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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 8562493" data-attributes="member: 6779310">Trade related conspiracies: Dockworkers/stevadores guild.Yardworkers guildMegacorporate hired privateers.Rebels mislabeling cargos...All of those are potential long term stories that can create one-shot interactions galore.If the dockworkers guild is striking at certain ports, the adventure is finding people to unload your cargo and move it to the warehouse.  Or a guildworker notes that your ship unloaded across a picket line a few systems back, according to leaked logs... and they make life hell.When megacorps go to war, it's by proxies... but anyone not flagged by the employer and going to certain ports is targeted for protection money... almost enough, but not quite, to make the run a loss... unless something goes wrong.Another thing that helps in running a trade game is a table of things that can go wrong. Maneuver drives: Misaligned. Overheating to shutdown. Timing off, making maneuvers sloppy. partial outage makes maneuver drop in acceleration. Life support: CO2 scrubber failure. O2 tank leak. Funky smell. "It ain't dead, Jim" (microbial or macrobiotic inhabiting the systems). Slow toxins. Pressure leak. Pressure sensor failure resulting in incorrect pressures (and possibly bends and/or oxygen toxicity).Make a list of the systems that are installed, to your comfortable level of detail. Then come up with 3 to 10 things that can go wrong with each. And what the fix is. And how hard it is to diagnose.  Set the maintenance needs so that a minor mishap (cost increases due to inefficiency and/or small non-vital spares to fix non-lethal problems) is likely every 2-3 sessions.Another tool, stolen from FFG Star Wars: everyone has a background obligation that crops up randomly. When it does, Bad Squat Happens. Such as last week's wed session, Grishkal's Imperial Bounty obligation triggered. So, a bounty hunter shows up looking to ace them. (Worse, it's not doing it for reward; it's actually an imperial owned IG-100 Magnagard...) The entire session was dealing with it directly. They mindwiped it... with a major complication (4 threat)... this week, they tried to cash in on it, player failed, and the mindwipe mishap finally manifest... as it killed an impie during a customs boarding. Their cargo - a single passenger - participated in all the fights against it.They're all wanted by the Empire, but not at a high bounty. Yet. They're hoping to hand off the remains as a semi-functional unit to Teemo the Hutt.... This is where the crunch of the system becomes a useful tool.the problem comes when you stop asking "how are you justifying that in character?" and just go straight to the modifiers and mechanistics. And, for some, even then, it's not a problem.Not everyone plays RPGs as storygames. For some, they're boardgames at character scale. And that's OK when everyone at the table is good with it.  I'm more towards the middle of the two.</blockquote>

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