Life Event - Ancient Artifact

[Emperor Herdan]

Still, it's very jarring and aggrevating to have someone roll above eight with the help of a pry-bar, and then be told you need to immediately roll up a new character. The implication is, in fact, "you all die."

I agree... a worse case scenario (if you really really wanted to "teach" the player not to monkey around would be to have a bright flash, emergency bells ring out, etc) would be that anyone who isn't in the room stays alive, and when they do get into the room (maybe cutting open the fused door), the guy with the pry bar is dead, pry bar in hand, no damage to artifact can be seen. Gives the idea that they still don't know what it does, but they better not fool around with it...

My first choice would be that the prybar has no effect... and the roll indicated to the character Yeah, you did everything right, darn thang won't budge...

Take care

E. Herdan

 

[Dave Chase]

...
Back on topic. I also like someones previous concept of holding the rolled artifact in reserve for a future plot device. The character currently thinks the device is just an ancient curiosity of only ornamental and sentimental value since it was given to them as a gift by a friend they worked with when the character left a career.

Yup, those to me are some of the best hooks for a mystery.

That old friend my ask about it some time again, or some stranger happens to mention their old friend and ask about the object.

It might be key that opens an ancient locker/crypt/bank vault.

Just let them have some personal value to it and use it as a plot device later if needed. Something out of the blue, that will make them have to decide what to do.

Dave Chase

 

[alex_greene]

The B5 movie "Thirdspace" kind of sprang to mind earlier today; an event which might have been triggered by insomnia, sleep dep and reading the B5 preview PDF not long after coming off this thread ...

 

[ShadowDragon8685]

The easiest way to show the players "you don't open it that way" or "you don't open it," is simply to have the mechanical advantage force the box out of whatever restraint it is held on by - if he's got another strong guy to hold it down, the box whacks his pal in the face, if he's got the guy leaning on the box, the bar whacks his friend in the face. If he's tied it down, the tiedown straps snap (or rip out of whatever's holding them down.) Or even, the pry-bar bends.

Make it clear that he's not doing it wrong; he's exerting a hell of a lot of mechanical advantage and doing it properly, but that's just not going to work on this alien box.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Don't forget that this will not be something that the player just got at the start of play.

They could have had this device for YEARS. So some knowledge of what it does (or doesn't do) should be made available to the Player involved.

Maybe HE knows that when you press the button lights start flashing and a hum, rising in pitch, starts, but it settles down after a few seconds and just sits there emitting a cheery blue-green glow (and a bit of UV, but not dangerous). Makes in interesting lamp. It is a TL 13 device from a dead race a couple of subsectors over.

THEN the GM can make it something more if he wants later.

Remember, it doesn't have to be high tech either.

Maybe it is an alien version of the carving that is 1000 years old. Looks cool on the table, but no other value except to a collector or museum.

But, if the PCs try to find the world it came from, they run into a coverup that the megacorp that committed genocide doesn't want people to know about and fun and hilarity ensue (for the Referee anyway).

 

[hdan]

In my case, the character who found the artifact was a belter. So instead of the artifact itself, the character found the *location* of an artifact too large to sneak into a vaccsuit pocket.

Now that she's mustered out, she's going to charter a ship's boat to go and recover the artifact, and then hire a ship to carry it (and her) to the nearest Imperial science base. As fate (or the GM) would have it, another party also knows about the artifact, and is trailing her....

I'm actually using this adventure hook to get a few of the players together - one of them is a salvage specialist (and vacc suit wizard), another is a well-connected but low-ranking noble ex-administrator who needed to leave his post for unspecified (though urgent) reasons, etc.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

That works too.

Remember, a 50,000 year old TL 10 space dock would still be worth something to someone.

 

[GypsyComet]

The easiest way to show the players "you don't open it that way" or "you don't open it," is simply to have the mechanical advantage force the box out of whatever restraint it is held on by - if he's got another strong guy to hold it down, the box whacks his pal in the face, if he's got the guy leaning on the box, the bar whacks his friend in the face. If he's tied it down, the tiedown straps snap (or rip out of whatever's holding them down.) Or even, the pry-bar bends.

Make it clear that he's not doing it wrong; he's exerting a hell of a lot of mechanical advantage and doing it properly, but that's just not going to work on this alien box.

For a more subtle approach, you can also play with missing time and flashbacks. If walking toward this device with crowbar in hand suddenly brings together several memories of the place you found the thing (the metal shavings on the floor, the sourceless shadows of people on the walls) you might have second thoughts about such an attempt.

 

[Emperor Herdan]

Or the Artifact itself could cause the character to "forget" what he was going to do with the prybar... and that Psi shields don't protect against such suggestions...

Still lots of fun for the GM (Yay!)

take care all

E. Herdan

 

[GypsyComet]

The other possibility I was thinking of while typing the above was that the device was a "pod person" maker. Those who tinker with it or otherwise trigger it get vaped and replaced Mysterons style. Once duplicated, they go about their normal business, but now have some other agenda. The device has gotten old enough that it no longer remembers what it was creating the duplicates for, so the deep planted agendas are more investigative, and the new duplicate may have no idea that it IS a duplicate until the compulsion kicks on in a way that can't be denied or concealed. On the plus side, the PC gets Mysteron-style retro-metabolism if they die close enough to the device...

 

[Jame Rowe]

I'd suggest making it something very useful to the players... But that they don't dare use, because if the rest of the universe found out about it, they'd go to war to get it.

That's the problem. If it's common enough to roll up in a chart during character generation, then it can't be something that useful, or anyone would be able to find these artifacts just as easily.

Though if it's so useful that nobody dare use it, it's not really very useful is it .

It doesn't have to be common; in fact, it could be a once-in-a-lifetime thing that happened to happen to that PC.

I've been working on an alternate list, where the Piece of Ancient Tech could be anything - Ancient, Psionic, Alien or ... merely old. So it may be ancient technology, a museum piece, but may not actually be that important.

 

[Ishmael]

During PC generation the other night, one of the players rolled up a Life Event that says they've come into possession of an Ancient and/or Alien Artifact. I've got a couple ideas for this, but wondering what other GMs ideas are?

so the pc's find a fossil or stone-age arrowheads or something (ancient artifact )
or the have an authentic ( not tourist-fake ) bit of aslan jewelry ( alien artifact )

or combined!.. they find a fossil of a droyne skull... what would a researcher do to get their hands on that!

nothing says it must be working or powerful or even mysterious.
But the backstory of how they pc acquired it and where it is now would certainly be good.

 

[BP]

Ok - here's a double edged sword -

A necklace that warms up in the presence of psionic talent (in use)...

Oh, and after prolonged use, causes wearer to spontaneously fall into a deep, unresponsive sleep for upto several minutes at a time when in stessful situations (landing, combat, lying,...)...

 

[Epicenter]

Perhaps it's a small thing, small enough to be worn like a locket. You press certain parts of it in the correct order, it glows in a certain sequence of colors and plays a melody. For whatever reason, the haunting melody and the glows leave a vivid memory of double suns setting over a purple-colored sea and a reddish sky and an inexplicable feeling of sentimental sadness or loss.

As for why, you don't ever need to explain that if you don't want to. Perhaps the device once had some personal importance to a being who lived, had hopes and dreams, and died millenia ago. The meaning of it died with the being and all that is left is a keepsake.

Alternatively, it could be a key for something treasured the being left behind. This doesn't necessarily have to be money or riches or fabulous technology. It could be the being's daughter.

 

[whtknght]

so the pc's find a fossil or stone-age arrowheads or something (ancient artifact )
or the have an authentic ( not tourist-fake ) bit of aslan jewelry ( alien artifact )

or combined!.. they find a fossil of a droyne skull... what would a researcher do to get their hands on that!

nothing says it must be working or powerful or even mysterious.
But the backstory of how they pc acquired it and where it is now would certainly be good.

Everyone seams to be thinking along the lines of psionic or mysterious. Ishael has it right. It can be mundane.

Years ago, FASA published an article about a world where humans and aslans lived together. To allow humans to fight for honor against an aslan, they had a device that strapped onto the hand and wrist that gave the human a dewclaw. (alien device) It could come in handy if a player found himself dishonoring an aslan and having to fight an unarmed battle for honor.

 

[AndrewW]

Years ago, FASA published an article about a world where humans and aslans lived together. To allow humans to fight for honor against an aslan, they had a device that strapped onto the hand and wrist that gave the human a dewclaw. (alien device) It could come in handy if a player found himself dishonoring an aslan and having to fight an unarmed battle for honor.

There's the Aslan Cyber-claw (cybernetic personal augment) in Mongoose Traveller.

 

[BP]

...It can be mundane.

Pooper scooper - note plastic bags lost to antiquity.

 

[Dave Chase]

...It can be mundane.

Pooper scooper - note plastic bags lost to antiquity.

Battery operated light bulb changer.
That might make some interesting what the heck is stories in the future where they don't have light bulbs like we do.

LOL

Dave Chase

 

[barasawa]

Back on topic. I also like someones previous concept of holding the rolled artifact in reserve for a future plot device. The character currently thinks the device is just an ancient curiosity of only ornamental and sentimental value since it was given to them as a gift by a friend they worked with when the character left a career.

We had one of these in our campaign when I was in high school. Everyone thought it was a piece of really old alien artwork that had been handed down in his family for generations. Then we got toasted by pirates in an out of the way uninhabited sector. They were using it's cometary belt to refuel their jump 3 to get around a blockade. They didn't like us snooping around. Jump drive toast, main power out, life support irrelevant due to a couple of big holes in the hull. We barely eluded them and hid inside an asteroid with a big crack in it. Desperately trying to repair the generator, he had a little accident and the artifact (he always carried it in his tool kit) fell in.
That's when it activated. It was a nanoconstructor, single use. Since we didn't supply it with an approved pattern, it tried to approximate one. Short version is it rebuilt the ship, to completely alien specs. We got saved by our new ship, but then spent many sessions trying to come to terms with our new asset, especially since it wasn't fully under our control.

Well, that's just the weirdest and most dramatic artifact from character creation we dealt with. Others we encountered included a plaque with encoded jump coordinates, a psi-inducer/booster, a teleport sensor, a pocket hybernator (pocket watch sized device that cocoons the user and functions like a lowberth with no failure), and the infamous chromablaster (a gun like device that changes the color of what it shoots, the ultimate paint gun). I can't recall which of those a character started with, or found, but they all caused immense fun after the initial surprise.