Affording a spaceship?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

If such items must be purchased using the standard wealth/starting equipment budget rules, then they are guaranteed to "happen", in the sense of players voluntarily and freely (without "hints" or more overt pressure from the GM) going for such options.

This is where you lose me again. How does it guarantee any such thing if the GM isn't allowed to establish a premise for the campaign? If I can't say "This is a game inspired by Firefly, characters will the the owner-operators of a small independent freighter" then what guarantee is there that any characters will own a ship or be qualified to operate one?

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

If you as a GM gets to decide what kind of things the players' characters own at gamestart, why stop there? Why not also decide who they're going to be, what kinds of characters? Why not create their characters for them? Why not play their characters for them too?

Heck, why have players at all? If you want to create a story, sit down and write a novel!

Conversely though if all a "sane" and "competent" GM can do is describe a world without giving any kind of premise for a campaign or any requirements for certain character types how can you expect to have a coherent campaign? Why have a group of players at all? You are just going to be running individual games for characters that have no reason to even know each other.