Through a conversation about personality on ships and what makes a hero ship a character, I decided to put together a quick roll table for people to use in adding some personality to their secondhand freighters.

Each result is entirely narrative, and range from a funny smell to the odd panel falling off. I had some fun with the potential results, and some can create little hooks for a GM to latch onto if they so choose.

Link to the file

Let me know what you all think!

Sounds promising, but from what I saw most of the quirks are things that just make owning and using the vessel much more of a hassle than it would be without this system, particularly if there's nothing the players can do to fix these quirks. I don't see much in the way of positive benefits aside from the "attached mechanic" and "Abandoned Cargo", both of which have potential negative effects, while "Diplomatic Past" and "Wanted Transponder" balance out the potential positive with a potential negative. I feel like there should be some outright positive quirks to balance out the table, otherwise it's a system I think players would likely not want to use because it's more trouble than it's worth.

4 hours ago, immortalfrieza said:

Sounds promising, but from what I saw most of the quirks are things that just make owning and using the vessel much more of a hassle than it would be without this system, particularly if there's nothing the players can do to fix these quirks. I don't see much in the way of positive benefits aside from the "attached mechanic" and "Abandoned Cargo", both of which have potential negative effects, while "Diplomatic Past" and "Wanted Transponder" balance out the potential positive with a potential negative. I feel like there should be some outright positive quirks to balance out the table, otherwise it's a system I think players would likely not want to use because it's more trouble than it's worth.

Well the point was that these things are here as more "obligation for the starship" almost, rather than anything like "oh maybe I can get X benefit". It's supposed to be little Used Car-esque problems that the GM can crop up now and again, or if the players know about it, can make comments on or riff off of.

It's more for GM use than player use as just a way to make the PC ship more memorable and "quirky" like the Falcon or Serenity ect. without actually changing the stats

... was that the primary buffer panel?

I must say I like the table - some of the results seem a little too much for pure RP quirks, like the Abandoned Cargo or the Wanted Transponder (which should probably be more along the lines of "The ship has been tenuously linked to some sort of crime and may raise eyebrows" than an outright Wanted!), but others are just great. That said, a few positive results (like a well-stocked gourmet kitchen) might also be in order. Are you taking suggestions for expansion of the table?

22 minutes ago, Cifer said:

I must say I like the table - some of the results seem a little too much for pure RP quirks, like the Abandoned Cargo or the Wanted Transponder (which should probably be more along the lines of "The ship has been tenuously linked to some sort of crime and may raise eyebrows" than an outright Wanted!), but others are just great. That said, a few positive results (like a well-stocked gourmet kitchen) might also be in order. Are you taking suggestions for expansion of the table?

If you have any ideas sure! I can always change/add stuff to it

Rather than wanted transponder it could be something like suspicious transponder. It's original, and intact, but sometime in the past someone tried to alter it. Every now and then the signal is off just enough to make it suspicious.

Hidden cargo could be good. Something like a legend that the ship was once owned by a famous smugler and that he hid something of incredible value somewhere in the ship.

Former smuggler's vessel. The ship used to belong to a smuggler and even though it's clean now, the cartel wants to to look it over and make sure. This could go from extra searches every time they land at certain ports to full blown someone coming after them.

Exquisite Tastes: The ship has an extremely well-furnished galley as one of its prior owners was a gourmet. Unfortunately, they were also of a wholly different species, so several of the obviously high-quality tools are completely unknown to the characters and actually using the spices still left in the pantry is always a bit of a gamble, especially since they're not labeled.

Old Signature Ship: The ship is well-known for belonging to someone else. It has a history in many major ports, some of it good, some of it bad. Explaining it's now owned by someone else may or may not work and hilarity ensues often ("Get him out! I know he's hiding in there somewhere like last time - well, last time, he didn't get to meet his daughter yet!").

Haunted: The ship has an ominous history. Perhaps its last captain committed suicide after murdering their crew. Perhaps it was found drifting with no signs of its former inhabitants. Perhaps it was used in a notorious massacre. Perhaps it was the only survivor of its convoy on a risky hyperlane. In any case, more superstitious folks may want little to do with the ship or its crew.

Jinxed: People aboard the ship tend to suffer minor accidents. Maybe it was fitted for a different species and the proportions of its stairs are slightly off or the locking mechanisms for overhead storage compartments are low-quality (but difficult to dig out and replace). People who live on the ship have learned to avoid the worst kinks and keep some ointment for bruises on hand for the rest.

Perhaps the previous owner cloned their arch-nemesis to fix their ship.

”I have no regrets about cloning my arch-nemesis. You guys are the best!”

[Stereo is out of tune]

”Oh, come on, this is not cool!”

”Hehe, I know you’d like that!”

”Well, I guess you’re genetically predisposed to being d***s.”

(I’ve heard that these forums censor a lot of things, so I’ll add my own asterisks pre-emptively.)

I like the list, but I'd like it more if it had setback/boost dice for various skill checks made with or even on the ship.

"Strange smells and stains: charm skill checks made on the ship have one setback die"

"Noticeable Paint-job: anyone trying to identify the ship gains one (or two) boost dice on their check."

stuff like that. I like mechanics that echo the fluff

"Attached Mechanic: the old astromech droid has been rearranging the ship's wiring for years. while the ship seems to have a free mechanic, they are not that great, only rolling one proficiency die and two ability dice. But the wiring is a mess only they seem to understand, the difficulty is considered one (or two) higher for others trying to perform mechanic checks."

44 minutes ago, afrodave said:

I like the list, but I'd like it more if it had setback/boost dice for various skill checks made with or even on the ship.

"Strange smells and stains: charm skill checks made on the ship have one setback die"

"Noticeable Paint-job: anyone trying to identify the ship gains one (or two) boost dice on their check."

stuff like that. I like mechanics that echo the fluff

"Attached Mechanic: the old astromech droid has been rearranging the ship's wiring for years. while the ship seems to have a free mechanic, they are not that great, only rolling one proficiency die and two ability dice. But the wiring is a mess only they seem to understand, the difficulty is considered one (or two) higher for others trying to perform mechanic checks."

I toyed with this idea originally, but some of the plusses and minuses felt too close to mods, and I felt if it were too much of a punishment then people wouldn't want to use it in the first place. For now it's mostly just some narrative bits and pieces to give a ship some character for players to riff off of. I may make a version with various boosts and setbacks at some point.

I love this idea and frequently use quirks like these for my players vehicles in many systems that we play.

It may be appropriate to add modifiers to the quirks on a case by case basis, as long as the players are ok with it, it's a GMs call.

I once gave my D6 star wars group a freighter with a huge over sized quad cannon as a secondary turret, it did a lot of damage but randomly shut down one ship board system every time it was fired due to the massive power consumption. It was always good to watch the players debating whether to fire the quad and risk losing sublight engines or hyperdrive in the middle of a tense escape scene!

On 5/24/2018 at 9:14 AM, SirSaiCo said:

I love this idea and frequently use quirks like these for my players vehicles in many systems that we play.

It may be appropriate to add modifiers to the quirks on a case by case basis, as long as the players are ok with it, it's a GMs call.

I once gave my D6 star wars group a freighter with a huge over sized quad cannon as a secondary turret, it did a lot of damage but randomly shut down one ship board system every time it was fired due to the massive power consumption. It was always good to watch the players debating whether to fire the quad and risk losing sublight engines or hyperdrive in the middle of a tense escape scene!

Hah I really like that! I did something similar with a recurring freighter that pops up in my games called the "Waylander", which is a boosed YT-1300 that once acted as a pirate radio station, so has a bunch of Holonet arrays and can go speed 5, but has very low strain threshold. I might do something more along those lines next time it crops up, so that it will divert system power to boost to high speed

We decided for the Black Nebula (Black Pearl had been taken) that the air con smelt of peppermint mixed with oil, with a quite tapping that no matter how much we tried to find and fix it couldn't be found and fixed... and the landing gear was slightly off and landed with a bump but that did no lasting damage to the landing gears etc