Military base dungeon crawl: Need help with game idea

[glenmac]

Hi,

I am Jerry Blakemore of 12 to Midnight and the author of Weekend Warriors. The buildings provided in that mod would fit your time setting quite well. Reason being the barracks were built during the 40s and early 50s. When I was in the Army during the 70s and 80s these kind of barracks were still in use at Infantry school and many other bases across the US, particularly for temporary quarters. In Infantry school we were billeted in those buildings, each holding a platoon of trainees, around 50 men. The army liked the design I believe because of the flexibility. It is fairly easy to slap up some walls if you want to create a room.

The BOQ (Bachelor Officer's Quarters) is really an example of the diversity of this design. It is basically the same building type the enlisted men dwell in with a lot more privacy. I actually got to live in this kind of barracks while stationed in Fort Huachuca, AZ and they can be pretty comfortable with AC.

When it comes to labs for a military complex, there are no two like designs for this. The army probably would not use a temporaty design to house anything of great signifigance. This gives you as GM a lot of latitude when it comes to designing a lab. Just give it lots of check points and remember secure buildings tend to not have windows. And use basements (the modern dungeon) to scare your players.

Have fun designing your adventure. Throw in some things you know they have watched at the movies. Sell 'em on one critter and then show 'em how wrong they are.

"I got the silver bullets!"
"Great. But dude, we need holy water."

Cheers,

Jerry Blakemore
12 to Midnight
Sugar Land, TX

 

[takyris]

Oh, man, thanks for the bump, Henry! I missed my technobeholder idea!

 

[Breakdaddy]

However, the patrols are not really so much to keep people out, as to keep something in.

Wow, sounds exactly like how I made area 51 in my old Dark Matter game. nice!

 

[Bad_English]

In the past...

OK I did work for 9 years removing asbestos from places you would not even think of exsiting even on a Navy Base or two, let alone in cities and buildings.

MECHANICAL SPACES and ACESSES.

The amount of tunnels and 'crawls' in a given area is actually remarkable; I have literally started cleaning pipe runs in the basement of a building and ended up under a street almost a block away. Stopped only by a hastily setup brick wall from a former time that was the end of the job specifications and scope. The tunnel connected as a "T" and I could have kicked down the bricks and gone further. The live steam line had the tunnel at a roasty 100+ degrees and my airline to my mask was only 300 feet long.

Cities, Military bases and even ships... CV63 USS Kitty Hawk; back in the late 90's an entire machine shop was found in a space that had weld marks from a cutting torch that opened the bulkhead and another that sealed it. All of the equipment, sealed in packings and greased from the time the ship was fabricated in the 50's.

The university I worked in( in the same field,asbestos) had inter-connecting tunnels with spaces sealed behind bricks and piping heading off into the darkness, beyond my flashlight. Stories from a different crew about glowing pools under the old chemistry department and stuff that had to be handled with specialized equipment. Or perhaps the levels between the floors in the university hospital, and the mechanical acesses there that I saw. Pipe chases in old buildings with 30 foot drops.

Steam systems and water utilities were inter-connected for efficency, many still active, others dead. Sometimes in the processes of having to do a job that was bid upon by drawings and a flashlight stuck into a hole that turned out to be terribly under bid. Literally excavating the pipe insulation out of the ground and in the process finding more tunnels and pipe. I would have to say from experiance, that yes you could have a large underground structure on a base that is forgotten either on purpose or through a massive paper driven military procurement system.

Having been in those spaces and others that could fill pages to condence I have to say the following:

Air is close and stale often hot and mixed with decay in some of the more ahhh darker places.

Heat; not even touching a hot steamline made a softball sized blister, the coldest area was near the decontamination showers 120 degrees. Some of the steamlines were so hot that water, required to wet the insulation and clean the pipe evaporates before it hits the pipe, a small srpay of water explodes into steam. After 20 min. in that enviroment you are ill feeling, more than that well sometimes heat stroke takes you down.

Sharp edges as you crawl under rusty metal, water hot and cold dripping down, things that have crawled back there and died. Crawling on your belly for a half an hour to end up looking down a 10 to 20 foot drop if you miss your footing. Always something inside your suit moving, getting 40 feet in and your airline getting snagged, you cannot turn around because that is ahead of you another 20 feet, learning to crawl backwards, in broken concrete and other debris.

I would take the information here shake it and stir and apply in liberal quanties because in truth it is entirely possible. You had to have access because the utilities are and were maintence intensive, and someone was supppose to do the work. Now to mention man now that I think of it there were tunnels at the base that still had Civil Defence supplies from 1959...

 

[Salcor]

If you are looking for missile silo maps check out this site. http://www.missilebases.com/

Salcor