Merging two unrelated ideas

[james_davis_nicoll]

A comment on the Watsfic discord made me realize that this venerable SPI magazine game



could easily be adapted for an Aliens RPG adventure.



The basic set up is characters wake up from hibernation after a mishap disables the ship. With the clock ticking down, they have to reboot important subsystems or the ship will do dark and everyone on it will perish.

There are just two minor complications:

A: The ship collected a wide variety of specimens, all of which escaped during the mishap.

B: The mishap had the side effect of causing short-term amnesia in the crew, so nobody remembers which animals are safe and which extremely dangerous.

It strikes me that it could be amusing to try something I've seen suggested, which is that the players start off not knowing much more about their characters than what's supplied on their uniform tags. Want to see if your character has certain skills? Try to accomplish a task and see what happens.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

It strikes me that it could be amusing to try something I've seen suggested, which is that the players start off not knowing much more about their characters than what's supplied on their uniform tags.

That's the hook for the Mongoose Traveller adventure Flatlined, which I think works best as a convention game.

[keith_morrison]

That would be interesting in that someone who was generally a jack of all trades for many things or has a relevant hobby could really screw up the party in a technological setting.

"Hey, I know how to prepare a great meal and enjoy puttering around in the galley! I must be the ship's cook!" (They're the life support systems engineer).

[(Anonymous)]

Particularly if they had Jack of All Trades 2, which basically functions as Every Skill -1 (ordinarily no skill at all ~ -3).

[ffutures]

This would work well for The Awful Green Things from Outer Space, I think.

[(Anonymous)]

In James White's novel "All Judgment Fled" (1967 ish, in "Galaxy"), Earth's first contact is with a spaceship that turns out to be mostly full of zoo critters it's probably collected, leaving a mystery of whether any of the things are crew, and what the astronauts should or can do about it.

The Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where everyone forgets who they are and what they do is "Conundrum" (1992). This may also be broadcast without explanation in your TV guide. "Clues" (1991) is the other one. I think Voyager and Stargate also did episodes where they all get amnesia and are put in some kind of work jail. Maybe it's something that every show does eventually, like the Quasi Consensual At Best Fight Club story. Voyager did another, "The Killing Game", which is the amnesia plot again AND the fight club plot.

Robert Carnegie

[viktor_haag]

See also the Mothership RPG.