STAST Help Needed (Spoilers)

[Koshka]

To paraphrase somebody or other, "no adventure scenario survives contact with the players". I'm in the middle of running Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth for some friends, and just had an example of that.

 

First off,

 

Spoiler Space

 

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That enough?

 

Ok, the group is in the middle of the Ophidian Plague section, and got to the VIPER base before Frank stuck his head out of the men's room to see if the creepy snake guys who used to be his buddies are still around. I was using the Aerie map from the VIPER book as a reference (and really intimidated the PCs with the size of that place ), and as it happened they got to the kitchen before they found Frank. When they discovered the rest of the Snake Beer shipment, one of the players decided he hadn't done much with his Psych Lim: Curiosity and chugged a bottle before anyone else could stop him "to see what it tastes like". After getting Frank's story, that hero is now in quarantine in Dr. Silverback's lab while the good doctor runs every test he can think of.

 

I gave the player two chances to rewind and not drink the beer, but he says his character would have done it. So, do all of you think one beer would be enough to infect that character? It's indicated in the rec room description that Frank only drank one bottle of stout, if that's a valid guide to how much the rest of the Nest was drinking the hero's getting fangs in an hour game time. (That's how long it took the agents to transform, according to Frank.) However, I don't drink, so I have no idea if that's a reasonable amount of drinking. If the other agents put back two or three beers to Frank's one, and I've been told domestic beers have a lower alcohol content than imports so that's possible, then we're only looking at a partial transform at most.

 

Any opinions?

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: STAST Help Needed (Spoilers)

 

I haven't read the scenario yet, but...

 

 

How much it takes to transform any individual target seems to be a GM decision. Sounds like the guy in the story was a baseline human, and wasn't affected, so should a Super be affected by the same quantity?

 

Maybe the Super has some special defenses which may explain a (partial) resistance to the Transform effect? A clever idea may be to have him transform, but only gradually, as his superhuman physiology fights with the chemical, or something in his own background interacts with it. They can save him, but only if they can get enough information on the agent, and get appropriate research done on it, in time.

 

Gradually sock the player with some reptilian features, abilities and disadvantages over the course of the adventure to add to the stress, and voila! Instant added stress! Maybe reduce some of his regular abilities (or put limitations like Activation or Concentrate on them) to compensate for adding abilities from the formula. The player's suffering from his psych lim, but he's still in the game.

 

This gives you the opportunity to add a personal, campaign-specific slant to the adventure. Your players handed you lemons - make it into lemonade!

[Koshka]

Re: STAST Help Needed (Spoilers)

 

I haven't read the scenario yet, but...

 

 

How much it takes to transform any individual target seems to be a GM decision.

 

Not quite. There's a nicely statted out description of how the infected people spread the plague to others (by biting them). I'm on a friend's computer and my book is at home, but I think it's a 2d6 transform. The tricky part is that the description of how the initial transformations occured, after drinking the infected beer, doesn't quite match up with the game stats for the bite-transform. Apparently no one in the playtest drank the beer .

 

The hero doesn't have any fancy defenses, but he probably does have a higher body score than the agents, so I can justify a partial transform. I'd just like to know if anyone else thinks one beer would have enough of the Ophidian Plague in it to cause a visible effect.