The Price of a High Passage: Passengers in Traveller

Further off and to one side, on some high ground well away from the danger of the field and the smell of the camp, sat a prim collection of prefabricated huts and inflatable tents. There sat the money and the comfort money could provide—the tourists who travelled High, doped with quick-time so that a day seemed an hour, a week a day. Those in the camp had travelled like Dumarest—Low. Those who rode Middle stayed with the ships which were their home.

—The Winds of Gath.

E.C. Tubb was a British science fiction novelist and a primary influence on the Traveller game through his long-running Dumarest of Terra series. The Winds of Gath (1967), the first Dumarest novel, uses familiar Traveller terms, starting with the word traveller itself as well as concepts like High, Middle, and Low passage and the low lottery. An important subplot concerns travellers stranded on a backwater planet trying to scrape together enough funds to buy passage offworld.

My PCs’ ship, the Starjammer, is a packet, which as described in Traveller⁵ provides unscheduled passenger service. (In historical use, packets provided scheduled mail service, but that niche is covered by x-boats in the OTU.) Based on this, I took a quick look at how passenger service has worked across different editions of the game.

Passengers

The basic procedure for taking on passengers is consistent across all editions. Once a captain has determined a destination for the starship, checks are made for the number of passengers interested in traveling to that system. One check is made for each type of passage—High, Middle, and Low—modified by the population of the world of departure and crew skills. A good ship’s steward, for example, can help attract lucrative High passage travellers.

It wasn’t surprising that High, Middle, and Low passage appear in every edition of the Traveller game. But I was surprised by the consistency in pricing across editions, as summarized in the following table:

Passage Pricing (Cr) across Editions

Passage	CT, MT, TNE1, T4, T5, Traveller Hero, T20	GURPS Traveller2	MgT13	MgT23
High	10,000	3,500	6,000	8,500
Middle	8,000	1,750	3,000	6,200
Low	1,000	175	1,000	700
1 In TNE, Middle passage outside the Regency is Cr5,000. 2 Prices (per Far Trader) reflect a J-1 or J-2 free trader. 3 Prices reflect 1-parsec of travel.

Interestingly, the editions that have different pricing—GURPS: Traveller and Mongoose Traveller—scale their ticket prices based on the distance traveled, so in MgT2 a High passage ticket for 3 parsecs commands a price of Cr20,000. In all other editions prices are static regardless of the distance jumped. To me, it makes sense that a higher jump number, representing significant time savings, would command a higher price premium.

Most editions describe “Working Passage,” in which a Traveller pays for passage of up to three jumps with professional services during the journey. This can help a penniless but skilled PC travel to a more promising world, or help a captain with a crew shortfall meet his ship requirements.

TNE, Traveller⁵, and MgT also have a Basic or Steerage class that sits below middle passage but is much less risky than low passage. Basically, travellers in this class share a double-occupancy stateroom. This seems like a pretty reasonable extension of the classic three-tier structure.

Most editions—including CT, MT, GT, and MgT—assume that Middle and High passengers are berthed in the same basic staterooms, with High passage being distinguished by better food, entertainment, and privileges such as a larger baggage allowance. This allows liners to use the same staterooms for both types of passengers, bumping Middle passengers if a passenger traveling High shows up. MgT allows ship designers to include larger (x1.5 and x2.5) deluxe staterooms that increase the chances of drawing more lucrative High passengers, but it’s clear that High passengers can still be berthed in standard staterooms.

While ship design in Traveller⁵ also has much larger (x3) luxury staterooms as an option, it’s unclear from my reading whether these luxury staterooms are required for High passage or not. In Traveller⁵, High passage clearly requires specialized Life Support, though I’m not sure what that actually entails: extremely sensitive temperature controls? Hypoallergenic atmo filters? UV-free lights?

A passage ticket, presumably, is issued for one specific starship and one specific trip. Passengers may purchase tickets for a tramp ship directly from the ship’s crew: Traveller⁵ notes that the ship’s steward, normally the 4th officer, “sells tickets and arranges accommodations for passengers when in port” (Book 1, 161). GURPS Traveller: Far Trader also describes passenger agents and brokers who work (presumably on commission) to match up travellers with outbound ships.

But passage can also be secured with generic vouchers redeemable for specific tickets on any ship and destination. Most famously, a Travellers’ Aid Society membership provides one free passage per year. (The exact type of passage varies by edition.) Agent of the Imperium also mentions Imperial vouchers, presumably used to move government officials across the Imperium. I assume that a specific ticket takes precedence over a generic voucher unless the voucher is for a higher passage class, in which case the ticket-holder gets bumped.

Finally, Traveller⁵ introduces the StarPass, “a multi-use pass for Middle Passage valid for one year after first use” (Book 1, 68). This seems both a pretty logical thing for the OTU setting and fairly convenient Referee tool. A StarPass has a value of Cr250,000. Agent of the Imperium notes that a StarPass could put a passenger “on routed jumpliners when they had space available” (135).

Starship Charters

In addition to buying passenger tickets, another—and much more expensive—way for travellers to move between systems is to charter an entire starship. As GURPS Traveller: Far Trader points out, “Charters are an excellent mechanism for getting a group of traders involved in a different kind of adventure for a change . . . or for providing a framework for a related series of adventures“ (109).

CT, MT, TNE, T4, and T20 all have very similar rules around charters. The following language is from The Imperial Encyclopedia:

Charter price for a starship is computed based on that particular starship’s revenue-generating capacity. Starships are chartered in two-week blocks; the charge for chartering a starship is Cr900 per ton of cargo hold, plus Cr9000 per high passage berth and Cr900 per low passage berth. The owner of the starship being chartered pays all overhead expenses and supplies a crew for the trip (90).

The charges here are calculated using 90% of the standard per-unit price.

Strangely enough, Traveller⁵ does not include rules for charters, even though Book 2 has “Charter” as a mission type for Adventure Class ships (68), and describes at least two ships types that focus on this service: the Type K Safari Ship (38) and the Type U Packet (39). Given that Traveller⁵ uses the same pricing structure for passages as CT, one could assume CT costs for charters could be used in Traveller⁵ without modification.

Neither Mongoose Traveller 1e nor 2e mentions charters at all. Presumably one could use the basic CT formula for costing charters but apply MgT’s per parsec pricing, which is detailed on page 142 of the 1e Core Rulebook and page 207 of the 2e Core Rulebook. So that would be 90% of the price per ton of cargo hold, plus 90% of the price per high passage berth and 90% of the price per low passage berth.

Using that approach, here are the costs for a standard two-week charter for my PCs’ J-3 Pemami-class armed packet (Type UG-CA33).

Pemami Charter Prices (Cr) by Edition

Edition	1 Parsec	2 Parsecs	3 Parsecs
CT, MT, TNE, T4, T20	126,000	126,000	126,000
MgT1	82,800	151,200	241,200
MgT2	108,450	157,050	266,400

Note that with only 12 staterooms available, a Pemami charter is always more expensive than buying individual tickets regardless of edition, even if all of the passengers are traveling High. This strongly implies that travellers chartering this ship have both the means and the motivation to want a ship all to themselves. This limits the charter clientele to nobles, government agents, corporate types, or wealthy eccentrics, and the destinations are probably systems that—for whatever reason—do not enjoy scheduled liner service.

The charter prices appear pretty lucrative at first glance, but it’s important to look at this potential revenue against a Pemami’s expected monthly costs. As we have seen in our review of crew costs, these expenses can vary widely between editions. For simplicity’s sake, I’ve focused on Mongoose 2e costs:

Pemami Monthly Overhead (Cr)

	Low Cost1	High Cost2
Life Support	36,500	36,500
Fuel	6,000	90,000
Crew Salary	22,000	22,000
Maintenance	9,321	9,321
40-year Mortgage3	372,950	372,950
Total	446,771	530,771
1 Assumes two 1-parsec trips using unrefined fuel.
2 Assumes two 3-parsec trips with refined fuel.
3 Assumes purchase price of MCr111.885 and 20% down.

Based on this, it’s pretty clear that two-week Pemami charters, even at Cr266,400 a pop, aren’t going to easily meet the overhead, and it’s the mortgage payment that’s far and away the real crusher here. Even if a captain managed two 3-parsec charters a month, that’s only a 10–18% profit margin, and two a month is unsustainable for very long.

But let’s assume that our standard charter price represents only the absolute minimum charter price. The Traveller Adventure has a patron willing to pay 5 times the standard charter rate, and it makes sense to allow charters at anywhere from 2–6 x the standard rate based on special circumstances such as amber or red zones, cross-border excursions, special expenses, or just plain desperation.

With that in mind, a Pemami-class packet could potentially make a decent living off charters to and from dangerous or prohibited systems—just the sort of assignments that result in exciting adventures!

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