Heroes in a space opera campaign have a lot of downtime, spending as much time as they do about mighty starships jaunting across the void. While many GMs prefer to skip the bulk of travel time and get to the exiting parts, I prefer to let my players take advantage of the days, weeks, and months their characters will spend in transit. Hence my standard question, "What's your character doing during the voyage?" At last weeks session I got an answer I didn't expect.

"We play chess."

Well, as George Carlin said, "if you're gonna play, play." So that's what we did. The Arche-militant and Navigator spent a ten day journy playing regicide. Obviuslly my players couldn't play an actual game of regicide. Thankfuly, Martian Chess was able to fill in. For a tense fifteen minutes my players matched wits and tested each other's capacity for strategy to the breaking point. Unsurprisingly, the Arch-militant won out in the end. The whole course of play, complete with in-character taunts, was vastly entertaining. For these reasons, each player was rewarded with a number of xp equal to their final scores times 10. I suspect we will be doing this again.

Hmm... what "spotlight" of everyday activity onboard a ship could be worthwhile and entertaining for the whole group of pc (or at least, the majority of them)?

How about combining the necessary with the pleasant and start a Gloomhaunt Hunt ? This little vile critters are covered in "Creature Anathema". While running about ship shooting wildly with high penetration weapons might be a very very bad idea, the hunt could actually take place with bows, crossbows or harpune-like pressure-driven needle-weapons.

If this is to gaudy (or to dangerous) how about the "Ceremonial Walking of the Names"? Somewhere in the fluff, there is mentioned that (some) voiders engrave the name of passed crewmen onto the outer hull of the ship. So, why not have the Lord-Captain (and the Cleric and other Officers) "walk the names" (at least: part of them!) in a semi-religious ceremony, including the positiv metaphers of "with every step we take, we remind those who passed and honour the brave and loyal dead that gave their lives to the glory and profit of our Dynasties). The picture of VacSuit wearing procession on a vast hull in open space is a nice picture, for sure!

If played out in earnest, this might give a bonus to moral (or regain some los).

If you are looking for more dangerous parttime, I try to "collect" some "warp travell events".
http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_foros_discusion.asp?efid=159&efcid=3&efidt=249716

As rouge trader on the ship void strider i got more than enogh on my hands, i got a crew that dont know one end of a fork for the other (skill 20) and the morale aint where it should be (spaces battle and nasty warp creature onboard takes a toll) and the ship has a rebelius spirit to add onto that. So training the crew, getting the crew morale up and all the extra little things that keeps adding up really takes most of my time. I also have my young wife onboard whom is my helmsman sister ( we are 3 nobles + my wife on ship) she also wants some of my time, wich i ofcause look forward to whenever i can.

So for now i go more than enogh to do, and i cant see a end to it very soon. And i imagin thats how it would be for many a rouge trader out there.

It sounds like a good ideir to make a event out of these times if it fit into the campaign since that would add a bit more flavour into it. Getting to add some names to some of the simple ship officers that on the brigde, that give you your morning coffee etc that would indeed make it more personal. Instead of them being officer b1 and b2..

Awesome idea Attila-IV, and thanks for introducing me to Martian Chess. I would've just used Thud! as my regicide stand-in, or maybe Stealth Chess . (As an aside- I'm actually putting together a Thud! set using Warhammer miniatures to try and persuade my girlfriend (a big Pratchett fan) that this Warhammer-geekery is ok. From there, it can only be a matter of time before she agrees to try one of the RPGs...)

Thank you for pointing out Thud! I had no idea the game had been made. If it's of any help, Steve Jackson Games published a Discworld RPG a few years ago. Incidentally, I picked Martial Chess because we had a bunch of Icehouse Pieces at the table at the time. We've been using them to represent ships and debris in starship combat. One tube gives us enough pieces to field some massive fleets.