malcolypse
First Post
i found my post-game write up for my first dread game, under a metal sky. it's got spoilers in it, so beware if you wanna play in the game. i got told i had to name the ship, because the captain would have been too stoned to bother renaming it, so i looked over his background and decided that he had bought it from one of his "suppliers" and stole the name from my favorite space-rastafarians, from the novel neuromancer.
here goes...
so, the first run of a game of dread is behind me. i consider it to have been a success, and will gleefully run it again, and hopefully play in it as well. my players were julie, norm, jake, and maxwell, the crew of the medical supply ship marcus garvey.
norm was silus magnum, the ships captain, who was perpetually stoned and used most of the ships hydroponic gardens to grow mountains of pot. he decorated the ship like a bad 1970s (only 600 years out of date)porn set. lots of bead curtains, a disco ball, shag carpeting in his quarters, etc. he had a habit of pumping his ancient music through the shipwide pa system. he had a fear of the dark, so when he lost his eyes in an accident, he had them replaced with cybernetic eyes that could function as flashlights.
jake was the ship's janitor 2.0, a collection of microscopic lifeforms that shared a hive-mind conciousness and were sad that they had accidentally killed the original owner of their body before they had realized that he was a sentient creature. when watched closely, small lesions can be seen to appear briefly on his skin. (when i read this, i immediately thought of porpoises surfacing in the ocean, so i decided that that was the little buggers inside pulling oxygen directly into their single celled bodies. i also decided that the creatures that would be stalking them in the game were perhaps a distant relative of his species.) he valiantly uses these giant creatures weapons of mass destruction (disinfectant cleaning products and a vibro-mop) to combat any and all potential microscopic dangers to the crew.
julie was playing saria gomjabbar, an under-qualified ships pilot and navigator who faked her cerifications to get a job off-world and away from her father. luckily, the captain was too stoned to think to do a background check. her hoarding habit meant she kept track of all of her possessions and carried lots of useful gear with her at all times. she volunteered to be responsible for the ships inventory to help assure that she woudl become vital enough that she wouldn't get dumped off-ship if they ever found out she wasn't a liscensed navigator. she had an unnatural fear of staph infection, becoming a cyborg, and having the ship's engineer figure out she was a hack.
that engineer was comet peirce, played by maxwell. he had a son left back home because space is a dangerous place, proven by the explosion that killed his sister and destroyed his left lung. the cybernetic replacement is an antique that clicks everytime he breathes. in *tick* out *tick* forever. his specialty in inertialess drives was the reason he was qualified to crew this ship, which he feels particularly responsible for, since the captain didn't notice once when the ship didn't go anywhere for a full day. his obsessive personality and stim habit occasionally lead him to do things like take entire systems apart to fix some imagined problem.
and so it begins...
the group encounters a large ship floating dead in space, the captain determines that they should salvage the ships reactor so that his demand that no part of his ship ever not be fully lit will be less of a burden on their power supply.
the ship is on emergency power: no gravity, minimal lighting, minimal life support. the ship has been flooded with low levels of radiation. their space suits are more than up to the challenge, so with air and light for up to two days, they set out to explore the derelict. the first thing they do is discuss quarentine regulations that would require them to wait 48 hours to return to their ship in case of harmful biological elements. disapproving of this plan, the captain overrides the security failsafes so they'll have no trouble hopping through the airlock anytime they please. then they set of into the ship. they get garbled radio transmissions from someone onboard named king, who is apparently in one of the ships cargo bays. they head to the aft of the ship, trying to decide if they want to find this guy or get the ships power back on first. when they come to the door marked aft cargo bay and find alot of darkness beyond it, the captain decides to get the lights on before rescue attempts are to be made.
they find evidence of a gunbattle here, as well as the guns: big military assault rifles, which they pilfer. after powering up the ship and turning on lights and gravity, the crew is attacked by some large creature that moves very fast and leaves a wound on the janitor that would have been very painful if the microculture living inside used the nerves for more than steering and fast communications. having succeeded in their earlier goals and locking the power on, but with the setback that apparently somebody unhooked their ship from the airlock, the crew heads fore to find mr. king.
they find king in a closet inside the cargo bay. he has a broken leg and is suffering from prolonged exposure to the radiation, but seems fairly clear-headed and eager to escape. they find a floating cargo skid attatched to what is basically a seqway, that they can use to transport themselves(and especially the injured king) around the ship easier and head fore, to the bridge. on the way, a ceiling panel drops into the center of the skid on top of king's leg, causing him to pass out. on top of the panel stands a horrible creature that looks very much like a man without skin, sharp bone spurs growing through the muscles, and malice in its very pretty green eyes.
the captain sprays it with machine gun fire and the janitor trips it off the gravskid. it hops up and comes after them just as they race forward at dangerous speeds. the captain takes time to place a careful shot into the things head and it tumbles to a stop behind them. they head back to take a better look at the thing. it may well be a mutated human, but they're all pretty sure that mutations of this scale, especially the no skin part, would kill pretty much anybody before they could become viable killing machines like this guy. the janitor sprays disinfectant on the body and then sends the microalien equivilent of an away party to see what's up with this thing. they come back with several thousand enemy microaliens that they have a miniature world war with over the course of a few seconds to determine who will control this body. the janitor wins. they try to burn the body, but fire suppression systems kick in and prevent this.
the new plan of attack is to head back to engineering and flood the ship with hard radiation that will cook these microscopic bastards wherever they are and make it safe to maneauver the ship back around to their ship to escape. they get there and as the engineer overrides safety features and prepares the engines to vent, the others provide cover and end up mowing down dozens of the monsters. when they get back out to the gravskid, mr. king isn't there.
(by this time, the jenga tower that is a central feature of the dread game is getting pretty unstable, and people are giving serious thought to any unnecessay pulls)
they get to the bridge and determine that the creatures and the janitor don't show up on the ships sensors as living beings. they figure out that the creatures and mr. king are still alive, but they don't know how. they move the ship back around to their ship and dock with it. then they get word from king that he's been dragged into the air vents and he can see the aliens are coming for him and wearing space suits. they set this ship to explode and head back to theirs to find that the critters have turned the quarentine protocols back on, so they have to break into their own ship. they need to power up their ship to vent any creatures on board into space, so they head to their engineering section. as they open the doors, one of the creatures leaps onto their engineer (and the tower, long over due collapses)and start tearing into the seal on his neck with an imprompu shiv. maxwell is no longer among the living.
this is where some players had to leave, and the session ended, so i wrapped up with a quick run down of events that went something like this: they manage to get the engines powered up with several pulls from the tower, and as they head to the bridge, they get a com from king saying that more aliens are coming and he only has one bullet left and would rather die human and then there's a gunshot. they battle another creature in the bridge, hopfully getting one of them to topple the tower to save the others and the ship. they blow everything that's not nailed down into space and the survivors limp to the nearest port for repairs and to warn all of humanity of the danger they barely averted.
cue the music as the lights fade and credits roll.
the end
here goes...
so, the first run of a game of dread is behind me. i consider it to have been a success, and will gleefully run it again, and hopefully play in it as well. my players were julie, norm, jake, and maxwell, the crew of the medical supply ship marcus garvey.
norm was silus magnum, the ships captain, who was perpetually stoned and used most of the ships hydroponic gardens to grow mountains of pot. he decorated the ship like a bad 1970s (only 600 years out of date)porn set. lots of bead curtains, a disco ball, shag carpeting in his quarters, etc. he had a habit of pumping his ancient music through the shipwide pa system. he had a fear of the dark, so when he lost his eyes in an accident, he had them replaced with cybernetic eyes that could function as flashlights.
jake was the ship's janitor 2.0, a collection of microscopic lifeforms that shared a hive-mind conciousness and were sad that they had accidentally killed the original owner of their body before they had realized that he was a sentient creature. when watched closely, small lesions can be seen to appear briefly on his skin. (when i read this, i immediately thought of porpoises surfacing in the ocean, so i decided that that was the little buggers inside pulling oxygen directly into their single celled bodies. i also decided that the creatures that would be stalking them in the game were perhaps a distant relative of his species.) he valiantly uses these giant creatures weapons of mass destruction (disinfectant cleaning products and a vibro-mop) to combat any and all potential microscopic dangers to the crew.
julie was playing saria gomjabbar, an under-qualified ships pilot and navigator who faked her cerifications to get a job off-world and away from her father. luckily, the captain was too stoned to think to do a background check. her hoarding habit meant she kept track of all of her possessions and carried lots of useful gear with her at all times. she volunteered to be responsible for the ships inventory to help assure that she woudl become vital enough that she wouldn't get dumped off-ship if they ever found out she wasn't a liscensed navigator. she had an unnatural fear of staph infection, becoming a cyborg, and having the ship's engineer figure out she was a hack.
that engineer was comet peirce, played by maxwell. he had a son left back home because space is a dangerous place, proven by the explosion that killed his sister and destroyed his left lung. the cybernetic replacement is an antique that clicks everytime he breathes. in *tick* out *tick* forever. his specialty in inertialess drives was the reason he was qualified to crew this ship, which he feels particularly responsible for, since the captain didn't notice once when the ship didn't go anywhere for a full day. his obsessive personality and stim habit occasionally lead him to do things like take entire systems apart to fix some imagined problem.
and so it begins...
the group encounters a large ship floating dead in space, the captain determines that they should salvage the ships reactor so that his demand that no part of his ship ever not be fully lit will be less of a burden on their power supply.
the ship is on emergency power: no gravity, minimal lighting, minimal life support. the ship has been flooded with low levels of radiation. their space suits are more than up to the challenge, so with air and light for up to two days, they set out to explore the derelict. the first thing they do is discuss quarentine regulations that would require them to wait 48 hours to return to their ship in case of harmful biological elements. disapproving of this plan, the captain overrides the security failsafes so they'll have no trouble hopping through the airlock anytime they please. then they set of into the ship. they get garbled radio transmissions from someone onboard named king, who is apparently in one of the ships cargo bays. they head to the aft of the ship, trying to decide if they want to find this guy or get the ships power back on first. when they come to the door marked aft cargo bay and find alot of darkness beyond it, the captain decides to get the lights on before rescue attempts are to be made.
they find evidence of a gunbattle here, as well as the guns: big military assault rifles, which they pilfer. after powering up the ship and turning on lights and gravity, the crew is attacked by some large creature that moves very fast and leaves a wound on the janitor that would have been very painful if the microculture living inside used the nerves for more than steering and fast communications. having succeeded in their earlier goals and locking the power on, but with the setback that apparently somebody unhooked their ship from the airlock, the crew heads fore to find mr. king.
they find king in a closet inside the cargo bay. he has a broken leg and is suffering from prolonged exposure to the radiation, but seems fairly clear-headed and eager to escape. they find a floating cargo skid attatched to what is basically a seqway, that they can use to transport themselves(and especially the injured king) around the ship easier and head fore, to the bridge. on the way, a ceiling panel drops into the center of the skid on top of king's leg, causing him to pass out. on top of the panel stands a horrible creature that looks very much like a man without skin, sharp bone spurs growing through the muscles, and malice in its very pretty green eyes.
the captain sprays it with machine gun fire and the janitor trips it off the gravskid. it hops up and comes after them just as they race forward at dangerous speeds. the captain takes time to place a careful shot into the things head and it tumbles to a stop behind them. they head back to take a better look at the thing. it may well be a mutated human, but they're all pretty sure that mutations of this scale, especially the no skin part, would kill pretty much anybody before they could become viable killing machines like this guy. the janitor sprays disinfectant on the body and then sends the microalien equivilent of an away party to see what's up with this thing. they come back with several thousand enemy microaliens that they have a miniature world war with over the course of a few seconds to determine who will control this body. the janitor wins. they try to burn the body, but fire suppression systems kick in and prevent this.
the new plan of attack is to head back to engineering and flood the ship with hard radiation that will cook these microscopic bastards wherever they are and make it safe to maneauver the ship back around to their ship to escape. they get there and as the engineer overrides safety features and prepares the engines to vent, the others provide cover and end up mowing down dozens of the monsters. when they get back out to the gravskid, mr. king isn't there.
(by this time, the jenga tower that is a central feature of the dread game is getting pretty unstable, and people are giving serious thought to any unnecessay pulls)
they get to the bridge and determine that the creatures and the janitor don't show up on the ships sensors as living beings. they figure out that the creatures and mr. king are still alive, but they don't know how. they move the ship back around to their ship and dock with it. then they get word from king that he's been dragged into the air vents and he can see the aliens are coming for him and wearing space suits. they set this ship to explode and head back to theirs to find that the critters have turned the quarentine protocols back on, so they have to break into their own ship. they need to power up their ship to vent any creatures on board into space, so they head to their engineering section. as they open the doors, one of the creatures leaps onto their engineer (and the tower, long over due collapses)and start tearing into the seal on his neck with an imprompu shiv. maxwell is no longer among the living.
this is where some players had to leave, and the session ended, so i wrapped up with a quick run down of events that went something like this: they manage to get the engines powered up with several pulls from the tower, and as they head to the bridge, they get a com from king saying that more aliens are coming and he only has one bullet left and would rather die human and then there's a gunshot. they battle another creature in the bridge, hopfully getting one of them to topple the tower to save the others and the ship. they blow everything that's not nailed down into space and the survivors limp to the nearest port for repairs and to warn all of humanity of the danger they barely averted.
cue the music as the lights fade and credits roll.
the end
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