Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

[Herolover]

Hello all. I am looking for input on my next campaign.

 

I am starting to plan my campaign and since I will be picking up the new Pulp Hero book and have some players that have shown great my next campaign will be a Pulp adventures game. I am wanting (hoping) to make a game that is 60% Indian Jones, 20% Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and 20% everything else.

 

My Basic Idea

The campaign starts in 1936. The PCs are hired by a multi-millionaire philanthropist for a “project†he is putting together. They travel to (some remote out of the way place TBA). (I may put an adventure together based on their travel.) Once at the TBA place they find that the philanthropist has built a massive airship. I am thinking something like 1.5 times the Hindenburg. It will have its own crew, science staff and labs, I am even basing a squadron of 5-6 “fighter†planes on the airship.

 

The idea I have for the campaign is that “airship†travels around the world investigating strange areas (can you say lost worlds), archeological digs, and other sites of interest helping natives, fighting wrongs, and generally getting into trouble.

 

What do you think? Do you have suggestions? Adventure ideas, problems you see, etc

[Barton]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Ethiopia, Fascists (both kinds, Italian and German). Need I say more.

[Curufea]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Suggestions :-

 

Rival airship with more competant, and possibly evil adventurers.

 

The PCs anger some local secret society (possibly because they discover something they shouldn't) - the society starts sending assassins after them. All the assassins use some quasi-mystical powers and a trademark of the society.

 

Plateau hitherto unreachable - Lost World.

 

Problems-

Engine malfunction of course - they are left to drift and run out of food, classic "sailors in a lifeboat" problem, only airborne.

Pocket of tremendous updraft, flings them into the stratosphere - emergency oxygen or lose consciousness and wake up who knows where (or possibly even suffocate). Or in the case of the R101 (and Doctor Who) - meeting an alien spacecraft.

[BigJackBrass]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

This idea has some similarities to the premise behind the Terra Incognita, and I'd certainly recommend a visit to the excellent http://www.nagssociety.com website to have a look at the resources and links there. I regularly find useful tips that I'd never have come across on my own.

[fredrik_nilsson]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

I suggest you let the characters take a closer look at the the Bermuda Triangle.

[Herolover]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Thanks for the suggestions, ideas, and comments. Keep them coming. I am hoping to have a neat campaign that touches on some of all the PULP ideas and think I have it so that a player could play a lot of different type characters.

[Herolover]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Pocket of tremendous updraft' date=' flings them into the stratosphere - emergency oxygen or lose consciousness and wake up who knows where (or possibly even suffocate). Or in the case of the R101 (and Doctor Who) - meeting an alien spacecraft.[/quote']

 

Is this one of the new episodes? I don't remember that on in the old and don't get the new

[the Evil DM]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

ok this may be a stretch but if done properly it might be pretty cool. on this really big ship in between adventures, are a series of dissapearances and murders. the culprit? a vampire. either a member of the crew (like the assistant to the engineer on the Nightwatch) or a stow away who is being protected by a trusted member of the crew (Ensign Renfield?). at first throw some red herrings to make it look like the murderer is a jack the ripper madman type- then throw in the supernatural element.

I used this in a star frontiers game i once ran. I set it on a mining asteroid. a cross between the sci-Fi movie"Outland" with Sean Connery and Dracula.

[Mentor]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Africa is a seething continent of European imperial plots and conterplots ,unknown indigenous civilizations, ancient evils reawakened by unfortunate people or bad timing, natives hungering to throw off the yokes of oppressors, impassable plateaus and valleys populated with creatures from Earth's past or even myth.

 

Asia, North America, South America, Australia, Antarctica all offer equal possibilities. If those aren't enough, Mu, Lemuria, or Atlantis are merely waiting to be reemerged by the right tectonics, vulcanism or indiscreet perusal of the wrong Tome.

[Curufea]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Is this one of the new episodes? I don't remember that on in the old and don't get the new

 

It's from the Big Finish radioplay Storm Warning with the 8th Doctor and Charlie Pollard

[Alistair]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Hello all. I am looking for input on my next campaign.

 

 

 

My Basic Idea

The campaign starts in 1936. The PCs are hired by a multi-millionaire philanthropist for a “project†he is putting together. They travel to (some remote out of the way place TBA). (I may put an adventure together based on their travel.) Once at the TBA place they find that the philanthropist has built a massive airship. I am thinking something like 1.5 times the Hindenburg. It will have its own crew, science staff and labs, I am even basing a squadron of 5-6 “fighter†planes on the airship.

 

The idea I have for the campaign is that “airship†travels around the world investigating strange areas (can you say lost worlds), archeological digs, and other sites of interest helping natives, fighting wrongs, and generally getting into trouble.

 

What do you think? Do you have suggestions? Adventure ideas, problems you see, etc

 

There's some good pictures of the US Navy's flying aircraft carriers the Akron and Macon here:

 

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/ac-usn22/z-types/zrs4.htm

http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/ac-usn22/z-types/zrs5.htm

 

Cheers

 

Alistair

[Curufea]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Good idea, links-

 

Here's stuff about airships and the R101

http://www.aht.ndirect.co.uk/airships/r101/Crash/R101_Crash.htm

 

Here's a paper model

http://www.currell.net/models/r101.htm

[st barbara]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Ah but is he REALLY a philanthropist ? Or is he just using the heros for some nefarious purpose ? Why are coded signals being received on the airship late at night, and why does no-one in the crew want to talk about that fog shrouded island south of New Zealand that appears ONLY on the old map in the captain's cabin ?

[Herolover]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Ah but is he REALLY a philanthropist ? Or is he just using the heros for some nefarious purpose ? Why are coded signals being received on the airship late at night' date=' and why does no-one in the crew want to talk about that fog shrouded island south of New Zealand that appears ONLY on the old map in the captain's cabin ?[/quote']

 

LOL, yeah I have thought about using something along this lines. However, I think I am gonna keep him as a good guy, but the PCs will be doing a lot of strange things.

[McCoy]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

I presume the airship uses helium. But what if a blowout in an isolated area? difficult to find helium in the wild, but hydrogen is water + electricity.

[Herolover]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

I have thought about what it uses. My initial ideas is that it uses helium (hydrogen is just soooo messy).

 

I have been studying a lot of airships and have found that they releases ballast and sometimes even gas to raise or lower in emergency situations. I was thinking that the airship has some kind of weird science device to produce helium.

 

However, I think I might change my idea. Perhaps the airship uses helium, but does have a means of producing hydrogen. Thus later in the flight the ship will use a combination of hydrogen and helium.

 

No matter what however, I am going to make the producing of this hydrogen and helium a long process. They may have to be stranded for a while...ahhhh

[Curufea]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Aside from Hydrogen being explosive (which Helium isn't) - it also provide more lift than Helium does.

 

Although I don't think the various disasters that befell airships were Hydrogen-related, they were certainly a contributing factor (just like the fuel was in the last shuttle disaster).

 

Another idea (from the radioplay) - a locked cabin that the captain doesn't let anyone in. Possible there is one person on board who goes in and out, either to carry food (if there is something living inside) or to do experiments/fiddle with machinery.

 

More ideas -

Boarded by air pirates.

Floating islands hidden in eternal clouds.

Caught in hurricane.

Murder mystery (hmm, that's been mentioned already - oh well).

Race (either for money, or to get vaccine from A to B, or something)

Haunting

Cursed to never leave the airship.

Dimensional transport (they accidentally travel to other skies of other worlds, or forward/backward in time).

[the Evil DM]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Aside from Hydrogen being explosive (which Helium isn't) - it also provide more lift than Helium does.

 

 

 

And dont forget, since this is pulp, the ship could be powered by an all new super-secret type of lifting gas "Hylogen", better than hydrogen and non flammable. in fact it could revolutionize travel and it's military applications make it very desirable to many nations and other organizations...

[Mentor]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

And dont forget' date=' since this is pulp, the ship could be powered by an all new super-secret type of lifting gas "Hylogen", better than hydrogen and non flammable. in fact it could revolutionize travel and it's military applications make it very desirable to many nations and other organizations...[/b']

Great minds think alike, although the ability to cleverly harness otherwise dangerous compounds is being used by my Champions rather than Pulp mastermind villain.

[Herolover]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

WOW.

 

I am not sure what to say. The great ideas just keep coming and coming. I am definantly going to be using some of these ideas for adventures. KEEP THEM COMING.

 

Do you see any pitfalls to this type of campaign? Anything that you look at and say, "Yeah, he is gonna have some problems with...xxxx?

[Cancer]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

I think current airships use a hydrogen-helium mix: just enough helium to make the mix not flammable. As others have pointed out, hydrogen gives more lift, as well as being much cheaper. I don't know the proportions, unfortunately.

[Curufea]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Do you see any pitfalls to this type of campaign? Anything that you look at and say, "Yeah, he is gonna have some problems with...xxxx?

 

Yep - continuity.

 

If they ever visit the same place more than once, you'll have to keep track of what they did there and work out what has happened since. The solution to this is to never have them need to go to the same area more than once - until you have it suitably prepared

 

Likewise they may start thinking they can flee from problems rather than solve them. You'll have to hook them in. One of the reasons they kept have transporters malfunction in startrek was to keep the characters from fleeing (but most often they just ignored they had them).

[Herolover]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Yep - continuity.

 

If they ever visit the same place more than once, you'll have to keep track of what they did there and work out what has happened since. The solution to this is to never have them need to go to the same area more than once - until you have it suitably prepared

 

Likewise they may start thinking they can flee from problems rather than solve them. You'll have to hook them in. One of the reasons they kept have transporters malfunction in startrek was to keep the characters from fleeing (but most often they just ignored they had them).

 

Thanks for the suggestions. I really appreciate it. I shouldn't have to worry about the visiting places twice because when I GM I take copius notes so I should be ready for that.

 

The fleeing danger thing does bring up a point though. With one of the PCs being a pilot I am going to have to really watch out for the "Well, lets fly away" syndrome. I hadn't thought of that. Thanks.

[Herolover]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

While I am at it I have been thinking in the terms of campaign. I like my campaigns to have a main theme or plot. Now don't get me wrong I through lots of adventures at my players and they don't always revolve around a main villain or main plot. Also, once the main plot is done I usually start up with another one.

 

One of the things I am thinking of is having the players have to find a certain artifact. I have some ideas. Other than the "find the artifact" theme for the campaign, what kind of metaplots would you do.

[Super Squirrel]

Re: Questions and Suggestions for my next campaign.

 

Hello all. I am looking for input on my next campaign.

 

I am starting to plan my campaign and since I will be picking up the new Pulp Hero book and have some players that have shown great my next campaign will be a Pulp adventures game. I am wanting (hoping) to make a game that is 60% Indian Jones, 20% Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and 20% everything else.

 

My Basic Idea

The campaign starts in 1936. The PCs are hired by a multi-millionaire philanthropist for a “project†he is putting together. They travel to (some remote out of the way place TBA). (I may put an adventure together based on their travel.) Once at the TBA place they find that the philanthropist has built a massive airship. I am thinking something like 1.5 times the Hindenburg. It will have its own crew, science staff and labs, I am even basing a squadron of 5-6 “fighter†planes on the airship.

 

The idea I have for the campaign is that “airship†travels around the world investigating strange areas (can you say lost worlds), archeological digs, and other sites of interest helping natives, fighting wrongs, and generally getting into trouble.

 

What do you think? Do you have suggestions? Adventure ideas, problems you see, etc

I think your campaign is exactly why I came up with the ideas I did for Digital Hero articles. I don't know when the first one goes out, but I think you will find them very useful for your Pulp Campaign.