 February 5, 2012 - 8:14pm | I am working on a murder mystery adventure along the lines of Murder on the Orient Express. Basic story is there is a new Cruise Ship called the Princess Madeline. It's owner is a very rich being. He/she goes on the maiden voyage. There will be all sorts of npc's. Rich, travellers, crew, entertainers, new beings. The pc's are hired for securityby the owner. During the voyage the owner shows up dead. It is the job of the pc's to figure out who did it. I have been workng on deck plans for a cruise ship. Slow going on that. I am going to roll up a list of primary npc's and a list of secondary ones. The list will have a table so that the gm can roll to see who is the actuall killer before the game starts. This way the game can be reused with a different killer/killers and can be used again with out giving away the who dunnit. There will be background info for the primary npc's and their motivations on why they would want the rich being dead. This adventure would be more intelligence gathering rathar than fighting. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas that might help? |
 February 5, 2012 - 8:58pm | check out the deck plans for the Truane's Star Express that I uploaded to the deck plans projects. It was a HS 17 star liner IIRC. I did the same thing and the murderer was a hull scraper (gelatinous cube reworked for a Sci-fi setting) with a red herring of a glass etching artist who was transporting a 55 gal. drum of acid in the cargo hold so that after a few deaths by acid the PCs discovered this but ruled it out as the acid was chemically different. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 6, 2012 - 3:05am | Thanks Jedion. I will check it out. |
February 6, 2012 - 3:25am | Jedion, Thank you for the reference. I looked at the deck plans. They a very good. I need to learn how to do that. Also I found your thread and It has given me some good ides. I seem to have followed your path down this adventure. |
February 6, 2012 - 6:27am | Murder on the Orient Express is a classic and the central theme has broad appeal even if you've never watched it and dont already know the who dunnit. Of course in my game, nobody dunnit, a creature did it. I think that it would be worth revisiting this theme. A couple of things 1. the train actually gets snow bound and this gives the detective the time to discover the truth, otherwise the train would have made the station and the murderer would have gotten away (or that was the fear). In mine I treated void space like hyper space in Star Wars- time was spent in void space based on the number of light years travelled, this gave time for the death to occur and time for investigation. Its amazing how an impeding deadline puts pressure to solve. Dont forget to play that up. Have a GM's timeline of when events are going to happen and track time since the players dont have all the time in the world. In a classic dungeon crawl the Players can take all the time they want but not the same in this sort of an adventure. I like to throw in a little crisis here and there to distract and shake things up. 2. in Agatha Cristies story everyone dunnit. All the suspects took a turn at plunging the knife into the victim. Something you can do is upon medical examination of the body its determined that the multiple knife thrusts were of differing depth and angles and some were with sonic, vibro and regular knives. Should be enough clues that the players should figure out that multiple people stabbed the victim. Then the mission is to figure out who had motive. Since the story is a classic you have to expect that some players will have seen it so some NPCs have to be innocent and some guilty. EXP awards are based on nailling the 4-5 who are guilty. 3. Like in the classic story the victim could be a dispicable criminal and the PC's though discovering the truth may decide to let things ride. They still get high exp in this case, whether the expose the murderers or not is not about exp but about in setting consequences. Finally, dont do this adventure with players who are one trick ponies where the one trick is to shoot first and ask about EXP later. This sort of thing requires a lot of role play. In fact WotC would reject it for consideration as a module because it doesn't have the specified number of combats, a Boss encounter, a skill challenge and etc. from their list of things they look for in a module submission. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 19, 2012 - 3:19am | Content of Star Frontiersman project Hull ScrapersBy [[Larry Moore]] Scrapers are translucent creatures with no apparent brain or organs. It looks and acts like a single prokaryotic cell. They come in many shapes and sizes; most resembling a 1.5 meter cube, rectangular, cylindrical shape or whatever they squeezed through in the last ten minutes (they retain their shape for a time before plumping out back into their natural shape).  They can dissolve any living organism quite hastily. Small creatures are dissolved in about 100 turns or 10 minutes. Only when a large creature, up to 75% of its mass, is engulfed the scraper stops to digest its meal, taking 200 turns or 20 minutes. After digesting a victim scrapers secrete a residue ball spitting it, (sounds like a pop) in a random direction up to 10 meters. The sticky ball adheres to almost anything.Scrapers are kept away from ships consumables by resonating sonic fields around the room. Due to the expense of sonic resonation inside a ships hull they are typically not installed in passenger or crew areas. Scrapers will attack the nearest creature, attempting to engulf it and is oblivious to ranged attacks not knowing where the source is coming from. For unknown reasons Dralasites have been known to be repulsive. Most are able to walk away with nothing more than minor acid burns. Since their feeding does not include electronics, plastics, rubbers or metal they are often used to clean the innards of ships, those hard-to-reach spots and hidden nooks. As mentioned above they leave balls of sticky droppings that mark their path. Biometric scanning devices are outrageously expensive, even for the wealthiest captain and it’s been near impossible to attach tracking devices, needles to say scrapers must be removed before flight lest the passengers and crew become food. Fortunately maintenance techs accidentally discovered a way to lure the creatures out. A mixture of Vruskian Bung-Beetle Cake, Dralasite Foglob Pudding, Human Escargot Sauce (with snail) and a sprinkle of Yazirian Ponjo Ale bring the beasties running. Well...if you call 10 meters per turn running.
Author’s Note: This creature was designed using the FrontierSpace™ Referee Creature Creation document.
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February 19, 2012 - 3:28am | Here is my outline - feel free to pawn. ;-)
 Anyway.... that's what I'm working up. |
