Gig (or Pinnace) Economy
And the single best TTRPG resource ever
This Week’s post explores the thrills of employee vehicle hire.
Boat Loan
Something I’m testing out for my Intergalactic testing, recently added to the playtest doc.
Being part of a thousand-strong crew on a huge starship has become a key part of Intergalactic, something I was eager to explore as a point of difference to the familar sci-fi RPG setup of a small independent crew with their own ship.
From my initial playtests I wonder if I went a too far with this, having a bit too much time cooped up in the ship, sometimes making it easy to forget you’re in space at all. Layover offered a chance to get off the ship but you were then confined to a single planet and there wasn’t much drive beyond “make some money for yourself”, then you were back on the ship for the next transit. None of this was outright bad, but I wanted to make the balance between workplace-restriction and starfaring-freedom a little more even.
Enter the Boat Loan, a replacement for the current “ticket of leave”.
[from the Layover Page]
Boat Loan
Crew working Double Duty Detail now receive their Boat Loan, being granted temporary ownership of one of the ship’s boats, and the freedom to roam the system. This privilege carries three hard rules:
Return on time for the next transit.
Return the boat in the condition you took it.
Get Officer approval for each trip, agreeing to their modifications and stipulations.
Typical Officer stipulations might be a share of profits gained, an errand to run on their behalf, or taking specific crew members with you.
The Captain and Officers have access to their boats but usually stay on the ship, whether out of fear the ship will abandon them or the lack of appetite for visiting dangerous worlds.
This opens up little stretches of freedom for the players to explore the current solar system, but still ultimately ties them to the main ship with the pressure to return on time and profitable.
Transit times have been tweaked to make all this a little more viable while still applying financial pressure and uncertainty. Ships are now horribly inefficient for interplanetary transit compared to boats, to the ship is assumed to stay in-place between interstellar transits.
Elsewhere
Glorified Notepad asks what makes a good question for the players?
Throne of Salt drops a load of links to wikipedia, the best TTRPG resource.
Skullboy’s Illustrated Guide to Demons is funding right now and, well, it looks like this.
Coming Soon
Over on Patreon I talk about balancing inspirations for a sci-fi setting.
In writing the setting for Intergalactic Bastionland I feel pulled between the gravity of three stars:
Reality - What would it really be like to be in space as we understand it today?
History - What are some interesting equivalents to mine from actual history?
Fantasy - Yeah but what if this weird thing was out there??
Expect the full post here and on the blog next week.
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