Sunday game help - one-upping Avatar

[RangerWickett]

This Sunday I'm running part 2 of a 3 session sci-fi adventure. Then afterward we're all going to see Avatar. I have the lofty goal of making the players come away thinking my game was cooler than the 300 million dollar James Cameron flick, so I could use some help.

Short Background
[sblock]
Session 1, the PCs awoke on a sleeper ship that had been captured by aliens. They'd been in stasis for 200 years, during which mankind had developed FTL travel. A group of soldiers were coming to rescue the PCs, and while the PCs managed to escape, the soldiers all died, and the FTL ship's main AI was infected with a virus and died. The transport shuttle AI was able to fly the FTL ship to safety, but now the PCs have a tough mission.

They left behind a lot of their fellow crew on the sleeper ship, who will likely be experimented on and driven mad by the aliens if the PCs don't rescue them. It's a several-month trip back to Earth, so they can't go back for reinforcements; if they want to save their crewmates, they have to man up. They have access to lots of sci-fi weapons and gear -- beam cannons, gravity generators, hyper-healing kits, etc.

The complication is that their ship's fuel supplies were damaged, so even if they rescue the captives, they wouldn't be able to get back to Earth. There is a planet within range that has the fuel they need, but it's controlled by 'pirates.' Just because space pirates are cool.[/sblock]

So I need some help coming up with a 4-hour adventure involving space pirates. The sky's the limit; I'm using homebrewed rules, so I can make up stats for anything you can come up with.

My basic idea right now is that the pirates having a mining operation where they use mecha to extract the hazardous exotic matter that FTL ships use for fuel. The main mining operation is in a jungle, and the pirates could have used 'slave collars' to mind control a few of the native megafauna. Plus we have battle mecha, and probably some sort of VTOL airships.

How do I fit it all together, though, and pace it nicely? Imagine you were designing a video game; what cool set-pieces would you want to see?

How about:

Stage 1 - An orbital space elevator platform. The PC's ship can't land, so they have to either negotiate with the pirates, or commandeer the station so they can take the space elevator down. This gives us a chance for some ship-to-ship fighting, or ship-to-station, followed up by a boarding action. A nice FPS feel of moving and shooting.


Stage 2 - Ambush. As they reach the ground on the elevator, the pirates stage an ambush, perhaps with an airship to pin the PCs down, and slave-collared animals to attack them. For added drama, the elevator could attach to a cliffside jungle station, so there's perilous falls, indoor facilites to hide from the airship, and forest to maneuver through.


Stage 3 - Mining Base. The pirates set up their three mecha in a defensive perimeter. These are more like Matrix Revolutions mecha than full fledged battlemechs, but they're still tough. PCs could hack them maybe. The pirate commander should have a cool personality, and be involved in the combat in an interesting way. Maybe he could have been on the airship before, and it flies away after taking a few hits. Best bet to shoot it down is to take control of a mecha (hack it, or kill its pilot and climb in).


At the end, they get their fuel, and now that they're more familiar with their weapons and tech, they can stage the final assault on the aliens next week.

But that's just a skeleton. I could really use extra ideas.

Maybe go for some mecha vs. airplane action:

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dadPWhEhVk&feature=player_embedded[/ame]

 

[Stormonu]

This Sunday I'm running part 2 of a 3 session sci-fi adventure. Then afterward we're all going to see Avatar. I have the lofty goal of making the players come away thinking my game was cooler than the 300 million dollar James Cameron flick, so I could use some help.

Having just come away from that movie, you are doomed to failure. I hope you are kidding about trying to out-cool the Avatar movie . Trying to upstage another's creative talent is just something I don't think is fair to try, it may even lessen your enjoyment if you try and get your players to compare your game to the movie; they're two different beasts. Still, everyone wants a good game.

They have access to lots of sci-fi weapons and gear -- beam cannons, gravity generators, hyper-healing kits, etc.

Take a pointer from most successful movies; gear doesn't make the characters invincible; those who rely on it too heavily often get splattered when it fails. It should be tool to help them towards their goal, not an "I win button."

My basic idea right now is that the pirates having a mining operation where they use mecha to extract the hazardous exotic matter that FTL ships use for fuel. The main mining operation is in a jungle, and the pirates could have used 'slave collars' to mind control a few of the native megafauna. Plus we have battle mecha, and probably some sort of VTOL airships.

Hmm...unobtainium?

Stage 1 - An orbital space elevator platform. The PC's ship can't land, so they have to either negotiate with the pirates, or commandeer the station so they can take the space elevator down. This gives us a chance for some ship-to-ship fighting, or ship-to-station, followed up by a boarding action. A nice FPS feel of moving and shooting.

Remember, you need to design the elevator so the characters can't just threaten to blow it up or knock it out of the sky. A perimeter defense grid (laser mines?) and possibly escort (heavily armed pirate ship-to-ship fighters?) to the station should help the characters from just using weapon systems to solve the problem. You may want to set up a scenario where the characters will need to obtain access to the station from the inside to shut the defense systems down so they can make their escape once they have the FTL material. This could require a split group action - one group to hack the defense systems, one group (or the same group) to mop up/pacify the pirates and a third group in the shuttle to take out the defenses (perhaps with stolen pirate fighters) whilst avoiding the pirate-flown defense force.

Stage 2 - Ambush. As they reach the ground on the elevator, the pirates stage an ambush, perhaps with an airship to pin the PCs down, and slave-collared animals to attack them. For added drama, the elevator could attach to a cliffside jungle station, so there's perilous falls, indoor facilites to hide from the airship, and forest to maneuver through.

This might work best if the characters think they've pacified the station, only to find stragglers waiting for them on the surface. As an interesting twist, the pirates might send their own "boarding party" back up to the station at top to liberate their comrades and get the defenses back up.

Stage 3 - Mining Base. The pirates set up their three mecha in a defensive perimeter. These are more like Matrix Revolutions mecha than full fledged battlemechs, but they're still tough. PCs could hack them maybe. The pirate commander should have a cool personality, and be involved in the combat in an interesting way. Maybe he could have been on the airship before, and it flies away after taking a few hits. Best bet to shoot it down is to take control of a mecha (hack it, or kill its pilot and climb in).

Like all bad guys, the best one is somebody who throws a monkeywrench into the characters plan, escapes the initial attack and comes back with reinforcements - it'll make players hate him, if you can pull it off. Consider having the pirates using guerilla tactics to weaken the group before the final assault against a heavily fortified location; the characters have to work to get those heavy weapons to the mine in one piece to use against the virtually unassailable defenses that protect the mine. Perhaps when the characters stage their coup in the spaceside station, he does something that somehow makes escape impossible (or really, really difficult) until the characters hunt him down and find out how to reverse what he did. Perhaps he's set the station's self-destruct and is the only one with the code or key to stop the countdown. Maybe he's encrypted the station's planetary map so the characters can't find the FTL material mine. Maybe he's moved the only piece of equipment that can mine the material to a place where the character's can't hope to find it - or worse, the ore itself (the assault on the mine ends up with the characters empty-handed as the villain runs off laughing into the jungle for a final chase).

Also, like all good adventures, you might want to consider a "complication" - a third factor that works against all sides to introduce a "race against the clock" scenario (a favorite plot device from the Aliens series, and many other movies). I'm thinking the aliens the characters are fleeing from perhaps have learned the PCs escaped, and send a war party after the group. Which shows up just when the group's deactivated the station's defense grid and taken the elevator down the surface. Now not only do they have to face off with the pirates and get the FTL material, they've got to avoid an alien hunting party that wants to haul them back to the mothership for more experimentation. All while the starbase is on a countdown to blow up...and the villain's run off into the jungle with the location of the ore they just paid in blood for.

At least, it ought to make for an explosive Hollywood-style ending. And if you stage it right, the pirate villain ends up getting his "just desserts" at the alien's hands (just in time to show up again as the alien's new "super-soldier" in the next adventure, complete with a grudge against the PCs).

 

[RangerWickett]

Cool. (And no, not trying to actually one-up Avatar. But hey, why not shoot for the moon?)

I like the idea of a pirate villain being 'assimilated,' but I'm not sure how to make it work, since I've established that the aliens don't have FTL, so they couldn't follow the PCs. Maybe there's an alien stowaway on the PCs' ship. The trick is that this is only part 2 of 3 (part 3 is 'go back to rescue other humans from aliens'), so I think I want to save stuff like "escape before the place explodes" for that portion. Or not do it at all, because what works in a video game won't always work in a tabletop RPG.

They can't blow up the space elevator, because it's the only way they can get to and from the surface. Of course, they could bluff, but ultimately the PCs have to go down via the elevator. Or maybe I could make it so the station is easy to access, and the PCs head down, so the first fight is on the surface. And then the pirates go up to the station to ambush them on their way out?

Hm, I dunno. I kinda want to climax with mecha.

How about, the pirate commander is on the space station, communicates with the PCs for negotiations, and is an interesting character. Then when the fighting starts he opens the space station to hard vacuum and takes the space elevator down to the surface. Then continue with my original idea of him being in a gunship to harass the PCs on the ground. Hm.

Thinking, thinking.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

If they've got any brains at all they'll turn on their infrared scanners and blow away everything on the surface that isn't the mine itself. And why can't they get down to the surface? What the heck are shuttles for, if not that?

 

[RangerWickett]

Shuttles are for ship to ship transportation, and typically aren't built to escape a gravity well. The general process is that space elevators bring things between surface and orbit, and ships fly between planets.

Also the bad guys are near to both the space elevator landing and the mine, so orbital bombardment is infeasible. Though that's a good point, they should be able to scan from orbit to see what they're up against, and via communication with the ship they can get real-time birds-eye views of the terrain.

 

[Celebrim]

This Sunday I'm running part 2 of a 3 session sci-fi adventure. Then afterward we're all going to see Avatar. I have the lofty goal of making the players come away thinking my game was cooler than the 300 million dollar James Cameron flick...

For what I've been hearing, being cooler than "Dances with Smurfs"/"The Last Blue Guy"/etc., shouldn't be too hard.

Maybe it would have been fresh 15 years ago, but at this point, the plot, "We have met the enemy and they are us.", has gotten so cliche and overused that I can barely sit through that story again.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

For what I've been hearing, being cooler than "Dances with Smurfs"/"The Last Blue Guy"/etc., shouldn't be too hard.

Maybe it would have been fresh 15 years ago, but at this point, the plot, "We have met the enemy and they are us.", has gotten so cliche and overused that I can barely sit through that story again.

What you've heard is different from the facts.

I went in thinking "Wow, this'll be bad. Pretty, but bad"

I was wrong :U

Ranger: Use descriptions. Lots of them. Paint a picture for the PCs as much as you can, so they can break past the pure mechanics. That's the best you can do to try and match or beat, well, any movie

 

[The Little Raven]

I went in thinking "Wow, this'll be bad. Pretty, but bad"

I dunno why people do that. I mean, it's James freakin' Cameron.

 

[Celebrim]

What you've heard is different from the facts.

I went in thinking "Wow, this'll be bad. Pretty, but bad"

I was wrong :U

Well, that's good to hear. I'm not sure I'm convinced, but it's good to hear.

Let me ask you this: what did you think of Braveheart?

 

[Celebrim]

I dunno why people do that. I mean, it's James freakin' Cameron.

Because it looks like a live action anime - lots of pretty but terrible cliched plot. And because really, about the third time they ran down into the bowels of the sinking ship, the movie turned in to a farce and you started rooting for them to die.