Hi, new poster. I have what seems like a very basic question but I just appear to be stumped on how I'm going to solve it.
Basically I run eclipse phase as an ongoing game at a bi-monlthy convention six hour slot and I write each adventure and then create a link in to the next adventure, so at the end of the session players want to know what's going on and have a little bit of a set up for what going to happen next time. So in session one they discover the assassian on their deep rim researchs tation was in fact a forked person and his 'real' copy was living on venus, so they went to get him and interrogate in the second.
So each session links. No problem so far, I've used odd signals tansmitting targeting system to focus on earth locations, codes stored in frozen AI's that turn out to be gate information and such at the end of a session so each adventure becomes a search for the next clue.
Only problem is I realised I've fluffed a clue for the next one -ish. After exploring Echo's ruins the team found a monsterous relic of Iktomi hives and fought of mysterious assassins who lacked any kind of cortical stacks whilst discovering one of the team was in fact a illousionary hack that had been placed in their minds as data since they'd passed through the gate, so far so good. But when they went to sleep near the iktomi wind harp things, the epxerienced dreams of the Iktomi and I gave them their next clue through the dream about a possible weapon to fight the TITAN threats. Only problem is I ended with them knowing they had to 'Seek the colony'. That okay but realised at the end of adventure that I had planned the enxt advnture to be set AT the colony (an uplift community that lives a very brutal existence) not be a long hunt just to discover what the colony was. In game I've already confirmed that their higher up's don't knwo what the colony is.
So really I suppose I'm asking in a long winded way is: How do I skip the 'find the colony' part of the adventure? What a realistic way of Firewall doing that research for them. I think it's a little bit of a let down for it to just be handed to them 'Oh,the colony is here' becuase it seemed so mysterious to them before. Is there anyone with an idea as how to make the hunt for this pecie of information both quick (maybe one scene) and interesting?
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A minor question about how firewall would solve a problem
Thu, 2011-07-14 05:38
#1
x-humed
A minor question about how firewall would solve a problem
Thu, 2011-07-14 09:24
#2
The Green Slime
Re: A minor question about how firewall would solve a problem
Maybe this: the colony in question is not what the players think it is. They've just assumed it's the Uplift colony, whereas in fact the wind harps are pointing them towards something else entirely - an ancient Iktomi/other alien ruin buried far beneath the Uplift colony, but as yet undiscovered.
Perhaps a faction within the Uplift colony have discovered the ruin and are keeping it secret, or they suspect its presence and will team up with the players to explore it, which they must do to unlock the information they need to activate the secret ultimate MacGuffin weapon that will defeat the TITANs.
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Thu, 2011-07-14 09:40
#3
Arenamontanus
Re: A minor question about how firewall would solve a problem
Wouldn't it be an *Iktomi* colony? So they would have to search for their colonies, especially the ones near Echo?
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Thu, 2011-07-14 12:58
#4
nezumi.hebereke
Re: A minor question about how firewall would solve a problem
My first leaning would be what Arenamonteouhs said; why would the iktomi harps lead to something non-Iktomi? However, it sounds like you've lead an awesome campaign so far and everyone is having fun, so i assume this has been settled (even if it's just 'a bunch of uplifts found this awesome asteroid and inhabited it, but it actually has an awesome Iktomi laser in it!')
So yes, the question at hand is 'how do you condense a lot of research into a short span of time?'
The answer is, condense all that research into a short span of time.
Really. Require a few networking rolls and some research rolls. The degree of success on the research roll determines how long it takes to find the information. Networking adds positive modifiers (since it's more research). Then just say, 'you spend six months (or whatever) combing the star charts and creating astronomical models. You have settled on this astronomical object, XK-598172-B as being the object you saw in the dream.' It takes five seconds. The players will appreciate it. If you want, describe a research montage.
Thu, 2011-07-14 20:35
#5
archon
Re: A minor question about how firewall would solve a problem
Or you could make it mysterious. Mysterious is *always* good. Perhaps they spend some time searching / researching fruitlessly, and then they receive an anonymous message with information about this colony that's not in any public records or networks.
Someone knows about this colony that no one else does. And they know that you want to find it. MYSTERIOUS! :)
Fri, 2011-07-15 06:57
#6
x-humed
Re: A minor question about how firewall would solve a problem
Thanks for the ideas guys. I think I'm gonna go with the last two. I mean I already know why they're going to the colony, I juts wondered how to get them there. All they know is that it's important to the Iktomi (the odd reasoning behind this is basically becuase in my game the Iktomi dissapeared into 'The Weave' for large and complicated reasons but basically they now are part of gestalt mind that exitss within the pandora gates and they're fighting some kind of secret war against the TITAN tech and others, the players have worked all this out-ish) but 've got that bit sorted. but I completley forgot Nezumi's point that I can just montage it. I might well Montage for a while have them get nowhere for six months and then recieve an anonymus message.....sounds good....Not only that but I think I can link it to Memory Hole....should be interesting.....