#RPGaDay2021 - Day 19 - Star Wars is All About Capitalism, Baby!

Day 19 of #RPGaDay, and the main word is "THEME."

If it hasn't been obvious from my previous posts, this past year has been dominated by my Star Wars d6 (West End Games) Campaign. 

Star Wars is always something I throw out when I give a list of suggested games I'm interested in running.  The group may have reached their saturation point with the normal 5e game we were playing, plus the BECMI D&D side campaign I was running.  Nevertheless, I offered, they unanimously accepted, and the rest is history.  

As I mentioned on Day 1, we sort of went off the rails from the traditional rebel game that WEG Star Wars focuses on: 

Me: "What are you playing."

Player #1:  "A Brash Pilot."

Me: "Good, and you?"

Player #2: "A Wookie."

Me: "Good pairing, and you?"

Player #3: "A Twi'lek male merc, can I be enslaved to another player, and trying to earn my freedom."

Me: "I'll allow it, and you, Steve?"

Player #4: "I want to be a Galactic Exotic Animal Dealer!"

Me:  "Dammit Steve!"

With the concept of a scrupulous business and his crew, it creates a new set of problems, while eliminating certain plot hooks.  Yes, they still deal with secretive transactions, and they certainly know their share of shady characters, but in between those adventures, the campaign feels a lot like a classic Traveller game. 

Traveller is the classic 70's sci-fi rpg that followed a more hard science fiction look and feel of the future than the science fantasy of Star Wars.  Faster-than-Light drives existed but jumps took weeks and multiple jumps may be necessary.  Traveller is most noted for its lifepath system of character generation, where you conducted "tours" of various professions to gain experience and improve your character, but a bad roll "mustering out" of certain professions could kill the character before your actually started play.  

One of the top activities in a non-military Traveller game is commerce.  The PCs usually have a ship, and transporting things for a profit is the easies way to make a buck.  

While thee WEG sourcebooks do cover Freighters, smugglers, and general commerce, I've rarely seen anything go in that direction, especially the extent of this group.  

Throw in the fact that I'm using Traveller scenarios and articles to flesh out the campaign, (again, see Day One)  and there's no argument if I ever wrote the actual plays into a book, the cover would be classic GDW black with the classic Traveller font.  

We are almost 45 years from it's original release, so, despite the feel and familiarity to Traveller, there's none of the heavy accounting.  I'm hand-waving a lot of expenses, and their not negotiating too hard with business transactions.   In a world where 10,000 credits can transport and old man, his ward, and their droids from Tatooine to Alderaan, OR buy a used ship, what exactly is the cost for transporting a cargo hold of Bioxin Azure Rabbits from Takodana to Tuktaar.   I'm more interested in acquistion and delivery.  A decent bureaucracy roll can gauge the paperwork to fill out and hoops to the jump through. 

We're playing in the Imperial Era (5BBY) so the Rebellion is growing (the one character's half-sister is a fame Rebel pilot and demolitions "terrorist," but the crew of the Pretio has been adherent to Imperial law, and in fact, quite helpful to their needs.  There have even been a few overt gestures that the Empire's much maligned Science Ministries (non-clone related) may be interested in future collaboration.  So long and animals aren't being abused and the price is right, they would certainly consider it.