Delemental
First Post
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.
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.