I reckon there's two ways to crew up a commercial spaceship:
Either, you have enough crew to have an expert plus someone always on watch in: Propulsion, Environmental, Gravity, Computer Systems, Astrogation, Piloting.
If you have pax, add steward. If you have cargo, add Trade. If you worry about pirates, add sensors. If you are a pirate, add weapons and a squad of boarders.
Lots of people. Dozens. But, probably not hundreds because crew is expensive and, unless you're some sort of crazy pirate or military craft, you want to minimize crew.
And that can be fun in an RPG! There's a lot of people to talk to, have triangles, etc.
Alternatively, you can have, I dunno, like four people. An engineer, someone on the bridge, someone to buy cargo maybe or to go be bad guys, maybe a pecialist pilot or astrogator. Maybe up to a dozen people.
Ad that can be fun, too! Then the PCs are the crew, and that's pretty great, too.
Is there a third option?
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Computers run it all, with a small number of (1-3) humans there for sanity/emergency purposes.
ReplyDeleteGood for when you don't have a large group of people to play with.
Oh, you're right! Also, spacewisps. But, those don't have cargo.
ReplyDeleteYou can have a caravan of smaller ships, such that everyone needs to know enough to get their ship through a crisis, but the caravan only needs one (for instance) person expert enough to overhaul a Grav system, and maybe another few with the skills to provide fine cooking.
ReplyDeleteSo like one ship per person? So spaceships more along the lines of motorcycles than, say, destroyers. Tell me more.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols more like long haul truckers
ReplyDeleteTell me more.
ReplyDeleteOnly hire three people, undertrain them, ask them to do the job of nine people, and have all the passengers sign waivers so they can't sue when they crash on re-entry.
ReplyDelete... Jason Corley Are ships cheap?
ReplyDeleteDefinitely not, but investing in a worker is unheard of. They might go work for someone else, or ask you for a three cent per million light year raise, or (gulp) unionize? Even if you end up having to pay out a few trillion spacebucks every few years it's worth it to fuck over everyone who works for you.
ReplyDeleteThat, Jason Corley, is probably financially sensible. And not at all a world I want to think about.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols: I was thinking more of wagon caravans, each wagon a home to a small cluster of people. Each wagon needs a drover, but the caravan entire may only need one blacksmith.
ReplyDeleteJason Corley That makes me think of BULLDOGS! for some reason...
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch Essentially, one family one space ship and meetup together for trade of expertise?
ReplyDeleteI suppose my issue with that is the Deep Dark is dangerous and filled with .. a lot of nothing, which is really problematic.
All of this is assuming a capitalist future. What if it's Communist? Or post-scarcity?
ReplyDeleteIn a communist society the crew will be getting their communal share whether they are on the ship or not, so there would be no financial reason to under-crew the ship. Every role would be filled three times over to allow for a full crew on each of three eight hour shifts. Crew quarters would be spartan to say the least, possibly to the extent of sharing bunks with other shifts.
In a post-scarcity society the crew are whoever wants to be there. The routine trade runs will be crewed by one or two people who like quiet routine. Exciting ships that go to awesome places will probably have more crew than they need and no one will have too much to do. Mostly the ship will deal with the important stuff itself and if a group of its passengers/crew want to go have some fun which might not be in the best interests of the whole ship, then it could give them a fancy shuttle of their own for a week or two.
William Nichols: I'm not sure I follow. If the ships are maneuvering together, why is "a lot of nothing" a problem? Seems like an advantage.
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch I mean vacuum is dangerous, so transferring expert people between ships seems positively reckless. If you're thinking one family (or so) per covered wagon type space ship and skill distributed between them, then if my hip has a proipulsion problem and you're the propulsion engineer, I need you to come save us, basically. To somehow send your expert over.
ReplyDeleteWithout star trek style transporter, that means docking. And docking seems dangerous.
Or in this model is it not too dangerous to dock?
Brian Ashford You are right, I'm assuming a soft capitalism.
ReplyDeleteBoth your communist and post-scarcity futures are ones I'd more enjoy thinking about than reckless capitalim.
The communist one is a delight, really, The problem remains expertise: Watch standers may not need to be experts, but you need an expert around to wake up the expert. And so, a way of recognizing the expert. Who now has a different job from her sisters, and is seen different. Does that still work as a communism?
For the post scarcity, heck yeah. This reminds me of the notion of starfleet as those who are too crazy to remain in paradise, rather than the best and brightest. The crewers on TNG have been accomodations than an Admiral could expect onboard a modern aircraft carrier!
What sort of interesting stories could you tell in those two realities?
As always, a lot depends on the assumed economics. I was assuming omething like the merchant marines, and it's fantastic to see other perspectives.
ReplyDeleteThe family-sized trucks or covered wagon approach is one I enjoy. Layer on top of that a galactic minimum basic income, and you've got a world I might just want to live in. We've assumed minimal hierarchies (family sized), established that there's little financial threats (because of the MBI), and that folks are friendly (sharing expertise).
I'm less enjoying the uber capitalistic society, as that just makes me feel tired. I work for some sort of capitlaistic corporation that I think could treat it's employees (me) better, so don't really want to think about the realistic cyberpunk version.
Both the communism and post-scarcity are sufficiently far removed from my reality to be enjoyable to discuss.
William Nichols In Communism the story could revolve around how hard it is to keep the ship going and complete your mission. How much are your character's willing to push themselves for the good of their community? How much danger will they accept? Look at all these other societies, are they happier? They are certainly wealthier, well, except for the homeless.
ReplyDeleteMissions could be trade, military, colony establishment or supply, exploration, rescue. All the usual, but from a different perspective.
William Nichols Post scarcity always makes me think of The Culture, but the Federation is close.
ReplyDeleteWhy are these people in space? Because they want to be. They want to explore untouched wilderness and new cities. They want to set up colonies unlike any other or go and find out if Most Eisley really is as bad as everyone says.
What the ships are up to is another matter. They are planning human civilisation in terms of millennia, including relations and wars with their neighbours (and remember, you have a lot more neighbors in three dimensions than you do in two).
For the ships, humans are both their children and very useful tools. They are quite honest about this and the humans who are there are presumably ok with it. But for how long?
(Relentless Capitalism is one of the reasons I don't play Traveller any more.)
ReplyDeleteBrian Ashford What one Culture book should I read to get into the series?
ReplyDeleteI'm going on vacation on Wed, and taking a culture book woudl be great. Tell me one.
William Nichols Consider Phlebas.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols: Yeah, I was toning down the thematic element of "vacuum is the ultimate barrier, cutting me off from any possible society of peers." That allows the creation of a society that's not restricted within the confines of one hull. One could assume more reliable docking, but it's easier (and to my mind more fun and empowering) just to assume more robust and maneuverable space-suits.
ReplyDeleteYour engines start sputtering? Okay, Big Betty will bring her ship on a parallel course, and put on her "walkin' about clothes." She jets over, and you can hear her walkin' about on the outside of the hull. There's a huge clang as she kicks part of your engine. "Yep," her voice crackles through your speakers, "ya got a little rock stuck in there real good. Glad I brought my crow-bar. Let me give her a little tickle." There are several more loud clangs, and then a metallic scraping. A pause. "Okay, I'm a dozen meters off. Warm her back up and let me see what's what."
I've been thinking, since posting, about the advantages of a multi-ship society. The primary one is that it allows for far more granular accumulation of capital ... like the advantage that a family fleet has, but even more so.
One family in a caravan doesn't need to wait until they have the money for a down-payment on a ship purchased with a usurious loan from outside banks, before expanding. Rather, if they've got some wealth and a yen to expand their fortunes, they can introduce their boy Cal to the Rennick's young man Haber, at the square-dance. If those two kids hit is off, the two well-off families can go in together on a new ship for the newlyweds, borrowing the rest of what they need from the caravan bank.
Because of course the caravan would have its own bank. Frankly, even single-ship societies should float their own bank.
Do you have a replacement RPG for this sort of genre, Brian Ashford?
ReplyDeleteWilliam Nichols: Everybody's going to give you a different Culture book as "the one you should read."
ReplyDeletePart of the problem with "what will introduce me to the Culture" is that the Culture books, by and large, don't take place within the Culture, in the same way that Star Trek episodes don't, by and large, take place on Earth. The excitement is in watching the Culture impact other societies, so that they need to stand for their principles.
Even within that context, though, I feel obliged to point out that Consider Phlebas has no narration by Culture characters, no action that takes place in the Culture, and only one character whose origin is within the Culture (therefore no on-screen interaction between members of the Culture).
It's within the Culture universe, but gives you absolutely zero first-hand information about the Culture. It does a fine job of introducing the technology and feel, but does not address social questions.
Player of Games is marginally more about the Culture itself.
Tony: Is that the one you'd recommend?
ReplyDeleteTony Lower-Basch That's warmed my heart, as I imagine it was intended to.
ReplyDeleteI could ask why Big Betty goes out and helps knock rocks out of other people's engines, but that'd be about as silly as asking why I bought dinner for someone on a Thurday after big news. It's just about the same reason, with the addition that Big Betty is knocking rocks out of the ship of the best pie making in the quadrant.
And, well, everybody loves pie.
A for Cal and Haber, well. I sure hope they hit it off. And as they both grew up on ships, I reckon they know how to keep gravity and propulsion and the blue algae mostly in line. Being youngsters, of course they don't have developed special kills. Neither did I at 18 and yet, somehow I managed to survive.
One ship for sure lends itself to hierarchies, in part as we're all so trained on star trek and BSG. With rank and privilege and, of course, we live in a crazy capitalism.
The communitarianism of one family one ship is nice.
William Nichols I've been having too much fun with Edge of the Empire and various OSR games to give it too much thought recently.
ReplyDeleteI was writing my own game about the crew of a spaceship which focused on the capabilities of the ship and was a setting where there was an awful lot of planets needing the help of space ship but not nearly enough ships to go around. Do you help the needy, or make a profit?
If I wanted to run something like Traveller now, I'd probably use M-Space.
Consider Phlebas does give a good deal on information on the infrastructure of the Culture, their ships, orbitals, minds and drones. I think William will find all that useful. Is also an exciting space romp.
ReplyDeletePlayer of Games does give a better idea of what it's like to live in the Culture.
In truth I think the best option would be to read Consider Phlebas then Player of Games.
Both are on the way. I'll bring them both on vacation, and probably leave them in Europe somewhere when I'm done.
ReplyDeleteTony: In the terms of the Solar Clipper series, what size ship would these family clippers be? one kt?
ReplyDeleteObviously, some variance, but what order of magnitude ya thinking? Is a translation even sensical?
I think a translation is sensible, with caveats. Probably one kt, yes, but ... in the Solar Clipper series the capabilities of a one kt clipper are strictly limited by the assumption that it must be capable of complete independence for the length of its trip. Therefore, it suffers from a complete lack of economies of scale.
ReplyDeleteShips in a caravan grouping, by contrast, can specialize in order to achieve better performance. They can, at its most basic, depend upon ongoing trade within the group, even for their very survival.
A Solar Clipper one kt ship, for instance, needs the whole bulky infrastructure of freezers, or else they are subsisting on dry and canned goods. In a caravan, one ship can have a mass of freezers, store a truly inordinate amount of frozen goods, and stock everyone. That means every other ship can be that much more effective at what they're doing.
So is it a direct translation? Well ... yes, and no.
... and couches on the dock?
ReplyDeleteDepends on what kind of society you want to tell a story of! Yes, I could imagine action centering on each ship's comfortable parlor, where people can come and visit. I could also imagine rocking chairs on a dock with lots of armor-glass ... folks sitting out of an evening to star-gaze, knit, watch the suit-lights of their neighbors jetting between ships, and gossip about who's visiting whom.
ReplyDeleteI have to say, I'm curious what you'll think of the culture series...
ReplyDeleteI'm quite enjoying this idea, you guys.
ReplyDeleteA lot of different types and varieties of spaceships. Each need a few things: environmental, propulsion, gravity, computer, astrogation, piloting. You may not need a person who is an expert, but you need the systems and at least a modicrum of skill -- somebody's gotta be able to steer.
Which also means you want someone in the convey who is an expert in those things.
Also, cargo. Also, cooking. Also, sensors. Also, understanding however you transfer from system to system. (math, basically)
Maybe also pax. Maybe some weapon systems, if pirates exist.
What other specialties?
People are likely to double up technical specialties with people specialties ... such that (for instance) your trade expert is also the caravan's lawyer and maybe judge. Somebody's going to likely be a captain and also the de facto mayor (i.e. the person who helps people get along and heads off small troubles before they become big ones).
ReplyDeleteHeh. "This game is about a proto-typical american western town in the 1800s. Only it's actually in space. And it's the 2800s. And the towns can move."
ReplyDeleteThe players could be playing caravanfolk, trying to make their lives work. They could be wanderers, traders, or lawfolk going between various caravans... I'm suddenly seeing a Dogs in the Vineyard hack for space-Mormons...
I am thinking apocalypse world is exactly the wrong system for this. Or, at least, the harhholder is exactly the wrong playbook.
ReplyDeleteWould AW work, or some other system to get that feeling of connection and companionship?
Yeah, Derek Balling, I think you're missing about half the conversation for having Tony Lower-Basch blocked.
ReplyDeleteIn any event, you only need anti-pirate stuff if there are pirates; long-haul truckers don't have a 50 cal on the roof, though a handgun is likely.
In both cases, it's about mass and cost.
"long-haul truckers don't have a 50 cal on the roof"
ReplyDeleteUnless you are playing Car Wars.
Yep, and that's not a world I choose to think about. At this time.
ReplyDeleteJesus Derek, actually read what I said.
ReplyDeleteWho the fuck said there are pirates in this world?
ReplyDeleteThat's what you seem to be missing, as your ability to understand simple English is failing you.
Go away now, cousin. This isn't a thread for you.
Finally blocking Derek. This has been recommended for years.
ReplyDeleteWell, this thread took a turn.
ReplyDeleteFamilies, man. Families.
ReplyDelete