Drifting

[Onix]

Privateer-styled as in Privateer press?

Actually, my first reading made me think you meant as in the PCs have received a letter of marque. I got excited thinking about a game where you're supposed to be hunting down pirates but you find that all of them are bigger and tougher than your crew and so you spend your time drifting, looking for wounded pirate vessels that your crew can pick off.

[kylesgames]

[kylesgames]

Ok, quick question- pseudorealistic or totally wonky space travel?

Currently space travel in Drifting is set up to work on a system of "jots" (light-minutes/day), which would be fairly realistic. There would be a table for all planets and the average light-minute distances between them. This means that we're talking about Earth-Mars taking about 14 jots for a fortnight, which means that players could spend more jots to get there quicker (spend 98 and get there in 2 days!) or fewer to get there cheaper (7 jots for 4 weeks). This could play into missions and the like- some cargo could expire requiring higher fuel costs, passengers will probably pay less for slower journeys, and faster travel is safer (pirates can't catch you if you're going fast).

Of course, this also provides incentives for risk. If the players choose to risk the Blue Ring Pirates they could shave off a jot or two on their travels.

The main problem with this is the math required. I've seen games that do actual delta-velocity calculations and provide GM's and players with necessary rules, but I don't want that. I'm almost questioning if it's better to change this around.

[Onix]

I know the temptation, the math probably isn't that hard but most players will not want to do it. This crops up a lot in sci-fi games. I usually have to sit down and mull over the idea for a while until I can come up with a math lite approximation of what I wanted to do. Like in the Artifact, I originally wanted to have vehicles do power management but it made things too slow.

The Engineer's Sourcebook was functional after the first year of writing it and worked beautifully if you wanted to do the math, it took me four more years and a lot of philosophy changes to finally simplify it down.

So two tools that you might use to simplify. If there's an equation, make a table. If there are two equations make two tables. Past that it's too much.

If the math is still too much, consider a random table. For each unit of distance the table has to be rolled on, some rolls are just delays, some rolls are hazards and require skill checks, maybe some hazards are pirates. The more options the better, it makes space travel interesting. The more jotts spent on the trip means fewer rolls on the table.

[kylesgames]

You know, that's a good idea- there could be a Jot Factor or something to measure how long flights increase the risk of fancy stuff happening-this would create a "waste" challenge that the players would potentially have to burn tokens on.

EDIT: I'm thinking of (and writing the first stuff about) a risk factor- it's pretty low (2-5 on a 2d6, with 5 being "very dangerous", but provides a decent incentive for hurrying), but it gives the players a reason to expend more jots to avoid wasting tokens, in addition to time-critical cargo, passengers, and missions.

EDIT 2: I've decided that the Jot system is not too difficult for players-it's simple multiplication, with the worst case scenario being someone deciding to get cute and having to deal with fractions. Worst come to worst and it's being played without adult supervision, people could just fudge the numbers.