Post by starkllr on Jul 27, 2010 20:08:14 GMT
I ran the adventure I posted here a couple of weeks ago, Games of Chance, last weekend.
It ended with the players (three humans and an ex-pat alien hiding on Earth, who'd come across a derelict TARDIS - or more accurately, the TARDIS chose them), after arriving in 1961 Las Vegas and discovering that a stage magician was using an alien time-travel device to make himself the most popular act in Vegas (and incidentally robbing high rollers when their hotel rooms are empty!), getting hold of the device.
Unfortuately, the magician triggered the emergency fail-safe on the device, which returns the user to its point of origin (an interstellar cruise ship in the year 2505 AD), and when he went, he took one of the PCs with him. The device blew itself up, so the PC and the magician are stuck in the future.
That's the setup for the next session: rescuing the PC (and, possibly the magician, depending how he behaves!). The problem is, the cruise ship doesn't have a hyperdrive, and it's smack in the middle of a war zone. Massive Sontaran and Rutan battle fleets are both on the way, and will arrive at the location of the cruise ship in 12 hours. Neither side will have the slightest reluctance to blow up the cruise ship in the course of the battle (either side might target it first, just in case the enemy is somehow using it for some kind of tactical advantage)
The ship itself is huge - take the largest ocean-going cruise ship and multiply by 10. It's got over 100,000 passengers and crew aboard, and most of the escape pods, shuttlecraft, etc are already gone (not that they'd be much use anyway - the Sontarans and/or the Rutans would only use the escape pods for target practice).
The first question is, do the players try to save the cruise ship once they've found their companion? If they do, I see a few possibilities they might end up trying:
First, somehow convince the Sontarans and Rutans to spare the ship and let it leave the battle zone. This seems unlikely to work.
Second, trick the sontatans and Rutans into sparing the ship. This might be possible. If either side got wind that a TARDIS was aboard it, that would induce them to hold their fire (on the downside, you've then got heavily armed Sontaran and Rutan boarding parties, and man-to-man combat in the corridors of a civillian pleasure ship)
Third, use the TARDIS as a lifeboat, getting as many passengers/crew onboard as possible before the shooting starts. The downside is, there's no way to really get more than a fraction of the passengers into the TARDIS in time, and so lots of peole will be left to die.
Fourth, jury-rig a hyperdrive (possibly using the TARDIS in some manner to assist). This is definitely possible, although dangerous (getting blown up in a horrible hyperdrive accident isn't really any better than geting blown up by Sontarans), and difficult (the players don't have any real control over the TARDIS or access to its databanks)
Fifth, get the TARDIS to materialize around the entire cruise ship, and move it out of harms way. This is the simplest solution, but the TARDIS would need to be coaxed and convinced to do it.
Any thoughts? Any possible obstacles and difficulties I can throw at the players while aboard the cruise ship?
It ended with the players (three humans and an ex-pat alien hiding on Earth, who'd come across a derelict TARDIS - or more accurately, the TARDIS chose them), after arriving in 1961 Las Vegas and discovering that a stage magician was using an alien time-travel device to make himself the most popular act in Vegas (and incidentally robbing high rollers when their hotel rooms are empty!), getting hold of the device.
Unfortuately, the magician triggered the emergency fail-safe on the device, which returns the user to its point of origin (an interstellar cruise ship in the year 2505 AD), and when he went, he took one of the PCs with him. The device blew itself up, so the PC and the magician are stuck in the future.
That's the setup for the next session: rescuing the PC (and, possibly the magician, depending how he behaves!). The problem is, the cruise ship doesn't have a hyperdrive, and it's smack in the middle of a war zone. Massive Sontaran and Rutan battle fleets are both on the way, and will arrive at the location of the cruise ship in 12 hours. Neither side will have the slightest reluctance to blow up the cruise ship in the course of the battle (either side might target it first, just in case the enemy is somehow using it for some kind of tactical advantage)
The ship itself is huge - take the largest ocean-going cruise ship and multiply by 10. It's got over 100,000 passengers and crew aboard, and most of the escape pods, shuttlecraft, etc are already gone (not that they'd be much use anyway - the Sontarans and/or the Rutans would only use the escape pods for target practice).
The first question is, do the players try to save the cruise ship once they've found their companion? If they do, I see a few possibilities they might end up trying:
First, somehow convince the Sontarans and Rutans to spare the ship and let it leave the battle zone. This seems unlikely to work.
Second, trick the sontatans and Rutans into sparing the ship. This might be possible. If either side got wind that a TARDIS was aboard it, that would induce them to hold their fire (on the downside, you've then got heavily armed Sontaran and Rutan boarding parties, and man-to-man combat in the corridors of a civillian pleasure ship)
Third, use the TARDIS as a lifeboat, getting as many passengers/crew onboard as possible before the shooting starts. The downside is, there's no way to really get more than a fraction of the passengers into the TARDIS in time, and so lots of peole will be left to die.
Fourth, jury-rig a hyperdrive (possibly using the TARDIS in some manner to assist). This is definitely possible, although dangerous (getting blown up in a horrible hyperdrive accident isn't really any better than geting blown up by Sontarans), and difficult (the players don't have any real control over the TARDIS or access to its databanks)
Fifth, get the TARDIS to materialize around the entire cruise ship, and move it out of harms way. This is the simplest solution, but the TARDIS would need to be coaxed and convinced to do it.
Any thoughts? Any possible obstacles and difficulties I can throw at the players while aboard the cruise ship?
