SpaceRun, Take me out to the black Options

[Daylen]

Anyone try a shadowrun campaign or at least runs that deal with the final frontier? Smuggling missions to the asteriods, infiltrate Ares base on the far side of the moon, investigating alien artifacts on the moons of Jupiter or even just doing a quick job against the Daedalus platform?

[BetaFlame]

I've been involved in a game of Shadowrun based on Stargate.

[Draco18s]

My group did a space opera once. The BBEG was a pervasive psychotic AI that when a race developed FTL travel (subspace/hyperspace) a signal out there in the void would get picked up, it'd install the AI in the ship's systems and begin "converting" the populous into parts (either cyborgs or just killing them).

[Karoline]

"Take me out, to the black, tell them I ain't comin' back."

There is in fact a serenity RPG out there if that is what you're looking for.

I'd imagine space missions in SR would be fairly limited. I mean if you hit the Ares moon base, where the heck are you going to go? Ares will track you all the way back to earth and likely have a nuke meet you in the upper atmosphere.

That said, I think something along the lines of working on the moon base (And perhaps facing weird astral rifts or other oddities) would be a very cool concept. I heard of someone running something vaguely along these lines before, but don't remember if it was run on these boards or someone's home group.

[Draco18s]

There is in fact a serenity RPG out there if that is what you're looking for.

Be prepared for you players to have no concept of money though. They don't ever have to worry about the fuel costs of traveling between star systems as they will always go looking for a job that would take them there and pay the way (and then some--afterall, would you ask someone to delivery something from one star system to the next and pay them less than it takes to travel there?) and in-system fuel is very very cheap.

Also be prepared for your players to make their own booze. We did it because we got bored from weeks upon weeks of stelar flight downtime. Made some 100 or so gallons of tech x5 scotch, 50 split between the guys who made it (me and another character, 25 gal each) 50 to sell on some backwater planet, and a gallon to the captain. I think we shared some with everyone else too, but we sold like half of it (and money was meaningless).

To further exacerbate the "money is sand" problem, I had a quality that allowed me to dig into a trust fund of sorts and get any single item I was looking at for free if I made a charisma check (effectively). My dice to that check was high enough that I could get anything up to some 8000 credits average. Max I could buy a ships boat and I hadn't even twinked for it (I was a cook).

[Daylen]

I'll stick to SR. I mostly just get annoyed with there being plenty of satellites where no runs happen and semiballistics just being used to annoy magik types. Plus in bladerunner the androids were only supposed to be in space; so I'd think it would be cool to have some kinda runs in space.

[Ancient History]

I want to write Shadowrun in Spaaaace, I've begged to do it. You beg to please! Maybe they'll listen to you!

[MJBurrage]

I want to write Shadowrun in Spaaaace, I've begged to do it. You beg to please! Maybe they'll listen to you!

I would love a Shadowrun in Space book. Preferably, full descriptions of all the various installations, realistic space travel for 2070, and whatever is up on Mars.

I would also suggest a short chapter on tweaking the world so that space travel is faster and more common than strict canon, for those that might want a more space opera spin.

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Anyone try a shadowrun campaign or at least runs that deal with the final frontier? Smuggling missions to the asteriods, infiltrate Ares base on the far side of the moon, investigating alien artifacts on the moons of Jupiter or even just doing a quick job against the Daedalus platform?

No campaign, really - but I send a team to Mars once, to hit a polar Proteus base.

Try and get Target: Wastelands - that's as close as you'll get to a Space Sourcebook.

[Cray74]

I would love a Shadowrun in Space book. Preferably, full descriptions of all the various installations, realistic space travel for 2070, and whatever is up on Mars.

A couple of books have given an overview of SR's space. As limited as it is, I'm not sure there's enough material for a full book.

[Karoline]

Be prepared for you players to have no concept of money though. They don't ever have to worry about the fuel costs of traveling between star systems as they will always go looking for a job that would take them there and pay the way (and then some--afterall, would you ask someone to delivery something from one star system to the next and pay them less than it takes to travel there?) and in-system fuel is very very cheap.

Also be prepared for your players to make their own booze. We did it because we got bored from weeks upon weeks of stelar flight downtime. Made some 100 or so gallons of tech x5 scotch, 50 split between the guys who made it (me and another character, 25 gal each) 50 to sell on some backwater planet, and a gallon to the captain. I think we shared some with everyone else too, but we sold like half of it (and money was meaningless).

To further exacerbate the "money is sand" problem, I had a quality that allowed me to dig into a trust fund of sorts and get any single item I was looking at for free if I made a charisma check (effectively). My dice to that check was high enough that I could get anything up to some 8000 credits average. Max I could buy a ships boat and I hadn't even twinked for it (I was a cook).

I have the book (Or used to, not sure where it is right now) but never actually got into a game. I'd imagine that the problems you're having are largely avoidable though. For instance, you might get paid slightly more than the cost of fuel (One way) if you're transporting something that is going to take you're entire ship to transport, but if you're moving small stuff, expect them to pay you less than that on the belief that you can move other people's stuff as well. Also remember to include docking fees and repair costs. From what I remember reading, there was alot of expense in keeping up a ship (And don't forget that food is fairly expensive in that setting).

As for making hundreds of gallons of booze, I can imagine alot of problems with that. Getting supplies could be difficult, as well as equipment, and selling it could be even harder as backwater people are going to already be making their own and inner worlders are going to want something with a brand name on it. Also, I'm fairly sure that tech x5 can't be applied to scotch, and even if it could, would require exceedingly advanced equipment.

As for the slush trust fund issue.. yeah, that can be a slight problem, though you can't buy a ship with it as ships cost 100k+ as I recall it. There are once again ways to combat this. If the government sees purchases for black market things showing up on you're bank account, then they may freeze it until they can come calling to know why you needed an illegal sniper rifle. Or if the fund isn't directly yours (You are being given access by someone else, much like an expense account) whoever is in control of it might think you're starting to take advantage of them if you're withdrawing 8k every other day.

Edit: I'm guessing the rules for making SR more space opera would be a little side bar that goes something like "Optional Rule: If you'd like a more space opera feel to your game, double or triple the speeds of space ships and cut their availability and rarity in half. Also provide more space ports for players to land at or launch from."

A space book would be cool, but from what I've heard I don't know that there is enough out there to really make a book of it. I mean the moon base and mars base seem to be the only real attractions. I'm sure it could make a great section of a book mind you. Like how Corp Enclaves has LA and Hong Kong both very well fleshed out in a single book. You could easily throw Space, Deep Sea/Ocean, and perhaps some other similar 'uncommon' running environments into one book. Expand things like ships (How big is that yacht you can get for 20kish anyway?) and subs and of course spaceships. Perhaps some new vehicle additions like snow-mobiles for arctic adventures.

[Draco18s]

Our GM wasn't the best so any of the details are her fault. Addressing things as I re-find them and the momentary answers I though.

Entire ship versus not: correct, just means that you'll do some scouting about for enough cargo.

Repairs: we never go into combat?

Booze: we built the equipment. From scrap metal. No really. Our engineer was a lot like the one from Team Fortress 2: taking discarded Sandvitches and Needle Guns, turning them into useful raw scrap metal, melting it down, and turning it into fully automated sentries with nothing more than a wrench. Combined with my equally epic cooking skills we got a roll high enough to qualify for super tech (halfway between newtech x2 and newtech x10) which would be better than a guy can make in the woods under the moon (moonshine is notoriously poor quality booze). I completely agree that we were probably given too much leeway in this regard, but it was honestly the second most exciting thing to happen (Alfred giving the absent player's character a rectal exam "for practice" was the first--another example of the money meaninglessness: Alfred spending a week planetside running a Christian Proctology clinic* made as much money as the captain's companion did seeing one person for one night).

*That is, taking a skill, rolling, and multiplying by some value that the GM either made up or pulled out of the book, it didn't really matter what he was doing it'd have come out to the same value.

Trust fund: I never once used it, actually. I started the game with some $300 leftover after chargen and that number only ever went up. And yes, I was buying weeks worth of fresh vegetables for inflight meals at every opportunity (or at least limited by how much I could safely store). I just commented on that I could buy a ship's boat (1-2 times every 80 tries or so) to which the GM screamed, "No! No! I won't let you!" And when asked by one of the other players what I'd do with it I said, "I haven't the faintest idea."

[Karoline]

Serenity never got into ship combat either, yet half of their problems revolved around needing repairs. Simply being in space puts wear on a ship and of course strain on all the ship's systems. Even an in-house mechanic is going to need to buy parts every so often if you don't want the ship to fall apart.

Personally as the GM I'd be calling BS on melting down anything (Not like you have a smelter handy) or generally making much out of raw scrap metal. Haelly was constantly complaining that she needed X part and that she couldn't replace/fix it herself because she didn't have the equipment to do so. As for making money from the clinic... I'm fairly sure I recall there being something about being able to use a skill to make money, but I seem to recall the amount being something like half what you rolled in credits, perhaps less. I can't imagine making the 500 credits a companion earns from a mechanic like that. I also don't recall anything about any kind of skill roll allowing for NewTech quality anything. And despite it tasting better than regular moonshine, most backwater folks aren't going to be willing to fork up the cash for better tasting booze, they're going to be more focused on making sure they can afford to eat and repair their tractor/whatever.

I do agree that the trust fund always seemed sketchy to me, especially the fact that the amount it could pay out without trouble was (Basically) based on how good looking you were.

[Draco18s]

Personally as the GM I'd be calling BS on melting down anything (Not like you have a smelter handy) or generally making much out of raw scrap metal.

Oh, I didn't mean literally melting it down, I meant we used spare ship parts (Mechanic only had like 3 of everything, because money was meaningless). I know the show modeled the way things should have been, but the rules as written didn't even imply that kind of difficulty.

Mainly because if you don't give the players a job (or jobs) that cover the cost of whatever they're doing they're not going to do it. If they've got a couple bucks above the cost of repairs, every flight, every time (or nearly), they're not scrounging, so there's no difficulty of life, which quickly becomes "money is meaningless" as if they are scrounging they quickly become incapable of doing anything at all.

Sort of like the (Mongoose) Traveller game that started up for a while. After a char build session, a ship build session, and a "get to the next planet session" one of the players (our Alpha Omega GM) built a space economy php program to calculate the best goods to trade when traveling from point A to point B to shorten what had taken an entire session down into 5 minutes.

At which point, funding the spacetravel became meaningless.

At which point it became assumed.

but I seem to recall the amount being something like half what you rolled in credits, perhaps less

That's exactly what I meant. He rolled his skill and got some value and in a week of doing that he made less money than the companion made for 8 hours of prostitution. Note: our captain was female and the companion male (GM was also female). No body at the table thought this made sense.

We also didn't make a whole heck of a lot from our booze making, but it did come out to be a better deal than just rolling a skill for plying a trade planetside (though compared to plying a trade planet side for the same duration with the same number of skills involved: probably not--but at least most of the work was done in space while traveling).

Of course...money was meaningless...

And while that might not have been a game system problem entirely, there was nothing in the book that said we were doing anything wrong.

As one player (our SR GM) exclaimed once:
"Sure! We'll take the job! What's that? Only 300 credits profit? Sounds fine! Not like we know what that means! And not like we have a choice!"
The choice to decline being a non-option as it was the plot.

TL;DR
Basically interstellar flight is so exorbitantly expensive by RAW that the players can not do it unless are paid to take something that way, so they won't be flying their space ship at all unless a job takes them into the black. The players themselves have no want or reason to fly to another planet most of the time, and even if they do, they will always find a job to take them there and pay the way.

[Karoline]

If they've got a couple bucks above the cost of repairs, every flight, every time (or nearly), they're not scrounging, so there's no difficulty of life, which quickly becomes "money is meaningless" as if they are scrounging they quickly become incapable of doing anything at all.

Well, if you look at it like that then money is meaningless in any system, because you'll always be making more on a mission/run/adventure/whatever than it cost you. Yet somehow it manages to remain highly relevant in most game systems.

So you're saying that if you make a total net profit of 10 nuyen from each run, then money is instantly pointless in SR? I'm fairly sure 99% of the people here will quite disagree with you.

one of the players (our Alpha Omega GM) built a space economy php program to calculate the best goods to trade when traveling from point A to point B to shorten what had taken an entire session down into 5 minutes.

So? They know what prices are good at points A and B this exact second. Does that matter? Given how long it takes to get from A to B the price could easily change and you might be eating losses instead of making a profit. Shipping is a much more complex business than buy low/sell high.

It really sounds to me like you're problems come from your GMs being exceedingly blase about money, or just general pushovers. I mean after all, if some character wrote a simple PHP program that allowed money to become meaningless to him, why isn't everyone in the universe millionaires? Obviously something in the universe prevents such a simple act making money meaningless.

[Daylen]

with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion space travel in the solar system would be close to space opera as far as time is concerned. The cost would be so high though that only wealthy nations and AAA corps could afford to have a ship or two each. so no tramp freighters...
With fusion power one could perhaps assume space opera or just long flight times but at least interiors of space craft more livable than the moon lander. But months or years of flight time can add a nice SR kinda feel to things. I always think the characters in Alien needing to be put in hibernation added to the feel dystopianness alot better than Star treck where they just hit warp and a few days later they are light years away.
and as far as enough material to make up a book... isnt that what imaginative writers are for?

[Draco18s]

Well, if you look at it like that then money is meaningless in any system, because you'll always be making more on a mission/run/adventure/whatever than it cost you. Yet somehow it manages to remain highly relevant in most game systems.

So you're saying that if you make a total net profit of 10 nuyen from each run, then money is instantly pointless in SR? I'm fairly sure 99% of the people here will quite disagree with you.

In Serenity, as in ShadowRun there are expenses--the costs of doing the job, you always expect these to be covered--in ShadowRun they are typically lower than the costs of getting new equipment, when they're not you know the relative cost (eg, getting a van).

And then there are indulgences. Upgrading equipment, buying new gear...that kind of thing, generally expensive and each mission brings you closer to some new stuff.

Serenity has it backwards. The expenses incurred simply traveling from A to B are 10 to 1000 times greater than buying new upgraded equipment. If a group decided to not-deliver the goods (essentially worth less than 1% of the fuel needed to move them) and take the money and run they could ditch the spaceship and settle on a planet of their choice and live out a luxury lifestyle for pretty much the rest of their lives.

Its sorta like the X Prize: 10 million to the first spaceship into orbit twice in two weeks. Cost of development: 20 million (per team). Except that you're paid up front.

So? They know what prices are good at points A and B this exact second. Does that matter? Given how long it takes to get from A to B the price could easily change and you might be eating losses instead of making a profit. Shipping is a much more complex business than buy low/sell high.

In Traveller there was a table for getting good deals based on a Trader skill. The person who had twinked (as much as you can in a LifePath system) in that direction was good enough to buy at the very bottom of the table (25% local price?) and sell at the very upper end (400% local price?) at an odds pushing 80%. It was actually impossible for them to lose money by RAW.

[Daylen]

Is this a serenity forum? I thought we were at a shadowrun forum.

[MJBurrage]

Well firefly / Serenity makes a great template for a group focused around a rigger and running clandestine cargo across borders. Think cargo panzer running through NAN territory, or a group with a cargo plane, etc.

[KarmaInferno]

I always think the characters in Alien needing to be put in hibernation added to the feel dystopianness alot better than Star treck where they just hit warp and a few days later they are light years away.

From what I remember, the tech manual book that came out at the time of the movies specified the FTL field system they had in Aliens actually suffered from a kind of odd time expansion effect. As they went faster, time aboard actually sped up, relative to the outside universe.

So they really needed those coldsleep pods. Otherwise they'd come out of a ten month trip as senior citizens.




-karma

[Karoline]

In Traveller there was a table for getting good deals based on a Trader skill. The person who had twinked (as much as you can in a LifePath system) in that direction was good enough to buy at the very bottom of the table (25% local price?) and sell at the very upper end (400% local price?) at an odds pushing 80%. It was actually impossible for them to lose money by RAW.

*shrug* so why didn't he buy something from one guy for 25% the local price and then go to the next stall and sell them that same stuff for 400% the local price? Why even bother going to a different world?

Despite the series it is based on, I think the Serentiy RPG was much more designed for groups to be played -without- a ship of their own. The fact that a ship costs more than the entire group could put together seems to suggest that general direction. So likely, instead of getting paid for expenses and then some extra, expenses should be directly covered and the characters paid. Heck, they could be the cargo that someone else is transporting. Like I said, never played it so never got to see these sorts of problems at work.

Hehe... cargo panzer...

[Falconer]

Actually... not talking serenity so much but SR. I think it would be interesting to see more space development.


Just limit it to the solar system... but stuff like cowboy bebop, battletech, moonlight mile, Babylon5, planates, even crest of the stars have some great insights on how the system could expand the frontiers a bit. Outside of the TV/movie I don't know serenity well enough to comment on it.


Really, I like the concept of downtime while in-transit... I'd avoid any kind of FTL, hyperspace, or interplanetary. I'd stick w/ more mundane elements. Just as the earth has sort of become the playground for all the magics... the mana voids of space give a lot of room for more 'mundane' pursuits.


I like the concept of transit times for a few reasons... one it makes lifespans actually mean a bit more. Interplanetary transit should take a long time, and should lead to downtime pursuits (hackers could program their own stuff, faces could do correspondence, riggers vehicle/drone mods, etc.). Things like availability and supply make a HUGE deal... so there would be a premium on a rigger who could say jury rig specialty drones for a run on the fly out of scrap/desktop forge. It makes downtime planning of things more important for sure. It also stresses things like more of a barter economy, money has value but it's less valuable than being able to provide what the other guy needs.

I think battletech does a great job w/ solar systm transit models and the like. 1G acceleration it takes a month to reach 10% lightspeed. Though you get some potential problems if you get people trying to do relativistic physics (let alone collisions!)... especially if someone is intentionally trying to hit something w/ say an asteroid w/ some thrusters attached.

Racially... I think dwarves would rock in space. Long lifespan, good body for resist radiation, etc... (plus they're resistant to pathogens/toxins that'd crop up in isolated populations). They're small and lightweight (they eat less, need less propellant.. etc). They're strong str3 base... so would have less trouble if put under harder stresses such as say 1.5G acceleration for days on end.

In terms of development... mars & the moon for sure... maybe expanding out to the jovian moons. A bit of piracy/denial ops going on in the asteroid belt. Mayhaps harvesting the gas giants for propellant for use in ion drives. Intentionally introducing extremophiles (think the sulphur vent bacteria) to venus to begin terraforming. Bases on mars (again potential for maybe terraforming). Moon bases. Harvesting comets for water, asteroids for minerals. Taking another page from battletech... zero-g materials and manufacturering. With a touch of the wild-west frontier nature of serenity.

Not only that, you'd get wierdness w/ the orbital cycles... EG: things would be cheap between earth and mars when their orbits are close... and much more restricted when they're on the opposite sides of the sun.

[CanadianWolverin...]

When I think of Shadowrun and space, for some reason I think of things like the PC game Alpha Centauri and its secret projects like Space Elevator and if corps love to try to plunder the shit out of planetside, how much more would they love to monopolize on plundering resources from other solar bodies where the politics might be slightly less restrictive since there are few nations who can afford space travel, only other corps to compete with and fewer magical and other nut jobs to worry about?

Nice point on the use of dwarves in space Falconer.

[Ascalaphus]

I recently started thinking about using Alpha Centauri as a Shadowrun setting, or something like it.

[Karoline]

I recently started thinking about using Alpha Centauri as a Shadowrun setting, or something like it.

Ah, good old AC. Haven't played it in years though. I think one problem with a space based game with slower travel in a world like SR is that technology has increased in unbelievable leaps and bound. It wouldn't take long to get rather odd gaps in technology that you generally don't want to see. I mean, imagine if a spaceship launched 20 years ago returned now. Think of all the advancements that have happened in the last 20 years. The internet has grown massively, computers can do things in milliseconds that used to take hours, cell phones have shrunk to micro-sizes and can now stream videos and access the internet. TVs went from color being a fairly snazzy option (Well, not quite) to blue-ray quality super HD with surround sound. Computer graphics have gone from large pixels to "That isn't real?". I'm sure plenty of snazzy new healthcare related things have cropped up in the last 20 years that we take for granted now that was only dreamed of back then. Now fast forward 20 years to when we will (supposedly) have fully functional cybernetic limbs and brain/machine interfacing and all the other things you see in the early SR editions.

So, imagine if you're stuck in a ship for several years at a time. By the time you get back everything you own would be completely outdated. Heck, that new thing that was cutting edge when you got it at liftoff could be so outdated that it isn't even being supported any more and won't be able to interface with anything else.

It seems to me that any setting that has slow space travel also has fairly stagnant technology or some means of spreading new technology very effectively (MechWarrior for example has long travel times, fairly consistent technology, and FTL communication to spread any new technology that does come out.)