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Now that we have a custom campaign structure for a “Between the Stars” campaign, let’s turn our focus to the scenarios that will be triggered by that campaign structure.

With quite a few of these scenarios, of course, we can use scenario structures that we’re already familiar with: Someone is murdered on board; grab our scenario structure for mysteries. The ship stumbles across a wandering asteroid studded with alien architecture; whip out the maps for an old-fashioned dungeoncrawl. We might want to give some thought to the types of hooks we can use to initiate each scenario narratively, but there’ll be no need to reinvent the wheel in designing the scenarios themselves.

(Random thought: If we’re looking for a semi-generic structure for constructing scenario hooks we could define them according to (a) when they’re triggered; (b) what officer will receive the trigger; and (c) what the hook is. For example, a scenario in which the PCs are approached to smuggle a cargo might be triggered in dock before the voyage starts; target the cargomaster; and take the form of a comm call asking for a meeting at a dockside bar. The “asteroid of alien architecture” might be hooked with the navigator making a Sensors check (on a success they detect the asteroid a fair distance away; on a failure they stumble too close to it and get caught in an automated tractor beam). A murder scenario might be hooked with the security officer making a Security check (success indicates they find the body on a routine sweep; failure indicates that a random passenger finds the body).)

For other scenarios, however, it may be useful to give some thought customizing new scenario structures. As an example of that, we’re going to look at the hypothetical example of hijacking scenarios. Before doing that, however, I want to make a couple of particular points.

First, we’ll want to remember that the default goal of the campaign’s macro structure is to successfully run a ship in order to maximize profit. Which means that scenarios and hooks that either threaten the PCs’ profit or offer them opportunities for more profit will be most successful.

Second, I want to note that this entire section of the essay is entirely hypothetical: If this stuff were to be put to a proper playtest, I have little doubt that we’d discover that some of it doesn’t work in practice and other stuff could be greatly improved. That’s just part of the process.

SCENARIO STRUCTURE: HIJACKING

What we’re looking at here is any scenario where passengers, stowaways, or members of the crew attempt to take control of the ship.

If the ship were relatively small in size, we could probably run this using location ‘crawl techniques. In other words, we could take a fully keyed map of the ship and then run the actions of the PCs and hijackers in “real time” so to speak. This would be appropriate for something like Air Force One.

But let’s assume that the ship is larger and that we want to create experiences that feel more like Die Hard or Under Siege.

Node Map of the Ship: First, for purposes of navigation, let’s create a node map of the ship. This abstract representation of movement aboard ship will allow both PCs and hijackers to make meaningful decisions about where they’re going and how they’re going to get there without getting bogged down in tracking things corridor-by-corridor and room-by-room. (Although for certain key areas – like the bridge of the engine room – we may still want to draw-up detailed maps for tactical purposes.)

With this map we can now key both nodes and the routes between nodes. We can also allow characters to secure and/or barricade specific nodes or routes. (So some routes to the bridge may be less heavily guarded than others, for example.)

We can also assign travel times between locations.

Shortcuts and Stealth Paths: Looking at our touchstones of Die Hard and Under Siege, we can see that a lot of the action is driven by protagonists seeking out alternative methods of moving around the structure (ventilation shafts, service corridors, burning holes through bulkheads, etc.).

We could try including these routes onto our node map of the ship, possibly by using dotted lines:

Or, for a simpler and more flexible solution, we could assume that the ship has sufficient structural complexity that secret routes can always be found: With a sufficiently high skill check, a character can either find a short cut (which reduces the amount of time it takes to get from one location to another) or a stealth path (which makes it possible to reach areas of the ship that have been blocked off in one way or another).

To this, let’s add a wrinkle: If effort is taken, certain locations can be secured. For example, in Aliens the last of the survivors attempt to seal up a portion of the colony so that they can survive long enough for a rescue ship to arrive. Of course, the aliens still managed to find a way in, so let’s make that an opposed check: If your effort to find a stealth a path into my area is better than my check to seal the area, then you’ve found something that I forgot.

Control of the Ship: For a simple structure, we could simply equate control of the ship with control of the bridge. But if wanted a more dynamic scenario, we could make it so that individual systems can be taken offline or supersede the bridge’s control from other locations in the ship. (For example, you might be able to gain navigational control from the engine room; knock communications off-line by getting to the receiver room; turn off life support from environmental control; or access the automatic security systems from the security center.)

Node Effects: On a similar note, we might want to define some specific game structures for special nodes. For example, if you can access the communications array and send a distress signal, what effect will that have?

Is gaining control of the automatic security systems something that can be automatically achieved in the security center? Does it require an opposed skill check? A complex skill check? If so, how much time do those checks take? (Would it give enough time for the bad guys to physically lay siege to the security center?) Do you have to do it compartment by compartment? Do we run the whole thing as a massive hacker-vs-hacker battle in virtual reality?

Do I prep the armory by simply having an inventory of available supplies? Or do we code something similar to a wealth check to see if a particular piece of desired equipment is available?

Random Encounters: Finally, I’m always a big fan of using random encounters to simulate the activity in complex environments. Whether it’s panicked pockets of prostrate passengers or roving hijacker enforcement teams, a well-seeded random encounter table can add unexpected twists and delightful chaos to the scenario.

OTHER SCENARIO STRUCTURES

Here are some other potential scenario structures for a “Between the Stars” campaign.

Bomb Onboard: Touchstones might include stuff like Die Hard With a Vengeance and Law Abiding Citizen. The actual mystery of identifying the bomber can probably use a standard mystery scenario structure, but what about the process of finding (and possibly defusing) bombs before they explode? What effect do bombs have on ship systems?

Plague: The Babylon 5 episode “Confessions and Lamentations” is a particularly poignant look at disease scenarios on spacecraft. “Genesis” from Star Trek: The Next Generation was a particularly stupid one. (On the other hand, TNG’s “Identity Crisis” shows the breadth of potential within the general idea.)

Lost in Space: Touchstones would include… well… Lost in Space. (Also, Poul Anderon’s Tau Zero.)

Collision in Space: Here you could probably lift some of the same structures for systems damage from the “Bomb Onboard” scenario structure to model collision damage.

Mutiny: We could probably lift large chunks from our “Hijacking” scenario structure

Smuggling: Both with the PCs engaging in smuggling and with NPC smugglers trying to use their ships to achieve their own aims.

If you’re feeling up for it, grab one of these and give it the same treatment we gave hijackings: Post it here in the comments or toss a link down there to wherever you do post it.

Go to Part 15: Generic Scenario Structures

Go to Part 1

When I designed The Lost Hunt for Fantasy Flight Games, I launched the scenario by having an elven village attacked by a kehtal (a servitor of the demon gods of Keht). The idea was pretty simple: The PCs could then follow the trail of this murderous creature, which would lead them to the interdimensional rift in which the demon gods were imprisoned.

The tricky part was the actual tracking. Although I wasn’t thinking in terms of game structures back in 2001, I knew that this section of the adventure needed more weight to it than a simple skill check. The experience of the adventure couldn’t be, “Fight a monster, make a Wilderness Lore check, and – ta-da! – you’ve found the interdimensional prison of an ancient god cult!”

So what I ended up doing was crafting a custom game structure for tracking: Following the trail required five successful Wilderness Lore checks (DC 20). Each failure would force the PCs to backtrack (requiring an additional success in order to find the trail they lost). Each successful check would bring them to a “pit stop” along the trail, which was described in boxed text: One established the creature’s prodigious leaping ability; another brought them to another scene of carnage wrought by the creature; and so forth.

Nothing too complex here: I was basically adapting the concept of complex skill checks (as found in numerous RPG systems) and tweaking it a bit. But it did take a little bit of thought and a little bit of experimentation to nail down the details. Once I had tucked this custom “pit stop and backtrack” game structure into my mental toolkit, though, it proved useful time and time again: I’ve used it probably a dozen times since then.

This is, obviously, a very simple example of how you can create custom game structures to organize your prep and affect your players’ experience with the game world. In fact, it’s so straight-forward some of you are probably saying, “Duh.”

So let’s tackle something a little more complicated.

BETWEEN THE STARS

Campaign Concept: The PCs are the crew (and possibly owners) of a starship plying the interstellar trade routes. Although some planet-side activity might croup up, the focus of this campaign is going to be on the voyages of the ship itself.

Macro-Structure: For the macro-structure of the campaign, I’m going to use Traveller. As discussed in Part 10, Traveller has a well-developed system for handling interstellar travel and trade. This system empowers the PCs to make decisions about where they’re going; what they’re trading; and so forth.

Scenario Triggers: As we also discussed in Part 10, however, this game structure is incomplete. It has a closed resolution loop (go to starport, deliver goods, pick up goods, go to starport), but it lacks vertical integration. So the first thing we need to figure out is the trigger we’re going to use for transitioning from the trade-and-travel macrostructure to the scenarios that will probably fill most of our actual playing time.

I’m going to propose that, just like a dungeon has rooms and a wilderness has hexes, this campaign has voyages. In other words, just like we fill a room or a hex with content, we’re going to fill each trip from one star system to another with content. (Of course, some dungeon rooms are empty and some of our voyages may be uneventful. We’ll come back to that later.)

BETWEEN THE STARS – KEYING VOYAGES

We all know how to key a dungeon room or a hex: You write a number on the map and then you use that number to reference a description of the content of the room or hex. How do we key voyages? In other words, when the PCs leave a starport how do we know what this voyage will contain?

Linear Sequence: A simple solution would be a linear sequence. You prep a scenario for their first voyage (no matter where they’re headed); then you prep a scenario for their second voyage; and so forth. The obvious disadvantage of this approach is that it doesn’t include meaningful choice for the PCs.

Random: We could prep several voyages and then randomly determine which one we’ll use on any given trip. But, of course, once again we’ve eliminated meaningful choice for the PCs.

Space Hexes: We could key each hex on the subsector map with content. Couple of problems, though: First, any given voyage will actually contain multiple hexes. Second, because the campaign isn’t exploratory in nature there will be a lot of hexes they’re unlikely to visit (since they’ll probably be sticking to direct routes between planets). We could, of course, limit our prep to hexes near established trade routes and then implement a system for randomly determining which hex’s content on the flightpath gets triggered for any particular voyage. But doing that actually suggests what might be an easier approach…

Routes: What if we just key each route with content? When the PCs take a particular trade route, we trigger whatever content we keyed to that route. A potential problem here would be PCs who settle down into servicing a regular route: Once they’ve used up the keyed content for the route, there’ll be nothing new to experience the next time they take it. We could mitigate this by randomly determining cargo destinations (so that the PCs would be less likely to settle into a regular pattern) or by keying multiple scenarios to a single route (this would increase the prep load, but make it harder to completely “burn out” a given route).

BETWEEN THE STARS – SPICING THE STRUCTURE

So our basic structure looks like this: We key each trade route with an encounter or scenario which is experienced when the PCs take the route. In addition, we randomize cargo destinations to discourage the PCs from wearing a groove into a particular trade route.

That, by itself, would give us enough structure to run a campaign: We could draw up the local subsector, map out the trade routes, key them, and start play. But what could we do to spice things up – adding flavor, complexity, and/or detail to the campaign?

Random Chance: Instead of a route’s encounter happening automatically when the route is taken, we could have a randomized scenario check. Since the players won’t know whether there will be complications on a particular voyage, this will make the campaign less predictable (and also possibly less frustrating). Setting the right probability of experiencing a route scenario will probably require some experimentation: Will the PCs end up taking multiple routes on most journeys (getting from planet A to planet C via planet B)? How interested are the players in the actual trade mechanics of the game (as opposed to using the trade mechanics as a mere method of delivering content)? And so forth.

For the sake of argument, let’s say that we want roughly a 1 in 3 chance of triggering a scenario. (A roll of 1-2 on 1d6.)

Scenario Sources: Now that we’ve randomized the occurrence of scenarios, we can use that same mechanic to include encounters from non-route-based sources.

First, we’re going to seed our cargo and passenger tables with scenario triggers. For example, carrying a shipment of positronic brains makes it more likely to be targeted by rogue robotic hijackers. Or a particular passenger might be targeted for assassination.

Second, our scenario check (which is performed once per route) is now revised: On a roll of 1 we trigger a route scenario; on a roll of 2-3 we trigger a passenger scenario; on a roll of 4-5 we trigger a cargo scenario. A roll of 6 indicates no encounter.

Scenarios are theoretically being triggered on rolls of 1-5 on 1d6, but our practical odds of experiencing a scenario on any given route will remain roughly 1 in 3 because the PCs may not be carrying cargo or passengers with scenario triggers.

Weighted Route Tables: Instead of just keying a unique encounter (or a set of unique encounters) to each route, we could instead key each route with a weighted scenario table: So in the Black Expanse you’re more likely to get hit by pirates, while in the Inner Systems you’re more likely to get hit with a random audit.

(Alternatively, we could rebuild our scenario check and include “region scenarios” as a fourth type: So each route would be keyed with a unique scenario; each region would have a random scenario table; and we’d also have cargo/passenger scenarios.)

“Empty” Voyages: As noted above, we’ve now created “empty” voyages (i.e., voyages on which no scenarios will be triggered). In order to spice these up, I’m going to take a page from Ars Magica, combine it with the character creation rules for Traveller, and create a game structure for handling “down time”: Improving your skills. Improving your ship. Working on research projects. And so forth.

Dockside Encounters: Another possibility would be adding structures for dockside encounters and/or scenarios. But I’m actually going to deliberately eschew this sort of thing: I want this campaign to be focused on the ship.

While it’s certainly possible that the players will get tangled up in some planet-side intrigue, by specifically excluding this content from the campaign structure I’ll be steering the focus of the game away from it: Docking will generally be the boring bit that bridges the gap between the exciting stuff.

Go to Part 14: Scenario Structures for Between the Stars