Singularity - musings

[Gonzag]

A question for the GM's running Singularity right now:

Have your players already discovered the secrets of the Fortuna Ventura, and how long did it take?

We're currently on our first tour along the Confederacy route, having just stopped at Bogustin. I've rolled mysterious event 8 for that week - android crew member caught in reset mode - so I made up a short event: Hash Deacon, the (android) engineer was hit by a random energy spike while in engineering, forcing a reset and having him staring into nothingness for two minutes. Of course, the PC engineer did immediately call the PC doctor and together, they got Deacon to sickbay and into the autodoc. At this point, I decided that the autodoc was manipulated, showing human lifesigns instead of an android. Still, for a single moment, the doctor saw... something non-human, before the manipulation kicked in!

Now that my players interests are piqued, they'll start investigating like a pack of hunting dogs on the scent. I could have handled the scene in sickbay differently, but the doctor's player is a rather quiet person and I just wanted to give her a scene in the spotlight.

I for one have asked them to roll their sanity at character creation, and use the previous notoriety of the Ventura Fortuna to be maybe haunted paired with a healty dose of the NPC gaslighting them to make the players think its actually maybe a horror game and their characters might be losing it.
I plan to make them suspicious on the first route and make them discover everything in the first half of the second trip. To make them allies to Naliir, I think its best they interact directly with him sooner rather than later, especially since so much of the intrigue would happen behind the veil without their knowing if they don't talk to Naliir or don't use the small ship whose name escape me at the moment. Also I want to make them do side missions.

In your case, I might make it seem like the problem was with the doctor or the autodoc if I wanted to make the mystery last longer. Or, while they are full on bloodhound chase mode, I might place the drug enduced bad trip right there to make their suspicions blow out of proportion and see what come up once things calm down.

Your energy spike in engeneering was an inspired idea, and your players worry for Deacon's health, making it that more shocking when the final reveal will happen.

 

[Jet_Black]

I have shared. There is no rule. I can't quote a blank area. An addition in a table that does something not in the rules doesn't mean there is a rule, just flavor.

You do you, but this isn't RAW. I'm not going to argue the point. I'm sure someone else will be along before long to do so, but I'm not going to play this particular game. You do you.

Maybe it's because I'm used to more narrative RPGs, but I think you're approaching the problem from the wrong direction. This isn't about a two-minute-reset out of the blue, it's a springboard for creating your own encounter. As you'd admited yourself, there can be unusual circumstances for longer resets (energy spikes, glitching custom software...).

You said you're running the campaign on a forum, so I guess your players can read your descriptions as often as they want. Subtle clues are probably enough in that case. Me, I'm running Singularity face-to-face for five players, so there is always a certain level of background noises, players brewing themselves coffee, or having toilet breaks, or whatever. Sometimes, I need to hit them over the head with a clue...

 

[Gonzag]

Actually, introducing plot items in adventures that don’t abide by the rules is arbetrary. If robotic brains had these issues, they would be covered as such by the rules. If you can quote a rule that mentions this happening, fine. An entry in a table in an adventure doesn’t make the cut as far as I’m convened.

You could just as easily start claiming high guard weapons randomly start displaying long failures. That’s a choice, not a rule.

If you look at the table at page 111 of the robot handbook, it clearly state that used robots might have glitches and defects. The imput error, specifically, might cause a robot to pause for a long time if fried by an electrical shock. P. 14 of the act one, sylean dream, tells you Naalir invests a lot to keep the Baron's android top notch but doesn't with the rest of the crew. Especially since the blue square on page 13 says the true Baron's android body was way more advanced than what Naalir had access to. Naalir's crew isn't new robots, since that blue box interaction happened more that 30 years before the start of the game (still on page 13). With these informations, its clear that the crew of the Ventura Fortuna qualify as "used robots" that could or could not have any defects.

Since its a roleplaying game, they have to give you leeway to sew your story without saying BTW Deacon's robot has X defect for him to glitch, because maybe that's not what happens in your game. As a DM you're weaving the story and the rules, you're not just reading one of those book where "you are the hero" to your players.

Would you be also mad at Mongoose because in the adventure High and Dry they have to escape an errupting volcano with a wonky spaceship and there is no rules to determine when a volcano would errupt in the rulebook nor what would the impact would be on a ship?

And last, you can also you know maybe just take it down a notch and have fun?

 

[Terry Mixon]

If you look at the table at page 111 of the robot handbook, it clearly state that used robots might have glitches and defects. The imput error, specifically, might cause a robot to pause for a long time if fried by an electrical shock. P. 14 of the act one, sylean dream, tells you Naalir invests a lot to keep the Baron's android top notch but doesn't with the rest of the crew. Especially since the blue square on page 13 says the true Baron's android body was way more advanced than what Naalir had access to. Naalir's crew isn't new robots, since that blue box interaction happened more that 30 years before the start of the game (still on page 13). With these informations, its clear that the crew of the Ventura Fortuna qualify as "used robots" that could or could not have any defects.

Since its a roleplaying game, they have to give you leeway to sew your story without saying BTW Deacon's robot has X defect for him to glitch, because maybe that's not what happens in your game. As a DM you're weaving the story and the rules, you're not just reading one of those book where "you are the hero" to your players.

Would you be also mad at Mongoose because in the adventure High and Dry they have to escape an errupting volcano with a wonky spaceship and there is no rules to determine when a volcano would errupt in the rulebook nor what would the impact would be on a ship?

And last, you can also you know maybe just take it down a notch and have fun?

Okay. I’ll let it drop. I said my piece and don’t want to argue. Do as you like.

 

[J. L. Brown]

If you look at the table at page 111 of the robot handbook, it clearly state that used robots might have glitches and defects. The imput error, specifically, might cause a robot to pause for a long time if fried by an electrical shock. P. 14 of the act one, sylean dream, tells you Naalir invests a lot to keep the Baron's android top notch but doesn't with the rest of the crew. Especially since the blue square on page 13 says the true Baron's android body was way more advanced than what Naalir had access to. Naalir's crew isn't new robots, since that blue box interaction happened more that 30 years before the start of the game (still on page 13). With these informations, its clear that the crew of the Ventura Fortuna qualify as "used robots" that could or could not have any defects.

Since its a roleplaying game, they have to give you leeway to sew your story without saying BTW Deacon's robot has X defect for him to glitch, because maybe that's not what happens in your game. As a DM you're weaving the story and the rules, you're not just reading one of those book where "you are the hero" to your players.

Would you be also mad at Mongoose because in the adventure High and Dry they have to escape an errupting volcano with a wonky spaceship and there is no rules to determine when a volcano would errupt in the rulebook nor what would the impact would be on a ship?

And last, you can also you know maybe just take it down a notch and have fun?

I'm with Terry on this. Commodity devices in the 57th century, especially ones which have existed for decades, or centuries, or longer -- and especially in a background which is specifically deeply enriched by Vilani risk-averse / user-convenience attitudes -- ought to be very close to optimized, extremely thoroughly debugged, and reliable to events in the 10^30th sigma. A 'there was a power spike, wait 60 to 360 seconds' failure is crazy.

Fine, the 'story' needs the robot crew to (sometimes) act weird. There are lots of ways to address that, and Mongoose chose the 'As your car is going down the freeway, the engine shuts off -- wait (time equivalent to driving 20 km) before being able to start it up again' approach on a silly table. I can do both; I can recognize that there 'needed' to be a malfunction, AND I can recognize that this event as written is utterly ridiculous and harms the verisimilitude of the setting.

It was a poor choice; and now we have to live with it.

 

[Endie]

It was a poor choice; and now we have to live with it.

Gonzag pointed out that it's even in the rules. so we have imprimatur for the idea that very old robots with unstated maintenance records might at some point over the years suffer a glitch, if that is needed.

It seems kinda peak traveller forums to be worrying that a company that writes adventures for people that enjoy the plot of adventures made a plot point in an adventure.