{"id":3077,"date":"2016-08-04T08:37:51","date_gmt":"2016-08-04T15:37:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/?p=3077"},"modified":"2017-05-04T14:54:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T21:54:57","slug":"pcs-as-ship-crew-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/pcs-as-ship-crew-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"PCs as Ship Crew, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>And a wonderful <em><a href=\"http:\/\/gamingballistic.blogspot.com\/p\/gurps-day.html\">GURPSDay<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>to you all! Thanks for including <strong>Game Geekery<\/strong> in your RPG reading circuit.<\/p>\n<p>Today is a follow up to the popular &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/pcs-as-ship-crew\/\">PCs as Ship Crew<\/a>&#8221; post from a few weeks back, which generated quite a bit of feedback.<\/p>\n<p>The most common comments were people sharing their favorite gameable ship crews fitting the mold that I didn&#8217;t mention, especially:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Expanse_(TV_series)\">The Expanse<\/a> (which I have since binge watched and quite enjoyed)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Legends_of_Tomorrow\">Legends of Tomorrow<\/a> (fun little B-show)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cowboy_Bebop\">Cowboy Bebop<\/a> (classic!)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Andromeda_(TV_series)\">Andromeda <\/a>(Hercules, Hercules!)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Blake%27s_7\">Blake&#8217;s 7<\/a> (on my list, but I&#8217;ve never seen it)<\/li>\n<li>and even&#8230;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cleopatra_2525\">Cleopatra 2525<\/a> (one of the few shows so cheesy even <em>I<\/em> couldn&#8217;t get into it)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Both Star Wars and Star Trek were frequently mentioned as well. I have played and GMed numerous games in both universes, and they were of course super, super fun settings to explore. But they don&#8217;t <em>quite<\/em> fit the kind of crew I&#8217;m talking about here for a couple reasons (and may get their own post down the line).<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h3>Self-Determination<\/h3>\n<p>One thing the ideal PC party\/ship&#8217;s crew has is self-determination. They can go wherever they like, accept or refuse any jobs they want, follow or ignore any story leads that speak to them. If they&#8217;re halfway through a mission but suddenly decide, &#8220;Eh, forget it&#8230; let&#8217;s just keep the MacGuffin for ourselves&#8221; they can totally do that.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, a Rebel Alliance crew of PCs <em>could<\/em> simply defy their orders, but that makes quite a major change to the game&#8217;s foundation and assumption in a way that a freelance crew doesn&#8217;t. They <em>could<\/em> tell Starfleet to go to hell and pursue their own agenda, but if the premise of the game is &#8220;PCs as Starfleet officers,&#8221; that&#8217;s quite a change-up. Again, can still be a lot of fun, but a little different than the topic at hand. I personally find it more enjoyable when the party has to live and die on their own terms.<\/p>\n<h3>Just Scraping By<\/h3>\n<p>Speaking of, the second thing that most of the above PC teams have in common is that they are always just scraping by, pulling into port on fumes and having to scramble for work. Starfleet and its post-scarcity infrastructure, not so much &#8212; Starfleet personnel in a Star Trek game don&#8217;t need to worry about the logistics of support, money, food, medical care, gear, etc. I prefer\u00a0when the crew isn&#8217;t sure where that next meal or ship&#8217;s fuel is coming from.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A couple of RPGs also got reader shout-outs: <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Traveller_(role-playing_game)\">Traveller<\/a>, which is more or less written assuming this <strong>exact<\/strong> kind of crew (and may or may not have been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nerdsonearth.com\/2016\/07\/inspiration-joss-whedons-firefly\/\">Whedon&#8217;s inspiration for Firefly<\/a>), and <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Leverage:_The_Roleplaying_Game\">Leverage<\/a>, which (I am told) explicitly structures the game according to the roles the PCs fill within the group (from the episodes I&#8217;ve seen and enjoyed, this sounds perfect).<\/p>\n<p>This kind of character group structure goes <em>way<\/em> beyond just tabletop RPGs, though. One reader pointed me to an absolute <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">treasure trove<\/span> of examples of this kind of group at TV Tropes: <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/FiveManBand\">The Five Man Band<\/a>. It lists out hundreds of examples of similar groups from all manner of media, from Hunger Games and the A-Team to Fraggle Rock and more. A great read! (See also <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/TheTeam\">The Team<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>Finally, speaking of losing hours of one&#8217;s life to a crazy-cool and awesome website&#8230; another reader pointed me to a site called <a href=\"http:\/\/www.projectrho.com\/public_html\/rocket\/index.php\">Atomic Rockets<\/a> which, I am overjoyed to tell you, is densely packed with info about ship crews, their gear, their ships, and so much more. Seriously, it&#8217;s an incredible resource for space gaming, definitely worth bookmarking and checking out.<\/p>\n<p>All this talk about constructing great campaign premises and PCs is percolating the ol&#8217; GM juices! Share your thoughts in the comments below &#8212; what&#8217;s on your mind?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>If you enjoyed this post and others like it, might you consider the <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/TheMookNet?ty=h\">Game Geekery Patreon<\/a><em>?<\/em><br \/>\n<!--Precis - A follow up to the recently popular post on establishing your game so that the PCs are the crew of a ship, whether on sea, across the aether, or in space. --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div class=\"mh-excerpt\"><p>And a wonderful GURPSDay\u00a0to you all! Thanks for including Game Geekery in your RPG reading circuit. Today is a follow up to the popular &#8220;PCs as Ship Crew&#8221; post from a few weeks back, which generated quite a bit of <a class=\"mh-excerpt-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/pcs-as-ship-crew-part-2\/\" title=\"PCs as Ship Crew, Part 2\">[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3045,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,3,6],"tags":[],"series":[],"class_list":["post-3077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-gming","category-gurps","category-rpgs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3077"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3982,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3077\/revisions\/3982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3077"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themook.net\/gamegeekery\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=3077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}