that is the way to go about things.

Thanks

 

[dragoner]

The typical methods used in life
by 20th century Terrans (thrift, dedication, and hard work) do not work in
Traveller; instead, travellers must boldly plan and execute daring schemes for the
acquisition of wealth and power

CT Book 3 last page

Also, not being a stingy ref, the players in the game I'm ref of made a pretty penny robbing a gun smuggler's deal; which it should be a fairly decent haul.

 

[IanBruntlett]

Could I have examples please?

In particular, a brief explanation of what you or your players were up to and the rewards they were given would be nice.

 

[dragoner]

The players were on the trail of a lost Zhodani prototype ship, where they stopped at the scene of a battle and found a damaged nuclear missile in the fragments of a ship (Gyges class frigate). Then at the starport they sold the nuclear warhead to an agent on a balkanized world, who was working for some insurgents; the agent tipped them off to a crooked arms dealer who burned them, and she wanted burned in turn.

The players rented a room in the same hotel, modified a personal drone into a gas bomb, then interrupted the meeting and got in a fight in the foyer of the suite but final got the drone through the door and gassed everyone in the meeting. Grabbing the money, comms, and any available guns, they fled; hopped on their ship and were gone.

The haul:

Cr.3000 for the nuke.
Cr250k in the briefcase.
1 assault rifle with a 30 round clip (4d6, AP)
1 Knife, Nic's (2d6)
2 auto-pistols w/2 15rnd clips (3d6-3)
A comm and credentials both belonging to a Julius Round, arms dealer

Money was a four way split, iirc

 

[Nobby-W]

The mortgage on a starship will be a significant fraction of its running costs, and a bank could quite reasonably be expected to ask for a business plan or other evidence of ability to support the mortgage. A Book-2 style Type-S is never going to be viable as a trading ship, so it is unlikely that a bank would actually extend a mortgage to a party wanting one for adventuring.

A free trader or other merchant ship with the ability to realise revenue is much more likely to be viable as a business, and so a party could produce a credible business plan to convince the bank manager to lend 10's of millions of credits.

There is also another problem with really expensive starships - the finances involved in running a starship are one or two orders of magnitude higher than the costs of adventuring and purchasing kit. This can lead to balance issues where the party has too much money (Oh, I'll just go out and buy this suit of battle dress ...).

IMTU I have approached by making starships cheaper and parties less rich, by having a market in secondhand starships. The starships go for a market value based on what is economically viable to do with the ship. Merchant ships might go for significantly more than a Type-S because they have significant revenue generation capacity. The actual market value of a used Type-S would be based on what type of business could be sustained with the hull, e.g.

* Transport for some party of troubleshooters or adventurers
* Conversion to specialist applications, such as a Seeker
* Breaking up and selling for parts

In this situation the market value of a used Type-S might be a small fraction of the new purchase price of the ship, perhaps just a couple of million credits or so. This is a sum of money that might be attainable by a party through more conventional adventuring.

As an analogy, markets for used aircraft or ships much like this exist in the world today. For example, people still fly Boeing 707s economically on certain routes (or used to do so until recently); at one point the market value of an airworthy B707 was about 2 million USD, just a few percent of the price of a new airliner of similar capacity.

A free trader or other merchant ship would probably have considerably greater market value as it is much more viable as a business, at least on certain routes. The value of such a craft might be closer to 5 or 10 million for a free trader (more for a larger ship with more payload), but a party could prepare a plausible business plan and use it to obtain a mortgage to purchase one.

This type of secondhand market gives the referee an option for having the players obtain a ship and run it on a much more modest budget. The finances are much more in line with the sort of money involved in adventuring, so cheap ships are (possibly somewhat counter-intuitively) actually an aid to game balance.

 

[Reynard]

Traveller characters are not normal, to say the least. They don't have 9 to 5 jobs since leaving their service and hope to make a killing on their own maybe even strike it rich with luck. They often acquire a ship to go places where the riches are and buy equipment to meet their needs. Now they just need the right patrons with the right jobs. They won't be purchasing the mortgage on the ship in a few adventure but they'll have it easier than the mundane merchant struggling for every credit or that other band of mercs one jump away from bankruptcy.

Yeah, real life for the ordinary sucks compared to the RPG character.

 

[phavoc]

OK, to quote page 2 of the Core Rulebook:-

"The Traveller Campaign The traditional Traveller campaign features a little bit of everything. The characters will go from exploring abandoned alien Ziggurats to rescuing missing pets to taking on the local crime lord in a protracted gang war. Inspiration could come from anywhere"

Mg have done some really good books to support running traditional Traveller games. I've got them and will be using them.

However, ship's mortgages have got me stumped. How could your average patron possibly have enough credits to employ the player's characters? Lets assume that the players are proud (mortgaged) owners of a Scout (Type S). Here are a few monthly costs I came up with...

114,752 Cr Mortgage
2,754 Cr Maintenance
8,000 Cr Life support
200 Cr Unrefined fuel
10,000 Cr / ton spare parts

Thanks

From the new Free Trader supplement:

Other costs are less frequent (such as yard bills for the annual overhaul and refit). A wise shipowner puts away money each month for this, so the maintenance cost is listed as a monthly
expense. However, only about 20% of this maintenance cost is actually spent each month on spares and stores. The rest is put away to pay for a proper overhaul in a suitably equipped
maintenance yard. Class A and B starports almost always have a yard, and private yards may also exist elsewhere.

Conceptually this makes sense. Ships, aircraft, even cars, don't get heavy maintenance every year. They get it at regular intervals or as needed. The costs for spares (normal stuff at least) should be included in the regular monthly maintenance costs. After all, if you aren't replacing anything then what the hell is that money going towards? Certainly not labor (free from the PC's).

The life support costs have always bit a bit wonky for my tastes. If a cabin is empty you can seal it off and it should consume NO resources. But the book says they do, even if unoccupied. And how can that be? Is the Kwisatz Haderach hitching a ride with the players and they don't know it?

The players, most likely, have been given a scout/courier, so there is no mortgage cost. Maintenance can be done at scout bases for free. They are rugged little ships designed to operate on unrefined fuel, so that could be free wherever they go. Salaries, well, they are paying themselves, so they do without a paycheck for a little while.

Assuming we go with the surplus Scout for the players, we change the equation to:


0 Cr Mortgage
2,754 Cr Maintenance
Variable Cr Life support
Variable Cr Crew salaries
200 Cr Unrefined fuel
0 Cr / ton spare parts

If you look at it that way it becomes much more manageable. One could argue that if they are docked the life support costs would be less, but docking fees apply, which might offset the cost savings.

 

[Condottiere]

Twentieth century aircraft depreciate faster than fiftieth century starships, and comparing maintenance rates, are far better built as well.

The dichotomy in the town of the week, is that a horse and/or van is cheaper and low maintenance than a starship. Public transport is exorbitant, and the cheapest form leaves you dicing with Death.

 

[Epicenter]

The mortgage on a Type-S should leave you stumped. It's about as practical as spaceship for Traveller as a noble's yacht.

While the analogy is pretty loose here, it'd be along the lines of someone walking into a bank and wanting a loan on small "cutter" type ship, like the kind the US Coast Guard uses - ocean-going, reasonable endurance, light armament, hardly any room for cargo.

There's really no economic activity that such a ship could use to repay costs. Quasi-military ships aren't profit-making vessels, they may support revenue-generation but are an expense, not a generator. So the ship would probably be bought by governments or maybe large corporations who have deep pockets and large revenue streams as a security or patrol vessel. The Scout isn't alone; there's a lot of ships like that in Traveller - they're intended as encounters (the corsair) or for more specialized campaigns.

Typically Type-S vessels are on loan to a former Scout. Otherwise, the players might have a Type-S hull they bought surplus and fixed back up to working condition and flying it around. Such a reconditioned starship might not have an actual mortgage, but certainly repairs on such a reconditioned starship would be many times more expensive than a normal ship.

While the Free Trader is the typical campaign vessel, of course in standard Traveller, once the players have reasonable trading skills, they'll make a lot more money simply eternally rolling on the trade tables than going adventuring.

Ships I've had more success with campaigns with:

* Mercenary Cruiser. Be ready to run a military campaign. Not everyone's cup of tea, obviously.

* Liner. Pretty obvious, basically a Free Trader but transporting passengers - I'm not sure this one actually works out with most editions of the Traveller trade rules though - the rules are very poor.

* Far Trader. Like the Free Trader but unprofitable! This one definitely doesn't pay off with most Traveller trade rules so you'll need to fudge it.

* Safari Ship. I admit this is the one my players are currently running. We're having a blast with it, too. The bank was kinda skeptical of course, but the players sold it; their business plan was to take nobles and other rich types to remote-ish planets for safaris and other walkabouts. It's pretty much the most fun campaign I've run in years of Traveller now. It's an excursion ship for rich people who want to go visiting planets for safaris. Great excuses to fly to remote worlds, interdicted worlds, and so on. They get to rub elbows with nobles who learn about the player's unique ... erm ... skills and discretion and their ship gets chartered to do all kinds of questionable things as well as legal stuff. The kind of feast-or-famine campaign that doesn't have a constant revenue stream so the players are scrambling to make ends meet at times.