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Idea for a traveller scenario, can't seem to get past initial concept.

I like the Philidelphia phasing, Ishmael, especially with the twist that it's the players who are phased. I think I'll borrow and shelve that one. :)

Here's my 2Cr, similar to some above:
A computer somewhere on the planet has evolved into an AI and has decided to remove humans from the equation by taking over all the robots, who then take the people prisoner/kill them. The command can be communicated worldwide in a matter of minutes, giving the humans no time to react.
The AI may have a sinister purpose, or may just want to 'protect humans from themselves'. A few humans may have escaped capture/death, but the players will find themselves facing an entire planet of zombie-like robots, some trying to capture/kill them, some simply spying on them. Of course, the AI is also in control of surveillance systems, etc. and may be in the process of getting its robot servants to lash up a connection to the planet's defence systems...
 
Probably my last two ideas

Hi,

Here are two final thoughts (one of which is really just a kind of dumb variation of one of my previous posts but the other is hopefully suitably Traveller-esque).

The first idea is that the adventurers have stumbled into a Zhodani Psi-Ops experiment that is trying to use computers to augment natural psionic abilities to create massive virtual realities in peoples minds. The intent is that if the Zhodani's can perfect the process, they can create massive realistic recreations of actual places based off peoples memories so that they can explore the places (especially the layout of military outposts from captured prisoners minds), and/or maybe convince captured prisoners that they instead have escaped and are back at their home base being debriefed.

Anyway the adventurers would be just some hapless starship crew that had been captured by the Zhodani for use in a trial run, but who didn't realize it. The settlement would be a recreation of the next stop on their itinery, but something has gone wrong. Perhaps its just that the server that handles the people in the simulation has crashed, or it may be that one of the adventurers has some latent psionic abilities and is subconciously seeing through the deception without realizing (and since all the adventurers are linked together, they too are seeing through the deception), or it may be that deep down subconciously one of the characters had a bad experience on this planet (or a very similar planet that this place reminds him of) and somewhere deep within his mind (perhaps from his childhood) resides the thought that he "hates everyone there and wishes that they would just go away" and the computers are trying to literally interpreted this. Maybe as the simulation continues to fall apart other pieces of what the adventurers percieve also begin to disappera as well.

The players would then have to try and figure out what is going on, find a way out, and then try to excape from their Zhodani captors, perhaps.

The other idea is that the players arrive on planet, there appears to be no one there. They wander around exploring, trying to figure out what happended. And eventually they happen upon a large warehouse. In side are numerous bodies, some completely lifeless, some apparently alive but either motionless, weak, or incapable of movement, speech, or intelligent thought, and finally there are a small number of people who actually appear to be conscious and coherent but aren't sure why they are here.

Eventually, the adventurers come across a somewhat delusional person, muttering to himself that he is "the game master, creator of all that everyone surveys" and something about "these blasted character generation rules" and how "most the NPC's he has rolled up have either died during the generation process or have had such lousy stats as to be almost totally unusable" and that "the player are here early and he's not ready but if they could just come back next week he's sure he can have the place fully populated by then".

Anyway, hopefully that's the last of my ideas.

Regards

PF
 
The Quiet Earth

I saw most of "The Quiet Earth" when it was on back in the 80s. This might be good research if you can find it. Short summary, a scientist wakes up and there's nobody left on Earth. More details at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quiet_Earth_(film)p

That one was about science gone wrong but if memory serves should provide the creepy atmosphere for an empty world.
 
The population has been rounded up by forces unknown and now reside in mass graves. Was it internal, external - leave the players guessing. Part of the next piece of the puzzle is one jump away. The adventure is on.
 
The PCs wander around for a while, ending up in a dark warehouse. Then the lights come on and everyone jumps out shouting "surprise!"
 
There are some really good ideas in this thread. Let's sum them up:

1) Something has happened to the PCs.
1.1) Misjump. The PCs are still in jump space, but don't realize it. At the end of the week, they "pop" back in at the edge of the system, or they're at the planet slightly before the "current time" as per The Langoliers.
1.2) "It's in my mind!" The Zhodani have done something to the PCs to make them think that this is happening, but it isn't.
2) Something has happened to the population of the planet.
2.1) They have been taken. Good for small populations, problematic if the population is in the thousands; this is easier if the kidnapper has psionics or something similar. Possibilities: Slavers (perhaps some sort of pirate consortium, like the Demon Princes in Jack Vance's Demon Princes series?), or a huge and ancient colony ship, or strange energy beings from jumpspace.
2.2) Spontaneous combustion. On a massive scale. Maybe the effects of weapons testing?
2.3) Infectious plague. Genetic mutation caused them all to go underground/undersea/wherever, or it's a psionic plague of teleport and displacement, or an infectious disease, or genetically-engineered flesh-eating microbes (with the inevitable government round-up and cover-up).
2.4) Side effect of ultra-tech. The Jumpspace Institute's latest jump-7 experiment, or a leftover Artifact weapon from the Final War of the Ancients.
2.5) <Insert Deus-ex-Machina> did it. God/Robots saved the people from one of the above, or it's the Cloverfield Monster, or the GM had lots of left-over characters due to bad randomization/failed conversion to a new system/overdose of sugar and caffeine, or it's a fungus below ground, or it's sentient mind-controlling diamonds, or it's a crazy AI.
2.6) Left on their own. Mass religious revival, psionic lure of a native creature, or it got too hot/cold and they found shelter, or they're waiting to surprise the PCs.

*Whew*

My own take? I might use a variant of the giant underground slime mold. It's feasible that the settlers might not have been on planet long enough to note it, and if the creature(?) is everywhere below ground, it could be under everything that the humans have built. It's activity is triggered by particularly strong radiation in the L-N bands; only recently, with the increasing in the Tech Level of the local industry, has the populace created enough radiation in this band to cause the thing to become active. Normally, it would lie in dormancy until the planet reached a particular point in its orbit, maybe once every five hundred years, so this activity is premature.

Anyway, it located living creatures on which to feed by vibrations in the ground, then encysted everyone it could. Maybe it went by stages, so that the newspapers reported a few disappearances, then massive vanishings, and finally it got everybody. Maybe some of them are still alive in their psychedelic cysts below ground? The X-Files had an episode like this, with Mulder and Scully hallucinating while in such cysts.
 
A couple of years ago on TrekRPG.net, someone started an adventrue seeds thread which now runs to 29 pages. It's for Star Trek but it's only a list of outlines so it can easily be adapted to another sci-fi setting like Traveller:

Adventrue Seed Thread

or you can download a PDF of the first 25 pages directly from here:

Adventure Seeds in PDF flavour

I also wrote a javascript page that automates the random adventure generator from Jovian Chronicles:

Jovian Chronicles Random Adventure Generator

Refresh the page to change the results :)

Crow
 
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Thing, wasn't that the idea behind the cymbelline chips? Which adventure was that? I seem to recall that ultimately leading to Virus.... :oo:
 
WJP said:
Of course, the crew, upon investigation, find that transporter research was being conducted at the station, and a massive wave transporter accident sucked everybody up. At the end, the crew saves the station crew by re-materializing them from limbo.
Click to expand...

"The Vanished". Great episode. I GM'ed it back in the 80's when I was a young teen. :)
 
For a slight variant on this, I'd suggest something that occurs in John Barnes' latest book, "The Armies of Memory". To avoid spoiling for anyone (it's a pretty significant surprise in the book that Barnes has been leading up to for years), let me know if you'd like the details by PM.

Or just grab the book, though you might want to read "A Million Open Doors" first.
 
The first story in Murray Leinster's Med Ship (available for download from the Baen Free Library ( http://www.baen.com/library/ )) starts with the hero arriving at a planet where the entire population of its only city (it's a recently established colony) has dissappeared.

EDIT Feb 3rd 2015: I just noticed that the book is no longer part of the Baen Free Library.


Hans
 
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misjump sort of

One of Larry Niven's novels/novellas was about a ship that somehow became suspended in time due to some damage to the drives. When it finally returned to normal space it was many years in the future with no one else around. Might be able to work this is somehow.
 
Ahhh... the OTHER "city with all the inhabitants missing/dead" story. :p

Sorry, its been a few years since I read those... probably have to dig them out and re-read them.
 
I think at some time or another, every sci-fi author from the 60s to the 80s tried to tackle a "space traveller arrives, finds everyone gone" story. Makes me want to search through my 50s and 60s sci-fi bookshelves.
 
Twilight Zone

rvolz said:
I think at some time or another, every sci-fi author from the 60s to the 80s tried to tackle a "space traveller arrives, finds everyone gone" story. Makes me want to search through my 50s and 60s sci-fi bookshelves.
Click to expand...

Hi,

Now that I think about it, I do seem to recall some old Twilight Zone episode where some guy finds himself to be the only one in town. It turns out he was an astronaut undergoing tests on the effects of long term space travel and being alone for extended periods, and was having a nervous breakdown, so that it was all just happening in his mind, or something like that. I guess that story is a little different than the premise of the initial post, in that it was just a lone person and not a whole ship's crew, but now that I remember it, it was kind of similar.

Regards

PF
 
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