How about a monstrously huge bulk freighter that they might not really have the crew to properly handle, but that's dirt cheap because its current owner just wants to get rid of it for reasons?

>>32668745
>What should I offer them?
Abandoned luxury liner.

Make it obvious that there's a potential to turn it into Sheikh's class vessel.

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I should be more clear.

My party is not competent to run a ship themselves. And they have no money. They need to take hire as crew on someone else's ship. And deciding who they take hire with decides where the campaign is headed.

>>32668745
Present them a cargo freighter.
Crewed by a robot, a total loser, a female pilot cyclop and an asian chick.

>>32668745
An alien bioship that lost its symbiotic 'crew' and is looking for replacements.

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Some giant mashed together monstrosity of a superfreighter run by the ultimate cheapskate. Life support fails often because getting a decent one cost too much profitsss.

>>32668908
Couple more suggestions

A manchausen type with some incredible tales of glory and an old but capable looking ship. No one else will work for him. Is he going to betray them, is he mad or is he actually the real deal?

A runaway scientist with a mysterious past, with an powerful but experimental ship suspiciously lacking markings. Lots of tech (that might fail or break) and the potential for the people who funded the ship to turn up.

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>>32668945
I obviously don't mind the references. But they have to stand for something in the campaign.

I have considered a pure comedy option. But we only had 1 session and I want the characters to get established as adventurers. Their background is already comedy. They come from Potatohoe, which is Bumfuck, IA the planet.

Is there any way to make the Planet Express ship more real and less slapstick? We're not playing pic related.

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>>32669035
>A manchausen type with some incredible tales of glory and an old but capable looking ship. No one else will work for him. Is he going to betray them, is he mad or is he actually the real deal?
>A runaway scientist with a mysterious past, with an powerful but experimental ship suspiciously lacking markings. Lots of tech (that might fail or break) and the potential for the people who funded the ship to turn up.
YES! Thank you, this is what I am looking for.

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Sor ar I have
>>32668745
Hans Oloh
Bodacious Pirate
Moya
Bounty Hunter
>>32669031
Disorganized Labor
>>32669035
Admiral Munchhausen
Mad Scientist

>>32669025
What's the adventure?

>>32669248

These bioships could be from a recently destroyed galactic superpower everyone hated. They had have to play diplomat for their ship, and the fact that they're the only synthetic crew can give them a lot of room to have fun in.

An asteroid monitor of tremendous durability but minimal speed, created in the earliest days of space warfare. It's weapons are quite outdated, but huge agricultural zones inside it's massive walls allow it to be nearly self-sufficient.

A semi-spherical rock with engines on one end, this nickle iron monster is captained by a massive man with a dark beard and gentle temper and his crew of neo-Mennonites, dedicated to a time when space travel was simpler. For the most part pacifist, they do make an exception in the case of protecting their homes and humanity.

>>32669366
>It's weapons are quite outdated
I like this, but have it be the kind of outdated where its still a pretty scary thing to face off against. Like a massively inefficient but nonetheless incredibly powerful mass driver

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>>32669392
Not OP btw

>>32669318
>>32669248
Thinking along the lines of Lexx, maybe it's a next-generation battleship and they need to take it back to its base.

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>>32669422
I get it now. The bioship makes them a power in the sector. But they don't understand it.

Yeah, that will work.

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>>32669442
I think I would describe the cryptic controls and indicators of the unfathomable ship as vegetables. It's something the players are familiar with.

>The cucumber vibrates as detonations rock the ship and it gets hard to steer with it. The onion display has lost 2 layers. There's a cherry blinking in the rear part of the large radish display.

>>32669515
Not OP, maybe describe the MFDs as a primordial soup that moves pockets of nutrients around to attract bioluminescent bacteria to form up into a readable display. Just a thought, would make it seem kind of alien I guess?

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>>32669542
Sweet!

A medium sized ex-warship from a defeated power. The captain still wears his old uniform and the ship hasn't been repainted.

A crowded transport with at least three different groups of hippy new age types. Peace love and hallucinogens?

A neutral ship that seems perfectly average, but is actually a spy vessel.

>>32668745

Well, this is one of those questions where the better answer is probably:

"What does your party like to fucking do?"

I mean, if they love the luxurious mercantile scheming it will probably be different than if they crave blood and piracy.

I mean, you could just give them a spaceship mansion for humor value, too.

>>32669652
I'm going for tropy space opera plots that don't arc too long. It is supposed to feel like the Star Wars universe, only less monolithic. It is decidedly soft SF, with lots of magic science and crazy aliens. FTL, space combat, shields, all that is a given, I just elected to avoid teleporters and their Star Trek flavor.

The adventures will be short, funny, heroic, and changing in genre and setting. There will definitely be a heist or breakout. Creepy Mystery is my staple. A good race or chase will dominate one episode. One will make them part of some secret resistance.

They should meet a lot of aliens so that I can use call backs. Before they get their own ship they should experience a few different types. Combat should never be the solve-all option. And they have to stay together.

I already know they want to work toward their own ship, of course. They also have a mystery from home, but they are far from there and don't know how to get back, so that will get picked up much later. The group tends to get lethargic in sandboxes, so I'm trying to always offer a few leads and develop the situation from there.

>>32669767

Aha, well so for their main ship it sounds like you really want a generalist one.
Maybe modular and upgradable, and potentially with a Farscape-like personality.

Sounds like you don't want much grand mercantile empire building, but you do want there to be a backdrop with plenty of ties to them that help them do things in life.

If you want them to jump ships often, you can really do whatever you want. Yandere AI, Bounty Hunter looking for crew, etc.

Or you could just start them off in the main ship, though maybe a bit 'in need of repair'.

For plot, you could have lots of background groups trying to do things. Claim planets, blow up navies, activate artifacts, etc.

Farscape/SS13, maybe.

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>>32669857
Yes, indeed.

The idea of this thread was to collect a few ideas for the specific situation they're in right now.

>>32669890

Well like I said, what situation do they WANT to be in?

Do you have some steampunk fans who may like to stow on board a victorianesque space explorer?

Do they fucking love monstergirls and want a fluffy tail kitsune captain of ship summoned with demon magic?

It's scifi, so you can really do anything. I'd just caution you to have things be somewhat internally consistent. Like don't change the melting point of normal steel every session maybe, you know? (Unless maybe there's a reason for it doing that. Basically, have a reason for things that's perhaps understandable to the players.)

tl;dr: What are your players' fetishes?

>>32669935
No, that's the wrong way. No need to force stuff in there, space opera has plenty to offer.

>>32669980

I didn't say anything about 'force'. The OP asked for ideas in a wild soft-scifi setting.

Obviously the goal being to do stuff your players might enjoy. Not one-to-one copy their favorite novel.

>>32669980
>>32669890
>>32669767
Basically, Star Wars is demon magic. They may as well be called psykers or wizards. It's just how you phrase it.

You could make the technology "quantum clockwork" for steampunky elements. Space Opera's defining characteristic is that it's in space. That's it.

>>32669587
>A neutral ship that seems perfectly average, but is actually a spy vessel.

I like this one. They seem like the obvious choice--just plain, reliable spacers.

The captain is almost suspiciously average. Name's John Rackam. Likes to have a drink after duty hours, but never two. Eats the same breakfast every morning. The crew makes a big deal out of it if he wears a grayish-blue shirt on the bridge instead of his usual gray.

Then one of the PC's walk into a cargo hold that's been left open and find 15 corpsicles who were extraordinary renditioned from a rebelling colony world.

>What makes a man turn neutral?

>>32669442
The other thing is you don't have to just give them the ship. It makes sense that whatever killed the crew might have left it quite damaged and the party only has a vague idea of what's going on below deck, so it could easily turn into a variant of exploring alien ruins as they try to get it working again.

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Well I will have to represent it as an option in the station hangar. So there will probably be an abandoned pod with a light blinking inside an open hatch. The rest will be narration about what it looks like (organic, grown, alive). That would be a shuttle sent to sit in the hangar as a lure while the ship orbits nearby.

>>32671482
I don't want to know what makes a man turn neutral
thehorror.webm

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>>32668745

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>>32673291
>>32668745
>A seedy headhunter looking for dupes to portray slaves so he can infiltrate a slaver hub and get to his target. 'Just some acting work, a week tops.'

>>32668745
An art deco ship that used to be on display as a museum piece before the curator needed funds to run the place.

>>32669422
>Our world has many problems plaguing it; perhaps, you, with your advanced knowledge, could help us better ourselves
>Can you quit it with all the philosophical bullshit? I'm asking a simple question here! Do you, or do you NOT HAVE NUDE BEACHES?

>>32668745
A ship staffed by one human engineer and a few fairly sarcastic robots. A couple asshole mad scientists call the ship to antagonize the captain every so often, hijacking the ships communications to force the crew to watch historically important holovids.

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A huge mining and cargo vessel. Old and not designed for combat, but with tools and equipment that have been repurposed to serve in a hurry.

The ship was brought into the system by a handful of crew who want to claim the ship as salvage, but obscure legal clauses from the race in question requires the ship to be brought to its home system to do. There are four "crew", far less than is necessary to operate the ship, and who's actually captain is disputed.

-One is a space bum who found the ship adrift, and invoked the right of salvage. Lazy and unsanitary, but smarter than he looks.
-A low-ranking ex-crewmember who was in stasis when the ship was lost, and believes himself acting captain now the rest of the crew is dead.
-A member of a foreign species, who's family squatted on the ship as it drifted. Born on the ship, and therefore treats it as home.
-The ship's somewhat unstable and neurotic AI, loaded itself into a service droid when its main core was damaged. Claims the ship is itself, and therefore nobody else has rights to it.

The crew argue and bicker over who's in charge constantly. The party were brought on board to help maintain and run the ship until the salvage rights can be claimed (at which point they will be given recompense), as well as defend the vessel from pirates and hostile entities who think a massive, barely-armed space freighter is an easy target.

>>32669318
Related to this, you could have a collapsed empire dumping naval assets because it can't afford to dispose of them properly, including some with working AIs.

>players check local jobs board
>"type 4 destroyer looking for crew"
>"abandoned by navy after 15 years loyal service"
>"will provide housing, transportation and/or crushing of enemies for fuel and maintenance"
>"no pets please"