Traveller General--Forbidden Tech Edition

The first Fire, Fusion & Steel (for TNE) is at least not a typological disaster like the T4 version is.
One thing you CAN take from TNE is the maintenance rules, however. Volume -> hours per week, telling you how harried your Engineers and Maintenance crew are.

If you want a taste of what Fire Fusion & Steel requires, look at the rules in Brilliant Lances.

Brilliant Lances?

The "small ship" combat game that came out before FF&S. It is, for the most part, the ship construction rules with standard parts, while FF&S also includes a lot of part building sections and includes other types of vehicles.

If Brilliant Lances' design section scares you off, FF&S is not for you.

dully noted

Speaking of paperwork, do we have any sources of in-universe forms other than Merchant Ships 2 or TNE Player Forms?
I was thinking of doing an article on them for Freelance.

bump

...

...

You know there's a CT supplement called Forms and Charts, right?

...

Oh good, more for me to look at. I mostly want to design a couple different standards that I can use as props. Ledgers, stacks of old customs inspections, retained copies of filed flight plans.
IMTU, the 3I uses a lot of hardcopy paperwork for spacers.

Oh shit that is a glorious lot of paperwork.

>IMTU, the 3I uses a lot of hardcopy paperwork for spacers.
Can't hack a filing cabinet, and since long-distance data is slow anyway, keeping the master copies offline is probably a good idea.

Well, for varying levels of "good."

They also get used for double checking.
All imperial forms come with multiple watermarks and other security features, in addition to being made from a specialized plastic that mimics paper very well.
OK, so every Imperially Recognized Starport (class c or higher) is issued a specialized extruder to make the paper used - the paper has the Imperial Sunburst, a security code unique to the extruder embedded in an image hash, and the complete Starport ID code (three letter sector code, letter-#-letter-## ID code, subsector letter, location code) as watermarks. Then the form is either printed as a blank, or printed after being electronically filled out, with multiple security code microdots (again, unique to the printer).
At some point it gets stamped with various things.
This adds another layer of data security - you can hack a database, but good luck getting everything you need to forge the paperwork.
TAS will, for a small fee, issue a nonmember an ID card. While it comes with a microchip for various storage needs, you also get a folio for letters of recommendation (see below) and customs records.
I also added recommendation letters, something that most people forget: it has space for the persons name and photo, the ships name, registration, and captain, time spent aboard, salary paid, reason for leaving, and anything else the captain has to say about their service, all on a hand sized piece of thick paper. Most starports will print these letters for a small fee on their own paper, resized to the smaller standard, and many customs agents will notarize them (usually with multiple stamps on top of the "I witnessed this" signature).

I'm just coming up with shit now
Ship Registry
Imperial law recognizes the use of two numbers to refer to a ship: registration and production.
The production number is always assigned first, and follows the imperial standard: the shipyard is assigned a six digit alphanumeric code, which is then followed by the two letter and three digit design code (assigned by the shipyard to each spacecraft design), the year of manufacture, and a three digit hexadecimal identifier. Small craft may have a two digit hexadecimal batch number appended as well. This makes a code composed of 18-20 numbers and letters.
Registration is according to the world, but many follow the pattern of three letter sector code - subsector - world location/hull code - number - two letters - two numbers for a 8/7 code. Most Starports are fine with just the world name and the second section of the registration, as plenty of worlds do not add the first part, and often don't even follow a standard for the second. The only imperial regulation on this matter is that the primary registry code must be seven alphanumeric digits.
Here is an example ( pulled out of my ass)
A standard Beowulf class far trader, manufactured and registered in the Spinward Marches
Production Number: DF867K/BT143-0769-5BA
Registration Number: SWMH0409/ML5PF72

MORE OF THIS COOL IMMERSIVE SHIT!

It is also important that it be something you can forge, fake, or bullshit your way around, though. You might have to work for it, or you might get caught out eventually (hopefully after you've disappeared), but if you make the system too good you get into the shadowrun competent security trap.

Or traveller piracy arguments.

Forging the paperwork is actually fairly easy - it just takes some setup. Get to a class C port, and find out if they're corrupt enough to let you study their printer and extruder, then build one that you can reprogram once you study the paperwork of the port you're forging. And thats if you want it to be perfect.
Very few customs agents actually check the security portions of the papers, and many view it as a formality because most of their work is done electronically. Throw in how common those sheets are (on a streetwise 9+, you can find someone selling blank forms or even the blank sheets).
Hell, on a 10+ you can find someone willing to print whatever you want, for a price.
Printer dots don't check out? They were complaining that maintenance did something.

35% of all Starport paperwork extruders and printers have yet to be upgraded to the new model, which was introduced four years ago in response to the discovery that the manufacturer was selling the security algorithms to criminal organizations. While this means that paperwork from those ports is subject to slightly more scrutiny, it also means that the new equipment is almost exactly the same as before, and the old model hit the semi-public market at roick bottom prices...
The Imperially mandated reorganization of the previous vendor did hurt the company short term, but they bounced back under new leadership to sell effectively the same product to corporations who often deal with spacers or wish to create an air of sophistication. While they avoid the previous debacle by manufacturing them so the customer inputs the specifics of the security features at time of installation, they still don't always check their clients...

>the shadowrun competent security trap

what is this?

The old Judges Guild book "50 Starports" may also have stuff of interest.

Oops. The "Traveller Logbook" is the one I was thinking of.

This is written to help with MgT1e, and how easy it can be for a Noble to gain even more SOC. Also, MgT Book 8 is somewhat useless, so I pulled mostly from GT Nobles.
The Imperium has an astounding number of nobles, far more than Cleon's original framework calls for. This is partially due to the way that noble inheritance tends to work - one child inherits the title, the rest get a title one rank lower. This cycle then continues, until the rank of Knight, where every child inherits the rank even if they are not the primary inheritor. Thus, every Archduke has spawned a rather large number of Dukes, far more than there are subsectors in the Imperium. In fact, one Archduke simply bought an entire system, kicked the tiny population out, and told his descendants to settle there, and today even the farmers and belters there are at least Knights.
The rest can be explained by a later addition to the system, the Life Title. For whatever reason he desires, such as meritorious service or great achievement, the Emperor may bestow a non-inheriting title on a person. While this wouldn't seem a such a big issue, as the title doesn't pass down, the noble status does - meaning every child is suddenly a full noble of one rank lower, or that some dilettante baron has spawned a line of counts.
An example of the last recently happened when the wayward child of Baron Darali took off on a multi-decade Grand Tour - and specifically invited Imperial Intelligence to send agents along. Through thirty four years of travelling, he has shown a willingness to support the agents from his own pockets and get them exactly where they needed to be - at one point pulling a controlled drunken crash into a high security corporate compound just to insert an agent. He also wrote several well-selling novels based on the missions he helped facilitate, and upon his return was given the life title of Duke - making his family hate him even more.

His novels did skyrocket in sales, even after he admitted that he never asked for the details needed to make them accurate - and never would. Today, he is still hosting the occasional agent, but mostly freaking conspirators out with the presence of his century old yacht, supposedly haunted by the ghost of its lecherous first owner. Crew turnover is frequent, so he's always looking...
As a general group, nobles descended from non-inheritors are called "wanderers", as many have no fiefs to call home. II calls them " The Emperor's Shotgun", as each is still technically bound by the Imperial Mandate.
Many people who obtain a life title often end up with small fiefs and financial portfolios - not from their own efforts, but as gifts from other nobles. It is rude to present the gift publicly, or acknowledge it outside of a private setting. As one observer noted "its like some creepy house warming party, where you wake up and discover that your neighbors snuck in and left little gifts behind while you were sleeping, and if you talk about them they might disappear."
As a matter of tradition, Wandering Nobles who obtain significant financial holdings, such as land, corporations, or stock portfolios, are expected to present them as gifts to the highest ranking family member who holds a fief (the classic nobles). The only proper response is for the giftee to charge the gifter with the hereditary maintenance of those holdings. While they can't present new titles, it is still a rise in familial status, and the jockeying for that status is a major driver in local forces.

What do you guys personally prefer using as a setting, Third Imperium or a homebrew/established setting like star trek?

It varies really. I use 3I for Veeky Forums, but if I want to get complicated I'll go with the style of games done before 3I was released - tiny pocket empires trying to control up to 3-6 jumps away. The only problem then is maintaining the standards of currency and design, but a corporate coalition works well there - think TAS, but with more funding and regulatory powers.

Although speaking of which, does anyone want to create a Veeky Forums sector or domain for games? We'd probably set it just outside of the 3I if we want to use that, but I got a hankering to use the hyperdrive portal variant engine.

there was an attempt in the archives that was never finished, and is that from traveller 5?

I think T5 has of, but I'm familiar with the variant from Mongoose, which has no extra fuel costs, but twice the size, and movement in hyperspace is parsecs/day per M-Drive rating (I would put it back at parsecs/week). Drives open a portal that limits the maximum size of the ship, starting at 200 tons for an A class and going up by 200 tons for each letter after (still leaving out I and O) until a Z class H-drive allows up to 5000 tons.
I'll need to look in the archives for that then.

good luck user, it's called the Tiji sector IIRC

bumping

It died of starvation, so I started work on my own.
Have TRAGDA sector, subsector A. I didn't finish all the trade codes, because I'm about to fall asleep here. On an interesting note, I did a quick mockup and everything below 0x04 is Imperial until you hit 07 and 08 - 0704 is independent and only 0808 falls in Imperial borders. Also, 0307 is obviously the subsector capitol.
SECTOR TRADGA, SUBSECTOR A
0101 - C590936-9 R TAS De Hi In
0102 - A887796-8 T Research, TAS, Imperial Consulate Ag Ga Ri
0103 - E575569-3 C Ag Ga Lt Ni
0106 - E4669AC-5 C Hi Lt
0109 - A776993-9 C Naval, Research, TAS, IC Ga In
0110 - D8B4676-9 T Fl Ni
0202 - C456986-9 T IC Hi noGG
0204 - B000976-A - Naval, IC, Pirate As Hi In Na Va
0205 - D555888-5 C Scout Ga Lt
0207 - B542494-9 H Naval, TAS, IC Ni Po
0208 - E371766-8 T
0209 - A784778-C H TAS Ag Ga Ht Ri noGG
0210 - C4219DD-7 T Scout, Research Hi Na Po
0301 - C574657-4 T Pirate Ag Ga Lt Ni
0302 - C5A0752-9 T De
0303 - D68A786-3 C Scout Lt Ri Wa
0305 - B6749A5-6 H Research, TAS Ga Hi In
0307 - A000B87-C - Naval, Scout, Research, TAS, IC As Hi Ht In Na Va
0402 - D301687-8 - Scout Ic Va
0406 - A47399A-C T Research, TAS Ht
0407 - E442312-8 C Lo Po
0408 - X332100-6 T Po
0409 - D767679-8 H Scout Ag Ga Ni Ri noGG
0505 - B643301-B C TAS, IC Lo Ni Po
0506 - D554887-5 C Lt noGG
0508 - C657454-8 T
0509 - B238520-D T Scout, TAS, IC Ht noGG
0510 - C776A75-7 T Research, IC, Pirate Hi
0601 - C0009A9-C - Scout, Research, Pirate As Hi Ht In Va
0602 - E440100-9 R De Lo Po
0609 - A54587B-9 T Scout, Research, TAS
0610 - C100624-A - Na Ni Va
0704 - C454000-0 C Scout, Research Ba Lt
0710 - E241263-3 T Pirate Lo Lt Po
0803 - EAD1756-8 R Fl
0805 - B765987-9 C
0808 - C541326-8 F TAS

cool, tell me about the 0301 Pirate planet I'm a sucker for a wretched gathering of scum and villainy and/or a wretched gathering of scum and vilani

Schedules, the switch by Captcha away from alphanumerics (which we were using form some naming), and some inevitable creative differences brought the project to a halt, but the frame work of Tijii is a good start.

We were also trying to design it roll by roll on Veeky Forums instead of doing what has done, which is to present a block of UWPs for interpretation.

Getting all of Tijii, or any sector, really, up to UWP stage is the easy part. 3-500 UWPs are a button push away. Turning the raw numbers into a distinct setting takes more than random numbers.

Oh, I know that pain. Once tried to create an entire domain sized cluster for an ATU game. That bit me in the ass when I tried to map it out, and make it make sense.
TRDA0301 - Imperial Designation Mishra 3119 - AMBER - PIRATES
Mishra 3119 is an early industrial world, just barely into TL 4 as it slowly recovers from a lethal plague that swept through the cities - the only survivors being the low-caste rural ancestors of the current population.
Notable to the culture is the xenophobic belief that offworlders are not fully real, and also an indirect manner of discussing almost everything - lines of poetry are often used to stand in for various activities and actions, often with no relation between the original poem and the item being discussed.
When several pirate gangs fleeing the Imperial border expansion precipitated by the Oroneva Ring incident came across the world, they quickly discovered just how easy it was to take over an abandoned city airport and convert it to a starport. An uneasy truce has been reached, with the pirates providing technology in exchange for supplies and "naval auxiliary" commissions, but among the natives poems of peace are being read in angry tones...

When Shadowrun GMs get so into detailing actual competent security and law enforcement/megacorp forensic & kill teams that shadowrunners can't exist, can't do their jobs, and basically the whole premise of the game is invalidated as unrealistic.

It's a bit like traveller piracy arguments, where people argue that piracy can't possibly exist, rather than taking the position that yes, pirates (and shadowrunners, even sloppy ones) are canon and finding a way to make them work.

Now, my favorite from the batch? 0204.
System TRDA0204/Caloo B000976-A N C P As Hi In Na Va - AMBER?
With the exception of a single gas giant, the entire Caloo system is nothing but one of the biggest asteroid belts ever seen, starting at 0.56AU from the local sun and going until 40AU, all while being dense enough that many asteroids pass within 1000km of each other.
Originally a mining concern that outgrew company expectations, Caloo was turned loose to form its own economy, often sending jump-2 freighters to TRDA0103 for food.
After the Oroneva Ring was activated, the Imperial border stabilized at Caloo, primarily due to the sheer difficulty of properly holding the system with so many sensor shadows to hide behind. Local Pirate and Independent fleets will often jump in from far out, coast in on silent, and then ambush Navy ships before scattering to hidden bases.
The Navy is responding likewise, but is hampered by having to provide security for the locals - who have responded to the entire thing by factionalizing into different loyalties, thus making the issue even worse.
Currently, Caloo is full of wrecks from both sides, with salvagers and belters grabbing as much as they can. Pirates and the fleets of former pocket empires wreak havoc before turning into scrap themselves. Despite what the Imperium backed government says, the effective law level systemwide is 0, and there are enough facilities to count the entire system as a class A starport.
Someone is making one hell of a profit off this mess.

I don't know, 0307 seems to scream a NYC/Albany situation.

Are you going to make it a pretty map next?

There are multiple factions at work in Caloo - The Third Imperium, Remnant Fleets, and the Pirates are the foreign ones. Local grown ones include Collaborators, Loyalists, Passives, the Guo-Kawa Industrial Collective (socialism disguised as a corporation), the Blue Dominion nihilism action group, and the Profiteers.

Already done, at least with the entire "putting dots in a hex" part.
Everything corewards of the red line is non-imperial territory.
It's the subsector capitol the sector capitol wishes it was.

And now for context: in 1110, an Ancient artifact being studied, termed the Oroneva Ring, was activated. It opened a 6AU wide transit tunnel, via a previously unknown non-jump dimension, to a galaxy outside our local cluster. In 1111, news reports confirmed six such rings activating, and other reports confirmed the presence of populations of known minor and major races in the other galaxy.
An interesting development was confirmation of the same non-jump principles in use there for FTL travel - the hyper drive, relying on opening portals to that dimension, or a related one, and using ordinary drives to provide transit speed, at a rate of 1 parsec/week per 1g thrust.
Said dimension also appears as flat as jump space, so it must be related...

My Traveller game takes place in one of those 'distant galaxy where humans evolved on multiple separate worlds' settings, using the old reliable excuse that some advanced, ancient proto-humans seeded various planets to be fit for humans after billions of years of evolution.

I was wondering if anyone has some good resources for making some weird humans to represent the kinds of humanity one might find growing up on different planets.

...

I usually steal from setting I like, like Star Wars or even babylon 5 and i put them in a "paint job" to suit them for the setting.

...

I like to give them failing planets, where the animals, freed from any sort of predation, eat all the plants.
Because militant vegans can't ecology.

K'Kree are great for antagonists, but I've rarely seen K'Kree PC's

Well, lone K'Kree are technically insane by the standards of the race. They generally travel in groups of like 50+.

They also hate non-sophonts predator animals? That's real dumb, yes.

Insane for their race sounds like it'd end up somewhat human, at this point.

Would the Grand Census book work for giving cultural variations?

That's sort of what it was for.

Same tables in World Builders, if one is more available than the other.

They like to travel in large family herds, but can be generated in CT in groups as small as three.

Not really. A lone K'kree is either a conditioned sociopath with a large side helping of religious fervor, is a sacrificial pariah, or is about to literally die of loneliness/stress.

I'm 99% sure they do. But I've also met enough militant vegans who believe wolves will thrive on tofu to tar them all with the same brush.

Although some excellent spreadsheets were fan-made at the time which dramatically sped up the design process.

If you want high-fidelity spacecraft FF&S or the Brilliant Lances design book is for you.

FF&S also allows you to design ships outside the narrow confines of the OTU parameters. You can have stutterwarp drives, for instance.

Gurps Traveller also has ship design - it's annoying to watch your speed spiral down as your mass goes up.
Here comes my recommendation for ship designs, no matter the design system:
Never start with the hull. Always design your deployment package in accordance with design mission - you want to know the weapon loadout you want, or how much cargo you need to haul. Then add your support systems - workshops, and the like. Finally add the crew for that and get your berthings. THat's without the bridge, power, M-drive, jump drive, fuel, or the crew for those - but now you can get an idea of what size hull you'll need.
Now you start wrapping it up with the powerplant, drives, and hull. It makes it a lot easier instead of desperately shuffling components in and out to get the performance you want.
You can ask for a "200 ton SDB", but go "heavily armed, long-ranged, system defense boat" and you can get a variety of potential designs ranging from small craft to 500 tons- and all of them will be roughly comparable for their scale if designed around the same, scalable, deployment package.

but the thunderhooves from TNE were a...decent idea, because cyborg centaurs are cool in concept

...

...

...

...

How have you started your games? I'm thinking of starting my next one with "rich, eccentric, noble (yes, that was redundant) seeks crew for possibly haunted spaceship, very luxurious - quarters include inflatable hot tub under bunk. Inquire at berth ##, believe the man telling you to stay away. Ignore him, but believe him.
Ability to cook gets 150% payrate."
In case they can't get a ship together - it's only two players.

While eccentric is predicated on being rich (poor people are just weird), noble is a separate condition.

His grand tour has lasted for 7 terms - adding eccentric to noble at that point is redundant.
Of course, most of that time has been spent performing stealthily blatant insertions of Imperial Agents, so...

Anybody ever have something extragalactic in their games? like the extragalactic lizard things in...IIRC, Traveller's digest?

Pic only moderately related

Yeah, my first game had an Ancient seedship from beyond the galaxy that we recovered from an asteroid belt.
We also crashes that system's precious metal economy that game.

Meet a map. Quickrolled today, 3 pocket empires (one at bottom stretches out of sector, since its a sub-capitol model), and plenty of j1 pocket kingdoms.

storytime?

I've told it before, but sure.
So, my dad is a grognard. He did play CT (and AD&D) back in college, as part of a huge group - between 10-30 PLAYERS if the schedules lined up right. Do you really want to know how much damage a literal platoon of adventurers can do to all the taverns of a city? In a single night? And that's before they launched in Traveller and became pirates.
So, there they were, 16 men in an 8 bunk scout...
Wrong game.
OK, so its about 2012, maybe 13. We decide to play Mongoose Traveller, me, my older brother, my younger sister, and my dad as Ref. Older Bro is IRL an accountant, and I can't remember what career he goes for - I think Navy or noble. Sis goes rogue, then Psion. We all drop out after 3-4 terms, total up our shares and get about... 43% off a seeker. Promptly ignoring the "no more than ten shares from age" rule for old ships, we land a 55% or so discount on a seeker. Or it was a modified Beowulf, I don't remember. Which I would, if during our first session dad didn't roll a PLANETOID ARTIFACT WITH NO CLAIMS.
Seriously, we were kinda surprised, like "how does this planetoid have no claims on it"
>Dad: it's small for this system
So we start mining. And discover an entrance.
And then find out that its hollow, with a miniature star inside for power and light.
Oh, and a refinery that could swallow entire asteroids. Remember the part about how we crashed the precious metals market? Yeah, that's how.
Working alongside the Ancient AI, we fix it up, including installing new jump drive modules, also fostering an economic revolution that nearly starts a civil war with the main world, and then someone gets suspicious...
Behind our backs.
We barely managed to jump out when the Navy came calling.
With a few hundred capital ships. Somebody had followed us and taken enough scans to realize what we had.
One jump-23 later, we raid the local naval depot for parts and raw materials. It was pretty easy when we managed to fix the main gun - (cont)

Said main gun consisted of unleashing the compressed star we used for power. Phoom, there goes a Tigress! And the Azlanti behind it!
Then we take a jump that's rated to cross the intergalactic void. And land in the middle of a fleet of planetoids, most of which are bigger than ours.
You know how the Ancients seeded races across the galaxy? These guys seeded the Ancients.
Oh, and they needed some locals to help reseed such capabilities in our galaxy, because otherwise we were doomed.
Unfortunately, dad got hit with massive overtime for the next six months (jumped from a 60 hour work week to a 90 hour), and we never did start session three with our plans to invade the Imperium with a few thousand jump-capable planets... Yeah, our main ships had a hull size reserved for planets.
It was fucking crazy.

That is some Doc Smith level insanity right there. Good stuff, user.

You know what is insane? We almost had session three, when dads worked dropped back down to 60 hours a week - literally thirty minutes before game he gets called in to do an emergency software patch for a client.
The client then fucked everything up enough that his next work week was 120 hours.
I tell you this in case you ever need to know how many hours your group can bill their patron for - OT is fun.

Do you use psionics in your game?
How do you deal with with psionics bypassing mandatory sections of the plot?

>Promptly ignoring the "no more than ten shares from age" rule for old ships, we land a 55% or so discount on a seeker.
>Seriously, we were kinda surprised, like "how does this planetoid have no claims on it"
>One jump-23 later, we raid the local naval depot for parts and raw materials. It was pretty easy when we managed to fix the main gun - (cont)
a good dad.

It might have been a bigger discount - but I remember us designing a custom ship - which might have been from the planetoids automated shipyard, and I believe we had ship shares left over.
It was a crazy game.

Planetoid vessels are !!FUN!!

>quickrolled
Do you mean you just found a website giving random UWP codes and used them as is directly?

...

Nah, I haven't gotten any UWPs yet. Just drew up the sector and rolled for stars. Not even gas giants yet.
Governments total decided by a 1d+1, odds for centralized even for distributed (layers of control decided by 1d-1), jump range (and tl) decided by 1d, and maximum number of jumps in the command circuit (double it for the turn around time on orders).
Obviously this doesn't allow 3I style governments, but I'm okay with that.

Then I started adding tiny j1 kingdoms, again rolling for how many jumps before the bureaucrats back home need you back.
And then I left several j1 mains unclaimed, to add interesting smuggling opportunities.

Let's feel old!

...

...

is 2320 anywhere in the folders?

The old 2300 is in there (it has its own folder), and the main book for the mongoose version is in mongoose 2008/settings - other
Haven't checked the others yet.

While cleaning up my place, I discovered all my traveller books and found out that small group that makes the translated books I collect, finished a new one, so I'm thinking about starting a campaign again. Yes - as an inexperienced DM, but I've DMed some fantasy campaigns and played more fantasy campaigns, so I think I'm good.

This is what I'm currently thinking about how to go about it.
> tell players ahead of time that there are non-obligatory ideas, but no strict plot they have to be worried about derailing, explicitly tell them to do whatever they like decisionwise, only pre-defined components are them being where the game starts, looking for a job and being able to operate a small- to medium-sized ship
> characters find themselves separately in a trade harbour on an asteroid, all of them ask - either at the same place - or in their own ways for job
> get sent to a specific ship that's currently empty and in the harbour, it's open and 'employer' is standing at the entry
> well-dressed accountant tells them he's the owner of the ship and needs them to fly to a different harbour a few systems away to deliver some goods
> they do it
> if players choose to investigate storage room (on their own) more closely, turns out those brick-shaped building units for flexible homes are actually a rare and valuable metal piled up high enough to make up a fortune
> if players choose to go through with job as employer asked them to, arrive at trading post for selling goods to pretty wealthy clients, where employer sells the gold and asks party not to head back to starting point but to literally anywhere else

> also has been accepting a transport mission of valuable goods, if players notice through decision of their own (like eavesdropping) turns out he'll then be asking them to head to a different location to where he was supposed to take new delivery
> if players unlucky, soon get new company. If lucky, takes a bit longer until company finds them: The real owners of the ship
> They're prospectors and smugglers, the employer is only their accountant and tech support, the ship didn't belong to him and neither did the gold
> turns out employer is a compulsive scam artist, and they are accomplices to his theft of a ship and it's cargo
> They are small enough to be manageable combat-wise, but they are openly hostile and won't settle for an amicable solution.
> if party still doesn't kill, hand over or in some other way get rid of employer, employer keeps trying to scam locals (npcs) wherever party takes him
> if party takes out smugglers, smugglers later turn out to have more high-profile employers who want their ship back and a message sent to anyone thinking about stealing from them, written in the pcs' blood.
> remainder of campaign is a constant game of who you can trust, since smugglers' employers could have contacts and assassin's anywhere.
> if pcs somehow manage to track down and take out smugglers' employers, campaign becomes a sandbox game for good, where future plot depends entirely on where players go and what they do

Wait, so is this sector for Mongoose or for T5?