Giving spaceships character
 

In what ways can one turn a spaceship into a character in its own right by giving it quirks? I don't mean building a spaceship with the character-creation rules; I mean individualizing spaceships.

In my case, I need ideas for a state-of-the-art, retro-tech (TL 6+3) Patrol frigate for Tales of the Solar Patrol.

Re: Giving spaceships character
 

Do you have the old Pyramid archives? There's an article on that topic, giving vehicles and other equipment individual "character" through quirks like systems needing time to warm up before reaching full power, making funny noises under specific circumstances, and so on.

Re: Giving spaceships character
 

You might want to consider using the Used Vehicles rules from GUPRS Action 1: Heroes. Basically you can knock up to 60% off of what the vehicle would cost brand new and then make a roll on the table in there per 10%, some of the entries are Bad Legs [reduced range], Wobbly [reduced SR], etc. Just adept them to Spaceships and viola a nice quirky ship. I put forth this idea in the playtest for Book 7 but I don't know if it made it in, I've used it in a game before and it didn't seem to mess anything up. But like I said, you'd need to convert it over a bit.

Ghostdancer

Re: Giving spaceships character
 

In Jan-16, 2004's Pyramid, Erik Funk's article "The Universal Breakdown Manual for GURPS" references 2 articles:

"Appendix Z: Starship Troubles" by David Morgan-Mar -- For starship quirks (25th April 2002) [0425.3.html]
"Appendix Z: What's Wrong With It?" by Matt Riggsby -- For component quirks (29th August 2002) [0829.3.html]

They're both in the 2002 archive zip, filenames listed on the end of the above lines!

Re: Giving spaceships character
 

Ooh! Good! I've got the archives. Thanks, guys!

Re: Giving spaceships character
 

I'm thinking of Firefly, here, so I don't know if this will jibe exactly with what you have in mind, but aside from operational quirks (which she certainly had and contributed greatly to her character), one of the things that gave Serenity her character was the shape of her. Not just her profile, but inside, things were sort of awkward in places because, presumably, some conduit had to run through the wall, here, and you just have to duck, too bad. Similarly, she crew had personalized the spaces. I assume it was Kaylee that did it, but anyway, someone painted vines and flowers along columns and beams in the galley room, for instance. Jayne had his weight set in the cargo bay under the little platform thingie.

Those are the kinds of things, anyway, that I think about when I think of ship character. They're the same kinds of things that caused my wife and I to go shopping specifically for a house built in the 50s or 60s, rather than new construction.


Ben

Re: Giving spaceships character
 

State of the art milspec equipment will inevitably suffer from having some features in the design specs that the contractors dutifully put in, that don't actually work. Pick some tasks that are normal spaceship operations and introduce some widget that in theory will make it easier but have the widget just never quite work right.

Re: Giving spaceships character
 

Ah! Yes, I get the feeling that the mechanics have never quite gotten the AutoChef to get the coffee to taste quite right.