In-Jump adventure seeds

[Enoki]

Design one like this:

Start from the premise that the "party" (aka players) are not a united group with a common objective. Instead, they are individuals brought together and each has a set of motives and objectives. These are not in complete alignment with the rest of the player's motives and objectives, and might well be in conflict with another player's objectives.
Throw in some NPC's to muddy the waters and fill out any holes in the various player's personal scenario. They can be crew or passengers...
Put them on a ship and it jumps. Now they have a week + to interact and havoc ensues. :devil:

It's sort of like playing Clue backwards. You start with motives and means and end up with a murder.

I will warn those who run a game like this that sometimes players get upset with being in a game where they are expected to be at odds with one and other rather than a group of like mind solving some problem that unites them. Personally, I think it's more "real world" to have them with differing motives and objectives.

Of course, nothing is stopping them from deciding their own motive / objective isn't worth achieving and joining forces with another player. That's part of the fun here. :CoW:

 

[Timerover51]

The two brand new, still-in-their-wrapper personal servant robots crated up in the cargo bay are actually warbots programmed to steal the ship. They come online half way through the trip and attempt to kill (or incapacitate) the crew. One heads for the bridge, the other heads for engineering. Hilarity ensues.

That sounds like one of the sub-plots in Witches of Karres, the Agandar/Les Yango and his Sheem Assassin Warbot.

I keep thinking that "Vatches" would be fun to add to the jump space mix. "Jump Space" being the Vatches Universe.

 

[flykiller]

personal servant robots

sounds like system shock 2. "I am a fully registered trioptimum service robo"BOOM.

 

[Whipsnade]

Nice thread resurrection. I posted this idea to the TML too many years ago to remember. (That's also why it's rather vague!)

Back in the early Oughts, I'd read an article in MIT's Technology Review about self configuring minefields. The author described witnessing a test in which a tank drove through a minefield as the mines hopped away to make a path and then hopped back to seal the opening in response to signals from the tank.

The ideas behind this were a couple of those simple ones that make you say Why didn't someone think of that before?

First, the mines act as a distributed computer. Each has a small chip and each "talks" with it's neighbors via weak, low range IF "chirps". When the field is sown, the mines chirp a bit between themselves until the field as a group "knows" where all the individual mines are located.

Next, each mine was given a small solid fuel rocket motor similar to those used in Estes hobby models. The motor is good for a certain number of "hops" giving the mines a certain amount of mobility.

Of course, you can immediately begin thinking about all sorts of weakness in and countermeasures to such a system. The mines cannot be buried, for example. The mines' "chirping" can help them be detected. The IFF signals used to command the mines can be spoofed. Like any other offensive-defensive spiral, the list is pretty long and pretty much open-ended.

Still it would be a nasty idea to spring on some unsuspecting players.

Dragging it all back to in-jump, imagine the players are carrying, knowingly or unknowingly, such a minefield as cargo. Then imagine the field "wakes up" for some reason and tries to deploy per it's default programming.

The players cannot simply throw everything overboard because disrupting the jump bubble/envelope is suicide.

So, what are they going to do? cue evil laughter...