The Intrigue Pales beside....& Alternate beginnings

jedion357's picture
jedion357
December 2, 2011 - 4:48pm
This thread is for discussing starting the adventure in Pale. Certainly ideas can be gleamed from the Dragon article "The Volturnus Connection" And yet I get what SF-0 did by starting the action "en media Res" and throwing the PC's into the middle of the action. However, I've thought that hinting at some intrigue while the PC's are still at Truane's Star would have value for the story but experience tells me that subtle clues and foreshadowing is only effective when it has all the subtly of a fragmentation grenade.
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!
Comments:

jedion357's picture
jedion357
December 2, 2011 - 5:04pm
Obvious starting place is the mission brief. Could bring on action with a sabotage attempt of the mission since any public announcement of the mission would draw the Red Devils attention. Perhaps as they are loading the ship there is an explosion and fire forcing the PC's to rescue themselves and the crew. A man against the elements encounter. The after math is the figure out it was sabotage and the mission planners quietly charter a tramp freighter in secret, the Serena Dawn. PC's are allowed to inspect the whole ship and make what plans they want. During the trip.
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!

jedion357's picture
jedion357
June 2, 2013 - 4:52am
New thoughts:
http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/7526

Seccitte Zebulon has betrayed his crew and sold out to the government of Truane's Star. Some of his crew have thrown in with the pirates and are now secretly mining the deposites that Seccitte sold the locations for to the government.

This set up is not with the PCs as a government sponsored party but rather a private expedition to Volturnus. a member of Seccitte's crew wants to recover something or someone on Volturnus. or someone being held as prisoner and used to mine on Volturnus got a brief subspace message out to family who wants them rescued.

Under this set up the Volturnus mission is a half baked expedition which is exactly what is portrayed in the module SF-0. Lets face it the expedition in SF-0 makes no sense as a government sponsored expedition.

Adventure starts on Pale with investigation into Zebulon, the system and the ship captian,

PCs must locate the system based on fragmentary information in the brief subspace message.

Ultimately Seccitte will sell the information of where the system is for 100,000 Cr which the PCs employer will pay. government agents may get wind of the PCs and be on their trail and this could lead to some excitement as well.

after the PCs depart Truane's sTar the script of the Volturnus campaign can be run pretty much in tact or modified to suite. I would play out a pirate attack in close proximity to Votlurnus when the PC's ship is down to a speed of 1-2 and is about to or has entered orbit. transition to a boarding action but carefully craft it so that the PCs cannot possibly counter board the pirate vessels and win the day in orbit.
I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers!