Advice for an upcoming adventure

First of all, hello to everyone. I'm relatively new here (obviously), but I've been lurking for a while. I've seen some very good advice given here, so this seemed the best place to bring up my own little situation.

I've just started running a Dragonstar campaign. I've finished one adventure, which I think went well. I have my idea ready for next weekend's game, but I'd like some advice or opinions on how I can run this particular adventure and keep it interesting.

Here's the basic premise. The party will be exploring an ancient luxury liner that disappeared two thousand years ago on its maiden voyage. On the surface, they are looking for a lost member of a dwarven salvage team. However, this ship happens to be "alive" in a sense. The Dragonstar setting has a race known as soulmechs, which are essentially living souls in robotic bodies. This particular ship was built during the period in Imperial history when soulmechs were first being developed, and as an experiment the soul of a rather famous pilot was transferred into the starship. Of course, something goes wrong, everyone on board is killed, and the ship is lost forever (until now...).

The ship's soul has gone quite insane at this point, but it's not the "murderous rampage" type of insanity, but more of the "unbearable guilt with loose associations in reality" type. He's got control of the ship's systems, though the ship can't move (otherwise he would have steered himself into the nearest star). The magical backlash from the accident also gave him some quasi-psionic abilties (I actually don't allow psionics IMC). He really just wants to die at this point, and when people start showing up, he figures he's got a chance.

The objective for the party will be not only to find the missing dwarf, but to figure out clues that will lead them to discover the ship's secret and destroy the device that houses the ship's soul. The ship itself will be trying to give them hints by sending random "visions" to individual party members showing them scenes of the ship's first voyage (empty ballrooms are suddenly filled with people, etc). The visions alternate between nice ones (people having fun) and terrible ones (people dying horribly). Hopefully this will be enough to motvate the party to try and figure out the source of these strange happenings.

That's a pretty straightforward plot, sort of a cross between the Titanic (the actual ship, not the movie) and a "haunted house" type movie. Here's the tricky part. First, I want this to be an "encounterless dungeon"; in other words, there are no "bad guys" to fight. That doesn't mean there can't be risks, I just don't want running gun battles. While most of my players can handle something like this, I do have one or two, well, "trigger happy" players. I'd like advice on how I can keep them from getting too bored (the last adventure involved a lot of gunplay, and a vehicle chase).

I'd also like general ideas on things I can include to heighten suspense, and keep everyone interested and on-track. I don't want the ship to just pop into everyone's head and say "Excuse me, but I'm an insane pilot trapped on this ship. Could you folks come on down to the hidden chamber behind the engine room and pull the plug for me?"

I've already downloaded some deck plans from modern-day
cruise ships to use as reference material, and the hook to get them on the ship is ready. Any hints or suggestions I can get from y'all is much appreciated.

That's a pretty straightforward plot, sort of a cross between the Titanic (the actual ship, not the movie) and a "haunted house" type movie. Here's the tricky part. First, I want this to be an "no-encounter dungeon"; in other words, there are no "bad guys" to fight. That doesn't mean there can't be risks, I just don't want running gun battles. While most of my players can handle something like this, I do have one or two, well, "trigger happy" players. I'd like advice on how I can keep them from getting too bored (the last adventure involved a lot of gunplay, and a vehicle chase).

I'd also like general ideas on things I can include to heighten suspense, and keep everyone interested and on-track. I don't want the ship to just pop into everyone's head and say "Excuse me, but I'm an insane pilot trapped on this ship. Could you folks come on down to the hidden chamber behind the engine room and pull the plug for me?"

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Wow. Sounds pretty neat.

While I am not up on Dragonstar in particular, here are a a couple ideas for you.

The "encounterless" aspect can actually work for you in heightening suspense. If the party is getting creeped out by the "haunted" ship and the images they keep seeing (think "The Shining") they'll be jumping at shadows waiting for "the monster" to show itself. Throw in a few "traps" -malfunctioning lifts, poisonous vapor leaks, etc.- and there's your risk.

Keep things on track by doing what you can to get the group into the feel of the setting. The emptiness of the vessel punctuated by strange sounds and images in their heads (do they know it's psychic or might they think it's happening around them?) will make them think of their surrounding as more than just the room they fight the monster in. Make sure they don't forget why they are there either. For the hook, possibly a time limit to keep them moving.

Remember also that the "ship" is basically nuts so the images and all won't necessarily be coherent or easy to understand.

Hope this helps

Well, let me first of all say that this is a very, very classy spin on the old 'ship AI gone nuts' plot, well done.

As for the combat-happy players, in my experience the only way to keep such players truly content is to throw some combat at them. With this in mind, I'm thinking that your AI might be somewhat volitile (what with being a nutcase and all) and probably prone to outbursts of violence.

For instance, if the players seem to be having problems interpreting its confused mental imagery (and, unless you have really smart players, chances are it'll take them a while to catch on) it might get a little frustrated and go off the hook. Imagine this:

Suddenly, the screens (or whatever the ship's output devices are) start scrolling increadibly quickly the same message over and over - 'You just don't get it do you? You just don't get it do you? You just don't get it do you?' (or something to that effect), the lights start going nuts, the alarms go off full blast. Then, all of a sudden, there is silence. Silence and darkness. Then a single screen (or whatever) turns on and there is something written in very small font on it (spot checks might at this point be in order to read it). The font quickly grows larger and larger and very quickly the message covers it entirely. It reads: "TIME TO DIE" (Bladerunner, anyone?). Then all hell breaks loose.

Now, this ship has killed its previous crew so it presumably has some offensive capability (albeit reduced in destructiveness over the years), simply throw a sample of whatever it has got at them and Voila - your combat monkeys get their moment in the spotlight and the entire party gets a hint in the double meaning of the 'time to die' thing.

Oh, and it might be an idea to make sure they can't leave the ship once this happens (players tend to react badly to these sorts of situations). Good old sealed airlocks ...

Yours,

Altin

How did the old passengers die? I mean, if the ship opened all the airlocks and depressurized the whole ship, well, that's one thing.

As one person mentioned, if the ship has some sort of defensive capabilities internally ... laser eyes, gas nozzels, electrified floorplates ... if these things killed the passengers, and the hallucinations show this ...

If you don't let the players know that the laser eyes that "just missed them" aren't firing AT them and aren't real ... they'll fire back regardless. Make a few rolls, meta them a little. If they see you making rolls, they'll think they're under attack ... they'll fire back.

And story-wise, isn't it more entertaining to have a group of twitchy space heroes blowing holes in the walls trying to defend themselves against weapons that haven't functioned in a thousand years?

--HT

This reminds me of that recent movie... Don't know. Where it went through a dimensional rift, came back, and now it's possessed.

Anywho...

About the Combat Monkies. Some of those visions could be a little modified, or somewhat tailored. Let's say that when one of the visions comes to the gunbunnies, that it could intitle a 'villain' or something. Like, a shadowy figure, or something... nightmarish. The soul of the ship reaching out? Well, if the vision isn't obvious it's a vision, the PCs could open fire at it... Basicly shooting at nothing.

Now, me, I'd get unnerved when my buddy just opened fire and screamed at a wall.

And, yes, throw some definet hazards. Steam pipes? If they burst, you got a scalding cloud, not to mention shrapnel if the pipe *explodes*.

If it has an elevator... well, you can SERIOUSLY play with their heads. Have it start going haywire, then stop at the floor where the secret room is, or the floor they can access it on. If they refuse to get off, have the doors slam shut, and it let them freefall a few floors, before binging them back up.

Static. Static can be Very scary. Because that's all there is. If they try to radio for help, if they don't get it, give them static. Let's use that elevator example. The little phone inside of it falls off the hook, and in the reciever is just static. This could be the ship's 'voice'. Imagine an absolutely silent room, and static is heard. Getting slowly louder. For full effect, get a radio, turn the dial so that it's between stations, and play it for your party. Have it under the table, adjust the knob...

Or, maybe it also has video of the First voyage. They try to turn a monitor on, and they see people dropping like flies, so to speak.

Xarlen said:

This reminds me of that recent movie... Don't know. Where it went through a dimensional rift, came back, and now it's possessed.

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That would be Event Horizon. Decent Sci-Fi/Horror Flisk.

Baron Von StarBlade said:

That would be Event Horizon. Decent Sci-Fi/Horror Flisk.

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If by "decent" you mean "the only movie I know of that actually caused an entire gaming group to rip the video out of the vcr and subject it to a slow and painful execution by blowtorch," I'd have to agree.

Though, Angela Basset's breasts were rather nice.

Er wait, on second thought, I'm thinking of "Supernova." Same thing.

Heap Thaumaturgist said:

How did the old passengers die? I mean, if the ship opened all the airlocks and depressurized the whole ship, well, that's one thing.

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In Dragonstar, ships move through the galaxy by means of teleportation, using a magical device called a starcaster. The soul implanted in the ship was a very, very good pilot, but of course had no knowledge of the more subtle nuances of magical planar travel. During one jump, a slight irregularity appeared in the field - these things happen all the time, but the pilot, not knowing this, attempted to correct. This resulted in a huge magical backlash which crippled the ship and killed everyone on board. I did it this way so that there is no obvious damage from outside the ship, and to explain the unusual magical forces at work on the ship.

The ship wasn't trying to kill anyone, it just made a mistake. But I like the suggestion made by someone that the ship's skewed perceptions could not only lead to unintentionally dangerous situations, but could result in the ship getting impatient with the party's progress.

As one person mentioned, if the ship has some sort of defensive capabilities internally ... laser eyes, gas nozzels, electrified floorplates ... if these things killed the passengers, and the hallucinations show this ...

If you don't let the players know that the laser eyes that "just missed them" aren't firing AT them and aren't real ... they'll fire back regardless. Make a few rolls, meta them a little. If they see you making rolls, they'll think they're under attack ... they'll fire back.

Click to expand...

While this is supposed to be a luxury liner, and therefore probably wouldn't have hidden blaster turrets, it's reasonable to assume that there would be security measures in place to contain unruly passengers, keep unauthorized personnel out of certain areas, etc. This would actually fit in with my overall idea, as the ship's designers ended up turning many non-essential functions over to the ship's spirit to reduce the number of living crew needed (and to keep more of those crewpersons focused on serving the passengers).

Thanks first of all to those who've posted so far, your advice has been helpful.

Going back over my last post, where I explained how the crew and passengers died, I'm thinking of changing it a bit. Perhaps the original incident was the magical teleportation accident I described, but this only resulted in most of the people on board dying. As this was happening, the ship's soul panicked, trying to figure out what was going on, and everything went haywire. As I mentioned before, the ship was given control of a lot of different functions (initial tests indicated the pilot's spirit could manage the task of just flying the ship rather easily, so they began to hook more systems into his neural net). So as the pilot lost control, the systems began to act crazy; airlocks opened, security systems went into overdrive, environmental controls sent parts of the ship into deep freeze while others roasted, and so on.

This would give me two important elements; one, it gives me a little variety in my visions (PCs see some people disintegrated magically, while others are depressurized, or electrocuted, or frozen), and two, it gives me a reason to introduce some dangerous elements without making the ship's spirit a malignant force (perhaps he suffers from the same visions, constantly reliving the horror of that day, but the visions are still triggering the same events). I could even use this as an "early-warning" system for some of the more potentially deadly traps; having a character get a vision of people being blown out of an airlock seconds before the hatch opens up again.

I should mention that there are absolutely no signs of any of this carnage on board. The ship's soul put its maintenance robots to work after everyone was dead, loading their remains into the escape pods and firing them off as a sort of "burial in space". Thus when the players encounter the ship, it's completely sterile and empty, and all the escape pods are missing. That should make the first visions of the gruesome deaths even more shocking to them.

Xarlen also mentioned the presence of a "villain", or some shadowy figure in the visions. I like that idea. I may incorporate the ship's spiritual "presence" as they explore the ship (perhaps that "presence" gets stronger the closer they get to the hidden chamber where his soul resides).

I like this. This is sweet. You need a journal though, or at least a few monitors showing folks having a discussion on the subject.

Some sort of record that is left by some person/group of the last folks to die. They don't know whats killing them, so they speculate. Only, they don't think its the ship. Maybe they think its some form of alien or energy beastie that came during the teleport accident.

I think these folks need to stress that it isn't the pilot - the pilot is doing good even with all the added pressure and responsibilities. And then they need to panic and debate heavily what is killing them, how to best defeat it and go their separate ways. The party can later see footage of all of them dead (just their bodies, not the actual act) just to spook things more.

Maybe one group thinks there is some sort of maintenance bot or other "soul mech"-ish thing that's gone haywire, ready to drop elevators or send people out airlocks. Maybe they speculate that in order to do that, he has to be within 200 meters of the elevator or airlock. Maybe that will get the party running around crazy when they see an elevator go nuts....

"Quick! It must be that crazy maintenance bot! Its got to be within 200 meters for the broadcast range on its control antenna to function! Lets find it and kill it!"

Only, of course, there is no maintenance bot causing problems ... just a broken down ship and a very, very sad pilot.