Campaigns on Carriers, Battleships & Dreadnoughts

[Warshield73]

I have been discussing hero or PC ships in another forum. When I run Phase World campaigns I tend to base them on small ships where the PCs can be in charge, not large ships.

Question: Have any of you played in or run campaigns set on large capital or super-capital ships where the PCs are just a few among thousands?
How did it work?
Did you enjoy it?
What kind of adventures did you play?

I have never run this in Rifts, I did run campaigns like this in 1st Edition Sentinels with the PCs being based of an Ikazuchi but truthfully I spent most of my time getting them off the ship rather then adventuring on it.

[Jefffar]

Basically there is a point in which the ship becomes a part of the backdrop rather than the party vehicle.

Imagine Star Trek through the eyes of those nameless ensigns instead of the Bridge Officers.

[tobefrnk]

I’ve done this in Robotech. For the onship stuff, I had a “Hey, I think there’s a secret on/about this ship/mission”. So, while on the ship, the PC’s would interact with NPCs and go about finding out the secret.

Think like how Dana Sterling in Robotech devised the plan to sneak into the hospital. Actually, a lot of the play was influenced by all the “closed doors” story telling that was in Southern Cross. “What’s the real reason behind this mission?”, “Is there a Spy?”, “What are they hiding in that room?” etc.

[ZINO]

I have been discussing hero or PC ships in another forum. When I run Phase World campaigns I tend to base them on small ships where the PCs can be in charge, not large ships.

Question: Have any of you played in or run campaigns set on large capital or super-capital ships where the PCs are just a few among thousands?
How did it work?
Did you enjoy it?
What kind of adventures did you play?

I have never run this in Rifts, I did run campaigns like this in 1st Edition Sentinels with the PCs being based of an Ikazuchi but truthfully I spent most of my time getting them off the ship rather then adventuring on it.

yup done that need the book that contain Phase World - Fleets of the Three Galaxies

Have any of you played in or run campaigns set on large capital or super-capital ships where the PCs are just a few among thousands?
a few from micro to fleet size reduce amount of dices
How did it work?
try different way so me good some bad
Did you enjoy it?
when iron out sure
What kind of adventures did you play?
a few from small group of players to fleet size reduce amount of dices

[S8nCummins]

we actually ran a great campaign on a large ship utilizing two characters per player.
One command crew aka captain, CAG, chief engineer, chief science officer, etc etc etc
And the other PC was the traditional troubleshooter away team characters.
the only requirement was that we inverted the ranks, so the guy who played the captain also played the FNG on the active team. and the lowest ranked command crew member who i believe was the engineer played the head of the team.
it was a good time.

[Axelmania]

This reminds me how how https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/File: ... 1_Map1.jpg was an entire map where you board with marines, yet https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Scien ... (StarCraft) had 200 hit points so a https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Marine_(StarCraft) doing 6 damage per attack could destroy it in 17 bursts. Yet within the level you could fire as much as you liked at interior doors and so forth without everyone dying.

[Warshield73]

This reminds me how how https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/File: ... 1_Map1.jpg was an entire map where you board with marines, yet https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Scien ... (StarCraft) had 200 hit points so a https://starcraft.fandom.com/wiki/Marine_(StarCraft) doing 6 damage per attack could destroy it in 17 bursts. Yet within the level you could fire as much as you liked at interior doors and so forth without everyone dying.

I have found that when on ships or stations, especially small ones where they are near the hull, my players use a lot more magic and psi weapons as well as phase swords and ripper vibro blades. Something about being blasted out into space just makes that HI-80 pulse laser rifle a lot less wonderful.

[SolCannibal]

Well, first Palladium game in ever played was a Robotech game set in the SDF-1 era, mostly following the series script but tweaking, expanding or filling blank spaces where convenient or fun. The ship was pretty much the group's home base, city and besieged bunker all rolled into one. Won't deny, that campaign owed as much to the original Galactica series and WWII film reruns on tv as Robotech itself.

We mostly focused on the long slow journey from Pluto back to Earth, alternating things between missions or slice of life sessions centered on the day-to-day among either civilians in the city or drudge work while on duty but out of combat - and adding lots of detail or subplots along the way: near complete radio silence from Earth, meaning there was uncertainty among the crew if "the space giants" had or not razed the planet, the ups & downs of the PCs confronting the initial problems of dwindling resources like fuel, spare parts, veritechs - or troops - and having to find sometimes good, sometimes unpleasant stopgap solutions for those problems.

Fun stuff like;
- Developing "hydrogen pumps" to collect fuel through periodic orbital trips around any of the gas giants,
- Capturing ice blocks around Saturn's rings for water (ok, not sure that was scientifically precise, but was dramatically convenient).
- Doing - quite morbid - "junk runs" where pilots would return to battlefields to collect debris from downed ally and/or enemy vehicles to canibalize and adapt for use in repairing or building more veritechs or destroids.
- Turning all PCs suddenly from grunts, privates or sergeants to lieutenants or captains with the "call for volunteers" and the need to speedtrain like crazy through thousands of greenhorns or die trying.

Also, lots of in-game experimentation with destroids, veritechs, variant concepts, finding new ways to canibalize Zent technology in stuff to be used in the veritechs, destroids or the SDF-1 as a whole, not to mention a variety of shenanigans with officers, grunts, technicians or scientists, from professional to political, romantic (one of the PCs was a friend of Lisa's dead fiance, resulting in a tense, guilt-ridden, on-off almost relationship, at least until Rick really gets into the equation and the player just quit, another pilot entered a secret romance with Gloval and a third would become the boyfriend of one of the bridge bunnies) and the occasional drunken discussion or fight in Min Mey's family restaurant.

Ah, there were also some occasions we threw the script completely through the window, like the decision to get the Zentraedi away from Earth with another blind fold jump and abandoning the Solar system to start anew somewhere else - what resulted in a series of misadventures on worlds hit by either Zentraedi, Robotech Masters or the Invid, among other unpleasantness that leads us to limp back home. Or some sparse communications with bases on Mars and the Moon, leading to our witnessing of the Mars' base destruction in the first sessions of the campaign, or a bloody battle in orbit to avoid a near repeat of the same with the lunar outpost when finally nearing Earth - and gathering a bunch of survivors into the SDF-1 amidst the mayhem. Overall, our version of the SDF-1's journey back home took 2-3 years instead of 1, if memory tricks me not.

Then comes the "Battle Cry" episode - remember the refugee starting riots over not being able to leave the ship?
Well, now think of the fact that by that stage the great majority of the ship's troops were conscripted youths who just received the news that their families and loved ones would have to stay in "starship target" along with them because the government was doing a stupid worldwide censorship game, even denying the aliens existence. The GM had a threat of mutiny and the PCs had to deal with it.

Except we were not only officers, we were their officers, we had trained those kids, fought beside them and seen them or others hurt or dead, not to mention suffer through years of uncertainty and doubt about Earth's fate due to High Command's demented "let's bury the head under the sand to avoid panic" strategy. They had abandoned us to be killed by the Zent and were doing it again, all for the sake of "censorship, security and order". We said "to hell with it" and lead the mutiny ourselves, taking over command from Gloval much to the GMM's surprise.
From there we decided to fly again, doing a little tour cruise across the planet - and over a number of metropolises - as a little show to inform the Earth the SDF-1 was alive and back as a little "screw you guys, sideways!!" to High Command and its radio and media blockade, a little merry ride that nearly sparked into actual fighting with world government forces a number of times (that had little to no idea of what the heck were we actually doing) before calm heads and negotiations prevailed and we finally surrendered command again.

The players were imprisoned, but the whole thing become a complete utter disaster to be dealt with, as High Command started to realize just how much things had changed for the people inside the SDF-1 and any understanding or control they might have of its crew was nominal at best. Not to mention the extra mess of having unravel some of their lies, as the greater part of the rank-&-file of the world armies were as unaware of the truth as the general populace. Even doing a court martial could prove problematic. Great times.