Zeropoint

So, a gaming buddy of mine just mentioned to me that she'd be interested in playing a game where the PCs are (or can be) starships, citing Anne McCaffery's "The Ship Who Sang" as a reference. I'm rather intrigued by the idea, as I've read plenty of stories with characters who are no longer, or never were, quite human, and I've done a bit of my own thinking about what a person could be if they didn't have to pass for a greasy Mark 1 Mod 0 homo sapiens sapiens. Therefore, I'm starting a thread here to ask for information, advice, and random thoughts on the matter. Has anyone here ever run a game with such a concept, or given serious thought to it? Are there any books/stories/movies/webcomics that I should definitely read if I'm going to run such a game? Any more-or-less on-topic thoughts you might have are welcome here.

<squints> Isn't that basically Europe and Africa?

The excellent webcomic Freefall had a mention of "electrosynthetic algae" as part of a ship's life support system once.

Hmm, interesting. If I've understood the article correctly, they've found bacteria that run in both directions, as it were. I see two possible applications for this: the first is a biological fuel cell; put in sugar water and oxygen, get electricity. The second is the reverse; put in carbon dioxide and electricity, get oxygen (and sugar). Oh, and some kind of biological rust removal system?

Darn, three years later and the companion bot is STILL looking like my best bet for finding a girlfriend!

The Democratic and Benevolent People's Republic of the Milky Way

Blessings of Jebediah Kerman upon you, Jade Rabbit!

There's a disturbingly huge amount of sexism and misogyny in geekdom. I'm trying to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

After reflecting on that last post for a while, I feel like I should apologize; it makes a woman sound like something to be bought and sold. That's not right.

If they come with a pilot like that, I'll be more than happy to pay the $5k.

I hope she'd been to a Self Defense Against Fruit class.

It would be far easier to make silver bullets by turning them from silver bar stock on a lathe than by melting and molding them . . . maybe there are silver candlesticks on the mantlepiece and a dusty old Craftsman metal lathe in the garage?

And some random paramedic.

She's going to miss that bauble.

Are you shaying those shpoonheadsh got there firsht?

Which would make the harbinger accurate! . . . harbinging? harbingation?

Hey, SOMEone has to be the first intelligent species, the Precursors who leave mysterious and powerful artifacts for everyone else to find . . . why not us?

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time Images vs. Common Sense

You think two vision modes are bad? What does it look like when a power armor character tries to mash visible band, IR, UV, thermographic, and millimeter wave radar all together into the same display? I also have an amusing image in my head of a power armor character being in millimeter wave radar mode and walking into a glass wall because to him/her, it's totally invisible. Edit: I just remembered one difference: in IR vision (my experience was with a thermal imager for firefighting), some visibly transparent materials are opaque. Acrylic plastic, AKA Plexiglass, looks silvery white and you sure can't see through it.

The Common Man. There are no records of where he came from, and his own recollection is spotty . . . although he's been known to tell stories about a few different Czars that make it sound like he was there. Powerwise, he seems like an ordinary human with mildly better than average innate talents and a lot of combat experience. He's got just about every skill that could be useful in a military environment, but without super defenses, it's still possible for him to die in battle . . . and that's when his powers become obvious, because when he dies, he comes right back and brings a friend. This continues to happen until the sheer mass of soldiers brings victory. (Regeneration with Resurrection, and Duplication linked to the Resurrection?) The duplicates fade away (old soldiers, don't you know) after the fighting is done. The Common Man gets **** done.

Paramedics. Ideally, all superheroes should be certified EMTs, but that's probably not realistic. Knowledge Skill: Superhuman World. Area Knowledge of the campaign area. That's about it, off the top of my head, for skills that "EVERY responsible superhero should know."

If you're in a balloon, floating via the buoyancy provided by the atmosphere, you're pretty clearly NOT in space.

I'll be happy to provide a home to any threatened catgirls out there.

What about masers?

5e Star Hero had an option wherein hexes of Flight represented acceleration, all ships in space had infinite NCM for free, and some conversion factor from amount of Flight to gravities. "Combat movement" represented how fast the ship could go and still have reasonable real-time control over its motion (obviously not fast enough for interplanetary travel). It seemed pretty good to me, but then, I never actually tried playing or running a game like that.