After having the idea of running a simple Traveller “trading game”, I felt drawn towards GURPS Traveller. This is a collection of Traveller material that I’ve collected over many years but never got around to using, largely because GURPS seemed so scary. Now that I am more deeply exploring GURPS it seems a more approachable prospect.

GURPS Traveller is powered by the Third Edition of GURPS. My first thought was to convert the material (to Fourth Edition) but then I thought, ‘What the heck?’ and decided to just play it as written. I own all the Third Edition material I would need so it removes the barrier of conversion.

Here’s my rough plan:

1. Choose a starship and give it a name: I am thinking one of the “tramp trader” ships.
2. Build a crew for the starship, one of whom is the Captain and registered owner.
3. Drop the starship and crew into an area of Known Space within the GURPS Traveller universe.
4. Start play.

All of these decisions are about easy-access to the actual playing of the game. Yes, I could build my own Traveller-style subsector of space but this would be a small game project of its own. Using the material ‘out of the box’ lets me get started quickly and also invites me to explore the GURPS Traveller line on its own merits.

STEP ONE: Choose a starship

I’ve always been drawn to the exploratory campaign in Traveller and my first love of starships in the Official Traveller Universe is the Type-S Scout/Courier. This is a poor choice for trading cargo, however, because it is too small for serious use in this role.

The second thought is that the original game’s Free Trader Beowulf is the iconic tramp trader. This is the classic Beowulf-class 200-ton Free Trader starship and, frankly, remind me of our first games of Classic Traveller back in the late 1970s and early 1980s. There is strong nostalgia here.

My third thought is maybe the Empress Marava-class 200-ton Far Trader which is almost as iconic but offers a Jump-2 drive and consequent greater flexibility. I also love the twin-nose shape and form of the starship which somehow reminds of a certain Millenial Bird-of-Prey.

But the real question is what can a starting crew afford to run?

For the answer, I turned to page 101 of “Far Trader” – the GURPS Traveller supplement all about mercantile campaigns – and read through the new Advantage named ‘Ship Owner’. This in turn led me to review the rules on pages 98-99 about ‘Starship Ownership’, reminding me of the Classic Traveller ‘mortgage’ over 40 years.

Choices are essentially about how to finance the starship. What I love about GURPS is the range of options: are you independently wealthy and able to fund the ship yourself, or are you bootstrapping it with finance from the bank, or did you steal it, get financed by a world government, or get favour from your old corporate contacts? Or something else?

There’s a certain appeal to the idea of having a character with zero actual experience of interstellar trading who is independently wealthy and decides to finance their own starship. I do some ‘back of the fag packet’ maths and work out that I can buy a Free  Trader-class starship on 60% ownership with a 40% loan over 30 years for Ship Owner @ 16pts plus Filthy Rich @ 50pts. The mortgage is a whopping 120,416Cr/month.

What if they buy the starship second-hand? The example Free Trader character on page 85 says that Alexander Jamison bought his ship second-hand at half-price. I like the idea of an old starship (perhaps with some interesting quirks) that he owns pretty much outright.

Taking the Free Trader-class at half-price (a mere 14.45MCr) means he can buy it outright for being Filthy Rich @50pts plus Ship Owner @19pts. This means no mortgage and the freedom to explore the Mains at whim. Hurrah!

I’ve had the idea of running a starship named “Serene Dawn” for years, so let’s use that name for the starship and set to building our Filthy Rich owner.

STEP TWO: Build a crew… well, a captain

Let’s begin with the captain – let’s call him Reynold Alexander. We’ve already decided they will be the sole owner of the Serene Dawn. I have a kind of rich-kid version of Malcolm Reynolds in mind, although initially perhaps less of a criminal at this early stage in his Captaincy.

I’m basing him on the Merchant template from GURPS Traveller (page 75) and using the 150-point budget to buy him the Wealth and Ship Ownership he needs. For background skills I’ve given him Astrogation, Piloting (Starship), Guns (Pistols), Fast-Draw (Pistol), and Brawling. I had a few points spare and with the five quirks bonus points was able to improve his Health to 11 and buy the Fit advantage.

I’ve equipped him with some Cloth armour (a sort of ballistic weave clothing suit), a Magnum Revolver 9mm, a Fedora (which he is “never without”), and a medium-range hand-held communicator. As he’s a rich kid, I have spent the remaining credits on fitting an Automedic aboard the Serene Dawn for when things ‘go south’.

Reynold has the Ally Group advantage which means he can recruit 2-5 crewmen at 75 points each who are available on a 3d roll of 9 or less. This gives me flexibility in putting together the rest of the NPC crew for the starship. The only problem is that each is rolled for availability at the start of each adventure (or other reasonable period).

I’m going to work on those NPCs next session.

Game on!