WikiName - User contributions [en]

4 August 2023

2023-11-17T09:30:05Z

Brick:

It is time for us to depart from [[Drinax]]. [[Pent]] and [[Stigo]] get a little stipend from us to sustain them in our absence, and then we make for [[Hilfer]] on the first leg of our "Bacherlor party" trip to [[Sink]]. We've decided that Brick is to be the lucky man, though it's quite unclear who he;s supposed to marry.

Still. The trip is uneventful. The second leg is possibly even more boring that the first. Somewhere in the endless and vaguely star-studded tedium I sit for my first brokerage exams, but get confused on the difference between Indirect Off-planet Derived Income and Interstellar Non-salvage Profits and Gains, as redefined in the Empirian Taxation Protocol Update of 1101, and also fail to properly account for cryo-burn based value loss in perishable cargoes, and so I will have to do a resit.

Some of the crew are more successful like Diogo who gained adequate knowledge in all things related to sensors. Brick managed to graduate from the online school of stealth, nobody saw him for a week. Heloise while thoroughly understanding the theory of firing a gun, failed miserably in practical application. No one seriously wounded.

We make it down to Sink's spaceport, which is set up to process thousands but contains barely dozens, go through immigrations and make an acquaintaince with our government appointed guide. [[Almeca Bew]], pleasant though she is, is an unwelcome surprise.

She recommends us a hotel, but promises to scout for us something with a bit more local flavor. We tip her handsomely, go for dinner and agree to meet at the docks the next morning so she can help us find a suitable ship and captain for us to go fishing with. Much to her dismay, we settle on doing business with [[Captain Fred]], the worked-hard-and-put-away-wet-looking owner of the vessel The Loves Lost. Because there are not enough life vests on board, Almeca refuses to let us all board, and so Frankie and I go with her to see some local ruins - we're joined there by another guide, who seems to specialize in this area. Almeca seems very charmed by Frankie. Heloise takes boating lessons from Captain Fred, and Diogo and Randy manage to secure a catch of crabs and fish to supplement our dinner.

Our fishermen notice that our captain loves a sip, beer or otherwise, which is duly noted.

On day 2, we buy additional life vests for the boat and buy some whisky for our captain. Frankie and Almeca go to the local craft markets. No seahorses, just more crabs and fish (Diogo and Randy are getting terrifying with these harpoon guns) and Heloise continues her boating lessons and is allowed to try to dock the boat. We pay Fred for a minor repair (100 CR)

On day 3 we all set sail early, having agreed to meet with Almeca later in the day. We spot the magnificent sea horses, and I befriend one of the local crabs. We also locate our cache, which I mark with my communicator. Our techies rig it so that we can use it as a locator beacon.

We hand our beloved Captain the whisky and tell him that we'd like to go out extra early the next morning, but that we'd understand if perhaps that was inconvenient for him. For a 1000 CR deposit, he is willing to let us go out on our own.

Almeca has found us a local place to stay - someone who has some business off-planet lets us use their town home. This decreases our bills and gives us some privacy.

After having made ourselves at home in our new digs, we ask Almeca to take us hiking in the hills along the western shores of the lake. We have a little repast outside and we frolic to our hearts' content. We also very coincidentally happen to locate a secluded cove, hard to spot from land, but easily accessible from the lake itself. We take notes of checkpoints along the road, and spot two.

On day 4, I agree to await Almeca at our new location for a spa day at a civilised time. The rest of the crew sets sail at the crack of dawn - sans captain Fred - and retrieves the cache. Diogo, Brick and Randy work together to hoist the cache on shore, stow it in an out-of-sight spot in the cove and then install our state of the art fish finder on The Lost Loves.

I take to the steam baths and enjoy a rejuvinating facial treatment based on tea. Almeca seems to be enjoying herself, which is wonderful.

[[Campaign_Murdok_Madness|Campaign Main Page]] || [[Murdok_Madness_Play_Sessions|All Playsessions]] || Next: [[8_September_2023|Rebel Rebel]]

4 August 2023

2023-11-17T09:29:21Z

Brick:

It is time for us to depart from [[Drinax]]. [[Pent]] and [[Stigo]] get a little stipend from us to sustain them in our absence, and then we make for [[Hilfer]] on the first leg of our "Bacherlor party" trip to [[Sink]]. We've decided that Brick is to be the lucky man, though it's quite unclear who he;s supposed to marry.

Still. The trip is uneventful. The second leg is possibly even more boring that the first. Somewhere in the endless and vaguely star-studded tedium I sit for my first brokerage exams, but get confused on the difference between Indirect Off-planet Derived Income and Interstellar Non-salvage Profits and Gains, as redefined in the Empirian Taxation Protocol Update of 1101, and also fail to properly account for cryo-burn based value loss in perishable cargoes, and so I will have to do a resit.

Some of the crew are more successful like Diogo who gained adequate knowledge in all things related to sensors. Brick managed to graduate from the online school of stealth, nobody saw him for a week. Heloise while thoroughly understanding the theory of firing a gun failed in practical application. No one seriously wounded.

We make it down to Sink's spaceport, which is set up to process thousands but contains barely dozens, go through immigrations and make an acquaintaince with our government appointed guide. [[Almeca Bew]], pleasant though she is, is an unwelcome surprise.

She recommends us a hotel, but promises to scout for us something with a bit more local flavor. We tip her handsomely, go for dinner and agree to meet at the docks the next morning so she can help us find a suitable ship and captain for us to go fishing with. Much to her dismay, we settle on doing business with [[Captain Fred]], the worked-hard-and-put-away-wet-looking owner of the vessel The Loves Lost. Because there are not enough life vests on board, Almeca refuses to let us all board, and so Frankie and I go with her to see some local ruins - we're joined there by another guide, who seems to specialize in this area. Almeca seems very charmed by Frankie. Heloise takes boating lessons from Captain Fred, and Diogo and Randy manage to secure a catch of crabs and fish to supplement our dinner.

Our fishermen notice that our captain loves a sip, beer or otherwise, which is duly noted.

On day 2, we buy additional life vests for the boat and buy some whisky for our captain. Frankie and Almeca go to the local craft markets. No seahorses, just more crabs and fish (Diogo and Randy are getting terrifying with these harpoon guns) and Heloise continues her boating lessons and is allowed to try to dock the boat. We pay Fred for a minor repair (100 CR)

On day 3 we all set sail early, having agreed to meet with Almeca later in the day. We spot the magnificent sea horses, and I befriend one of the local crabs. We also locate our cache, which I mark with my communicator. Our techies rig it so that we can use it as a locator beacon.

We hand our beloved Captain the whisky and tell him that we'd like to go out extra early the next morning, but that we'd understand if perhaps that was inconvenient for him. For a 1000 CR deposit, he is willing to let us go out on our own.

Almeca has found us a local place to stay - someone who has some business off-planet lets us use their town home. This decreases our bills and gives us some privacy.

After having made ourselves at home in our new digs, we ask Almeca to take us hiking in the hills along the western shores of the lake. We have a little repast outside and we frolic to our hearts' content. We also very coincidentally happen to locate a secluded cove, hard to spot from land, but easily accessible from the lake itself. We take notes of checkpoints along the road, and spot two.

On day 4, I agree to await Almeca at our new location for a spa day at a civilised time. The rest of the crew sets sail at the crack of dawn - sans captain Fred - and retrieves the cache. Diogo, Brick and Randy work together to hoist the cache on shore, stow it in an out-of-sight spot in the cove and then install our state of the art fish finder on The Lost Loves.

I take to the steam baths and enjoy a rejuvinating facial treatment based on tea. Almeca seems to be enjoying herself, which is wonderful.

[[Campaign_Murdok_Madness|Campaign Main Page]] || [[Murdok_Madness_Play_Sessions|All Playsessions]] || Next: [[8_September_2023|Rebel Rebel]]

9 October 2023

2023-11-17T09:04:57Z

Brick:

The crew has decided to accept the offer of the Drinaxian king (ahem, the Emperor of the Sindalian Empire) to become privateers on the Empire's behalf.

This means the following for the players:

* We may want to figure out a decision-making structure for the characters to follow on the ship.
Stated principles: aim for something that is flexible and allows for rotation of command roles, but lets characters with domain specific skills act on them. 
Suggestion: a rotating 'commander' structure, maybe like so: 
With a crew of 8 we could do a schedule that puts 2 people on the bridge at all times, and that gives everyone 1 day + night with just 1 three hour shift every four days, and between 6-9 hours 'on' on the three intermittent days. We could pair 'command-capable' crew with 'non-commander' crew in two person teams, or even run them 'offset' so that people get to take watches with different crew mates over time. 
(stolen from here: https://www.followingseas.media/blog/2017/5/8/best-watch-schedule-ever)

* We may want to figure out a way of paying for upkeep / maintenance of the ship and crew. 
Stated principles: "the ship eats first" and "expenses that benefit the mission-readiness are considered shared".

* We need to figure out how to finance maintaining and (further) improving the ship and how to handle characters' private wealth w.r.t to that. 
how much inequality among PCs are we okay with? 
do our PCs have opinions about this or is it just us players? 

For the questions above I propose three basic working models to help get us started:

1) The Commune 

All PCs pool all of their resources to improve the ship maximally at game start and provide shared starting capital to keep her afloat for the first few jobs. 
All characters who work on the ship receive a salary (NPCs > employees) / a profit share (PCs > partners). 
All PCs immediately get an equal share in (the company that owns) the ship, regardless of initial contribution and we decide together on payouts. 

All PCs feel equally bought in. 
Eliminates a lot of character-level bookkeeping. 
It seems at odds with in-game reality, and may be unacceptable to some PCs. 
[meta] It requires liquidation of all private assets, meaning that a lot of backstory / plot hooks become obsolete. 
 
2) (Soon to be) worker-owned 

All characters who work on the ship receive a salary (NPCs > employees) / or profit share based on % of company ownership (PCs> partners). 
The company that owns the ship pays out "stock" (different from "ship shares") to partners over time and becomes a worker-owned (PC-owned) collective. 
Characters who have ship shares at the start, can choose to apply the ship shares to the ship for improvements, and PCs with cash can loan their cash to the company to run the ship until it makes money. 
A cash loan entitles PCs to loan pay-off + interest paid out in installments before the profit shares are made 
Donated ship shares could entitle PCs to receiving some amount of extra company stock after the ship becomes profitable?

This decreases wealth + income inequality among all PCs over time to the point of meaninglessness. 
Allows the company to 'get fat' and build up cash reserves by keeping the profit share of stock it has not yet given out (good for lean times / ship damage or if we get another ship and need to fix it) 
Gives each PC free choice about using private wealth to improve the ship / help the company. 
May make ship improvements slower if people choose not to contribute. 
Is in line with in-game economic reality, but not in a way that some PCs remain 'gimped' forever because they can't afford good kit. 
Creates space for politically colored gameplay (corporations hate us! workers love us! We'll let you go if you let your workers own the ship! Oops, your ship is now owned by the slaves you were ferrying!) 
 
3) Hypercapitalists in space 

All characters who work on the ship, receive some sort of salary (NPCs > employees)/ profit share (PCs > the venture capitalists). 
No one donates private wealth to the ship. 
The company that owns the ship can take out loans on crew-owned ship shares or other assets to improve itself. 
Paying off loans on ship shares become part of the operating expenses of the company that owns the ship. 
One PC, one vote.

Increases income / wealth inequality among PC's, but (if the payout is sufficient) probably not in a way that is salient since we all have "enough" money. 
Nicely hypercapitalist, like the rest of the in-game universe. 
Higher operating expenses due to loan repayments, Company will likely remain 'lean', since PCs can maximize private wealth instead. 
Allows for easy leaving / joining of new characters. 
Seems at odds with the inclinations of some PCs to leave such an amazing asset technically unowned. 

* we get to name the ship

Please add your suggestions here:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left;"
| Hippocampus || (after the sea horses of Sink)
|-
| That Second Certain Thing || (Death and... taxes, of course. Our new business. A Culture reference)
|-
| The Bachelorette || (I mean...)
|-
| Brick's Bride || (I mean... pt 2)
|-
| Unlimited Breadsticks || They're breadsticks and they're unlimited.
|-
| Cheshire Moon || (a cat's smile)
|-
| Century Hawk || A very old bird of prey
|-
| Liberty ||
|-
| The Grail ||
|-
| Second Chance ||
|-
| Venus || Ancient Roman goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory
|-
| Eris || Ancient Greek goddess of discord
|-
| Nandaka || sword of Vishnu, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nandaka#Symbolism representing knowledge]
|-
| The Endeavor ||
|-
| Nova Horizon ||
|-
| Star Runner ||
|-
| Phoenix Rising ||
|-
| The Defiant ||
|-
| The Cosmic Dancer ||
|-
| Priscilla|| Queen of the desert / Trojan Reach
|-
| Furthur|| After the Merry Pranksters' bus
|-
| Aced The Kool-aid Acid Test || Culture reference meets The Beats
|-
| Perdita || "lost" (Shakespeare's lost princess of Sicily)
|-
| Albatross|| Wandering sea bird with huge wingspan
|-
| Liabilité|| Reference to the disrepair and possible malfunction of our new ship
|-
| ||
|-
| ||
|-
| ||
|-
| ||
|-
| ||
|-
|}

* we get to name the company

Please add your suggestions here:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left;"
| SpaceBums Inc. ||
|-
| Generic Operators for Aquisition and Transportation Inc. [GOAT Inc.]||
|-
| Junonia & Sons || A pretty shell name for a pretty shell company
|-
| Alpha Solutions || When you need the A Team
|-
| The Jolly Rogers ||
|-
| The Opportunists||
|-
| Prancing Privateers||
|-
| ||
|-
| ||
|-
|}

* We get to pick jobs: which characters do which jobs on board (and do we want people to (be able to) do more than one job)?

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left;"
| Role || Mandatory? || Character ||
|-
| Captain || M || on rotation / watch? || maybe we use a 'commander' role instead? or 'coordinator' or ... ?
|-
| Pilot || M || Randy / Diogo / (Persy) ||
|-
| Astrogator || M || Persy ||
|-
| Engineer || M || Pent / Randy || (Electronics: Computers, Sensors, Comms, Remote Ops) Diogo
|-
| Maintenance || M || Pent / Stigo / Randy ||
|-
| Gunner (barbette) || M || Diogo ||
|-
| Gunner (turret) || X|| Diogo ||
|-
| Medic || M || Heloise ||
|-
| Broker || O || Persy, once he graduates ||
|-
| Steward || O || Persy ||
|-
| Marine 1 || O || Brick ||
|-
| Marine 2 || O || Franky ||
|-
| Marine 3 || O || Stigo? ||
|-
|}

* We get to improve the ship.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left;"
| Improvement || Current state || ship shares needed ||
|-
| Turret || nonfunctional || 1 ||
|-
| Holographic hull || partial function, power drain]] || 1 ||
|-
| Maintenance cost || 10.000 cr/mth || 4 (to 2667 cr / mth)||
|-
| Hull strength || 72 || 2 (to 88) ||
|-
| Countermeasure suite || DM+4 || 2 (to DM +6) ||
|-
| Power plant || 75% (195) || 1 (260) ||
|-
| Jump drive || DM -2 || 2||
|-
| Manoeuver drive || unreliable (1/36 nonfunctional)|| 2||
|-
|}

Total ship shares needed for full repair: 15 or (after the start of the campaign) 75 MCr cash per PoD rules.

* Who has ship shares?
* How many ship shares does each PC want to use to improve the ship?
* Which ship improvements to we want to make (first)

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left;"
| PC || # of shares || would prefer to spend on: ||
|-
| Brick || 0 || 0 ||
|-
| Diogo || 0 || 0 ||
|-
| Franky || ? || ?||
|-
| Heloise || 0 || 0 ||
|-
| Persy || ? || ? ||
|-
| Randy || 2 || Maintenance cost? (making other repairs possible sooner), possibly Countermeasure suite? ||
|-
|}

Context Ship shares and PoD rules 

The OG and PoD rule sets seem incompatible with each other.

We think we can mostly fix it by: 
1) not equating "ship shares" to 'owns a part of a ship' (hence the concept of 'company stock' as introduced earlier) 
2a) house ruling Persy's ship outside of the very broken math that starts happening when we try to convert 'actual ship ownership' to "ship shares (for PoD)", 
or 
2b) plain refusing to let Persy contribute any ship shares at all (and then maybe the company can try to rent or buy out the [[Misophist]] for themselves at a later date). 

Explanation for who cares: in our normal Traveler rules, "ship shares" are valued at 1 MCr, and they pay out 1000 Cr per year. PoD says that at the start of the game ship shares can be applied, but if you have no "ship shares" and need to pay in cash, you need to pay 5MCr (five times more than the original given value of a ship share to make an upgrade) This makes "ship shares" virtually worthless to hold onto in the PoD campaign (this is good - we want to use them to fix up the ship!).

Persy currently owns a ship that's worth about 67 MCr, and it's 25% paid off. If he keeps the ship and rents it out as he has been doing, this pays him 25000 Cr a year (so the same as if he owned 25 ship shares, by original rules). Obviously we do not want to give Persy 25 ship shares (he would be insufferable about it, and would also break the game).

If instead he sold the ship and paid off the mortgage, he'd end up with about 17 MCr cash, equivalent to 17 ship shares (or an annual payout of 17000 CR) by original rules. We still do not want to actually give Persy 17 ship shares, because he'd immediately fix up the whole ship, which would probably scuttle half the campaign and would also make everybody else hate him / ask him to be their sugar daddy.

If we instead apply PoD RAW (rules as written) and decide Persy does not get to sell his ship before the game starts. We'd make him pay in cash and then those 17MCr would count as only +-3 ship shares (still for a payout of 3000 Cr per year). It would be an absolutely shit investment for Persy to make, because even if he applied them directly to the maintenance cost of the ship (which would drop the cost by 6000Cr a month (or 72000 Cr a year), he could not just claim that money outright, he'd at best get 20% of those savings passed on, but probably not for a few years.

In short: ship shares > ship upgrades = great deal. Ship ownership > ship shares = gamebreakingly OP. Ship ownership > cash > ship upgrades = fuck you, my PC crunches numbers for a living, bro.

Hugo's pitch to the referee

If the party decides that they want Persy to get ship shares and contribute them, I'd like to propose this: for ship ownership value to ship share conversion purposes, we assign a one-time ship share a value of 3.18 MCR (1% of the harrier value per share, which is what other sources online have cited as the original base for ship share calculations). This would net Persy 5 ship shares and a bit of pocket change, which is a sizable enough fortune for him to still justifiably be a bit of a snob about, but probably not game-breakingly huge.

It would do a lot to diminish the currently absolutely ridiculous wealth inequality between Persy and everyone else in the rest of the party, which I have personally found kind of tricky. I think Persy has the type of wealth where he could basically hand wave most problems the pary encounters (Like, sorry, but... work? for a living? Ew!), but that does not make for a fun game.

* other?

[[Campaign_Murdok_Madness|Campaign Main Page]]

9 October 2023

2023-11-17T09:01:53Z

Brick:

The crew has decided to accept the offer of the Drinaxian king (ahem, the Emperor of the Sindalian Empire) to become privateers on the Empire's behalf.

This means the following for the players:

* We may want to figure out a decision-making structure for the characters to follow on the ship.
Stated principles: aim for something that is flexible and allows for rotation of command roles, but lets characters with domain specific skills act on them. 
Suggestion: a rotating 'commander' structure, maybe like so: 
With a crew of 8 we could do a schedule that puts 2 people on the bridge at all times, and that gives everyone 1 day + night with just 1 three hour shift every four days, and between 6-9 hours 'on' on the three intermittent days. We could pair 'command-capable' crew with 'non-commander' crew in two person teams, or even run them 'offset' so that people get to take watches with different crew mates over time. 
(stolen from here: https://www.followingseas.media/blog/2017/5/8/best-watch-schedule-ever)

* We may want to figure out a way of paying for upkeep / maintenance of the ship and crew. 
Stated principles: "the ship eats first" and "expenses that benefit the mission-readiness are considered shared".

* We need to figure out how to finance maintaining and (further) improving the ship and how to handle characters' private wealth w.r.t to that. 
how much inequality among PCs are we okay with? 
do our PCs have opinions about this or is it just us players? 

For the questions above I propose three basic working models to help get us started:

1) The Commune 

All PCs pool all of their resources to improve the ship maximally at game start and provide shared starting capital to keep her afloat for the first few jobs. 
All characters who work on the ship receive a salary (NPCs > employees) / a profit share (PCs > partners). 
All PCs immediately get an equal share in (the company that owns) the ship, regardless of initial contribution and we decide together on payouts. 

All PCs feel equally bought in. 
Eliminates a lot of character-level bookkeeping. 
It seems at odds with in-game reality, and may be unacceptable to some PCs. 
[meta] It requires liquidation of all private assets, meaning that a lot of backstory / plot hooks become obsolete. 
 
2) (Soon to be) worker-owned 

All characters who work on the ship receive a salary (NPCs > employees) / or profit share based on % of company ownership (PCs> partners). 
The company that owns the ship pays out "stock" (different from "ship shares") to partners over time and becomes a worker-owned (PC-owned) collective. 
Characters who have ship shares at the start, can choose to apply the ship shares to the ship for improvements, and PCs with cash can loan their cash to the company to run the ship until it makes money. 
A cash loan entitles PCs to loan pay-off + interest paid out in installments before the profit shares are made 
Donated ship shares could entitle PCs to receiving some amount of extra company stock after the ship becomes profitable?

This decreases wealth + income inequality among all PCs over time to the point of meaninglessness. 
Allows the company to 'get fat' and build up cash reserves by keeping the profit share of stock it has not yet given out (good for lean times / ship damage or if we get another ship and need to fix it) 
Gives each PC free choice about using private wealth to improve the ship / help the company. 
May make ship improvements slower if people choose not to contribute. 
Is in line with in-game economic reality, but not in a way that some PCs remain 'gimped' forever because they can't afford good kit. 
Creates space for politically colored gameplay (corporations hate us! workers love us! We'll let you go if you let your workers own the ship! Oops, your ship is now owned by the slaves you were ferrying!) 
 
3) Hypercapitalists in space 

All characters who work on the ship, receive some sort of salary (NPCs > employees)/ profit share (PCs > the venture capitalists). 
No one donates private wealth to the ship. 
The company that owns the ship can take out loans on crew-owned ship shares or other assets to improve itself. 
Paying off loans on ship shares become part of the operating expenses of the company that owns the ship. 
One PC, one vote.

Increases income / wealth inequality among PC's, but (if the payout is sufficient) probably not in a way that is salient since we all have "enough" money. 
Nicely hypercapitalist, like the rest of the in-game universe. 
Higher operating expenses due to loan repayments, Company will likely remain 'lean', since PCs can maximize private wealth instead. 
Allows for easy leaving / joining of new characters. 
Seems at odds with the inclinations of some PCs to leave such an amazing asset technically unowned. 

* we get to name the ship

Please add your suggestions here:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left;"
| Hippocampus || (after the sea horses of Sink)
|-
| That Second Certain Thing || (Death and... taxes, of course. Our new business. A Culture reference)
|-
| The Bachelorette || (I mean...)
|-
| Brick's Bride || (I mean... pt 2)
|-
| Unlimited Breadsticks || They're breadsticks and they're unlimited.
|-
| Cheshire Moon || (a cat's smile)
|-
| Century Hawk || A very old bird of prey
|-
| Liberty ||
|-
| The Grail ||
|-
| Second Chance ||
|-
| Venus || Ancient Roman goddess of love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity, and victory
|-
| Eris || Ancient Greek goddess of discord
|-
| Nandaka || sword of Vishnu, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nandaka#Symbolism representing knowledge]
|-
| The Endeavor ||
|-
| Nova Horizon ||
|-
| Star Runner ||
|-
| Phoenix Rising ||
|-
| The Defiant ||
|-
| The Cosmic Dancer ||
|-
| Priscilla|| Queen of the desert / Trojan Reach
|-
| Furthur|| After the Merry Pranksters' bus
|-
| Aced The Kool-aid Acid Test || Culture reference meets The Beats
|-
| Perdita || "lost" (Shakespeare's lost princess of Sicily)
|-
| Albatross|| Wandering sea bird with huge wingspan
|-
| Liabilité|| Reference to the disrepair and possible malfunction of our new ship
|-
| ||
|-
| ||
|-
| ||
|-
| ||
|-
| ||
|-
|}

* we get to name the company

Please add your suggestions here:

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left;"
| SpaceBums Inc. ||
|-
| Generic Operators for Aquisition and Transportation Inc. [GOAT Inc.]||
|-
| Junonia & Sons || A pretty shell name for a pretty shell company
|-
| Alpha Solutions || When you need the A Team
|-
| The Jolly Rogers ||
|-
| The Opportunists||
|-
| Prancing Privateers||
|-
| ||
|-
| ||
|-
|}

* We get to pick jobs: which characters do which jobs on board (and do we want people to (be able to) do more than one job)?

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left;"
| Role || Mandatory? || Character ||
|-
| Captain || M || on rotation / watch? || maybe we use a 'commander' role instead? or 'coordinator' or ... ?
|-
| Pilot || M || Randy / Diogo / (Persy) ||
|-
| Astrogator || M || Persy ||
|-
| Engineer || M || Pent / Randy || (Electronics: Computers, Sensors, Comms, Remote Ops) Diogo
|-
| Maintenance || M || Pent / Stigo / Randy ||
|-
| Gunner (barbette) || M || Diogo ||
|-
| Gunner (turret) || X|| Diogo ||
|-
| Medic || M || Heloise ||
|-
| Broker || O || Persy, once he graduates ||
|-
| Steward || O || Persy ||
|-
| Marine 1 || O || Brick ||
|-
| Marine 2 || O || Franky ||
|-
| Marine 3 || O || Stigo? ||
|-
|}

* We get to improve the ship.

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left;"
| Improvement || Current state || ship shares needed ||
|-
| Turret || nonfunctional || 1 ||
|-
| Holographic hull || partial function, power drain]] || 1 ||
|-
| Maintenance cost || 10.000 cr/mth || 4 (to 2667 cr / mth)||
|-
| Hull strength || 72 || 2 (to 88) ||
|-
| Countermeasure suite || DM+4 || 2 (to DM +6) ||
|-
| Power plant || 75% (195) || 1 (260) ||
|-
| Jump drive || DM -2 || 2||
|-
| Manoeuver drive || unreliable (1/36 nonfunctional)|| 2||
|-
|}

Total ship shares needed for full repair: 15 or (after the start of the campaign) 75 MCr cash per PoD rules.

* Who has ship shares?
* How many ship shares does each PC want to use to improve the ship?
* Which ship improvements to we want to make (first)

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: left;"
| PC || # of shares || would prefer to spend on: ||
|-
| Brick || ? || ? ||
|-
| Diogo || 0 || 0 ||
|-
| Franky || ? || ?||
|-
| Heloise || ? || ? ||
|-
| Persy || ? || ? ||
|-
| Randy || 2 || Maintenance cost? (making other repairs possible sooner), possibly Countermeasure suite? ||
|-
|}

Context Ship shares and PoD rules 

The OG and PoD rule sets seem incompatible with each other.

We think we can mostly fix it by: 
1) not equating "ship shares" to 'owns a part of a ship' (hence the concept of 'company stock' as introduced earlier) 
2a) house ruling Persy's ship outside of the very broken math that starts happening when we try to convert 'actual ship ownership' to "ship shares (for PoD)", 
or 
2b) plain refusing to let Persy contribute any ship shares at all (and then maybe the company can try to rent or buy out the [[Misophist]] for themselves at a later date). 

Explanation for who cares: in our normal Traveler rules, "ship shares" are valued at 1 MCr, and they pay out 1000 Cr per year. PoD says that at the start of the game ship shares can be applied, but if you have no "ship shares" and need to pay in cash, you need to pay 5MCr (five times more than the original given value of a ship share to make an upgrade) This makes "ship shares" virtually worthless to hold onto in the PoD campaign (this is good - we want to use them to fix up the ship!).

Persy currently owns a ship that's worth about 67 MCr, and it's 25% paid off. If he keeps the ship and rents it out as he has been doing, this pays him 25000 Cr a year (so the same as if he owned 25 ship shares, by original rules). Obviously we do not want to give Persy 25 ship shares (he would be insufferable about it, and would also break the game).

If instead he sold the ship and paid off the mortgage, he'd end up with about 17 MCr cash, equivalent to 17 ship shares (or an annual payout of 17000 CR) by original rules. We still do not want to actually give Persy 17 ship shares, because he'd immediately fix up the whole ship, which would probably scuttle half the campaign and would also make everybody else hate him / ask him to be their sugar daddy.

If we instead apply PoD RAW (rules as written) and decide Persy does not get to sell his ship before the game starts. We'd make him pay in cash and then those 17MCr would count as only +-3 ship shares (still for a payout of 3000 Cr per year). It would be an absolutely shit investment for Persy to make, because even if he applied them directly to the maintenance cost of the ship (which would drop the cost by 6000Cr a month (or 72000 Cr a year), he could not just claim that money outright, he'd at best get 20% of those savings passed on, but probably not for a few years.

In short: ship shares > ship upgrades = great deal. Ship ownership > ship shares = gamebreakingly OP. Ship ownership > cash > ship upgrades = fuck you, my PC crunches numbers for a living, bro.

Hugo's pitch to the referee

If the party decides that they want Persy to get ship shares and contribute them, I'd like to propose this: for ship ownership value to ship share conversion purposes, we assign a one-time ship share a value of 3.18 MCR (1% of the harrier value per share, which is what other sources online have cited as the original base for ship share calculations). This would net Persy 5 ship shares and a bit of pocket change, which is a sizable enough fortune for him to still justifiably be a bit of a snob about, but probably not game-breakingly huge.

It would do a lot to diminish the currently absolutely ridiculous wealth inequality between Persy and everyone else in the rest of the party, which I have personally found kind of tricky. I think Persy has the type of wealth where he could basically hand wave most problems the pary encounters (Like, sorry, but... work? for a living? Ew!), but that does not make for a fun game.

* other?

[[Campaign_Murdok_Madness|Campaign Main Page]]

Brick

2023-02-24T11:22:45Z

Brick: Created page with "BRICK.... A name that conjures the image of someone who is strong but perhaps not blessed in the brain department. Brick was not fond of his name, but he could not deny that i..."

BRICK.... A name that conjures the image of someone who is strong but perhaps not blessed in the brain department. Brick was not fond of his name, but he could not deny that it somewhat suited him. Just like a Brick, he never really knew what his purpose should be, his life had been laid out in front of him by his father. Follow his footsteps into the military. Without any better ideas and true to his name he went where he was placed. Although, as so often was the case, it didn't really go according to plan.

Brick failed the Marine entrance exam, and his father was furious. His father had been angry with him before, but this was different. "Maybe some time on the streets will toughen you up, the school of hard knocks is what you need. ALthough you'll probably end up failing there too". He sneered cruelly as the door slammed. He was right though, Brick couldn't cut it on the streets. After months of eking out a living, the universe threw him a lifeline. He got drafted by the army. They were out looking for likely lads on the streets, disposable and with a tendency for violence. Brick didn't particularly want to be a grunt, but it had to be better than this.

To his surprise, it suited him. A mindless grunt who didn't have to think, and just went and did as he was told. Brick enjoyed the structure and found strength and support in the unit around him. Individually he did not excel but his unit gained renown for their tight-knit bonds and prowess in holding seemingly indefensible positions. They were known as The Iron Wall.

After several terms in the army, he ended up where his father had wanted him to be, the Marines. Posting after posting, mission after mission, it all became a blur. Towards the end of his second term, his unit was chosen for an extraction mission with low odds of success. He did not realize it yet, but this was where his military career would come to an end.

He awoke, groggy and disoriented. The muffled screams of pain echoed through his head. Where am I? I must be on something. He could hear a cheerful humming, and two bright eyes and a smile came into focus. "Morning sleepy head!" she said cheerfully. "Do you know your name?"

"Brick?" he muttered groggily.
"Ah excellent, your brain isn't completely scrambled then. My name is Heloise, and if it hadn't been for me you would have lost a lot more than just your arm and your unit" she stated in a brusque matter-of-fact sort of way.
Seeing Brick's obvious shock at the news and panic at seeing what was left of his arm, Heloise quickly changed tack. "Oh I'm terribly sorry, I'm a scientist and my subjects in the lab are not often alive. My bedside manners leave something to be desired".
Brick merely grunted as he began to process the multitude of his loss. He eventually managed a "Thank-you" and then passed out again.

He came to again a few days later to find that Heloise was gone. The nurse on duty smiled sympathetically at him and indicated a pile of paper on the bedside table. On top was a handwritten letter:

Dear Brick,

I do hope you are feeling better, sorry that I had to dash but I have matters to attend to.
I spoke to your commander from the Marines, and long story short. They don't want you anymore.
You have been officially discharged. A summary of your severance package is on your bedside table.
A bit rough I know, but on the bright side they will pay for a prosthetic for you! Check out the pamphlet with the latest options,
I circled the one that I think is best. I'm a little jealous actually, might have to get an augment or two of my own.
Anyway, I'm getting sidetracked. When you're up on your feet you should come to find me on planet Murdoch.
I'm heading there to do humanitarian work and to be honest, could really do with some help and protection.
I expect to see you there within a few weeks.

All the best,

Heloise.

P.s. I left a sketch pad and pencils on your nightstand. Give your hands something other to do than hold a gun.