I think the most important thing to remember is that this
adventure is written to be played in one single hour of ga-
me time.
The advantage of this is that the material on NPCs in the
back of the adventure is sufficient, the characters will not
have the time to get aquainted to more people during the
adventure.
The main disadvantage is that the referee has to keep the
action going all the time. Once the emergency has begun,
there is no more time for extended planning sessions and
thelike, the characters have to decide and act immediate-
ly, mostly by reacting to the many bad things happening
all around them.
A way to get the "desaster feeling" across is to "overload"
the characters with sensory input, with sights, sounds and
smells: Lights are flashing, people screaming, all happens
almost simultaneously, there is no quiet moment to take a
deep breath and reflect on the situation - chaos rules.
As for the ship's deck plan, one way to handle it is to show
it to the players at the beginning of the adventure, but to
keep it away from them once the desaster has begun. After
all, the characters do not have a plan of the ship, they have
to find their way amidst the chaos (which is not really diffi-
cult, most of the events "come to them").
