 July 30, 2010 - 4:20pm | I'd like to see something like; Murder on the Truane's Star Express A who done it adventure for 2 to 4 characters. woot posted this once and rather than resurrect and old thread I'll post it here. biggest hurtle to writing this adventure that I had was that my original table top adventure was on a massive 20 deck star liner inspired by a big ocean liner. I used full sized maps and miniatures and it was unweildly. Well poking through old thread looking for something I noticed this comment from the robow00t and it struck me that you just dont need a huge liner, even something frigate size would work 1. frigate size will accomodate like 70 or so personalities, crew and passengers, though I had about 30 to track in the original adventure. (and Agatha Cristie mystery seems to have about 6-8 suspects. 2. a frigate can in therory land on a planet which could be useful in this or further adventures having recently caught the end of murder on the orient express then watched another story by Agatha Cristie I also come to a conclusion about this adventure: As per the Agatha Cristie style: most every one present must have a motive to kill the victim and the bulk of the adventure is eliminating the red herrings almost like a RPG version of the game Clue (Professor Vrusk in the engine room with the laser welder...) Further considerations: its called the Truane's Star Express because it doesn't stop in Dixon's star but just passes thru while the astrogator works up a jump solution for Truane's sTar. This gives the PCs about 5-7 days or so to solve the murder. and it may be the best way to run this adventure may be not as a party but each Player is out for them self- pretty much like a game of clue. I'm thinking that a Gm will have to have a bunch of encounter cards on hand to hand out to a player when they ask the right question of an NPC or investigate the right detail. The card will have a paragraph for the player to read before handing it back. the paragraph is a clue or bit of NPC dialogue. miniatures or counters or even paper standies are moved around the ships decks and players may move also and quiz NPCs in there location but they cant talk to people who are sleeping etc. on top of that other events happen according to a time line. passenger's panic and try to storm the life boat and must be stopped. animal gets loose in the cargo hold. sabotage? etc. The key thing here is the deck plans: they need to be small and managable but still believable as a star liner Edit: a more managable scheme for running this game might be several decks scaled down so that 4 fit on an 8.5 X 11 paper and that paper is mounted on cork (or maybe even foam core) then tape little flags onto pins with NPC and PC names. Color code the flags blue for crew, yellow for passengers, red for players. keep it to 6 or 7 crew and maybe 20 or less passengers and the PCs. there is a reward for who solves the murder and the players can work together or separate for this. exp points awarded thus 1 for slack investigation 2 for active investigation 3 for solving the crime. In game reward is a cash award. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
July 30, 2010 - 4:27pm | Running the adventure: 1 or 2 players: they could take the role of security officer and medical officer in the crew. or even a "space marshal" or Star law agent on holiday or a pair of agents traveling somewhere as part of the job..... 3-5 players: the crew thing breaks down a little but they could still be crew and service personel but should not be in a position with high time demands like the astrogator. However they could be corporate merc catching a company ride and asked to solve the mystery before they put into port for whatever reason. they could be also passengers that because they were playing poker in the cassino and monitored by camera during the murder they are thus excluded and they for some odd reason are recruited to investigate. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 July 30, 2010 - 6:03pm | Alternatively try using cards for locations. When a player announces where he is going you hand him the appropriate card and it's placed face-up in front of the player. Rooms on the deck plan have a number/letter that corresponds to a card. You need a number of cards for each location = to the number of players (or use poker chip colors on the card and in front of each character that is in the same room). Other scenarios;
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July 30, 2010 - 8:24pm | I think the cards will work. I made a simple table here. (View/print cards) For each deck, lay the cards from left to right. This assumes the ships has a perpendicular deck plan. Example;
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 July 30, 2010 - 10:06pm | Looks interesting although I'd prefer a map myself. BTW, when I go to the page with your table, there are links to the various rooms. Clicking on them brings me to a page that says I'm not authorized to view the page (even though I was logged in to the DWD site). Also, half of the text telling my I'm not authorized appears under the DWD logo in the upper left. I can see the bottom half of the letters (so I knew what they said) but the top half is under the logo. (Firefox 3.6.8 on Redhat Enterprise Linux 5) Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
July 31, 2010 - 1:57pm | Errr... we are still working on the permissions (the d100 Table content isn't ready for public consumption). Can you email a screenshot? The links to the rooms are for editing the table entry, there is no further information. Since I created the table I'm the only one able to edit. At this time we are still working out how to handle site permissions. For example do we want others to contribute to the table but only edit their own entries? Should it be all private and members can comment on the table and make suggested entries? Should it be all open, anyone can add/edit/delete. Dunno. Any suggestions? Eventually we'll have several tools on the site and this all need to be figured out. :-) |
