Surviving Misjumps?

[justindurkan]

I'll set the scene first.

Imagine a J1 free trader visiting a pre stellar world to pick up some agri goods or something. After picking up the goods, they move to the gas giant to refuel and suffer M-drive failure (cause of failure to perform scheduled maintenence). The ship is caught in the Gas giants grav well. The ship will die in less than 24 hours unless helped. The nearest ship is over 36 hours away. The only option is an emergency jump (the ships owner also felt that a lifeboat took up valuable cargo space and forewent such a purchase).

The ship misjumps (obviously) into a rift. They have a damaged J-drive (repairable with onboard bits) and a need to refuel. But, there is no refuel opportunity anywhere in a rift. Safety is J1 away but it may as well be J1000 for all they can do about it.

Unless...

I'm interested in peoples views on completing the 'Unless...'.

I'm real keen on making the answer a major adventure in itself, primarily to prevent players mistreating the seriousness of a misjump. I'd like to teach the owner a lesson in starship operations as well (but using plot rather than a referee heavy-hand).

So, just how could a death-only situation be turned into a cool story with a survivable out.

/Justin

 

[Steve Perlot]

Had a similar situation in a game I ran awhile back. The players were quite inventive. They poured everything on the ship that had any hydrogen in it (water, booze, food, melted plastic, the rats in the cargo hold, etc.) into the purification plant and came up with enough fuel mass to activate the jump drive. Then they rolled another misjump. Fortunately, they misjumped into a system with a fuel source, but were on the wrong side of the rift and barely had enough power plant fuel (they siphoned that off as well) to get the ship down to the planet to get water for fuel. Turned a commerce/espionage campaign into an exploration adventure, not to mention the fact that this was TNE and they went from the Regency into the wilds without wanting to.

 

[themink]

How good is the ships doctor? If they drop into lowberths (with suitable preping) and send a radio pulse offering a reward for rescue, help should get here in roughly 4 years (assuming anyone comes)

Lloyds would probably asses a reward of 5% of the book value of the ship payable to the rescuers.

Why were they so short of funds as to be this rsiky. Aren't you giving them the oportunity to earn decent money by taking large risks?(of a player adjustable nature, rather than just rolling against misjumps). Was the player aware of the risk they were taking? the character definitely would have been.

Alternatively, if anyone else has done a similair thing, the other victim is probably radiating away screaming for help - If the other ship is bigger, the combined fuel may be enough to get the small ship home. This also leaves a "treasure map" situation of an unfueled ship floating in a rift for you to get back to.

Alternatively again, they come accross a set of deep space sensors - someone has set up a series of astro/ship sensors a long way fro many interference (a whole parsec away) - they might be scientific sensor, anti-invasion or pre-invasion depending on what sort of campeign you are playing.

Alternatively again, despite the roll of the dice, don;t drop them in the rift, put them somewhere nasty - but survivable.

For next time - passengers won;t travel if they don't have a life raft, nobody will ship cargo unless you can display a "maintainance" ticket. Stop them going this far.

 

[BluWolf]

Pirates???

Oh sorry....coerced salvage technicians.

The characters could survive but would lose their ship at a minimum.

 

[tjoneslo]

IMTU the ship won't precitate out of jump unless there's a solid object somewhere nearby. In the case of a deep space jump it probably means a rogue planet, brown dwarf or some similar phenomona.

So, if the character's have any jump drive theory (Above average Engineering or pilot skill) they would know there is something out there that dropped them out of jump space.

Haunted planets not having seen the light of a star in millions of years, perhaps with starships destroyed in their attempt to refuel. Alien artifacts. Things better left undisturbed. Got a copy of CoC?

A large crashed starship may have enough fuel left to let them jump out, and may have enough ghosts to eat them in the process of getting it.

 

[BluWolf]

Originally posted by tjoneslo:
IMTU the ship won't precitate out of jump unless there's a solid object somewhere nearby.

MAN I LIKE THAT!!!!!!!

Having yet to read ANY game mechanics yet, this seems to make alot of sense in a psuedo-scientific way.

The rest of the post is exactly the sort of theme I want in MTU. I own CoC. Its the reason I want to get T20.

Consider this concept appropriated.

 

[Spacehand Arioch]

I recall a Challange magazine MT scenario where the players encounter a dyson sphere.
(A world that completely surrounds a star, as all the EM emissions are absorbed by the sphere, it would appear as empty space on sensors).
Perhaps they misjump to such a system.
Of course because of the technology needed to create a dyson sphere it was created by the ancients. The best part is that one of the ancients hunter/killer liquidpolymer robots (think T2) was still active on the sphere.

 

[justacaveman]

The ship could also be near a comet. Being mostly ice, it should have enough water to convert to L-Hyd fuel.

Or, the ship could come out into a "Sargasso of Space". A place that misjumps are drawn to by an Artifact of the Ancients. The device could prevent J-drives, and M-drives from functioning until the characters shut it down. Of course the device has a security system/guardian that must be overcome first. Also fighting off the cannibalistic survivors/descendants/aliens of previously captured ships would also be a problem, but if you wanted an easy life you should have stayed home.

 

[N.I.C.E. Labs]

Well, there are a couple things possible. What kind of agri-materials? Enough the right kind to distill into some sort of fuel? If it's powered equipment a little engineering could keep them running...feeding power into the jump capacitors. Perhaps the possibility of rigging some sort of solar collector to gain enough power to jump in a few weeks (a la Annic Nova).

As for how they got there and how they get away it's similiar to an adventure I cooked up. Out on a rift-border world there were some starport officials in league with pirates. The leaders of this pirate group had misjumped, but in a stroke of luck jumped into a rift hex where a large bulk freighter (20,000 tons +) was had misjumped decades before. It had enough fuel for the pirates to refuel and escape. Now, the pirates realized that even though the freighter's drives were wrecked it was sound and spaceworthy...instant hidden base.
Now then, the starport officials will pick a suitable target and either sell them a dummy jump destination chip or staging a 'routine maintenance' accident on the target ship so they have to take a destination chip. The chip says it's for one system when in reality it's the jump coordinates for the pirate base. Also encoded in the chip are commands to dump the fuel and kill life support a few days into the jump so the pirates either find bodies or full low berths when the ship appears (though of course when this happens to the player's ship there's a mishap in the chip so this happens far later so the players have a fighting chance when they emerge from jump).
All that's left is for the players to deal with pirates, get fuel and escape

 

[N.I.C.E. Labs]

Originally posted by justindurkan:
I'll set the scene first.

Imagine a J1 free trader visiting a pre stellar world to pick up some agri goods or something. After picking up the goods, they move to the gas giant to refuel and suffer M-drive failure (cause of failure to perform scheduled maintenence). The ship is caught in the Gas giants grav well. The ship will die in less than 24 hours unless helped. The nearest ship is over 36 hours away. The only option is an emergency jump (the ships owner also felt that a lifeboat took up valuable cargo space and forewent such a purchase).

A thought about avoiding the jump in the first place...it would really frost the players down on thier luck to literally throw away a bunch of money, but perhaps orienting the ship so that they then explosively decompress the cargo hold, shooting out all thier money making goods, but providing them with enough action/reaction to nudge them into a more stable orbit...at least long enough for the rescue ship to possibly make it to them...

 

[savage]

I had something like this happen due to a nasty pirate incident. He won, we jumped with a very
beaten ship. Luckily one of our scout ships picked
up our distress signal....

Savage