09-01-2021, 08:00 PM | #11 |
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
|
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.
__________________
Decay is inherent in all composite things. Nod head. Get treat. Last edited by Agemegos; 09-01-2021 at 08:34 PM. |
09-01-2021, 08:12 PM | #12 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
|
Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign
Quote:
Quote:
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. |
||
09-02-2021, 02:24 AM | #13 |
Stick in the Mud
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Rural Utah
|
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.
__________________
MIB #1457 Last edited by sjard; 09-02-2021 at 02:44 AM. |
09-02-2021, 07:33 AM | #14 | |
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: near London, UK
|
Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign
Quote:
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.
__________________
Podcast: Improvised Radio Theatre - With Dice Gaming stuff here: Tekeli-li! Blog; Webcomic Laager and Limehouse Buy things by me on Warehouse 23 |
|
09-02-2021, 07:35 AM | #15 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
|
Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign
Quote:
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.
__________________
Fred Brackin |
|
09-02-2021, 09:22 AM | #16 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
|
Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign
Quote:
Quote:
|
||
09-04-2021, 09:39 AM | #17 | |
Join Date: Oct 2004
|
Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign
Quote:
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? |
|
09-06-2021, 03:46 AM | #18 | |
Join Date: Jul 2006
|
Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign
Quote:
"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. |
|
09-06-2021, 07:52 AM | #19 | ||
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
|
Re: The Tramp Freighter Campaign
Quote:
Quote:
|
||
09-06-2021, 11:05 AM | #20 |
Join Date: Apr 2005
|
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.
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|