What to do on a CAPITAL ship?

[Vulpinoid]

First, which kind of ship is it? A huge capital ship with whole companies crammed inside, a small research vessel or the typical NPC small converted freighter? Most of the tasks are going to be routine. There is gunk to scrape off, sensors to stare at and filters to clean everywhere.

Personally, I'd love to try a scenario or a minor campaign set completely on a capital ship some time.

I was going to follow this up on the other space ship thread, but thought that it might work better as a new topic.

We know that the crew roles on a huge starship will be much the same as the crew roles on a small freighter or similar ship. The main difference is that there will be dedicated members of crew for each role rather than people who have to juggle multiple roles to keep the ship flying. In fact, it's more likely that there will be senior roles and support staff fulfilling ship functions where a lone individual might be forced to complete such tasks on a small ship.

Small ship = part time cook.
Capital ship = one or more chefs with a compliment of kitchen-hands and cleaners.

My question here is not so much..."What roles would you find on board one of these massive vessels?"

Instead I'm asking..."What sort of tales to you think are better suited to this type of ship?"

Simple answer is that the crew play as an "Away team" to use Star Trek terminology, heading off on adventures away from the ship. In this sort of case, the ship basically fulfils the role of the town in an traditional dungeon-bash, while the planet/phenomenon being investigated fulfils the role of the dungeon. Other easy answers would easily come after watching a string of episodes of Star Trek the Next Generation, or Battlestar Galactica (both of which have their own distinct feels despite being set on huge space vessels).

But what other types of story or role-playing experience would be suitable to this type of campaign set-up.

V

[Susan Calvin]

It needs a structure. Even non-military vessels need a strict organisation in order to function smoothly over a long period of time. It might not follow traditional military lines of command (for example the Prospector's Guild of Fading Suns where a Council of Elders vote on issues).

When there are people, there will be stories to be told. If the ship is designed for long journeys, like I would like mine to be, it becomes more of a home than an transitory living area. People try to lead their definition of ordinary life when off-duty. Economy would be handled more carefully as the crew must share the ever-limited resources of the ship, unless you have the Star Trek replicators which pop out material as long as you have energy.

[chronoplasm]

One of the ideas I've always wanted to play with is the idea of a massive ship that has taken damage or fallen into disrepair due to shortage of resources, and thus now has 'dark zones'. That is, sections of the ship are suffering from blackouts and have become inaccessible to repair crews. These areas could be populated by mutineers, trapped personnel that have gone feral, or tribes of alien stowaways. Thus, your own ship could have 'dungeon crawls' in it.

[contracycle]

I dislike the "away team" approach because it is self-defeating; it moves the action away from the ship and thereby renders the ship irrelevant.

I can think of three main themes that apply on board.  First, fragility, in that the ship is a bubble that cannot be allowed to pop.  This is the most basic source of tension and danger.  Second, claustrophobia, in the sense that you cannot escape the other crew who inhabit the ship, you have to deal with any conflicts - hell is other people, as Sartre remarked.  Third, the greater purpose - every ship exists with some definite mission that superceeds the individual interests of the crew, and thus can be brought into conflict with their own views.

Setting a game on a ship will require that the ship be realised in great detail, because in effect it will be nearly the whole game world.  Sure there is stuff outside the ship, but its unlikely any action will occur in any of those locations more than once, and the bulk of all action will necessarily occur on board.  Therefore you will need to know how long it takes to get from A to B, how big the cafteteria is, etc.  For this reason the basic science of the ship will also need to be precisely defined, for which purposes I strongly recommend the excellent Atomic Rocket site: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/

[David Artman]

Well, we STILL need a scale other than "Capital Ship"--read any Culture novels? If we're talking a General Systems Vehicle, it could be upwards of 200km in all dimensions and hold a habitat indistinguishable from a planetary one, complete with seas and forests and cities and.... you get the point. But of course, The Culture is so advanced that, frankly, there's little to "do" other than entertainment, hobbies, study--very little adventure (or a ton of artificial adventure, in VR or RL with drones, etc; think Dream Park on steroids).

You seem, by the examples, to want something more on the scale of an aircraft carrier or maybe a bit larger. In that case, you are in big-time luck: Carrier premieres on PBS this Sunday--check local listings for time and channel. --wait a sec: PBS is free, I forgot!

That's the banal, personal-relationship, day-in-the-life stuff, though--in SPAAACE, things have to be wilder, no? And a carrier's mission might be a great deal different from the general mission of your capital ship (as I said in the related thread: one must know something of the purpose of the voyaging, to know how the ship will be decked out and crewed).

One worthwhile note, though: a capital ship will rarely be alone (most mission profiles, at least). There will be supporting craft, not to mention its own fighters (if any) and launches (in-space shuttles and ground-landing). Maybe there's fruitful stuff to be had from inter-fleet conflicts or disagreements?

Other than that, off the top of my head... what contrac said, totally. There's just too little concrete detail in the OP to make any headway with specifics like "adventures" or "roles" or even "science/tech." And being storygamers, we could as easily ask for what themes are needing exploration or emphasis, and build all the tech and roles out of that, to finely hone the tensions and conflicts of interest.

So, in summary: insufficient data to answer.

[Susan Calvin]

I'm more interested of life on board. Cities are also basically huge numbers of humans that stay put in a limited area, and I think none would argue that there is too little that can be done with such an environment.

I would still want PC:s with a clear rank and function in the ship's hierarchy, whatever that might look like.

[Landon Winkler]

I agree with contracycle that the away team approach basically makes the game no longer about the capital ship. Its a fine approach for a sci-fi game, but I don't think its really an answer for your question.

One approach I think might work is something like the Alpha Centauri backstory. Basically you're working with a colony ship from a pre-FTL, pre-cryostasis culture. The ship is probably massive, but filled with a ton of people going about their lives, trying to not go insane. Everyone expects entertainment and shifts working on the ship to be enough, but people break down eventually.

Given a few generations, it'd be easy to explain groups growing and, eventually, competing amongst themselves (probably because someone started hording precious resources). Command and control breaks down, parts of the ship are repaired as fast as they should be, certain sectors might be claimed, resources change hands, the occasional atrocity is committed, and so forth.

Players could easily be troubleshooters from one faction or peacekeepers from across all the factions, tasked with arbitration and restoring order. This could force a very interesting type of play, because you can't afford to start killing people because you don't agree with them. Maybe one or two, but lose too many and the ship won't make it.

Mix in stories with external threats (aliens, space phenomena) or personal threats (space madness, personal relationships) to keep everyone on edge. I'd keep some external threat looming and build some madness into the game system, myself. Make things a bit claustrophobic.

Hope that helped or sparked someone's imagination.

Cheers!
Landon

[Vulpinoid]

Hope that helped or sparked someone's imagination.

Worked for me...shame I'm working a half dozen other projects at the moment.

V

[David Artman]

If you mean suit, then I agree that that could be cool... but I'd also be willing to scrap a set of Oracles that made for too much of a kitchen sink feeling to the game. The suits, as I read them, seem to be written to make a campaign in and of themselves, in isolation--though all are, of course, in the Hyborian-esque Age that is the game's main source.

However, perhaps I am overly influenced by one-shot convention play, which seems to benefit from a tighter, more-integrated setting and situation....

[David Artman]

Ignore the above--wrong thread (someone can delete this and the above, to avoid clutter, if they like).

[opsneakie]

The thing with capital ships is that they're huge. You could be living on one for years and still not know all the nooks and crannies. On the other hand, a capital ship (I'm assuming along the lines of Star Destroyer size here) is tiny, compared to a planet or a city. Once you've built this vessel and crammed it full of weapons, equipment, cargo, and provisions, things have to be very space-efficient. So while the place may be huge, your quarters are tiny, the hallways are too narrow, the ceilings are too low, etc. etc. etc. Obviously on a luxury liner or similar this wouldn't be a problem, but especially on a military vessel comfort is second to functionality.

You could play with all sorts of things. Since the characters are confined to the ship, having an outbreak on board could be fun. Have them get boarded and fight off the invaders hallway by hallway. Disease, murder, starvation, you can play with all sorts of stuff on board a large ship. The downside is you might need to built an awful lot of NPCs and flesh them out pretty well, for at least the NPCs the players are running into on a regular basis.

You could even have fun with a derelict ship. Have the players be your standard freighter crew, checking out a disabled capital ship found floating off the well-charted routes. Maybe have their ship be damaged so they have to use the derelict to hide on. Now you can do a creepy sci-fi horror, as the players wander through this huge, silent ship, trying to find out why the whole place is empty.

Just some thoughts on capital ship stuff. It makes a great setting, and it's confined, so you can really detail it out. If you're big on mapping, make a deckplan of the thing, and let the fun commence.

-sneakie

[Susan Calvin]

I think I would keep events outside the vessel to a minimum, especially confrontations with aliens and other intelligences. Space is huge, and I would like it to remain focused on life inside the self-contained miniature society.

For a Swedish sci-fi classic dealing with life onboard a derelict colonization vessel, feel free to read the poetry epos Aniara.

[walruz]

Another question to consider: Is this hard SF, soft SF, Space Opera or maybe the Grimdark Future of the 41st Milennium? Depending on your genre of choice, the ship is going to behave differently, and the stories to be told are going to adjust accordingly. Sure, most stories work in a wide variety of settings, but I think you get my point.
If you are going for a Space Opera or other "Space with supernatural stuff" genre, you could run basically any horror story, amplified by the fact that you can't flee anywhere. A kind of Silent Hill-ish scenario where the characters backgrounds are really integral parts of the story could work, both in and out of the horror genre, because the characters have to resolve their issues, they can't just run away.
For inspiration, you could watch Robotech: The Macross Saga (or the original Chou-Jikuu Joussai Macross) as well as Babylon 5. They both contain many story arcs that deal with outside threats, but also some situations which are more soap opera-ish (that is, dealing with relationships between different crew-members or other people on the ship/station).

[MoonHunter]

Much of the "in ship" events will simply be soap opera/ dramatic in nature.

Unless some external force is acting on the ship OR something extraordinary (like a haunting), most ship life is pretty routine.  Thus your crew will need to be acting on their own drives and needs, and how those interact. Those in an officers/ lead role, will be working on "making things better" for their command. So you will be playing the military equivalent of "office politics".  (Sure he is the Ship's Doctor, but he has the Captain's Ear and has pull wayyyyy beyond his rank. So you will need to make sure that he is on your side when you present "this plan".).  So inside, there is little to do except what people have done since the begining of time.

Now external events acting on your ship will cause things to really rock for those inside. However, it becomes "horror" in some ways. Stuff happens and you don't know why. You are down in engineering. There is a power drain. You send a guy into the relay tube.  He screams. You don't know there is a giant space ameba out there, unless you reported this power drain to the bridge, and they might get around to telling you. So a lot of it is "suprise" and "powerlessness" because you are not one of the people sitting on the bridge.