 March 4, 2013 - 6:05pm | I was thinking about the story Alive where the plain for those soccer players crashed in the Andes and they ate the dead to survive. Never did understand why they just didn't hike down the mountain but I was thinking this might work as a story in the Frontier- ship misjumps and suffers other engineering difficutlies and survivors are forced to eat the dead. Immediately after thinking of that a movie I watched from the roof of a van at a drive in theater suddenly came to ming: The Thing. So the story is that the survivors were eaten but by some life form like the Thing that then doppleganged them. Sole survivor gets taken back to the Frontier and naturally chaos ensues. or the ship crashes and there is a sathar listening post and the handful of sathar are as per some recent discussion the types that like to suck bodily fluids out of victims and use their hypnotism ability to compel willing victims. As I type this I'm remined of the Original Star Trek episode where the creature sucked all the salt out of victims- not half as gruesome as the above but in the same vein. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 March 4, 2013 - 6:49pm | I think most players would prefer The Thing as a plot rather than Alive. Whenever the plot uses the phrase "force the characters," (You used the phrase, "survivors are forced,") it removes player agency and tends to be despised by the players. You're supposed to help your characters become heroes, not victims. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
March 5, 2013 - 4:38am | Alive would suck for the players to play out though the new guy in the old school run through of the original modules talked about the dralasite pirate he chopped up with an ax as being chopped so good he was going to get some batter from the kitchen and make some dralasite McNuggets so I dont know maybe. I would use the Alive scenario as a set up. Its happened to other people and the PCs are trying to figure out what happened for whatever reason or that they are now trying to survive after the survivors were picked up. Another wrinkle ala Serenity- reaver madness is on the survivors of the Alive experience for some reason and they suddenly snap and become bent on torture, rape, eating, sewing your skin into their clothes and then killing you. This theme, now that I think of it has been very popular in Sci-fi though it does not seem to have become cliche yet. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 5, 2013 - 5:50am | come to think of it most monster movies are a variation on this theme- werewolf either kills and eats you or you turn into a werewolf, vampire kills you or turns you into one, Frankenstien adds a wrinkle in that the killing part is done by the monster and the reproduction part is done by the mad scientist, Dr Jekyle and Mr Hyde the turning into part is done by the guy to himself and is always a potential threat but I rarely remember it being used as a threat instead they rift on Jack the Ripper with Mr Hyde. some monsters are just looking to consume though if a mummy can be made once it can be made again and the monster from the black lagoon carrying off the beautiful girl in a bathing suit has tons of sexual overtones (and by extention reproducing the monster) that a modern remake would not fail to include The Alien and Species series followed this theme and I'm sure that there are others that are not coming to mind write now. Predators are of the gonna kill and eat you variety except they substitute mutilation and dismemberment for consuming but in a way the taking of a skull trophy is a type of consuming. The Thing has been mentioned. Zombie movies fall into this The new wrinkle is to take the classic monsters and humanize them more- Were wolves and vampires have been done to death with that so that they are now teen heart throbs and who's going to get the girl? the werewolf or the vampire. I saw prevues for some sort of zombie movie where a living girl and a zombie boy fall for each other- it had a Edward Scissorhands vibe to it. Clearly these monster movies aren't the classic monster trope anymore. I suppose a phychologist would have something to say about the universal themes in moster stories about the fear of being consumed by, taken over by or turned into by some hideous malovent creature. I can just imagine what Freud would say or rather what he'd fixate on- the whole consuming and reproduction thing would be right up his pet theory alley. This has got me thinking about themes of fear and such ala monster trope for Star Frontiers. I've never actually played or read Ravenloft though I've gotten the feeling that people felt like the property had been done to death by the IP owners and the the best ever was the first. I will have to perhaps dig up a PDF of the classic module and read it to analyze it for writing a monster trope adventure. The problem I see with this sort of adventure and this problem is probably the reason there is only one famous horror module, the afore mentioned Ravenloft, is that its tough to raise tension in an RPG campaign. 1. campaign stretches over may weeks and stopping the game to meet again next week will immediately break any tension that you worked up. 2. Not much fear of death- if it happens its quite removed and there is always a resurection spell (or freeze feild) though some systems like Shadowrun revel in the fragility of PC life and character creation happens often. 3. You can kill NPCs and red shits but that is expected. 4. the general trend in rpgs is that PCs fight and kill a monster then move on for this sort of horror you need the monster to kill the PCs outright, maliciously, and do perverted things to them like eat them or reproduce with them such that new monsters burst out of their chest or whatever and this doesn't really sound like a fun nights gaming with your buddies especially when the perverted stuff starts happening to your character. What does need to happen is: A. that the monster(s) need to not be revealed too soon; this is one method of how tension is heightened in a movie- you only get little glimpses of it till the big reveal close to the end and climax. B. if it can be killed early its not much of a threat though the relentless horde of aliens in the movie Aliens was kind of scary back then and they did get mowed down C. it almost needs to be a relentless opponent that keeps coming back somehow through the whole module till the cornering in a boss encounter. perhaps he has an ability to get away and it takes the PCs tracking him to his layer and cornering him- then the adventure becomes an investigation and can you solve the mystery of where fast enough before he kills too many people. I miss anything? EDIT: I did some reading up on Raveloft (wikipedia and the actual module) looks like fun- wish we had played this one back in the day. found this link with elements of a gothic novel http://www.virtualsalt.com/gothic.htm I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 March 5, 2013 - 11:19am | 2. Not much fear of death- if it happens its quite removed and there is
always a resurection spell (or freeze feild) though some systems like
Shadowrun revel in the fragility of PC life and character creation
happens often. This is completely an aside but this and a few other comments made me immediately think of Sandy Peterson, who I only know indirectly. He wrote the original Call of Cuthulu RPG and later went on to work on the Doom series of computer games. I never played with him as a GM but apparently there was a great fear of death in his games. The box cover of the original version of the Arkham Horror board game was based on a scene from one of his games. I know the two people playing the characters depicted on the cover. They were visiting an injured party member in the hospital and Sandy unleased the hordes destroying the wing of the hospital trying to get them. (Apparently the male character, played by my old high school GM who originally introduced Sandy Peterson and Tracy Hickman to role-playing back before D&D ever came out, had managed to slip through several of Sandy's well laid traps and he was gunning for him.) Sandy apparently had no qualms killing you off if you messed up and took every opportunity to try to do so. And all the people that have played with him that I've talked to said he ran games very well and everyone had fun. So it can be done but probably takes the right GM and the right group to pull it off completely. 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 |
March 6, 2013 - 9:36am | I guess I'm influence by some table top groups I played with- one in particular played D&D 3.5 and have this over arching mission of we're going to play this character to level 20 which I came to realize meant no PC death or rather no permanent PC death. That was the most frustrating group I played with because 3.5 limits you to one combat a night and exp is earned for only combat (the good ol days of exp for gold are past in the realms of 3rd edtion) This meant an excrusiation 2+ years of Monday nights playing a glacial slow system trying to not quote annoying children saying, "Are we there yet!" At one point I started trying to die by dancing my monk into the hottest part of combat unsupported and taking on the most dangerous opponent but came through pretty much unscathed except for the loss of a few hitpoints. A little bit after that I became apathetic and eventually quit the group. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 6, 2013 - 11:22am | I've never played in a game where it was hard to kill off characters. Quite the opposite. Mostly my fantasy gaming has been in RuneQuest (or a modified version there of) and when you only have about 20 HP and weapons do 1-20 pts of damage (before armor) and a good hit in the head can kill you with only 5-10 points of damage you can die quickly if you're not careful. We tried to avoid combat when at all possible (of course it helps when the system promotes character advancement through skill use and not XP accumulated through combat). My first character died in a mortal stuggle with battle demons (aka Xenomorphs from Alien movies). He put on a cursed ring tha summoned two new ones every five rounds (1 minute). He managed to take 4 of them with him and seriously wound a fifth before he died. I think 10 were summoned in all before he died and the summoning stopped  .I don't remember how my second character died. I don't remember much about that character at all actually. (of course it was 20+ years ago). But knowing how my characters go out it was probably equally greusome. Third charcter was retired alive after several years of campaigning. Fourth character ignored the warnings of a ghost trying to stop him from going down a passage, stepped on a pressure plate, and had a 10 ton stone block dropped on his head. Fifth character was retired as well. At this point I had gotten married and was in the process of moving away to grad school although I doubt this character would have met a gruesome end. Like character 3 he was a wizard and I tended to be a little more careful with my wizards. Our DM didn't have any problems killing us off if we did stupid things. We typically averaged a character death every few sessions. It was a dangerous world. Plus with about a dozen players there were just more chances for mishaps. Looking back on it with years of hindsight, while we loved our characters, the game was really much more about the story and the actors (PC's) came and went. 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 |
March 6, 2013 - 3:06pm | Superpowered characters with an inability to die has been a common complaint of the system in WOTC's hands. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 March 7, 2013 - 5:47pm | Well when your 5th level character has +22 to combat it is a little hard to not miss the enemy and slay them in droves. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 March 8, 2013 - 8:17pm | Just don't add any anime horror to the game scenario. I want to be tenticle raped, no player ever said. The only PC deaths I've even been involved with were in Battletech. We played more for the stompy robots but gave every mech pilot a name and played them as a character. From mechs popping up over a building only to have the head and cockpit removed by fire from an AC/20, to the light scout mech cut in half by an AC/20. Needless to say the AC/20 became the weapon of terror and dread. In every age, in every place, the deeds of men remain the same. |
March 9, 2013 - 4:18pm | Come to think of it, the highest PC death game that i've ever played was Car Wars. I bought the game, used four sheets of graph paper that I already hand on hand (thank you D&D) and made an arena and invited two friends over to play (I refereed). One friend "killed" the other car then got out and walked over and shot the other PC in the head. That pretty much set the stage for Car Wars in my neighborhood after that. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 11, 2013 - 6:28pm | Has no one ever played Paranoia? Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
March 11, 2013 - 7:53pm | I wish I had when I was younger. It looks like fun. But these days I don't have a face-to-face group and finding anyone to actually fulfill a campaign online is essentially impossible. It's one game, then poof, usually because someone else sees that a group is available that night (or was a part of that night) and posts a game for the same night and time to get participants, then the previous game gets forgotten and no one ever gets back to it. That was both a recent experience and an expreience some while back. People on the internet are like ADHD children. Nothing holds their interest long enough to disregard interlopers. And yet it was the two ADHD people who stuck around to continue the previous game the following week last time. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
March 16, 2013 - 4:04pm | Has no one ever played Paranoia? I finally obtained a copy of Paranoia back in 2005 plus some interesting modules (Hill Sector Blues was one and it has some nice maps of a dome city that I always thought would be good for SF) I had always been curious about this game from all the interesting looking ads in Dragon Mag. I read it and thought it was rather inspired in concept and probably ideal for light hearted beer and pretzels gaming with other adults. Clearly the game lends itself to over the top play and is not to be taken seriously. Which would be a lot of fun, especially when it comes to summary execution of fellow party members when they prove themselves to be disloyal mutant commies or witness something you dont want reported back to the computer. I would expect it to be a fun diversion for a group for one module at a time ie 3-5 sessions then move onto something else only to come back to the game months latter with new characters or with the same if any of the previous characters didn't burn through too many of their clones due to all the various summary executions that end up going on due to whim of the computer or back stabbing of the party members. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 17, 2013 - 10:41am | I've owned Paranoia since I was a kid but never really ran a game with the system. The green and red dice that came with it are still my main pair of d10s that I use all the time though. 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 |
