Plans: Evil high tech lab ideas? (Future)

[Emperor Valerian]

I'm busy running a futuristic game for several companions of mine (Travellerd20). Basically the three of them are officers on a military starship charged with exploration and clandestine activities. Its a 900 ton ship, crew of 20, with the PCs being the Captain, Tactical Officer and Communications Officer/Exec.

Last session they stopped another high tech vessel from swooping in on a defenseless planet, but lost their FTL drives in the process. I'm planning on having them visit what should normally be a quiet planet - life but nothing sentient, jungle climate, and there they'll find some kind of high tech lab with the ultimate prize - blueprints left by an ancient civilization for an antimatter drive (currently the best anyone has is high tech fusion).

My problem is that I need ideas for traps and layouts for this ancient alien location. How would these ancient aliens protect their secret technology? What type of facility on a remote planet would have such information? What kinds of traps would they have? How should the investigation of this facility progress? What kind of weird/strange/eerie things should they find inside?

Information doesn't need to be T20 specific - any good ideas from any gam system would be appreciated, I can go about trying to convert them. Thanks much in advance!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

First: decide whether the installation is military or civilian. A military installation may have robot guardians etc., a civilian one is less likely to.

Second: a lab is a dangerous place, even without "traps"- imagine a 3 year-old left unsupervised in a good high-school science lab. That approximates what it would be like for a human to stumble on the lab of a culture 1000's of years ahead of them. Just because something looks familiar doesn't mean it is. Ditto empty. Or safe.

That "coffeemaker" in the corner could actually be the lab's container for micro black holes...

Third: What if someone else stumbles onto their find, and has no respect for their claim...or what if that someone else had found it first, left, and is just now coming back. "Mirror Matches" can be quite dangerous.

Fourth: What if the owners don't operate in time the same way humans do? IOW, what the party thought was abandoned was actually just set aside for a "lunch break"

Fifth: Any of the above could be accentuated if the lab is actually bigger than they think. What if there are other "wings" connected via teleporters? Or if the lab is just one side of a larger architectural feature made with one or more tesseracts?

Sixth: The place wasn't abandoned- the scientists were killed.

Check out some Sci-fi stories, series and movies: Star Trek, Babylon 5 and other series have pointed out the danger involved in abandoned military installations. The old movie The Forbidden Planet featured labs that operated under the concepts of point 2 above. Some of their child-development testing devices were lethal to humans. The Cube/Hypercube movies involve a tesseract system, as does the Dr Who series. Point 6 could be seen in X-Files, The Thing, Pitch Black, Star Trek, Starship Troopers, Stargate SG-1, and countless Larry Niven stories, to name but a few.

 

[Warren Okuma]

I'm busy running a futuristic game for several companions of mine (Travellerd20). Basically the three of them are officers on a military starship charged with exploration and clandestine activities. Its a 900 ton ship, crew of 20, with the PCs being the Captain, Tactical Officer and Communications Officer/Exec.

Last session they stopped another high tech vessel from swooping in on a defenseless planet, but lost their FTL drives in the process. I'm planning on having them visit what should normally be a quiet planet - life but nothing sentient, jungle climate, and there they'll find some kind of high tech lab with the ultimate prize - blueprints left by an ancient civilization for an antimatter drive (currently the best anyone has is high tech fusion).!

How much more advanced? Maybe they find the plans of a EMP bay weapon treat as a Particle Accelerator, but usable only in close range, but ignores half the armor and gets a +2 to hit, TL 16, but inefficient and find out it's still working. Badly cannibalized defense bots etc... collapsing ceilings, poisonous gas, explosive methane, etc...

My problem is that I need ideas for traps and layouts for this ancient alien location. How would these ancient aliens protect their secret technology? What type of facility on a remote planet would have such information? What kinds of traps would they have? How should the investigation of this facility progress? What kind of weird/strange/eerie things should they find inside?

Alien crumbling fetuses staring at you with dead lifeless eyes, strange vats with odd looking dried stuff on the bottom, leathery, crumbly dirt-ish, grey dust, strange blue-purple smears, etc..

 

[interwyrm]

The lab is automated. It has an integrated computer control. At some point, the creators decided to pull the plug on the research there. The computer had developed self-preservation instincts, and engineered a variety of creations to pull the plug on the researchers. There should be a variety of organic and robotic defenders. Try to make the organic defenders as bizarre as possible.

 

[The Green Adam]

Good news everyone! That shower stall is actually a shower stall. But the toliet...you don't want to know.

It would really depend on the level of technology the installation fields as well as the nature of the aliens themselves. In one campaign I ran, any attempt to steal or mess up an ancient alien vessel resulted in the offender being beamed off and back to their own ship. The players had to find out how to disable the alien craft's transporters without going over there. In Trek easy. In Traveller? Not so much.

 

[Warren Okuma]

* broken thermostat, that constantly resets to near freezing temperatures or blazing hot desert heat. Two settings.
* The Lab computer has a pseudo-AI that can program itself, as long as you tell it what to do very specifically... and it's telepathic, but very quirky since it is programmed to deal with long extinct non-human race.
* It's actually a crashed starship. And it might take off and attack other ships... poorly. It's 150,000 years old after all.

* Telepathic interface for a long dead non-human race. But it tries really hard to interface to you.

Sensors: "Flock of birds fly, one sleep, but carp swim with the current."
Captain: "What?!?!
Navigator: Squadron of Rampart fighters inbound, undamaged; one damaged; the carrier already jumped out of the system. I... think.
Sensors: Cherry blossoms fall.
Captain: Uhh...
Navigator: And it says we're boned.