> On Jul 31, 2016, at 7:52 AM, Abu Dhabi <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Some players tolerate this fairly well; after all, they are playing a game where at least one player needs to be an amateur accountant in order to not run out of fuel in deep space/skip too many mortgage payments in a row/die of CO2 poisoning because you did not remember to do your maintenance/go deeper and deeper into debt as you fail to make a profit on your venture. Other players - not so much. I've had a player leave a game I was in explicitly because of the tedium of space travel. There were probably many more who found this situation intolerable for unarticulated reasons, and simply stopped showing up.
>

This is why you're the GM :-), abstract it out. Ask them if they want to do anything particular during the voyage, get their response and game that out.

Presume if you have the appropriate skill sets in the party the routine crap of ‘running a spaceship’ is taken care of.  This is where a ton of roll-pre-playing comes in handy, and preparation on the part of the GM.

Pre-roll random cargoes, and pre-roll the results (or just flat-out make it up, if you want to), toss in any Macguffin related events, and there you go.

“You cross the subsector pretty uneventfully. You spent X credits on maintenance, fuel and a few broken things along the way (you now have a shiny new cappuccino maker in the galley, the old one blew up one day, a mildly exciting event), and made Y credits transporting various cargoes and some speculative trades.

"Jezebel spent the time studying for the Navigator III qualifications test, if she takes it she passes. Heneriii spent his time rewatching all the seasons of “Space Rangers” and has learned nothing.

"You still have a pallet of electronic novelty items you misjudged the novelty of and haven’t been able to sell, a container of agricultural hand tools, and Murphy has a strange rash the autodoc isn’t quite curing.

"That’ll each him to go to a budget brothel on <insert name of place>”

This way the tedium of the whole thing is gone, and if the players just want to get to the end, they can.

If you have things they need to do/encounter/not do on the way, you can game that out.

 and voila: jump across a subsector in 15 minutes of gaming time :-) and you all get to the ‘fun stuff’ right away.

Always remember: this is not “Accountants and Actuaries”; unless a PC wants to keep track of all this, or play trader they can, if they just want to do the crazy PC stuff they can; routine stuff does NOT have to be gamed out.

--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs