Hi, I have recently tried to set my first RT campaign in a PbP forum. We were rolling for machine spirit oddities and complications, and the second roll got the party a xenophilous ship - so they have to take a xenotech component, at the cost of certain penalties.

The book says the party can choose a xenotech component. Does that mean they receive the component at no further cost as part of the ship background, or do they still have to pay the full SP cost and the only bonus of the background is the access to a normally restricted component?With the ItS creation system just access seems a bit low.

I would say it means they have to allocate some SP towards a single xenotech component.

They have to pay the SPs. It wasn't meant as a gift.

Then again, you're the GM.

They have to be paid for with SPs, yes, and as GM, you can veto something that would be too story-breaking for a beginning party to have, but otherwise they can pick what they want from among the xeno-equipment in place of a normal human component they'd usually have access to. Also remember, SPs only matter at ship creation. After the game officially starts, they are irrelevant, and only Power and Space really matter. If you were to give them the component free of SP, these two things would still matter.

Alright, thanks. It seemed a bit weak compared to what ItS gives, but as it happens they got both (and have to deal with having a somewhat weak starting SP amount, but hey, their problem .