[Scenario Seed] Diner of Death.

[Catsmate]

Curious isn’t it? There is not one film or book that has used the title Diner of Death. There’s a “surreal short” called Death’s Diner (haven’t seen), and a book called Death at the Diner (‘cosy’ murder mystery, haven’t read) and an actual restaurant called the Death Row Dive and Diner which appears to cram in the maximal amount of tackiness possible. You’d have thought it was the perfect title. Pity I can’t copyright it¹.
Oh well.

Diner of Death.
This evening’s little seedling came to me, surprise, surprise, in a café I frequent, and some memories of episodes of the Twilight Zone and similar shows. A more than a hint of Invasion.
We’ve speculated about the Diner of Dreams, mixing the fate of Clara and Ashildr with the old TV series Nightmare Café but this particularly establishment is safely immobile.


The setting.
It’s a restaurant/café/diner called The Dark Light Diner², it's night-time with heavy rain outside. I’m aiming for a noir-ish feel. Lightning is optional but don't overdo it.
It’s not in a city exactly, I envision it as being out of town, perhaps close to the ramps connecting it to a major road artery.

One of the motorway services in the UK would fit nicely but there are plenty like it in the US and Europe.

• Feel free to make suggestions.

Nearby, maybe a couple of hundred metres, is a service station with fuel pumps, but it’s no longer a 24 hour operation; two shifts only and locked up until 7AM. There may be a couple of trucks/artics parked over there with the drivers sleeping inside, or trying to in the pounding rain.

The patrons.
More-or-less the people you’d expect in a low-rent eating establishment far from anywhere at 2AM on a wet morning.

People stopping for food or a toilet break or a rest or some air, wet as it is. People running low on fuel and waiting for the pumps nearby to open at 7AM. People who trusted to GPS and <REDACTED> Maps and got lost. Normal people, most of them. But tonight is going to be anything but normal, and some of them are going to die here.

There may be a police car parked outside with a couple of uniforms taking a break. Or a grizzled detective with a crush on a waitress younger than his daughter.
A taxi-driver returning from a job who needed “a strong cup of char and a wad”. Or maybe some of those special ‘stay-awake’ pills.
A poor soul whose car broke down and walked here, waiting for a tow, soaked to her skin. Or who pushed her partner off a bridge and is trying to figure out what happens next.
A couple of truckers shooting the breeze and waiting for the weather to break. Is one worried about the teenage runaway locked in his sleeper, drugged and bound?³
A married couple returning from a family gathering.
It’s probably not a location for sex workers, no city or proper truck stop.

There’s at least one larger group; perhaps a small indie band, Midnight Goblins, fresh from a gig, and the debut of ‘Our Love is Sexy But It's Unspeakable⁴’
A couple of guitar players, a drummer, singer, manager, roadie. A six-passenger van with vaguely Lovecraftian artwork is parked just outside. Stuffed with functional if battered music gear.

Then there's the staff. A night manager (why’d he draw the short straw?), a couple of wait staff, a KP/washer/busser, a cook and maybe some kitchen help.

Perhaps one of the Misfit Mob (for a UK setting) or ther Wrecking Crew (for the US) is inside, off-duty, unprepared and probably worn out after a 'job'

Naturally one of these people is not what they seem. But which one?


The Threat.
There's a traveller from the far future around, someone who's attempting to escape a losing war, and jumped millennia into the past. Jovena Valdis is  hoping for sanctuary (or an opportunity to carve out a domain for herself) but is pursued by a pair of time travelling bounty hunters. Arriving a couple of hundred metres from the diner she is disorientated and detects the imminent arrival of her pursuers and takes shelter, temporarily, in a late-night diner/cafe.

• Jovena have been a war criminal, a scientist who Knows Too Much, an innocent or a mass murderer.
  
• Perhaps, in the manner of Magnus Greel's escape she was damaged by the transfer through time and hunts other patrons to keep herself alive.
• Overall I leave her motivations to the GM to determine what suit their game.
  

Jovena buried her time-suit and some other gear in the scrap of park by the edge of the parking area, morphed her clothes into something more suitable and headed to the diner, pausing to toss a psionic static generator on the roof.

• She knows one of her pursuers is telepathic.
  

She's tired, hungry, disorientated and possibly injured. She's also armed and desperate.

• Gear wise she has clothes made from a shapeshifting material, a sensor-deceiver, light body armour, a backpack, local currency and papers (which might be identified as fake by checking databases), perhaps some mind control devices (a pen-like cerebral disrupter or a bag of control implants?), a medical kit and possibly other gadgets. If she's draining life force/cerebral fluid from people she'll have the necessary tools.
• She was a soldier, and may have biological or other enhancements.
  

The Pursuers.
There are two operators pursuing Jovena. Their motivations are probably financial, it's a job to them. Or maybe they have personal reasons for hunting her. Their time travel is unsanctioned and they really want to be gone quickly and without causing a disruption.

Keve Exan was an operative for the Time Agency, when it existed. Just not a very good one. Now he does various 'little jobs' for money. He's ruthless and able, but worried; this is not a good era in which to be found meddling. The Doctor maybe around.

• He's dressed in more-or-less appropriate clothing, with body armour, has ID and money and is heavily armed.
  

Phebe Nyseth is his temporary partner, a human telepath from a colony planet half a galactic arm away from Earth and millennia in the future. Time travel is new to her and Keve took her on because of her psychic talents.

• She is less armed but wears armour and has a scanner device (which isn't working due to the jamming and deceiver). The psionic static around the diner mostly nullifies her telepathy unless she resorts to drugs, or significant effort and physical contact.
  

Their time machine is in the parking lot. It resembles as mall RV or van and is disguised as such (though inspection or a ultra-tech scanner will reveal it isn't what is seems). Breaking in need advanced skills and/or tools, will activate a security alarm and will infuriate Keve. Inside is the time-jump engine, various items of equipment, assorted weapons (able to level the diner and surroundings) an auto-doc, two sleeping pods, a fresher and a coffin-like pod for Jovena. It has a suite of jamming, interception and other infiltration equipment.

Keve will isolate the diner, establishing a force field encompassing the building and part of the car park, jamming communications (including land-lines) and keeping everyone inside. The electricity, water, gas, and other utilities will be uneffecetd.

So, what happens next? Immediate armed assault on the diner? Or a cat-and-mouse game for a while?

Ideas or suggestions are welcome.






1. It's generally impossible to register a copyright on the title of a work.

2. OK, not a great name, suggestions?

3. OK this is getting darker than I expected.

4. Blame the random name generator for both.

[thewarchief]

Why do I get the idea that Clara is running the diner?

[Catsmate]

Jul 6, 2024 19:50:41 GMT thewarchief said:

Why do I get the idea that Clara is running the diner?

I was deliberately avoiding that!! It's supposed to be a nice, normal, eatery. Unless the GM says otherwise....

[thewarchief]

Jul 6, 2024 20:37:51 GMT Catsmate said:

I was deliberately avoiding that!!

I thought that but once you see it you can't unsee it. Besides diners are not a UK thing, so Clara's diner stands out more.

Jul 6, 2024 20:37:51 GMT Catsmate said:

It's supposed to be a nice, normal, eatery. Unless the GM says otherwise....

More like until.
I mean even if it is a nice, normal, eatery, it'a also in a Dcotr WHo adventure so something's going to happen.

So if "it’s not in a city exactly, I envision it as being out of town, perhaps close to the ramps connecting it to a major road artery," then how does it do enough business to stay in business? It's probably near something else that draws in enough people to keep the diner running. And whatever that is, it's fair game for not bing nice and normal. But what?

Some possibilities (check as many as you like):

□ A transportation hub? (train station, airport- probably for freight rather than passengers)
□ A port (for customs; doesn't have to be on the coast but in a state on the coast)
□ A secret military facility (government, UN, NATO, UNIT, mercenaries, aliens, or maybe several such in the area.
□ An alien community (a place where the majority of the locals are all aliens; maybe Zygons, maybe something else, maybe known to the government, maybe not)
□ A ghost town (maybe the diner is left over from better days- fits the film noir thing. Could be in the rust belt in the Midwest US, or someplace in the Northeast that used to be a big textile mill.
□ Weird Lights in the Sky (they aren't all at Area 51. What are they and who is responsible. Msybe there are UFO tailgate parties?)
□ Temporal Weak Spot (maybe this is a hole or whirlpool in the space-time vortex and occasionally it spits out stuff from the vortex, with the resulting stange sitghings and happenings.


As for Jovena..
● Why here and why now?
● Did she pick this time and place for a reason? If so what is it, since that's probably going to be the adventure?
● If not, did someone else pick this time and place for her? If so who and why, since that's probably going to be the adventure?
● Did she get spat out at the aforementioned Temporal Weak Spot?
● Or maybe she just spun the settings and let ended up here entirely at random.
● Maybe she was a war criminal, a scientist who Knows Too Much, an innocent or a mass murderer. But maybe she was all of the above. What if there is some freaky timey-whimey stuff going on with alternate timelines where who she is and what she did changes depending on how certina things play out, and this is causing a multi-tracked temporal loop. It's like she is in a pick-a-path adventure where some of the paragraph references are wrong and she doesn't knnow which.  She is aware of this and has some idea and plan for how he wants things to go, but she is also "in the eye of the storm" and thus still subject to the changes. Think of it as her time travel experiments giving her a limited version of the "Feel the Turn of the Universe" trait. She knows time''s been messed with, what's wrong, and how she fits in, but she doesn't have the full picture and doesn''t know quite how to fix it. Think of her as being a cross between the Grandfather Paradox and Schrodinger's Cat. She is both alive and dead at the same time but discovering her to be in one state crates a paradox that causes her to be in the other state, ad infinitia. So it will take an outside force (the PCs) to break the loop. Oh, and naturally the diner scene is a critical decision point.




And as for the Time Travelling Bounty Hunters
● How did they know where to go? I assume Jovena didn't leave them a note with the coodinates?
● Did they track her. If so how, and does it help once they are in the same time zone?
● How law abiding are they? Basically you've stated that they are here unsanctioned. Are they just bending a rule, have a grduge against Jovena, figure they can get away with it on a backwater planet such as Earth, or just don't care about the rules at all?
● What would they do if found out? Would they go so far as to eliminate witnesses to prevent being found out?
● Whose worse Jovena or them?
● How obvious is Exan's body armor? Is is something concealable, or does he stick out like a sore thumb?
● Do they know what Jovena looks like, or is there something that prevents that? IMO I think it would be interesting if Jovena had a shimmer or something so that the hunters would have to figure out which one of the diner patrons is her. Thay way you'd getting them talking to the patrons and the player picking up on clues and maybe figuring some stuff our or picking a side,  before the fight breaks out.


What about the PCs?
Are they just patrons at the diner who just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, despite probably being time travellers themselves since this is the Doctor Who RPG and not Gumshoe.
Are they investigators with fore knowwedge of the events? Maybe they are from the future and here to prevent some bad thing that happened?
Or maybe they get sent here to investigate the events after the fact?


"So, what happens next? Immediate armed assault on the diner? Or a cat-and-mouse game for a while?"
I'd say that would depend on the NPCS. Does Jovena panic? Are the hunters concerned about maintaining a cover, keeping down the collateral damage, or concerned the locals in any way? The whole thing could be a quick bloodbath or take hours.

[Catsmate]

Jul 6, 2024 23:49:37 GMT thewarchief said:

Jul 6, 2024 20:37:51 GMT Catsmate said:

I was deliberately avoiding that!!

I thought that but once you see it you can't unsee it. Besides diners are not a UK thing, so Clara's diner stands out more.

True, though the UK's Motorway Services have some diner-esque locations and there are some places near ports that'd fit nicely.

Jul 6, 2024 23:49:37 GMT thewarchief said:

Jul 6, 2024 20:37:51 GMT Catsmate said:

It's supposed to be a nice, normal, eatery. Unless the GM says otherwise....

More like until.
I mean even if it is a nice, normal, eatery, it'a also in a Doctor Who adventure so something's going to happen.

Absolutely.

Jul 6, 2024 23:49:37 GMT thewarchief said:

So if "it’s not in a city exactly, I envision it as being out of town, perhaps close to the ramps connecting it to a major road artery," then how does it do enough business to stay in business? It's probably near something else that draws in enough people to keep the diner running. And whatever that is, it's fair game for not bing nice and normal. But what?

The image I got was is that it's just off a major road, but is perhaps heading towards its last legs. The service (gas) station has cut its hours already.

Jul 6, 2024 23:49:37 GMT thewarchief said:

Some possibilities (check as many as you like):

□ A transportation hub? (train station, airport- probably for freight rather than passengers)
□ A port (for customs; doesn't have to be on the coast but in a state on the coast)
□ A secret military facility (government, UN, NATO, UNIT, mercenaries, aliens, or maybe several such in the area.
□ An alien community (a place where the majority of the locals are all aliens; maybe Zygons, maybe something else, maybe known to the government, maybe not)
□ A ghost town (maybe the diner is left over from better days- fits the film noir thing. Could be in the rust belt in the Midwest US, or someplace in the Northeast that used to be a big textile mill.
□ Weird Lights in the Sky (they aren't all at Area 51. What are they and who is responsible. Msybe there are UFO tailgate parties?)
□ Temporal Weak Spot (maybe this is a hole or whirlpool in the space-time vortex and occasionally it spits out stuff from the vortex, with the resulting stange sitghings and happenings.

I'm steering clear of military and suchlike, I was aiming for reasonably normal.
Port would make sense, especially in these post-Brexit times when UKGov has constructed various facilities, often in the middle of nowhere, to cater for customs/biosecurity/political theatre checks. So at times there will be bursts of trucks.
I'd avoid the airport because while there is a cargo flow it doesn't operate in the way I want; I need a quiet night for the diner to function for the scenario. Of course maybe the French ATCs are on strike again.

Jul 6, 2024 23:49:37 GMT thewarchief said:

As for Jovena..
1. Why here and why now?
2. Did she pick this time and place for a reason? If so what is it, since that's probably going to be the adventure?
3. If not, did someone else pick this time and place for her? If so who and why, since that's probably going to be the adventure?
4. Did she get spat out at the aforementioned Temporal Weak Spot?
5. Or maybe she just spun the settings and let ended up here entirely at random.
6. Maybe she was a war criminal, a scientist who Knows Too Much, an innocent or a mass murderer. But maybe she was all of the above. What if there is some freaky timey-whimey stuff going on with alternate timelines where who she is and what she did changes depending on how certina things play out, and this is causing a multi-tracked temporal loop. It's like she is in a pick-a-path adventure where some of the paragraph references are wrong and she doesn't knnow which.  She is aware of this and has some idea and plan for how he wants things to go, but she is also "in the eye of the storm" and thus still subject to the changes. Think of it as her time travel experiments giving her a limited version of the "Feel the Turn of the Universe" trait. She knows time''s been messed with, what's wrong, and how she fits in, but she doesn't have the full picture and doesn''t know quite how to fix it. Think of her as being a cross between the Grandfather Paradox and Schrodinger's Cat. She is both alive and dead at the same time but discovering her to be in one state crates a paradox that causes her to be in the other state, ad infinitia. So it will take an outside force (the PCs) to break the loop. Oh, and naturally the diner scene is a critical decision point.

I've taken the liberty of numbering your points.

1. That place exactly? More-or-less random chance. The 'modern day' of 2025ish? Because there are other time travellers to create 'static' for time jumps and she can integrate herself.
   
2. See point 1. She arrives at the diner by chance.
   
3. Hmm, interesting. I hadn't thought of that. My first idea is maybe she's a diversion for someone else, to distract the hunters?
   
4. Always a possibility. Of course maybe the interaction of three time travel devices (Jovena, the hunters, the PCs) is what create the weakspot and attracted them in the first place. Causality is optional. Or the hunters deployed a device to prevent Jovena from jumping out and it pulled her in even before it was activated.
   
5. That would be my base assumption. But you have made a couple of excellent points.
6. Oh I like that. Intersecting time travel experiments from different universe causing 'her' to be merged. Nice.
   

Jul 6, 2024 23:49:37 GMT thewarchief said:

And as for the Time Travelling Bounty Hunters
1. How did they know where to go? I assume Jovena didn't leave them a note with the coodinates?
2. Did they track her. If so how, and does it help once they are in the same time zone?
3. How law abiding are they? Basically you've stated that they are here unsanctioned. Are they just bending a rule, have a grduge against Jovena, figure they can get away with it on a backwater planet such as Earth, or just don't care about the rules at all?
4. What would they do if found out? Would they go so far as to eliminate witnesses to prevent being found out?
5. Whose worse Jovena or them?
6. How obvious is Exan's body armor? Is is something concealable, or does he stick out like a sore thumb?
7. Do they know what Jovena looks like, or is there something that prevents that? IMO I think it would be interesting if Jovena had a shimmer or something so that the hunters would have to figure out which one of the diner patrons is her. Thay way you'd getting them talking to the patrons and the player picking up on clues and maybe figuring some stuff our or picking a side,  before the fight breaks out.

sss

1. Their employer gave them a device to track her. But if she jumps again with enough of a lead on them then she can escape.
   
2. Not really. They have the tech to scan for her, or detect her telepathically, but both sides have deployed tech that will effectively prevent this, so they're stuck with old-fashioned methods.
   
3. Well they're post-Time Agency so there may not be anyone to sanction them, but other time travellers may intervene, for various reasons. The default is that they can get away with meddling to a limited extent, but something that would attract major attention would cause ripples that will have unpleasant consequences for them. So no nuking the diner.
   
4. They might, if they think they can make it appear to be part of the background violence of the period. Otherwise drugs, mind erasure and telepathic alteration.
   
5. Entirely for the GM to determine.
   
6. Mostly concealable, though someone with police/security/military experience might notice it.
   
7. Absolutely right. My assumption is that she has some sort of disguise, which would normally stick out light a sore thump to a decent scanner but the jammers will prevent this. Though physical contact might work. Then again if you're going with a darker version she might possess/skin a bystander to take their identity.... I was aiming for a investigative scenario, not a rapid descent into violence.
   

Jul 6, 2024 23:49:37 GMT thewarchief said:

What about the PCs?
Are they just patrons at the diner who just happen to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, despite probably being time travellers themselves since this is the Doctor Who RPG and not Gumshoe.
Are they investigators with fore knowwedge of the events? Maybe they are from the future and here to prevent some bad thing that happened?
Or maybe they get sent here to investigate the events after the fact?

That depends on who the PCs are.
For a one-off, they could be diner patrons/staff dropped into something way over their heads.
For the Mob/Crew they're better prepared but weren't expecting this. Backup is unavailable, most of their gear is, unfortunately, outside the force field.
For more mobile PCs, like the crew of the Achronic Omnibus, they arrive to investigate something and are in the diner when the hunters arrive. Their transport is isolated, the hunters suspect them and they have to figure out what's going on and what to do.

Jul 6, 2024 23:49:37 GMT thewarchief said:

"So, what happens next? Immediate armed assault on the diner? Or a cat-and-mouse game for a while?"
I'd say that would depend on the NPCS. Does Jovena panic? Are the hunters concerned about maintaining a cover, keeping down the collateral damage, or concerned the locals in any way? The whole thing could be a quick bloodbath or take hours.

I plan to run the scenario for my own group (the third option above) as an investigation, with untrustworthy allies and perhaps a distraction or two (kidnapped girl, one of the band is actually an alien et cetera). The classic TV bottle episode.

[thewarchief]

Any old Port in a Storm

One of my points about ports is that apparently they don't have to be on the coast anymore.

I know that becuase there is now a Port of Worcester in Worcester Massachusetts. Now Worcester is about 50 miles (80 km) from Boston, but the railroad runs throuh Worcester so they take shipping from Boston, send it to Worcester and customs inspects it there. I don't know exactly why they did it that way, but I also don't know why they can't do something like that elsewhere in the country.

So you could set up a "port" somewhere off the beaten track for all this to take place at. Just put it near a railroad track so they can move stuff in and out. And in the US we have a lot of semis to shift freight.

Now onto Other points (numbered for convenience):

Jovena:
1. Alright she's here strictly by chance (unless you have some unidentified NPC pulling her strings, but even then it would look random to us until you want to point clues at them).
2. Okay so she has a shimmer or something else that does something similar, but the Hunters have tech to detect and counter that, but Jovena has tech that detects and counters their counter tech, so basically all the tech cancels out and were back to doing things the old fashioned way.Great expect that the only ones who know that are them. Pity you can have then frustrated smacking their tech on the countertop when it doesn't work.
3. As for what caused the weakspot, IMO it's probabably a case of their all going over the same ground too many times. Like she goes back, then they go back, then she changes things and goes back again, so they do, etc.etc.etc.etc. oops time breaks.
4. As a for the effect on Jovena, I think she still get's alted with the timeline, but for some reason she is still aware of what happened, what supposed to happen, what she wants to happen and so can try to go back and change things. Again. Which she does. Again. But she is still stuck in the loop. Probably the PCs are what will break it.

5. As for the Hunters, so they don't want to draw any undue attention. Okay.


Let me see what I can do with that.

So say everyone is hanging out at the diner with a bunch of locals. Each waiting for the other side to give themselves away (I assume Jovena doesn't know what the hunter's look like or she'd leave the diner as soon as she saw them). Eventually someone (maybe a little girl?id) asks Jovena for change for a dollar for the jukebox. She counts out four quarters without paying attention (she's worried about the hunters) and she of the kid drops one of the quaters and it rolls over to the booth with the hunters. Keven bends down and picks up the quarter for the little girl and freezes when he notices that its not a quarter but some similar sized coin from the future!

Keve draws his weapon, Phebe spills her coffee in a rush to draw hers, but but Jovena is faster and grabs a hostage. Put in a local Sheriff and Deputy on site for coffee and donuts and you got a three way standoff (they will care about the hostage even if the hunters don't). Everything is tense for a minute with everyone pointing weapons at each other (the cops brought guns to an laser fight). The PCs wondering just what they are supposed to do, and who to help, and then...

... a Reaper (or three) shows up due to the weakened timeline! Suddenly all sides have something more serious to worry about and have to deal with the Reaper threat. Everyone else at the diner panics (can you blame them?), Hunters and cops both start firing at the Reapers, and in the confusion Jovena hotwires a car and drives off. The hunters grab another vehicle (diner, film noir, how about an old red pickup truck, 80 years old with a million miles on it) anf give chase. The cops probably do the same. The PCs join in, plus some more Reapers (because Jovena and the Hunter are the source of the problem, and the Reapers will continue to show up until the problem is resolved).
Jovena is probably trying to lose the hunters long enough to do another time jump (BTW if she succeeds she random humps right back o the diner at the start of this -tHe loop was caused by her "hitting the lottery" and randomly getting the same space-time coordinates twice in a row). The HUnters know she's going to try to jump and don't want to give her the chance. They cops don't know any of that but there are several armed and dangerous folk running about, being chased by flying monsters, and the PCs have to try and make sense out of all of it.

Oh, and if things do turn out the way the GM want's the situation gets reset and the PCs get to go through it all over again but with a strange sense of deja vu.

So basically Groundhog Day meets Pulp Fiction in the Doctor Who Universe.

How's that?


Oh, and if you really want to go film noir with this you should set it back in the 1930s or 40s. That way diners are in thier heyday, everyone has got the dress and mannerisms to fit. The New York tough guy accent. Cigarettes (the time travllers will need to pick up a pack to keep from sticking out like a sore thumb). If you got 1940s you can even bring in the possibly (or just the threat of) Axis spies.

The PCs agency could have detected the damage timeline and sent the PCs to investigate (which in turn adds to the problem) so they are there trying to pass for locasl too, which measn they might get mistaken for Jovena or the Hunters.




P.S. FYI the Worcester Lunch Car Company used to make the trailer like diners you see in TV shows, and ship them around the country. SO the Northeast is still pretty much the capital of small diners. Oh, and if you use a Worcester Lunch Car design you'd have a standardized plan to work from.

[thewarchief]

WheW!

Lost internet connect when posting. Glad I didn't lose that to the internet.

[misterharry]

Jul 7, 2024 21:23:41 GMT Catsmate said:

Jul 6, 2024 23:49:37 GMT thewarchief said:

I thought that but once you see it you can't unsee it. Besides diners are not a UK thing, so Clara's diner stands out more.

True, though the UK's Motorway Services have some diner-esque locations and there are some places near ports that'd fit nicely.

American-style diners may not be commonplace in the UK, but we certainly have them. In fact, there's one down the road from me. One wouldn't stand out particularly over here.

[thewarchief]

Jul 8, 2024 9:01:39 GMT misterharry said:

True, though the UK's Motorway Services have some diner-esque locations and there are some places near ports that'd fit nicely.

American-style diners may not be commonplace in the UK, but we certainly have them. In fact, there's one down the road from me. One wouldn't stand out particularly over here.
[/quote]

Sorry, I might be wrong, don't think you do. You might have "American Style Diners" in the UK but you almost certainly don't have any American-style diners tht are like
a real diner. The real things aren't all that commonplace in the US anymore. Many are registered historical landmarks!


What most people think of as a diner today is some retro 1950s themed restaurant that features burgers and shakes, big spacious, brightly light, with lots of white (or chessboard pattern) tiles, 50s memorabilia, and faux neon lights in impossible modern colors. All very cheerful and fun. Not that there is anything wrong with that. But the OP mentioned film noir and those sorts of places aren't that. These places are like that because the owners want them to be like that. It's a selling point.


What is though are the old Lunch Car style Diners from the early 20th century. Those things with about the size of a railroad car and build on wheels so they could be moved to a site. Space was cramped since they had to fit in a lunch counter, row of seat,a half dozen booths, grill, a couple of refrigerators, and some storage space into it. Waitstaff is at a minimum (typically just the cook), and you literally have to walk up to the counter and place your order, and then the people eating at the counter either move out of your way or hand it to you when it's ready. The diner cars tended to be dark, being mostly stained wood, and somewhat dingy, lit by yellowed incandescent bulbs and/or florescent, which were a bit harsh. Most hand entrances on either end (one of which typically had a cigarette machine). Any neon signs are on the outside to attract customers, and one of the lighter either doesn't light up, is brighter than the rest, dimmer than the rest, flickers, or all of the above depending on what mood it';s in at any given time. Being old, most have had some repairs done, and there will be stools that don't match the rest, or broken tiles that have been replaced with new tiles that don't match. I've seen one where the wooden counter that they used to cut bread for toast got so worn that it was concave. Most are small "Mom & Pop" operations run by a family. Some have been expanded in larger restaurants. All have been around for about a century, probably twice as long as they were supposed to. Atmosphere wise it not cheerful and retro, more just a place where you can get decent home-style meals, often at all hours of the day. They sell far more breakfasts than burgers. Now there are other styles of building, but even they tend to be old. Many make a living because they are the only place to get a bite at two in the morning, or during a snowstorm. These places aren't like this by choice but by necessity. Necessity from a century ago. Relics of a bygone era. That's what I think of when I hear "diner".

I could be wrong, don't believe American-style diners are quite like that. I suspect they are probably 50s retor burgers & fries places like the diners we've seen on Doctor Who. Ones big enough to have a Elvis statue inside, next to the rest rooms (the Lucnh car diners didn't have public restrooms, nor ther space for them. Those that do added them on.).


For a Noir type adventure I think a dingy old diner works better than a 50s retro burger place. Even one of the remodeled expanded ones. It has a more depressing downbeat atmosphere that fits Film Noir genre better.

[misterharry]

Jul 8, 2024 13:11:29 GMT thewarchief said:

Sorry, I might be wrong, don't think you do. You might have "American Style Diners" in the UK but you almost certainly don't have any American-style diners tht are like
a real diner. The real things aren't all that commonplace in the US anymore. Many are registered historical landmarks!

This the one that's near me, based in an imported 1950s US diner car:

www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink/american-diner-derbyshire-crowned-best-7183830

As I said, not commonplace, but they aren't unknown here and probably wouldn't attract much undue attention.

[thewarchief]

Jul 8, 2024 13:35:18 GMT misterharry said:

Jul 8, 2024 13:11:29 GMT thewarchief said:

Sorry, I might be wrong, don't think you do. You might have "American Style Diners" in the UK but you almost certainly don't have any American-style diners tht are like
a real diner. The real things aren't all that commonplace in the US anymore. Many are registered historical landmarks!

This the one that's near me, based in an imported 1950s US diner car:

www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/whats-on/food-drink/american-diner-derbyshire-crowned-best-7183830

As I said, not commonplace, but they aren't unknown here and probably wouldn't attract much undue attention.

Sweet! Much more like the real deal than I expected. I used to live right off a street with three such places. I'm in the northeast and lived in Worcester, Massachusetts,  where most of these cars were made (at least most of the ones in the area). So I've been in quite a few. I was a regular customer in three or four, including this one.
link


BTW, thinking about it, the "cafe" where the 7th Doctor has his moral dilemma over using sugar in Remembrance of the Daleks is closer in tone to a real diner. Basically just a place to eat, and not much else.

[misterharry]

Jul 8, 2024 13:44:19 GMT thewarchief said:

BTW, thinking about it, the "cafe" where the 7th Doctor has his moral dilemma over using sugar in Remembrance of the Daleks is closer in tone to a real diner. Basically just a place to eat, and not much else.

Ah yes - that's what us locals call a greasy spoon (though I think that's an American term too). A large mug of strong tea and a bacon sandwich (or perhaps a full English breakfast). There are still plenty of them around, though many will have fallen by the wayside due to more recent food hygiene regulations!

[thewarchief]

Jul 8, 2024 13:52:40 GMT misterharry said:

Jul 8, 2024 13:44:19 GMT thewarchief said:

BTW, thinking about it, the "cafe" where the 7th Doctor has his moral dilemma over using sugar in Remembrance of the Daleks is closer in tone to a real diner. Basically just a place to eat, and not much else.

Ah yes - that's what us locals call a greasy spoon (though I think that's an American term too). A large mug of strong tea and a bacon sandwich (or perhaps a full English breakfast). There are still plenty of them around, though many will have fallen by the wayside due to more recent food hygiene regulations!

Bingo! :"reasy Spoon" is exactly what people think of when the word "diner" is used in the US. It just that in the last few decades fast food places lowered the bar and diners are now a step up over a McDonalds or Burger King.

Truck Stop is a similar type of place with a similar reputation. Truck Stops are places where truck drivers can stop for food and rest, especially at odd hours of the day. Basically a diner with a parking area big enough to accommodate tractor trailers. . In the US a lot of freight is transported on large (18 wheel) trucks rather than by rail. So there is a culture and support structure around it.

I did not expect Brits to be aware of the term "greasy spoon" let alone use it. Then again most Brits I see on Youtube don't know the origin of the term "riding shotgun." although the use it.

[Catsmate]

Jul 8, 2024 0:37:22 GMT thewarchief said:

Any old Port in a Storm

One of my points about ports is that apparently they don't have to be on the coast anymore.

I know that becuase there is now a Port of Worcester in Worcester Massachusetts. Now Worcester is about 50 miles (80 km) from Boston, but the railroad runs throuh Worcester so they take shipping from Boston, send it to Worcester and customs inspects it there. I don't know exactly why they did it that way, but I also don't know why they can't do something like that elsewhere in the country.

Post-Brexit the UK started constructing new facilities for examining imports, including enormous truck parks. It has been an unmitigated disaster.

Jul 8, 2024 0:37:22 GMT thewarchief said:

So you could set up a "port" somewhere off the beaten track for all this to take place at. Just put it near a railroad track so they can move stuff in and out. And in the US we have a lot of semis to shift freight.

True. I hadn't thought about rail links.

Jul 8, 2024 0:37:22 GMT thewarchief said:

Now onto Other points (numbered for convenience):

Jovena:
1. Alright she's here strictly by chance (unless you have some unidentified NPC pulling her strings, but even then it would look random to us until you want to point clues at them).
2. Okay so she has a shimmer or something else that does something similar, but the Hunters have tech to detect and counter that, but Jovena has tech that detects and counters their counter tech, so basically all the tech cancels out and were back to doing things the old fashioned way.Great expect that the only ones who know that are them. Pity you can have then frustrated smacking their tech on the countertop when it doesn't work.
3. As for what caused the weakspot, IMO it's probabably a case of their all going over the same ground too many times. Like she goes back, then they go back, then she changes things and goes back again, so they do, etc.etc.etc.etc. oops time breaks.
4. As a for the effect on Jovena, I think she still get's alted with the timeline, but for some reason she is still aware of what happened, what supposed to happen, what she wants to happen and so can try to go back and change things. Again. Which she does. Again. But she is still stuck in the loop. Probably the PCs are what will break it.

1. I do rather like your idea that she was sent here deliberately. But, as you say, it'd look random.
2. Ah, bench-thumping in the great Whovian tradition.
3. Exactly. Nothing like a minor predestination paradox to remind players that time travel follows four dimensional rules.
4. I like the loop idea. BTW, on a related note, have you ever read Kuttner's The Transgressor?

Jul 8, 2024 0:37:22 GMT thewarchief said:

5. As for the Hunters, so they don't want to draw any undue attention. Okay.


Let me see what I can do with that.

So say everyone is hanging out at the diner with a bunch of locals. Each waiting for the other side to give themselves away (I assume Jovena doesn't know what the hunter's look like or she'd leave the diner as soon as she saw them). Eventually someone (maybe a little girl?id) asks Jovena for change for a dollar for the jukebox. She counts out four quarters without paying attention (she's worried about the hunters) and she of the kid drops one of the quaters and it rolls over to the booth with the hunters. Keven bends down and picks up the quarter for the little girl and freezes when he notices that its not a quarter but some similar sized coin from the future!

My assumption was that Jovena rapidly assumed the pair were hunting her, but wasn't sure, and didn't know what resources the had. They'd isolated the diner and surrounding with a fairly weak force field (à la Invasion) so she cannot escape and tries to bluff things, perhaps diverting their attention to someone else or otherwsie get the drop on them.
Wrt teh quarters (or fifty pence coins in the UK ) Jovena may have made a mistake in faking them.

Jul 8, 2024 0:37:22 GMT thewarchief said:

Keve draws his weapon, Phebe spills her coffee in a rush to draw hers, but but Jovena is faster and grabs a hostage. Put in a local Sheriff and Deputy on site for coffee and donuts and you got a three way standoff (they will care about the hostage even if the hunters don't). Everything is tense for a minute with everyone pointing weapons at each other (the cops brought guns to an laser fight). The PCs wondering just what they are supposed to do, and who to help, and then...

I like it!

Jul 8, 2024 0:37:22 GMT thewarchief said:

... a Reaper (or three) shows up due to the weakened timeline! Suddenly all sides have something more serious to worry about and have to deal with the Reaper threat. Everyone else at the diner panics (can you blame them?), Hunters and cops both start firing at the Reapers, and in the confusion Jovena hotwires a car and drives off. The hunters grab another vehicle (diner, film noir, how about an old red pickup truck, 80 years old with a million miles on it) anf give chase. The cops probably do the same. The PCs join in, plus some more Reapers (because Jovena and the Hunter are the source of the problem, and the Reapers will continue to show up until the problem is resolved).

OK, you'd need to deal with the hunters' force field but just hand-wave that the Reaper overloaded it in the traditional cloud of sparks.
Cue car chase. Excellent.

Jul 8, 2024 0:37:22 GMT thewarchief said:

Jovena is probably trying to lose the hunters long enough to do another time jump (BTW if she succeeds she random humps right back o the diner at the start of this -tHe loop was caused by her "hitting the lottery" and randomly getting the same space-time coordinates twice in a row). The HUnters know she's going to try to jump and don't want to give her the chance. They cops don't know any of that but there are several armed and dangerous folk running about, being chased by flying monsters, and the PCs have to try and make sense out of all of it.

I like the idea that all the time travellers are predestined to return to the diner, replacing their 'previous' selves.

Jul 8, 2024 0:37:22 GMT thewarchief said:

Oh, and if things do turn out the way the GM want's the situation gets reset and the PCs get to go through it all over again but with a strange sense of deja vu.

So basically Groundhog Day meets Pulp Fiction in the Doctor Who Universe.

How's that?

Excellent!

Jul 8, 2024 0:37:22 GMT thewarchief said:

Oh, and if you really want to go film noir with this you should set it back in the 1930s or 40s. That way diners are in thier heyday, everyone has got the dress and mannerisms to fit. The New York tough guy accent. Cigarettes (the time travllers will need to pick up a pack to keep from sticking out like a sore thumb). If you got 1940s you can even bring in the possibly (or just the threat of) Axis spies.

The PCs agency could have detected the damage timeline and sent the PCs to investigate (which in turn adds to the problem) so they are there trying to pass for locasl too, which measn they might get mistaken for Jovena or the Hunters.

I hadn't though of that, but as you say it'd match the ambience.
BTW I tracked down someone that was bugging me; subconsciously I must have remembered Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?

Jul 8, 2024 0:37:22 GMT thewarchief said:

P.S. FYI the Worcester Lunch Car Company used to make the trailer like diners you see in TV shows, and ship them around the country. SO the Northeast is still pretty much the capital of small diners. Oh, and if you use a Worcester Lunch Car design you'd have a standardized plan to work from.

I remember reading about the Night Lunch Wagons and filing it away in my Notes.

[Catsmate]

Jul 8, 2024 0:38:06 GMT thewarchief said:

WheW!

Lost internet connect when posting. Glad I didn't lose that to the internet.

That's always annoying. I recommend using an external editor, pasting it in and formatting it; sometimes the forum eats my posts.

[Catsmate]

And, as a useful resource for this scenario, here is a diner floorplan I found on seemingly defunct an RPG resource website, the entry is here.

[thewarchief]

Jul 8, 2024 21:29:14 GMT Catsmate said:

OK, you'd need to deal with the hunters' force field but just hand-wave that the Reaper overloaded it in the traditional cloud of sparks.

Yeah, or the Reapers manifest inside the force field, and Keve drops its because it's now trapping him.

Jul 8, 2024 21:29:14 GMT Catsmate said:

OK
I like the idea that all the time travellers are predestined to return to the diner, replacing their 'previous' selves.

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Yeah, they have no way out. I assume that the an outside factor being an outside factor breaks the loop. I figure the Reapers are out of the loop and different ones come to feed each time the loop resets, and causes more damage. Like chumming the waters. So what happens to/with them is one of the things that can break the loop. MAybe the PCs can too, if you assume that they are coming into things on the second or later run through.

Oh, and I'd suggest coming up with three or four loosely defined acceptable endings and stop the adventure when one of them happens. Like:
1. Jovena escapes, hunters persue.
2. Jovena is killed; hunters claim body and leave.
3. The hunters are killed.
4. Both Jovena and the hunters are killed (one hunter just resets the loop)
5. A reaper comes into contact with some anachronistic tech (a shimmer, or some scanner, a laser pistol) and shorts it out while vanishing. Next time through the loop the item doesn't function and you play through as if the item didn't work.


href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_the_Real_Martian_Please_Stand_Up%3F"]Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?[/a][/quote]

I was thinking of that Twilight Zone episode (it's where I got the cops), but didn't go that way because you wanted a normal diner and not one run by a three eyed alien. But, we could borrow from another Twilight Zone episode with a diner. What if there is some sort of fortune teller machine on the counter and booths and every time you play through the encounter you either get the same exact fortunes (with the associated deja vu) or completely new ones (that point to a way top break the loop)?

[Catsmate]

Jul 8, 2024 22:02:20 GMT thewarchief said:

Jul 8, 2024 21:29:14 GMT Catsmate said:

OK, you'd need to deal with the hunters' force field but just hand-wave that the Reaper overloaded it in the traditional cloud of sparks.

Yeah, or the Reapers manifest inside the force field, and Keve drops its because it's now trapping him.

That'd work.

Jul 8, 2024 22:02:20 GMT thewarchief said:

Jul 8, 2024 21:29:14 GMT Catsmate said:

OK
I like the idea that all the time travellers are predestined to return to the diner, replacing their 'previous' selves.

This reminds me of a scenario idea I had involving a safety-deposit box robbery that Goes Horribly Wrong when the thieves encounter a former Torchwood operative's private stash and get time looped.

Jul 8, 2024 22:02:20 GMT thewarchief said:

Yeah, they have no way out. I assume that the an outside factor being an outside factor breaks the loop. I figure the Reapers are out of the loop and different ones come to feed each time the loop resets, and causes more damage. Like chumming the waters. So what happens to/with them is one of the things that can break the loop. MAybe the PCs can too, if you assume that they are coming into things on the second or later run through.

That makes a lot of sense to me.
And reminds me it's time to look at the Yithians and Tindalosi and their places in the Whoniverse.

Jul 8, 2024 22:02:20 GMT thewarchief said:

Oh, and I'd suggest coming up with three or four loosely defined acceptable endings and stop the adventure when one of them happens. Like:
1. Jovena escapes, hunters persue.
2. Jovena is killed; hunters claim body and leave.
3. The hunters are killed.
4. Both Jovena and the hunters are killed (one hunter just resets the loop)
5. A reaper comes into contact with some anachronistic tech (a shimmer, or some scanner, a laser pistol) and shorts it out while vanishing. Next time through the loop the item doesn't function and you play through as if the item didn't work.

Excellent suggestions. Of course there's the added, potential, complication of two time machines and a lot of twonkies floating around. Might someone through in with Jovena and help her kill her pursuers?

Jul 8, 2024 22:02:20 GMT thewarchief said:

Jul 8, 2024 21:29:14 GMT Catsmate said:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_the_Real_Martian_Please_Stand_Up%3F"]Will the Real Martian Please Stand Up?

I was thinking of that Twilight Zone episode (it's where I got the cops), but didn't go that way because you wanted a normal diner and not one run by a three eyed alien. But, we could borrow from another Twilight Zone episode with a diner. What if there is some sort of fortune teller machine on the counter and booths and every time you play through the encounter you either get the same exact fortunes (with the associated deja vu) or completely new ones (that point to a way top break the loop)?

That was the one with Shatner wasn't it? There seem to have been a lot of Diners in the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits.

[thewarchief]

Jul 10, 2024 21:50:57 GMT Catsmate said:

That was the one with Shatner wasn't it?


It was one of the Shatner episodes, yes. He did appear in two.

Jul 10, 2024 21:50:57 GMT Catsmate said:

There seem to have been a lot of Diners in the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits.

A sign of the times. Diners, along with drug stores, were the fast food places before there really were fast food places. So they show up a lot in shows from the 50s and 60s, especially if people were travelling, because that is where you'd be able to stop for a quick bite.

You see a lot of phone booths in older shows too. There was a time when most people had to go to the corner store to make (or receive) a phone call. Or go to the library to look something up.