Traveller Bounty Hunter, the Ship To Be Named

I used the fairly simple Mongoose v1 ship rules to create their ship. Based on the 0-Hr Tachikaze Interceptor, it is a 30-year police pursuit craft that has seen better days. But is is also how they can afford it: the new 40-year mortgage is for 1/4 the original price which was just over MC120. And also, they have a bit more income than normal as they are the stars of the On The Hunt holo-series, a reality show about bounty hunters. And they also do product placement for Instellarms, LIC. 

Working out the basic costs, I get the following:

Monthly costs:

                Pilot                        Cr6000

                Navigator               Cr5000

                Engineer                 Cr4000 x 3 = Cr 12,000

                Life Support           Cr2000/person (x5 crew = Cr10000)

                Power Plant fuel   Cr2000

                Mortgage               Cr125,000 (MCr30 / 240 payments over 40 years)

                ==========

                Cr159,000

Which for starships is not so bad. And also, the PCs will fill in 3 of those roles, so we can really subtract that. Life support I am going with Cr2000/person/month which is how I read those rules. Though I think Classic is Cr2000/person/week but that always seemed really high to me. Regardless, house rule if nothing else!

We also need to figure out how much they are getting paid, both from the residuals for the show and their sponsor, Intstellarms. A search indicates that a popular bounty hunter in real life gets $75,000 a year for his show. As credits are about $2/credit (well, they were in the late 70s, and I'll go with that!) meaning the players also earn Cr150,000 a year, or Cr12,500/month. Which is already 2x the pilot pay! We'll add a bit more as the show does promote the arms maker, so let's add Cr50K/year, bringing our players getting Cr200,000/year, or Cr16,666/month. Plus, any bounties they get. 

We have a few decisions to make: is the ship the characters' ship, or does it belong to Checkmate Acquistion? I am going to go with the players are owning this but use their company to help back the loan. Assuming we get 3 players (only 2 showed up the first night), the mortgage split 3 ways is Cr41,666/month. So, while it looks like they are making a LOT of credits, they are really still in the hole. Starships are really expensive in Traveller. 

I've pegged the bounty on Katja Rigg at MCr2.5. And there may or may not be accomplices - they have yet to do any real investigation other than talking to one of their contacts, which did give them the lead to the starport custodial engineer who "saw something he should not have". 

Maybe they will name it this session. They did just get it

everyone needs ID cards (I'll add the skills on the back and voila, character sheets!)

And as I've noted before: Traveller is really different than most SF games. Things are expensive. Star Trek and Star Wars everyone and their dog has a spaceship, can fly it, and it costs nothing. Of course, RPGs should not be accountants in space, but things should not just be given away. Similar to why I like low-level games - there are consequences and this this is not just a fantasy fulfilment thing for me. Traveller has a different set of struggles than a lot of SF games in addition to your normal things. One of the reasons I really enjoy it!

And yes - it is also time for the next Organic Towns for Windemere Crossing. I may get that out tomorrow, though I also need to finish my 3 sessions outline (and one session is done). I generally plan the overall arc, but never define how to get to the endpoint specifically. Basically, we start at A and need to get to F. There are a number of ways I throw out there, and then build on the choices the players take. And yes - part of that comes from the XDM book which I need to re-read. And yes, I did back yet another GM book, The Secret Art of Gamemastering though I only backed the book and not the whole thing as the other two books are really just forms, and I can make those myself. One of these days I'll be good at running games (though it seems the ones I do less prep work run better. But I like prep work!)