Re: Starting vessel

Abbadon the Dark Angel of Morning wrote:
> What ship did you use to introduce newbie wildspacers to space with? Did you
> give them something very, very odd, or kept it fully groundling, made of
> wood with sails and all, but added a helm? Did you get all Monty, and give
> them something armed for war? Or made it a wrecked trader, and made them
> learn the hard way about ship-board catapults? And what were the general
> circumstances of the discovery?
        In my last SJ campaign (it was a one-player-one-DM campaign) the first
ship the PC was on was an eel trader that was pretty much stock. The
captain shipped small cargoes and was used to running from a fight
rather than breaking out the heavy weapons. The circumstances were that
the PC had recovered a treasure from an elven Man-o-War which had
crashed almost right on his head. He was fleeing from spacefarers who
wanted the treasure, and he figured that he could only find out who
these pursuers were, and why they wanted the treasure in space, so after
running back to his hometown (Waterdeep) as fast as he could, he asked
around and found out that sometimes spelljamming ships came into the
harbour, so he waited around until one came by, and he paid for a berth
aboard the little eelship. He chummed around with the crew while they
were in the dock, getting to know some of them, and learning what he
could from them of space. Of course, the poor Slippery Eel didn't
survive long, as his pursuers (Neogi) caught up to him almost as soon as
he left the atmosphere, but that's another story...
        The first ship that he actually had *control* over was a badly used
angelship that was all he could afford to buy at Bral (he had acquired a
Minor Helm after doing a favour for the Arcane). He fixed up the
angelship, and kept it for the rest of his spacefaring career, even
after he found a smalljammer (he flew the smalljammer while almost all
of his remaining crew followed in the angelship). The angelship lasted
until it was dismantled by shivaks...
        All of this has made me think of another question: how do you guys
handle non-PC crews? When it came time for the PC in my campaign to hire
crewmembers for his angelship, I had him do a whole bunch of quick
interviews with hopeful hirelings, and based on the interviews (as well
as what pay they wanted and how they showed up when he cast Analyze
Balance). The choices that he made had a huge effect on how the campaign
turned out. The four hadozee he hired turned out to be covertly working
for the IEN, although he found that out fairly quickly. It wasn't until
much later in the campaign, after the hadozee had been kicked out, that
he discovered that the harmless half-elven lookout (who never fought
when the ship was boarded, who had the lowest pay of any of the crew,
who claimed to be on the run from the jealous husband of his lover) was
another plant from the IEN, who was actually a bionoid, and who tried to
take over the ship when signalled by a nearby armada. There was also a
psycopathic human murderer who he sniffed out and didn't hire; a lying
braggart who had no skills whatsoever who he also sniffed out; an
arrogant elven helmsman who demanded high pay but was worth it; a very
highly-paid cook who demanded only the best working conditions but who
made the crew very happy and who turned out to be *really* handy with a
thrown knife; a female lizardman who seemed bloodthirsty, but who turned
out to be a good hire who was extremely loyal; and there were the
survivors of the Slippery Eel who decided to stick with him. It was
loads of fun making up some quick descriptions for the potential
crewmembers and notes on how they would turn out if hired, and it made
for interesting on-board plots. It was also nice when the ship was in
battle and a crewmember was killed to be able to tell him who was
killed, and see him react to that.
        Oh, and incidentally, hi again to everybody, I've been rather
incommunicado for a while, but I'm back (and with a new email addy)!

--
The most merciful thing in all the world, I think, is the inability of
the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island
of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not
meant that we should voyage far.