On Tue, 1 Jul 2014, Onno Meyer wrote:
Brandon wrote:
I think the volume for crew/passengers will largely be
affected by how long they have to remain on the ship going
from point A to point B -- that is, trip duration. A 12
hour trip requires a lot less comfort space than a 12 day
trip or a 12 week trip.
The Vehicles rules have a break point at 24 hours. I agree
on the difference between 12 hours and 288 hours, but does
the difference between 12 days and 84 days really matter
that much? You can spend 12 hours in a seat, with short
trips to the toilet. For 12 days, people want a bathroom,
a bed, a bit of personal space. How much more do you need
for 84 days?
The more i think about it, the more i consider it a matter too complex to
break down in rules.
Like many people need some place alone, but how much of that is a bunk or
a cabin? A bunk might be just closed with curtains, like in submarine
movies, or it might be a sound proof coffin, with it's own access to life
support. A crew station might be a place on the bridge, or it might be an
isolated office.
And it matters if your bunk or crew station is equipped to do sparetime
activities there.
Many people need to see what they are used to. Like some people need to
see the horizon once in a while, other need to see green plants ect. Some
of that needs can be provided or simulated easier then others. Which needs
will be how common would be highly background specific.
As rule of thumb, i would include psychologists in the crew of very long
occupancy vessels, i guess someone knowing more about the matter can
suggests how many for how many crew members.
I would include some gym or arboretum or holodeck or other spare time
place, to give crew members a place for alone or small group time.
Propably the size of a cabin could be used as guideline, how much is
needed by a crew member, and a crew member should have access for one or 2
hours every other day.
I would include something like a mess hall, that could also be used for
large group activities such as card games or dances.
Johannes replied to me:
If the GM wants to regulary play with some set of stressfull
situations, ideally he should anounce it at character creation
time and suggest ads and disads to influence how stressfull
they are to a pc. That should come after the GM has decided
how much of a problem thoose situations are in general in the
gameworld.
Yes, player characters always draw more than their fair share
of trouble. One thing I've been thinking about is 'emergency
interstellar capability'.
From 3E TL11, it isn't terribly expensive to add hyperdrive
to insystem craft. They already have the power and avionics,
all you need is the hyperdrive itself. Consider the Dropship
from last month. It doesn't have long-occupancy maintenance
access space or quarters, but it has a galley, a toilet, and
two automeds which might be used as bunks.
What that means requires some creative rules interpretation.
It could be that after 24 hours, you make the first roll to
check for HT loss. That probably won't kill the Dropship.
Call it 48 hours and about 1.5 parsec one-way-range?
The alternative interpretation would be that after 24
hours, it has to make nine rolls for 37 man-hours of
skipped maintenance, at -4 for the second roll, -8 for the
third, and so on. That makes it almost certain that things
go wrong after 24 hours.
I can't look at the rules at the moment but going by what feels right, i
would say it should depend on how cutting edge and how optimized the ship
is.
Formula 1 cars and military aircraft AFAIK would not go long without
constant attention of a mechanic. Stock cars can go for weeks or month
without even minimal maintainance such as adjusting tire preassure and
exchainging oil.
Compare the Scout Singleship from 2012. It has just a bunk
and a crew seat, but it has long-occupancy access space, a
workshop for maintenance and even a cyberswarm to do the
routine work.
And finally look at the Deep Space Transport, also from
2012. It has proper cabins and maintenance facilities.
Is the Scout Singleship a reasonable design for weeks and
months?
For a lone crew member you have only alone time so you will be restricted
by how long the crew member can stay sane, without contact to other
humans. And the crew member definitly should not even suffer from a quirk
level claustrophobia.
Having no place to exercise at all seems not a good idea for a long time.
But i guess you would not need more space then a roomy crew station or a
bunk for some sort of gym equipment. Propably you can argue, that either
can transform into some.
Redshirts are another thing. I prefer to have an all-PC crew,
to make it clear that there is no 'GM spokesperson' or 'mole'
to mess with the group dynamics.
Depends on the type of campain and GMing style. They can get in the way if
players try to delegate tasks, they should do themself to them. But it is
good, to have someone do thoose things that logically should be done, but
it disturbs the game more then it helps if it's done by a pc. Like
guarding the vehicle or the prisoner, while the others do the actual
adventure. Or being the technical expert in the field, that is important
only in this specific adventure.
Also it works much better in my experience to demonstrate how dangerous or
evil someone or something is, by targeting an NPC, then by going at pcs.
If the pcs have to carry aound the wounded and incaptitated NPC
additionally to other problems it works better, then if one PC is taken
out of action.
Have you seen the Andromeda series? At first the giant ship
was empty except for the few main characters, later on they
got redshirts walking around but for practical purposes the
main characters still did everything.
They were extreme at that. I still wait for the spin off series, with the
totally unrelated adventures of the other crew members, where you
occasionally see a main crew member walk through the background.
Star Trek had a larger cast with many recurring extras, so
you got the feeling that the redshirts actually do something
for mission success. From time to time an extra would even
be promoted to main cast, like O'Brien.
They are often good at blurring the difference between who is an important
and who is an unimportant character. I like that. I try to do the same
with NPCs.
As an additional point, stress from being confined in the ship too long,
can be used as explaination for some of the rather unprofessional
behaviour that often happens in space exploration movies. With reference
to that, you can occasionally have NPCs to do dumb stuff, that is
important for the story.
And if you occasionally let the pc do will rolls, to avoid doing something
like taking a quick swimm in that nice lake over there, before someone has
scanned it, you can also have some alien psionic influence plot, without
it being obvious from the start.
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