Advice on a Disaster Scenario

[dayriff]

I've decided that I want to open the first session of my new Traveller game with a little man-vs.-nature conflict. I want to start off with something exciting to let the players stretch their PCs a little, and I think that dealing with the harsh and uncaring universe makes a better Traveller introduction than combat. I'd like suggestions on extra complications to add and ways to make the scenario more exciting.

SITUATION: The PCs are traveling by train (or some ground system) on a TL-15 vacuum world of about 6 million people. The entire planet is a tomb-world that was once inhabited by an alien race that died as their atmosphere was slowly stripped away. There are ruins everywhere on the planet. I am going to exercise my GM perogative and declare that they were visiting a particularly interesting ruin far away from the main settlements that is a bit of a tourist destination. It's off the beaten path, anyway. Suddenly there is a massive explosion and the vehicle on its side. The emergency lights flicker on and the vehicle's AI steward system starts to give instructions before fading off in mid-word. A man starts screaming hysterically. From somewhere in the compartment comes the hiss of precious air slowly leaking out into the vacuum.

ME: (after description) What do you do?!

Additional details:

1) The explosion is probably the work of one of the many enemies the PCs made in character generation, or maybe the work of an enemy of one of the other passengers. Still, I'd like to leave enough ambiguity that they can't be totally sure without an investigation. So emergency supplies that have been "negligently" not properly upkept is okay. Open sabotage like slashed open vacc suits I'd like to avoid.

2) There are emergency vacc suits somewhere in the compartment, but the PCs will have to either make intelligence rolls to remember the safety briefing or look around a little to find them.

2a) However, there is an alien on board who can't possibly fit in one of the vacc suits. Will the PCs try to save it? (And possibly gain an Ally.)

3) The other passengers are likely to do something silly/counterproductive if the PCs do not calm them down and/or provide leadership. What silly thing should they do?

4) I'd like to encourage the PCs to move out of the train and be forced to go take shelter in the alien ruins. I'd thought that perhaps the engine on the vehicle is going to explode, or maybe there are solar flares going on and the ruined vehicle can't provide the proper radiation shielding any longer. Other ideas?

5) Some of the alien ruins might have long-sealed air inside and/or interesting things to find. One of the PCs is an archeologist.

What other complications can I throw at them? How long can I reasonably delay rescue or what complications could make sure rescue is delayed? This is normally a highly monitored (and very high Law) society, but on the other hand that doesn't mean disaster response is always efficient. It's also a balkanized world. Maybe there's some dispute over what government has authority over rescue efforts?

Any ideas for, "it could be a coincidence but is probably sabotage" additional bad things that can happen? Overall, I'd like to spend an hour to an hour to two hours of play time on this. It doesn't need to fill the whole night on its own.

P.S. I know there's a tendency to pick apart stuff like this and explain why it could never happen. So if you're going to say that, please go on to explain, "But here's how you could still make it work."

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Survival bubbles instead of Vacc Suits. You can live in them, but they don't let you move around very much. Maybe there are only enough Vacc Suits for the crew and all passengers are expected to use the Survival Bubbles.

The Fusion Reactor starts venting plasma, forcing eveyone to abandon the train, or at least move the the other end of the train, depending on how big it is... Venting plasma might melt parts of the train setting off small explosions...

If it was sabotage, maybe the automatic distress beacon doesn't work. Individual Vacc Suits will have their own beacons that could be set off, if the PCs remember them.

Rescue would probably be only a few hours away once they are discovered to be missing. A suborbital shuttle should be able to reach them pretty quickly; assuming there isn't something wrong with it as well...

I think your best bet is to keep the authorities from finding out there is a problem for as long as possible.

Of course, if this sabotage is just part of a bigger action taking place all over the planet, then help could be a long time coming.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

The Doctor S4 ep "Midnight" features a very similar scenario. In that there's some also a kind of entity that messes with the passengers in their stranded ATV. That's if you want to make your players freaked out and paranoid.

Fits with your ruins too.

It starts with banging on the bulkhead....

I won't spoil it but the way in which the 'entity' makes its presence felt is frakked up and incredibly simple for a ref to replicate around the game table.

I think it's on dvd, and there may be stuff on youtube. If your players haven't seen it, they'll be terrified! If they have, they still might be terrified, because the Doctor isn't there this time....

 

[EDG]

Heh, I was gonna say "you need to watch Midnight" too .

Though it does highlight a point - the threat need not come from outside. I guess it's how murder mysteries work too - people are scared and panicky, and all sorts of things come out then...

 

[kristof65]

Cool scenario idea. Here's my thoughts/comments:

1) You've got enough going on that you don't necessarily need to use the "negligence" for the care of the emergency supplies. I can see that you're avoiding trying to make it feel hopeless for the PCs, but you still want it to be a challenge. Since there was an explosion, and the vehicle has flipped over, you can accomplish the same thing by having the supplies locker jammed shut. Now they have to work frantically to get it open without damaging the supplies inside.

2) Again, you can use the door jammed shut or otherwise inaccessible to accomplish this.

2a) IMO, any spacefaring society that has frequent contact with aliens is going to usually have concessions made to alien life forms survival as well - probably in the form of some sort of "rescue ball" rather than a space suit. You don't have to do it that way, but that's my take on things. What I would probably suggest is that the locker containing said rescue ball is even more inaccessible than the one with the suits - like only accessible on the outside of the vehicle, maybe even on the side that's now laying on the ground. Not an insurmountable situation, but one in which many people may leave the alien to fend for itself, and to which it is doomed if help is not given.

3) Several things come to mind here. In addition to panicking, they will all probably have different ideas on what is best to do - if they all take off on their own, the likely hood is that more will die. A couple of quick thoughts:
- if the vehicle's airlock no longer functions properly, every time it cycles, valuable air will be lost outside, reducing the survival time of those inside. The PCs should want to reduce the number of those cycles as much as possible.
- communicating for help. Say the explosion took out the communications equipment, and the PCs have the only person capable of even possibly making it work. If that PC also needs to do something else that is seen as a higher priority, panicked passengers could be badgering them to see to the radio, or worse, damaging it more while trying to "fix it".

4) Loss of atmosphere inside the train is probably the best way to get them moving. Since the alien ruins seem to be a tourist spot, there should be an airfilled dome "visitor center) or area there that would offer them better protection until help arrives. If you don't provide enough working Vacc suits/rescue balls for all the passengers, that will be the ONLY way they'll survive, by having a group go to the ruins, then part of that group carrying back some empty suits to the pasengers still left in the train. Hmm - thinking about it, I would say you should have 2/3 the number of working vacc suits/rescue balls as you have survivors, and you should have at least three times as many survivors as there are PCs.

To answer some of your other questions:

What other complications can I throw at them?

Lot's of survival type rolls.

Perhaps as they're going back to the train to move the second group of passengers to the ruins, they see something interesting they want to check out - something they might not be able to find again if don't check it out "right now!"

Getting into the visitor center might be tricky, if they don't have the right access codes.

if the train has multiple cars, you could have a center car be the one blown up - now there are two different sections, which leads to other complications - especially if the PCs are split up.

How long can I reasonably delay rescue or what complications could make sure rescue is delayed?

If it's actually a "train", there could be two explosions. The one that damaged the vehicle itself, and the one that damaged the tracks meaning the "standard" rescue vehicle couldn't be used. Since it's a balkanized world, maybe the fastest secondary rescue effort would have to be made by a bordering state - that drags politics into the mix while permissions are sought and the ramifications deliberated by the politicians.

 

[kristof65]

Heh, I was gonna say "you need to watch Midnight" too .

I was thinking about that episode as well.

 

[kristof65]

Man, you've got my head spinning with ideas now. These don't all necessarily go together, or with what I've said before - they're mostly random.

- if the alien ruins are under the control of a private corporation, that corporation may not want to admit to there being a problem - or even any survivors for that matter. That could lead to delays while they try and figure out how to accomplish a rescue without alerting the authorities - or possibly even not attempting a rescue at all.

- Take a cue from just about any Scooby Doo episode. The attack and anything interesting about the alien ruins are simply a ploy by someone to gain something out of a relatively worthless plot of land.

- incompetant crew abourd the tourism vehicle/train. They should be taking charge, but the PCs have to because they're idiots who are trying to follow "proper procedure" that will get everyone killed.

- ruins could be all or mostly underground, meaning fast rescue attempts like orbital shuttles and grav vehicles can't get to them. Explosion collapsed tunnel, meaning they'll have to be dug out.

 

[alex_greene]

If it's a vacuum world, it is entirely possible to have a meteor strike be the cause of the accident. The lack of an atmosphere means that rocks can fall from the sky straight down to the surface unhindered. In fact, the gravity of the world accelerates said rocks; not to mention the fact that, if it once held an atmosphere with living beings, the world may still retain its magnetosphere - a blessing for some, for it'd mean the radiation from the star would still be getting deflected, permitting surface dwellings, but it'd draw down iron meteors something rotten.

Furthermore, unless there are plenty of surface relay towers in the vicinity within line of sight, communications - including distress beacons - would have to rely upon orbiting satellites, because there'd be no ionosphere to bounce radio signals off.

So your characters could be a long time waiting for rescue, but the cause of the whole incident could still be attributed to sheer dumb luck.

 

[dayriff]

A lot of good replies. I have seen Midnight, and I think it was a sort of back-of-my-head inspiration for this. I hadn't thought of mimicking it so directly, though. Hmmm. I think I see an easy way to do the "monster". I have already established that this planet has terrible psionic echoes reverberating everywhere. (You know, from the billions of sentient beings dying in terror and hopelessness as their atmosphere was slowly stripped away over the course of a generation.) It wouldn't be a stretch at all to have one of the NPCs get a terrible bump on the head in the crash and start spouting alien gibberish accompanied by uncontrolled psi manifestations. Not truly dangerous, but try convincing frightened people of that.

I like the idea of forcing the PCs to take the few suits available to try and find help and/or more suits. Perhaps the fusion reactor is venting a small stream of gas against the bulkhead of the compartment. Even if it doesn't burn through, the temeperature is slowly rising and rising and rising....

I also like the idea that the airlock might be malfunctioning, or at least the NPCs will be terribly concerned that it might not be working right.

The more I think about it, the more intergovernmental squabbling makes sense for delays in response (at least in terms of hours, and I don't think this would be a days-long scenario). Of course, the PCs will have no idea what's going on or how soon rescue might possibly arrive.

Underground ruins make sense and would add to the claustrophobic atmosphere.

Oh, slightly humorous bit. If they think about it, I'd certainly let them sue the tour company afterwards. I think three of the four PCs have at least 1 skill rank in Advocate.

 

[AndrewW]

There could be someone purposely jamming the distress beacon.

Someone on the inside or maybe a hacker on the outside rerouting or canceling out the automated signal so it doesn't show up on anyones screens. Rerouting rescuers to the wrong location.

Some sort of bomb scare or toxic leak in the offices that would be monitoring things to cause an evacuation so nobody knows about the accident.

 

[dayriff]

There could be someone purposely jamming the distress beacon.

Someone on the inside or maybe a hacker on the outside rerouting or canceling out the automated signal so it doesn't show up on anyones screens. Rerouting rescuers to the wrong location.

Some sort of bomb scare or toxic leak in the offices that would be monitoring things to cause an evacuation so nobody knows about the accident.

The more I think about it, though, the more it's kind of irrelevant to the situation at hand. There are a lot of reasons that rescue might be delayed. All the PCs really have to know, though, is that no comforting voices are appearing on the radio telling them that help is on the way and that no one is showing up. Should they choose to look into the matter in greater depth later on, I can surely come up with something.

 

[Dave Chase]

...
I'd like suggestions on extra complications to add and ways to make the scenario more exciting.

SITUATION: The PCs are traveling by train (or some ground system) on a TL-15 vacuum world of about 6 million people. The entire planet is a tomb-world that was once inhabited by an alien race that died as their atmosphere was slowly stripped away. There are ruins everywhere on the planet. I am going to exercise my GM perogative and declare that they were visiting a particularly interesting ruin far away from the main settlements that is a bit of a tourist destination. It's off the beaten path, anyway. Suddenly there is a massive explosion and the vehicle on its side. The emergency lights flicker on and the vehicle's AI steward system starts to give instructions before fading off in mid-word. A man starts screaming hysterically. From somewhere in the compartment comes the hiss of precious air slowly leaking out into the vacuum.

...

1) The explosion is probably the work of one of the many enemies the PCs made in character generation, or maybe the work of an enemy of one of the other passengers. Still, I'd like to leave enough ambiguity that they can't be totally sure without an investigation. So emergency supplies that have been "negligently" not properly upkept is okay. Open sabotage like slashed open vacc suits I'd like to avoid.

For suspense let them think that it might be enemies. Have some (not all) remember a mild threat from some one in the past. Have some others think terrorist. It will add to the suspense between the players.

2) There are emergency vacc suits somewhere in the compartment, but the PCs will have to either make intelligence rolls to remember the safety briefing or look around a little to find them.

2a) However, there is an alien on board who can't possibly fit in one of the vacc suits. Will the PCs try to save it? (And possibly gain an Ally.)

3) The other passengers are likely to do something silly/counterproductive if the PCs do not calm them down and/or provide leadership. What silly thing should they do?

Like many of the ideas of the above. Pick and choose or take them all. If you use the survival balls for passengers only then limit the number of usable bubbles so that someone has to share a bubbe with the alien.

For more suspense have the alien have a limited air supply of his special air. Regular Human air wont kill him but will make him unconcious (ie dead weight).

4) I'd like to encourage the PCs to move out of the train and be forced to go take shelter in the alien ruins. I'd thought that perhaps the engine on the vehicle is going to explode, or maybe there are solar flares going on and the ruined vehicle can't provide the proper radiation shielding any longer. Other ideas?

Some harmless (unknown to the PC) explosision could be good. But have the train air in the cars that are sealable become tainted with fuel or other bad stuff, forcing them into the suits or bubbles.

If you have any crew left alive, have them be so new that they are unfamilar with the area and emergencies that the PC have to lead and have to ask them (crew) questions all the time.

5) Some of the alien ruins might have long-sealed air inside and/or interesting things to find. One of the PCs is an archeologist.

If you want to help the PC's out into the alien enviroment, let one of the survivors be a treasure hunter that has a secert camp near by (at least 1 hour travel time in bubbles) that has supplies and medical things.

What other complications can I throw at them? How long can I reasonably delay rescue or what complications could make sure rescue is delayed? This is normally a highly monitored (and very high Law) society, but on the other hand that doesn't mean disaster response is always efficient. It's also a balkanized world. Maybe there's some dispute over what government has authority over rescue efforts?

Any ideas for, "it could be a coincidence but is probably sabotage" additional bad things that can happen? Overall, I'd like to spend an hour to an hour to two hours of play time on this. It doesn't need to fill the whole night on its own.

P.S. I know there's a tendency to pick apart stuff like this and explain why it could never happen. So if you're going to say that, please go on to explain, "But here's how you could still make it work."

I like the metor shower thing. The planet knew it was coming but never expected it to be so bad or long. It takes time for them to get to the PC's train. Even if somehow they get through via radio or such, the government tells them to hang on because they are having issues in the city and mass is more important than just a few.

If you really want to twist things, have profiteer ship show up and offer to help at a price (do this only when things get really bad and they are almost ready to die.)
The price is stealing treasures, slave labor on the ship, or some other twist.

Dave Chase

 

[The Chef]

This was the last train back to the main habitat before solar flares kick off. they would normally have made it back in plenty of time however with the accident the authorities cannot send help as they would be irradiating their emergency crews.

of course any potential sabatours would know about the periodic solar activity and would have timed their explosives to be in concert with this. and as you said it gives the pc imputus to explore rather than stay where they are, as the cars can no longer adequately shield against the rads.

Chef

 

[kristof65]

The more I think about it, though, the more it's kind of irrelevant to the situation at hand. There are a lot of reasons that rescue might be delayed. All the PCs really have to know, though, is that no comforting voices are appearing on the radio telling them that help is on the way and that no one is showing up. Should they choose to look into the matter in greater depth later on, I can surely come up with something.

That's actually a good idea. Who knows, the players themselves may give you a better idea as to why help didn't arrive sooner.

You should probably have an idea or two in mind, though, just in case the PCs throw you for a loop and do something unexpected that might allow them to make contact with someone and find out what's going on. In any case, once help does finally show up, "What took you so long" is probably going to be among the first questions asked of their rescuers.

 

[dayriff]

You should probably have an idea or two in mind, though, just in case the PCs throw you for a loop and do something unexpected that might allow them to make contact with someone and find out what's going on. In any case, once help does finally show up, "What took you so long" is probably going to be among the first questions asked of their rescuers.

Sure. I think jurisdictional delays, coupled with the emergency transponder being out, is going to be the default answer. I estimate that the whole thing probably should last about 6 to 7 hours of in-game time.

With everybody's help, I now have the scenario nailed down. Something like this:

1) Wreck happens. Several people are injured, including lady who is going to go crazy from psi echoes. There are three PCs (one person can't make it) and six passengers, including the alien.)

2) Presumably the PCs will patch the leak and/or locate the vacc suits. There are only four suits, as they are intended for use by the maintenance crew rather than as emergency supplies. (It actually may be necessary to sacrifice one of the suits to properly seal the leak.)

3) The lady starts to go crazy from the psi echoes, ratcheting up the tension.

4) Some debate and roleplaying about what to do.

5) Somebody notices that it's getting hotter and that one bulkhead is growing uncomfortably warm.

6) If they go outside to investigate, each use of the airlock uses a lot of air because of damage. They'll discover the fusion plant venting against the passenger compartment.

7) Someone (possibly one of the passengers or one of the PCs) will be able to plot their location and know that there is a supply cache nearby that might have more suits.

8 ) Debate over who should go. If they have failed in reassuring the passengers about psi woman, she may well be thrown out the airlock if they leave her alone with the NPCs!

9) Those who go out over the alien, vaccum landscape may encounter weird ruins. Their vacc suits warn them there is radiation from solar flares and that exposure should be limited.

The interesting thing is that the PCs aren't actually in much danger. If they wanted to be totally brutal, they could just club the other passengers over the head, take the suits, and wait for rescue. (The radiation thing is purely a precautionary warning by the suit computer, as the vacc suits have built-in rad shielding for such emergencies.) But they will think they're in grave danger.

If they play it heroically, they'll be treated as heroes. The news channels will make them the celebrities of the day. Man, I'm really looking forward to this now. This could be very interesting.

 

[EDG]

If it's a vacuum world, it is entirely possible to have a meteor strike be the cause of the accident. The lack of an atmosphere means that rocks can fall from the sky straight down to the surface unhindered. In fact, the gravity of the world accelerates said rocks; not to mention the fact that, if it once held an atmosphere with living beings, the world may still retain its magnetosphere - a blessing for some, for it'd mean the radiation from the star would still be getting deflected, permitting surface dwellings, but it'd draw down iron meteors something rotten.

No more than any other planet would. Yes, meteorites can hit the ground without burning up. Yes, gravity does accelerate them too, but not enough to make any kind of difference - if they're going to hit the planet then they're probably already travelling at a high velocity. Having a high gravity doesn't mean the planet is able to "pull down iron meteor(ites)" more than a smaller one could.

Also, most surface dwellings would be shielded enough to withstand normal solar radiation. After all, they have to be environmentally sealed because of the vacuum environment anyway, and that's more than enough to serve as radiation shielding too, at least for alpha and beta particles (gamma rays would still get through though. Either way you'd probably want to build stuff under a metre of regolith.)

 

[dayriff]

No more than any other planet would. Yes, meteorites can hit the ground without burning up. Yes, gravity does accelerate them too, but not enough to make any kind of difference - if they're going to hit the planet then they're probably already travelling at a high velocity. Having a high gravity doesn't mean the planet is able to "pull down iron meteor(ites)" more than a smaller one could.

True, but it does mean that even a very small chunk of space debris won't burn up before it hits. I think my position is going to be that since this is a high tech, class A starport world, they've acted to sweep the local planet's orbital space pretty clean.

But... it's impossible to get it all. The damage looks like it could have been caused by a micrometeor hitting in just the right place (a one-in-a-million chance), but the secondary explosions make it hard to be sure. That would probably be the "official verdict" unless the PCs start making a lot of noise and force a detailed forensic investigation.

 

[kristof65]

Sounds good - I just have a couple of comments on things it's possible your players might bring up.

2) Presumably the PCs will patch the leak and/or locate the vacc suits. There are only four suits, as they are intended for use by the maintenance crew rather than as emergency supplies. (It actually may be necessary to sacrifice one of the suits to properly seal the leak.)

Given the vacuum environment, it would make sense for local safety regulations to require some sort of vacuum protection for each passenger and crew on board. Obviously, that's counter to what you're looking for in the scenario, but you should have an answer as to why there aren't any rescue bubbles. My suggestion would be to have them damaged in the explosion.

The interesting thing is that the PCs aren't actually in much danger. If they wanted to be totally brutal, they could just club the other passengers over the head, take the suits, and wait for rescue. (The radiation thing is purely a precautionary warning by the suit computer, as the vacc suits have built-in rad shielding for such emergencies.) But they will think they're in grave danger.

If any of the PCs have the Vacc Suit skill, they may question this. Have an answer for them.

 

[dayriff]

Sounds good - I just have a couple of comments on things it's possible your players might bring up.

2) Presumably the PCs will patch the leak and/or locate the vacc suits. There are only four suits, as they are intended for use by the maintenance crew rather than as emergency supplies. (It actually may be necessary to sacrifice one of the suits to properly seal the leak.)

Given the vacuum environment, it would make sense for local safety regulations to require some sort of vacuum protection for each passenger and crew on board. Obviously, that's counter to what you're looking for in the scenario, but you should have an answer as to why there aren't any rescue bubbles. My suggestion would be to have them damaged in the explosion.

I'm going back and forth on this. The thing with vacuum is, what are the odds on a slow leak? If all the air rushes out, nobody will have time to wear put on a vacc suit anyway, so there's not much sense from a safety standpoint. But then again, maybe you're right that regulations would require something for an emergency evacuation.

I'm not entirely happy with "damaged in an explosion" unless they weren't supposed to be accessible from the passenger compartment anyway. I suppose I'll have to think on this one.

The interesting thing is that the PCs aren't actually in much danger. If they wanted to be totally brutal, they could just club the other passengers over the head, take the suits, and wait for rescue. (The radiation thing is purely a precautionary warning by the suit computer, as the vacc suits have built-in rad shielding for such emergencies.) But they will think they're in grave danger.

If any of the PCs have the Vacc Suit skill, they may question this. Have an answer for them.

They all have Vacc suit skill. Hmmph.

 

[lurker]

Additional problem that might be interesting for medical PCs. Not enough medical supplies and or doctors to treat the wounded. Need to decide who gets treated. Possible bribes and riots as people fight to get their loved ones saved.

Details:
Passenger transports may have some or all personnel trained in emergency first aid (mostly CPR, choking, simple cuts and other things they would be more likely to encounter) but they probably have little to no experience (low level med skill).

There may be a first aid kit in each of the 'cars' but not enough supplies for a large disaster and not the equipment needed to perform more detailed diagnosis (low tech equiv: x-rays) and treatment (surgical tools, drugs).