I was working on the next and possibly last Red Dwarf adventure for my group, and I was puzzling out some ships, when it struck me that there seemed to be some small inconsistencies regarding ship sizes and numbers of crew or passengers. I’ve just been through all three books, making myself some statistics, and here’s what I found:

There are five categories of size in the Red Dwarf RPG; Small, Medium, Large, Bloody Huge and Immense. As far as I can see, no official vessel has been put in the Immense-category.

For Small ships, the absolutely lowest number of passenger capability is 1, and the highest is 8. For Medium, the lowest is 4 and the highest is 40. For Large, the lowest is 9 and the largest 2000. Yeah, I was shocked, too. For Bloody Huge, the lowest is 150, and the highest is 5000.

The reason I began this count was because I kept seeing Large ships, with wildly different numbers, and I started wondering if any ship could be squished into Large with a bit of imagination. Certainly, these overlap.

Looking at required crew, there is little more to gain. For Small, not counting automated pods, the lowest requirement is 1, and the highest 2. Medium is exactly the same. Large has 2 as lowest and 4 as highest, and Bloody Huge has 3. As both highest and lowest.

Obviously, these numbers are not the most important factor in determining size. Red Dwarf is Bloody Huge and houses 1169, because much of it is cargo space, docks, ship bays, shops, recreation areas, and all the other things needed to form what is essentially a flying city. Enlightenment, on the other hand, houses 2000, but is classified as Large. It has no use for cargo decks, but does have a deck devoted entirely to sports and sexual recreation. Bloody Huge Leviathan houses a mere 150, but is mostly made up of cargo decks, being a transport ship. There is logic to this.

The ships I question are the likes of the Centauri, the Nova 5 and the Hermes. They don’t seem like they should be in the same size category as the Esperanto and the simulant ship from Gunmen of the Apocalypse.

The real problem though is with Blue Midget, White Midget and Starbug. Each of these need a minimum of one pilot, and can house up to four people. And they’re all classified as Medium.

Come on. Even before the season 7 warping, Starbug is magnitudes bigger than Blue Midget. Blue Midget is a car! A tiny little cab, barely room for four to sit up in the cockpit, probably a small luggage compartment, and then the engines. That’s it. That’s Medium, according to this, along with zeppelins and personnel shuttles with room for forty people and their luggage.

White Midget seems to be slightly larger than the blue type, but it’s in the same series, and the differences seem to be mainly cosmetic.

Starbug is a home for four people, beds, small kitchen, cargo bay, medibay, three decks, for crying out loud! It does not belong in the same size category as Blue Midget. Problem is, it doesn’t belong with the Nova 5 either, and definitely not with Enlightenment.

You might say that this is all totally irrelevant, and that it only matters if you’re in space combat and want to be boringly accurate about movement, and well, you’d be right. It has little to no impact on the actual gaming. Even so, it bothers me. I like things, even inconsequential things, to make sense. That’s why I made my own rules for hologram simulation. Compared to the madness of the original hologram rules, this is nothing, but I’m still considering writing myself some clearer guidelines. Maybe put in a new class between Medium and Large, or put a new Tiny class at the beginning, redefining Small and Medium.

Anyway, it can wait, I just wanted to rant about it for now. The adventure is as good as done, and I think I’m finished with everything I absolutely needed to do, leaving tomorrow and the rest of today off for things I want to do. Like pine for Dreamfall. Joy.