How to game the Kessel Run

In this RPG-a-minute episode of Improvised Radio Theatre With Dice (about 27 minutes in) Roger and Michael propose a Traveler-style SF concept:

"There is a starship at planet A, you have to get it to planet Z. You are being hired to do this. You're being paid a basic stipend, and fuel and maintenance or whatever, but any money you can make along the way, that's fine, you can keep it."

It's Wagon Train to the stars – and why not? Or you could set it aboard a sea-going vessel in ancient, medieval or early modern times. Or make it about delivering a truck cross-country in a campaign modelled on Damnation Alley. There’s plenty of scope for developing picaresque adventures of the week as you go.

But that’s only half the potential. A good story arises in the tension between what you want to do and what you’re allowed to do. Consider how many Star Trek episodes are built around solving a problem in spite of the Prime Directive. So I’d suggest presenting the player-characters with their contractual terms of employment:

INTERSTELLAR DELIVERY CONTRACT

Base Compensation: 50,000 credits upon successful delivery

Time-Performance Clause:

• On-time bonus (delivery within 365-400 standard days): Additional 25,000 credits
• Early delivery bonus (under 365 days): 100 credits per day early, capped at 10,000 credits
• Late penalties:
• Days 401-500: Lose 200 credits per day from base pay
• Days 501-600: Lose 500 credits per day
• Days 600-700: Contract void, crew liable for ship's full value
• Day 700+: The ship is deemed stolen and arrest warrants will be issued for all crew, who will be liable for the ship’s full value plus damages of up to 100x that

Fuel and Consumables Accountability:

• Crew receives fuel allowance calculated at 120% of direct route requirements
• Excess fuel costs deducted from final payment
• Documented emergency detours exempt from fuel penalties

Permitted Commerce Provisions:

• Crew may conduct trade using up to 30% of cargo capacity
• Passenger transport permitted in designated quarters only
• All commerce profits belong to pilot
• Ship modifications for commerce prohibited without written approval

Route Deviation Clause:

• Minor deviations (adding less than 30 days) permitted without penalty
• Must log all stops with legitimate commercial/maintenance justification
• Employer reserves right to audit ship's navigation logs

Performance Bond:

• Crew posts 10,000 credit bond, returned upon successful delivery
• Bond forfeited if ship arrives with unreported damage or illegal modifications

Maintenance Requirements:

• Designated captain responsible for routine maintenance costs
• Major repairs (over 5,000 credits) reimbursable if properly documented
• Ship must pass inspection upon delivery or crew liable for repair costs

Any new crew member or passenger who travels outside the star system in which they came aboard is required to be a signatory to these articles and will be treated as a crew member for all legal purposes. It is the responsibility of the designated captain or their appointed representative among the ship’s company to ensure this is done, or risk a financial penalty to be determined by the courts.

This legal framework makes significant detours financially painful while still allowing the characters flexibility for interesting adventures along the established trade routes.

Now let’s consider the possible loopholes. That’s where things could get interesting – if the characters think of them:

• The Maintenance Gambit: They could claim extensive "preventive maintenance" is needed at conveniently profitable trade hubs. Who's to say the ship doesn't need a full diagnostic after passing through that nebula? Maintenance stops are explicitly allowed, and if they befriend/bribe the right mechanics to provide documentation.
• The 400-Day Sweet Spot: They lose the 25,000 credit time bonus if they take over 400 days, but penalties are only 200 credits/day after that. So days 401-425 cost them just 200 credits each against the time bonus they've already lost. If they can make more than 200 credits profit per day on those stops, they’re ahead.
• Creative Fuel Accounting: "Documented emergency detours" are exempt from fuel penalties. Pirates spotted on scanners? Better take the long way around. Stellar phenomena? Navigation hazard. Build up a file of sensor logs showing various "threats" that necessitated course changes.
• The Passenger Shuffle: "Designated quarters only" – but what if passengers are willing to pay premium rates to hot-bunk or squeeze extra people in? The contract doesn't specify maximum passenger density, just which quarters they can use.
• The Cargo Hustle: That's 30% of cargo capacity, not 30% of cargo value. They could fill it with incredibly dense, high-value items. Also, who's measuring? Is it by volume? Mass? If they claim some cargo areas are "inaccessible due to maintenance," does that reduce the total capacity and therefore increase their effective percentage?
• The Reimbursable Repair Scheme: Major repairs over 5,000 credits are reimbursable. What if they have a "catastrophic failure" requiring expensive repairs at a station where they just happen to have excellent trade connections? Or where the repair shop owner owes them a favour and inflates the invoice?
• The Navigation Log Edit: "Employer reserves right to audit" – but that's not automatic. They might not bother if the ship arrives in decent condition. And navigation logs can be tricky things: cosmic radiation, system glitches, all sorts of unfortunate data corruption...

The real beauty is combining these. Take 399 days for the journey (just under the penalty), claim you rushed to make it on time despite multiple "emergency detours" and "critical maintenance", arrive with documentation for everything, and walk away with base pay plus bonus plus a year's worth of side profits.

But those are still just plot-based exploits. More interesting still is if the contract includes ethics clauses that could constrain the characters’ ability to turn a profit. As a real-world example, some Shell negotiators in the 1990s were setting up business links in the former Soviet Union. They met with officials who proposed a scheme that would divert funds provided by the state. The officials would become rich and Shell would get a kickback. The latter had to explain that they were bound by ethical standards that didn’t permit that kind of skulduggery. Presumably the ex-Soviet officials found another company to deal with, became oligarchs, and later bought football teams or palaces on the Black Sea, but the point is the Shell guys’ hands were tied by their own company's ethical protocols. Something similar in the spaceship contract terms could pay story dividends later.

Out among the stars

When I was a child, Boxing Day usually meant a Bond movie on the television. That was fun, but the adverts dealt a ruthless kill-shot to the season with scenes of sun-soaked beaches and the urgent advice to book your summer hols without delay. As an antidote to that, here's a vision of another trip, a 150-year mission to another star system. (If you spot the mistake in their mission plan, for there is one, let's hear about it in the comments.)

In the shorter term, and closer to home, here are the first steps we'll need to take to become a spacefaring civilization:

To round off the year, I'll leave you with this quote by Hemingway. He wasn't talking about generation starships but I like to take it that way:

“Because we know now that there will be no landfall we must keep the boat up very well and be very good to each other. We are fortunate we have good people on the boat.”

A place among the stars

"Here is a vision of where we could be [in fifty years' time]: We will have fusion power and open-sea mariculture. We will be able to travel the globe freely through suborbital space in less than an hour. We will have research laboratories, industries, and hotels in orbit. We will have scientific bases, astronomical interferometers, and helium-3 mines on the Moon. We will have city-states on Mars — vibrant, optimistic centers of invention sporting lively and novel cultures, with many casting off the chains of tradition to strike out new paths to show the way to a better future. We will have mining and settlement outfits finding their way into the main asteroid belt, and exploration missions to the outer solar system. We will have grand observatories floating in free space, mapping the planets of millions of stars, and finding other worlds filled with life and intelligence. And we will be making magnificent discoveries in physics and cosmology, learning the nature of the universe and life’s role in it, and preparing our first interstellar spaceships to journey forth and find our place among the stars."

That's Robert Zubrin, astronautical engineer and advocate for manned space exploration, making the case for a Roddenberry-style vision of humanity's future. If you feel like going into the new year with an upbeat attitude, listen to Dr Zubrin talking here to Michael Shermer on the Science Salon podcast. It'll make you forget every dumb, anti-rational, zero-sum argument you encountered in 2019 -- at least for an hour. You might even decide to join the Mars Society.

A while back, Jamie and I wrote a script for a TV show set in a Mars colony later this century. The idea was to de-genre the idea of space travel. To forget about Buck Rogers adventures and space opera plots and instead just explore the human adventure involved in setting up on a new world. The networks didn't bite -- they might have if we'd included aliens -- but here's the opening sequence from the pilot, just in case it entices you to look towards the final frontier...

Whatever world you make your home, happy New Year!