Travellers as Passengers

[Tforbes]

I vaguely remember seeing a calculator, generator, or chart out there somewhere which was able to help determine a few key factors for situations where Travellers are... well... travelling but don't have a ship of their own.

Namely, how long do they have to wait for a ship headed to their destination? What kind of passage is available? What's the market rate for the route?

Sure, I could use the Passage and Freight chart from the Core book for cost and assume that there is always a ship heading to every destination departing immediately but...

Who doesn't want to introduce yet more randomness into this game.

Picture it: The Travellers are on a backwater dust-ball. They CAN book passage on the Far Trader currently at the port but he's charging 3 x the going rate since he knows there's no other choice. or the Travellers can wait the 6 weeks until somebody else comes by and hope they're less opportunistic.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

When you are wanting to go to that back water there may (short of owning or chartering a ship) be only one world you can find passage to the back water as it may be the only one that ships to them. To compound the issues they may only ship outwards to a different world so you can't directly return to the world you came from. If you are lucky the worlds that ship to and from the back water may ship to each other. They may have a triangle trade where A ships to B and B ships to C with C shipping to A.

Now major worlds will have a lot of places you can come from and go to but even some of those worlds may not be frequent and may not offer a route back.

Now an evil GM might take advantage of the characters by paying them to go from A to B to retrieve something and bring it back but the only each get 2 medium passages to cover the round trip and enough shipping money to cover the direct return cargo costs. Then they find that they are having to pay for an extra medium passage and an extra cargo leg eating up all their profits. But it will be up to the characters to find a way to make a Cr on it without being sued into oblivion. They should be checking the routes before they accept the job.

 

[Tforbes]

I completely see that Referee fiat is always going to have a place in this situation in service of a narrative.

I simply cannot for the life of me get it out of my head that I have seen a generator which (similar to TravellerTools) could be used to look up a given planet and its Neighbours to determine when / if the next ship would be arriving / departing which Travellers could book passage on.

Who knows? it may have been a dream I once had...

 

[rinku]

As a quick and dirty method for ships with available berths you could use the Seeking Passengers rules on CRB p239.

Instead of a Broker, Carouse or Streetwise check modified by Steward skill, make a flat 8+ roll to see how many ships in port are taking on passengers, using all the other modifiers, and reading the Passenger Traffic result number of dice as the number of ships.

So, as an example, travelling from a Pop 6 (+1), Starport D (+0) world to a Pop 7(+1), Starport E (-1) one gives a net +1. Rolling availability for Low passage (total +2) and getting a 7 gives an effect of 1, so there are no ships with low berths available. Rolling for basic passage (total +1), the players get a 11, an effect of 4 that indicates two ships are taking on Basic passengers (probably slavers. I'd be careful). Middle passage roll (+1) is 9, effect 2. So there is one ship taking on middle passengers. High Passage (-3) roll is 10... effect -1 and no ships in port have any staterooms free.

(Those rolls likely mean the ship taking on middle passengers doesn't have the Steward skills or free cargo to take High.)

Anyway, just a suggestion.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Is that a different ship for each type or do someone those ships count more than once as they may carry more than one type of passenger?

 

[rinku]

Could be either.

It's only a quick kludge, but using established rules regarding passenger traffic. Referee decides the specifics, and how many berths are free, which may matter.

You could generate how many ships are in port, but a lot of them either won't be taking on passengers, will already be fully booked or won't have enough berths for the party. And thinking about it, it's probably best if this method is generating only ships that do have enough berths for the group.

 

[boggo2300]

As a quick and dirty method for ships with available berths you could use the Seeking Passengers rules on CRB p239.

Also known as the Personal Ads...

 

[AndrewW]

It's only a quick kludge, but using established rules regarding passenger traffic. Referee decides the specifics, and how many berths are free, which may matter.

You could generate how many ships are in port, but a lot of them either won't be taking on passengers, will already be fully booked or won't have enough berths for the party. And thinking about it, it's probably best if this method is generating only ships that do have enough berths for the group.

May have to split the party between ships due to available berths.

 

[Sigtrygg]

No idea what the official rules are. here is how I have done it for many decades...

For worlds on trade routes/xboat links there is regular commercial passage available - roll 3d for how many hours until a ship is departing to your desired destination world.

If your destination world is not on the trade/xboat route then roll 1d each day, on a 6 a ship posts passenger requests for the world
DMs up the referee, take into account destination world trade code, starport type, population.

If you are on a world that is not on a trade/xboat route and seek passage off world then use the same as immediately above.