GURPS Traveller-esque game: Ship Cost?

[zeborazor]

I have a quick question. I'm running a space game in a similar vein to Traveller. Basically the group will be the Captain/Crew of a free merchant vessel roaming around the galaxy. Question is, what is a fair way to charge for the ship? The Hero-Class is like 68mill and at 125pts that's a tad expensive. Even doing the financing requires a down-payment of 6.8mill. I was thinking of providing a patron that would give them the ship in return for intel, however just giving them 68mill for a duty doesn't seem exactly right.

Suggestions? Just trying to figure out a fair way, without just handing it over to them. Thanks for the suggestions.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Agemegos

Don't make a rod for your own back. If you want them to be in a ship, put them in a ship.

The GURPS rules are tools; in particular the character cost rules are tools to allow players choices within constraints. If your campaign won't withstand the players choosing anything other than to play the complement of the ship provided, don't put that choice in front of them. And without the choice you don't need the constraints.

Agreed. Think of it as a campaign switch. If you want them to have a ship, give it to them and say that it costs so many $ per month to keep in shape.

In a normal such campaign I'd give them a ship that was barely in shape to give plenty of GM hooks for use (oops, the thingamajig broke down and you won't be able to leave the planet until it's fixed). Thinks like this give the characters incentive to accept shady jobs when necessary. In addition, when they do get money they can use it to bring the ship slowly within specs.

[zeborazor]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

Agreed. Think of it as a campaign switch. If you want them to have a ship, give it to them and say that it costs so many $ per month to keep in shape.

In a normal such campaign I'd give them a ship that was barely in shape to give plenty of GM hooks for use (oops, the thingamajig broke down and you won't be able to leave the planet until it's fixed). Thinks like this give the characters incentive to accept shady jobs when necessary. In addition, when they do get money they can use it to bring the ship slowly within specs.

That was one of my fears. I want the game to be pretty gritty and wasn't sure if giving them the ship would be too much of a luxury, but for some reason I hadn't thought of just giving them an old, rusty, bucket. Things to ponder...

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by zeborazor

ISuggestions? Just trying to figure out a fair way, without just handing it over to them. Thanks for the suggestions.

As for this being fair, giving them a ship is only questionable if you give it to only one character. Perhaps it could be something earned by the group (maybe found in a junkyard and bought for scrap price that they fixed up over the last several years). Or maybe they all put money in a lottery ticket and the ticket won allowing them to buy the shop.

However, if this is necessary for the campaign you probably shouldn't be charging the players for the ship.

[DangerousThing]

I have it easy. My space opera in inside a Dyson sphere where each habitat is connected to others, so dirigibles and floaters (anti-grav vehicles) will do fine.

One of the characters was given half the ship by her grandfather, but she doesn't want to be a leader and I trust her with this.

Otherwise I would have had to figure out a way to give it to everybody equally.

[Kilmore]

If your campaign has artificial intelligence, your ship could be an NPC. No one owns it, it just lets people ride in return for helping take care of it's business.

[Humabout]

Originally Posted by zeborazor

I have a quick question. I'm running a space game in a similar vein to Traveller. Basically the group will be the Captain/Crew of a free merchant vessel roaming around the galaxy. Question is, what is a fair way to charge for the ship? The Hero-Class is like 68mill and at 125pts that's a tad expensive. Even doing the financing requires a down-payment of 6.8mill. I was thinking of providing a patron that would give them the ship in return for intel, however just giving them 68mill for a duty doesn't seem exactly right.

Suggestions? Just trying to figure out a fair way, without just handing it over to them. Thanks for the suggestions.

Firstly, is this ship merely a plot device that lets them travel around or get into trouble? If so, it doesn't need to cost points; it doesn't boost anyone's capabilities any.

Secondly, a) does the ship belong to just one PC? and b) what benefit does that ownership bestow on the owner that the other PCs don't share in? If the ship belongs to the group, again, there's no reason to charge points for it - no one gains a benefit the others lack. If fewer than all of the PCs own it, but they don't get any added capability, it still shouldn't cost points. More simply put, character points measure capability, so if no one gets extra capability for owning the ship, it shouldn't cost character points.

If only one person owns the ship and that lets him do things the others can't, then you'll need to charge him points for it. You might consider monstrous amounts of Signature Gear, Wealth, or points traded for cash backed up with a full load of debt as a Starship Owner meta-trait.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by zeborazor

That was one of my fears. I want the game to be pretty gritty and wasn't sure if giving them the ship would be too much of a luxury, but for some reason I hadn't thought of just giving them an old, rusty, bucket. Things to ponder...

Don't forget the heavy mortgage they signed in a language they don't understand with a shady character.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by zeborazor

I. Question is, what is a fair way to charge for the ship? The Hero-Class is like 68mill and at 125pts that's a tad expensive. Even doing the financing requires a down-payment of 6.8mill. I was thinking of providing a patron that would give them the ship in return for intel, however just giving them 68mill for a duty doesn't seem exactly right.
.

Patron is the cheap way to get a ship when working with character pts.

When working with $ you should probably note that Traveller ships have costs inflated by their really rather large sizes and assumptions about what's necessary for interstellar travel. That Hero class is a lot bigger than the Millenium Falcon. The Hero is more like a small ocean-going freighter while the Flacon is sized like a DC-3. It's 200 dTons for one and maybe 30 dTons for the other.

Specifically Interstellar Wars ships are more expensive than previous versions of Travellwe because they're _more_ capable. the GT Beowulf is only J-1 while the ISW Hero is J-2 in spite of being thousands of years more primitive. This was probably a retcon done as a nod towards astrophysical reality. 1 parsec at a time won't get you to very many places in the real galaxy.

So, you don't have to do your numbers in $ but even if you do the numbers taken from any particular setting can be highly idiosyncratic. I designed ships from scratch with Ve2 for a Space campaign and my tramp freighters were only $1 million new and half that used.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by zeborazor

Suggestions? Just trying to figure out a fair way, without just handing it over to them. Thanks for the suggestions.

In one of my own designs, an abandoned RPG named Modern Action RPG (covering some of the same ground as the GURPS Action series), one of the things you could do during character creation was to pool points from different player characters towards collective ownership of a large and expensive vehicle. Points had a non-linear effect, so that e.g. a total of 8 points would give 50% more vehicle than 7 points.

It should be possible to do something similar in GURPS. Instead of having each player buy Very Wealthy, or whatever, and then still have to commit massive fudgery as in several orders of magnitude, use some kind of Signature Gear or Signature Vehicle variant rule, where a pool of CPs, contributed to by every player, is converted into a monetary value, and that's how much ship they can collectivey afford to own.

I know that a poster on here, PK (P. Kitty), the Assistant Line Editor for GURPS, has some house rules for Wealth, IIRC including Signature Gear, on his MyGURPS page. I don't have the address bookmarked but it should be findable with Google.