I'm a spaceship!
I have a crew of 18, plus 4 officers. These are divided into boarders, sailors, traders, and seers.
Onboard is a nose cannon and defensive mounted weapons, a bomber and a couple of shuttles. I've got modern hand weapons and a disciplined gang of violent bastards.
My foodstuffs include soylent and bread for everyone to eat. I have bandages and emergency medicines, and enough spare parts and hydrospanners for my sailors to take care of me and themselves.
I've asked to engage in piracy, and carry some cargo. The cargo is carried in sealed boxes and a few nooks and crannies; my diligent, tough traders know a couple of contacts who sometimes ask me for help.
My viewports let the weird, scientific seers on me look into the abyss to know where to take me; I've got a solar sail and ion drive. My hull has a full seal.
Can you answer some questions about me?
-- What is special about me?
-- What size am I?
-- How much do I weigh?
-- What do my insides look like?
-- What sort of sleeping conditions do I have for my crew?
-- How much of me is given over to engines and life support?
-- What're my toilets like?
What other questions do you have about me?
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How and how well does the crew maintain you?
ReplyDeleteHow does your crew make use of you?
Have you ever had a different crew?
How do you feel about other ships?
What glory do you want displayed upon your hull?
How do the crew keep up morale on space voyages? Aka what's the equivalent of grog and sea shanties?
ReplyDeleteWhat are shifts like? Do we hotbunk -- each bunk sleeping two in alternating shifts? (Time on shifts is usually divided into six four-hour watches.) This also impacts how much crew we have on the midnight watch and creates question of how quickly we can get all hands on deck in an emergency.
Am I equipped to make planetfall, or do small ships mostly dock at orbital stations?
Officers sometimes take their family -- or even a holy man -- on board. Do we have any of that?
Ooh. You probably have a graphical "callsign" that acts as the analog to flying the flag. : ' )
ReplyDeleteDo you maintain a day - night cycle for your crew, or have they abandoned a circadian rythm
ReplyDeleteJohn Dornberger My Captain is always getting us into trouble, risking me and my crew to get "booty" and "prizes". That booty gets distributes to my crew, and the prizes are sold both to take care of the crew, and to improve my systems. The Captain is looking at some missiles for me, which might be nice. I've never had missiles, do they hurt?
ReplyDeleteMy Captain is one of my officers; I've also got a Quartermaster, Boatswain, and Stargazer.
I've had lots of crews! Sometimes, the Pirates onboard tell the Captain to take a hike, or just to become a regular pirate again. KATIE Mx XII has been onboard as long as I can remember, but everyone else shifts in and out pretty quick. Especially the boarders, who sometimes get exploded!
Other ships seem nice. But, sometimes they have things that my Captain wants, and if they don't give it to us, then we have to blow them up to take it! I always want to find a way to not blow anyone up, but sometimes we need to.
I like taking care of my crew. Sometimes, I think I baby them. Otherwise, they surprise me with their ferocity!
Jesse Cox The Quartermaster is in charge of crew morale; they use foodstuffs and coffee, mostly. Some fruit after a month onboard really makes the crew happy!
ReplyDelete[ Legit, I should probably add booze to the list somewhere. ]
How traditional are the 4 6-hour shifts? Submarines do that; did 18th century frigates?
My sailors are on an 8-hour shift, with 2 of them always on watch. Same for the Seers, but only one of them is usually on lookout. The Boarders train and clean, and the Traders make deals and check our cargo hasn't come loose.
I have enough bunks for everyone to have their own bed, thank you very much. I am not some fly by night operation; I have sufficient space for my crew.
I can make planetfall, but it is not pleasant. I need repairs afterwards, and it is sooo hot! Several systems start to fail, sometimes even my crew!
My Stargazer is appointed by my Captain, and is pretty much a religious figure. The Stargazer stares into the abyss, and does not falter!
I've been wondering if I have any children onboard; how many children do you think I'd have on me? Apprentices?
Jesse Cox I have lots of callsigns. I like to claim to belong to lots of different ports, because I don't like to be shot at!
ReplyDeleteSean Gomes That is a good question! What do you think?
ReplyDeleteThe ship maintains "ship time" of day and night (high and low function) but transitions to the local planetary time when in orbit (to the annoyance of the crew)
ReplyDelete[ Family obligation just came up. I'll be reading, but unfortunately not answering questions for the next few hours. Talk among yourselves! Be nice! ]
ReplyDeleteSean Gomes Maybe something like this:
ReplyDeleteSailors. High: 4, Low: 2
Boarders: High: 5, Low 0
Traders: High: 3, Low 1
Seers: High: 2, Low 1
Are you thinking 12-hour shifts, adjusted over the course of a few days by the shipboard AI to the local time?
What amenity do I lack that other ships have?
ReplyDeleteI know some old shanties that refer to the Mate ringing the bell, which was rung every half hour and used to mark shift changes. So...at least back to the 1800s?
ReplyDeleteAnswer, in ship's AI voice: The head, where the crew go to the bathroom, is midship with two commodes and a sink. The hygiene sleeve is part of the medbay, and most of the crew don't use it quite as much as I'd like. I sometimes need to run the air scrubbers extra hard if a crew member starts growing a fungus! On the other side of the med-bay is the Scuttle, where the crew drinks water, chew on their soma wads, and exchange gossip. That way all my water reprocessing is in the same place!
Answer, in the ship's AI voice: I don't have any children any more. One of my captains brought her daughter on as a Cabiny, and I loved telling her stories. She jumped port at a station to be with her father, though. At least, I'm pretty sure that man was her father.
Now all I have is the ship's lizard, Beuford. He catches and eats any mites that come on board, and he can survive over two hours in hard vacuum (please don't ask my how I know that) but he doesn't like it when I try to talk to him : ' (
Questions -- do the crew have any favorite pranks? What ceremony do we do the first time a spacer crosses the Asteroid Belt? Do I have any favorite ports?
Vivian Paul Plants. I don't have any plants. I never could keep them alive, and most other ships have crew members who take on that job. I never could get my crew to maintain pretty plants. The algae, of course, but nothing pretty!
ReplyDeleteJesse Cox Do my officers have their own facilities? How old was the girl when she jumped ship? How old was her "father"? How did the Captain react?
ReplyDeleteSometimes, the crew likes to play pranks of Beuford. I discipline them very strongly for that -- crew members fall down in seconds if you take all the air out, and Beuford is fine!
The Quartermaster always has me make a big deal about it when we're about to jump and have a greenie onboard. I hit the klaxons, and reverb "all hands to defensive stations", and we see how the greenie reacts. Once, the sailors convinced a new kid he should be strapped down for it! Oh, what fun. They let him up, and I didn't let it get out of hand.
I never let it get out of hand. I like my crew.
The officers have a lounge that can double as a private dining room. The Captain has a personal head and hygiene sleeve. Some captains have let all the officers use it -- some have kept it all for themselves -- and some have shared it selectively, like a prize.
ReplyDeleteI'm...not sure how old her father was. I believe someone may have tampered with my offline medical database before my waking, and the crew bio-files...well. Let's just say that I double check them if the encrypted checksum in the file does actually match. The girl has undergone most of her body-growth was done, but her brain was not mature, so...between sixteen and twenty four. The captain was three times that, and her ex-mate about halfway in between.
It did not go smoothly. I had to use a lot of white noise to mask their arguments, and the crew was still listening. The day we lost our cabiny, the captain's blaster power cell was completely drained when she came back aboard and plugged it in.
Captain changed over six months after that, and the new Captain told me she had gone to see her daughter. I hope they managed to settle their argument!
(Sorry. That may have been a little dark.)
ReplyDelete[ Jesse Cox If I am reading correctly, the previous Captain and the "father" are dead, and the new Captain murdered the old Captain. Right? ]
ReplyDeleteThat's not certain. It's certainly plausible that the old captain did some grievous property damage in frustration, or even discharged her power pack to prevent herself from doing something stupid...and then that when the role of captain was turned over, she was sent back to her daughter in a little stasis dinghy.
ReplyDeleteIt's also plausible that the captain, in her 30s, slept with some kid and had a daughter and that man really was her father.
But the evidence provides no assurances.
Jesse Cox I really want there to be a ship playbook. As discussed in another thread, I want it to help with conversation management when there are 5 PCs (enough for two conversations with the MC).
ReplyDeleteDo you have ideas for moves for such a playbook?
Woo. That sounds fantastic.
ReplyDeleteIt's late, so I'll look up those posts later, but off the cuff
-- the ship's moves are largely to direct conversation. Die rolls, if they appear, may want to mostly be about tone rather than outcome (on a 6-, cheerfully describe whatever has gone wrong in a way that makes it clear you think this will be sooooo exciting!!!!!)
-- many of the ship's moves should be reflecting questions and creating things to do. Basically like running the Brainer's workshop as a full-time job. I have more thoughts on that for tomorrow.
-- perhaps imagining the ship as managing a Landscape threat, with clear cues on where the ship has cart Blanche, where the ship should make a call and pass a note to the MC, and where the ship needs the MC involved.
MIT larps often had constructed mechanics that were meant to be run by a helper who didn't have GM authority, and sometimes were PCs working with an obscured resource and difficulty mechanic they either weren't allowed to, or really would prefer not to, discuss directly. I'll think about that as a model.
Jesse Cox "MIT larps ... " makes me wish I'd gone there instead of Carnegie.
ReplyDeleteBut, then, I woudln't have been happy anywhere, as I wanted to not belong. So, probably good I was at a place where it was easy not to.
I would certainly not recommend it for everyone. I cracked under the pressure, rallied, burnout out, and withdrew before they could kick me out.
ReplyDeleteIf either of my children want to go there, we will have some long conversations first.
As an aside, just writing up the initial post really helped develop a voice for the ship. I'm hopeful I can carry it over to the playbook. Its slightly childish and self-centered, but in a good natured way. The ship doesn't care about profitability, but about the officers and crew being happy. About going places.
ReplyDeleteApparently merchant marines typically use a 12-hour rotation of watches, so you have 4 hours on, followed by 8 off. That'll be my default, if it ever comes up and the Quartermaster doesn't go with something different.
ReplyDelete