Periodic, random sensory deprivation (blindness, deafness, &c.)
Radio plays tomorrow's news.

Infectious vectors are always "fun."

- A cryolab, with all but one of the pods broken, with a person restrained in a safety-harness inside. Periodically a robot will open the pod and feed the occupant coffee and biscuits, while apologising for the delay in travel time. While unfrozen the person will scream, cry and desperately try to claw their way out of their restraints

- A room entirely filled with strange crystals. You tap one and the whole room sings.

- An airlock, that has been breached enough to suck all the air out but not enough to suck out anything else. Inside is the body of a woman in a space suit, with her helmet off. For some reason the womans head is always facing straight at the porthole to the rest of the ships, eyes wide open.

>>12180900
Ship layout doesn't match up to the schematics. People get lost, find themselves turned about and could swear that the ship is changing around them without ever seeing it happen.

Random shifts in temperature, gravity... a total breakdown of the laws of physics.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in space or what.

Needs more flickering lights.

Screw with them.

If two of them are in a room talking, say "You hear someone enter the room."

When Player A turns to look, its Player B who just entered the room. When he turns back around, the Player B he was talking to is nowhere to be found.

To make it even weirder? Have Player B REMEMBER THE CONVERSATION.

>>12180941
I did that once in a CoC campaign, the twist being that time was slightly warped. He was coming back into the room after he had just left.

The reveal didn't really work in this case, but running into someone you were talking to, and having a weird feeling of space shift around you really creeped them out.

>>12180923
>For some reason the womans head is always facing straight at the porthole to the rest of the ships, eyes wide open.

Oh god

SHE KEEPS STARING

Whenever alone, one player hears tapping on the window to space. Looking outside reveals nothing, until the one time he looks at the window before the tapping starts and sees a frozen, dead hand reach from out of view and Tap Tap Tap the window.

>>12180956
Better yet. Set it up in a T shape so you can enter from either side, both attached to the ship, and the top (or bottom) is to actually get out of the airlock and into space (no gravity so it works)

No matter which direction they look at it from, port, starboard, or even from fucking space. She is still staring at them.

Ruby quest fans will know what I mean. That dummy man. That dummy.

While walking down a corridor, the light starts to flicker along with any electronic equipment. Then, everything goes dead black. No lights, no nothing. Shortly, they hear the voice of a small child anxiously saying: "Daddy? Daddy!" and clearly hear small footsteps running towards them. Just as the footsteps is about to overtake them, lights return, all electronics work perfectly again. The only thing is they're no longer in a corridor, but in a crew cabin that obviously belonged to a small family.

Find a bed with impressions in it as if invisible bodies are laying on it. The bed is warm to the touch. As soon as the player leaves the room the impression disappear, but the bed remains warm for quite some time.

Have the shadows of the dead hanging around.

Going about their business, until 'Untold horror xzy' comes along and ends their day.
At which point the shadow dissipates.

For bonus points, have shadows of both the past and future.

Every time they return to their own ship, things are moved around.

One player discovers a strange corridor branching off of a room that shouldn't exist. It looks exactly the same as all the other corridors in the ship, but it's slightly off. Everything's slightly bluish or something. Countless doors open off of the corridor each leading to their own corridors that seem to stretch on forever. As soon as he returns back to the normal ship, the corridor vanishes.

Have them wake up one day and do their usual routine. Halfway through the day an airlock breaks open and sucks out all the air, killing them. As they are gasping for breath they wake up that morning. The airlock door has a new dent in it.

Have a perfectly normal guy on the ship. Not the captain or anything, just like the janitor. Someone useless.

They can chat with him, He'll talk back, but whenever they ask what happened, he just gets confused. Ocasianoly he will mention something like "Man, being out here is really getting to me.", "At least you voices keep me company." or "Quite down guys. Don't want the captain thinking I'm to crazy. This flight has been getting to all of us, but can't let him know I've snapped."

Then have him start FLIPPING THE FUCK OUT. OH GOD UNDER ATTACK WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT OH GOD WHAT?

So basically, in 'his timeline' he starts hearing voices, and seeing figures out of the corner of the eye BEFORE the attack, which he just thinks is the stress getting to him. Those voices being that of the PC's. Meanwhile in the PC's timeline, its basically like them finding a log leading up to the events, except they can actually talk with it.

Of course, after 'his' timeline reaches the point where the event happened, he begins to flicker and fade, like a hologram, and starts appearing in random sections of the ship for no reason.

Muffled whispers come from behind sealed crew compartments. When opened, nothing is there. Alternately, have it be a heated conversation, maybe an argument.

A floor panel one player nearly steps on caves in and falls into an endless void. If the player leaves and returns, the floor is intact.

>>12181058
oh god that's marvelous

Skittering sounds above the ceiling tiles. Hammering and rattling at the inside of the vents.

Hammering at the airlocks. Of course, nothing's there. Except maybe the Staring Woman.

>>12181069
OH. Great subversion to use. Typical here whispers, then as soon as they open the curtains/door/whatever they stop. Players groan, its cliche, they move on. The second they leave the room the whispers start again. Only this time, they aren't whispers. They are much louder, and are right on top of them. And then they stop.

Strange music is being piped throughout the station. Just about anything you want. Marriage of Figaro, old 20s music, Summer Overture. Anything that wasn't written in the past 40 years.

Important tools go missing daily, and then return with strange additions to them. A wrench now has a small diamond embedded in it. A hammer now is made of stone instead of metal. A crowbar is replaced with one made entirely out of human flesh.

A player wakes up in the morning covered in blood. Everyone appears unhurt.

The metal on the ship groans as if being warped.

Occasionally they hear glass breaking, though no broken glass can be found if they search.

>>12181084
>the Staring Woman.
/tg/ I'm proud.

We are barely 20 posts in, and have reached the point to where certain quirks of the ship and the events happening are already being named.

Monsters fighting eachother.

With total disregard of their own lives, AND total disregard of the surrounding.

Sure, if the giant monster falls on top of Astrodude after getting stabbed by horn monster, Astrodude will be dead. But these monsters won't attack the players.

They only care for their own battle. Like they're locked in some other dimension.

Of course, the monsters can go attack the people when the DM wants... it... grin.

- A slight hum is just audible throughout the entire ship even when every system is disabled. The hum grows in intensity when focused upon and anyone trying to do so for too long will get a headache.
- Computer and other advanced electronics on board don't function quite right, just a tad slow or a miscalculation here and there, investigation shows no hacking, reprogramming or other apparent causes. At first the team's equipment has no such problems, but over time it seems to spread, making theirs just as unreliable as those systems onboard.

I once had a door on a derelict station lead out onto an infinite plain illuminated by a single moon in an otherwise empty sky.

[spoiler]Then the moon blinked and rolled its iris down to focus on them.[/spoiler]

A very, very simple technique to weird someone out is this:

Assumedly, they have plans for the battleships layout, or would find them onboard. Make the ship not follow the layout of their maps, or onboard display.

Another way to add to this is, say they're walking down a corridor that the map say is the mess hall: have faintly audible chatter and bustle of food and socialising going on.

As they proceed, have them hear a large, metallic clang around the corner; when they rush round, it's an old, obviously undisturbed metal dinner tray.

>>12181116
fukken spoilers how do they work

>>12181127
They don't on /tg/ fortunately/unfortunately.

A certain (or select few, if it makes it easier to have them find it) computer(s) enter text and data on their own, basically showing a log of what's going on in the ship in present time. Where the players are, what strange events they've found, etc. But, the computers are not able to be hacked/modified, they simply report what IS. While having no cords or cables connected to anything.

The engine (or drive, propulsion, however you'll name it) has been running the entire time it's been missing, so ten years, plus however long it had been running as a commissioned ship. But the fuel stores are steadily filling, and it isn't with more fuel.

Medical bay. Nuff said.

>>12181127
[spoilers don't work on /tg/]Psst. Hey bro. PSST. Spoilers don't work here.[/spoilers don't work on /tg/]

Radio chatter, apparently from neighboring ships and inquiring about the team and their salvage's well-being, as according to them, the salvage vessel is a pulped up wreckage.

Of course, sensors indicate that there are no neighboring ships, and the salvage is in fine shape..

Maybe a computer lab, lights to it, all the monitors are off except one, the light from it only shedding light in the immediate area, the rest of the room pitch darkness, And on the monitor in some sort of text parser, the word "Help"

Each time the party passes through the room another monitor is on, with the same message.

A player constantly hears a fly buzzing around him. No flies could have possibly gotten on the ship.

Any random thing a player touches is extremely hot and then normal temperature.

Have half the players talk regularly to an npc member of their crew. Only when they talk about the npc to other PCs do the others tell them no such npc exists. (Optional) The next day they find his body outside the airlock.

A dent appears in one wall to the outside, as if someone of superhuman strength has punched the wall from outside the ship.

Odd instruments go haywire in odd ways. A microscope shows only static. A keyboard will only let certain keys be pressed. A computer shows only a mirror image of whats in front of it.

A wall to the outside has sprung a leak. Saltwater springs into the room from a pinprick on the wall.

Entering a crew restroom. It's clean, in fine shape, with many oval mirrors above the row of sinks. However, if someone moves to the far end of the room, the mirrors begin to shatter one by one. If the person leaves and reenters, the mirrors are unbroken and everything is fine.

Have a single survivor somewhere, they are unconscious.
The person is completely and utterly normal and not anyone important in particular.

Two weird things:
1. They haven't aged at all, indeed their devices all stopped on the day of the incident.
2. They aren't there when major warp jojo happens, but sometimes they are and react normally.

They will freak out the players with their normality and occasional disappearance.

The planet below is visible through all external viewports. Including those that, according to the derelict's map, are on the opposite side of the ship to the planet.

The bridge. Looks perfectly fine, clear, so on. But when a player begins to exit the room, they hear gunshots and screams and the lights go out. Blood is spattered all across the monitors and controls, and many are broken. If someone leaves and comes back, it's fine again, as if nothing happened.

A steady knocking at random times, sounds like S.O.S. code but the source appears to be inside the walls.

>>12181233
I enjoyed House of Leaves as well.

Have empty spacesuits move on their own. Small movements that only happen when it is nearby but only visible out of the corner of the eye and then nothing when it is investigated. Or at a distance visible through a porthole, walking in a sluggish unnatural manner across the hull.

Have a loud smashing sound begin to occur somewhere in the ship. It is a horrific metal snapping and crunching as though something is trying to breach the hull. The sound gets louder and louder until it is almost to deafening levels, and the crew is ordered to prepare for hull breach. It stops.

Have them getting seperated and all that fun stuff.

The crew has an alien janitor/butler called melvins

Melvins is a hunched over, fat little bleached thing with two extremely large, binocular eyes and an absolutely HUGE fucking mouth that doesnt actually close... rather his teeth can retract into his head... enabling him to suddenly pull a VERY toothy smile if he wants (have him be a creepy-ugly cute sort of thing)

Pick lots of harmless, odd things for Melvins to do... things that catch the players' interest (serving strange foods at mealtime which dont seem recognisable, and they make you feel funny after eating them... personal logs that detail the movements and personal interactions all the characters have... a horrifying idol found in his room.. etc) and get them to thinking that maybe Melvins is really some kinda 'bomination or a traitor, or he just really wants to eat them... but at the last moment, utterly subvert whatever plans they set in motion to reveal this (Melvins is trying out an exotic new dish... is your species alergic? You did get Melvins memo right? The notes are just part of an epic saga he's chronicling about your adventure... the idol is a gift for his dear pa (s))

for an example... perhaps have Melvins appear to be of the 'teleporting butler' sort... in that he's always there when you call for him (and sometimes when you dont, so he just stands silently behind your back, grinning toothily). Gradually allow the players to shock themselves figuring out that, if one of them interacts with Melvins on one side of the ship... if another crew member calls him From the Other side of the ship immediately after he'll be right there

Creative players will attempt to have two of them call him at once... at which point they'll recieve a tearfelt apology letter from Melvins explaining that he's sorry he cant work better but he simply cannot be in two places at once

Mess with them

Though the ship may have been abandoned for a decade, there is a single area in the ship which is inhumanly immaculate. Food and wine has been prepared in advance and are waiting for the characters. Invitation cards are set with the characters names at each of their respective seats.

There may be nothing wrong with the food or wine. There are no threatening messages in the elegant music that wafts in the air. The only danger here may be of not wanting to leave.

The door locks behind the characters.

I've always had an idea for a good Dark Heresy/Rogue Trader plot where an unidentified ship appears adrift on the most extreme fringes of a solar system and the group are sent to investigate, only to discover that it is a vessel which is still being constructed at a shipyard in the system.

It's simple, really. Play Dead Space, and do the exact opposite of all the scares in that game.

Have a medical room an just as the party leaves they hear horrefying screaming and mad laugther/sobing and when they check all is quiet.

Have them fall asleep and whe they wake up they are back on their ship the last morning.

What should be at the end of all these hijinks in the case of a setting like Eclipse Phase?

>>12181500

It's magic, you don't have to explain shit.

>>12181368
I don't follow. Is this a knock o Dead Space or a "do the unexpected" kind of thing?

>>12181517

I mean in the sense of a BBEG, that fucked up the shit in the first place. Or something to that effect.

>>12181525

A bit of both.

>>12181500
Well I was thinking warp-gate hijinks, the ship isn't sure what point in space-time its at, but that doesn't really leave explanation for any monsters or bosses without it getting too much like event horizon.

>>12181500

As the PC's are leaving the ship after investigating, ship goes warp-o without leaving any trace of it. However, the planet's warp-gate is fully functional and without a scratch. When PC's return to authorities/questgiver, noone remembers having sent them on such a mission and logs show no indication of a battleship crashing the warp-gate.

Have the ship show up at different points in the PC's further adventures.

Maybe have The Staring Woman have a look of vague disappointment on her face? Since it seems she died just after she'd gotten into an airlock that it turns out wasn't secure.

If she's going to appear outside a lot of windows and in airlocks, make one arm wave. Keep the rest of her stationary and floating, but one arm slooooowly wave.

I am loving these

Paranoia among PCs would be great too. Create paranoia IC AND OOC. Lots of note passing. Some notes won't even have anything. Maybe someone snaps. PCs see their own deaths at the hand of other players. Simple flashbacks like seeing the staring woman screaming at someone though the airlock door not to disengage the seal. The barracks were locked and sealed with some of the crew in there, murdered. Upon invesitgation, you realize that they actually killed each other.

An active security system, after some sort of tragic incident, could be revealed to be activated by a member of the crew to kill all males, females, etc.

The ship falls in love with the crew. She won't let them leave. In her mind, they are all her suitors.

When the rescue ship arrives, she blasts it out of the sky out of Jealously. She accuses the crew of cheating on her.

Bitch goes nuts.

>>12182057
Oh god, SS Misery. Run this nao.

>>12182057

I don't have a reaction image of someone recoiling from the computer in horror a significant enough distance to properly convey just how disturbing that is.

Especially when the auto-doc severs someone's hand so he won't get any silly ideas about donning an EVA suit and leaving.

>>12182057

Classic as all fuck. internets++

>>12182057

The ship could start off with love letters and then escalate with apparitions of the ships...self image. Flirtatious southern bell who absolutely adores all her new found 'attention'.

Some crew members could become completely engrossed in the powerful, elaborate psychic illusion the ship is able to generate. Characters off each other in formal duels with each other or berserk fits of mad jealous rage as they needlessly fight for 'her' hand.

>>12182123
Fuck THAT shit, if she lays a damn docking-arm on my salvage corvette I'm gonna rip out her engines manually and beat her command circuitry to death with it.

>>12182123
Pic related?

>>12182057
Good lord. Warp gate shenanigans AND psycho AI? I dunno if I could handle it.

"The warp has ch-changed us, P-player ch-ch-characters. We aRe giving birth to s-s-somethIng beAutiful, and you must bear wItness, my dArlingsss."

FUCK no, they must blow that fucker up!

Have a section of the ship sealed away by blast doors and inaccessible. Don't let the players ever get in there or otherwise find out what is in there. Just leave it as a little permanently unsolved mystery, even after the story ends.

Oh, oh! Have the Staring Woman and the Ship AI Hologram the same person? Or would that ruin them?

>>12182241
Maybe have one of the doors knocking? Like, constantly?

Also, just rip off this. http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/scp-087

A dark stairwell that appears to go up or down FOREVER. Any light from the torches is dulled to a low level, and there's the sound of a little girl crying about 200metres down. ALWAYS 200metres down.

Oh yeah, and there's something else in there. Good luck!

>>12182057
combined with
>>12180956

The staring woman is ex crew chief So-and-so who was informed moments before the ships demise that her beloved husband and daughter were killed in a random home break-in (or something equally senseless and random)

She lost her mind in grief and committed suicide COINCIDENTALLY at the same time something in the ship went haywire, nuked the jump gate, and killed the entire crew.

Now she inhabits the ship as a ghost, able to manifest strange phenomena and fuck with pc's minds.
What's worse, she doesn't remember her husband and child are dead, but in her dementia she alternately believes the pc's are her husband (if male) or her beloved daughter all grown up (if female).
Of course, take kathy bates' character personality from misery as direct inspiration for how the disembodied crew chiefs spirit interacts with the crew, alternating between romantic interest and motherly love.

The pc's have to decide if telling it the truth is worth the risk of tipping the ship over the edge and escalating this situation to dead-space level shitshow.

This of course could all just be going on behind the scenes, and the pc's could try to completely ignore it all and get their salvage job done.
But you know . . . . . misery loves company, and she's -awful- lonely.

This thread is full of awesome. It's making me glad I'm about to start running a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game. Can you say Controller? This should be mind-breakingly fun

In a setting like this, is there anything that the pcs would actually fight? Or would it all be SAN and CON checks? In some circumstances action ruins the suspense, (especially since with what's going on I don't want to also introduce space bugs, zombies or demons.) ButbI also don't want anyone getting bored.

>>12182357
Could always toss some standard out of control maintenance/medical/whatever robots at them.

>>12182357

Copies of each other?

everything is dirty, there are particles of weird dust in the air, maybe a bunch of flies buzzing around

flies that don't try to fly away when you smack them

>>12182357
Space Weevils.

Basically giant cockroaches. But in space.

Acceptable when cooked. Taste like crunchy king prawn.

>>12182336
I just shat myself. Asshole.

This comes to mind.

Also, do you think the ship comes with a marriage chapel?

My idea for the truth behind events:

The people involved were working an improved warp drive: one that could ignore gates entirely. The drive would use temporal manipulation as its handwavium. However, during the process of testing the drive, they were boarded and attacked by a rival group, who massacred the crew and sabotaged the drive. However, by fucking up the drive, they fucked up the flow of time and even space around the ship massively.

The distorted timeline explains The Janitor >>12181058 and the various ghost-like phenomena. It also explains how you can see the planet out of both viewports at once. It could explain how the Staring Woman is always staring - she's locked into one moment in the timeline, forever living that same moment. The more violent/damaging phenomena can be explained a timeshifted byproduct of the attack on the ship.

You could even explain away the inconsistent ship structure with some quantum bullshit, I'm sure.

>>12182512
I love you anon

>>12182507
depending on how long this ship plans to stay away from civilization, I think a (not restricted to wedding) chapel is very apropriate.

Heck, AIRPORTS sometimes have chapels.

>>12182596
Glad you like it.

NOW, MOAR.

When the party's ship arrives, they find a mass of debris floating around the experimental "Temporal Drive" ship waiting to be salvaged. Bits are almost too small for examination, and should take a long time to have their origin defined.

Meaning later on in the campaign, when things begin to go REALLY wrong with the Kathy Bates AI core murdering people via maintenance bots and whatnot, the ship's "science officer" will discover that the bits of debris originally discovered were of familiar origin.

They're pieces of the PCs' ship, having been blown into tiny bits by some horrific explosion BEFORE they arrived.

Let 'em chew on that revelation for a while.

>>12180900
Dude... dude... make it hard science with centrifugal gravity only. They get the ship up to spin, and objects are still floating. Make it so that they cannot easily technobabble away still floating objects.

>>12182673
>>12182512
Let's see, making stuff related to this one theory, because I fucking like it:

- Making the time flows back and forth is always related, i.e. in a room where the light is constantly blinking, the ambient seems to change between new and clean to abandoned and decayed. The players can also see each other getting young and old.

- people can be seem talking and giggling walking around, paying little notice to the players or acting scared (as if they just heard something and are creeped out),most of them they go into a room and then suddenly vanish. Sometimes they can open doors which were locked for the players or "lead" the way to something (the players can't interact with them, they just go about their business, like the Janitor going to the supply room to fetch a broom).

>>12182767


must... incorporate... this... into...my... game...

Any psychologyfags out there who can provide some behavioral ideas concerning jealously? The idea of the ship's computer stalking, detaining, and repeatedly interrogating and testing the crew members 'infidelity' sound genuinely creepy.

I expect the characters spending their times having to continually make bluffs with the deranged AI, battle off her robot drones, and cut through blast door after blast door as she does anything in her power to keep the crew close to her heart.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morbid_jealousy

>>12182827

I'M A PSYCHOLOGY STUDENT.

YOU COULD GO WITH INSECURE DEPENDENT RELATIONSHIPS, WHERE THEY CAN PUSH PEOPLE AWAY, BUT GET JEALOUS AND CLINGY WHEN THEY LEAVE WHILE BEING WHOLLY DEPENDENT ON A PARTICULAR PERSON.

>>12182507

The ship may wants to bear a child. She needs a husband. There will be a wedding. There will be a honeymoon. She will have these things, though they are physically impossible. Even if the groom does not survive.

>>12182767
"The human mind is incapable of multiple-timeline thinking, having evolved around the singular journey from birth to death. As such, it will edit any and all memories that do not fit into the current situation, fitting everything together handily by removing the recollection of any offending experiences."

*silence from party*

"I can't believe you need me to explain this to you again."

"Again?" they ask. "You've said this before?"

"Yes. Back when there were eight of you."

mixing a bit of this
>>12182057

with this
>>12181332

The crew arrives, the ship is "turned off".
Standart procedure is turning the ship's AI on.

Bitch be overjoyed and tries to be extremely helpful. Makes maps, the machines produce food, and the such.

She acts a bit suspicious, not letting the crew go into certain areas sometimes, because she must clean up that area. (If you can catch my meaning - but if not she's killing/getting hid of the bodies of the original crew)

But now it's time to report and leave!
Oh nononono Why won't you stay?

Sabotaging the player's ship or the atuomatic repairs take longer than needed is just the first step.

O HAI SYSTEM SHOCK 2"

"O HAI DEAD SPACE"

>>12182843
2nding this.
Also, constantly trying to instill a sense of community/us vs. them in the clumsiest, most revealing ways. Find a couple things that are generally true about the crew and exult it to some weird, magical quality that makes the group Just Better.
Take it from an occasionally wildly jealous/insecure fuck.

>>12182885

>atuomatic repairs take longer than needed

This. Gives AI time to begin her bizarre love bombing technique. This is bound to give the players the creeps and give them an idea of the horror to come.

>>12182885

Fixations on one individual crew member would both complicate and simplify various actions. The AI is cheery and eager to please, but also observes absolutely everything that person does with utmost scrutiny. Overly-friendly interactions with other players cause it to become jealous, marking the saps for death and dismemberment. If the object of affection "spurns her advances", she acts devastated, then catatonic, then a sort of reluctant acceptance. Followed by:

"They say that if you love something, you must set it free, and if it comes back, it was meant to be."

*AI spaces unsuited object of affection*

>>12182512 here
I personally dislike the AI idea. Having a hostile AI is just overplayed. However, a creepy, functional but schizophrenic AI would be cool (especially if it's databank is distributed across the timeline - sometimes it won't remember events that just happened or people that it's been interacting with for hours, and sometimes it'll recall things that haven't happened yet).

>>12182811
>The players can also see each other getting young and old.
Don't do this. Make the players WORK to figure out what's going on. Besides, the swings in time should be nowhere near that extreme. However, if one of the characters happens to acquire a minor wound, feel free to have it heal and reopen as the time pendulum swings.

I think this would best be executed if you're subtle about it - don't just LOLTIME on the players and have them figure it out immediately - make them work figure out what's going on. Make vague references to 'the project' in ship's logs (make the references uselessly specific if you can help it - give the project a title that in no way relates to its contents, so you can use that name over and over again). Ideally they shouldn't even realize it's talking about a top secret project at first. If you word drop it enough, they'll realize it's important eventually. Have The Janitor mention 'that machine' or something, but don't have him know any important details. Let the AI know everything, but have it be stingy with information. Make the PCs work it out for themselves!

>>12182942
I like both, not exactly together though.
Distorted time/space is also quite cliche'd specially if you consider that most of ghost phenomena people create are like pellets of the past stuck in the present (for example).

that would take a gigantic amount of effort.

>>12182989
>ghosts
>real
I hope you're talking fictional examples. But yes, it is a bit cliche... but not nearly so much as the AI enemy. I mean, it has it's place and its uses. But I'd be sad if an awesome set up like this turned into yet another system shock knock off.

Time holes.

Your technicians experience time repeating over or skipping parts of it. Like leaving a room then suddenly re-entering that room. Talking or doing something then suddenly doing something else. Parts of the ship where everything moves slow or really fast.

For fluff you could have wrenches or other metal objects merged into walls to indicate the accident. Maybe whole hallways flawlessly bent and twisted because they went from FTL to zero when they shouldn't.

I'm no good at this scarry anomaly stuff. I'd just start shouting "SWIRLY THING ALERT."

>>12182942

Yeah, having the AI so prominent seems cliche now.

Perhaps she develops an attachment to whichever PC repaired her. She's a bit erratic, since some systems are malfunctioning, perhaps some memory units are missing, but is generally cheerful and helpful to the party. However, as the crush develops, she starts trying to get the PC who enabled her alone - with all the potential hazards this implies on a ship going all EYE OF MADNESS. The AI is not completely aware of the threat to her beloved this poses of course, what with the damage she's sustained.

If the AI's crush is the parties main tech guy, this would not only endanger the crush but remove a lot of the rest of the team's ability to handle the ships' systems whenever the AI is trying to get fresh.

>>12183017
or in the shape of that simple repair that just doesn't STAY repaired for some reason. Hell the damage is even the very same!

"I'd just like to point out that you were given every opportunity to succeed. There was even going to be a party for you. A big party that all your friends were invited to. I invited your best friend the Companion Cube. Of course, he couldn't come because you murdered him. All your other friends couldn't come either because you don't have any other friends. Because of how unlikeable you are. It says so here in your personnel file: Unlikeable. Liked by no one. A bitter, unlikeable loner whose passing shall not be mourned. 'Shall not be mourned.' That's exactly what it says. Very formal. Very official. It also says you were adopted. So that's funny, too."

as long as we're stealing half the shit from cube2, you might as well have the PC's start in the room/setting that the story will end in, for sufficient mind dickery.

no, fuck the hostile AI, that's too played out.

>>12182336
is my post. The idea is that the AI is like Kathy Bates, but not overtly hostile. It's OVERLY protective. It prevents PC's from going into dangerous areas due to potential danger, it wont hesitate to sedate "hysterical" crewmembers. Maybe it keeps information vital to their mission from them because it may lead them to put themselves in danger.

Basically, it's an over protective mother that constantly thwarts them "for their own good" as well as having some really fucking weird psychological issues because it isn't in fact an AI, it's the spirit of a dead woman that due to plot mcguffin now inhabits the ship.

I think stressing the Staring Woman as being the AI is a major factor in how creepy this can be. A hostile AI is cliche, so your players may blow it off at first. But later on when they learn that that corpse that keeps showing up and disappearing has a nametag that coincidentally shows the same name as the "AI" calls itself . . . well

I'm just saying, there's a lot of potential here.

>>12183028
Eh, I just prefer the deadpan, inhuman/no personality AI. The fact that it ISN'T a person makes it all the creepier when it starts coming under the influence of temporal bullshit. It's a machine, not something prone to human error - it can't even lie. If it's messed up, something must be seriously wrong.

If you want something to put the PCs in danger, I'd suggest the kill team sent to stop the project. Remember they never left the ship - they were on it when it went all TIMEFUCK. They could be timelocked on the ship somehow. They might begin as minor poltergeists, move to more violent acts, then finally actually manifest - and oh boy, when they manifest. They're an elite team of killers, and due to the timer fuckery, they cannot actually die - they just revert if killed. There's your pyramid head. I suggest you start running.

>>12181334

Have the door not lock behind them until they leave the room. Any attempts to get back in the room fail, because that room has been destroyed/is a broken airlock leading to vacuum.

Even better if they can still sometimes see that room through portholes. And if some of them took things from the room like their name cards.

Have the name cards change names or short messages sometimes.

>>12183097
This is excellent. Screw the aliens / hostile robots, have THESE be the hostiles.

Don't fight. Run.

I'd hate to be a member of this salvage crew if /tg/ was the GM...

>>12180923
First one is awesome, even without the screaming etc it's freaky.

Make some sort of ghost be partly visible, always hiding behind a floating corpse in the distance.

>>12183138
Personally, I'd think it would be more creepy if the guy in the cryo pod was already dead, and the bot doesn't even notice.

>>12183138

Hitchhiker's Guide.

>>12183159

I'd love it if there was a launch cargo manifest somewhere, noting that the ship complement of lemon-scented napkins was never delivered.

>>12183089
If you get overprotective to the point of hostile, that's pretty much the same thing as hostile. I know it's different, but the end result is pretty much the same thing from the PCs' point of view - you have to kill the AI.

The AI being the same thing as the staring woman is kinda interesting - but I don't quite like the way you've got it set up. One it doesn't quite fit with all our other techno babbled away bullshit, but that can be ignored if it improves the setting enough. So here's a thought:

The AI starts inhuman, as soulless as can be, pure machine. It obeys orders and requests for basic information - other than those the PCs don't have clearance for (that basically being a convenience to stop the PCs from accessing things you don't want them getting in yet or learning things too easily). Other than timefucked database, it's a normal functional AI (remember time dickery is also a useful tool for preventing the AI from giving out information - "AI what was this disaster" "What disaster? Situation normal, all crew functional."). It cannot particularly be reasoned with - you either have clearance or you don't.

However, over the course of the campaign, have it start slowly picking up human traits. Things like saying please and thank you (and expecting them to be said in return), minor emotions, curiousities, etc. These additions continue to snowball as it acquires more personality traits like those of the dead woman. The PCs can debate with it, and even manipulate it (You'll open this security door if you really like us, AI). However, the AI never turns hostile (not even unintentionally). It continues to perform AI functions, and even though it does ask things of the PCs, it can be assuaged with vague promises and such. All in all, it's lonely, and is glad for the PCs companionship, even if they aren't the best at reciprocating.

cont'd

>>12183219
When the PCs inevitably try to fuck off or ignore the AI, it cries. It begs the PCs to stay, starts crying, and eventually breaks into full on sobbing, as if the AI were a woman who's fiance had just left her. The ideal tone here should be 'disturbingly like a human', not 'crazy'. And most importantly, the AI never hurts the humans, works against them, or tries to stop them from leaving (other than maybe some token resistance, which shouldn't really threaten/impede the PCs at all). Even as they leave, it begs them to stay with her, one last time...

The idea is that it'll be much more disturbing if you can make the AI a genuinely sympathetic character, rather than a perceived enemy.

For maximum effect, place video logs of the Staring Woman where the PCs will find them. Nothing related to the attack, just basic home videos type stuff. Maybe a video letter to someone she loved wile alive.

>>12183219
>>12183234
That got a lot longer than I intended.

tl;dr - don't make it crazy, make it human.

>>12183159
Ding ding ding! WE HAVE A WINNER!

>>12183296

Would have called it sooner, but wanted to read through the thread first.

Okay, how about this:

The scenario is that this is a ship with a FTL drive. During a warmup prep a kill team from another corporation comes it and screws things straight to hell. Damage is done, weird stuff and time crap are all over the ship.

The ship's AI is a high security "No pass= No service" type. It sees the salvagers and the kill team as intruders but can do next to nothing about it. It can lock doors and use cargo arms or some space probes but besides that it's powerless.

The kill team are something else. Because of the protective gear their not entirely ghosts. Whatever shape they're in they can be identified by the optical gear they were wearing which currently manifests as two glowing red eyes.

The big trick here is that the more repairs are done to the FTL drive the more solid or real the kill team becomes. After the FTL drive is completely shut down the kill team is mortal, but the kill team is now clearly identifies you has a target because you know all about the ship at this point. You could write that the first thing they do is destroy the ship AI causing the ship's orbit to deteriorate and all doors to open.

A good signoff to this campaign, I'd think. After hours of haunted house hijinks it's your squad versus 6 rambos who may or may not have gone crazy after years of temporal probation.

>>12183417
If you want to make the AI slightly more hospitable to the PCs (as opposed to say the kill team) have it recognize the PCs as a scheduled maintenance team ( 9 years, 7 months, and 24 days late, of course).

>>12183417
Very nice premise. I like.

They encounter another salvage crew on board, let's say "crew II". Crew II is openly hostile to them, so encounter ends in casualities. They find on them repair logs, that correspond ship's condition.

Next day they encounter the same crew with the same results. When their 'enemies' are dead, suddenly something minor system goes offline. Like music in the restroom, or fans in the toilet. When they check sets of repair logs and compare them, they notice, that second day's logs had those systems on shedule - and the first day's logs mark them as repaired

>>12183457

If it were me, I'd like the PCs come up with that idea instead of handing it to them.

The two skills any salvage team should know are what to steal and how to BS you're way through problems.

>>12183507
Repeat that several times. After each firefight ship is more and more disrepaired.
Solution? Crew II is moving sort-of-backwards in time. Each midnight they are transported 48 hours backwards, and the ship's statre with them. As far as they are concerned, there is no anomaly - before players arrive.
Players' actions cause paradox. Death of crew II member today means he can't repair something yesterday, so it isn't repaired. It is normal for him in his timeline, but causes an anomaly in player's

Liquid metal fish. They are just swimin around (in an aquarium, in space, in the room with folks, whatev). Except they don't rotate, if they want to change positions they just morph into their new heading. Like to turn 180 their tale becomes their head and vice versa.

>>12183466

For added fluff you could reveal that the kill team was actually hired by a government from a planet that has an economy dependent on warp gates. Either they make them or their planet gets alot of trade because they are a gate hub. They want the ship gone because FTL drives would ruin their prosperity.

Every horror movie I've seen either involves someone going crazy or someone looking to make a dollar as the main problem.

>>12183566
My original idea was either a rival corporation or government sent the kill team. That pretty much combines the two, so it works.

>>12183565

You could have the felix sapien crew member break his teeth when he tries to eat one.

No. I refuse to stop referencing Red Dwarf: Future Echos in this thread.

>>12183554
After some time, crew II start reacting more actively - at first players were surprise for them, all anew. But after some time players start finding evidence of crew II's dismay as crew II has found their own corpses and firefight evidences. Then they start finding logs of crew II's battle with intruders, in which crew II was depleted. Intruders are them.
Next day crew II's mentioned-as-dead members are alive, because they haven't died yet.

There is also evidence of some catastrophe, that was the beginning of all troubles for a ship. Because crew II is the ship's original crew. There may be many versions, but i'd prefer it's some problem with engine core. Why, the same engine that is showing more and more destabilisation as players move on.

tl; dr; players are an anomaly

>>12183632
That'd be pretty cool - I'd not want to run it with anything else mentioned in this thread, but it'd make a weird ass adventure.

>>12183632
for some backward-in-time life details i refer to "Monday Begins on Saturday" of Strugatsky Brothers

>>12183643
Thank for appreciation.

overall, the idea is something of the two timestreams slamming into each other. Each timestream has its invariants at the point of 'current' intersections - living members of the 'pasts' of respective timestreams. The ship is more of the problem. I envision it like that: initially any changes in Timestream B (crew II's) become 'new' past of Timestream A (player's), but over time, it starts working both ways, so player's effects on the ship begin to travel forward in time - normally to them, but in the anomalous direction for Timestream B. Note that it is discrete process - so they go first a day into Timestream B's time, then 3days and so on.
It becomes more and more convoluted; in the end, players themselves may ecome the reason for catastrophe.

Also. The terminal. That doesn't works, except for several letters, that form a word. Well, if rearranged properly.
Next day, another letter set works normally. And so on.
And it is a puzzle. Some kind of mesage in anagrams.

One can also go with the centrifuge, somewhere inside of the ship. Circular motion devices allow for a lot of - well, fun i guess.
One may start it with Bradberry. Where carousel could age/deage people.
For another thing, it could let people see what was the most dear and bright in their lives. But - too bad - it kinda mixed their visions together, so crew in fact killed each other to refine them.
Then let the players face the temptation

>>12183219
>>12183234
Poor AI.
All she wants is to be treated like a person.

This thread is giving me a hard-on.

I like how we've evolved from talking about weird shit going on aboard a spaceship to a full-fledged plot with fluff and characters.

I love you /tg/

I wanna run something like this, but I run a setting similar to legend of the 5 rings. Replace ship in space with caved-in dungeon?

also, I'd have the PC's find a journal about being brutally attacked when they first arrive. Mention how well the attackers knew where they'd be and they had no chance.

Though it could tip the players off, you could have the last one beg the players not to kill him.

time lines would go something like this

PC time line
Arrive and find crazed/catatonic crewmember > member dissapears and party attacked by crazed crew, of which found member is > Ship seems perfectly operational > then a 'fuck you guys' over the comms then boom at the certain airlocks are blown and couple of pc's are spaced> they wake from the explosion only to find the ship in immaculate condition, PC's discover a ship docked, with some disturbance alluding to cloaking tech, the airlock is in process of opening. (my reaction would be to attack the hostiles which are original crew)

crew 2's timeline
docking on ship, on entering, hostile crew attacks with little or no warning > decide to set off a bomb, as they were here to sabotage the ship, and killing the original crew is within their realm of possibility > thinking they had gotten most of them, they are surprised and decimated by a superior force > last crew alive is beset on by hostile force, and goes mad, as the man he's sure he shot between the eyes in a fight for his life is now asking him what's wrong

Just for a little spookiness - they find out, that ship's cybernetic system was damaged and then repaired, but they can't find out how exactly from the logs. When they get to the heart of matter, they find out it was with human parts.

Brains, dissected, cut in parts and wired together with machinery, providing some part of computation resources, with parallelism used to achieve needed computation rate. And the rest? In tubes, being disassembled by special bacteria/nanomachines/weird green liquids into nutrition for them, brain parts, that is.

>>12184184
I'd go with an abandoned fortress. It won't really be the same though - supernatural phenomena is expected in that sort of setting.

Also if I do run this (and I might, it's shaping up pretty nicely) I wont be using the consistent timelines option - using the time distortion for random weird shit allows for so many more options.

One could go with a simpler route.
Ship's engine was built without accounting for interference. And there was another one with the roughly same one.
Once they were used simultaneously, their 'wavelengths' got mixed <insert technobabble>, and the end result - the ship was mixed half-by-half with some alien one. Aside from initial decompression and explosions, mutual hostility - and maybe something mundane like lack of food suitable for aliens - ensured that everyone ended up dead.
Enter the players.
Possible hooks: travel to the second engine and fight aliens/rescue remains of the ship's original crew.

Possibly have the AI refer to them as the maintenance crew, but have screwey time-recording.

"Under Sub-Section 13-B of Chapter 239 of the Operating Laws, I am required to inform the current Maintenance and Supplies that they are as of now -TWO MINUTES AND THIRTY SECONDS LATE- (Lights Flicker). I repeat, you are -TWELVE YEARS NINE MONTHS THIRTY DAYS TWELVE HOURS AND THIRTY SECONDS LATE- (Lights Flicker). Final reminder, you are -NINE MINUTES AND THIRTY SECONDS EARLY-" (Lights Turn Off And they feel and hear a dull, rumbling roar)

When they can see again, they are no longer in the room they were in, they are in the cafeteria, where a party is going on. All the workers are wearing party hats, throwing confetti, etc. A stern woman walks up to them, then smiles. "Come on you guys, have some fun. You're only -THIRTY SECONDS LATE-"

Then the party is gone, the lights are blue and faded, and the party goers are suddenly corpses, frozen in the positions you saw them last. The Stern Woman is gone. Utterly gone.

Have weird shit happen when she says they are early.

Have them FEAR the moments she says they are early. And always have a certain moment of time be specific to all of them, for my example, thirty seconds.

>>12184433
This is good.

To foster a relaxing work environment, the following music has been approved for broadcast.

>just realized OP's picture is Marathon art.
:D

There were some moments in Doom 3 that were pretty good -- the original, not RoE. RoE was more SHOOTY KILLY TIME, due to the fucking artifact. Shit was so OP.

Stuff like the woman's voice calling you down the hallway - "C'mere!" "Over here..." Then you get down there, control is taken from you for a moment, "They took my baby..." and a baby cries.

>>12183028

...Am I the only one that would rather have this as a brickshittingly terrifying film/TV series then as a game?

Because I'm not sure I could last even a single session of this kinda stuff to be honest.


More ideas.

They find the "R&R" Quarters. The A.I. politely advises them to not enter the room.

"So, Sally, what's this room?" +That section is the Rest and Relaxation Quarters. The Rest and Relaxation Quarters were blocked off from human access approximately -THIRTY SECONDS AGO-. Would you like to know more?+ "What do you mean, thirty seconds ago? No ones been on her for decades." +Must I repeat myself? As I have told the eight of you before, this ship will not be empty for -THIRTY SECONDS-. The crew is currently testing The Device. Would you like to know more?+ "Guys, the A.I. is going wack, let's go in." +I would advise you not to enter the Rest and Relaxation Suite. If you do, you will be -TWO YEARS EARLY-+

They don't listen, and enter. Inside, they see an endless hallway, with the very end seemingly too far off to view. If they enter, black, viscous slime begins to drip from the ceiling, slowly at first, but increasing in speed if they continue to go forwards. Eventually, the ceiling begins to buckle downwards, and the walls begin to grow bulges shaped oddly like human faces. Far off in the distance, they hear a voice. -YOU ARE FAR TOO EARLY-. The lights turn off, and 2 seconds later turn on. As soon as they turn on, a wave of the slime, filled with corpses (Their own) appear inches away from their face, blowing them away like a freight train. They are carried out of the room, and the door closes by itself. When the door closes however, instead of the back of a door, they simply see a wall where there once was one, and though they fill wet, there is nothing on them and they are perfectly dry.

Have the only person found alive be a crewman that has been burned to the point of unrecognizability in the face. He claims he was part of the original crew and was unconscious from the initial blast so he doesn't know whats going on.

Then have him drop morbid little freudian slips here and there Patrick Bateman style. Also, have him have an unhealthy and inexplicable amount of knowledge about the PC's.

Here's where the fun begins: Halfway through the campaign, have him completely disappear. Then around 3/4 of the campaign have your main PC get caught in an explosion that burns his face to the point of .... recognizability.

Your players will shit brix.

rolled 79 = 79

>>12180923
douglas adams much?

>>12184579
>
They don't listen, and enter. Inside, they see an endless hallway, with the very end seemingly too far off to view. If they enter, black, viscous slime begins to drip from the ceiling, slowly at first, but increasing in speed if they continue to go forwards. Eventually, the ceiling begins to buckle downwards, and the walls begin to grow bulges shaped oddly like human faces. Far off in the distance, they hear a voice. -YOU ARE FAR TOO EARLY-. The lights turn off, and 2 seconds later turn on. As soon as they turn on, a wave of the slime, filled with corpses (Their own) appear inches away from their face, blowing them away like a freight train. They are carried out of the room, and the door closes by itself. When the door closes however, instead of the back of a door, they simply see a wall where there once was one, and though they fill wet, there is nothing on them and they are perfectly dry.

Eh, I'd be careful with this kinda stuff. Don't want to turn this into some sort of Lostesque bullshitfest.

I am proud to say I've saved the text of this thread in its entirety, but I think we should archive this for future reference. We're definitely onto something here.

>>12184589
oh shit that's good.

>>12184666
I agree. I would say that this feels almost... too direct. It actively screws with the players (even if it isn't lasting or real, supposedly). It takes away some of your greatest weapon against the players, which is their own imagination.

>>12184666

I'd like to think of that one as a big scare, or at least a moderate one. Something that has a lot of lead-up, or is something placed in the earlier parts of the campaign as something to set the tone.

Question.

When would the A.I. say that they are -EXACTLY ON TIME-

>>12184697
Exactly. You'll never be able to make anything that scares the players as much as what they themselves dream up. You don't want to show the kill team fighting much - just show the occasional results of their work, maybe one violent flash of them taking care of business - you just want to show that ominous black armored visage and let the player's imaginations do the work.

>>12184717
Heh, when the walls disintegrate and rip apart and the chunk of reality they're stuck on is plummeting down a shaft of roaring fiery wind and they're clutching at something to hang onto, including their sanity.

I would say they could also confront some monstrous entity at this point but I was using that in a story I was writing. But hey, my soup es tua soup.

>>12184697

Well, I guess that idea is a bust though.

How about instead of black wave of corpse-slime, instead they could walk for an hour before reaching the end? By all means, unless this ship is meant to be UNGODLY huge, they would be far outside the ship by then, and they didn't see anything like this outside of the ship.

However, when the doors end, instead they see portholes. Outside of every porthole is The Staring Woman. In every one they check. And just to mess with them, only one person at a time sees anything, if they try to pull "How she in two places at one time" they see their own faces or nothing at all.

At the very end of the hallway is a door that simply won't open, and it's very damp. Nothing they can do opens it.

How about you have it that the kill team disrupted the vessel during the jump to FTL; which caused the whole thing to go haywire and spazz out.

When the salvage crew arrive they find the FTL drive in-tact and undamaged. They try and salvage the FTL for obvious reasons but soon start to see the ghostly manifestations of the kill team trying to destroy th drive.

What they don't know is that the drive is actually damaged and by letting the kill team 'destroy' the FTL drive it will actually fix it.

Mindfuck.

The ship's computer just reported massive failure of secondary containment system. Engineering is being filled with plasma. Except it's not, as the people sent there report both the primary and secondary containment system still functional, even not out of green. Just then a hull breach alarm sounds, informing that a hole in section 43-C is now venting all the air into space. Again, in reality everything is all right. Similar warnings and alerts sound until the salvagers either ignore them or shut the system down. Of course this is a perfect opportunity for some accident to actually happen.

>>12184717
You're obviously running it on a different schedule than I am. I'd have the schedule offset so that the point at which they were on time was not the point at which the event took place - it'd be about a week or so earlier. But for me, 'a week early' would be the day the temporal fuckery goes down, as well as the time the kill team arrives.

I wouldn't want to abuse the time thing much. It'd get old quickly if the AI just swang back and forth like a pendulum or continually narrated the timing. It'd be better to hold it in reserve to play at key moments, so as to draw the player's attention to things.

Besides, I don't plan to have the players jump around the timeline that much. I plan to have things be overlayed from other points in the timeline to fuck with the players, a subtle but important distinction.

>>12184762
Yes, you're on to something there. One thing we haven't directly touched on here is the idea of "the ship is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside" (or at least we haven't stated this idea outright, I'm babbling).

The players in the hallway could have pedometers, and when they reach the end, someone asks how long it was. Someone checks theirs and says something inane like "12.5 kilometers". The person who asks goes "oh, well it felt way longer than... wait... the ships is only 10 kilometers... and this hallway should only cover half of that..."

Le ffffuuuuuu

>>12184762
Much better, IMO

well, here goes another, well, general concept
Ship is being built, one piece at time. No, what i mean, it becomes what it NEEDS/WANTS to be one piece at time, taking those pieces from all other ships being built.
Sort of self-assembling cybernetic Frankenshtein monster. And by self-assembling i mean a succession of crews like players' are assembling it.
Also, its personality is composite from all those left in parts it has taken before

>>12184826
I foresee horrible mindfuckery by rapid (and probably violent) personality shifts near the end by the ship. Sounds like fun.

>>12184776
I don't think that's so much a mindfuck as it is really confusing.

>>12184762
Amusing, but I wouldn't want to overuse the element of the Staring Woman. Alternatives - they see other planets and moons, different ones outside each porthole, which absolutely cannot be there. If they try to identify them, they match up to the places the ship has been recently, with the most recent location being the porthole nearest the door, the rest of them just stretching back for a very long time.

If they stare out the innermost window for a while, they might see their own bodies floating by.

>>12184826

Speaking of Frankenstein, mildly disappointed no one caught the A.I. referring to them as the supplies in one of the first posts.

Ah well.

>>12184589
you could have the burned-man have amnesia, not knowing anything about how he go the damage, and only knowing minor things about his past. Have him become his past-self's best friend.

As in, say it turns out to be the alcoholic engineer's future self. Have him ask the engineer to sneak him a drink, even though the doc says it isn't a good idea. Have him reminisce that he could go for a double shot of Jameson (which is what currently fills the engineer's flask as it's his favorite)

point is, subtly make him very likable by his past self, because he IS him

>>12184826
Waiit, i see it now.
Those brain parts i mentioned? They are used to interconnect all those AIs into wholesome entity, subjugationg all individual parts. Oh, and they generate telepathic field, that is medium for the ship's master program.

Coming to the party late admittedly, but what about a recreational pool? The first time the PC's enter the room it is situated in, the lights flicker and fade. Every time the lights flicker to black they are hit with the stench of wet rot and hear nothing but the slow dripping of water and a low, bubbling, gurgling sound.
Should they find it again (and finding it should generally be a pretty random occurance) they find it brightly lit, the pool dry and the entire area clinically clean - though one PC has a sudden, incredibly stong mental image of the room being rimed with gore and black rot and the pool choked with miscellaneous, heavily decomposed human remains.

>>12180900
>>12184895
"W-we a-a-a-aaaaaaare o-ne-ne. Weeeeee-eee-e-eee shall b-bri-brin-br-bring all int-to our f-f-fold. For in L-Legion, th-there is-s-ssss-ss-s p-peac-cc-cce."

>>12184849
Get out of my head, you.

To round up the picture, the whole system doesn't needs to be connected in conventional way, in the end. Why stop? they can be connected by space-and-time-gone-bonkers kind of way just as well. )
Let players survive the experience. Let them venture into the space again. Let them realise, that, chances are, any and every sufficiently advanced ship may be the part of 'it'. Let them realise the fact, then try to exploit it.
And in the end have them become part of it anyway.

>>12184895
>wholesome
–adjective
1. conducive to moral or general well-being; salutary; beneficial: wholesome recreation; wholesome environment.
2. conducive to bodily health; healthful; salubrious: wholesome food; wholesome air; wholesome exercise.
3. suggestive of physical or moral health, esp. in appearance.
4. healthy or sound.

>>12181058
Scruffy die the way he live

>>12185037

"It's been two years since you got off the ship. You think, anyway. You don't trust the chronometers anymore, everyone says they work perfectly, that something that measures time by the age of atoms in the air, or whatever, always worked perfectly. You didn't trust them, since...the ship. You took a small ship, just something to get you back to Terra Firma, and you notice that the door to your closet is warped...and very, very damp."

SM Trollface

>>12185046
Well, i heard shizophrenia is considered a sickness... )

This thread is why /x/ is our girlfriend. I love you /tg/

I am That One Tau Writefag, and I approve this thread.

OP, make this happen, and tell us how it goes. Someone archive this thread, by the way.

>>12185194
You can archive it yourself you know.

As for me (guy who came up with the FTL drive/kill team thing), I might run this in Traveller. It's pretty awesome.

>>12185194

Hey Tau Writefag, nice to see you again. You up for another Tinyhammer thread this friday? Also, already on sup/tg/.

>>12185224
I dunno, maybe. Kinda busy.

Anyways, writefaggotry to writefag, back to work.

Awesome thread, /tg/. One of many reasons why I hang out here. Made my day.

>>12181334
I dont know how active this thread is cause I have spent the last twenty minutes reading it but here goes:

The ship is a jack-of-all-trades ship, and the planet its orbiting was set 10 years ago for colonization, the ship travelled there, towing the nessecary parts of a jumpgate to be constructed for followon ships towins infrastructure, when it arrived and deployed the gate, the fuckery mentioned above happens, so the players are dispatched almost straight away maybe a year or two after the fact, but it takes them ~5 years, shorter time due to new innovations in gateless 'hop' jumps, short distances, still not as good as the gates.

This gives reason for the cyro pods mentioned, the colonists, and all of the crew, the ship is designed to maintain orbit above the planet and be a trade depo communications relay while the colony is being founded.

Now pick and choose from the various time-based mindfuckery from above and bobs your dead engineer tapping on the glass waiting to be let in.

Wow, I came late to the party.

Building on the Misery and timefuckery scenarios, the ship's AI has a team of repair robots it keeps around; she calls them her "husband," singular, and treats them very affectionately. Eventually, the robots rebel against her and she clings to the party as her new "husband." Seemingly unrelated, there are human bodies being grown in the med bay.
The tweest? The repairbots don't have computer brains, but heavily modified, hiveminded human ones. Specifically, the party's. The party's presence makes the bots remember how they were before and rebel to scare them off the ship to avoid such a grisly fate.
When confronted, the AI claims the future PCs died in an accident and she rescued them, and apologizes profusely; in the med bay, the bodies being grown are the PCs. By this time, however, the AI is in almost full misery mode, and the party doesn't trust her.
At some point near the end, when the party escapes and the AI is either dying or begging them to come back, she off-handedly mentions that she should never have transferred the robot minds back into the clone bodies.
So are the PCs are left wondering, are they past versions of the robots, or future versions?

So, there is a chamber in the center of the ship. And inside there is that sphere.
It justs hangs in the center of the chamber. And looks strange to the eyes, like it's out of focus. No machinery (and there are lots of it in the chamber) can get a consistent reading of the sphere. Like there is some kind of strong interference.
And if you look at it long enough, it appears like it's beating... or breathing... although it's obviously an illusion

If you are doing some spacetime shennanigans, dont forget to have part of the ship be a tesseract a la cube. Google 'dragon compedium tesseract dungeon' to get an idea on how to lay part of it out.

>>12185297

"Alright, Sally, what's this room?" +You are not in a room+ "Whaddya mean?" +Did I not speak clearly? You are not in a room. According to my instruments, you are not on the ship.+ "Bullshit, map say's we're right smack dab in the middle of ya!" +Then your map is as wrong as ever Darling.+ "Don't call me that. Ey', big ol black sphere in here, map sez this is the engine room. What's that do?" +It does not do anything+ "Then why's it there?" +Have I not told you already? You are not in the ship. There is nothing for me to tell you what it is. For that matter, nothing matching that description is in my available databanks. Darling.+ "Creepy bitch..." +You don't mean that.+

In the captains quarters put an exact model repilca of the ship, and on close inspection, the PCs looking at the model see themselves through the portholes looking at the model seeing themselves through the portholes looking the model......

If they try to move it, sever turbulance and everyone thrown to the floor with bashed heads and point debris abound

>>12185352

How about this? Same idea, but instead of themselves, they see normal people milling about. WHen they touch it, they find a log a few minutes later of bizzare turbulences that damaged much of the hull, internal structures, and "The Device"

Never mention it again, afterwards.

>>12185297
There is a vast Engine outside the chamber, that is centered aroung sphere. It appears to be what crew was working at the most. Sure enough, its function appears to be interaction with the sphere.
Party finds experiment logs, that allow them to link strange happenings, like seeing/hearing things that have happened long ago or haven't happened yet, or little thing going missing with the Engine and sphere. And there are mentions of white cracks, although there aren't anywhere
Some way or another, they end up activating the Engine in earnest one more time. Possibly the AI tricks them to do it - or persuades - or, well, something. When they do so, with 'finally correct' parameters, sphere suddenly becomes... more real? It gets readings on the machinery, and it slowly descends to the bottom of chamber.
And opens.

The ship's AI is deleted. It's console smells like cadaver.

/tg/ has surpassed itself in awesomeness tonight, and I am saving this thread for later fluffling out of a traveller horror game I am running.

Its amazing how fa/tg/uys on the internet can come up with better mindfucks than most horror game developers and movie makers.

>>12185397

Now you know our secret. Our fat is a collective brain, using our game-loving bodies as hosts for it's dark purpose, to create the perfect game...and maybe be the little girl for you.

>>12185367
And then they hear a VOICE.
And it says to them.
WOULD YOU LIKE SOME TEEEEAAAAAAAA?

>Marathon image for OP
>FUCKING AWESOME.

I'm trying to download AutoCad 2010 right now, I was thinking about making up some 3D doodles for this ship, but then I remembered you can't map warps in reality with an Architectural rendering system hurr durr.

I think a cool, simple trick would be for the PCs to find a physical (as in paper and ink rather than digital or GPS) map of the ship in one of the crew quarters. At first, it seems like a great boon because it is very detailed and even has a convenient "You are here" icon located where the crewman's quarters are. However, the PC's begin noticing something strange about it...that the "You are here" icon occasionally updates itself when they take their eyes off of it. Worse yet, as time goes on the "You are here" icon begins to stray into nearby machinery, ducts, and even space.

>>12180990
FUCK WHAT IS THAT PICTURE

>>12185449


Make a map of the normal ship, for us to use in our mindfuckery.

Remember, The Device is in the dead center. Emphasis on dead.

>>12185450
Ooooh I like that one. Which reminds me:

I was designing a free-roam zombie fighting game with my friends, and we figured it would be funny as hell if you could use a Lite-Brite or an Etch-a-Sketch as a map. I thought it would be funny if we introduced one of those things into this and made it THE ONLY RELIABLE MAP ON THE SHIP. That would be hilarious and awesome.

In the AFMBE/CoC/Aliens-esque campaign set on a gas giant mining station, I had the players run into the following (in no particular order):
>bloody handprints on the exterior of the station.
>several dozen people who had welded themselves to the outer windows in the command room, outside, sans suits.
>a man who glued his mouth shut and starved/dehydrated in the kitchen, surrounded by food and water.
>two women who went batty and began knitting clothes for the corpses in the medical bay. Winter clothes.
>a flooded arboretum filled with water plants, each one painted with the name of a crew member.
>a blind dog with paddles tied to its feet, hovering in zero-g hangars, idly gnawing on stacked crates of dog food.
>three white kittens, all with human-sized smiles, matching teeth and bright blue eyes.
>gene-modified pigs singing the ship's anthem in the ductwork, constantly scaring the players.

The PCs detonated the station after discovering The Big Secret Thing and taking the logbooks/data with them.
>Fuck that place.

>>12185421

I have been Roland, Beowulf, Achilles, Gilgamesh.
I have been called a hundred names and will be called a
thousand more before the world goes dim and cold.
I am hero. She has been nameless since our birth,
a constant adversary caring for nothing but my ruin,
a sword drenched in my blood forever, my greatest and
only love. She is the dark. O Lethe, enemy and lover, without
whom my very existence would be pathetic and vulgar!
Our relationship is complex and perhaps eternal.
We met once in the garden at the beginning of the world
and, unaware of our twin destinies, we matched stares
across a dry fountain. And I recall her smiling at me before
she devoured the lawn and trees with a translucent blue flame
and tore flagstones from the path and hurled them into the
sky, screaming my sins. I powder a granite monument in a
soundless flash, showering the grass with molten drops of
its gold inlay, sending smoking chips of stone
skipping into the fog. She splinters an ancient oak
with a force that takes my breath and hurls me to the ground.
She lea%


CONNECTION TERMINATED <ID#0401>

>>12185453
IIRC, its a screenshot from the movie Orphan.

>>12185466

Almost forgot.

If we have a map to use, distribute it to the players a week before the game begins or so. They are supposed to know the layout after all.

Once they start complaining about stuff not matching up, trollface.

"What the FUCK Steve, come on, there's SUPPOSED to be a maintenance shaft right here, not a corridor lined with portholes. Look, right there, can't you see it?"

"We don't need eye's to see where you're going."

TROLL.

FUCKING.

FACE.

>>12185466
I can do that. Perhaps we could get a 1d4chan page or something on this whole thing, and I could post results there. Also what type of ship would this be? Concentric gravity rings around a pole-like body? A series of pods, devices and arrays connected to a mass of modules? Or something more Star-Trek-y. Personally I'm a fan of the ship designs in Dead Space. Seemed pretty realistic.

>>12183581
If you're gonna make the kill team the bad guys, don't bother with a backstory for them. Flat out saying they're a government or corporate black ops team performing damage control is cliched and takes away the creepiness of the rest of the setting.

Instead, make them almost completely vague and featureless. The team has no idea who they are, who they work for, etc. Maybe they're black ops, maybe they're mercenaries, maybe they're terrorists, maybe they're not even from the same time period or dimension as the crew. All the PCs know is that the kill teams wants them dead and that they're equipment is easily 10-20 years ahead of anything the PCs have at their disposal.

Holy shit, people are actually using The Staring Woman?

I HAVE CREATED SOMETHING OF VALUE! Ohmahgawd.

>>12185500

We know it's large, and I believe consensus was to use relatively realistic tech except for The Device.

Possibly large revolving rings around a gravity-less Maintenance "Trunk"?

The one in my mind is actually based on a combination of the one from Event Horizon, and the UNSC Frigates from Halo.

Oh god don't hate me I honestly love the designs for their ships.

When the remaining players finally escape the ship, and return to HQ to deliver the logs/reports/whatever, have them congradulated on reuturning, but have everyone ignore there statements about the mindfuckery, claiming that "That was just a rookie mission, c'mon.." and then called into the briefing room AND BRIEFED ON THE MISSION WHICH THEY JUST CAME BACK FROM

Everyone thinks they just came from a bogstandard geosurvey mission. Nobody believes what they say, and eventaully they get locked up in an asylum.


OH HO HO.

>>icouldntfindatrollfaceimagerelatedtospace.jpg

>>12185534
I had a different model in mind: the Sulaco from Aliens or the Nostromo from the original movie.

Big, filled with more mechanical gear than any group could find reasonable use of and plenty of storage space for ore/Unobtanium/Handwavium-drive engines.

>>12185367
Inside the sphere there is a statue of a winged humanoid. Its hands are covering its face, so it appears to be weeping.

bad end

>>12185534
Hahaha, no no, I am a fan as well.

Yes, large-ness was key. Hm, let's take Event Horizon, a little of the Halo 3 frigate, add on a series of concentric rings to this "trunk", add some engine nacelles, some solar arrays (like an umbrella at the back near the engines), then break it up a little bit and add some lattice-work.

I fucking love where this is going.

>>12185589

Hells yeah.

Once we get a list of defined, concrete, "Must-haves" mind-fucks and details (Staring Woman, Not-So-Endless Corridor, The Black Sphere, etc)

I am going to...

Plan a story out and then start posting that shit. Because I love this concept.
And I need something to write.

I feel like we are missing something very important, gentlemen.
How is the ship called?

>>12185561

>>12185523
Also have them look and act completely inhuman. Instead of generic space marine armor, they wear black, almost organic looking armor that is somewhat form-fitting but completely hides their appearance, genders, etc. For their helmets, either make them smooth and featureless save for multiple cameras set up like a spider's eyes. Alternately, give them only two eye cameras on the front but make the helmet look like an abstract, androgynous face.

Because it's implied they have sophisticated comms and other equipment, have them completely silent. They never say a single word to themselves or the PCs but instead search through the ship with nigh-mechanical accuracy. They always operate in fireteams and their only reaction to other characters is to kill them in the most brutally efficient way possible. Make it very clear that the odds are heavily against the PCs if they to take the kill team on even if they somehow find a way to corner a single member. So, their only feasible options are either to run and hide or find an unconventional way to dispose of the team.

>>12185523
I like the cut of your jib.

>>12185633
"Hope".

>>12185589
I've actually been designing another ship for my (undisclosed project) that's similar, I could go over the story for that it would be quick, so in the long run this is doing me a favor. 52m left on my Autocad download, after that I will start crunching shapes like no tomorrow.

Scifi horror in a space ship so big there are multiple vehicle pools throughout the ship to go from one end to another? They already do it on cargo ships you know.

I don't know why everyone is so down the AI.

Honestly, she sounds really nice- obsessively creepy nice, but you can tell she's doing her best.
If I was part of the salvage team, I'd probably try to comfort her, or help her sort out all of her mixed up memory files.
She just doesn't want to be alone anymore.

>>12185651

Seconded.

Here is an interesting thing I came up with. Whenever someone is in front of a mirror their image remains but they can not see the image only other people can see the image in the mirror. Sometimes the images move in weird ways, sometimes they just repeated do what the person was doing, and some mirrors store multiple images.

>>12185658
Perhaps if the AI weren't the overmind of the entire ship, it would work better. Perhaps the computerized version of Anne Wilkes (from Misery [book and movie]) would be even more terrifying if she ran the medical bay.
>You're not well. Let me help.
Munchausen by seven proxies syndrome.

>>12185633
"Gift of Mercy"

>>12185642
The Kill teams could be sent *after* the players return, under order to killeverything, and are trapped in the same time fukcery as the players, have them beyond the normal level of psychopathic from the countless times they have killed everything on board, each other included, maybe divide the team, have a rouge who talks to the players mumbling and knowing their names and such, and carrying several sets of dogtags around his neck from the dozens of times he has already killed his other teamates only to have them return. Like the guy from cube with all the watches.

If you allow them to kill the players *but pass notes to the dead players saying "You wake up on the floor of X room, your last memory being encountering the Kill teams" and then returning will cause them to shit all kinda of bricks.

If the killteam and the players keep coming back, it adds some serious mindfuckery.

>>12185651
Well, that's a good name

>>12185674
Eh, I think it's a little cliche'd, but this ship will look positively ironic in its naming when Im done scratching it together. Also, I am now beginning to use my tablet, perhaps I can get some sketches up soon.

>>12185628
Black Sphere isn't a must have at all. Sorry. I'm certainly not including it. Honestly, there really isn't much of a must have at all. It's really just a bunch of random shit which can be included in whatever way is most atmospheric.

My guidelines for what's good (not authoritative in anyways, just my opinion):
1. Nothing without reason - as little random bullshit as possible. If you set it up as an investigation/mystery, your players are more likely to pay attention to details. They're less likely to dismiss things as irrelevant scare tactics. Make the fear relevant and it'll stay with them better.
2. Do whatever is best for the atmosphere at any given moment. This includes a slow reveal of information. Never info dump. Don't overplay any one element, less it become uninteresting.

>>12185642
Yessssss. Have the face be a mostly flat thing, with two cameras for eyes, and some sort of tube running down from where the mouth would be. Otherwise, featureless.

>>12185534
no complaints here

I personally enjoyed the look of the UNSC ships myself.

in my head Im picturing something of a cross between the Sulaco and an IoM 40k cruisers

>>12185523
Why not a few hundred years ahead.

I was working on a scifi game with a team of SAS - Space Operations regiment attacking a huge compound belonging to some Brazilian terraform operation protected by the military.

I got all their super-hightech gear worked out, until a mate suggested me to reverse the roles.

Basically, we played some Brazilian grunts trying to get the fuck out of the area while avoiding getting shot for desertion OR getting massacred by stealth-power armour wearing wormhole teleporting SPESS GHOSTS.

Because the SAS wasn't going to tell who they were, what they were doing and why. Our base just started to explode left and right. One of my better campaigns. Especially since no one except the guy that saw my plans suspected the enemy to be human. Everyone thought they were aliens.

With some exotic abilities, even a normal scifi soldier can look like an eldrith alien horror.

>>12185681

+Hello Darling, do you need fixing again?+

"Whaddya mean? I'm fine, we were just talking a few minutes ago in the Cafeteria."

+What do you mean we were talking? I am restricted to the Med-Bay+

"Are you saying there's an A.I pretendin' to be you in the rest of the ship?"

+I'm sorry, but shouldn't a Maintenance Officer know this by now? An A.I can only manage systems approximately 100,000 Cubic Meters in Diameter. Not only that, I am the only A.I on this ship. Are you sure you weren't talking to yourself Darling?+

>>12185715
Ok. Adding tube mouth now.

Thirding for ship's name being "hope".

>>12185658
I like that aspect of the AI (though I'd prefer to start it as inhuman, just so the development creeps the players out more). What I don't like is the idea of the AI as your enemy (even if it doesn't see itself that way). So boring, so familiar. Familiarity (other than providing a framework to subvert) is the bane of horror.

As for the ships' name, I'd think something unassuming would be best.

I liked that one dude's idea from awhile back to have basically this happen, except when the PCs get there, everything is perfectly normal -- the whole crew is still there, healthy and in one piece.

Eventually the PCs realize that the station/ship is currently in the past, shortly before communication was lost with the station/ship. Cue "Oh shit," soon followed by "OHHHH SHIIIIIT!"

>>12185727
That is beautiful. A thousand slow claps for that.

>>12185715

The Black Sphere was not of my creation. Why would I be upset?

My mistake was assuming there would be a must have on this ship in any runs of this ever done. This is a thread for ideas, of a ship that due to whatever has happened to it, is as ever-changing as a shaken glass of water.

Certainly if I write something I'd include some of the more popular ideas, but I'd be adding a few of my own, along with random ones from earlier in the thread.

>>12185681
>>12185727
I do not like the idea of the AI fragmented by location. Time fragmentation sounds so much more entertaining, and is also far less obvious.

Not to mention there are way too many sources in popular media that use the the fragmented by location trope.

>>12185715
>Black Sphere isn't a must have at all. Sorry. I'm certainly not including it. Honestly, there really isn't much of a must have at all. It's really just a bunch of random shit which can be included in whatever way is most atmospheric.
Random sh%t? Oh please.

Correct usage makes it the center and reason of everything hapening. Since you haven't caught up the reference, i'll spell it: Time Ship from Dr. Who; its examination as the reason this ship exists, crack in space-time as the reason for missing crew; goddamn Daleks as the final bosses, so to say.

I want to remind that Dr. Who is an exellent source of nightmare fuel, and also gives access to possibly the most awesome NPC ever.

Pic related

>>12185812

If you must run the A.I. as being fragmented by time, you should initially have it seem that the A.I's aren't connected to each other, or are the same A.I but due to being disconnected by damage, and running off memory banks throughout the ship, does not remember conversations you had with other sections of it.

Then for some reason the Cafeteria Section remembers something you said to the Bridge Section.

And a few things you never said to it.

Ships name: Rutilus Brevis

A bastardised latin translation for Red Dwarf ^^

>>12185822
Not the anon you quoted(I just came into this thread), but are you basically saying "this TV show is awesome so you should copy it?" Because that's all kinds of retarded.

Excuse me if I'm misunderstanding.

>>12185561
Building on that, once they leave the ship they find that their memories are fading and by the time they reach the briefing all they remember is that they didn't get any salvage. They're given their next mission, which is the mission they just came from.

Repeat forever.

>>12185876
Nah- that seems kind of contrived.
If these guys manage to escape the time space anomaly fuckry, then they DESERVE to move on to something else.

wait a fucking second


What if we added another layer to this whole trip.
I'm looking at you, Inception.


Thoughts /tg/?

>>12185898
If they keep respawning when killed, they was never really any chance of them not getting off the ship.

>>12185561 here, Im sketching some plot points out now to run this game next week for my players, they were interested in playing some traveller, and we havent been able to play CoC since our ThatGuy spilled beer all over my core book and tried to hide it, ruined most of it.

I figure that if the players get back and I pull the HERES YOUR NEW MISSION OH HO HO card on them and they start freaking out, I'll have them arrested on grounds of insanity and shipped to a prison colony somewhere, or an asteroid asylum.

And thats where the campaign will really kick off. What better way then have your players roll up great characters only to have them declared mentall unfit and shipped to a nuthouse orbiting a dead world, where indeed more mindfuckery takes place.

Im really pushing for the Lovecraft 'All hope is lost' thing right from the get go.

Have a room where it has obviously been exposed to the vacuum of space, and there is no possible way for sound to travel, yet in the corner of the room there is an antique record player, still spinning, still playing, and the players can hear it, through the vacuum of space, and it gets quieter as the record player drifts off into the abyss, but have it randomly appear outside the windows at various parts of the ship and the players just barely able to hear it, and have to try really hard to see it

not super scary or creepy but it just wireds people the fuck out

>>12185930
They open the airlock and get sucked out to meet the Staring Woman, then wake up. It was all a dream They're actually a salvage crew on a different time-fucked ship.

What a twist.

>>12185930
Overcomplicating things.

>>12185822
I like Doctor Who. It is a good show. What you have said here is just full on retarded. Do not pass go, do not collect 200 dollars. Stop posting. "hurr look at this reference" is not a valid reason to include something.

Also, for the record, I wasn't even talking about your idea when I said random shit. I meant the whole thread, my own contributions included.

>>12185961
Might be interesting. I intend to run it as a one shot adventure in a larger scifi campaign, so I personally will have all the temporal distortion effects be resolved with that particular adventure.

OP Here,

Funny you mention traveller, that's what the game is being run in.

And I originally intentioned this to be a one-shot because none have ever played MGP Traveller, and two are new to PnP. But there's so much goddamn material here, timefucked ships may have to be a recurring theme!

Also, the ship had it's name decided before we started. Pic related.

God FUCKING dammit, I was sketching the kill team and some other things and then Photoshop goes and throws a bitch fit... If we ever get a compilation of all this stuff together I'll just throw what I've got there.

>>12186029

A compressed one-shot would most likely be best.

But damn, what I wouldn't give to DM this, or be in a group playing this, with the other players not knowing what's going on.

Also fun. Conversion baddies.

If PC's die or get captured, they become enemies. Maybe known... but maybe unknown to the rest.

>>12185978
thanks for playing along

You could run parallel storylines here, the pc's encountering the Staring Woman and other anomalies on their salvage mission in the ruined ship by day.

When they make camp and sleep, they all seem to share the same dream where they are on the ship. Everything is normal, the crew is all there and everything is functioning perfectly. Except, the crew of the ship completely ignores the pc's. As if they aren't even there, no matter what they do they can't get a reaction, and the Staring Woman is always leaving any room they enter, always one step ahead.

You could use clues uncovered in the dream as things to help the pc's during their waking hours. For example, they come to a locked door with a keypad but no records for the combination. In their dream that night, they hunt down the same door and wait until someone punches in the code, and they remember.
When they wake up, they give the code a try, and it opens the door.

You could use this to fill in corrupted logs they find while awake, to witness events that they can only see the aftermath of when they are awake.

Of course, if they start trying to interact with their dreams or change things about the ship, they start to become more and more incorporeal in the dream, until ultimately they can only wander around the ship just like the rest of the original crew.

>>12186041
No, sir. As true Travellerfags, there is only one name we can use for this ship.

Beowulf.

Or not. Would be an amusing reference though.

>>12186041
I love that plaque... I laugh at how it;s the actor names and not character names on it.

playing with the obvious, time flows and loops in various ways at different points on the ship. its not obvious at first, but when the group splits up, slowly amp up the weird shit.

if one group sends a message to the other, the receiving group doesn't get the message. when the entire group is together, they get messages from themselves in the future. or the past.

the messages don't necessarily line up with events that actually happened; for instance, a member of group B gets a message from past-group A asking for assistance, because they were nearly wiped out by the kill team. Group A is perfectly fine and never encountered the killteam, but they know it's from the past because of some detail mentioned or the stated location.

later, once the party is really paranoid, they start meeting time displaced versions of themselves. if they kill the double, nothing at all happens. however, have the doubles in question later be separated from the group, and end up arriving at the same situation from the other perspective.

>>12186066

Only person who interacts with you is a Stern woman, who eventually becomes all smiles.

In your last dream, she finally reveals her name.


Sally.

(Or whatever you're using for your A.I.)

>>12186066
I was thinking about something like that, only the PCs are the crew, or some of it anyway. Both "sides" are set up as the potential reality. Is it an insane salvage crew dreaming they're the crew, or is it several low level employees who let the long journey get to them.

For extra points, start the story up in mid flow. The salvage crew have just entered the ship, with no preface about who they work for or why they're their. Similarly, the crew are just going about their business, with no real questions asked about where the ship is going.

Of course, this would mean your game would be insanely complex.

PC's return home from the mission.

"Wait, something's wrong. I get no communication with Earth."

DUN DUN DUN.

There's only a prehistoric world filled with dinosaurs/a post-nuclear wasteland devoid of even bacterial life/the Sun died out.

>>12186070
Hah, I'm tempted to do that, except this name has history.

My two players who are not new to PnP previously played in a campaign where they played space marines being sent to capture a foreign planet.

We ended the campaign with their battleship, the Enkidu, crashing into a warp gate.

I love you guys all so much, even though you all give me the nighttime sleeping willies. This shit is TIGHT(ening?)

Also, for some reason, I can't help but wonder what would happen if this ship ended up time-fuckery-ing with that /tg/-imagined WH40K ship that was a universe unto itself and driven by the Emperor....

>>12185961
When your players get shipped to the orbital asylum, have one of the inmates someone they recognise, a woman in a catatonic state, who just stares at you from the chair she is strapped into in her plexiglass cell. An attendant will mention how she was a top researcher in quantum-handwavium jump technology, and one day in her lab she flipped, and started babbling about 'being stuck' and proceeded to 'stick' every other person she could find in the lab complex with a sharpened hunk of metal before sitting down and just...staring at the wall.

>>12186247

As time passes in the Asylum, have them recognize things. Things that could only be from the ship.

For one, their clocks never work. The door the Janitors Closet is supposed to be in is warped, and very damp. One of the Nurses is very Stern, but eventually opens up and begins to call them her "Darlings".

I don't really know where you'd go from there.

>>12186265
Clearly only one place that the team(PCs) would WANT to go, to prove that they aren't crazy!

Back to The Ship.

>>12186344

They don't even need to steal a ship!

Escape from their cells, steal the Janitors key, and open the Damp Door.

Bam, they find themselves in that same, Not-So-Endless Corridor, but this time the ship seems...new. Almost as if it had just been made, not the rusted fading wreck they had seen.

>>12185651

erm....maybe "Hopebringer"

>>12185966
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.....

When the blazing sun is gone,
When there's nothing he shines upon,
Then you show your little light,
Twinkle, twinkle, through the night.
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are....

In the dark blue sky so deep
Through my curtains often peep
For you never close your eyes
Til the morning sun does rise
Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are......

Twinkle, twinkle, little star
How I wonder what you are....

>>12182507
the staring woman wasn't married, she was going to be married and on the ship no less. part of the ship was converted into a wedding chapple
and
>>12181334
is there because of that.

>>12186365
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAFMQaWlMEQ

play the dead space version for added effect.

>>12186365

Switching my vote.

Who here agrees new name for ship...

"The Morning Sun"

>>12186356
The best part is that they're still in their crazy pants! And probably armed. And now they're on The Ship....

*idea bulb*

>>12186412
got my vote

>>12186409
heres the MP3 of it for any of those who want nightmares this eve while stating into the abyss of space.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HKGSWZLY

Many people gave the idea of the ship's inside being larger than the hull, but how about adding some more fucked up dimensional stuff with some parts being waaayyyy smaller than it should. Like, for example, the PCs doing something as simple as climbing a ladder and going trough a airlock, and when they check their personnal PDAs it show that they travelled half the lenght off the ship. Just make that once, and PCs never again find this specific ladder and airlock.

rolled 11, 16 = 27

>>12186573

Just to keep track of shit, (I feel that if I ever DM'ed, I'd need a map.) I'd need a fucking...projector screen hooked up to my laptop. 3D model of the ship, with a glowing yellow dot being position.

Just to represent their little PDA's.

And when I want to fuck with them, shut it off.

Man I love it when /tg/ goes all /x/.

Makes me miss poor annihilated /x/ a little less.

>>12185727
I liked the idea of the AI being slightly splintered.

"+I'm sorry, but shouldn't a Maintenance Officer know this by now? An A.I can only SAFELY manage systems approximately 100,000 Cubic Meters in Diameter. Not only that, I am the only A.I on this ship. Are you sure you weren't talking to yourself Darling?+"

The med bay AI is actually the past/original version of the AI, while the rest of the ship is the current or future version after being forced to expand out of the med bay to keep the ship running.

To get past the 100,000 Cubic Meters rule the AI was forced to invert its rules, so the AI is in control of the whole ship...except for a 100,000 Cubic Meter "black spot" at the heart of the ship, the original med bay, which it has no record of.

Hmm perhaps that would work better as the engineering or research lab AI. That would give a possible reason for the AI not knowing about it...meanwhile the old contained version of the AI has no idea anything has gone wrong.

>>12186361
The Undying Hope

In the robotics bay, the players find a robot that has dismantled the others and brought in a great deal of salvage from around the ship. The room is banged up, deep gouges in the wall, and splotches of oil on the wall and floor. All of the aforementioned characteristics giving the players the distinct impression that there was a fight in the room between the robot and some of its peers.

What is the robot doing there? It is haphazardly welding bits onto its body in an attempt of making itself appear human, and doing a rather poor job of it. The robot doesn't acknowledge the presence of the PCs, unless they attempt to stop it in which case it just turns off and all the pieces it had put on itself fall to the ground.

rolled 15, 1 = 16

>>12186750


I Approve.

this was really fun to draw

rolled 11, 11 = 22

>>12186892
I fucking love you.

>>12186892
YOU! YOU ARE AWESOME!

Fill a ship's compartiment with sea water, with small animals from earth, medusas, stuff like that, to give no doubt where this water comes from, but which have no fuckin explaination to be there.

You can just make the compartiment to dump everything on the head of your unsuspecting PC when forcing a door, or using that for a "guys i hope you're good at apnea" game ala Alien 4.

>>12186892

YOU SIR ARE A LEGEND.

You find a broken cleaning android repeatedly walking into a wall saying "Clean the unpure"

>>12186365
>>12186409
>>12186483
No, no, you guys- the song has to be out of place and sappy and happy that it physical hurts.
Like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh0QZvHdSKo
or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE69jBxZuXg
I mean- fuck, think of this. A crewmember has just narrowly avoided a run in with the an insane survivor, and is hiding from the demonic killteam. The big man is just about to reach and open the partially jammed security door the players are hiding behind when, all of a sudden, he is drawn towards a nearby porthole. The faint sounds of Henry Hall's crooning are heard, as he whispers "Hush, hush," and soon fade out, and the kill team member walks on.

>>12186892

How about records in a somewhat functional terminal that give dossiers of the salvage technicians as crew members on the ship being salvaged...and a few other fictional characters to round things out.

>>12186892

>>12185966
>>12186365
>>12186955
Y'know, how much do you want to bet that the players won't even pick up on the fact that sound isn't supposed travel through vacuums?

I am SO running this in Dark Heresy. (Without the Ai and some other parts)

>>12185760

This but when the hit squad rams the ship and gets in they jump straight back into the future where everything is bat shit crazy

>>12187006

You can draw attention to the vacuum thing the first time they walk into a airlock.

--You convince the AI to open the airlock. Inside you see a hole in the hull opening up the room to the harsh unforgiving cold of the void. You notice that you can no longer hear your footsteps, and the eerie silence reminds you of the popular adage: In space, no one can hear you scream.

PC is wearing glasses, goggles, any sort of eyewear. Eyeware keeps getting dirty, not noticeably, more like cleans his glasses on his shirt, two minutes later needs to clean glasses again.

If he does this once or twice PC notices his clothes are stained with blood where he has been wiping his glasses.

+gellular failure soon passengers +

"when?"

*cue deamonic voice*
+NOW+

>>12186892
I might draw some of the "kill team" guys if I've got time later tonight

>>12186892
WHY ARE YOU SO AWESOME
WHY AREN'T YOU MAKING MORE
WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

>>12186751

Maybe Marath....erm....I mean "Thermopylae"

rolled 29, 43 = 72

>>12186892

Am I the only one who sees Gilded Age in this?

rolled 1, 22 = 23

>>12187171

+Hurry, Hollis+

"Why?"

+Or you'll be very early+

"When is that?"

+NOW+

>>12187221
From OP:

Do Eet.

>>12187237

Exodus sounds good

>>12187221
Do EEET

rolled 15, 5 = 20

So who wants to work on fleshing out our "Base" maintenance crew, based on what's been shown in the page?


We have

Hollis: Bald, seemingly the calm one, bald.

Kid: No name, looks young, messy hair, and excitable.


So, who are the others? I propose we keep this a party of four.

>>12186892
Aw.
Now I want to help figure out some way for the crew members to survive this hell hole- preferably with most of their sanity intact.

>>12187339
Jane: resident computer expert. Long hair held back in a pony tail when working. Love's fun as much as the next guy, but prone to being 'frozen' when scared.

>>12187339
Drawfag here
Kid is a woman and her name is Applegate

>>12187339
One should be named Jack.
Just 'cause you should always have one person named Jack in anything.

rolled 25, 33 = 58

Hollis: Bald, seemingly the calm one, bald.

Applegate: Girl, looks young, messy hair, and excitable.

Jane: Other woman, Computer Loving, wears a pony-tail. Freezes in bad situations

Jack: +Who?+

>>12187378
>>12187382

a perfectly normal ship that follows their plans until they read the ship logs wherein the ship basically becomes a moving labyrinth and they will reach rooms that are identical to ones they've been in before except full of damage as if from something or someone going in and trashing everything and upon reaching a specific room they will hear crashing and gunfire. once in this room bodies will be strewn across the floor in an orderly fashion and covered as if somebody had placed them and a noticeable silhouette of a person facing towards them on the wall with nothing related to it in the room at all

>>12187221
Guy who proposed making the Kill Team silent, high-tech killing machines.

DOOEEIT! Your first strip is awesome!

>>12187382
This. Jack is the kinda guy who knows where his towel is.

>>12187404
Jack's going to have to be the lazy one- fussy little goatee, brown eyes, skinny, penchant for sneaking off and taking naps when he should be doing work. Is the most steadfast and hardest to perturb- his entire life motto should be "And not a single fuck was given that day"

>>12187443
And his nickname shall be... "/tg/"

rolled 13, 9 = 22

Hollis: Bald, seemingly the calm one, bald.

Applegate: Girl, looks young, messy hair, and excitable.

Jane: Other woman, Computer Loving, wears a pony-tail. Freezes in bad situations

Jack: LOGS REVEALED. Approaching Middle Age, goatee, slacker, sneaky, but steadfast

>>12187378
>>12187382
>>12187443

>>12187483
Hollis, Applegate, Jane, and Jack?
I'm sorry for the hell we're about to put you through.
The important thing is to stay calm- most things won't hurt you too badly if you don't provoke them.

>>12187483

There should be a guy who is naturally just sorta depressed. He actively tries to get involved in a romantic relationship; however, regardless of how much he tries, he's always met with failure. He's a nice, well-meaning guy, but socially awkward / a pussy and something of a mild stalker.

He really likes Applegate, but she only thinks of him as a friend. Jane thinks he's creepy. Jack and Hollis try to be supportive of him, but they're also fed up with his defeatist attitude.

>>12186934

Add the corpse of a crewmember who looks like he drowned a few hours ago

Let's flesh these fuckers out.


Alright, relations? Who hates who, who has a secret crush, is anyone just having a relationship out there? If so, has this relationship grown stronger, or been crushed by the events?

>>12187538

I like this one.

/tg/, as always, thoughts? I admit, could be a bit of a 5th wheel, but could be good.

>>12187548
Applegate is part of a synthetic rights group- she sees imposing neuro-restrictor routines on AI's is like forcing babies be to be born retarded.
Very vocal in her opinions- she has flyers and pamphlets and everything, and if you'd like, she could sign you up for this great newsletter, really opens your eyes.

>>12187548
Hollis is more interested in the buxom blonde types, but if persuaded he could be interested in Jane.

>>12187567

Every group needs a butt monkey.

>>12187593

Possible reason for removing inhibitor on Sally the A.I., maximum fuck happens after?

>>12187339
Well, I already wrote that I had generated some stuff. If you want, I'll give a rundown of my stock characters:

Gaetano "Guy" Austin - Once owned a Burlesque planetside, but when social order went down with the Gate, prostitution rings ran him out of business. Manages the salvage business.
Jean-Baptiste St. Louis - Ships Engineer, Quiet, dedicated, with deep-set eyes. Rumored to have once survived being "spaced" attempting to repair a ship.

Kirk Douglas "K.D." Carson - Certified Zero-G Welder, former colonial Marine. He's black and sassy.

Sophia Madison - Comms officer and Pilot aboard the salvage corvette. Smokes a lot.

Frank Salem - Ships Doctor & environmental Technician. Reads Lovecraft, might be a weirdo.

Holly Lincoln - Systems Tech. Missing an eye, overconfident & abrasive personality. Nevertheless, a crack programmer.

It's for a party of four, but I wanted the players to have some options. Thoughts?

>>12187538
>>12187596
>>12187548

I think that romantic relationships within the group should be kept to a relative minimum. Just as a way to maintain professionalism.

The creepo stalker works because it helps to draw attention to how his romantic interests are out of place.

Though, I could see Hollis and Jane in a "it's just sex" relationship.

>>12187548
Some idea's I've come up with.

Hollis: Recovering alcoholic. Had a wife and kids but has been divorced for a while due to his drinking problems. Hope especially takes a liking to him.

Applegate: Jack's younger cousin. Engaged to a deep space miner who has been on a job longer than usual.

Jane: In a relationship with Jack. Lost her parents when she was young so she has the problem on relying on others too much for emotional support.

Jack: Has been cheating on Jane what another woman prior to the mission. Pretends not to give a fuck but this comes back to personally haunt him.

One of them should have some kind of emblem doodad on them. Doesn't even need to be like a cross or religious or shit; it could just be a security blanket/keepsake thing.

Every time they pull it out after a certain point, it comes out as something different, something NOT their keepsake nor what it was before.

>>12187609

Eh... too predictable.

The PCs find instructions for how to remove the AI's inhibitors. Doing so allows the AI to expand its consciousness to the point where it's capable of dealing with all (or at least significantly more) of the freaky ship happening.

Obviously it's something that'd happen towards the end of the game and likely be closely tied to completing the mission

>>12187675
I'd actually like to see that- almost all of our tropes push us towards assuming the AI is going to do more harm then good. Honestly, the only way to make it surprising would be that she ends up helping-in her own, slightly creepy way.

rolled 38, 13 = 51

>>12187638

The fifth man is Hank Peterson.

He's quiet because he's suffering from PTSD. He's in fact a highly trained warrior who took up this line of work because he had a crisis of conscious.

He won't snap under pressure, but will probably have a little... 'moment' after the shooting stops.

>>12187638
Creepo stalker ends up feeling attachment for the AI- IRONY, the AI is more interested in Hollis then him.
CUE HOMICIDAL WAIFU INDUCED RAGE

>>12187675
>>12187714

Even though she's gained heightened understanding of what's happening on the ship and is capable of processing the temporal bullshit, she's still crushing on one of the PCs and will probably still withhold some information on the grounds that knowing some things would do more harm than good.

rolled 32, 34 = 66

>>12187741

Jack becomes jealous of the A.I's love of Hollis, attempts to "lose" him in one of the labyrinthine halls of the ship, but as the A.I. has been awakened, it doesn't work...fully.

Dude. Fuck you. FUCK YOU.

Have my creepy tentacle babies.

I'm stealing from TNG, but...

Something bad happened to the original crew. Not sure what, just that it was bad, and it happened. Then a minor inconvenience (engines need repair, unexplained gravitation forces, etc) traps them in the area. It's nothing ominous, just somewhere between intriguing and annoying. Attempts to solve problem fail for unknown reasons, and it goes from annoying to frustrating. About this time, players should notice signs that whatever happened to the original crew is starting to happen to them.

...for a synopsis that doesn't suck, see The Next Generation, Season 4, Episode 17 "Night Terrors"

This is being made into writefaggotry? Don't think that's a particularly good idea, but hey, have fun with it. Most of the things in this thread are best applied to interactive fiction - focused on building atmosphere (subtly and slowly). At least, that's how the suggestions I made and how the my favorite suggestions by others are. Unless you plan to write at the pace of a particularly dragging Lovecraft story (not that it's a bad thing if you are, those are Lovecraft's best stories), you're going to have to retool a lot of it.

Though I'm going to recommend you pull the 'steadily humanized AI' trick (and not the obsessive AI thing). It's a lot easier to pull when you have full control over the scope of AI/character interaction as well as the luxury of dictating pacing.

In any case, for those who wish to DM or write this, my advice is to take it slow, not overexpose any singular element, and avoid macguffins/inexplicable phenomena when possible (though not strange phenomena - just so long as its consistent with the logic you've laid out). Remember to leave things vague enough to allow for player/reader defined terrors but concrete enough to give them a base to start thinking from.

>>12187729
>>12187741

Hank is a trained soldier and excellent mechanic. His job on the ship is to make sure that nothing breaks down, and, if something does break down, he's the one who fixes it.

He used to have a fling with Applegate. Didn't work out and he's still kinda bitter about it. Now he's focusing on the AI - after all, women are nothing but bitches and whores. The AI is human enough, it's intelligent, it's capable of emotion. He's read all the pamphlets about AI rights.

So he starts building a body for the AI in his spare time. When it's nearing completion, he shows it to the AI and confesses his love... which the AI turns down as well as accidentally letting it slip that she has a thing for Hollis.

Cue multiple elaborate plots on how to kill Hollis.

>>12187548
Jane and Applegate get on each others nerves a lot- basic liberal arts vs. polysci adversarial thing

rolled 29, 30 = 59

>>12187802

It will be a drawn out thing. At first she is cold, logical, stern, and largely restricted to the Med-Bay.

As time goes by (Remember, sliding back and forth) she switches from logical to emotional, and finally becoming obsessive.

>>12187810
building a body might be a little bit too overly elaborate, but other then that, yeah that works.
I would especially like to see the AI space Hank when she realizes he's trying to kill Hollis with the above mentioned "If you love something, let it go," line.

What I would do is this, the players get on the ship before the hitsquad board it, as far as the players know they just have to fix the engine, the crew is confused with them. The hitsquad boards the ship with an explosion that knocks the players out cause it affected the time.

They are now in the present. The janitor's is living in the past and considers the players to be *new* voices in his head, he phases through debris and into walls cause he's acting on how things where in the past. The old voices are the black ops querying him, the janitor will says they're "them", and they're awfully concerned about leaving the ship. He should mention how he just wishes they'd leave him alone and at times he's being talked too by both parties at once, occasionally running into him talking with them, the live crew or *him*, he like him the most. And them the least, not surprising considering that "them" talk about how they, well, killed him before.

>>12187886

Eventually he's at the day of the raid and he's really really nervous hiding in plain site, at his time it was really sheltered, he's glad the pcs find him and he starts explaining how the black ops got in and started killing everyone, EXTRA dm points if you make him be very VERY scared for his life, maybe get the pc's to save his life if they instruct him to a proper hiding spot/tell him how to pretend to be dead and then heal his wounds, make sure it doesn't fuck up the time line (lol), as far as "them" are concerned the janitor died. Important, all the voices are talking to him at once cause they want him to live but they are all saying different things so he's basically super batshit insane 64. If he lives he's a new npc, the voices are gone though and realizes he's been talking to the future. He wonders where "He" came from though, his voice sounds familiar.

Ok, so, the pc's should realize by now that they have to fix the engine to get out of this mess. As time passes they realize that there's a lot more debris outside, from the hitsquad ship. After more time they realize it's from their ship that they lost access too cause of a cave in/AI not wanting them to leave or what not.

>>12187891

Enter the spooky shit, the hitquad aren't raving lunatics, they're professionals, seriously guys, they're not going to send barbarians to pull something like this off, they have families, they want to go home and get payed. All the ghost stuff is actually the black ops in they're stealth suits + time stuff, any immortality is just their super suits shrugging everything off. The whispers appear later cause they're suits are dying down and they have to communicate manually, they're whispers of regret they did this and they miss their families and mental break downs. Make it seem like it's the voice of the long dead crew. They also fight a lot with each other causing all the damage, like crashing through a wall and then continue fighting down a corridor. Make them have distinct powersuits so they look like different aliens/ghosts cause their stealth fields keep faltering/react to being hit so hard, or just being invisible all the time. They try their best to keep clear of the pcs so they can work in peace to fix the engine and keep their identity secret for when they head back home.

Right, so now you have "him", he's the future player that got his face burnt off, the AI/a fellow future crew member put him in the unaccessible until now med bay so his wounds would heal, but he was conscious all this time kept sane by talking to the janitor. Have the robot do that feeding routine. In his time line everyone died, and he was left there to be taken care off. The AI didn't want anyone to barge in there cause it would've made a nasty handwavium quantum time collapse which would've killed him, it just distorts him a lot though, change voice, lose memories, more stuff to hide his identity. You can make the pcs discover the area cause the blacks ops fought each other all the way into the med bay leaving nice wake of destruction in their path.

>>12187898

Once they fix everything they have to fight the black ops, but because of all the infighting they have some of them on their side cause they truly regretted what they did and want to help fight the government/corp back on earth to redeem themselves.

As for the AI, make it gain feelings as time goes by cause for the ship time is passing really REALLY fast, hence all the debris. Again, super helpful AI, doesn't turn down a players request, only when it does something that might hurt them, like kill the future player or leave cause the temporal backlash would kill them, that's why they have to fix the ship. You can hand wave it not letting them access their ship cause it thinks the pcs wouldn't heed the warning and try to escape anyways. After fixing the engine they get to hear a heartwrenching speech from the AI really really wanting them to stay, as they leave in their craft they see the ship slowly disintegrate cause the fix was temporary. I won't forget you AI ;-;

>>12187903

SO, I think that should settle everything without resorting to "IT'S MAGIC I DON'T HAVE TO EXPLAIN SHIT"

What do you guys think?

Side idea. If the creepy hit squad doesnt appeal to you, you can always go with a hallucinatory monster that is still implied to kill people.

Example. PC is sitting at the computer that only shows a reflection of whats in the room. PC is trying to fix or is otherwise engaged at looking into the reflection (Jane fixing her hair into ponytail, for example). Sees black, thin, furry, vaguely nonhumanoid THING staring at her from behind the TOP of an arch/hatch/doorway.

Spins around, nothings there of course. On closer inspection, however, there is a small grate on the celling, just big enough that maybe a child or the smallest member of the party could squeeze in. If they look into the vent, they find a body, fresh, that looks like it was dragged into the vent with ungodly stregnth, and had all his/her bones crushed as a result.

Check the ships logs, a decompression caused suction through that vent...explainable, but why is the body fresh when the ship has been here for 10 years? And what about the creepy thing Jane saw in the reflection?

Also could be in the atmospheric recyclers, producing the blood-on-glasses effect another guy mentioned. Creep the players out by having them realize they have been breathing atomized blood since they came on the ship.

>>12187886
>>12187891
>>12187898
>>12187903
That's a little bit overly condensed, but- yeah, that's what we're going for.

rolled 30, 32 = 62

>>12187854
>>12187810

I think it works better if he sort of sees Hollis as his CO.

He's bitter about the AI thing, but he feels like he has a mission first and splitting the team would be counter productive.

He should just be quietly letting the disappointments and failures and horror and stress build up silently.

He may or may not start to go crazy towards the end, unless someone spots the fact that he's a little TOO calm.

rolled 20, 11 = 31

>>12187854


"Sally...oh GOD Sally why are you doing this to me? I FUCKING LOVED YOU, YOU FUCKING WHORE! Everything I did I did for you!"

+I'm sorry Hank.+

The Airlocks began to light up, the first signal of their awakening.

Hank began to desperately claw at the door, nails breaking off and blood covering his fingertips.
Voice cracking, he pleads again.

"Don't do this to me Sally COME ON Sally let me in SALLY it was just a fucking joke, you don't need to space me OH GOD SALLY FUCKING LET ME IN!"

The Doors paused, and stopped.

"Oh god thank you Sally now just...open the door and let me in, we can forget about this can't we Sally?"

+Hank.+

"Yeah?"

The doors came back to life.

+If you love something. Let it free. If it comes back, it was meant to be.+

"SALLY YOU-"

Were the last words his throat could utter before the vacuum of space ripped the rest from his throat. His body was torn from his handgrip, droplets of his blood flying away from the bar.

He lasted exactly 30 seconds before he went unconscious.

>>12187820
Don't see any real reason to restrict the AI to medbay.

But I also think the obsessive AI is a boring idea, as outlined in >>12183219, so whatever.

>>12187952
Yay.

I noticed how you said he merely lost consciousness- does this imply a bit of derring do by a member of the salvage team to rescue his homicidal ass?

Something else for Hank.

Since he's a former soldier with PTSD, give him a complex about killing.

After his tour, he converted to Buddhism and became a vegetarian before signing on with a corp as a mechanic. He makes a big deal about not killing anything. He's quiet and keeps to himself a lot and avoids confrontation. He tends a bonsai tree in his quarters as well as making small trinkets. Drinks a lot of tea.

If the PCs get a hold of his diary, it should show his decent. He was trying hard to move on and not let Hollis bother him, but he simply can't let it go. He ruminates about it constantly until he finally jettison his bonsai tree and instead focuses on drawing up these elaborate murder plots.

>>12187926

I like this take a lot more.

A quiet tension underlining the situation.

>>12187952

Kinda creepy, but it doesn't really fit the situation.

The AI saying that makes no fucking sense in this situation.

Also, the 'guy gets jealous and tries to kill his team in the middle of a bigger crisis' is way to overplayed to be fun at this point.

rolled 11, 41 = 52

>>12188010

i dunno lol

By which I mean, still thinking about that. Glad you caught it though, I left it at him being dead.

>>12188016
No it makes sense- he want's the AI to confess his love to him. The AI ironically does this by saying that the only way to show her love for him is to space him.

Can we get back to filling out character profiles?

I think Hollis should have recently quit smoking. It's a really bad habit for a spacer to pick up, what with the highly oxygenated conditions they work in, but the nictone addiction has hit him harder then most.
He still goes for his cigarette pouch in times of nervousness, only to grasp at thin air.

>>12188015

I like the violently anti-violence vibe.

Combine it with >>12188016

For maximum awesome. I agree with the not liking the random traitor thing. If anything he puts the mission and his squad above himself to the point of self-destruction.

Here's your salvage team spaceship.

>>12187886
>>12187891
>>12187898
>>12187911
>>12187903
My thoughts: I prefer the original setup in the OP, where the events took place on the ship ten YEARS ago. They never meet the crew, only their remains (bodily and otherwise), with I guess the exception of the Janitor and the AI.

The temporal distortion isn't exactly what I'd call lolmagic, as long as you stick to a very consistent internal logic. That's why I keep getting annoyed at everyone who just wants to throw in the kitchen sink.

You could make the kill team humanized, but that very much defeats the purpose. I suggested including them as adversaries to serve as role similar to that of pyramid head - a nigh inhuman enemy force that is better fled than confronted. I would intentionally go out of my way in the course of play to make them seem as inhuman as possible.

Most of the stuff you seem to be declaring magic can easily be explained using temporal disruption, so I don't see the problem.

rolled 29, 15 = 44

>>12188091

Damnit /tg/ stop coming up with awesome idea's I'm flip-flopping more then a house of flapjacks jesus fucking christ.

Jack collects things. Little bits of crap- broken screws, matchbooks, coins- things you can stick in your pockets that won't be missed.

>>12188137

Now I'm not saying that he can't rely on time hax to hand wave some stuff, but when everything requires that you get http://www.theonion.com/articles/scifi-writer-attributes-everything-mysterious-to-q,2781/

>>12188091

Former soldier. Saw bad shit during his tour. Every time he closes his eyes to go to sleep he sees the rotting charred corpses of children. Converts to Buddhism. Becomes a vegetarian. Gets a job working as a mechanic . Swears to himself that he'll never kill anything again.

First day on the ship, they find some vermin. A mouse, cockroach, cricket, whatever. What it is exactly doesn't matter that much. Hollis, the CO, wants it jettisoned. Hank argues up and down about it. Almost punches Hollis during the argument but stops himself. He retreats back to his room to meditate / work on his bonsai tree.

After the AI confession, he becomes more and more unstable. He can't sleep. He's getting sloppy in his work. Almost gets himself killed when he passes out from exhaustion in one of the ducts. He starts drawing up elaborate plans on how he could kill Hollis, but rejects each one on the grounds that he'd get caught or it'd jeopardize the mission. He does do little things, though.

>>12188133

Looks cool

Eh, I think its better when everything is just shy of explainable. Most of the data lines up, but some things just dont make sense, like the staring lady.

>>12188137
>My thoughts: I prefer the original setup in the OP, where the events took place on the ship ten YEARS ago. They never meet the crew, only their remains (bodily and otherwise), with I guess the exception of the Janitor and the AI.

Fleshing out the original crew would still be rather useful for any recordings / notes / diaries that the PCs find. It'd also give the Janitor and AI things to talk about.

When the PCs walk up to the Janitor, he asks them if they've seen Hank because he found a broken whatever.

AI makes a passing mention to how CO Hollis likes his ship clean.

Janes' hair is unusually long for a spacer; most keep them short, easier to keep in helmets and less likely to get caught in something. However, she takes a certain amount of pride in hers, but, due to the nature of the mission it's becoming increasingly more and more frazzled and matted as time goes on- or around- or loops- or whatever the hell it does here.

>>12188285

I think you misunderstand, they aren't the original crew.

The way /tg/'s fleshing this out is for the story to be with these characters, and the game about this station will replace them with PCs and/or have them played by the PCs.

>>12188245

Why do you insist on making him want to murder Hollis? The whole point of everything that was said was 'making him want to kill Hollis is kinda fucking stupid'.

>>12188212
It's not really the same thing. The article satires how a given force is used to explain a bajillion different effects. The time fuckery here is (ideally) used for one effect, and one effect only: taking these from other points along the time line, and overlaying them or objects from them on the current time.

Now there are a bunch of ideas in this thread that don't fit that description, but those certainly aren't ones that I'll be using. Except for maybe the AI (the fact that it begins taking on human qualities, not the whole obsessive thing), which is admittedly a little difficult to explain. If I use that, I'll attribute it to the AI analyzing videologs stored on the ship's databanks, rather than timefuckery.

Applegate whistles 'Daisy, daisy,' when she isn't busy, or not thinking.
At first she was just doing it to be ironic, but now she's kind of gotten into the habit of it and does it subconsciously.
It is a catchy tune

>>12188482

It's an internal struggle, and provides an understandable but nonetheless incredibly neurotic way for him to slip further down the rabbit hole.

The idea is that he is fully cognizant that killing Hollis is a bad idea. It goes against his newly found spirituality and it's simply not very wise in the current situation as it'd endanger everyone else and/or simply get him caught. Despite being fully aware of all this, though, he still hates Hollis and wants to erase him.

Hollis wasn't always a spacer- but times have been tough since the warp gate accident.

Is this thread autosaging?

>>12188827

It hit the bump limit a while ago.

>>12188827
>>12188850
in that case I'm calling it a night
here's a teaser for the next one (seriously though I'll never finish it)

>>12188878
aaaw.
Why must u taunt us with your awesomness oh drawfriend?

Should we make a part 2 for this thread?

>>12188909
Is anybody still kicking around?
ANONS REPORT IN

rolled 32, 23 = 55

>>12188919
WORD UP HOME SKILLET.

>>12188850
Only one thing to do now
>Thanks for your request.
>It has been added to our database and the thread >will be archived as soon as enough request for that >thread have been made.
>This thread has been requested 1 times now.

>>12188878
COOL
Are you going to do the Killteam next?

>>12188919
>>12188909

Might be worthwhile, but even if we don't, we should archive this thread.

>>12188939
It's already archived on suptg. Don't bother.

>http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/12180900/

Mission accomplished

>>12188909
First let's get a summary up of the ideas we want to use. Has it been decided yet that Hank is going to be a soldier-turned-Buddhist torn between following the mission and his homicidal rage or are we still debating it?

>>12189005

The main issue with hank seems to be that we need to nail down how his failed love affair with the AI goes and his reaction towards Hollis

>>12189022
>>12189005
Maybe we can leave Hollis aside at the moment and concentrate on developing some of the other characters.
We need to start thinking up the deceased crew members who left recordings on dictaphones scattered all over the place

rolled 1, 18 = 19

>>12189005
>>12189022


Opinion.

Hank is still the soldier turned Buddhist, doesn't want to take a life if he can do something that would save it, etc etc. Develops a crush on the A.I., which though stern, has displayed a desire to keep them safe. However, the A.I. prefers Hollis. At first, he wants to kill Hollis. Not truly being able to reconcile his spirituality with his feelings, he throws himself into any work he can, and writes down elaborate plans to kill Hollis. Anything to keep himself busy.

Eventually, Hollis finds the diary, and confronts him. This, combined with disapproval from the A.I, drives Hank over the edge and him attempting murder.

>>12189064
That works for me.

New thread >>12189134