What Is a Vehicle?
A Vehicle is a conveyance that carries people — a wagon, a ship, a boat, a cart. It is the thing the party travels on, and the thing their cargo travels in.
Its unique capability is its occupants. A Vehicle is the only actor other than a Being that carries a property of its own, and that property is the list of who is aboard: each occupant named, with a role — crew, passenger, or draft creature — and an optional style such as Bosun or Helmsman. An entry may name a single character or a whole Cohort, which is shorthand for all of that cohort’s members riding along.
That is the question a Vehicle exists to answer: who is on board, and in what capacity. Everything else it does — holding cargo, carrying actions, taking effects — any actor can do.
Like every actor, a Vehicle carries movement rates for the mediums it can travel in, so a river barge and a mountain wagon can be given different speeds.
When to Use a Vehicle
Use a Vehicle when:
- The party travels by ship, wagon, cart, or boat, and it matters who is aboard
- You want the crew and the passengers distinguished, and a captain named
- Cargo and stores should live with the conveyance rather than in someone’s pack
- The conveyance has a travel speed of its own
For a fixed place that does not move — a building, a wall, a bridge — use a Structure instead.
What a Vehicle Contains
- Occupants — who is aboard, each with a role and an optional title.
- Gear — cargo, equipment, and stores carried on the vehicle.
- Movement — its travel rates, per medium.
- Actions — procedures you attach to the vehicle.
- Effects — active effects on the vehicle.
What a Vehicle Does Not Model
A Vehicle is a container and a conveyance, not a creature:
- No capacity. There is no cargo limit and no passenger limit. Nothing weighs the load or refuses to accept more; how much a wagon can really take is yours to judge.
- No condition of its own. A Vehicle has no structural integrity, no hit points, and no damage model. It cannot be worn down, holed, or wrecked by the rules — a ship that catches fire is a matter for narration.
- No crew effects. Having a helmsman aboard, or losing one, changes nothing mechanically. The roles are there to record who is doing what, not to modify anything.
The Vehicle Sheet
The Vehicle sheet has these tabs:
- Facade — image and description
- Profile — movement rates, the private dossier, and attributes
- Gear — cargo, equipment, and stores
- Actions — available actions
- Effects — active effects
All five are the common actor tabs, and they behave exactly as they do on a Being: the Gear tab is the same inventory ledger (a vehicle’s cargo instead of a character’s possessions), and the Actions and Effects tabs are identical. They are documented once, in Understanding Sheets under Common Actor Tabs — see that page for the columns, controls, and how to add, stow, and remove things.
The Profile tab carries three things, and it is where a vehicle’s private notes live:
- Attributes — normally empty for a vehicle. The section is kept so a world that wants to give a ship a Quality a rating of its own can.
- Movement — the travel rate for each medium, with a star marking the active one.
- Biography — the dossier, the private description only you and the GM see. The public description a player sees stays on Facade.
The one difference: a Being’s Gear tab reports carried weight and encumbrance, because a character is slowed by what it carries. A vehicle is not encumbered by its cargo, so its Gear tab reports the cargo’s total weight alone.
Intrinsic Actions
A Vehicle defines no actions of its own. It carries only the actions every actor shares:
| Action | Shortcode |
|---|---|
| Edit | editDocument |
| Delete | deleteDocument |
| Make Default Medium | makeDefaultMedium |
All three belong to every actor and are described on Base Item, which covers what each one does, how it is invoked, and what it produces — the shared document actions are the same wherever they appear.
Make Default Medium picks which movement medium a vehicle is currently moving in, and it is driven by the star control in the movement table on the vehicle’s own Profile tab — click the star beside a medium to make it the active one. Add Movement Profile, in that table’s header, adds a rate for a medium the vehicle does not yet have.
The cargo and equipment a vehicle carries are ordinary gear items with actions of their own — see Gear and the page for each kind of gear.
See also
- Actors — the four actor kinds and how to choose between them.
- Structure — the fixed counterpart, for a place that does not move.
- Cohort — a whole group named as a single occupant.
- Gear and Working with Gear and Equipment — the cargo a vehicle carries.
- Understanding Sheets — the tabs a vehicle shares with every other actor.
- User Guide — back to the index.