On Sat, 8 Sep 2012, Onno Meyer wrote:
Hello everybody,
I'd like to toss two thoughts into the ring ...
First, it seems to me that the big ships, with several thousand
tons and a crew size in the double digits, caused less interest
than the little ones up to a hundred tons, with crews the size
of a typical gaming group. Is that the right impression?
Large crews mean many NPCs. Running a game with many permanent NPCs and
little that creates a us vs them with the PCs, other then them being NPCs
is more difficult to roleplay. It also gives opportunities to the GM that
the simpler setup does not, but it's not suprising that this is not the
default.
Additionally the larger the ship, itS' more likely that it becomes more
"landscape" rather then a vehicle. Not only are there more opportunities
for searches and such, unless it's a warship, the larger the ship is, the
smaller the chance that it will be used for missions, where vehicle combat
is likely.
Second, I was wondering why I keep thinking of cargo haulers and
not passenger liners when I think of big, commercial ships. Most
freighters have a little passenger capacity, in the tradition of
the Millenium Falcon and the Serenity, but their primary role is
to carry cargo. I can think of several reasons, some good and
some bad.
* Passengers are individuals, which complicates the task of the
players or writers. You can tell stories how the valiant crew
deals with an endless succession of guest stars and their
foibles, but those would be people-oriented feel-good stories,
not hard-hitting action adventure. A load of machine parts or
industrial chemicals is less demanding, you can mention them
in passing and concentrate on the engine trouble or the
pirates.
* Even if you do such stories, you need only a few passengers
per adventure/episode. You can't turn the cruise ship around
for the forgotten teddy bear of a little kid if there are
hundreds of other passengers who would rather arrive on time,
thank you very much.
* Passenger liners go between established destinations. So do
most freighters, but you see more freighters on the frontier,
where action adventures happen and aliens might strike out
of the shadows.
Players with service jobs, or other occupations that brings them into
contact with customers might not want to interact with customers in a
game, other then gunning them down.
Coming up with a cargo on the fly is sometimes easier then coming up with
passangers, and there is less danger the players start taking interest and
you now have to remember all the stuff you have winged. Though in de
ludis, my gladiator soap operator some such characters have become
permanent fixtures.
There are a couple of bases I could cover with passenger
transports. I've written many of them, but not systematically.
* A fast transport to get people from A to B. The role of fast
transatlantic ships before the airliner. There can be luxury,
but not at the expense of speed.
* A very fast transport with the look and feel of an airliner.
At decent TLs, it can do ten parsec per single day, so you
could do five-parsec jumps without real cabins.
* A luxury transport for passengers on a holiday. Luxury in
the ship is just as important as visiting the planets.
* A hardscrabble colonist transport. This could shade into a
prisoner transport or a refugee transport, which in turn
shades into the ark ship I wrote as a bulk freighter
variant.
A possible setup for a passanger transport optimized for speed could be
SOP being jumping into the system, exchanging a shuttle with outgoing
passangers with an already waiting one with new ones and heading out
again. It might get more feasable if there is an other reason to make
stops as well (long range navigation works with many small jumps anyway,
the shuttles also deliver fuel ect)
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