[Spaceships] Making a setting work...

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

Although the Ricardo class itself wouldn't work without an oversized Phase Conveyor; I limit phase conveyors to only conveying mass equal to the mass of a ship their size, to keep ships from using undersize phase conveyors. As a side effect, external clamps aren't much use unless you have empty cargo holds sufficient to make up for the mass you're clamped to.

The Ricardo class has 6 FTL systems, so a Ricardo with it's full 5 equal-mass barges is the usual 5% by mass jumpdrives.

[Ejidoth]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

The Ricardo class has 6 FTL systems, so a Ricardo with it's full 5 equal-mass barges is the usual 5% by mass jumpdrives.

Ah! Okay. Yeah, that would more or less work, then.

[safisher]

Why not go back to the age of adventure and see how it worked? A reputation for success, or ruthlessness, "paid" with adventuring opportunities. Joint-Stock companies were driven by wealthy men with an appetite for great reward. They were GREEDY, and they were perfectly happy to send off some capable captains and see if they came back. Columbus did not own his ship. He wasn't even a very good navigator, or the most experienced sea captain. He was lucky (which in GURPS you can quantify) and he was qualified. Sometimes, that's all that was necessary. John Smith was not a man of means, but he commanded a very important colonizing expedition when his style of leadership was needed. Most of the adventurers of that era, in fact, were what we all would call high point PCs with only a marginal amount of investment in wealth. They had marginal status, but clearly impressive levels of much more important stuff -- Fearlessness, Charisma, Talents, high skills in Leadership, Combat Weapons, etc. Read up on Cortez or any other the Conquistadors. Those guys were classic adventurers and the stuff they pulled off made them gather even more opportunity. If they failed, they often died.

The archetype for a good space game, IMO, is not the self-made captain who owns his ship. He's won it in a card game, got it on loan from a mafia in Zeta Alpha, or stole it from a dock on the other side of the universe. But if you want them to be made-men, just give them the points. You are playing an adventure game, not populating a reality simulator.

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by safisher

The archetype for a good space game, IMO, is not the self-made captain who owns his ship.

Malcolm Reynolds of the Serenity would disagree.

He's won it in a card game, got it on loan from a mafia in Zeta Alpha, or stole it from a dock on the other side of the universe.

"Hey, GM! You let Bob have a free spaceship by saying he won it in a card game. Well I won a Super Dooper Personal Impenetrable Force Field Insta-Kill Blaster Doohickey in a bowling match! Gimme the stats!"

Freebies only work if they are campaign elements that benefit the entire group equally. The moment the owning player says, "It's my ship! Follow my rules or else," you've got a problem.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Malcolm Reynolds of the Serenity would disagree.

Mal bought his own ship, apparently without debt, but do we know where the money came from?

[Stormcrow]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Mal bought his own ship, apparently without debt, but do we know where the money came from?

Doesn't matter. Starting wealth doesn't consider how you got it, only that it's yours.

Mal owns, with no strings attached, a cheap or very cheap ship, yet he is Poor. A character cannot start like this in GURPS without GM fiat or without spending hundreds or thousands of points on Signature Gear or extra cash.

[Ejidoth]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Doesn't matter. Starting wealth doesn't consider how you got it, only that it's yours.

Mal owns, with no strings attached, a cheap or very cheap ship, yet he is Poor. A character cannot start like this in GURPS without GM fiat or without spending hundreds or thousands of points on Signature Gear or extra cash.

I've been thinking about this. I think the difference might be what Poor means.

You're wealth level in GURPS measures potential income almost more than it measures actual worth. The money you can make with a ship is generally proportionate to the size and quality - and thus cost - of the ship.

In GURPS terms, Mal has a fairly high level of Wealth with 100% of it in Signature Assets (see Spaceships 2, p. 27) for Serenity. However, he doesn't really have wealth independent of Serenity, so generally all his income comes from operating that spacecraft.

He also has either several levels of Debt to represent the costs of running the thing, or he bought Serenity as a Cheap or Very Cheap ship, which both represents how broken-down it is and how expensive it is to maintain.

Something still doesn't seem quite right, but I'm not sure what.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Doesn't matter. Starting wealth doesn't consider how you got it, only that it's yours.

It does, though. Wealth isn't just money. Did Mal ever have Wealth, or just some manner of windfall?

Regardless...

Originally Posted by Stormcrow

Mal owns, with no strings attached, a cheap or very cheap ship, yet he is Poor. A character cannot start like this in GURPS without GM fiat or without spending hundreds or thousands of points on Signature Gear or extra cash.

Yes, if you want owning a ship to be on your character sheet in GURPS, it's going to be a problem.

MyGurps offers sensible rules for 'doesn't have lots of Wealth but does have lots of money/stuff'. If you don't use those, yeah, you get into the 'Han Solo costs more points than God' realm.

But even if you do use them, basically, you'll only play Mal because you want to. His junker of a ship and tight personal finances aren't saving many points, compared to the incredible amount of inconvenience they bring him.

I'd attribute this to GURPS' baseline position that gear is really not very important. If you want a game in which some gear is very important, you're going to be working around that.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

Something still doesn't seem quite right, but I'm not sure what.

It's a fundamental problem with GURPS Wealth rules, for which there are several partial patches (like Debt and Independent Income and Signature Gear) and lots of house rule fixes floating around.

Wealth covers at least four separate traits - total assets, adventure useful assets (set at 20% of starting wealth), monthlyl income, and how many hours you have to devote to that monthly income. Well, maybe five traits, there's also the social components that overlap with Status and credit rating.

Bundling these together makes Wealth simple, which is nice for characters where the details don't matter a lot, but any time you try to design a character where exact economic situation is an important part of the character concept they're going to pinch you. Having a really big asset you can't or won't sell is one of the more common ones, but it's also hard to design a character who has a huge monthly income but has to work full time to earn it, or who has been pretty much broke up to now but *just* got hired for the high paying job the campaign is going to be about.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Ejidoth

I've been thinking about this. I think the difference might be what Poor means.

You're wealth level in GURPS measures potential income almost more than it measures actual worth. The money you can make with a ship is generally proportionate to the size and quality - and thus cost - of the ship.

In GURPS terms, Mal has a fairly high level of Wealth with 100% of it in Signature Assets (see Spaceships 2, p. 27) for Serenity. However, he doesn't really have wealth independent of Serenity, so generally all his income comes from operating that spacecraft.

He also has either several levels of Debt to represent the costs of running the thing, or he bought Serenity as a Cheap or Very Cheap ship, which both represents how broken-down it is and how expensive it is to maintain.

Something still doesn't seem quite right, but I'm not sure what.

Mal doesn't seem to function as if he's got Wealth enough to own a ship at Spaceships-type costs. If he did, he'd have much more of a social place, higher standard of living, better contacts... As it is, his 'social place' is being Inara's transport. Or 'sketchy guy who can maybe move your cargo' when he's working.

He also doesn't really function as if he's Poor. His living conditions are pretty spartan, but remember that he's traveling all the time...lower than Wealth-appropriate living standards aren't surprising. He doesn't seem to be a low-status person, except when he comes to the attention of significantly high-status people...the frontier ultra-rich or core-worlders. Mal being Average wealth seems plausible to me.

He doesn't make much if any profit on the ship, but if we assume it's a Very Cheap ship, the finance costs that he avoids by owning it outright are pretty trivial. Add in that he's probably got some sort of Unluckiness and more than a few mental and social disadvantages interfering with money-making opportunities, and his constant struggle just to keep flying is easy to explain.