Traveller demo

[phydaux]

The owner of my local game store is letting me run a Traveller one-off as a demo. We both hope to get new players interested in Traveller so when T20 comes out, well, so it will sell well.

To be honest, it's all about the money.

So I made 6 characters (a ship captian, a Merchant, an engineer, a deck hand, a ships doctor and a nobel travelling in disguise as the ships stewart). I'm putting them in a 400 ton Fat Trader and droping them in the Lanth sub-sector. I figure I'll have them run around the local starport doing starport stuff (drinking, getting into barroom fights, then looking for cargo so they can pay the morgage on the ship). Then, after the lift off, a nice misjump to plop them 10 lightyears from no where.

Then I'll have them run across an old, abandon space hulk. I'll use the ship from the old classic adventure Leviathan. I'll have them don vacc suits, EVA over to the hulk and look around.

The idea will be if they can find some fuel then they can transfer it to their ship and they won't starve to death in deep space.

I plan to have some fun with them while they explore the hulk before they find tons and tons of Lhy in the tanks. I have a few ideas, but I was wondering if any of you guys has run a similar adventure (and who HASN'T run Annic Nova at least ONCE)? If so, do you have any ideas on how to set a "creepy" mood, and things to find on the ship that will make the players go "Ick!"?

Thanks in advance, guys.

phy

 

[DrSkull]

You need a couple of NPC's in red shirts.

 

[tjoneslo]

Originally posted by phydaux:

I plan to have some fun with them while they explore the hulk before they find tons and tons of Lhy in the tanks. I have a few ideas, but I was wondering if any of you guys has run a similar adventure (and who HASN'T run Annic Nova at least ONCE)? If so, do you have any ideas on how to set a "creepy" mood, and things to find on the ship that will make the players go "Ick!"?

Thanks in advance, guys.

phy

Description, and lots of it is always helpful. Things like
"Despite your active sensor, you can't see the ship at all, until you are right on top of it"

"The pitted hull seems to absorb the lights from your suits, making it difficult to tell distances."

"Your lights are swallowed by the long dark hallway, where the partly open doors look like the hungry mouths of some mythical beast".

Leaving at least one vacuum desicated corpse floating just on the other side of a sliding door is a requirement.

Hearing odd sounds is always good. But in this case they hear faint radio transmissions... It's just radio echos from their own transmissions from the various bits of functioning but unpowered equipment. But having things whispering in their ears, and they can't track it down.

All of the power source on the ship will be drained, so it will be pitch black. IR won't help because everything will be exactly the same temperature (cold as death). The odd shadows cast by the lights they carry, which move as they move can be good for putting people on edge.

Use lots of depressing analogies. Like cold as death, dark as a tomb, portholes looking like a lifeless eyes.

 

[N.I.C.E. Labs]

In an old issue of Challenge Magazine (GDW) there is a write up of a sort of bermuda triangle section of the Spinward Marches. A small rift pocket of no worlds just south of Regina. If you find Victoria on the map, it dead center of this rift.

Anyway, it went on talking about the ships that had vanished and all the strange things going on ranging from ghost ships to phatom transmission to rumors of pilots plagued by something trying to get into their ship from while in Jump. It might work well to have them misjump there...and after they review library data and such, let their own fears do the work for you. I'll see what I can do to scan it and make a .pdf of it for you if you'd like.

As for other elements, deranged log entries are good. Creaks and groans of unattended bulkheads showing the strain of age. Smell is good too...remember the film 2010. The first thing they noticed is the smell of death. Turned out to be some rotted meat in the galley, but the effect was the same....

 

[phydaux]

Originally posted by DrSkull:
You need a couple of NPC's in red shirts.

I've already got that. I plan to have the ship in port for their annual 2 week maintenance. While in port, I'll have a plasma leak kill a yard worker - a slow, lingering death with lots of long, baleful screams. From then on, an odd harmonic will be detected in the Jump Drive plasma injectors, sort of a thrum-thrum, thrum-thrum, thrum-thrum.

Kind of like a human heart beat.....

 

[phydaux]

Originally posted by tjoneslo:
Description, and lots of it is always helpful.

Ooo, good stuff.

Thanks,

phy

 

[kafka47]

If you want a mood piece for the ship, why not use: Aboard the Death Ship save, instead of computer virus, use Alien infestation of a silicon lifeform. That will keep them guessing. But, the best haunted ship/local would be The Zhodani Brain from The Traveller Chronicle #2 after that one my players were...

 

[bozzutoman]

Play the soundtrack from Alien. It's moody and will put the players in a proper state of mind in no time at all.

This one worked for me: Arrange to have the most Shaggy-like player alone investigating staterooms. Have him unknowingly trigger a portable holo-message player, displaying an alien "ghost" directly behind him. Then when he turns around (or maybe sees it in a mirror) BOO! If the build up is creepy enough, this should work. It should be good for a scare before he figures it out. Or as in our case, the others did when the freaked player bolted then gathered the whole party to investigate.

Another idea is to develop some unexplained technical anomoly that makes one player keep hearing his name whispered.

If you want to make the ship REALLY haunted, you could have the psychic residue of a psionic passenger prowling the corridors. The players have to identify its corpse and return it to its homeworld.

 

[N.I.C.E. Labs]

One thing that I did that freaked my group out was when I ran them through ANNIC NOVA I built up the angle of it being the 'ghost ship' that had been sighted all over. The eventally salvaged the ship and claimed it for it's own. Since it was an alien ship they knew virtually nothing about it I gave it a bit of a mind of it's own. Power systems coming on and off on thier own at odd times. In one instance the fired it's lasers and disabled some vargr pursuing the players on it's own. Freaked 'em out for a good long time

To tie in what I mentioned about the sort of bermuda triangle (I have more info now....it's called the Abyss Rift (Challenge Magazine #44) where there's a rumor of something living in hyperspace trying to get inside the ship...on one flight they had been chartered by a scientist who wanted to study the rumor. He had sensor at every viewport all over the ship. That and his spooky theories were enough to put the crew on edge, but the topper was this. The captain of the ship was a bit eccentric and he had a rebuilt Zhodani warbot (unarmed) that he named Mongo and was using as a steward. At one point I had the bot suddenly go to a window and sit there clicking as all of his targeting systems go nuts.

It was priceless!

 

[phydaux]

Originally posted by N.I.C.E. Labs:
To tie in what I mentioned about the sort of bermuda triangle (I have more info now....it's called the Abyss Rift (Challenge Magazine #44) where there's a rumor of something living in hyperspace trying to get inside the ship...

Hmm. Nice to know the origin of the name "The Abyss." That Abyss happens to be IN the Lanth sub-sector, where my demo will take place. The party will mis-jump right into the heart of the Abyss.

MJD did a great job detailing The Abyss in G:T Behind The Claw. That's where I got the idea for the demo adventure. I didn't know the rumor about the entity living in Jump Space, however.

I never did the vaccum desicated corps thing before. What I have done, though, is have a set of standard crew coveralls floating in the dark, 0-gee space hulk. With the wierd lighting coming from the helmet lamps on the vacc suits, it looks JUST like a person coming to get them:

"What the HELL is THAT?!"

"It's comming right at us!"

"CHRIST!"

BOOMBOOM

"Wait, it's just a set of coveralls..."

"You IDIOT! You don't fire a shotgun inside a small room with armored bulkheads for walls when..."

"Hey, my vacc suit's loosing pressure."

"Oh NO, my face shield is cracked!"

"Where's the leak? Can you see the leak?"

"Hold still! I can't patch the leak if you don't hold still."

"Stop pointing that shotgun at people."

"Tell him to put down the sword first."

"I'll cut off your idiot head before I die..."

"Give me the shotgun, Bob."

"Hell NO! Not until he puts down the sword"

"I can't fix his face shield until he puts down the cutlass..."

"Put down the sword, Harry."

"What about MY leak? Is it fixed yet? Is my leak FIXED yet?"

"You know what? To HELL with fixing your leaks! If we all just stand here long enough, we'll run out of air anyway!"

"I just want to stab him a LITTLE..."

 

[N.I.C.E. Labs]

hehe fantastic

 

[Cptn. Collision Course]

the first time they see somehting scary, ask all the players for their character sheets, then hand them new ones with a new stat - SAN

Now ask them to roll those D20's, twice...

 

[FlightCommanderSolitude]

Originally posted by phydaux:
"Hey, my vacc suit's loosing pressure."

Hehehe. The floating overalls are a very fine idea! I'll remember that one...

 

[phydaux]

Well guys, the demo is tomorrow night. I have the characters, adventure notes, maps, figures representing each of the characters and a hex map of a starport bar.

Wish me luck!

 

[DaveShayne]

Originally posted by phydaux:
Well guys, the demo is tomorrow night. I have the characters, adventure notes, maps, figures representing each of the characters and a hex map of a starport bar.

Wish me luck!

Luck!