Shipwrecked!

I need some expert help, and I couldn't think of a better group to go to than you guys!

Here's what I have. I want to do a planetside survival story. The players are stranded on a planet with only a handful of gear and must survive until they can find a way to contact help, or escape.

I'm not a good Voyager expert, but there was this one episode of Voyager where Tom, Tuvok and the Doc were shipwrecked on a planet with a desert enviroment and they have to eat this huge spider creatures for sustenance. I'm thinking something like that, but perhaps in a jungle enviroment.

The planetside adventure is no problem with me. However, I need some suggestions on how to strand the characters, and some ideas on how to extricate them from the situation once the time has come. I am trying to maybe find a way to get them there short of destroying an entire starship.

The time of my campaign is pre-Dominion War, and after the peace treaty with the Cardassians. Sort of 1st & 2nd DS9 series time. Please help. Thanks!

Standard shuttlecraft accident? "Just out for a toddle in the shuttlecraft...oh! The ionic whatsinator just fried! We're going down!"

Cue credits

"What the hell were we doing in a shuttlecraft when we have a perfectly good starship, only a few light hours away?"

"Well, we needed to get our time on the stick, otherwise you lose your pilot's cert, then the cpatain makes you paint the hull with a can of paint and pantbrush...you have to figure out how to make that work..."

"But we always have some sort of accident or incident in the shuttle..."

:D

Actually...I think I'm gonna use that...

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A passing nucleo-ionic thingamabob wavefront damaged USS [starship]´s sensors and Crew goes via shuttle to [planet] to collect [vitriollic substance] so sensors can be repaired. On the way [accident] happens, and Crew is stranded on [planet].

Or...

A diplomatic mission requires use of shuttlecraft, because [planet]´s culture regards transport bems a religious taboo. In mid flight [accident] happens and Crew is stranded in savage part of [planet]. A nice complicator would be if [accident] totally wrecks shuttlecraft to bits, so USS [starship] thinks they´re all toast.

Or...

Crew must beam down to performe routine away team duty. Then an unexpected solar flare hits just as Crew is beaming down, knocking sensors and communications offline for two weeks, plus sending Crew to entirely different coordinates. NPC´s onboard USS [ship] think Crew is dead, as solar storm continues and all shuttle and EVA activities are curtailed by the CO. Meanwhile, Crew is stranded without a clue as to what happened to USS [starship] and must fend for themselves with only tricorders to help !

Hmmmm... I might just use some of these !

The key here seems to be more the delay of rescue rather than the cause of crash...

So what you need to do is have the shuttle accident be severe enough to mean that they cannot even crash the shuttle, and are forced to use an emergency beamout within seconds (or die on the shuttle)...

Shame that PC1 was injured leaving a blood trail, and NPC Expendible was unable to use the emergency beam-out as the shuttle was swept out of range... Or that Expendible was delayed trying to rescue the emergency beacon...

But expendibles struggles did mean that the Ion storm swept the Shuttle several light years away before vapourisation.

Now when the players ship tracks their shuttle, they find a vapurised debris field over a very large area, with DNA traces of at least 2-3 of the crew... Case Closed.

Unfortunatly, your players are now stranded on the planet with basic survival kits, maybe a Phaser or two (if they are lucky), and rapidly dwindling rations, while on a planet teeming with life, it seems a shame that most of it is poisonous or dealy (as expendibles brother found out already), but any scan from orbit will simply be inundated with life-signs...

Now get out of that one!

Too bad about the timing of your campaign - during the Cardassian War, the short-lined Klingon War or the Dominion War it would have been easy to have the ship simply blown out from under the characters and have them crash-land in damaged lifeboats. It's still possible in that time period, though, and far less overused than the ol' transporter mishap or shuttle crash. It also can give you the benefit of having an enemy the characters must avoid.

As I said, a marooned behind enemy lines scenario isn't impossible in this time period (2369-70). There are renegade Klingon factions which sided with the House of Duras during the recent Klingon Civil War, and the Romulans, who also were allied with the Duras faction. The Rommies are also still smarting over the botched invasion of Vulcan.

How's this? While patrolling near the Romulan Neutral Zone, the USS Cannon-Fodder a Way-Too-Small Class starship is investigating odd energy readings from a small planet right on the edge of the Zone. As they enter standard orbit the D'Deridex Class Warbird [Way-Too-Big-and-Really-Heavily-Armed[/i] uncloaks and blows the Cannon-Fodder away. Several lifeboats eject and the Rommies merrily blow them away (they really wasnt no witnesses, Jehovah's or otherwise, visiting this system). The PCs (and possibly some Expendable Ensigns^{tm pat. pend.}) are split between 2 or 3 lifeboats which land several hundred kilometres apart. The PCs can have full survival supplies if you wish, but should probably be limited to Type I or II phasers. A copy of the Starfleet Survival Guide may be made available to them - this wonderful little book is available in bookstores and is the best non-game gameable sourcebook around.

The PCs can contact each other with commbadges, but since there are Rommies about this can be hazardous. They must join up, then find a way off planet so they can warn the Federation that the Rommies have set up an outpost. While they're at it, I sure Starfleet would like them to find out just what the Rommies are doing on the wrong side of the Zone - is it a listening post, a mine for some ultra rare exotic mineral desparately needed by the Star Empire, or what?

Several questions will have to be decided before you begin - what type of terrain are the PCs crossing? Are there indigenous sophonts on the planet. What is their view of the Rommies? Perhaps their government has capitulated and there is a resistance movement, like the original WWII Maquis. Will they trust the Starfleet characters (assume they have not made First Contact)? Do they kill on sight the inevitable Vulcan PC (if they've never seen a Vulcan before, the tiny forehead differences are going to be irrelevant to them)?

There are any number of movies which could serve as inspiration for this sort of campaign - Force 10 From Navarone, BAT-21, et cetera. Also of some use may be such gaming materials as various Twilight: 2000 adventures, the Traveller double adventure Marooned/Marooned Alone or any number of fantasy wilderness adventures. Books like The SAS Survival Handbook may also come in handy.

Ah, you guys are too GOOD! Great ideas. Now the old wheels are turning. I love the idea of a threat race also pursuing the players while they are planetside. I sat here running the different races through my mind and reasons they wouldn't just abandon them to the elements.

First, the Jem'Hadar came to mind. Wow, imagine, stuck in a hostile enviroment and not sure where the next Jem'Hadar is going to unshroud. But, I'm not quite there yet in my series timeline.

Then, I thought of the Hirogen. Maybe they are even the reason behind the crash somehow? And of course, they go planetside to pursue their prey. But, how do we get our cuddly old friends the Hirogen from the Delta Quadrant to our neck of the woods? Ideas? Opinions? This is the best free advice I have ever received!

The Hirogen have been seen apparently as close as the Romulan border in the Beta Quadrant, so just have one or maybe two ships in the Alpha Quadrant that kept pursuing their prey.

Best tip here is simply to start them off in the situation. This is where the cinematic/episode aspect of the genre is best used. You don't really need to hold their hand and push them into the situation. Just start off there.

Example:

You want to challenge the players with a seemingly hopeless situation - being shipwrecked.

Don't play out the events leading up to the crash. Even skipping the actual crash is probably a good idea, since you may not wish to start the session with the most dramatic event.

Start with the characters clambering out of their wrecked shuttle/lifepod and describe their current situation.

You could sum up the events leading to the current situation briefly, or quickly play out key events as flashbacks. Then you should be set to focus on the adventure at hand.

Hey, this reminds me of a very evil idea I intend to test on my players some time in the future...

Like kjakan suggested, have the players start the adventure clambering out of their crashed shuttle... only they also lost all memory of the accident. Their last memory dates back a few days ago, where they were still on their ships handling routine tasks.
That way, the players will have to figure out, not only how to come back to their ship, but also what the planet they crashlanded on is, what their mission was, and, optionnally, what made them lose their memory (which could be either some radiation that also caused their crash, or someting much more sinister, like a weapon, or even some game played by Q).

How about this: a graviton ellipse emerges from subspace, swallowing the characters' vessel. Unable to escape, the ellipse reenters subspace, travels across the galaxy, and expels them at the far end of the Gamma Quadrant (beyond Dominion-held space).

Their vessel, unable to remain in space, makes an emergency landing on a tropical, class-M planet. Their communications technologies were mostly fried by the time inside the ellipse, but at least they have some weapons, rations, and so forth. Futhermore, the hulk of their crashed ship - once disassembled and reallocated - should provide excellent housing and defensive capabilities. The saucer section would provide living space, laboratories, replicators (if you're nice), and so forth while the remnants of the engineering section (should they prove salvageable) could be moved and reactivated to provide power.

The goal could easily be to build a small colony, acquire the necessary materials, refit their shuttles/build a new [smaller] ship, and escape their tropical gulag, flying through Dominion space to get to the Bajoran wormhole and return home (yet another source of adventures).

This provides a Voyager-esque setting without having to deal with the Borg (or any other Voyager elements you'd choose to avoid) while providing lots of interesting background material. Hey, maybe its your PCs that are really responsible for the Dominion War!

Just some random thoughts.

mactavish out.

Actually, I see this type of scenario as a vary bad one to begin in media res. If the players feel railroaded by having the ship crash, they're gonna feel 10 times as railroaded by having it presented as GM fiat. A good Gm can make the attack/disaster/whatever flow naturally so that the players have a good time. What may make for a good movie opening, keeping the audience in suspense as to what really happened, often makes for a very bad role-playing experience, since the PCs were there as it happened. As a player, I personally find it unpleasant in the extreme to be denied essential knowledge that my character definitely has. I've quit games for less.

Certainly this is a contrived happenstance, but if the players are aware of the nature of the Series ahead of time, this is simply a way to get started.

I would certainly never spring something like this on a group of players without any warning, but the premise behind marooning the PCs on an out-of-the-way planet is sound. In fact, there are plenty of opportunities for play to be had that might not otherwise be available aboard a ship.

mactavish out.

There's an excellent scenario in the computer core: Passageway.
A crashed escape pod, Jem'hadar and an alien device.

Highly recommended.

Passageway works quite nicely, with a little extra work fleshing it out it can be quite the experience as three of my PCs learned.

I used it as filler while some of the group were away and the others did not want to pause the game for a few weeks. Since it was in the middle of the Dominion War, it worked out quite nicely.

There are several other adventures on here that are of an excellent nature. Some may have to be adapted to fit your own campaigns but the essence of each work effectively.

I have not checked in some time but do take a look at anything by Dave Biggins. I cannot recommend his material strongly enough.

Regards,
CKV.

Heres another idea for you. Armus from TNG's Skin of Evil, or something like him. A being that has the ability to reach-out and touch something. It doesn't need to be compleatly evil, it could just be lonly, misunderstood, etc...

Oh and Passageway is worth it's weight in latinum (sp?).

Kosst, have you considered running such a "Shipwreck" style adventure as a character development scenario?

In my USS Dauntless campaign, I ran a scenario in which two PC's (the Male Human Conn Officer & Female Vulcan Ops Officer) ended up making a forced shuttlecraft landing on an ice planet and having to survive while awaiting rescue - a fairly standard Star Trek situation going back to The Galileo Seven. However, what made the scenario of interest to the players was the level of interaction that they could bring to their characters, given that they had a decidedly 'Spock-McCoy' relationship but with marked sexual/romantic undercurrents to it - a bit like Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres in the first few seasons of Voyager ... and look how that ended.

It was also fun for the PC's still on their starship to watch/listen to the level of interplay between the stranded characters (who, by the way, are husband and wife in real life).

Why not give it a try?