Traveller Tuesday: Staterooms

a.k.a. "Just where do those murderhobos sleep, anyway?"

Looking at the map of the Pride of Walston (amazingly, the PCs managed not to wreck it  last game session), you can see that the quarters look rather cozy.

And by cozy I mean cramped. I eliminated the grid in order to make this design prettier (because girl), but those staterooms are roughly 3.5 meter by 2.5 meters (or 11.5 x 8 feet), not counting the bathroom. My rudimentary math tells me this is 92 square feet or 8.75 square meters, which means these staterooms -- which, I admit, are on the small side even for Traveller (because scout ship) -- are smaller than your average dorm room, which I'm told is 12 x 19 feet.

What's interesting about this whole dreary exercise in geometry is this:  Cabins like this exist in real life.

There is an entire selection of images like this to be found at Freighter Voyages. Apparently it's now possible to book passage aboard a cargo ship as if it were a cruise line. I find this endlessly fascinating. Yes, you can rent a suite smaller than a motel bedroom and be stuck in it for days as you cross the ocean between cargo ports!

I tease, but this is exactly how most player characters make a living in Traveller: hauling people and cargo between worlds. It's actually quite cool that something like that exists in the here and now (not counting the Navy, of course. I believe this would rate as officer quarters on most ships, and submarine staterooms are little more than walk-in closets).

Those rooms, though. I'm not claustrophobic, but I'd go mental in one of those. And now you know why, in Traveller, half of the displacement of a stateroom is not taken up by the room itself, but by communal areas such as lounges and galleys.