There's one thing I've really never seen most game systems be able to do right, and that's recreate the title creature from John Carpenter's "The Thing" very well.
(BTW, am I wrong in thinking a large % of traveller players like the 1982 version of the thing? If you do like it, there's a nice site for you called www.outpost31.com that's just overflowing with goodies including rules for using "the thing" in the phoenix command rpg system, a thing card game, a map of outpost 3q as seen in the movie and even more goodies. If you like the thing you should pop over to it ASAP and look around.)
Anyway, back to traveller. Can anyone imagine making a scenario based on "the thing" with it as a NPC? (If you want to fiddle with traveller canon, an interesting idea has just come to me: Grandfather's war was against the thing, as a lifeform, and it had consumed/duplicated some of his children, leading to his war to stop the thing from becoming the dominant, if not only, lifeform in the galaxy. After he wiped out the thing's homeworld and, he believed, all it's forms that weren't on it, he retreated from the galaxy just in case any survived
Wow, something grandfather was afraid of? The idea of that ought to cure a traveller player of constipation real quick.:rofl
I was wondering if the thing was suitable for adding into traveller, perhaps as an ultimate antagonist in some way. A lifeform like that is so dangerous the imperium might have to declare a genocide program against it, if it were discovered.
Suppose grandfather did try to wipe them out long ago, and ALMOST succeeded. Suppose a research station on a pluto like planet found the ruins of an ancient base, with-GASP!- what appeared to be a perfectly preserved ancient frozen in ice near the ruins.
What if it were not an ancient, but a Thing that has assimilated one. What if they thawed the remains for study? What if The Thing revived and began to assimilate the research staff one by one?
What if a truly sadistic piece of evil incarnate masquerading as a GM dropped a group of traveller players into this scenario?:devil:
A major issue would be writing rules for the thing that don't amount to "GM decision". Gurps may just barely be able to handle it with a lot of fiddling and high points costs, and a viable copy of The Thing from the movie might cost only slightly less than, say, superman, but I'm not sure how other game systems could handle the thing, or if they could short of "The GM decides..."
The phoenix command rules are, naturally, more complex that most gamers can handle and don't translate well. No one on the SJG forums could ever make a good version of the thing so I may not pull this one in GT, but if any sadistic scu...er GMs want to work the thing into traveller it might be interesting to try agreeing on general rules for it for various systems.
I was trying to imagine ways to put the thing in traveller, and came up with the above right off. Other ways might be to discover the thing's homeworld just before they develop spaceflight, and face the issue of warning the imperium that a lifeform capable of consuming and replacing all other life may be about to emerge into the galaxy. An alternative could be a ship landed on the thing's homeworld before it developed tech, it assimilated the crew and learned their knowledge, now it's heading out to see what yumminess awaits it in the stars and the players somehow find out and have to stop it.
Maybe a variant on the ancient war thing, with the ancients wiping out almost all Things but it not being the cause of the final war could be written into YTU.
Maybe a drunken old slob at a starport tavern tells the players a tale of his youth when his FT misjumped and set down on a strange world to refuel, and some of his crewmates were assimilated by things, leaving only a few to escape. They never spoke of it for fear of being silenced by imperial security who might not want knowledge of such a lifeform becoming common, but now he's old, drunk, hasn't got much longer and is telling his story. Or maybe he tells the players because, after 50 years, he just saw a ship identical to his old FT land, and dead ringers of his crewmates, as he knew them 50 years ago, were on board....
Yeah, a panicking old geezer, obviously terrorized, has a heart attack from sheer fright and, before dying, manages to tell the players the story, maybe even given them an old data chip with data about the thing and how it operates on it, something he saved from long ago. Now the players have to see to it the things don't take over the world they're on and spread. It must be stopped now, while it's just on this world, perhaps because this world was the only one in jump range of it's homeworld.
Sounds like a good scenario for the halloween season, maybe if I get working on it now I might have something ready by then....
(BTW, am I wrong in thinking a large % of traveller players like the 1982 version of the thing? If you do like it, there's a nice site for you called www.outpost31.com that's just overflowing with goodies including rules for using "the thing" in the phoenix command rpg system, a thing card game, a map of outpost 3q as seen in the movie and even more goodies. If you like the thing you should pop over to it ASAP and look around.)
Anyway, back to traveller. Can anyone imagine making a scenario based on "the thing" with it as a NPC? (If you want to fiddle with traveller canon, an interesting idea has just come to me: Grandfather's war was against the thing, as a lifeform, and it had consumed/duplicated some of his children, leading to his war to stop the thing from becoming the dominant, if not only, lifeform in the galaxy. After he wiped out the thing's homeworld and, he believed, all it's forms that weren't on it, he retreated from the galaxy just in case any survived
Wow, something grandfather was afraid of? The idea of that ought to cure a traveller player of constipation real quick.:rofl
I was wondering if the thing was suitable for adding into traveller, perhaps as an ultimate antagonist in some way. A lifeform like that is so dangerous the imperium might have to declare a genocide program against it, if it were discovered.
Suppose grandfather did try to wipe them out long ago, and ALMOST succeeded. Suppose a research station on a pluto like planet found the ruins of an ancient base, with-GASP!- what appeared to be a perfectly preserved ancient frozen in ice near the ruins.
What if it were not an ancient, but a Thing that has assimilated one. What if they thawed the remains for study? What if The Thing revived and began to assimilate the research staff one by one?
What if a truly sadistic piece of evil incarnate masquerading as a GM dropped a group of traveller players into this scenario?:devil:
A major issue would be writing rules for the thing that don't amount to "GM decision". Gurps may just barely be able to handle it with a lot of fiddling and high points costs, and a viable copy of The Thing from the movie might cost only slightly less than, say, superman, but I'm not sure how other game systems could handle the thing, or if they could short of "The GM decides..."
The phoenix command rules are, naturally, more complex that most gamers can handle and don't translate well. No one on the SJG forums could ever make a good version of the thing so I may not pull this one in GT, but if any sadistic scu...er GMs want to work the thing into traveller it might be interesting to try agreeing on general rules for it for various systems.
I was trying to imagine ways to put the thing in traveller, and came up with the above right off. Other ways might be to discover the thing's homeworld just before they develop spaceflight, and face the issue of warning the imperium that a lifeform capable of consuming and replacing all other life may be about to emerge into the galaxy. An alternative could be a ship landed on the thing's homeworld before it developed tech, it assimilated the crew and learned their knowledge, now it's heading out to see what yumminess awaits it in the stars and the players somehow find out and have to stop it.
Maybe a variant on the ancient war thing, with the ancients wiping out almost all Things but it not being the cause of the final war could be written into YTU.
Maybe a drunken old slob at a starport tavern tells the players a tale of his youth when his FT misjumped and set down on a strange world to refuel, and some of his crewmates were assimilated by things, leaving only a few to escape. They never spoke of it for fear of being silenced by imperial security who might not want knowledge of such a lifeform becoming common, but now he's old, drunk, hasn't got much longer and is telling his story. Or maybe he tells the players because, after 50 years, he just saw a ship identical to his old FT land, and dead ringers of his crewmates, as he knew them 50 years ago, were on board....
Yeah, a panicking old geezer, obviously terrorized, has a heart attack from sheer fright and, before dying, manages to tell the players the story, maybe even given them an old data chip with data about the thing and how it operates on it, something he saved from long ago. Now the players have to see to it the things don't take over the world they're on and spread. It must be stopped now, while it's just on this world, perhaps because this world was the only one in jump range of it's homeworld.
Sounds like a good scenario for the halloween season, maybe if I get working on it now I might have something ready by then....
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