Marooned!

[RickA]

After reading through the Darwin's World rulebooks (and giving in to temptation and loading up Fallout 2 on my PC again) I've gotten excited about the next stage of my T20 campaign.

The crew of the Spirit of Freedom (300 ton TL15 yacht) will be crash landing on a bad bad world next Saturday night.

My plan is to crash land the ship, so that it is in an inhospitable area of the world (Mojave?) far from any population centers so that the ship is a) safe from intrusion and b) can't really be used as the base of operations for the players.

Ship will have to be unflyable, but I'm not sure what sort of damage to put on it. Powerplant? If so that takes away almost all the ships resources from the PC's, including the autodoc. Just the jump drive? Then the maneuver drive works and I can't have that. Maybe just the maneuver drive is out... yeah, that might work. Keeps them from getting out system (can't launch off the planet) and keeps them from flying around in this TL15 gunboat.

The goal of this section of the campaign would be to collect a laundry list of components needed to repair the jump drive and get the hell off this planet. Anyone have some good ideas on that? I'm thinking some items which are available but expensive on a TL6 sort of planet but this is a post-nuclear war planet, ala Mad Max or Interplay's Fallout.

Some items... maybe a rare mineral only available in minute quantities in seawater or somesuch, needing extensive processing. Forcing the PC's into a bit of "nation building" to build up a stable higher tech town near the sea so that they can process these materials...

 

[RickA]

The Spirit of Freedom also has a TL 13 Wheeled ATV. The fuel source of said ATV is a bit ambiguous. Was wondering if it's likely to be "Pour distilled water into it" ala Mr. Fusion in Back to the Future or if it's more likely to be a "refined plutonium" fuel source. Obviously I could just say what it is off the top of my head but would find it embarasing if the typical TL13 ATV is clearly defined as running on water in a rulebook somewhere, lol.

Either way might be interesting. Giving them the ATV to use as a mobile base would help the PCs for sure, but there's something appealing about the image of the big ATV being pulled around by a 40 mule team in harness too, in order to save fuel for when it's REALLY needed.

 

[Gundiwolf]

Seems like more of the recent versions of Traveller have used hydrogen fuel, which can be purified from water with a converter. One of the early CT double adventures implied that the ATV had the converter built-in, so yeah, pouring water in worked.

Other ATVs ran off fuel cells that could be recharged from the ship's power plant. Perhaps that would work better for your setting. And remember, the ship's power plant still needs fuel as well.

 

[kafka47]

IMTU, anything with a purification unit could concievable use water as a "fuel" just that water is heavier to carry long distances but certainly safer than carring H2 or lighter than Refrigation units to keep it liquid.

For starships & sealed vehicles, I had always assumed life support meant a total recycling of the environment to run everyday appliances and meet needs for water & air. Now, you're telling the OTU is DIFFERENT???

 

[RickA]

Good point made about the power plant needing fuel. By the ton! And on a hot dry sort of world like Earwin's World that's a respectable ammount of wealth right there (tons of water) and transporting it across distances to the crashed ship out in the Mojave desert... lots of challenges.

Likely the group would run the power plant to minumum to keep the computer (which is a TL 15 A.I. computer) going and basic life support plus things like the autodoc when they are actually out at the ship. During the months of time they are travelling around the blasted earth they would shut down all systems except a miminum monitoring program on the computer to recognize threats or whatnot.

 

[parmasson]

If the maneuver drive is out then they might need to get eight new high-temperature 10x600mm multi-phase connector bolts for the thruster plates. Not too complicated but kinda hard to find on a TL-6 planet. With just a few improvements in local manufacturing say up to TL 7-8 so they can have powdered metal technology and the special bolts can be made.

 

[RickA]

Ah, I like it! That goes on the shopping list. Thanks Parmasson! Anyone else have something to contribute to my players pain?

 

[Chaos]

How about some object that has become the Most Holy Relic of a powerful apocalyptic cult, so the players eith need a very good plan, or have to wade through a couple of hundreds of fanatic cultists, in order to get it?

Or they need some part that takes TL 12-15 to make, but there is the wreck of a Ziru Sirka starship that also crashed on that world several thousand years ago, which one such part in working condition.

Of course, you could combine the two and make the starship wreck the Most Holy Temple of the aforementioned apocalyptic cult.

 

[RickA]

90 grams of Unlikelium, which can be processed from seawater: 1 gram/100 tons of seawater...

 

[RickA]

Originally posted by Chaos:

Or they need some part that takes TL 12-15 to make, but there is the wreck of a Ziru Sirka starship that also crashed on that world several thousand years ago, which one such part in working condition.

Of course, you could combine the two and make the starship wreck the Most Holy Temple of the aforementioned apocalyptic cult.

I like, I like. Have some good technobabble of what this part might be called and what its function might be? The more of that stuff I get from you guys the better, because my players know all my tendencies in naming and technobabble.

 

[Gundiwolf]

Hmm. A "thrust governor", basically a high-tech valve. Requires a special alloy and high tolerances, so it can't just be fabricated by the resources they have available. Theirs is cracked.

 

[RickA]

Okay, they need a thrust govenor replacement for the maneuver drive. Special alloys and built to high tolerance specifications which would be about impossible on such a world. But... as it just so happens the players may not be the first people to ever crash land on this world...

 

[Chaos]

Originally posted by RickA:
Okay, they need a thrust govenor replacement for the maneuver drive. Special alloys and built to high tolerance specifications which would be about impossible on such a world. But... as it just so happens the players may not be the first people to ever crash land on this world...

Have them receive a garbled radio message while on their way to the surface, in archaic Old High Vilani - an automated radio transmitter beacon programmed to send Signal GK whenever it detects a ship jumping into the system, or maybe a life-boat with such a transmitter. The Vilani ship managed to put it in orbit around the planet before crashing, so the character will at least be able to guess that there is another ship(wreck) on the planet - but unfortunately, the cult has also received the signal, and considers the PCs´ ship as a gift from their god(s) to them, and they will stop at nothing to get it... well at first they have to find it...

Boy, I´m getting devious today...

Instead of the thrust governor, or maybe in addition to it, let them need to get a piece of the Ziru Sirka ship´s AI computer to replace a malfunctioning part in their ship´s - maybe the part responsible for jumping, so the AI will still function very well for their stay on the planet, but will know it needs this spare part in order to jump.
After said spare part has been installed, however, the players realize that a piece of the Ziru Sirka AI was on the part, and their AI starts displaying a split personality...

I guess I´d better stop now, or there´s no telling what else I´d come up with...

 

[RickA]

Keep going, keep going.

I was struggling with how to get the PC's to know there was another ship to seek. Good idea with the distress beacon. With my group I'll need to make sure to put it clearly, with a map showing the crash site of the Ziru Sirka ship.

Hmmmm, ought to do some reading on the Ziru Sirka before I do that scenario so I know what they are. Heheh.

 

[far-trader]

If you want to stretch out the play some have the distress beacon guide them to a temple of this cult where they find the beacon, and nothing else

No ship, no crash site, no vital needed parts. Just a bunch of "true believers" who want to do horrible things to the infidels for violating their holy relic (I love the machine that goes "ping").

Of course the temple scholars will have religious texts that describe fully how the distress beacon was found, and how the finder heard it speak to them, and so they took it from the offering site to the temple.

Now all the PCs have to do is get a copy of said text, translate it, decipher it (what does this bit mean... "lo and then the gods did send their fiery messenger to level the city of the non-believers and when the smoke had cleared Ossup heard the god's voice in the ruins and it called him to take it from that place to a place of honour and once done the remains of the city were buried in a rain of mud... "), and then find and excavate the long buried wreck.

And what may now be living over, under or inside of that wreck?!

 

[Chaos]

Originally posted by RickA:
Keep going, keep going.

I was struggling with how to get the PC's to know there was another ship to seek. Good idea with the distress beacon. With my group I'll need to make sure to put it clearly, with a map showing the crash site of the Ziru Sirka ship.

Well, the crew could have fed the beacon their projected point of impact. Now the PCs will only have to make sense of the old Vilani coordination systems (does latitude come first or second? How many degrees does a full circle have? Which end of the planet is considered North?) and measurements (what do they use instead of kilometers? And how long is that measurement?).

 

[RickA]

lol Dan, that's brilliant. Cruel, but brilliant.

10,000 worshipers around the holy relic, chanting "Oohlatek, Oohlatek..." and the Marine asks the rest of the PC's "How much ammo do we have?"

Afterwards they find no thrust regulator, just mystic descriptions of the ship crash? Cruel indeed!

 

[jasper]

1 kilo of pure gold to replace and resoldier computer connections.
fiber optic cable more connections.
coffee filter destroyed. Only hobo coffee until fixed.
10 kiloliters of heavy Pure ionic 10w30 oil for lube parts of manuever drive
coverter plant inner sealent. protects the wall of fuel purification from elements. It is a high tec cermanic.
a dozen r.t.it. (round to its).
certain autodoc drugs are destroyed or degraded.
????
How long was the war?
what happen to weather, comm, etc satelities ?
Was there space construction going on before the war?
How correct is library info on this planet?
Electric shorts in ships system some can be fixed other have to be replaced.
Shower systems shot.
temperature gauges in ship all are need of repair. Each room has different temperature.

 

[RickA]

Kilo of pure gold for repairing components, nice. Fiber optic cable, 100', could be salvaged from ruined cities, good idea.

LOL, coffee filter. I love that. In our game they were using the Broad Side of a Barn (which we all know and love) and they spent like 20,000cr on a new coffee maker for that piece of junk ship. They had starship crews from other ships visiting in port just to sample the coffee. In ship combat they all would rather hear me say the engines got hit than their beloved coffee machine.

*********************************************

How long the war? Only a short period, but the society was already sliding towards anarchy due to environmental problems (there were already a few dome cities). The nuclear and biological exchange utterly wrecked the civilization globally.

Space Construction before the war: in the same degree as you find today on Earth.

Library info on this planet is little. Jump error into an unknown area of space. The computer will eventually be able to make some educated guesses about where they are then might give the oh-so-helpful "This is a red zoned planet".

 

[RickA]

Alright, I put this together in an email to the engineer player, he'll have it available at the game tomorrow. I also gave the comm officer the Signal GK information from the orbiting drone. I chickened out and made it a 50 year old Solomani message.