Space pirate adventure help

If you want to go less pirate and more just space mercenaries then have them join an odd jobs company.

Essentially they'll be guns for hire, ship for hire whatever. They'll receive an email for a job, or multiple jobs and just send them on if every session. Gives variety and less chance the police will always arrest them

>>49201046

Rival pirate captains - friend rivalries, or bitter rivals.

Corrupt space cops/ naval officers who need to be dealt with: both sides might engage in bribes, blackmail, or killing the other party to keep them quiet.

Threats that bring pirates and navy vessels together on the same side - an invasion of some crazy religious cult, or aliens, or ancient auto-replicating robot warfleets from the Age Of War™.

From the anime Bodacious Space Pirates comes the cool idea of insurance fraud. Shipping companies pay pirates to 'attack' them and 'steal' their cargo so that the company can collect on insurance (generally something done when the market value of the cargo has crashed). Even more unsavoury corporations might pay pirates to destroy their older borderline-obsolete ships to collect insurance and save the cost of safely decommisioning them.

File: economicsofpiracy.pdf (1B, 486x500px)

1B, 486x500px

>>49201046
I'd bring a few things into consideration.

Governments do not like pirates. They are bad for business. Governments are often dependent on and run by, in some capacity, businessmen. Therefore, as a pirate, you are likely not only to run into lawmen on patrol, but also mercenaries after the price which will invariably crop up on your head. You might also run into Q ships; ships well disguised as merchant-marine vessels, which are actually bristling with hidden turrets and a boarding detachment when you start to board them because they've "surrendered" and "don't want any trouble." These threats are especially likely to crop up if you're the unscrupulous sort of pirate who kills victims instead of making sure they can get back to the nearest spaceport.

Of course, you could go to a place that's lawless, but this presents a whole different other set of difficulties; merchants don't like to go through lawless places, and those that do are going to be armed and escorted appropriately most of the time. Alternatively, they might declare that they're under the protection of a powerful criminal syndicate and that you should therefore not fuck with them, or they might even be pirates themselves.

Here; I picked this up a while ago. It's for the Traveller system, but it still has some interesting ideas in it that might be relevant for a GURPS campaign.

>>49201046
GURPS Space if you want help building up a setting.
GURPS Traveller if you want a Traveller-style game in an alternate Traveller universe. (The Far Trader book would interest you regardless of what system you use, I think.)
GURPS Terradyne if you want a pre-established hard sci-fi setting.

One good idea you might take out of real life is the idea of privateering. Governments in wartime used to issue letters of marque for private ship captains, essentially empowering them as agents of the state and giving them essentially a legal "out," as they're more like mercenaries than pirates. This makes things a little easier, since it means that you can land at ports of the friendly power, and they'll treat you normally. Maybe even like heroes, if you bring down a famous or otherwise important quarry. Of course, the government you're poaching the freight of may or may not decide to honor the letter, depending on the circumstances and your conduct to the defeated; this can mean the difference between being captured and thrown into a military prison and being summarily shoved out an airlock. On that same note, if the government you're working for loses, and is wholly conquered, you might just be considered a pirate in what used to be their space, as well, depending on how they feel about privateers.

From a story perspective, being a privateer is kinda nice, because if the empire you're raiding is a jerk--enslaving people, glassing planets, not using coasters, that sorta thing--your players will feel less of a moral quandary jacking their stuff.

>>49201046
>gurps
Don't forget to make it /realistic/ space pirate adventures!

Space Pirates need not limit their sights to ships enroute. Thieves and vandals in possession of a starship have plenty of opportunities in backwater systems, remote installations, unlooted archeological sites, and even larger ports where they may not be recognized. Cargo is still stealable in the warehouse...

>>49202728
gurps has rules for cutlasses and shotguns, that's pretty realistic.

>>49203853
well, there's the strossian Crimson Permanent Assurance...

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2010/09/books-i-will-not-write-4-escha.html

>>49201046

Most pirate jobs in space (assuming warp, because you need warp for pirates to be feasible because you sort of need the mark to "jump in" on you, otherwise they'll never get anywhere near you. You also have nowhere to hide without warp to cover your heat track) will be inside jobs or the labor of hacking.

Either someone ratted out on their company so you know in which space lane, at what time, a ship will warp in, letting you set up an ambush, OR your hacker stole this information.

Also think about the culture the pirates originate from. They must clearly be very poor for piracy to be profitable to them. Alternatively they are very desperate, or they are actually government agents commandeering ships in the name of the crown.

>>49204566
And if it's the space future, you can have a vibroblade cutlass or one with a hyperdense blade.
Or take a warhammer, so you can have a warhammer with a hyperdense pick and a rocket engine on the other side, so you can swing it even harder.

>>49204760
Or just a crudely-shaped piece of hull plate from the last ship you lithobraked in.

Quick self bump before work