"I'm sorry Dave..."

[Callos_DeTerran]

Before anyone does any more 2001 quotes, I've never seen all of that movie myself and this thread isn't about rogue AI. Not completely anyway.

Recently my brain has been stuck on the 'terror on the spaceship' style of game, courtesy of EA's Dead Space, so naturally I've begun to think of how to craft a d20 Modern game for it. Floor plans, encounters, just what the hell is wrong in the first place, all of those things bounce about in my head. But I've run into a creative problem.

Assuming the PC's are under the guise of repairing the ship (they will be) what sort of problems can they fix aboard a gigantic space craft? (And I do mean big, as in having a crew in excess of a thousand people, not including passengers) What effect would they have? Sadly, my techy problem-fu is lacking so I turn to the Playground as I usually tend to do. What sort of problems could PCs fix aboard a giant ship and what effect could it have (good and/or bad) on their surroundings?

[The Glyphstone]

Maybe look to Alien for good reference? Kinda the same thing, though monsters plural instead of monster, and less collateral damage civilians to get in the way.

[erikun]

What does the spaceship do?

Just right off hand, I can think of: air leaks, water leaks, fuel leaks, thrusters maintenance, engine maintenance, structural integrety checks, docking maintenance, droid maintenance, computer systems check, gravitational systems maintenance, gravitational systems repair, or just screwing in bolts on the outside of the ship. Plus problems happening in just one section of the ship, such as a rogue droid taking appart machinery, maintenance hatches refusing to open, or general computer errors (Blue Screen of Death).

Of course, these are just the mechanical problems. There are also the people to deal with, such as slummers, drug trafficers/growers, rebel organizations, terrorists, and so on. You can combine several, such as a condemned section of the ship that has become a popular place for the poor, but an environment leak is slowing draining the air from the area. Throw in a hostile rebel group, and the party needs to try to move the homeless while watching out for armed rebels, or from wandering into a section where low oxygen levels threaten to knock the entire party out and kill then.

[nyarlathotep]

In a ship large enough to house thousands of people you are going to have miles of wiring, and any section of the wiring getting damaged can cause problems. Big problems if it is the wiring that powers the computer that tells you where faults are in the wiring, or in the life support systems.

The reason I recommend this is that it is a problem that most people even without technical knowledge (assuming the guise comment meaning they aren't really repairmen) can fix, but the process of finding the short is still hard enough that there can be tension built around it.

[Leewei]

Simple malfunctions that also have an element of danger to them. Wiring that seems faulty that doesn't go dead when the circuit-breaker is thrown, doors with faulty sensors and with the failsafe disabled due to a faulty air leak sensor, that sort of thing. The ship is a death trap. And the worst thing is that it might not be sabotage by any of its crew...

[Dienekes]

And I was all ready to start singing Daisy.

But really, if your on a ship that big you're running a fully serviceable ecosystem. The machines that turn urine into drinking water, possibly the second most important machine in the entire spacecraft (after the one that converts co2 to oxygen or whatever you're using to get oxygen to circulate the ship)

So importantly things that do the necessities are of vital importance. Then we go to the ship itself. Screw the engines for the most part, the spaceship will still keep moving in the same trajectory with or without them. Air leaks are always popular. Maybe the machine that churns out soylent green is broken? That or the actual food supply is dying off for whatever reason.

Or you could get interesting and have a virus or disease start to spread among the population that the scientific doctors can't figure out how to cure. Really anything you can think of that would affect a normal society would be a real problem in such an environment. Plus whatever spacey ideas you can come up with. Everyone's in deep sleep except for a few people and yet all the support systems seem to blow. Or your trajectory is broken by an asteroid that knocked out your engines (see now engines would be a problem), alien contact, or simply realizing that everything's gone wrong and you're all alone in space.

Hope that helps in any way.

[Iku Rex]

The Alternity adventure The Last Warhulk might provide useful ideas and maps.

[sonofzeal]

The #1 biggest danger is always decompression. Violent decompression should always be on everyone's mind, including yours when you lay out the ship. The more spherical, the better; the more modular, the better; the more redundant protections, the better. The characters should have to go through massive precautions when doing anything that has anything to do with the ship's hull, and should be seriously on edge the whole time. You can make the players on edge too by talking about these things for a bit and then having one of them fail. Just one, and there's backups, but that'll get the tension up. Speculate on what would happen to the residential area if a full decompression happened, ask your players for their ideas. You can get a lot of mileage this way....

[Catch]

Star Trek reruns. Anything that can go wrong with a spaceship has happened in at least five different ST episodes.

The season really doesn't matter (though Voyager tended to have the most mechanical problems, what with the premise being Oregon Trail in space).

[chiasaur11]

Marathon was mostly alien invasion and mad AI, but there were a couple of ideas in there.

Lessee, there was decompression, power failure, the automated door opening system was very much on the fritz, the computer systems crashed and when they did work often displayed random text, automated defenses were offline and when they went on sometimes worked wrong, to the point of attacking the security forces they were meant to help, the long range coms were down, and the teleporters sometimes went to the wrong location entirely.

Lots of fun.

[Randel]

Things every ship need:

1. A power source.
A: Fusion reactor - Has no chance of exploding but if even the slightest thing goes wrong with the reaction then it shuts down. Cue people having to run through lots of diagnostics to get all the force fields and stuff properly repaired/replaced/and calibrated. Its a race to get it fixed while the back-up power source runs. It converts hydrogen into helium... which either gets tossed out or filled into tanks for balloons...

B: Nuclear reactor - Easy, cheap, and reliable. Little maintenance is needed but occasionally a leak in containment fills the area around it with radiation. Nobody ever stays around it for long (since robots do most work on it) but there is the chance of something mutating as a result of radiation exposure.

C: Ram Jet - A giant magnetic scoop that scoops up interstellar hydrogen as a fuel source for the fusion reactor. If anything electronic runs into the magnetic scoop, consider it fried. Much like a regular Fusion reactor but it constantly gathers hydrogen fuel so its unlikely that it will ever run out (unless the ramjet breaks in which case you have to fix it before reserves run out). A fluctuation in the magnetic scoop could conceivably start messing with sensors or other electronic gizmos near the front of the ship. Micro meteors may occasionally get caught in the scoop and mess with it until you shut it off and get the meteor out.

2. Support Systems
A: Oxygen cleaner - cleans up the CO2 and toxins out of the air. May include a greenhouse or hydroponics system that converts CO2 to oxegen with plants. Also, there has to be a proper mix of oxegen and nitrogen and such... if the system starts pouring out pure oxygen then fires flare up easier (may even result in metal burning if there is a hot enough spark). Pure oxygen also can really mess up a person. Also, if the nitrogen mix is too high without oxygen then people can suffocate without feeling short of breath (since I think our bodies can detect CO2 but not oxygen... we feel short of breath because we 'taste' CO2 not because we miss oxygen. Thus an inert gas can kill people without them noticing it... particularly if they are asleep).

B: Water purifier - As Dienekes said, need to keep that one properly maintained. The ship would probably have multiple water systems... one for drinking water, one for cleaning, one line for waste water, another for industrial purposes, and maybe one for the Ion Drive. Some crewmembers might have their own personal water purifier set up in their room or just drink bottled water instead of water from a sink. Also, cleaning might be done with alchohol or something... to save water and such. Remember that hydrogen and oxygen can be converted into water and visa versa.

C: Replacement part factory - Have something like a replicator set up (or just a shop with the equiment to make wiring an microchips and stuff) which could manufacture any part that there isn't a spare on hand. Keep in mind it probably best to have two or three replicators set up and spare parts in case one breaks.

D: Food supply - Unless you have a ton of stored food, some way to create food is needed. Maybe a replicator, maybe a hydroponics bay, maybe some sort of cloning factory or even live animals to raise. Its very likely that the cheapest food would be some sort of yeast/algae/tofu/protein stuff while more expensive food would include actual vegetables or even actual meat. Due to the expense of real meat (as opposed to cloned stuff if its available) then some people might bring chickens, guinea pigs, fish, or turtles to raise in a small space and sell them for meat. You may find various small animals who have escaped and gotten caught up in the wiring or something.

Note that microgravity can have strange effects on growing living things... like tree spouts that grow roots and leaves in all directions, or chickens with serious birth defects, also low gravity causes osteoporosis in bones. Thus if there are any low-gravity parts of the ship (which would most likely be much cheaper than ones with decent gravity) then some people might try raising stuff there so they don't take up space in the high-class graity areas. Thus, don't be surprised if you run into chickens on a start ship... or hideously malformed chickens with four legs and rubbery bones... and lets not get started on what happens if they get exposed to radiation from the reactor or cosmic rays.

Keep in mind, that when you eat your chicken nuggets you don't know what the chicken looked like before. Also, if people start vanishing and you hear about someone selling bacon or pork on the black market... well, unless someone brought along some actual pigs to get pork from then prepare for some crazy stuff.

E: Chicken soup vending machines - There will be vending machines, and someone has to make sure the chicken soup nozzle doesn't clog.


Also, if there are holes in the hull, then its likely that they are just little pinhole sized ones. To fix them just search for spots where the pressure drops and then stick some duct-tape over the hole until you have time to go outside. You could probably get into alot of the outside hull areas just by saying you're looking for hull leaks.

Also, the ships computer should have several backups all running... so when you have to run the defrag or something then it doesn't jam everything up in an emergency.

[chiasaur11]

Oh, and the replicator should make a drink almost (but not quite) entirely unlike tea.

[Mewtarthio]

Well, you are in a small, enclosed community that nobody can ever leave. How long is this ship going to be traveling? If it's a very long time (eg a colony ship, or a Voyager-esque lost ship), expect things to get really messy. In particular, resources are at a premium. If somebody commits a heinous crime, life in prison is out of the question: There will be capital punishment. If it's long enough that you expect new generations to be born, then things start getting really dystopian.

[Randel]

Also, all consoles double as firecracker storage lockers. Its your job to make sure that all bridge consoles contain enough explosives in them to let the people there know how damaged their ship is.

Also, if you have a holodeck then be sure and deal with that (no unplugging the damm thing and just replicating a PS3 for everyone... thats just cheating).

[Fhaolan]

Here's a scenario that one of my gaming groups tried to pull off once. It didn't work out for us, but that doesn't mean it can't for you.

A reasonably large asteroid mining/refinery ship is traveling through a belt on a far garbage star (no habitable planets, just asteroids), looking for rocks with high enough mineral content to be worth processing. Near a fascinating asteroid with a high value of rare minerals they find a floating derelict. A very large ship with no registry, no name, no markings at all, and of an unfamiliar configuration. It's not 'alien' as such, it just seems... custom, and very expensive looking.

The mining vessel sends a salvage crew across (the PCs), but there's nothing there. No passengers, no crew, no life... and no bodies. All the escape pods are intact, nothing missing except the people. There's damage of some sort, to the power systems, life support, etc. so nothing onboard is working at all. The technology seems a little out of sync to what they're used to. Some of it more advanced, some of it out of date. None of it with makers labels or anything that seems to indicate the place of manufacture. The engines, if they worked, would be seriously oversized for the vessel indicating that it's intended to be *fast*. It somehow doesn't seem like a luxury private vessel; it has a para-military feel of austereness, but it has no offensive weapons of any kind.

And then the mining ship explodes, taking with it all hands.

The PCs are now stuck aboard an unfamiliar vessel that isn't operable as it stands. Everyone on board has mysteriously disappeared, and their own ship just blew up for no apparent reason. There's little chance they will be found by another ship, and they've got no life support but what's in the suits they brought with them. Is the ship *really* empty? When they do get power going, why do all the logs and records on the ship simply end at the exact same moment of time, and at a completely different location in space? Where did all the people go? Where did they come from in the first place? Why is the ship completely 'scrubbed' of any kind of ident? Why were they out here in the middle of nowhere, next to this valuable rock with no mining equipment? What happened to our mining ship? Is it all connected somehow?

Combination survival and mystery game. I won't tell you the answers to these questions, because part of the fun is coming up with your own.

[BobVosh]

Things every ship need:

Spoiler

Show

1. A power source.
A: Fusion reactor - Has no chance of exploding but if even the slightest thing goes wrong with the reaction then it shuts down. Cue people having to run through lots of diagnostics to get all the force fields and stuff properly repaired/replaced/and calibrated. Its a race to get it fixed while the back-up power source runs. It converts hydrogen into helium... which either gets tossed out or filled into tanks for balloons...

B: Nuclear reactor - Easy, cheap, and reliable. Little maintenance is needed but occasionally a leak in containment fills the area around it with radiation. Nobody ever stays around it for long (since robots do most work on it) but there is the chance of something mutating as a result of radiation exposure.

C: Ram Jet - A giant magnetic scoop that scoops up interstellar hydrogen as a fuel source for the fusion reactor. If anything electronic runs into the magnetic scoop, consider it fried. Much like a regular Fusion reactor but it constantly gathers hydrogen fuel so its unlikely that it will ever run out (unless the ramjet breaks in which case you have to fix it before reserves run out). A fluctuation in the magnetic scoop could conceivably start messing with sensors or other electronic gizmos near the front of the ship. Micro meteors may occasionally get caught in the scoop and mess with it until you shut it off and get the meteor out.

2. Support Systems
A: Oxygen cleaner - cleans up the CO2 and toxins out of the air. May include a greenhouse or hydroponics system that converts CO2 to oxegen with plants. Also, there has to be a proper mix of oxegen and nitrogen and such... if the system starts pouring out pure oxygen then fires flare up easier (may even result in metal burning if there is a hot enough spark). Pure oxygen also can really mess up a person. Also, if the nitrogen mix is too high without oxygen then people can suffocate without feeling short of breath (since I think our bodies can detect CO2 but not oxygen... we feel short of breath because we 'taste' CO2 not because we miss oxygen. Thus an inert gas can kill people without them noticing it... particularly if they are asleep).

B: Water purifier - As Dienekes said, need to keep that one properly maintained. The ship would probably have multiple water systems... one for drinking water, one for cleaning, one line for waste water, another for industrial purposes, and maybe one for the Ion Drive. Some crewmembers might have their own personal water purifier set up in their room or just drink bottled water instead of water from a sink. Also, cleaning might be done with alchohol or something... to save water and such. Remember that hydrogen and oxygen can be converted into water and visa versa.

C: Replacement part factory - Have something like a replicator set up (or just a shop with the equiment to make wiring an microchips and stuff) which could manufacture any part that there isn't a spare on hand. Keep in mind it probably best to have two or three replicators set up and spare parts in case one breaks.

D: Food supply - Unless you have a ton of stored food, some way to create food is needed. Maybe a replicator, maybe a hydroponics bay, maybe some sort of cloning factory or even live animals to raise. Its very likely that the cheapest food would be some sort of yeast/algae/tofu/protein stuff while more expensive food would include actual vegetables or even actual meat. Due to the expense of real meat (as opposed to cloned stuff if its available) then some people might bring chickens, guinea pigs, fish, or turtles to raise in a small space and sell them for meat. You may find various small animals who have escaped and gotten caught up in the wiring or something.

Note that microgravity can have strange effects on growing living things... like tree spouts that grow roots and leaves in all directions, or chickens with serious birth defects, also low gravity causes osteoporosis in bones. Thus if there are any low-gravity parts of the ship (which would most likely be much cheaper than ones with decent gravity) then some people might try raising stuff there so they don't take up space in the high-class graity areas. Thus, don't be surprised if you run into chickens on a start ship... or hideously malformed chickens with four legs and rubbery bones... and lets not get started on what happens if they get exposed to radiation from the reactor or cosmic rays.

Keep in mind, that when you eat your chicken nuggets you don't know what the chicken looked like before. Also, if people start vanishing and you hear about someone selling bacon or pork on the black market... well, unless someone brought along some actual pigs to get pork from then prepare for some crazy stuff.

E: Chicken soup vending machines - There will be vending machines, and someone has to make sure the chicken soup nozzle doesn't clog.


Also, if there are holes in the hull, then its likely that they are just little pinhole sized ones. To fix them just search for spots where the pressure drops and then stick some duct-tape over the hole until you have time to go outside. You could probably get into alot of the outside hull areas just by saying you're looking for hull leaks.

Also, the ships computer should have several backups all running... so when you have to run the defrag or something then it doesn't jam everything up in an emergency.

Your scifi-fu is quite strong.

Also in a nonmilitary vehicle a spaced crazy is a must. Absolutely require for one person to go insane.

[Dienekes]

Oh, and the replicator should make a drink almost (but not quite) entirely unlike tea.

Also beware of joggers, I would also suggest that your ship be running from a giant mutant star goat and filled with telephone cleaners, but that's just me.

[Randel]

Your scifi-fu is quite strong.

Also in a nonmilitary vehicle a spaced crazy is a must. Absolutely require for one person to go insane.

Thank you.

Also, if there are people frozen or in suspended animation or whatever then you'll need somebody to keep an eye on them and make sure they are okay. That goes double for important people who might have assassins sent to pull the plug on them.

[Heliomance]

E: Chicken soup vending machines - There will be vending machines, and someone has to make sure the chicken soup nozzle doesn't clog.

Bah. I was going to suggest that.

[Radar]

In space, stars are your only guide and even they are useless, if you don't have very accurate information about them: mass, temperature, their star and/or planet system, specific chemical composition etc. Remember, that while you travel in space, you can't rely on star's brightness (changes with distance), color (changes with relative speed due to Doppler effect) or constellations. Account in nebulae that will obscure view. Now if you consider all this, your starcharts/catalogues are the only thing that makes difference between traveling and being utterly lost. It is obvious, you keep multiple copies of those, yet each copy is an immensly important object and should be well guarded. Navigational disasters can be as deadly as mechanical ones.

Also consider natural fenomena: crashing into uncharted nebulae; getting cought in a gamma ray burst from a magnetar. Sky is NOT the limit.

[BobVosh]

The problem with navigational issues is that you can't really make a story around stopping it. It can be used as a railroad source, but not much else.

[Zen Master]

The wonderful thing about stuff that does not exist is that you don't need any real explanations.

If you tell your players that the last [bomb/hull quake/laser salvo/whatever] disrupted the Quark Flow Stabilizers, and that this need to be fixed or the ship will go boom - then that's the way it is.

Now, to fix the Quark Flow, obviously you need to replace the [power core/superconductor magnets/ion relays/whatever] ... and so on, and so on.

Really, sci-fi is just endless series of making up stuff that sounds right. And other than that, it's exactly the same as making a fantasy game.

[Radar]

The problem with navigational issues is that you can't really make a story around stopping it. It can be used as a railroad source, but not much else.

Well... yes and no. First of, it's another layer of background and a way to remind the players, that outer space is not a nice place to be.

It also introduces a well justified MacGuffin into the scenario - there are numerous plots, that can be woven around stealing/hacking/destroying said charts. If you consider mutinity scenario, then it's an important element (one of the few mobile ones) of power struggle between the fractions.

Position of navigators would be significant on a spaceship, so if one of them died, it would catch attention of the public.

[BobVosh]

Valid point, but still seems more like background fluff than a plot point. Although a treasure map is always useful.

More applications that I originally thought, though. Simply because losing them can be a campaign ender.

[lesser_minion]

The wonderful thing about stuff that does not exist is that you don't need any real explanations.

If you tell your players that the last [bomb/hull quake/laser salvo/whatever] disrupted the Quark Flow Stabilizers, and that this need to be fixed or the ship will go boom - then that's the way it is.

Now, to fix the Quark Flow, obviously you need to replace the [power core/superconductor magnets/ion relays/whatever] ... and so on, and so on.

Really, sci-fi is just endless series of making up stuff that sounds right. And other than that, it's exactly the same as making a fantasy game.

Not so. Pointless technobabble is exactly that. It adds absolutely nothing.

Your story will get a lot more from a setting in which everything behaves in a consistent way, and where the laws of physics are followed as far as possible. Unless there are overtly supernatural elements in the setting, people expect the laws of physics to be followed.

You will have to break the laws of physics, and the best way to deal with that is to work out the implications of the change and work those into your setting.

Assuming the PC's are under the guise of repairing the ship (they will be) what sort of problems can they fix aboard a gigantic space craft? (And I do mean big, as in having a crew in excess of a thousand people, not including passengers) What effect would they have? Sadly, my techy problem-fu is lacking so I turn to the Playground as I usually tend to do. What sort of problems could PCs fix aboard a giant ship and what effect could it have (good and/or bad) on their surroundings?

This would vary, depending on how your spacecraft works. The first question is the scale of the issue.

Possible catastrophic failures:

- Radiators. Your ship has to vent heat into space somehow. If the ship's cooling system goes offline, then unless repaired, the crew will cook.

- Inertial Dampeners. If these go offline, then the ship's crew run the risk of being turned into sushi whenever they attempt to manoeuvre.

- Computing. Any spacecraft this big would be flown by wire. If the engineer messes up the VHDL or if one of the programmers messes up one of the programs, then there could be some pretty horrific results - systems going offline, or failing altogether.

- Augmented Reality. Instead of inertial dampeners, your crew might be kept in 'shock pods' with some lines for life support, and a VR interface of some sort. That could lead to an interesting way to interact with the ship's systems (note that security personnel wouldn't be necessary once the ship was underway - anybody boarding the craft would be reduced to sushi by the acceleration alone).

- Structural. If damage/cheap builders caused part of the ship's structure to fail, the results could be pretty varied - a bulkhead or compartment might rupture, a spar might shear, or worse. That could certainly leave a system offline - or damaged.

- Power. A total loss of power would leave the ship unable to do anything - all of the other systems would go offline (except life support). And that includes propulsion.


It would be very rare for an important system to go offline without it being a very big deal. If something just went offline for no reason or an engineering/programming error, then heads would roll when the survivors made their report. And not in a figurative sense.

If sabotage, monsters or supernatural events were involved, you would be able to explore it in the story, and it would make the events more interesting.

The only other likely explanations for any catastrophic failures are ship-to-ship combat damage and serious accidents (collisions, or accidentally flying into another ship's exhaust).

Well... yes and no. First of, it's another layer of background and a way to remind the players, that outer space is not a nice place to be.

It also introduces a well justified MacGuffin into the scenario - there are numerous plots, that can be woven around stealing/hacking/destroying said charts. If you consider mutinity scenario, then it's an important element (one of the few mobile ones) of power struggle between the fractions.

In general, I'd expect the interstellar drive to work without any complications as far as navigational issues are concerned. Saying that, most interstellar drives would have operators who would almost certainly have the same kind of influence and effect on the story as your navigators - either psychic, or at least very strange. I don't think a computer would really do very well at handling something as bizarre as an FTL drive.

[The Glyphstone]

In general, I'd expect the interstellar drive to work without any complications as far as navigational issues are concerned. Saying that, most interstellar drives would have operators who would almost certainly have the same kind of influence and effect on the story as your navigators - either psychic, or at least very strange. I don't think a computer would really do very well at handling something as bizarre as an FTL drive.

Personally, I find Turing-compatible AI's to be more likely than working FTL, or at least far more likely to come first.

[lesser_minion]

FTL engineering would be a completely different world to other kinds of engineering - acausal control theory isn't particularly well-developed in the real world, after all.

I don't think it's really within the reach of electronic computers. A synthetic biological computer maybe, but not electronics.

[Radar]

(...)

In general, I'd expect the interstellar drive to work without any complications as far as navigational issues are concerned. Saying that, most interstellar drives would have operators who would almost certainly have the same kind of influence and effect on the story as your navigators - either psychic, or at least very strange. I don't think a computer would really do very well at handling something as bizarre as an FTL drive.

True, on a spaceship (as it is with any sufficiently complicated machine) there are multiple vital systems and persons. One thing falls and you're in serious trouble. This means, that with a very large ship, with thousands of people, there are too many high priority targets for the security to reliably look after. Following: if players know, that something nasty is going to happen (for example catch a loose note about a planned sabotage), they won't be able to just fortify in few key structural points (with all important persons) and run a tedious and time-consuming security scan of the whole crew. They will have to actively hunt down potential criminals.

[Zen Master]

Not so. Pointless technobabble is exactly that. It adds absolutely nothing.

Oh ok - I guess the guys making *every sci-fi show known to man* just don't know that. Oh - and the fans watching too =)

[Radar]

Oh ok - I guess the guys making *every sci-fi show known to man* just don't know that. Oh - and the fans watching too =)

With any SF show you just sit back and enjoy the ride without giving it much thought. When you are a player, then world consistency is important to immerse oneself in the story and because you need to know, what things are possible (and what are the necessary means to do those thing) and which aren't.

Same thing with fantasy. In a movie "It's Magic!" will suffice, in a RPG not so.