What am i doing wrong?

[Hopeless]

Okay as previously mentioned in other threads I'm hoping to run a modern day game.
I've got the starting characters done and the scenario prepared but would like to turn this into a campaign and would like a few opinions and advice on how to do this successfully.

The adventure involves a group of characters working for ESA, Interpol and one of their financial backers to travel to Canada and locate a missing scientist who returned home for Christmas before everything went to hell and she's been incommunicado for about three months.

Now for the adventure parts I don't want my players to know... at least not yet!

The Missing Scientist:
She’s Yugoslavian by nationality, her parents never married and her only real family her paternal grandfather was killed in front of her and she fled to Sweden following his dying wishes.

Her Grandfather was Russian and had links to the Russian Space Agency introducing her to friends of his in the late 80’s and early 90’s which is why she developed such a strong interest in the space program as well as physics.

She was sponsored into ESA by her mentor Hercule Van Zeeman (a PC in the game) who recognised her potential and whilst studying for her degree she met her husband and they got married in ’09 with her giving birth to their son in early ’10 before the Canadians made ESA aware of her progress causing her abrupt transfer to Europe.

After almost two years of work it took the program being shelved, before she was able to make any headway in the project and in late November she succeeded but it was almost a month later before she could demonstrate her success in front of ESA representatives, financial backers and other scientists.

Much to her disgust they were only interested in her cold fusion design she decided to spend several months leave out of contact with anything to do with the project until the middle of March, but whilst they thought she was staying somewhere in France she actually returned to Canada to celebrate Christmas with her husband and son only telling her former mentor and her protege where she was going and that she was seriously considering whether to continue working with ESA or quitting altogether.

The Project:
Manuel Cortez a NASA Scientist and rival of Hercule Van Zeeman was present when Morgan demonstrated her successful project, unlike everyone else he realised the full extent of what she had accomplished and used his access to divulge her confidential background history to contacts of his back in the US Govt one of whom recognised the daughter of a former Russian General who escaped a trap laid for him by a US Covert team in '95 and he hadn't been seen since.

What wasn’t known is that Morgan personally almost killed the entire team responsible for her grandfather's murder before fleeing with her mortally wounded grandfather and the survivor framed her grandfather in an attempt to force him to come forward to exonerate himself, Cortez’s information simply gave him the chance to strike at Morgan herself and arranged for the plane to be shot down only to discover afterwards that she hadn’t been aboard.

He’s now part of the team sent to extract her and he intends to silence her once and for all.

The Chinese Reaction
The Chinese being curious about Hercule's protege and the reasons why she was being denied access to the program sent an operative to check on her background. He has found her facility and is close to discovering she had an operational cold fusion power plant in use since the early 2007 thats being used to gain funding from the Canadian Government something no one outside of ESA and the Canadian Government knows about.

The Russian Reaction
After the successful demonstration Morgan contacted one of her friends that had been assigned to the multinational project on behalf of the Russians to let her know of her success, she discovered her friend was dying in hospital and was barely able to let her know before she died.
The Russians know she called they just don’t know why and given enough time will realise exactly how badly the Americans have messed up!

The American Reaction
As noted above the Americans have sent a team up north to forcibly extract Morgan, but have no idea where she is since Hercule forgot to include her marital status in her confidential files.

One of them intends to kill Morgan and her family if he has the chance and this will introduce them as they’ll meet the PCs whilst they’re at Morgan’s facility bursting in thinking she's present which is when the Chinese Operative will intervene believing he’s protecting his nations’ interests.

The Americans are unaware just how successful Morgan's research project actually is and officially she’s just wanted for questioning but they’re unaware the Canadian Government refused the US request for extradition shortly after they were sent North to extract her.

The Twists:
1) One of the other backers stole the prototypes, research material and Morgan’s research team replacing it with enough material to pass inspection once the bomb aboard blew up shortly before it reached its destination. The Operative that shot it down didn’t detonate the bomb which exploded a half hour later whilst local authorities were investigating the scene.

2) Morgan’s maternal family have tried everything to ruin her life and prefer her staying in Canada, but her success forced ESA to ignore their advice and in return they’ve swapped out her research team and are using them to pursue her research for their own devices. However the exchange left Morgan decidedly paranoid so she hasn’t revealed her secrets to anyone other than her original research team as far as they know and that team lacks Morgan’s inventive genius so are limited in what they can do to what she developed whilst they were part of her team.

3) Morgan didn’t just perfect her cold fusion design and get the shelved prototype drive working she stumbled onto a form of jump drive that she hopes will drastically reduce the amount of time needed to travel from one planet to another but due to the interference has kept quiet about this discovery hoping to test it fully once she has the chance to launch her new system within a modified Ariane Rocket designed to deliver a satellite into Mars orbit.

I'm looking at this turning into a campaign a sort of fusion of Space 1999 meets UFO but I'll stop here and hope you respond so I can make sure I'm not making one heck of a mess!

Thanks in advance!

 

[Nathan Brazil]

You mention Space: 1999 and UFO tv shows. So for some campaign plotting I ask if you have considered what tech or tropes or elements from the TV shows you are taking:

Have you plotted your world's current TL or what future TL stuff do you have in your world? Basically what is available for the characters to buy/use/be supplied with and what else is going on.

Is there currently a Moonbase of some sort? Current, size, housing, staff capacity. You could use the Starports supplement to develop features. If it is not there, but you plan on one, develop a timetable as to when it gets built or what is in place by when. It takes time.

What if any spacecraft do you have? The construction rules in High Guard have construction times, so you may want to look at that. Building new ships takes time also...

Do you have aliens of some sort? What are their characteristics? Can they survive on Earth or just within their spacecraft? Can humans survive on their ships?

 

[Nathan Brazil]

From a public "real world" standpoint to see what YOUR future (and campaign) looks like, I would suggest looking the Wikipedia in manned spaceflight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights
and Current Space Agency Capabilities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_agency

From the articles you can see that only China, Russia, and the US have ever launched manned vehicles. While the ESA has its own astronauts, they have always been on someone else's taxi ride.
At this time only Russia and China have manned launch capabilities. With the US Space Shuttle retired, we (I am American) do not have any current capability either. Any public ESA launch would have all the bells and whistles of a "historic" event.

If your campaign has "secret" space programs to combat aliens (like UFO), develop some notes on how or why they stay secret, because as you can see from the article, many countries have space programs of quality levels capable of "seeing things", and many of them do not get along with China, or Russia, or the European Union, or the US.

 

[Hopeless]

You mention Space: 1999 and UFO tv shows. So for some campaign plotting I ask if you have considered what tech or tropes or elements from the TV shows you are taking:

Looking at the establishing of a moon base as part of the campaign the UFO part depends on how my players react to the situation since my original idea eventually introduces a long dead culture and the acquisition of technology that wasn't properly vetted before being returned for examination on Earth.

Have you plotted your world's current TL or what future TL stuff do you have in your world? Basically what is available for the characters to buy/use/be supplied with and what else is going on.

Currently will be normal tech until after the pilot game and then certain parts will escalate and depending on the player's intentions (whether they want to create new characters for example) might result in a time jump as I figure the development mentioned would simply accelerate the first manned mission to Mars in one or two decades once they get past the problems that arise from her discoveries.

Is there currently a Moonbase of some sort? Current, size, housing, staff capacity. You could use the Starports supplement to develop features. If it is not there, but you plan on one, develop a timetable as to when it gets built or what is in place by when. It takes time.

Not yet I figure thats going to be at least a decade before they even get as far as planning a permanent base and only after the first manned mission would it eventually become a reality.

What if any spacecraft do you have? The construction rules in High Guard have construction times, so you may want to look at that. Building new ships takes time also...

It'll more Orbital for the time being as a practical jump drive is still years away but it will eventually mean a weeks travel between planets or asteroid belt so a ship can jump from say earth orbit to mars with a week spent in "jumpspace" and a week back or another week to reach just short of the asteroid belt and so on for the inevitable mining that will happen as they look for the resources to build those next generation ships.

Do you have aliens of some sort? What are their characteristics? Can they survive on Earth or just within their spacecraft? Can humans survive on their ships?

Still deciding on this might have them encounter something on Mars but eventually reveal that one of the moons of the outer planets is actually a massive spaceship or more likely spacestation but as far as aliens are concerned leaving that for after the first game and get the players reactions.

I want to turn this into a sandbox campaign but for that to work I need plenty of advice and also from my players who so far haven't even bothered to read what I sent them as I originally stated I was randomly creating the characters and now think I need to alter them as per what I mentioned above but the lack of response is what got me worried I was seriously messing up somewhere.

 

[Hopeless]

From a public "real world" standpoint to see what YOUR future (and campaign) looks like, I would suggest looking the Wikipedia in manned spaceflight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_spaceflights
and Current Space Agency Capabilities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_agency

Sweet mother... sorry wow!
Thanks for the link oh my word I'm going to have to go through those I seriously underestimated just how much interest there is in outer space research!

From the articles you can see that only China, Russia, and the US have ever launched manned vehicles. While the ESA has its own astronauts, they have always been on someone else's taxi ride.
At this time only Russia and China have manned launch capabilities. With the US Space Shuttle retired, we (I am American) do not have any current capability either. Any public ESA launch would have all the bells and whistles of a "historic" event.

Interesting would make the interest in her cold fusion research more important at this stage than getting a drive system working that currently only a limited number of agencies would even be able to make use of!

If your campaign has "secret" space programs to combat aliens (like UFO), develop some notes on how or why they stay secret, because as you can see from the article, many countries have space programs of quality levels capable of "seeing things", and many of them do not get along with China, or Russia, or the European Union, or the US.

Was hoping to leave that part for later on in the game, but maybe I should be considering how the rest of the world would react since the current stage of my game would have one unspecified faction with access to her cold fusion research up to when she was transferred across to Europe and another of possible East European (or other) having all of her research including the prototype drive but not the jump drive research which was kept separate due to her preferring to complete her research on that before even hinting of its existance.

Oh wow, nothing says I can't have aliens already on Earth and stuck here since the second world war and only now discovering the means to return to their spacestation thanks to a descendant of one of their hybrid children whose completely unaware of their relationship...

Sorry going too far but seriously thanks for those links!

 

[Nathan Brazil]

Things to note about the space agencies and launch facilities.
1.Number of facilities. A lot of real estate has been chewed up countries over the years for launch facilities. Some have been decomissioned and/or fallen into disuse. But who knows, maybe they can rebuilt and used again.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rocket_launch_sites
2.Scale. The listing also shows what was the largest rocket launched at those sites. Perhaps one might make sense to reuse for manned purposes.

Interesting from a politics point of view is the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Once a Soviet facility, it is on Kazakh soil far from the current Russian border. It is leased to the Russian government until 2050. The Kazakhstan Space Agency only operates satellites right now. By 2050 who knows what Kazakhstan might be able to do?

On the idea of the secret/release of cold fusion, the "real life" reactions by nations in your adventure would be along the lines of:
1.Is it dangerous directly - if it in any way like fission where the fuel, byproducts or waste or even the process itself can be weaponized directly, you know how the nuclear countries or those who want nukes will likely react...
2.A more efficient energy source will change many things world. Some countries or companies will try to suppress it, others may demand it to be energy independent or remain competative. A cool solution for your game might be if it is patented or open sourced by the PC's or NPC's to prevent suppression. Patented and now some characters will never want for money again. Open source it and then your future world will become VERY interesting as EVERYONE is scrambling to make use of it!

 

[Nathan Brazil]

On open sourcing, I would suggest you look at the example of Paul Zimmerman and PGP. On that, just saying...

 

[Hopeless]

On the idea of the secret/release of cold fusion, the "real life" reactions by nations in your adventure would be along the lines of:
1.Is it dangerous directly - if it in any way like fission where the fuel, byproducts or waste or even the process itself can be weaponized directly, you know how the nuclear countries or those who want nukes will likely react...
2.A more efficient energy source will change many things world. Some countries or companies will try to suppress it, others may demand it to be energy independent or remain competative. A cool solution for your game might be if it is patented or open sourced by the PC's or NPC's to prevent suppression. Patented and now some characters will never want for money again. Open source it and then your future world will become VERY interesting as EVERYONE is scrambling to make use of it!

Plan on seeing discussing that with my players once they finish the first adventure (a big IF at this point) one of the revelations during the adventure is that Morgan went overboard with elaborate precautions to make it extremely difficult to weaponize her invention which makes implicit use of the fact her process does split the atoms in water and has a failsafe that causes this to reverse if someone tries to overload it but that only requires them to find and remove all of the backups she included once they realise they're there.

Have this vision of North Korea getting hold of it and they have a scientist who recognises what she's done and actually applauds because it renders it worthless as a replacement as a nuke until they can reverse engineer her invention just to locate the hidden extras she used to prevent just that.

Currently thinking that if they go to her facility one of the bad guys leaves a bomb and tries to cause a meltdown even going so far as to neutralize the obvious safety measures only to have it dump the water once it reaches critical but I'm hoping someone here will elaborate on what happens when oxygen and hydrogen are mixed back together under normal conditions (ie they were separate in the first place).

 

[Hopeless]

Which of the following sounds like the best place to start an adventure?

1)Following the activation of the world's first cold fusion power plant the Toronto facility is in talks with the Canadian Government over funding in return for the power supplied by the now working power plant being passed into the Toronto power network.

Up to this point Morgan Stuart (her married name is referred to as Morganna Jeredinov by ESA due to a mistake by her mentor Hercule Van Zeeman leaving them unaware she has married and recently gave birth to their first child) has been kept firmly out of the Multinational research program because of her dubious past given she's just earned her degrees in physcis, engineering and computer science which make her discovery very suspect in their eyes.

The Government want her to build more power plants with their help since she and her team are the only ones with the know how, but they have contacted ESA who subsequently panic when it becomes clear she isn't a fraud...

Originally this was to be part of her past but given I wanted this game to start off with the players arriving at Toronto airport to go looking for the holidaying scientist and her family this might make a better starting point.

2)The original premise for this is that she was transferred across to Paris and has finished her research well she had that done before the transfer but her original team have been swapped out by a group better affiliated with the research project (read may be operatives working for the other nations or on behalf of the backers looking to get a heads up on her research and then go straight full on espionage by having them be working for one or more organisations looking to steal her research since unlike ESA are fully aware how far she's got and want the opportunity to find out what else she's working on).

This would involve the fact she got the shelved program's prototype working using her cold fusion research and as an extra science fiction twist that she discovered a form of jump drive that is far from perfected but has enough information to get a crude prototype that may or may not work if taken out of the lab and used in space.

3) Morgan is recruited as a medic on an Antarctic Research Mission as part of the multinational project and is discovered to be a prodigy in physics and engineering managing to get a cold fusion working for a short while before a gasket blew and flooded the cabin with the water she had tried to separate into fuel.
Taken under the wing of ESA Astronomer Hercule Van Zeeman what would be the reaction if it gets out what she's done and the fact it did work?

One problem with this is that I could use the other characters but being set in 2006 that would make Wulfric 16 years old and Laura Braun would hardly be a corporate lawyer for one of Richard Branson's firms at this stage let alone explaining what Carl Wagner is doing aboard... maybe have him be Hercule's handler for the mission?

This would certainly be interesting place to start?! :lol:

What do you think?

 

[Hopeless]

So there are three possible starting points and only YOU can decide which one is used...

Are you going to start off as...

1)Members of an Antarctic Research Mission whose just found someone has figured out how cold fusion works and you're stuck on a ship with someone or several someone's intent on profiting from that knowledge...

OR

2)Present at the opening of the world's first Cold Fusion Power Plant and whilst the Canadian Government wants more built, ESA is slowly becoming aware of whats been achieved and thanks to them the world...

OR

3)Openly demonstrating the world's first minaturised cold fusion reactor for use with the space program the political infighting and prejudice shown towards the lead scientist has sent her into hiding with only a couple of trusted friends knowing where's she's gone BUT her entire team, research and prototypes have been seemingly destroyed through a mishap thanks to an egotistical NASA Scientist and now the world are looking for the missing lead scientist and YOU are the only ones who know where she is... can you reach her before god knows who does?

As I said its YOUR CHOICE... make your minds up time is running out!

What do you think, too much?