Re: Companies in Spelljammer

> > So what spell uses mangoes as a spell component...?
>
>There are several that could (there's a 2e spell that copies a certain
>amount of food, thus doubling your supplies) but it could also be used
>for research and who knows what else.  Spell casters are always needing
>wierd ingredients for something.

Let me see, you can get several tons of cargo in an SJ ton.  And several
thousand mangos to the tons.

Just what kind of spellcaster population that would require that many
components?

The pricier the food item, the smaller the segment of the population that
will buy it, the less likely that you will be able to sell a full cargo load
of that food item.

So a ship might take small quantities of luxury foods from a great number
of sources to ship them a long distance.  Enough for a couple hundred
nobles to eat in a month of each item.  Or several thousand upper middle
class families which try to imitate the rich people every once in a while.

So you could have one ship doing the long haul general luxuries from
sphere A to sphere B.  Within those spheres there are other ships
shipping various goods, luxury and otherwise, to various collection
points.

So, ground port N, with the capacity to consume 2 SJ tons of various
luxury food a month, and produces 2 SJ tons of a luxury food item per
month, _also_ produces food, timber and other locally tradeable
commodities.

A ship lands a couple times a month, trades 1 SJ ton of luxury food, and
loads up on other commodities for a shuttle run to a central space port.

That way, the luxury food market isn't saturated beyond capacity on
the ground port side.  The local ships are not going to be carrying
very expensive cargos, in general, compared to the inter-sphere
traffic.

A lot depends on whether a destination is a cargo transfer hub or
consumption/production point, so to speak.  A ground port will
have a huge number of potential consumers, but it is generally
more time consuming to get there.  The travel time from a ground
port to a space port is about half the travel time from a ground
port to a ground port on the same planet, so it makes a lot of
sense to do quick runs up to the space port, pick up goods from
a large number of sources, and then head back down.

So there should be at least three different categories of trade route:

Planetary collection and distribution:  Trade goods from various
ground ports collect goods at an orbiting space port.  This connects
the ground networks of trade with the more expensive SJ
networks.  A groundling ship carrying sea or river borne trade
will be much cheaper in terms of day travel/SJ ton, the ship will be
cheaper, possibly larger, and it won't require an expensive helm
and helmsmen on top of that.

Inter-planetary trade:  Goods from various trade hubs travels between
various inhabited planets, moons and asteroids within a sphere.

Inter-sphere trade:  Almost all luxury goods and finished goods.
Special materials for industrial/magical applications.

In order by value of cargo and expected travel time, the planetary
collection and distribution ships would focus on rapid turnaround,
easy landing and docking, and rapid cargo handling.

The Inter-sphere trade will have the most expensive cargoes,
cargoes often exceeding the value of the ship.  These will be
the ships most enticing to pirates, and therefore the most
heavily armed, with the most elite crew, and best helms.

Ships on the planetary distribution runs will probably have larger
crews.  They operate close to populated planets, so they have a huge
pool of recruits to choose from, and they are not limited by air,
water or food in any way.  The crew quality will probably be
pretty low, because the profit margins are tight, and most of
their job will be moving cargo.

Crew would likely be drawn from the planet, with perhaps a few
more experienced crew members who could come from anywhere.

Ships on inter-planetary trade will interface with ships from every
sphere that trades with that sphere, and the cargo runs probably
vary over the course of a year to exploit various harvest times
of various planets.

I would expect these ships to have the most variation in their
crew because by the time you get to inter-sphere trade you
are talking expeditions where group loyalty and long term
shared interests make homogenized crews attractive again.
The cargoes are just _too_ sensitive and expensive, and
monopolies too valuable to risk the source for a product finding
another shipper to get it to the consumers.

So inter-sphere ships would either be homogeneous or extremely
polyglot, in all likelihood.


I would recommend starting players on planetary distribution networks,
if you are transferring campaigns.  That way, their ground contacts and
knowledge of planetary goods and customs is useful, and they can get
their feet wet in SJ culture.

If you want to start them on inter-planetary travel, then you can
come up with excuses for almost any race as part of the crew,
although they might have to join at different ports.  You would
only see groundlings from planets in that sphere, in all likelihood.

Inter-sphere travel is where the big boys play.  You can have exciting
voyages of exploration, Hammership diplomacy to open up new ports,
intrigues over various luxury good monopolies.

If you want to _start_ with inter-sphere travel, then the player group
may start with a long term mission:  establishing a production and
transport center for a particular good, surveying a newly discovered
planet for interesting (and dangerous!) plants, animals and minerals.
They might be part of an away team, so to speak, or one of the
escorting ships.

Inter-sphere trade is the most likely to warrant escorts.  Hired
escorts would not necessarily be informed at all about the nature
of the cargo, because they really don't need to know.  If you
want to start off with inter-sphere trade, escort duty is probably
the most interesting for a player party with a not terribly
expensive ship of their own.

Michael Sandy