Tramp Freighters; PCs with Two transports?

[Mamatried]

[Argentsaber]

Just a brief suggestion with regards to the initial question.. I had this happen twice. In one case, a game started with a tramp freighter captain and a smuggler both.. they sold one ship and upgraded the other substantially. This was something of a strange game, as the ship was lots better than the characters using it quite often.

The second case worked out much better. The characters had a reasonably normal light freighter with modest upgrades for the typical recon and infiltration missions, but the second ship was substantially "overclocked" with multiple turrets, heavy shields, and big engines. I think the cargo bay held like 17tons. They used it for assaults which would normally be done by borrowed rebel starfighters in a more typical game.. with the added benefit that the entire crew could participate without needing to purchase any more than gunnery, allowing the pilot character to shine, but everyone to contribute.
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[dph]

I played a 5 player campaign with a Transport, a Scout and a Fighter!

It actually makes combat a lot more exciting, not the least because you have less 'gunners' and co-pilots.

All you need to do as a GM is to throw more ships at them!
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[garhkal]

[Mamatried]

The Adventure called " New recruits and Rebel Guns "

Sort of deals with the 2 ship party aspect as it in that adventure is possible for the group to have two ships after the mission's end, one fighter though and a transport.

So groups having more than one ship I see no issue with at all

[garhkal]

That gives me an idea for a new question.
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[LTAaripJasall]

I saw this post rise to the top recently and I can follow up with how this worked out, since I asked the original question. It worked great!



My fears of them using a small fleet of two transports as pirate vessels did not materialize.

In the Tramp Freighters campaign, they were able to rent out the ship and license it properly, and gain some small income running cargo around outside of the scope of our game sessions. They still had to deal with things breaking and fuel costs, so there was added stress to them on that front.

I did use the idea that someone posted here of a vengeful trandoshan family who came to hunt them for the stealing of the vessel, and that opened a whole wing of new adventures while they dealt with that.

I was even able to use this second vessel to break some of my own "plot armor" worries with their main ship. I had it stolen by the big bad in a dramatic moment, making the PCs mourn the loss of their ship character. It was an amazing gaming moment watching the shared story unfold as the wounded players planned to retrieve it. They were forced to use their secondary beat up freighter to take the fight to the big bad and get their property back.

Eventually towards the end of the campaign, the player characters had a medium transport too, full of its own rusted holes and quirks. No problems really emerged with them having multiple ships. If you trust your players to do cool things, the story can really evolve in interesting ways.

PS, I had almost all of them spectacularly blown up in the conclusion of the campaign. Very Empire Strikes Back.