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Old 09-01-2021, 08:00 PM   #11
Agemegos
 
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Default Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign

One of the things that you have to be careful about is making sure that tramp trading is not so compelling that the PCs can’t afford to have adventures. Ships make money when they are under way with cargo; they cost a bomb when they are docked. If your adventures are actually set on planets or in the hinterlands of exotic ports, and seldom occur on the ship at sea or in space, your PCs may work out that their characters effectively pay a fortune in lost profits to go on an adventure. Another thing that you have to be careful of is not to make adventures so compelling that PCs can’t afford to serve as crew on ships at sea. If the PCs have more fun and are better-paid as mercenaries than as merchants their incentive is to quit their jobs as seamen. Thirdly, you have the issue of PCs selling their ship and retiring rich.

I’ve always found it tricky, and that’s why I prefer to run campaigns for PCs whose job is to face opposition on planets rather than to maintain and steer a ship in space, for spies &c. who travel in or charter commercial aircraft like James Bond or Indiana Jones rather than for shoestring air charter firms with a surplus DC-3.

Before you put the effort in to making a tramp freighter campaign work, ask why you want to play the crew rather than the passengers, and consider easier and more versatile alternatives.
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Last edited by Agemegos; 09-01-2021 at 08:34 PM.
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Old 09-01-2021, 08:12 PM   #12
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Default Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anthony View Post
Han Solo should be able to buy the Millennium Falcon with Signature Gear, meaning it costs at most something like 10x average starting wealth.
Quote:
LUKE
Ten thousand? We could almost buy
our own ship for that!

HAN
But who's going to fly it, kid!
You?
When I wrote my D&D-based pastiche that we played in 1977 between the release of Star Wars and discovering Traveller, I based the ship prices on this exchange. Han doesn't deny that 10,000 [credits or whatever] are almost enough to buy a ship -- and Luke earns most of the 2,000 [do.] front money by selling his used landspeeder. (It also reinforces the sense that Millenium Falcon is a junker, however lovingly hotrodded.)

I lost a very heated argument with the other authors of the Serenity RPG, that boats in Whedon's 'Verse are cheap and that this facilitates adventuring because it allows the characters to take on small jobs. For example, Mal covers his operating costs for three weeks (or more) on the profits from smuggling two dozen head of cattle, and isn't worried about a ~10% shift in the price. The counter-argument amounted to, "well, starships in Traveller are expensive," and that saddling the characters with high costs and debt is a spur to risk-taking.
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Old 09-02-2021, 02:24 AM   #13
sjard
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Default Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign

My experience with a number of years playing both Traveller and the various Star Wars RPG incarnations is that the cheap price of ships in Star Wars are far more conducive to risk taking adventuring than the (by comparison) obscenely expensive Traveller ships of the same small party adventuring type ship.

For comparison, a quick check of two versions of star wars lists the unmodified YT-1300 (millenium falcon), at 100,000 credits new, 25,000 used. A third lists only 110,000 credits new.

Compared to Traveller's Type A/Beowulf class, probably the closest equivalent, being (price seems to vary by edition) around 35-40 million credits new, and it being just barely possible to make a profit from safe trading.

So my experience is that the lower cost tends to make cargo runs what you do on your time off (and you can generally make a decent living off of the WEG d6 trade rules) and as cover for getting into a new location for adventuring purposes.

Short version, most player's I've seen in person (a few hundred which isn't a massive amount) usually want the "Yeah, I'm a tramp freighter captain" as a background detail and occasional bit of flavor.

But there was some variation in that I had one group for whom the minutia of running a profitable trading only tramp freighter game was a lot of fun. The most exciting thing they got up to was the occasional smuggling run with only a handful of shots being exchanged through the entire campaign.

Edit: So, for me, I'd start with polling the players about what they want to see out of such a game, and then, after the first couple of sessions, polling them again to see if things need to be adjusted one way or another.
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Old 09-02-2021, 07:33 AM   #14
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Default Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign

Quote:
Originally Posted by Agemegos View Post
One of the things that you have to be careful about is making sure that tramp trading is not so compelling that the PCs can’t afford to have adventures. Ships make money when they are under way with cargo; they cost a bomb when they are docked. If your adventures are actually set on planets or in the hinterlands of exotic ports, and seldom occur on the ship at sea or in space, your PCs may work out that their characters effectively pay a fortune in lost profits to go on an adventure. Another thing that you have to be careful of is not to make adventures so compelling that PCs can’t afford to serve as crew on ships at sea. If the PCs have more fun and are better-paid as mercenaries than as merchants their incentive is to quit their jobs as seamen. Thirdly, you have the issue of PCs selling their ship and retiring rich.
Yes, Traveller seems to assume one week in jump, one week on planet (less a bit for transit between jump radius and interesting places), and for that matter something like breakbulk freight rather than containers. Really you'd expect the purser to start negotiating for cargoes the moment the ship comes out of jump (trying to stay generic-ish: gets into radio range of the port), and actual time on-planet would be limited to unloading followed by loading. (Plus the occasional evening off for crew recreation.) In a lower-tech setting you may not have "radio range of the port" so you can't set up the next cargo until you've actually arrived.

And of course Traveller puts its thumb on the scales with the ship mortgage, biasing the trade system (at least in some editions) so that you are very unlikely to make a profit at it and have to take side jobs. I think it's just assumed that A Ship Is Freedom so you won't give that up…

(As far as I can see, what Traveller assumes is the default, speculating on cargo with ship's funds, was vastly less common in reality than taking a contract to haul a load of A from B to C.)

This is where "Passage Crew" has some advantages, I think: you have to be at the destination point by a certain date or you lose reputation, but any money you make en route you can keep. (And, in my rough outline, stealing the ship is an offence against the Imperium, not some mere local polity that you can leave behind.) It's not going to fit every character, but for the sort of just-mustered-out no-particular-place-to-go drifter that's my usual experience of Traveller PCs it seems like a decent bet.

It's perhaps worth considering Firefly too, with its obvious heavy Traveller influence – they aren't in it to get rich, or at least they have no realistic prospect of doing so (and TV rules say that they start every adventure poor even if they did well out of the last one), but (even for the crew without warrants on them) it's a life that they can fit into better than being a dirt farmer, which seems to be the main legitimate alternative.

Another consideration of course is that it can be fun to play the pilot, if piloty things happen frequently enough to make it worth the investment of points. Ditto engineer.
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Old 09-02-2021, 07:35 AM   #15
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Default Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign

Quote:
Originally Posted by sjard View Post

a quick check of two versions of star wars lists the unmodified YT-1300 (millenium falcon), at 100,000 credits new, 25,000 used. A third lists only 110,000 credits new.

Compared to Traveller's Type A/Beowulf class, probably the closest equivalent, being (price seems to vary by edition) around 35-40 million credits new,
In G:Traveller a Beowulf was $26 or 27 million. The more capable Empress Marava was in the mid 30s. Interstelar Wars retconned the Beowulf into a J-2 ship basically making it into the Marava and it was then in the price range you give.

All Traveller ships and ships in systems influenced by Traveller are _huge_. I blame the liquid hydrogen for this but ships that by concept art are supposed to be like the Millenium Falcon end up being bigger than 747s.

I ran 2 fairly successful campaings about tramp freighters and their crews but I designed the ships with Ve2/GVB (this was much easier than some people might expect) and they were much smaller and cheaper. I got the price down to a million $ new and I believe it helped quite a bit.

I did the Mandalorian's ship in G:Spaceships and it was in the million range too. If you wanted to turn prices sjard gave from Star Wars into Gurps $ you could sue from Ultra Tech you could set 1 SW credit to 10 G$. The feel might be better if you had players use the SW credit though.
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Old 09-02-2021, 09:22 AM   #16
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Default Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign

Quote:
Originally Posted by RogerBW View Post
(As far as I can see, what Traveller assumes is the default, speculating on cargo with ship's funds, was vastly less common in reality than taking a contract to haul a load of A from B to C.)
Small nit: speculative cargo isn't the default even in classic Traveller, although it gets by far the most discussion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Book 2 page 46
Although most commercial starships routinely carry cargos as common carriers, charging a flat rate of Cr1,OOO per ton for the service, many also engage in speculation by buying goods at low prices, transporting them in spare cargo space, and then selling them for higher prices in markets anxious for them.
The rules for cargo are on pp. 8-9 and 11.
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Old 09-04-2021, 09:39 AM   #17
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Default Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
I ran 2 fairly successful campaings about tramp freighters and their crews but I designed the ships with Ve2/GVB (this was much easier than some people might expect) and they were much smaller and cheaper. I got the price down to a million $ new and I believe it helped quite a bit.
I have considered dropping the 100dt minimum size. A 30dt J1M1 GURPS Traveller ship can be bought for 7 MCr.

And ships are part of the same universe as cars, guns, houses, restaurants, robots, etc. If ships get cheap, what happens to everything else? A car must be much cheaper than a ship for example. What does this mean for living standards on planets?
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Old 09-06-2021, 03:46 AM   #18
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Default Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign

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Originally Posted by Pomphis View Post
I have considered dropping the 100dt minimum size. A 30dt J1M1 GURPS Traveller ship can be bought for 7 MCr.

And ships are part of the same universe as cars, guns, houses, restaurants, robots, etc. If ships get cheap, what happens to everything else? A car must be much cheaper than a ship for example. What does this mean for living standards on planets?
For reference - by comparison to modern surface cargo ships - I did a quick Google search and found:

"A decent fast ferry. Will start at $50,000 U.S.. Just for a good restored A+ shape hull. Figure 20 years before major work needed. Next add engine, radar, tanks, all. $400,000 with luck. Or more. That is a small cargo boat. Made to run fast freight in the S China sea area. Lets say from Japan to Cambodia to Vietnam to Malasia & around of small packages to small irregular ports. I see some for sale in the $200,000 range used. But getting to have high repair cost."

"But I recall we paid upwards between $80MM to $100MM for some of our ships built in Korea but I regret I do not recall their size. I think they were in the 4,000 to 6,000 TEU range."

Of course, after something like WW2 I'm told merchant shipping (specifically Liberty and Victory ships) suddenly became very cheap as piles of government of tonnage gets auctioned off. This could also be where cool adventure ships such as the equivalents of LSTs and Tenders become available. And possibly weapons as well in the right circumstances.

Oh, and for reference: Wikipedia tells us that the Victory ships were built for (2019 adjusted) ~$30,400,000 ... what that came down to at government surplus auction is anyone's guess.

Last edited by The Colonel; 09-06-2021 at 03:51 AM.
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Old 09-06-2021, 07:52 AM   #19
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Default Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign

Quote:
Originally Posted by The Colonel View Post
Of course, after something like WW2 I'm told merchant shipping (specifically Liberty and Victory ships) suddenly became very cheap as piles of government of tonnage gets auctioned off. This could also be where cool adventure ships such as the equivalents of LSTs and Tenders become available.
For what it's worth, something of this sort was written into the background of the Hero class in GT Interstellar Wars (p. 206), specifically to justify making them cheaply available to PCs:

Quote:
During peace negotiations, Imperial officials didn’t consider the Hero-class ships to be valuable enough to demand their return. As a result, dozens of these ships have been sold to private Terran bidders at scrapyard prices, to be converted into independent trading and exploration vessels.
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Old 09-06-2021, 11:05 AM   #20
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Default Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign

Just occurred to me in glancing at my RPG shelves that _Red Markets_ has a pretty good economic engine in it. Didn't care much for the setting, but the engine looked useful for simulating, well, markets.
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