Campaign ideas requested

EricPaq

Mongoose
Hello,

Our group recently (last Friday) converted to 2nd edition Babylon 5.

I have a very diverse group of chracters and I'm looking for possible scenario ideas.

Stast date: December 31, 2257 (5 days before Midnight on the Firing Line)

Characters:
-Human Technomage 2. Focus on electricity. Student of Herezade. Takes care of a shelter in Downbelow.
-Human Telepath 2. Psi Corps under cover operative. P8. Currently posing as an Earthforce Data Technician.
-Human Officer(pilot) 2. Earthforce. Reserve starfury plilot on station who does side technical jobs. Currently working for audio-visual in Alien Sector for a New Year's Eve show of "Grease" played by the Naked Truth (Pak'ma'ra who perform naked, see Lurker's Guide to Pak'ma'ra for their entry on their rendition of "Hair").
-Centauri Officer (ground forces) 2. Assigned to be in charge of security for Ambassador Londo Mollari.
-Centauri Diplomat 1. Minor diplomatic aide.
-Minbari (religious caste) Ranger 1/Trader 1. Ranger on station to observe. Took a cover to run a shop in the Zocalo with the interest of purchasing comedies. Was asked by Delenn to keep an eye of the common human.
-Narn Agent 1/Telepath 1 (took the Harrowed Heritage feat from the Narn book). P3. Reporter for the Narn News Network.
-Pak'ma'ra Lurker 2. Some investments in Quantium-40 mining companies on Melat (Independant Wealthy feat). Plans to become a Libranian.

Currently, the Technomage, the Narn and the Pak'ma'ra are investigating why a certain lurker was being hunted down. They found out that it involves some smuggled goods from a shiop in Bay 9. The Psi Corps undercover agent discovered that some Rogue Telepaths are involved with this smuggling and he's looking into the affair seperately.
The Dark of it: It's a ship of the Telepath Undergroup Railroad. The containers are cryotubes with Rogue telepaths to be shipped out.

The Ranger, Pilot and Centauri Officer were involved with a small riot outside of the musical. The rioters were against aliens performing Earth plays.

The Centauri diplomat is too new. He was merely involved in getting the Centauri Officer out of security due to the confusion when he got involved in the riot. The Ranger had stayed in the Shadows. The Pilot wore his Earthforce uniform.

Other ideas I'm developping:
-Mob boss who invites shop owners in the Zocalo and other business in Red Sector in order to exort money. Basically, a protection racket. The threath and illegal stuff doesn't happen in the Zocalo since there's too many eyes and surveillance.
-Pak'ma'ra who received her male half that was more developped and sentient then people thought. It start going crazy and killing people for food in downbelow.
-Raider spies looking for information on traders.

Anyone have other ideas?
 
Well, my own taste preferably would be to do stuff outside the station and do something a bit more epic.

I mean riots, smuggling, espionage, blackmail, are all parts of Babylon 5, but so are Massive battles, weird alien enemies (shadows, hand, drahk, etc.)

And turn the party against each other. I mean Techno mages were practically the shadows versions of telepaths. Maybe you could do something with earthforce corruption and involvement with shadow technology depending on what era or timeline you run it in.

That may work. You got the Centauri government involved with the drahk, earth government with shadowtech. That leaves something to connect the technomage and earth officer, as well as the centauri. Maybe the pak is linked to the officer, while the narn is being hunted by the centauri and technomage.

I would do ragner stuff, soul hunters added in, the hand, older races. Maybe something to do with old ones and ancient technologies, and some Ikarran stuff.
 
Thanks for some neat ideas.

I don't work for getting my players to do specific stuff in my campaigns. Like your idea of having them turn against each other.

I present them with situations, chaters to interact and though choices to make. Then I show the consequences of their actions.

I'm too early to involve the Drakh since we are season 1.

I know about the role of the technomages and i've already had some friction between the undercover telepath and the technomage. There was much rolling for an accidental scan merely to have the technomage feel unconfortable and the telepath get static compared to resistance.

yeah, I want to involve more shadowstuff./vorlonstuff.

I'm thinking of having Kosh appear from time to time, observing the Narn telepatic reporter.

I'll need some interesting ideas off station plus figure a way to give them access to a ship.

I'll have to lay many hooks and see what bites. :)
 
WEll dont turn your players against each other, but give the characters reasons to not get along, and maybe even hate each other a tiny bit, but make situations where they have to work together. It will bond the party and add more depth to it.

As for them getting a ship:

Give them a technomage ship
Maybe the Psi corps guy or earth officer has links.
That or someone knows a merchant
Or you can make it the objective of a mission: the players are low on cash, and do a job, and in the process steal a ship and keep it.
Later scenarios could then revolve around the owners getting it back, or maybe earthforce/shadows/vorlons planted it there for them to monitor their lackeys/enemies.

As for off station missions in the wider galaxy, maybe they could be hired bodyguards or advisors to some sort of archaeologists entourage.
 
We shall see. My experience with most players of that group is they enjoy playing together. They are very cooperative. When I tried running Paranoia XP a few years back, they didn't get it, they didn't get going against each other in wild and crazy ways.

I do have new players that I don't know about their style quite yet but we shall have to see.
 
I think you're off to a really good start. The thing that would worry me the most with these characters would be finding a reason for them to stick together. You have many characters that don't seem to have much in common and a few who could easily be considered natural enemies. But if your players are indeed naturally cooperative, it might help.

My main advice would be: Don't go too big too fast.

Your characters are level 2, beginners. For now, they don't have to fight the Shadows to feel they accomplished something. I've often seen D&D games whose concept was basically: Four level one characters save the world. It often doesn't make sense. If they could do it, why hasn't a group of level 8 done it much faster? And if you manage to build a story that makes sense, once it's over, you're left with something that's hard to top. What will they do once they saved the universe?

Look at the first seasons of B5, big things are starting but the characters do small (yet still cool) things. The battles with raiders are cool but would not feel as rewarding after Corriana VI and retaking Earth.

You've got time. Base your first adventures on your characters' backgrounds. Instead of having them save the universe have them save a family member, a mentor, the Pak'ma'ra's business or the reputation of a noble from the house of one of the Centauri (which gives influence and can help later when big things begin). They could prevent a minor (yet still dangerous if reverse engineered) technomagical item from falling into the hand of a group that would misuse it.

And at some later point, they could realise that one or many of these small things were actually part of a very big thing. For example: The smuggler with de technomagical item was going to sell to a corrupt executive of IPX who works with a shadow agent who planed to take control of the Q40 operation for his evil scheme which required to discredit the noble to place his own agent in a good position to get more resources, etc…

THEN they get to go against the shadow agent and perhaps some of his bosses. It will seem even more epic once they realise they've been involved long before they knew what was going on.
 
Shadow Queen said:
some time your mage will have to go on his/ her own for a time for testing etc

Actually, the end of season 1 is the last convocation of the mages. In December of 2258 they make plans to leave the galaxy which culminates in "Geometry of Shadows" in early season 2. The good thing is some of the mages went missing before "Geometry of Shadows", so you can put them where ever you like. The mage's history in at the start would be a small problem, but nothing that can't be worked out. If the mage gets to the Becoming before the end of season 1. Otherwise, the Becoming could be problematic if you are running a canon campaign. If you aren't running a canon campaign, then things can go the way you want.

Kizarvexis
 
Kizarvexis said:
Actually, the end of season 1 is the last convocation of the mages. In December of 2258 they make plans to leave the galaxy which culminates in "Geometry of Shadows" in early season 2. The good thing is some of the mages went missing before "Geometry of Shadows", so you can put them where ever you like. The mage's history in at the start would be a small problem, but nothing that can't be worked out. If the mage gets to the Becoming before the end of season 1. Otherwise, the Becoming could be problematic if you are running a canon campaign. If you aren't running a canon campaign, then things can go the way you want.

We are playing a pseudo-canon campaign.
If the players don't interfere with the events of the show then the TV show stuff will proceed as normal. If they decide to interfere, I'll extrapolate based on how they affected the setting.
Of the group, I'm the biggest B5 fan and get the best handle of the setting.
Usually the biggest fans are the one with most issues to changing stuff in a license setting, I like to explore the setting and see how stuff could turn out.
Also, I've told my players that they are the heroes of the campaign. All the other characters in the series will not show up to steal their thunder. If there's a decision to affect to be made, they are going to make it.

For the last convocation, yeah, he will be in it. I might move the date a bit but other than me, only 2 other players read "The Passing of the Technomage" book. And moving around the date wouldn't be a big issue, in my opinion.
 
With most of my games I take a similar approach.

Decide what you'd like to see in the story.

- The arrival of the White Star
- Interaction with Lorien
- Underground resistance of Narn homeworld

Know where and when you want the story to start, and where most of it will take place.

- My game started just before season 1.
- My game is able to move on, or off the station as needed

Have the players write a background, including at least two other players characters as trusted friends, no split groups

- This give a reason for them to work together
- This also generates lots of story ideas

Ask the players for character goals, and intentions

- goal is to wipe out the centauri
- intention to damage centauri property

Then in the first few sessions, have red herrings

- mysterious death down below, friend of a character
- blank moments in the characters life, where he has interacted with another
- reports of someone looking for another characgter
- a lost room key turns up
- witness to a shady deal or murder
- Vorlon walks past saying something cryptic that you later turn into a major plot point based on player interpretation
- Drazi thugs shake them down for credits

Things like this do make the story fun, and involves the players heavily in the storyline.

This does require more work than picking up a book, but it does make a huge difference in the campaign storyline. :)

and one thing I have told my players, they can change the story from the TV show, but if they do, it is their responsibility to bring it back in line and take responsibility for it, or find it a completely different story...

- Kill Sheridan before Za'ha'dum makes the shadow war progress as normal, but B5 is destroyed
- any key event can have a follow on cause, and a unexpected war may occur
 
If you need to dig out some old AD&D or D&D modules, just change some names and it work well, The “Tomb of Horror” B5 format is fun
 
Mick said:
If you need to dig out some old AD&D or D&D modules, just change some names and it work well, The “Tomb of Horror” B5 format is fun

You know I have a couple of dungeon crawls planned for my campaign (a Drakh cathedral and a research facility that was experimenting with leftover Shadowtech with predictable results). I think Tomb of Horrors is excellent advice. :twisted:
 
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