Deckplan and ideas for a Nostromo-like infested ship

[FraNe91]

Hi all!

I'm planning to run a session where the party is exploring a recently "abandoned" ship where they will discover an infestation that killed the entire crew.

The vermin is giant roaches -tell me if you'd like to have the stats- that can resist vacuum and that spit acid. :twisted:

The ship is a private freighter named "Elephant's Wisdom" where a Lovecraft-inspired cult carried eggs of these giant roaches that, obviously, opened up during the journey in Jumpspace giving the crew no chance to receive help.

The roaches are relatively easy to kill so I was planning to have the party encounter groups of them, like in Aliens, but I'd like to reproduce the feel of the first Alien movie for the initial part of the exploration. Cramped spaces and corridors, darkness and places to hide like ventilation ducts, like a sort of dungeon-crawl.

There should be enough space for a Launch (used by the searched person to escape - they will discover it only on the ship).

I usually do not use deckplans or maps to play, but for sure my players will search for one once they're aboard and would be nice to have something to give them as prop to provide choices on where to go search next (they're looking for signs of a person who was on this ship).
Sadly, I have no time to prepare a map of the ship myself, except for a simple scheme.

What I'm asking is if you have any deckplan suited for my case along with any suggestion you have for running this kind of session

Thanks!!!

 

[GypsyComet]

Freighters tend to be a lot of open space, though being full of cargo can mitigate that.

How big are you thinking? The 1000 ton Heavy Freighter in the core book is often overlooked.

One of these might be useful: http://www.downport.com/traveller/tech/Schirf/

 

[sideranautae]

The vermin is giant roaches -tell me if you'd like to have the stats- that can resist vacuum and that spit acid. :twisted:

What is their metabolism if they don't use a gas?

 

[GypsyComet]

They still may. He said "resist", not "thrive in".

 

[sideranautae]

They still may. He said "resist", not "thrive in".

Right. So how long "resist". Data needed regardless. If it' an abandoned ship they most likely don't need it and thus, need to metabolize something else.

 

[madmike]

I did similar, but using Chamax.... It was a great series of sessions and the group still collectively shudder at mere mention of it.

I used the Lab ship and then an abandoned mine plan pack I picked up from Drivethru RPG.

 

[FraNe91]

They still may. He said "resist", not "thrive in".

Right. So how long "resist". Data needed regardless. If it' an abandoned ship they most likely don't need it and thus, need to metabolize something else.

Probably on the corpses of the dead crew and on the pantry food.
How long? Enough for the party to meet them :roll:
The ship is deserted (except the vermin) since few days, maybe a month, if I remember my notes, so not much time.
I suppose they can resist few months without food because they enter a sort of hibernation that let them survive until more juicy humans come to awake them :twisted:

But I sincerely never thought about their metabolism until now because I know my players do not care :roll:
In my notes I remember I wrote they can live in the vacuum, and that they mutated and then evolved from the common roaches into a different specie because of radiations from space.

If you have any interesting idea about it that's for sure better than my "A mad scientist did it"!

Anyway,

How big are you thinking? The 1000 ton Heavy Freighter in the core book is often overlooked.

How big the ship? I don't know, enough for a bit of exploration, but it's still a private ship so not too big.
Since I'm new into Traveller I'm still not used to it's ship dimensions so I don't know how much a 1000dton ship could be, any suggestion is appreciated.

I thought about the CRB heavy freighter but It's too much free space to me and too little close quarters. I too thought about full cargo to mitigate it, but then the exploration area would be only crates...
Maybe the ship could be half freighter half passengers liner. Maybe it's a converted ship. It would givine me the opportunity to add more corridors and rooms.
What do you think?

 

[Rick]

Might I suggest that, rather than Aliens, you use the early Replicator episodes of Stargate as a reference? Aside from the fact that the replicators are mechanical, they would seem to fit better as a smaller 'horde-type' alien threat?

 

[sideranautae]

But I sincerely never thought about their metabolism until now because I know my players do not care :roll:

That's cool. Some players don't know enough to think even about it.

 

[Jeraa]

How big are you thinking? The 1000 ton Heavy Freighter in the core book is often overlooked.

How big the ship? I don't know, enough for a bit of exploration, but it's still a private ship so not too big.
Since I'm new into Traveller I'm still not used to it's ship dimensions so I don't know how much a 1000dton ship could be, any suggestion is appreciated.

Assuming it is a cube, a 1000 ton ship is roughly 24 meters (80 feet) long on each side. Roughly 4 side by side would be the length of an American football field. If you limit it to about 10 meters tall (roughly 3 decks), its roughly 37 meters (122 feet) long and wide. Making it 2 decks (roughly 6 meters) would put it at 47.5 meters (156 feet) wide and long, or about half an American football field in length.

Traveller ships are small, at least compared to ships from other sci-fi settings.

 

[Epicenter]

If you're going to use cockroaches, why don't you use cockroaches to the extreme?

* The ship is filled with cockroaches that were engineered for biological waste disposal on starships that were being reconditioned (proper use is that you release the things, once they eat out everything, you release a pheremone that makes them all gather in a single place for disposal). They pretty much will eat anything organic to gain sustenance. They also have certain habits that show their engineered nature, like they don't leave droppings everywhere and have a "toilet" where they all go (so the ship being cleaned out isn't left messy since their job is to clean it up).

* Once all the food is gone, they simply flip over and pretty much go into hibernation until they die (takes weeks, sometimes even months) or the recall pheremone is given. Your players can find hallways infested with "dead" cockroaches everywhere. Once there are signs of biological activity again, they slowly wake up from their dormancy, so that hallway filled with dead giant cockroaches when the players first board the ship will be mysteriously empty later on when they all wake up and scuttle off (looking for the players to eat).

 

[GypsyComet]

Anyway,

How big are you thinking? The 1000 ton Heavy Freighter in the core book is often overlooked.

How big the ship? I don't know, enough for a bit of exploration, but it's still a private ship so not too big.
Since I'm new into Traveller I'm still not used to it's ship dimensions so I don't know how much a 1000dton ship could be, any suggestion is appreciated.

I thought about the CRB heavy freighter but It's too much free space to me and too little close quarters. I too thought about full cargo to mitigate it, but then the exploration area would be only crates...
Maybe the ship could be half freighter half passengers liner. Maybe it's a converted ship. It would givine me the opportunity to add more corridors and rooms.
What do you think?

Ah, you want a space dungeon.
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/65327/CTF-DPM1-FASA-King-Richard-Deck-Plan-Module
or
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/88088/JG-Traveller-Doom-Of-The-Singing-Star

The first is a 5000 ton Liner with enough room to get into trouble. The second is a MUCH bigger modular liner with a shopping mall in the middle.

 

[AndrewW]

* The ship is filled with cockroaches that were engineered for biological waste disposal on starships that were being reconditioned (proper use is that you release the things, once they eat out everything, you release a pheremone that makes them all gather in a single place for disposal). They pretty much will eat anything organic to gain sustenance. They also have certain habits that show their engineered nature, like they don't leave droppings everywhere and have a "toilet" where they all go (so the ship being cleaned out isn't left messy since their job is to clean it up).

Hmmm, been reading the Heris Serrano books by Elizabeth Moon?

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Depending on how large you want the adventure to be, the lab ship might work.

Otherwise, there's a ship in supplement 10: merchants and cruisers that might be interresting. The Shakarkha is a 2,000 dton passenger liner (approx 130 meters long) with a healthy mix of open spaces and narrow hiding places for monsters.

A total of 130 staterooms, a large dining area, pub and a lounge spread over three decks. Carried craft includes a shuttle and two pinnaces, along with 6 air/rafts.

Sure, it's a luxury passenger liner rather than a freighter, but it does have a quite large cargo hold, including a secure vault for extra important cargo (such as alien eggs). And with just a little tweaking, the staterooms could be converted into labs or holding areas if you'd like.

Either way, sounds like an Interesting adventure idea! Be sure to write it down and publish it afterwards, and most importantly let us know how the game went

 

[Prime_Evil]

I've been thinking of doing something similar to this, but I intend to use an abandoned asteroid mining facility infested with alien creatures. I want a large facility with some cramped, claustrophobic areas and some vast open spaces. I'm aiming for a grimy, industrial feel with plenty of different paths for the environment so that the aliens can play cat-and-mouse with the trapped characters...

 

[GypsyComet]

I've been thinking of doing something similar to this, but I intend to use an abandoned asteroid mining facility infested with alien creatures. I want a large facility with some cramped, claustrophobic areas and some vast open spaces. I'm aiming for a grimy, industrial feel with plenty of different paths for the environment so that the aliens can play cat-and-mouse with the trapped characters...

Dra'k'ne Station might suit your needs.
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/88093/JG-Traveller-Drakne-Station-Drakne-Station

 

[Prime_Evil]

I've been thinking of doing something similar to this, but I intend to use an abandoned asteroid mining facility infested with alien creatures. I want a large facility with some cramped, claustrophobic areas and some vast open spaces. I'm aiming for a grimy, industrial feel with plenty of different paths for the environment so that the aliens can play cat-and-mouse with the trapped characters...

Dra'k'ne Station might suit your needs.
http://www.rpgnow.com/product/88093/JG-Traveller-Drakne-Station-Drakne-Station

Thanks...I'd forgotten about it!

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

The Nostromo itself is rather huge! When I first saw it in the movie, I had trouble believing such a huge ship had such a small crew. The Nostromo looked bigger than the Enterprise, and that had a crew of 500!

Also imagine if you roll up a Merchant character and you go through prior careers, and one of the thing you get was the Nostromo instead of a Free Trader, now the Nostromo probably costs around Mcr100,000,000,000 at least. And the players are flying this thing around and they find an interesting planet with an unbreathable atmosphere, and coming from that planet is a distress signal, so the player wants to land the Nostromo to find out what it is. the GM says you can't do that because the Nostromo is as big as a city, you need to take the shuttle down, and though the shuttle is only a tiny fraction of the size of the Nostromo, that thing is as big as an office building, and its amazing it can land at all.

Can you imagine the PCs flying around in a spaceship like this!

 

[Rick]

Ah. Slight misconception, I think. The Nostromo is the tug part of the ship that goes down to the planet. The automated refinery that they are towing around and is the size of a city, isn't actually part of the Nostromo.

 

[Reynard]

How about the Kinunir? Now there is a cursed class of warship that might pick up a bug, jump out, get the crew killed then reenter normal space broadcasting a transponder signal to the base awaiting its arrival... and nothing more.

The Kinunir is the Colonial Cruiser found in Traders and Gunboats pg. 98.