The Free Trader Benefit

[CosmicGamer]

A group of characters have mustered out with a ship, lots of money and weapons.

GM: Here is the setting. You are on a dusty world with a class E starport celebrating your good fortunes at the local pub......

Unless the players all just throw up their hands and roll over while these obnoxious locals goad them (doesn't sound like many adventurers I know), the GM instigates a bar room brawl where one of the NPCs draws their concealed gun and fires it. One of the locals injured will end up being the mayors son-in-law. The bar, although quite rustic to begin with, is pretty torn up. The fighting comes to an end when local officials come to investigate the gunfire and swarm the bar using smoke grenades, tranquilizer darts and bean bag shotguns (riot police). All PCs are searched and detained. Some slick talking and a bribe of every credit on them gets the PCs released (without their weapons) after they promise to leave the town and never come back. "And I better not see you back here ever again or you'll be spending some time on the chain gang workin' the mines" the local lawman declares.

The PCs start back towards where they think their ship was left. They are free, they have a huge stash of money on the ship from their last adventure, there are extra weapons in the ships locker and they have better things to do than stay on this miserable world anyways. One of the players, still quite drunk, swears and moons the now distant law office. One of the other PCs makes a comment about the local moonshine and they all have a good laugh.

They are having difficulty locating the ship through the dust storm. After a round of "Do you remember where we parked it", they realize the ship must have been stolen.

Now our adventurers are on a miserable frontier world with no ship, no weapons, no money and lots of unfriendly folk.

Whatever the dice give, the GM can take away. How's that?

I've always been critical of awarding starships as part of character generation....

Of course, clever referees can mitigate a lot of these problems, but I resent being forced to do so by the game system.

GMs want to create problems not mitigate them!:devil:

EDIT: Hey! I just noticed Gadrin got his post in just before mine. I just want to point out I did not see it before writing my post and any similarities is coincidence.

 

[Gadrin]

EDIT: Hey! I just noticed Gadrin got his post in just before mine. I just want to point out I did not see it before writing my post and any similarities is coincidence.

A likely story. Expect to hear from my lawyer.

Hey, hows-about a Great Minds Club on the boards here ?

 

[far-trader]

I'm back (thanks for safe travel wishes) and caught up with this thread.

My take for CT is that the first roll is the down payment(1) and I figure it's not ready as soon as you muster out either. You may have a wait of weeks or months before it's completed. Lots of time to find crew, line up some business contacts, spend some creds (maybe make some if you're lucky). And upon delivery the ship is depreciated 10% as soon as you break the seals.

Each subsequent roll means the ship you have secured financing for(2) is an older one (10 years per roll) and more depreciated (10% per roll). Typically the ship is one that the previous "owner" defaulted on and you are assuming the mortgage as is.

Key to this is you don't "own" the ship. You own the mortgage on the ship and until it is paid in full you have no equity in the ship beyond what you add to it above its basic specs. And you are responsible for maintaining those basic specs or you'll be in default of the mortgage contract and liable for the costs to restore the basic specs. So you can't sell the ship and hope to have something to show for it. Not until you have paid the mortgage in full.

Typically you won't have any prior history with a ship but it could be possible that you served aboard under the previous "owner" and came to an arrangement to fund his retirement for the privilege of assuming the mortgage (in effect trading your muster out rolls of ship for his in cash, so he gets something like an extra Cr40,000 per each of your subsequent ship rolls, if you want to know how much better off he is)

Now if you're lucky enough to roll ship 5 times, congrats, you have full title on a 40 year old ship worth 50% of its new value (should you decide to try to sell it you could probably get 45% of its new value being 90% of 50%). And somewhere a Merchant has retired in comfort with his profits of 40 years and a bonus of Cr160,000.

But then MTU is not one where a Merchant has much of a shot at making millions of credits in a few short months. It's more likely they'll be able to break even most of the time. A rare few may get lucky and make a few 100 KCr (and probably retire) while others will fail to make the payments and default. This is where the players get their older ships.

I have toyed with various "colour" bits to add to this...

One is for each subsequent ship roll I make two rolls on the ship combat "Hit Location" table, one for a benefit one for a penalty. Using the damage results as guidelines. For example: A roll of "Hull" hit would be a benefit of not suffering decompression on the first result of "Hull" in combat (a small armor benefit). A roll of "Hull" hit would be a penalty of a temporary patch to hold atmosphere but it will have to be replaced periodically and may fail without warning. And so on, just using the damage result as inspiration.

Another is each subsequent roll meant the ship had a DM +1 to the Drive Failure rolls. So that 40 year old ship you own free and clear has a DM +4 for Drive Failure checks. It's a bit of a maintenance headache(3). These DMs can be negated by performing a full overhaul(4) for each DM. Most "owners" don't do this due to the time and expense, it's cheaper to hire a better engineer (each skill level over minimum can offset one DM).

(1) waived actually, justifying MCr8.24 as a muster roll is silly imo, "Umm, know what, I want to cash in my ship roll for 90% of the value just like the middle passage ticket I got, so I'll take the MCr7.416 cash instead."

(2) yes, you need a business plan, and no it can't be "We're going to find speculative cargo to buy low and sell high." It has to be more like "We're going to trade between these worlds (list worlds) as they show a consistent probability of filling the hold and staterooms once we establish a reputation for safe and reliable service." If you roll ship and can't come up with a half decent business plan that's too bad, you don't get a ship and the rolls are wasted. Or if I'm feeling cruel you do get the ship and will fail and lose it anyway as well as some credits along the way. Unless you decide to skip, then the fun really begins :devil:

(3) but nothing like the maintenance nightmare that the 100 year old ship down the slip is (with a DM of +10 meaning only a 2 is good enough to avoid trouble). And with a worth of -10% of the original value the only reason it's still flying at all (when it does) is because it can (sometimes). The practical retirement age for ships is about 80 years when you can still get some 10% or the original value as scrap/parts.

(4) 2 months at a class A starport and 1% of the original value per DM

So, some quick Q&A to your original to clarify:

Now, supposing you roll the benefit twice. That's 10 years your ship's been in service. Wouldn't it be armed? Wouldn't the computer's program set be more robust? I don't see a ship surviving ten years of service, OTU or otherwise without packing some kind of heat.

In MTU it was added by a previous "owner" so it's their equity and removed by them for sale prior to transfer. Probably. Unless I feel the players need it, then maybe the previous "owner" sells it to them at a reasonable price. Maybe some kind of "deal" is made (like free passage for the previous "owner" for life). Basically the previous "owner" becomes a Patron.

Those ten years of payments add up to eighteen and a half million credits and change.

Do you think it would be reasonable to allow a PC to cash some of that in for ship's weapons and programming?

Nope. Since they have no equity in the ship in MTU. And I don't want them to be rich that easy. And it's sooo much more fun having them "write" their own bug filled programs :devil:

For that matter, if you totaled up the down payment and those ten years payments and deliver them as cash, you get just short of 26mcr. Might it be reasonable to allow that as an architect's fee & down payment on a better ship?

As noted that's not how it works in MTU, but... I'd be happy to allow the players to design an alternate ship if they pay the architect fee up front first (from combined muster out cash rolls or stuff, a Traveller's Aid Membership is quite valuable) for the first ship roll. IF the design and business plan work. Of course they'll have to wait the full build time then. Unless... if they have subsequent rolls to apply and the design works I'd waive the architect fee and build time and "create" it as a "standard" design.

 

[atpollard]

Hey far-trader,
Given what little I have heard about Merchants in YTU, I was wondering:

Do all your players roll up Marines?

I could see a lot of pent up frustration and shipboard combat in YTU.

 

[far-trader]

Hey far-trader,
Given what little I have heard about Merchants in YTU, I was wondering:

Do all your players roll up Marines?

I wish

As in I wish I'd had a ftf game going recently

I'm almost always (no surprise I suppose) a Merchant when I can play. Even solo (it works the best, though Scout isn't bad either). I've dabbled in all of the other basic services but Merchies and Trade are what I know best and have all kinds of background to throw at the players.

Not that I'm unprepared for Mercenaries, IISS DeeDees, or even ex-Navy StarMercs. So I'd hope to have a game with some veracity of setting and fun for whatever the players wanted to come up with. I'm actually in the middle of (on and off) working up some background stuff for that group of all Marines (if you've seen the recent bit of Grav APC and Cutter work)

Of course I see Starships as non-player characters. A special patron with certain demands that provides a valuable service for the players in return so that drives a lot of my choices.

 

[jawillroy]

They are having difficulty locating the ship through the dust storm. After a round of "Do you remember where we parked it", they realize the ship must have been stolen.

Cheeeenyus.

That's fine, real fine. New hero!

 

[jawillroy]

I wish

As in I wish I'd had a ftf game going recently

Alas! We are few and far between. Especially the far between bit. When I last posted a "CT in NYC post in recruiting, they had to import crickets for the occasion. If I was Gates, maybe I'd be able to justify flying to Australia or the UK or Texas or Japan (which city is magmagmag from? Gomen...) to run a game... but such is not the case.

 

[sabredog]

The PCs start back towards where they think their ship was left. They are free, they have a huge stash of money on the ship from their last adventure, there are extra weapons in the ships locker and they have better things to do than stay on this miserable world anyways. One of the players, still quite drunk, swears and moons the now distant law office. One of the other PCs makes a comment about the local moonshine and they all have a good laugh.

They are having difficulty locating the ship through the dust storm. After a round of "Do you remember where we parked it", they realize the ship must have been stolen.

LOL! Imagining their increasing panic as they wander around waving their keys in air trying to get their ship to "chirp" back is too much!:rofl:

 

[atpollard]

I wish
As in I wish I'd had a ftf game going recently

I've pretty much given up on ftf roleplaying.
Even if I had a hundred local players, - my job,
my wife and my two year old would make it almost
impossible to play.

I have grown to enjoy the play by post games.
Just a much slower pace than face to face.

 

[rancke]

They are having difficulty locating the ship through the dust storm. After a round of "Do you remember where we parked it", they realize the ship must have been stolen.

Now our adventurers are on a miserable frontier world with no ship, no weapons, no money and lots of unfriendly folk.

Whatever the dice give, the GM can take away. How's that?

Depends on how the GM set it up. If he told me up front that this would be about being stuck on a miserable frontier world with no ship, etc., I'd be fine. If he did a bait and switch on me, I'd leave the campaign instantly. Life is too short for that kind of GM.


Hans

 

[jawillroy]

For me, the bulk of my GM-job is preparation of the environment. I really haven't done all that many games where there was that tight a plot prior to the players getting going, partly because I like my players to be able to have their own characters without my fiddling them around too much. So if they have a ship, they have a ship - if they don't, they don't. The odds of a party coming out of chargen with more than one ship are pretty slim, and I've never encountered it. I like to improvise, so if the players somehow came up with two free traders and a scout between four players, I'd try to come up with something to meet the occasion - probably something like, "you've all been offered double-charter pay, in advance, to bring military cargo and personnel from planet to the main world of the De Cochinos system; there's little traffic there, so the patron's tapped you guys as the only available options. The free traders are to stay together in convoy with the scout jumping in several hours in advance to scan for opposition. There should be none, and the base you're resupplying is a separate continent from the main fighting." The trick here would be that by the time the party/fleet arrives, the situation on the ground will have gone through two weeks of change, and fighting will have erupted in the vicinity of the now-hot LZ.

Now, there's an honorable way of depriving a party of ships. "We lost the scout running interference for the traders on the way in, one of the traders's jump drive got lost to ground fire on the way down, and the other trader can't make orbit because the picket ship that got the scout is waiting for us. Half the personnel we brought with us is dead already. Half the supplies we brought isn't compatible with the weapons still functioning here. Is there somebody here we can make a deal with? Do repatriation bonds cover starships?"

 

[ThunderChilde]

Um, yeah.

I you aren't square with your players, you won't have any. Its one thing to pitch a shovel full of cowflop in the fan at lunchtime, it's quite another to pitch an idea, and kick their dog on the way to whole different campaign. I've walked out on games after a few sessions before for this sort of thing and probably will again.

My idea of fun isn't tumbling drunks for food scraps while dodging the chain gang. I have been in tight spots, whole adventures that sucked, but that was after a good period and working towards a goal. A class E and a year till another ship lands is not my idea of traveller.

My own thoughts on this.
If a ship is in such bad shape that it has a +4 DM, no bank would offer a mortgage. The risk is too high. The previous note holder would have lost the ship a long time ago for violating the contract. And if non of that holds, then I would not accept a ship, ever.

In my TU, when I was running, one additional benefit could be traded for the ship being part of the navel researve, free fuel at naval facilities, and half cost maintenence. If they are activated for service, all maintenence is free, upto and including an overhaul if warranted.

 

[Gadrin]

For me, the bulk of my GM-job is preparation of the environment. I really haven't done all that many games where there was that tight a plot prior to the players getting going, partly because I like my players to be able to have their own characters without my fiddling them around too much. So if they have a ship, they have a ship - if they don't, they don't. The odds of a party coming out of chargen with more than one ship are pretty slim, and I've never encountered it. I like to improvise, so if the players somehow came up with two free traders and a scout between four players, I'd try to come up with something to meet the occasion - probably something like, "you've all been offered double-charter pay, in advance, to bring military cargo and personnel from planet to the main world of the De Cochinos system; there's little traffic there, so the patron's tapped you guys as the only available options. The free traders are to stay together in convoy with the scout jumping in several hours in advance to scan for opposition. There should be none, and the base you're resupplying is a separate continent from the main fighting." The trick here would be that by the time the party/fleet arrives, the situation on the ground will have gone through two weeks of change, and fighting will have erupted in the vicinity of the now-hot LZ.

Now, there's an honorable way of depriving a party of ships. "We lost the scout running interference for the traders on the way in, one of the traders's jump drive got lost to ground fire on the way down, and the other trader can't make orbit because the picket ship that got the scout is waiting for us. Half the personnel we brought with us is dead already. Half the supplies we brought isn't compatible with the weapons still functioning here. Is there somebody here we can make a deal with? Do repatriation bonds cover starships?"

Sounds a lot like a game I ran for a Rifts/Phase World setting (think D&D in space). The players were part of a high-ticket mercenary group who'd been contracted to go to a planet (in the grips of a civil war) and retreive some information that was stashed in a nearby town.

On their way down to the planet their shuttle was shot down by rebel forces attacking the starport.

However with magic in the mix, not having a starship wasn't much of a big deal as there were alternate methods of travel.

If I were to do the above with Traveller though, I wouldn't have to change much (meaning my scenario) and I'd probably take a page out of the Keith's book Fate of the Skyraiders where the exploration party gets marooned on the Skyraider asteroid and must spend several weeks exploring it, until they eventually find a jump-capable scout to escape in. I'd do the same, especially if the adventure starts to bog down, say finding a jump-ship in a abandoned or hidden base that war-damage or ortillery damage reveals the underground complex.

But yes, Thunderchilde has a good point, if your players are expecting Traveller and you give them Survivor they might not like it. But you know your players best.

Repatriation bonds can cover whatever the GM puts in fine print

>

 

[Ran]

But yes, Thunderchilde has a good point, if your players are expecting Traveller and you give them Survivor they might not like it. But you know your players best.

>

I agree whole heartedly. You have to give up what the group is looking for and try not to rail them.

If it's just my brothers and similar male colleagues, "Traveller" resembles toned down "Battle Tech", "Full Thrust", or "Metal Gear". I go with it since they tend not to do anything too game breaking. They atleast think out their plans, often missing some critical point. If they have allot of equipment, I can count on them to lose it on their own. They don't tend to need my assistance plunging scout craft into jovian atmospheres.

If my sister or her friends are involved, "Traveller" takes on a "Man Vs. Wild", "Ender's Game - Xenocide", and "Master And Commander" vibe. This is mostly because they like the plant life/planets/etc. Also because they are all biology majors... try generating plausible aliens against that.

Of course it tends to turn into "Man Vs. Wild" because of the things the former group sets up.

:araphrased from the last game::
::After being defeated in a gun fight during the middle of an arms smuggling coup. The starship 'Stellar Horizon', a vacation cruise ship, is attempting to jump away from the incoming authorities.::
Bro: "I got it, I want to screw up the jump coordinates from engineering!"
Me: "Why?"
Bro: "I don't want those bastards to get away."
Me: "Ok, Do you even have any astrography skills?"
Sis: (In another bulkhead of the ship altogether) "I do!"
Bro: "Not really, but I do have a couple engineering and computer skills"
Me: "Ok... it wouldn't take much to just mess it up... go ahead"
Sis: "You are insane, you know that right? What if they jump anyway? I'm running back there to see what he's doing!"
Me: (after roll, just barely succeeding the computer check without modifiers-technically a failure, so I went with it) "To bad he can't hear you, cause he did... something to the navigation systems"
Bro: "What did I do?"
Me: "An undecipherable error message says that you did just that... something, and the navigation computer accepted it anyway... The lights have begun dimming in the 'Stellar Horizon'. A klaxon sounds as the ship begins to jump."

After tensely fighting with the crew members the ship exits jumpspace after a blinding flash in chunks around an uninhabited world, barely out of the 100d limit, and careening toward the planet. The survival bits with the surviving crew members after that was fun.

So thankfully, everyone has fun. Everyone sees a little of what they like. And nearly everyone experienced "Jurassic Park" style grizzly demises, or health complications from the atmosphere/food.

 

[Gadrin]

If my sister or her friends are involved, "Traveller" takes on a "Man Vs. Wild", "Ender's Game - Xenocide", and "Master And Commander" vibe. This is mostly because they like the plant life/planets/etc. Also because they are all biology majors... try generating plausible aliens against that.

[snip]

So thankfully, everyone has fun. Everyone sees a little of what they like. And nearly everyone experienced "Jurassic Park" style grizzly demises, or health complications from the atmosphere/food.

Sounds like the Flinx book http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Flinx
A massive jungle filled with all sorts of predatory plants and other things.



>

 

[ThunderChilde]

I accept the generally high cost of upkeep and the burden of payments in principle. I my self am not particularly comfortable with the apparently brief service life of the average starship. For my 2 cents and background, with regular maintenece and the occasional major repair most devices and vehicles of a certain quality will last for a very long time. With the state of the art in tl 10+ if you cared to design and build for durablility, starships should be good for a very long time indeed.

The good old Type A 200 ton free trader's basic design goes back to well before mileu 0. Commonality of parts and a couple thousand years to perfect the design should produce something more reliable than a custom one off or a new design that has not been wrung out. Add to that how very common they are supposed to be and parts aughta be easily had, new, rebuilt or used. There are probably upwards of 100,000 or more in service across the Imperium and beyond, with worn out and wrecked examples thick as flies in salvage yards and anywhere else if you look hard enough.

 

[gcbright]

Starships in my groups games.

Hi,

In the games I run or play in, my group prefers ship based games. Whenever we start a game, great thought is given to which character or characters get the ship.

Sometimes the characters all have either inherited or purchased a share in a vessel.

The ships in our games are always unique with good and bad points.

Examples:

In one game the characters ship was a free trader based on the safari ship design. In the ship description it was written up that during a bad economy, the shipyard had 32 safari ship hulls and no orders. Half of these hulls (16) were converted to free traders (with the ships boat, storage pens and some staterooms removed to make for cargo room).

The ship had areas of the finest craftsmanship and materials (the for rent staterooms), balanced by the crew staterooms which were way below no frills).

Because the ship had such nice guest staterooms and a very nice guest common area, getting takers on high passage was easy.

Beacause the ship was a rare variant of a more popular vessel, some fittings and such were not always off the shelf parts or easily found. (Anyone out there ever own an end-of-year model of a car where the maker made some part substitutions? If so, you know how frustrating it can be to stop at auto-zone and try for belts, etc.)

The original owner of the vessel, whose health was starting to fail, interviewed each player character and offered them 20% interest in the ship provided they would agree to perform ten tasks that he could no longer handle.

At the conclusion of each task, an agent of the original owner delivered to the characters endorsed payed off notes for 10% of the private loan he had technically made them on the ship.

Thanks