tl;dr - Does a Corellian Corvette make sense as PCs main ship?
As an admission, I think a lot about space ships.
In media and RPGs, there's a few ones that show up time and time again, in broad categories:
-- The single-person spaceship (X-wing)
-- The Family Ship (Serenity, The Falcon, The Roci)
-- The Larger Than Life Ship (Star Destroyers, Death Stars, Enterprise)
Of these, my absolute favorite is the family ship. Single person craft don't lead to enough drama, and the larger than life ship make it too weird for PCs to be meaningful.
Serenity is a home more than she is a ship, able to haul some cargo and provide the right level of privacy for drama. She's great and I love her. The Roci is a cheating PC ship, faster and with better guns than anyone else her size; this let's her crew matter in the politics of the Solar System.
The Falcon is the examplar case, but its not really a home. Its a bachelor pad for Han and Chewie, and I can't imagine Leia spending much time onboard. Or that there's room for bedrooms.
If you want to run blockades and have space for a princess in Star Wars, the obvious ship is the Correllion Corvette. I'm biased and love this ship more than I really ought; do you think it a Family Ship, or a Larger Than Life Ship?
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I would say it is a small warship and therefore larger than life, unless you happen to be Galactic level royalty, in which case is probably pretty cozy.
ReplyDeleteLook up "corellian consular-class space cruiser" it's what you are looking for. A Corellian Corvette about the size of Serenity.
I think it's too big. Reference says it's 126.68 meters long, and can handle hundreds of passengers.
ReplyDeleteMy take from the opening sequence of ANH matches that well.
Btw:
ReplyDeletehttps://plus.google.com/photos/...
Jonathan Beverley I'm not sure what I'm looking for inside that model; is there a real kitchen? Other amenities that make the bachelor pad descriptor less true?
ReplyDeleteI really like the specific case of Vipers and Battlestars, to support thrilling space dogfighting alongside a capital ship and the drama of the bridge.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford this?
ReplyDeletestarwars.wikia.com - Consular-class cruiser
William Nichols That's it. About twice the size of the Falcon, two modules good for cargo or a worship or a mini cinema. Doesn't look like it's older than the sun.
ReplyDeleteBrandes Stoddard Star Wars of course supports capital ships and starfighters. I'm not sure I like the sheer number of people onboard a capital ship; its no longer a family, but seems more like a settlement or city.
ReplyDeleteI mean, 115 meters verus 126. And for some reason I do not like that ship; perhaps it is irrational and based on my continued distaste for episode I. I dunno.
ReplyDeleteI'd be up for a light freighter, but not that one.
If Star Wars showed more interest in the drama of a bridge crew, it would show us how capital ships are interesting... and it would be a very different IP.
ReplyDeleteI agree, in general, that one wants family-scale ships for a lot of the best space storytelling. I kind of wonder if the Cant would have parsed more as capital or family scale if it had remained the primary focus of action.
William Nichols, it's just the best picture I've seen of what the inside looks like.
ReplyDeleteI did a quick skim, and the only other thing I found was the Ebon Hawk. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteBrandes Stoddard With 8 crew, The Cant seems a perfect family ship. And with long weeks to grab ice, there's lots of room for small drama -- my kind of roleplaying.
ReplyDeleteAgreed, Star Wars brige crews are about the most boring in the genre; star trek budges are the center of action, showing it sure can be. Instead, there's the continued emphasis on starfighters.
I think you mean the Knight? The Cant had a crew of 55, which could still be great grist for gaming - there are enough NPCs around to instigate conflict if needed, but not enough to trivialize the PCs, probably. Maybe.
ReplyDeleteOh damn, I read the whole wrong thing.
ReplyDelete55 is a bunch! I wonder how many for a skeleton crew; even a CC has a small crew complement. That's the low-end for a Hardhholders settlement in Apocalypse World; the way this is often handled is our PCs have special abilities (spellcating, fixing shit). I have some difficulty with my disbelief that enough of the crew on a spaceship would be bad enough at their jobs to blend into the background and let the PCs be super awesome.
Jonathan Beverley No worries! A lot of things are unspecified intentionally, to leave blanks for other narrative. But yeah, my mental image of the Falcon has a couple bunk beds, recyclers and a foodstuff similar to soylent. She's basically a space truck.
ReplyDeleteThe Roci is running with a skeleton crew of just four; do we know what size crew it is supposed to have?
ReplyDeleteStandard crew of a dozen or more, plus six marines for some missions.
ReplyDeleteTraveller has a few trading ships in this sort of size range.
ReplyDeleteThe Far Trader is probably the best.
google.co.uk - far trader - Google Search
Brian Ashford
ReplyDeleteYeah, the Far Trader and Free Trader are pretty good PC ships; I should have put the Free Trader on my original list. Its a bit on the small size of what I want; even Serenity has additional room for passengers, and there's not a lot of room for on a Free Trader.
I thiiiink a Correllion Corvette could be used by civilians as a rugged passenger & cargo transporter, able to take on dozens of pax and hundreds of tons of cargo. That's maybe too big for a game, I'm not sure.
Free trade is definitely too small.
ReplyDeleteIs the Defiant too Star Treky?
The Defiant is "just" a gunship, right. She doesn't have support craft (I think), doesn't carry much cargo, and doesn't really have room for passengers. She's a great ship to convey a very particular tone.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's what occurred to me; set up any particular ship as the ship for the player characters, and you've defined what sort of world.
Is it an X-wing? Then this is a world where a single knight on a horse is more powerful than ten thousand troops.
Is it a Free Trader, or Serenity? Then this is a world about travel and home, and families we make.
Is it the Falcon? Then this is a world where you need guns and engines and can carry a small amount because the government is bad.
Is it the Roci? Then governments are beginning to fail because holy crap that's a military ship and you are not official.
Is it the a Correllion Corvette? What sort of stories do we tell surrounding the crew & passengers of a Correllion Corvette?
/sub I have similar needs for my SW game.
ReplyDeleteWhatcha need for your game, Yanni Cooper?
ReplyDeleteI love other peoples star wars games. And I'm thinking about ships.
ReplyDeleteSomething a bit larger than the Falcon that Treasure Hunters might have used.
ReplyDeleteright now my current thought is a YZ-775: swrpg.viluppo.net - FFG Star Wars Index
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty nice PC ship; 8 crew, fewer in a pinch. A few guns, some pax capacity, and cargo capacity.
ReplyDeleteThat could be a nice extended family running such a ship, like Serenity. If you don't take on the passengers, then you've got a lot of room for the PC crew to spread out!
William Nichols By that logic the corvette would define a setting where a strong hierarchy and militarised warships are the movers and shakers.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols Waitaminute... That's the same ship I suggested at the top of the thread only with the falcon's cockpit. /storms off in a petulant grump/
ReplyDeleteYou sure, Brian Ashford? Looks half the length, and wooookiepedia says its a freighter rather than a consuler ship. That's a big difference in intended purpose.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols /wanders back, less grumpy/
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's probably officially a different ship, but clearly the artist has cut and pasted the body of the consular ship, with some Corvette engines and a Falcon cockpit.
Almost like these are three ships from the same in-universe ship company, and have very similar aesthetics.
ReplyDeleteMost star wars capital ships follow the cylinder model, and have a lot more in common with romanticized navy ships than space ships.
And that's ok! Ships serve more as setting than systems artifact in an RPG. Still, is love to see one that's a collection of hard points holding onto components.
Oh hey, the Normandy from Mass Effect. There's an awesome ship. Possibly a bit too military for you, not sure. It's best version was probably the SR2 from Mass Effect 2.
ReplyDeleteThe Tempest from the new Mass Effect game is kind of a Normandy knock off, but with less direct military influence. No guns etc. (though to be honest that it has no weapons does bug me). But it runs on a crew of 3 (pilot, co-pilot/science officer, engineer), has a small med bay, with space for a half dozen to a dozen crew depending on how you utilize some of the spaces, has room for a land vehicle and cargo. It's very much a product of exploration focused design.
ReplyDeleteThey're called refreshers, not bathrooms, in the SW universe :).
ReplyDeleteIn my own figuring, I think a civilian owned Corvette as the main ship is the antithesis of Serenity; its a flying castle and palace, while Serenity is a mobile home. It looks like the minimum crew is pretty small, though I do wonder how much thought, if any at all, those crew sizes were given.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols I think it is time for you to out the graph paper and design your own perfect FTL working home.
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford I've done this a couple of times. I once bought a Armada Correllion Corvette to dunk in water to find displacement to determine interior volume, as I think you know
ReplyDeleteThe answer really depends on setting, economic and privilege status of the intended story.
William Nichols I missed the water displacement research! That's dedication to the cause.
ReplyDeleteAs for the "setting, economic and privilege status", doesn't that mean that you can't really determine what the group's ship should be like until after they have generated their characters?
Maybe, Brian. This is right where game design meets MCing meets character creation.
ReplyDeleteThat is, I could build a narrowly focused game set onboard a space ship with, say, 18 crew and 4-5 officers. Where you are pirates. And go around pirating. And I've actually done that. :-)
Conversely, something like Star Wars World is broader, with everything from jedis to Scoundrel's to corvette's running around. And the MC could limit or necessitate different roles based on what game they want.
William Nichols In my own SF RPG (which I last looked at three or four years ago, so it's a bit fuzzy) the first step of character generation was for the players to determine the size of the ship which itself was based on the size of the operation which owned it.
ReplyDeleteIf the PCs owned it themselves it was pretty small and cheap. The next three steps were privately owned, corporate ownership and government owned. Each step up gave the players a larger ship and more resources but less freedom to do what they wanted.
Then we would design the characters and the ship at the same time. One player takes a Doctor, the ship's first aid cabinet upgrades to a sick bay. Another decides to play a planetary scientist, the ship gets a sensor array. Two players decide that they have side traits in Gunnery, the ship gets some gun turrets.
It worked quite well in playtesting but never got further than that.
That's really similar to some ideas that were going around in my head last night.
ReplyDeleteSimilarly, if someone plays the bartender (Guinan, etc), then the ship needs some people -- up the crew by a ton.
William Nichols Or the passengers.
ReplyDeleteYes!
ReplyDelete