@nyrath What's the proper size for the hero ship in a movie, TV series or RPG?
99% of the crew of the Enterprise seem to do nothing ever, not even react to the half-human.
In the three Star Wars movies the Millennium Falcon seems more a setting for interludes rather than part of the plot. As soon as the rookie gets the keys to an X-wing he's outta there. (In diapers?)
Traveller has two types of ships, depending on the types of missions the gamers are in to. With few if any NPC crewmembers.
@Hcobb@nyrath I'm comfortable with 4 to 7 characters. Any less and I begin feeling like I'm playing with a couple of action figures. Any more and half the cast does nothing in a given scene.
In Marathon, the ship has 25 crewmembers, but the story follows the 6 officers, sometimes taking attention to the ensigns. 6 is the sweet spot imho, if you make them distinct.
@Hcobb@nyrath I think the new gold standard if the Rocinante in The Expanse. It's the right size for a party, and even before it was "salvaged" the actual crew was small, the main compliment being marines it was ferrying.
@Hcobb@nyrath Ever since I was a little kid who was first clued into Moore's Law, it has bugged me that ships in Star Trek had or needed crews. Why are humans issuing orders to the ship's computer? They're in the 24th century (for TNG that I watched as a kid), given projected progress plus bandwidth and data compression used by transporters the ship itself should be a super-intelligence that doesn't ask it's pet hominids for advice nor pay any attention to their suggestions.
@stevenaleach@nyrath I will happily build you #KillerRobots that will "do the right thing."
All I ask is that you first write down a complete and consistent list of your infinite unspoken assumptions of what the fnord the right thing for them to do is.
Hand me a finite list and I can show you where this falls short.
@nyrath Whataboutism a Star Fleet frigate doing frigatey things?
With say red-shirt civilians whose deaths come across as failures of the crew to do their duty.
"An escort quest, again?"
Add comment