Advice Sought -- Marooned Alone

[gregcaires]

Hi all: (careful, possible SPOILERS below)

I'm GM'ing my son playing Marooned Alone as this is outside the scope of his existing campaign with friends. We've tweaked the game a little so that he has to go rescue Sadeh first before attempting to get off planet.

He's got a fairly hearty Aslan character, and we've made Pagliacci smaller so that it only takes 3 days versus 3 weeks to cross a hex. He's had some "enjoyable" prairie/steppe/jungle animal encounters and hunting opportunities along the way.

After two months he's made it to Sadeh's location (#1 on the map, from #2) and the patrol has survived by eating all the rations deployed with the lifeboat.

Now he has to get Sadeh to the starport and get off planet. So far, he hasn't run into the hunting party.

I'm interested to know if anyone can suggest some adventure during the second act so that is adventure transcends the now staid survival experience. The original book is silent on things like how to get offplanet after being called terrorists by the ships crew.

I've considered and rejected inserting Shadows (without the corrosive atmosphere, there is no tension) or Twilight's Peak (I'm saving that one for his main campaign with friends).

I've looked through my JTAS collection -- #25 has a bit of a dungeon crawl if necessary. Nothing from Tarsus fits.

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Greg

 

[mike wightman]

At the star port you have several options.

First off the week or so in the wilderness and a change of cloths should help avoid instant recognition as being the terrorists in the news a while back.

Money can then be exchanged for false documents and IDs - there's and adventure in that.

Try to book passage legitimately or try to bribe your way onto a tramp merchant.

Meanwhile the hunting party has turned up but they can't just overtly attack so a much more cloak and dagger assault or abduction may be necessary on their part.

You may want to make contacts with local thugs to get body guards.

 

[Piper]

Any suggestions?

Couple of thoughts for transitioning from pure wilderness to a more settled area:

1. The Wizards Tower: The character stumbles across a secret psionics facility/illegal genetics research lab/unlicensed mine. The facility can be active, abandoned or a place where "something has gone terribly wrong". You could treat it like an actual dungeon crawl.

Random map generator here:
http://donjon.bin.sh/d20/dungeon/

2. Chupacabra!: As the character enters areas of increased activity he is likely to come across hunters, hikers, resource gatherers and the like. He can be either mistaken for a bigfoot type creature or treated as the spearhead of an alien invasion.

This can run from light comedy to deadly depending on how you want to run it.