A vehicle's crew

[Narthon]

For a vehicle with a large crew, should the crew be bought as followers or dnpcs? Followers are not on the list of perks avalible for vehicles in the ultimate vehicle book, but it seems cheap to buy such an important/needed part of the vehicle with a disad.

Any thoughts?

[Captain Obvious]

Followers provide a net benefit to the character (or whatever else) buying them. DNPCs provide a net liability (other than roleplaying potential). It's my understanding that The Ultimate Vehicle takes the stance that a vehicle's crew provides benefits (it's hard to take out the whole battleship at once, meaning that they'll be fighting for a while, even on a lucky hit) and liabilities (it's hard to maneuver, fight, and run damage control when a large portion of the battleship's crew is dead or wounded, and that also means that there are a lot of guys that need to be carried to the lifeboats when the ship does go down), for a net effect of zero.

So, essentially, crew is a special effect of a vehicle. Define it however you want, but it doesn't cost any points, in and of itself.

[Dust Raven]

Depending on the genre, the campaign and the purpose of the vehicle, you can do this a number of ways.


As Narthosnsuggests, you can just have the crew be a SFX of the vehicle. No Perk or Disad needed. The crew is just there and does their job and stays in the background. Promenent members of the crew might be bought as Followers or a DNPC, but the rest are just "part" of the ship.

As Followers, the crew would be paid for by the character that's paid for the ship (or group of characters). The GM could also just assign the crew to the ship at no point cost if that's appropriate. As Followers, the crew will all have stats relating to their jobs and can also do other stuff (like leave the ship, run errands, etc.).

As Disads, the crew could be treated like an SFX or as Followers, but their overall value is to get into trouble or be threatened. Think of the crew of the Enterprise (either series). They were most likely DNPCs (a Disad on the vehicle) because they were constantly in danger but never really did anything useful (the main cast of the show, i.e. the player characters, did that stuff).

In any of these cases, an individual character can always take a specific member (or a group) as a DNPC for their character, and just say they are part of the crew. This would work like DNPCs for the vehicle, but only in regards to the one character.

[Narthon]

Ok, if it helps, this ship may become the mobile base of our supergroup, if we decide to buy it. I'm just putting something on paper to bring to the next session for evaluation, so it will get a lot of tinkering.

Thanks for the help guys.

[BobGreenwade]

Generally, under this kind of circumstance I'd say that the crew are a bunch of Followers. But they're not Followers for the Vehicle itself; they're Followers for the Vehicle's owner(s).