I accept that for Jesse, Kayci, and (maybe) you. You guys have played with me the longest and in some pretty brutal campaigns. But I accept zero responsibility for the other 2 players being that paranoid. They just came that way.
@@SSkorkowsky Maybe you just got used to paranoid players and happen to invite only that kind? PS: it’s not paranoia, when the GM is out to murder all the PCs, it’s just survival instinct.
Jack the NPC in the Deep Berth Pod was really nicely done. Your green screen work is top notch. "What do you mean "THEY cut the power"? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals!"
@@SSkorkowsky Piggy backing on this one because I can't post my own comments. :+/ This would be a hard scenario (or good exercise) for the players to stay within the bounds of their handicap and not "meta game" with info and knowledge that they wouldn't have. Did you have trouble controlling that?
@@obsidianjane4413 I had no problems with them metagaming on this one. But that's for 2 reasons: First, despite all the grief and playful venting I might do about them in these videos, I've got a crew of very good players. Second, I just don't concern myself that much with light or harmless metagaming. If they're sticking to the spirit of the game, I'm good.
Subtitles are something I've been trying to get on all of them. Started updating them on older videos, too. Not too difficult to do once/if RUclips gives me the auto-generated ones, as all I need to do is add punctuation, capitalizations, and correct some words that it didn't get right (Jack's bad accent always leads to the best wrong auto-generated words). Mostly just time consuming. However, if RUclips decides not to give me auto-generated captions to start with, it requires I have to transcribe it all the old-fashioned way, and that is hell.
If a character had gotten a ship (Scout, Free Trader) during char-gen, maybe once their memories come back the next adventure is getting back to where they'd been kidnapped, so they can retrieve it at some spaceport before it's impounded for late docking fees.
Well, I see two ends to this scenario. First, the ship could be rented out by some crew, earning the player regular pay from the people paying the lease on it. Second, getting said ship could be part of a later mission, with the ship being held by some patron that is holding it as collateral in lieu of actually paying them for a job he wants them to do.
Of course their ship could be in the hands of those who sold them and those people are living as the PCs (and dragging their reputation and credit history through the mud). It could be regularly delivering other victims.
Other accidents for the GM to consider: 1. jump engine malfunction on a old ship using 2nd hand parts. 2. Old third imperium naval mine 3. Another techno slave was awake for ship maintenance and failed on sabotaging the ship. 4. PCs ship was attacked by a virus ship. 5. Pirate failed to override a old naval warhead security measures but did manage to activate it.
I had this as the second adventure of my campaign. The team started with a military-grade robot, Issac, which was taken when the crew were kidnapped. Issac managed to rewire his power source into detonating. He sacrificed himself for his crewmates. RIP Issac.
I enjoyed running this, I used it as a side adventure for my main campaign. I rolled up pregens and gave the players blank characters sheets. As they started to try to do things they slowly learnt their skills and stats.
We had fun with this one, too. Our major change was a spur-of-the-moment thing. The Players were having a difficult time putting the pieces together, and it was really bothering them. Hambley died when creepers managed to dislodge a door he was attempting to reinforce. The doctor grabbed his gun (I had given Hambley a heavier weapon), fired and killed the creeper, spun around and killed the woman conspirator (not going to try to remember how that was spelled; sorry). Turned out he was being blackmailed as the Skilljacking ring had his family secured somewhere in low births. With the PCs telling the story of the crash, the doctor figured out that his family was being held on the crashed small hauler and were now dead. He was happy to fill in details the PCs couldn't figure out-- not all of them, of course, but enough to help them along. As to the shotgun problem your players had: there is a certain sort of person who one-hundred percent believes, in spite of all evidence (such as the existence of other weapons), the the shotgun is the single greatest weapon ever created. It's been my own experience that most of those people seem to design adventure video games. :/
Watched first 15 minutes only 45 seconds after this was posted (21 views). Had to break off for 2 hours and now there's 2½ thousand views! Wow! Betcha wish you could sell books that quickly! Awesome
The Weyland-Yutani t-shirt is on point. I could see this adventure adapted for Alien RPG easily. Actually if it didn't say "Traveller" in the title, I would have assumed that's what it was. I mostly got your shout out. Mostly.
Decades ago I played a little-known RPG - designed to be a one-shot game for 3-6 players. Dunno what it was called, Sandman, maybe? Anyhow, characters start as amnesiacs. Players had to try doing actions (such as starting a fire or looking for food) and, if it was on the Referees list, the ref would hand over a skill card, explaining future application. Each character had about six skill cards and also some situation 'triggered' a memory card. The aim was to complete the adventure but kudos was given to the player whose character 'recovered' the most memory and skill cards. After playing this, my husband wanted to play test a new RPG system he was writing as a one-shot at a small game convention. Similar set-up (waking on a jungle-covered island) and once players 'recalled' enough skills, they were given a section of their backstory and their character sheet. Ended up with them making friends with a 'cargo cult' and having to disarm an atom bomb ... the lost third from the end of WW2! The amnesia factor in scenarios fit well in one-shot scenarios.
Saw the notification this morning. "Sweet, new Seth vid! Crap it's 32 minutes and i have to leave for work in 15. Oh well, i'll just drop a like and have something to look forward to during the day." Also, did anyone else have the phrase "From dusk 'til dawn" pop into their brain?
Spend too much time agonising over decisions? Check. Stubbornly keep doing something that doesn't work when they could easily do something that does? Check. Using X assuming it does Y based on god-knows-what only to discover it actually does Z? Check. Sounds like you have the most stereotypical player group of all time
It can be a problem with the GM. I remember Seth (In another video) talk about a situation where the group run around a house and try a key in all locks without it fitting anywhere, after they give up, the GM reveals it to be a car key. Quite often GM forgets to be the eyes, ears, and other senses of all the characters.
And sometimes players can make random assumptions and then stick to them even in the face of conflicting evidence or even other players pointing out that they're wrong.
My players had the opposite of analysis paralysis, and when we switch to Dungeon Crawl Classics we had some amazing mishaps.... that lead to analysis paralysis.
Always interested to see Traveler scenarios with their different worlds and setups. Also everyone wish me luck, I just started running Horror on the Orient Express last week and it’s gonna be a beast.
@@morale6014 That's what I've heard for the most part. We just finished Venice yesterday (I'm not running most of the optional scenarios) and we've lost 2 characters so far and two are heavily wounded. Thanks clock tower.
This scenario could be converted into a cinematic adventure for the Alien RPG. Maybe instead of a skill-jacking ring, Weyland-Yutani is having the researchers bring people in to test experimental drugs on, possibly using Neomorph blood.
Nice review. Personally, I hate having my equipment taken away, and not getting it back by the end of the adventure would really tick me off! Especially if I'd managed to roll up something really sweet. Otherwise, sounds like a good place to start a campaign. Be well and stay safe!
personally if one of my players rolled up something rare or sweet I'd make sure you get it back if indirectly say when holding up in the metal container and trying to find something to replace that shot gun that ran out of ammo you rip open a box labeled "gaskets" and find that plasma rifle from your pre-kidnapped equipment list how did it get there without the others at the camp knowing? how did chainsaws end up in a mining facility on Mars?
Hmm, that's a really nice adventure ! One twist I would add is to make Skill jackers turn totally evil during the creeper swarm, and make creepers attack players bunker. Like plant some kind of beacon that attracts them, or blow their bunkers wall open with a bomb etc. Their motive would be to use players as bait and get out of the slaughter also avoid risk of players unmasking their operation.
After seeing Ian at Forgotten Weapons actually shoot a COP .357 in competition? I'd hate to be whoever was wielding that thing. Point of aim? Good trigger pull? Reloads? WHAT ARE THOSE?! haha.
That was a great video. The COP .357 looks awesome as hell, but in the end it's just a chunky derringer and suffers from every problem a derringer has.
This reminds me of star wars old republic your ship is about to crash and you wake up and they ask you your name and that is when your name select shows up. This gives me an idea of what I could do with a character select sheet . A ship is sinking into the water you have amnesia this is the amount of time you have to create a character sheet. Ready ... Go !
Had a good chuckle when I realised why Jack’s nametag had been missing throughout the video. Then felt ashamed, because it only clicked when he was wearing it in the end-of-video coda, and I should have figured it out earlier.
I agree that this would be a great opening adventure if a GM is wanting to run a game within the Great Rift. I hadn't thought about using a player's enemy to get them into the adventure, I will need to consider this for their future problems, as 3 of my 6 players have enemies, one of them has a lot of enemies, so probably wouldn't be too difficult to adjust the adventure to fit in with my story. Another great video, love your Traveller coverage, and all your other series, especially the Cthulhu ones, keep up the great work!
Aside from the excellent production of these videos - and of course the entertainment value - I think what I appreciate the most is Seth's mindset as a GM. His willingness to adjust the details for a better game, story, and player experience is absolutely the right way to approach RPGs. I love these videos.
After the D&D OGL Fiasco, my friends and I have decided to go back to an old favorite from my youth, Traveller. Thanks for your review, I am now adapting this adventure to Fantasy Grounds VTT based on your review as an initial test adventure .... thanks!
Have fun with it. And welcome back to the Third Imperium. And in case you didn't know, the Mongoose update to the classic Death Station adventure is free on DriveThru RPG (updates written by me after Mongoose liked my review of it). That has a suggestion on how to link it as a direct sequel to Flatlined.
@@SSkorkowsky Looking forward to it, I was involved in Traveller in my youth ( back in the late 70's ) when I was in the military. When I was young it was my favorite RPG... over the years Traveller changed a lot, but this version ( Mongoose 2nd ) seem to be very close to the old Traveller than I remember so well. Very much looking forward to it. Enjoyed your videos and looking forward to more... am now subscribed
Nice to finally watch this now that our GM has run both this adventure and then Death Station for us! One thing that was very satisfying for us as players during Act 2 was us managing to rig up some kind of interesting electric/magnetic signature at the bottom of the mining pit to try and lure the bugs in, then remotely detonating a bomb there once enough bugs were surrounding it. I can see from your table that our GM still threw the same number of bugs at us per character for a good challenge, but he did an excellent job at letting us feel like our strategy totally saved our lives. The set dressing bugs were _everywhere_ and we were able to kill a lot of them with that lure/bomb. So it really made us feel clever and victorious even though the actual number of bugs we had to fight directly wasn't actually impacted. I'll have to compliment him on this later! After Death Station we did have a crack at a prequel adventure of how we got on the low berths in the first place, but we ended up deciding to mutually story tell rather than "play" through it, because it was really hard not to feel railroaded when we the players all knew our actions were leading to us being captured. We kind of felt like we were railroading _ourselves_ with every decision we made, because we couldn't help but try and guess at how the GM was going to wind up having us all fail and be captured in the end. Maybe another group of players that wasn't so obsessed with identifying narrative patterns would be able to relax and enjoy the prequel idea more, even though they already knew how it would end!
Ah, correction, GM says he reduced Wave 3's severity to reflect that we set off the bomb on Wave 2. Still though, the set dressing bugs really made us feel way more excited about our successful explosion than it technically warranted challenge-wise, and I commend our GM for that!
Great to see some new Traveller content from your channel Seth. You sold me on the system, and I gotta say I love it, so thanks for introducing it. These videos are great easy listening. I know it's a mammoth campaign and you only review adventures you've completed, but you ought to consider doing something with Pirates of Drinnax. Even just an evaluation of the structure would be interesting, and if you ran it for your players it could make a great successor to the Two Headed Serpent and BTSHT-365 series (some of your best stuff imo) Anyway, thanks again for the Traveller vid!
late to the party, starting out a new game (played classic back in the 80's and finally have come back around to it)...thanks Seth, this was a great way to get going again!
Old school vets may get some flashbacks to the Chamax Plague/Horde double adventure from GW due to the xeno-bugs in the back half. In fact, you could probably mash this adventure into those two - let's see: PCs run through Chamax Plague as normal so they've had contact with the chamax bugs. A few adventures later on they're hauling weapons when they get betrayed by a colleague/contact and wind up being skilljacked per Flatlined, but with events taking place on Rashev (plenty of room for a minimg camp and skilljacker ring on planet). Instead of the bomb, the short hauler and local electronics get fried by one of the Horde ships having a terminal glitch in its systems as it comes down nearby. Flatlined plays out as normal until the bugs arrive, where they're replaced by invading chamax from the semi-crashed lander ship. The eventual rescuers can be local law enforcement who were tracking the short hauler as part of an investigation into skilljacking rings. Assuming the PCs survive, they go on to reclaim their ship and cargo from the folks who betrayed them with the help of the local law enforcement. The ship's drive gets damaged during the firefight with the criminals (the NPC ones, that is - you average PC is pretty dodgy too) leaving them stranded with a hold full of guns just as the events in Horde start to unfold. You even have an excuse for the government being happy to work with the PCs - they just helped bust the skilljackers (even if it was just for revenge) and they've had experience with the chamax already, and without a reliable drive until parts arrive they're in the same danger as the locals from the invasion. If you wanted to flip one of the conceits of Horde, you could have the locals mostly armed with higher-tech energy weapons while the guns in the PC's hold are slugthrowers, then play up the Horde ships generating EMP-like effects due to their stasis fields or somesuch and making zap guns unreliable at best. That way the PCs wind up with the most useful guns on the planet anyway and can still play their role in the scenario, but they aren't going to be swimming in lasers at the end of things, something I recall being an issue when I played it way back when.
I thought of making these bugs resemble the Chamax but toned down with a low reproductive rate and easier to kill. Then the PCs run into the real thing and can't believe how much tougher they are. Use the images from the Chamax adventures for the bugs.
Shotgun Solution: identify with the players their ammo is buckshot, which might be devastating to something fleshy up close; but to something with chitinus armour they're less effective. You could even offer dearshot ammo later on to change the dynamic of their attacks/damage.
Ah, yes. Analysis paralysis. Funny that we came up with the same term a while back. Fortunately, each of the groups that I run have at least one decisive person in the group now. I've run Flatlined once already and intend to run it again with an entirely new group, so your tips were helpful, giving me some things to consider before my little Flatlined redux. Great review! Thanks, Seth.
This is a great review and it gave me a great idea for how to start my own Traveller game, going with your idea of starting the campaign with this adventure and using the Connections as reawakening memories. Then when the PCs finally get to the planetary starport, they'll regain all of their memories and we'll do the prequel adventure, which I'm thinking of using The Hunt for Sabre IV for, ending with them either being kidnapped or put into cold storage and thinking that more answers to their kidnapping lie back on Arcturus with Urshakaan (and potentially giving them motive to kill him), which leads us nicely to Murder on Arcturus Station when the PCs finally get their stuff and ship back andgo find Urshakaan. It'll take some geographical rejiggering, but I've been designing my own sector to use in my home campaign anyway so it won't be too much of a problem to include Neon, Arcturus, etc. for my homebrew. Great review and thanks for all of the great ideas, Seth! You really have made my GMing much better with your advice.
So just dropping by, making notes, as I now start to develop that campaign I mentioned in my other comment here in earnest. And as you say, exploing the ship will take its sweet time - well I anticipate one whole evening for that. I am also pretty sure, that my players will take longer than your suggested 10 hours. But that allows me to establish some facts about the characters. Using my own rule set and background instead of the Traveller Rules, I have to approach character building and especially the connection skills a bit differently. At the moment I plan to let my players setup a very basic character and give me a very rough outline in which direction they should go (and especially what they absolutely don't want to deal with - like being a convict or having an addiction or something) With this information I finish the character with some skills and backround elements on note-cards, I hand out whenever the players stumble upon certain details about their character...
Thinkers are as smart as a very smart dog... Have you seen wild dogs hunt in Africa, they use complicated tactics and maneuvers that makes you think they communicate telepathically. So with one thinker these bugs can be quite scary smart.
I have just started running a Call of Cthulhu campaign and videos like this are really helpful in working out what I am going to dabble in next. Keep up the great work! Also...side note...your books are awesome!
Sounds like the "Getting out of the ship" part of the adventure needs a timer. Maybe once the ship is 30% full, the ship system indicates that the engine will explode due to the engine room and primary systems being flooded. Also, making a simple file that displayed the title of the ship would be kool too. I think a nice addition for encountering the creepers during the day is a classic Graboid tactic. Since its a mine, maybe there are some small tunnels under the camp, and occasionally as creeper pops out of the ground and grabs somebody to pull them underground...
Hm.... Maybe I go on and start a little campaign with my players, beginning with this one (as it's a pretty good introduction adventure) then the Death Station - and then some adventures of my own, with them hunting down the organisation that kidnapped them in the first place.
So since Seth never uses his channel to talk about his writing I'll take it upon myself to do it. Please read Mountain of Daggers written by Mr. Skorkowsky. If you like Conan or pulp heroes in general you'll like this book Also I like the review, definitely going to check this out.
He's done a fair number of vids about his writing in the past, it's just been awhile. He's even got a playlist for them: ruclips.net/p/PL25p5gPY6qKWXyXTrd0Ao0CQuGt3xaRdS
@@richmcgee434 True but as you said he hasn't said anything about it in a while and he rarely says anything in his vids if they aren't specifically dedicated to the topic of his writing.
GM, "The water level is slowly rising..." Players, "No rush, we can stay here for a bit longer." GM, "Something underwater slithers past your groin..." Players, "Where's the Air Lock?! We're out of here!"
I'm going to use this in my current campaign I wanted to run the Traveller Adventure but my players instantly decided to get rid of all my prep, sell their ship, and leave the imperium to become space pirates somewhere else. The thing is because they're carrying around a subsidized merchants worth of money as cash on hand as well as a huge amount of high tech equipment they have painted a huge target on their back without realizing it. At some point to get to the next system they'll board a kinda sketchy far trader, when they all go to sleep in their beds knockout gas is going to be pumped into their rooms. They'll wake up at the start of Flatlined.
Thanks for your excellent review Seth. I felt that this was much too similar to Marooned on Marduk (crashed ship, no equipment but that which you salvage under time pressure, survive a night from dangerous indigenous life form). And the EMP is also from another MJD adventure. Granted this has the sinking ship at the start, but that’s just a small addition to the same idea. I think it needs calling out that the value and quality of ideas from current traveller output is poor, repetitive and not gm friendly. Looking forward to receiving your adventure Seth, I have pre ordered a hard copy. Please consider writing more!
The similarity to Marooned on Marduk I can easily see with you pointing it out, but I personally didn't get that feeling from it. Mostly because Marooned was more of a chase and the NPCs were suspicious but not enemies. And the monsters were extremely different. The EMP thing I instantly had the, "This gag again?" feeling. As far as not GM friendly, one other criticism I have about Flatlined that I forgot to bring attention to in the video is the Vacc Suits. It mentions the 3 vacc suits in the crew cabins in the Airlock section (which I showed the text for that). I forgot to bring up that the vacc suits being in the cabins was not mentioned at all in the descriptions of the cabins themselves. That makes it very hard for a GM to use during the session as the PCs are exploring the ship and say "What do I find in the crew cabin?" That's not good. Some adventures are laid out well for "Couch Reading," meaning they are presented in a way that's easy to read when you're sitting there reading the adventure like a book. You read them and go, "Man I can't wait to run this adventure." Others are laid out for "In-Game" reading, which isn't as smooth to read like a book, but is perfect for use while running. There you get more bullet points and information is laid out so that a GM can quickly reference it with as little page-searching as possible. They aren't as exciting to read on the couch, but are solid gold to have when players say, "I open the door. What do I see?" MJD adventures are more couch reading. The ideas are good, reading the scenario before a session is great, but finding information while trying to keep the game moving smooth is much harder than it needs to be.
@@SSkorkowsky thanks Seth, Interesting about couch/in game reading. When I read a scenario - it grabs me if 1) the atmosphere is strong 2) the situation is interesting and has some ambiguity. 3) the internal consistency must be rock solid and everything is purposeful and has a reason. 4) It’s full of interesting plot elements, a sense of story. MJD seems to think an adventure consists of a situation with very little plot depth or progression but lots of NPCs or and one quite complex uncertain situation on a primitive planet. It’s too easy. He churns them out very quickly. These could be set in any game, they are mostly survival horror. Adventures like this are ok occasionally but where is the sci fi? Where’s that feeling of ice cold inevitability? Where is the sense of vastness? Where is the sense of discovery? Where is the technology? I liked Marc Millers idea of the EPIC format. A way of getting plot in with a reduced feeling of railroad. A kind of mixture of sandbox and railroad.
This could be used as a campaign soft reset. If the game has become stale due to far to much equipment, do this to them. Just pass a few years and have them wake up a sector away.
@@SSkorkowsky No one expects to go to Antarctica in CoC, it just kind of happens. One minute you're slumming around Arkham U investigating the new fraternity on campus, the next you're waking up from being drugged, kidnapped, and dragged off to the South Pole as potential shoggoth chow.
I ran this and the one thing I did was make it that the ship was in a low power mode keeping only the main computer alive for advice on fixing the ship and the condition of the ship and location on the planet. Edit: The condition and location along with how to fix the ship is the ONLY accessible data to the players.
Though this might be a shot in the dark, could you review "Warth & Glory" or any of the published adventures for it? I'm just getting into the game myself and am thinking of running the game, but I would like some "Professional advice" for running it from an experienced GM.
I love the idea of having a flashback adventure after this one (or maybe after Death Station, if running that as a followup?) but I'm stumped as to what the right flashback prequel would be. Did you end up doing this, and if so, which one did you use? If it's mining related, you can still possibly use the corporate intrigue intrigue angle mentioned in the module, and later on can involve Death Station and its two prequels...
Idea: if you want to keep the emp make Hambley be the one who set it. Why he did it could be any reason, he might have been a undercover agent from the beginning or he might have just have received an offer from the other company to betray his group but I think it would make it more of a plot point.
The real problem with the analysis paralysis sounds like it was because the game was online. Much harder to start with-holding snacks and chairs (or flicking the light switch on and off) to force a decision.
About gear - so around 28:00 or so... I think ammo-tokens, if you are willing to take the time to print and cut them, would be neat. So you not only have numbers on a sheet, but little physical objects, that show your dwindling resources.
Man, this sounds like quite a way to start an adventure. As this takes place in The Great Rift, is this the campaign you ran "The Rule of Man Commemorative" mini-adventure? And if so, was the Aslan character you talked about in that one part of this adventure? Get some Lion/Giant Ant claw-to-claw combat going?
Online play is one of those areas I fully admit I'm not an authority on. I feel many casual gamers are far more experienced and proficient in it than I am. But... here's our setup: I use Roll20. Why? Because that's what some people used when I played some Podcast games with them. I've heard Fantasy Grounds is pretty awesome, but I already have my Roll20 setup the way I like it and we all have figured out how to work it. We don't bother with all the ingrained character sheets, grid movement, and fancy features. It is the most basic tabletop setup. We roll our own dice (online dice rollers are just 1-step away from SkyNet taking over and killing us all. Those who support online dice rollers are complicit accomplices in the coming robot uprising). I'll use Fog of War to black areas out, either to be reveled as they explore, or to just house an army of badguy icons I plan to use (sort of the readyroom). The interactive Fog of war where it moves around according to their line-of-sight is neat and all, but a pain to setup and there's always 1 player who has it glitch out on them, so I don't use it. Every time we've tried at least one player has technical issues with it, so I gave up on it. I've found that when players have the Virtual Tabletop do everything for them, such as inventories, calculating rolls, tracking Hit Points, and all the details, they don't' learn the game. They get used to the computer doing it, that their own mastery of how it works is lessened. Maybe that's just me. I see it like how we all used to remember phone numbers back before our phones did it for us. Many players seen to have trouble learning or remembering the rules when the game does it. This frequently reduces their own strategies when playing because they don't know the nuts and bolts of the game mechanics and how to use those to their advantage. Now I use tons of map screens. Any map I expect to use in a session has it's own dedicated page. We also have a general page. For Traveller, that's often the ship's deckplan. When we did our Islands in the Rift campaign, which was entirely online, anytime the game started or during the frequent flying period, I just had the screen on the ship's deckplan and the PCs all moved their little icons around as far as where they were on the ship. If combat happened, we flipped to the space combat page which had a big series of concentric rings denoting ranges. I also have a huge library of images I use for badguys or what places look like. Such as we were recently playing Kult in an adventure set in Milan. As they were going though the city, I was dropping photos of places they were seeing. It was very handy. Audio on Roll20 sucks. We use Discord for chat. Our stamina during online games is far less than when we're all sitting in the room together. We've had to adapt shorter sessions. Instead of our 8-10 hour in-person sessions, online games last about 6 hours. We also have to formally announce more breaks. In a normal game, Todd can get up and walk to the kitchen and grab a Coke and come back. We all know what he's doing. We can hear each other. He doesn't even need to announce it. But in an online game where we're plugged into screens, he can't just get up and walk away for 30 seconds without announcing it. I have no idea if he can hear me. I probably can't hear him when he walks away. So the casual getting up and stepping away for a couple seconds isn't there the way it is in an in-person game. So call a short break every hour or so. They're also useful for giving us all a second to look away from the screen. I cannot ever stress the importance of regular breaks enough. That's about it.
Hey Seth, I love your reviews, and I was wondering if you'd ever played the original Deadlands. I've been getting into it with my group recently and it's a blast, and I was just thinking that it'd be really awesome to see a review of one of their pre-made adventures in your style. I particularly have to recommend the adventure "The Mission" from the Fire and Brimstone expansion book, which is actually a big part of what got me into TTRPGs to begin with. That said, I know you have a policy of not reviewing modules you haven't played with your own group, so if that prevents such a review, well, I can hardly blame ya. Thanks anyway for all the amazing content!
I removed the faulty EMP bomb and all the mystery around that, as there was no way within the scope of the module for the PCs to learn of the sabotage/ Instead, I changed the cause of the EMP blast to a freak accident when the ship was landing at the site and accidently contacted the radio tower, the resulting short blew some equipment being carried in the ship's hold and the EMP hit the camp as the pilot managed to steer the crashing ship to the lake. The PCs can learn the cause of the EMP when they make it to camp and the survivors say what happened, which aligns with any investigation the PCs might have done in the ship's hold of the exploded crates.
@@SSkorkowsky I would have changed it more drastically, The characters are in low births, the ship they are on had a misfire on the hyper jump, the engine explodes causing an EMP that also wipes the characters memories, the ships computer tries to make a crash landing on the most closest viable world, going for the soft landing of water, it lands near the coast, then the ship starts sinking.... Think Pandorum meets The Poseidon adventure, make the ship bigger,
I say, "Howdy there, Internet People"; but that is just because Beau of the 5th Column releases more videos than Seth, so I hear his intro more often :D
Our analysis paralysis is brought on by our PTSD - Post Traumatic Seth Disorder.
I accept that for Jesse, Kayci, and (maybe) you. You guys have played with me the longest and in some pretty brutal campaigns. But I accept zero responsibility for the other 2 players being that paranoid. They just came that way.
@@SSkorkowsky Maybe the real PTSD was the friends we made along the way. ;~)
@@SSkorkowsky Maybe you just got used to paranoid players and happen to invite only that kind?
PS: it’s not paranoia, when the GM is out to murder all the PCs, it’s just survival instinct.
Are you guys suggesting that your GM is evill? .... 'cause we will totally believe that :-D
@@SSkorkowsky You have scared the rest of us enough over the years. Ohhhh... we know your devious ways. #SethPTSD
"We were disappointed that we weren't crushed or eaten by eels."
Jack's really picked up some strange expectations over the years, hasn't he?
Jack the NPC in the Deep Berth Pod was really nicely done. Your green screen work is top notch.
"What do you mean "THEY cut the power"? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals!"
The fact that I didn't think of having Jack deliver that line brings me much shame.
@@SSkorkowsky Piggy backing on this one because I can't post my own comments. :+/
This would be a hard scenario (or good exercise) for the players to stay within the bounds of their handicap and not "meta game" with info and knowledge that they wouldn't have. Did you have trouble controlling that?
@@obsidianjane4413 I had no problems with them metagaming on this one. But that's for 2 reasons: First, despite all the grief and playful venting I might do about them in these videos, I've got a crew of very good players. Second, I just don't concern myself that much with light or harmless metagaming. If they're sticking to the spirit of the game, I'm good.
Just wanna thank you for often including subtitles in your videos. They're always helpful for me
We are 2
I don't often use them for Seth's videos, but subtitles in general are super useful and a lot of work to put in, so it's worth a mention!
@@ryke_masters in general is because inglish is not my mother language so they are usefull to me
Subtitles are something I've been trying to get on all of them. Started updating them on older videos, too. Not too difficult to do once/if RUclips gives me the auto-generated ones, as all I need to do is add punctuation, capitalizations, and correct some words that it didn't get right (Jack's bad accent always leads to the best wrong auto-generated words). Mostly just time consuming. However, if RUclips decides not to give me auto-generated captions to start with, it requires I have to transcribe it all the old-fashioned way, and that is hell.
@@SSkorkowsky i want to Thank you for taking the time :)
The whole opening of this adventure reminds me of the videogame Rimworld which starts following a crash their low berths landing on a backwater planet
If a character had gotten a ship (Scout, Free Trader) during char-gen, maybe once their memories come back the next adventure is getting back to where they'd been kidnapped, so they can retrieve it at some spaceport before it's impounded for late docking fees.
Cue "High and dry"?
@@lizardwithhat4125 exactly. They were kidnapped on Waldon in the middle of the mission.
Well, I see two ends to this scenario.
First, the ship could be rented out by some crew, earning the player regular pay from the people paying the lease on it.
Second, getting said ship could be part of a later mission, with the ship being held by some patron that is holding it as collateral in lieu of actually paying them for a job he wants them to do.
Of course their ship could be in the hands of those who sold them and those people are living as the PCs (and dragging their reputation and credit history through the mud). It could be regularly delivering other victims.
PCs with amnesia find the drug they were given & later give it to an NPC as a truth serum only to find it's an amnesia serum. Classic RPG night.
Could have been worse, could have been the crazed cannibal serum from the Death Station adventure.
Other accidents for the GM to consider: 1. jump engine malfunction on a old ship using 2nd hand parts. 2. Old third imperium naval mine 3. Another techno slave was awake for ship maintenance and failed on sabotaging the ship. 4. PCs ship was attacked by a virus ship. 5. Pirate failed to override a old naval warhead security measures but did manage to activate it.
I had this as the second adventure of my campaign. The team started with a military-grade robot, Issac, which was taken when the crew were kidnapped. Issac managed to rewire his power source into detonating. He sacrificed himself for his crewmates. RIP Issac.
It's criminal you don't have more subscribers. Your stuff is awesome!
Its criminal he has 80k subs and nearly 10k views with only a hundred comments. Comments please the algorithm.
I enjoyed running this, I used it as a side adventure for my main campaign. I rolled up pregens and gave the players blank characters sheets. As they started to try to do things they slowly learnt their skills and stats.
Seth's a gun guy confirmed. Nobody else would recognize the model.
Well he is a Texan
No, he’s a sci-fi nerd. That gun has been used in so many Sci-fi genre B-films that it’s hard to remember them all.
For a second I thought the thumbnail was that of Future Cyborg Indian Jones' trusty Nuke Surviving Fridge
Every Seth day is a wonderful day =)
We had fun with this one, too. Our major change was a spur-of-the-moment thing. The Players were having a difficult time putting the pieces together, and it was really bothering them. Hambley died when creepers managed to dislodge a door he was attempting to reinforce. The doctor grabbed his gun (I had given Hambley a heavier weapon), fired and killed the creeper, spun around and killed the woman conspirator (not going to try to remember how that was spelled; sorry). Turned out he was being blackmailed as the Skilljacking ring had his family secured somewhere in low births. With the PCs telling the story of the crash, the doctor figured out that his family was being held on the crashed small hauler and were now dead. He was happy to fill in details the PCs couldn't figure out-- not all of them, of course, but enough to help them along.
As to the shotgun problem your players had: there is a certain sort of person who one-hundred percent believes, in spite of all evidence (such as the existence of other weapons), the the shotgun is the single greatest weapon ever created. It's been my own experience that most of those people seem to design adventure video games. :/
Watched first 15 minutes only 45 seconds after this was posted (21 views). Had to break off for 2 hours and now there's 2½ thousand views! Wow!
Betcha wish you could sell books that quickly!
Awesome
Why do all the NPCs have a facial expression making me think they're desperately holding in a Taco Bell BM?
The Weyland-Yutani t-shirt is on point. I could see this adventure adapted for Alien RPG easily. Actually if it didn't say "Traveller" in the title, I would have assumed that's what it was.
I mostly got your shout out. Mostly.
@@sturat5166 pretty much. But make it better. Shouldn't be too hard.
The running gag where the same batch of faulty EMP bombs keeps turning up
Decades ago I played a little-known RPG - designed to be a one-shot game for 3-6 players. Dunno what it was called, Sandman, maybe? Anyhow, characters start as amnesiacs. Players had to try doing actions (such as starting a fire or looking for food) and, if it was on the Referees list, the ref would hand over a skill card, explaining future application. Each character had about six skill cards and also some situation 'triggered' a memory card. The aim was to complete the adventure but kudos was given to the player whose character 'recovered' the most memory and skill cards.
After playing this, my husband wanted to play test a new RPG system he was writing as a one-shot at a small game convention. Similar set-up (waking on a jungle-covered island) and once players 'recalled' enough skills, they were given a section of their backstory and their character sheet. Ended up with them making friends with a 'cargo cult' and having to disarm an atom bomb ... the lost third from the end of WW2!
The amnesia factor in scenarios fit well in one-shot scenarios.
Saw the notification this morning. "Sweet, new Seth vid! Crap it's 32 minutes and i have to leave for work in 15. Oh well, i'll just drop a like and have something to look forward to during the day."
Also, did anyone else have the phrase "From dusk 'til dawn" pop into their brain?
Another great review. I love Pitch Black too. The ship in this is great: a box with engines. I really want to run some more science fiction games.
Spend too much time agonising over decisions? Check.
Stubbornly keep doing something that doesn't work when they could easily do something that does? Check.
Using X assuming it does Y based on god-knows-what only to discover it actually does Z? Check.
Sounds like you have the most stereotypical player group of all time
It can be a problem with the GM.
I remember Seth (In another video) talk about a situation where the group run around a house and try a key in all locks without it fitting anywhere, after they give up, the GM reveals it to be a car key.
Quite often GM forgets to be the eyes, ears, and other senses of all the characters.
And sometimes players can make random assumptions and then stick to them even in the face of conflicting evidence or even other players pointing out that they're wrong.
@@SSkorkowsky and when you get both at once... Mon dieu
Thanks for the review and the additional game materials. I ran this last night for my group and it was a great session!
Awesome to hear!
This sounds like an extremely fun way to do a session 0 for experienced players. They discover their skills and backstories as they play.
My players had the opposite of analysis paralysis, and when we switch to Dungeon Crawl Classics we had some amazing mishaps.... that lead to analysis paralysis.
"Gods, I remember you, you're that smuggler that always pronounces Regina as Regina."
And that rhymes with "fun!"
Always interested to see Traveler scenarios with their different worlds and setups. Also everyone wish me luck, I just started running Horror on the Orient Express last week and it’s gonna be a beast.
Oooh nice. Good luck with that one. It's been on my "One day" list of campaigns for a long time.
I would give you a heads 🦵👂👁 up.... or at least a hand 🖐 up but you will have enough of them before long.
@@morale6014 That's what I've heard for the most part. We just finished Venice yesterday (I'm not running most of the optional scenarios) and we've lost 2 characters so far and two are heavily wounded. Thanks clock tower.
This scenario could be converted into a cinematic adventure for the Alien RPG. Maybe instead of a skill-jacking ring, Weyland-Yutani is having the researchers bring people in to test experimental drugs on, possibly using Neomorph blood.
"We thought it was a truth serum for some reason, but it was definitely not a truth serum" made me laugh into my coffee. We've all been there.
This seems like a pretty cool scenario that would work in multiple games. I could see a fantasy D&D type game that has nearly the same premise.
Thank you for your reviews of Traveller!!! :-)
Nice review. Personally, I hate having my equipment taken away, and not getting it back by the end of the adventure would really tick me off! Especially if I'd managed to roll up something really sweet. Otherwise, sounds like a good place to start a campaign. Be well and stay safe!
Tactically acquire in the field. Of the hitman games have taught me anything, everything is a weapon, everything. Lol.
personally if one of my players rolled up something rare or sweet I'd make sure you get it back if indirectly say when holding up in the metal container and trying to find something to replace that shot gun that ran out of ammo you rip open a box labeled "gaskets" and find that plasma rifle from your pre-kidnapped equipment list how did it get there without the others at the camp knowing? how did chainsaws end up in a mining facility on Mars?
Hmm, that's a really nice adventure ! One twist I would add is to make Skill jackers turn totally evil during the creeper swarm, and make creepers attack players bunker. Like plant some kind of beacon that attracts them, or blow their bunkers wall open with a bomb etc. Their motive would be to use players as bait and get out of the slaughter also avoid risk of players unmasking their operation.
After seeing Ian at Forgotten Weapons actually shoot a COP .357 in competition? I'd hate to be whoever was wielding that thing. Point of aim? Good trigger pull? Reloads? WHAT ARE THOSE?! haha.
That was a great video. The COP .357 looks awesome as hell, but in the end it's just a chunky derringer and suffers from every problem a derringer has.
This reminds me of star wars old republic your ship is about to crash and you wake up and they ask you your name and that is when your name select shows up. This gives me an idea of what I could do with a character select sheet . A ship is sinking into the water you have amnesia this is the amount of time you have to create a character sheet. Ready ... Go !
Had a good chuckle when I realised why Jack’s nametag had been missing throughout the video.
Then felt ashamed, because it only clicked when he was wearing it in the end-of-video coda, and I should have figured it out earlier.
I agree that this would be a great opening adventure if a GM is wanting to run a game within the Great Rift. I hadn't thought about using a player's enemy to get them into the adventure, I will need to consider this for their future problems, as 3 of my 6 players have enemies, one of them has a lot of enemies, so probably wouldn't be too difficult to adjust the adventure to fit in with my story. Another great video, love your Traveller coverage, and all your other series, especially the Cthulhu ones, keep up the great work!
Loving the Space 1999 Eagle interior Seth. Nice touch.
Aside from the excellent production of these videos - and of course the entertainment value - I think what I appreciate the most is Seth's mindset as a GM. His willingness to adjust the details for a better game, story, and player experience is absolutely the right way to approach RPGs.
I love these videos.
Another video from Seth! Best thing that happened this week!
Applause for Jack the NPC at 6:20 ish! *insert random Clapping gif
After the D&D OGL Fiasco, my friends and I have decided to go back to an old favorite from my youth, Traveller. Thanks for your review, I am now adapting this adventure to Fantasy Grounds VTT based on your review as an initial test adventure .... thanks!
Have fun with it. And welcome back to the Third Imperium.
And in case you didn't know, the Mongoose update to the classic Death Station adventure is free on DriveThru RPG (updates written by me after Mongoose liked my review of it). That has a suggestion on how to link it as a direct sequel to Flatlined.
@@SSkorkowsky Looking forward to it, I was involved in Traveller in my youth ( back in the late 70's ) when I was in the military. When I was young it was my favorite RPG... over the years Traveller changed a lot, but this version ( Mongoose 2nd ) seem to be very close to the old Traveller than I remember so well. Very much looking forward to it. Enjoyed your videos and looking forward to more... am now subscribed
Now I want to play Traveller
I started cause of Seth’s videos and boy am i happy i did. We’re just starting a pirates of drinax playthrough. You should definitely try it out
Well worth trying. I'd recommend starting with the Mongoose 2nd edition rules.
"They'd probably appreciate the chance to play for once." Not I. Forever GM and happy being so. I hope to never be a PC again.
Nice to finally watch this now that our GM has run both this adventure and then Death Station for us!
One thing that was very satisfying for us as players during Act 2 was us managing to rig up some kind of interesting electric/magnetic signature at the bottom of the mining pit to try and lure the bugs in, then remotely detonating a bomb there once enough bugs were surrounding it. I can see from your table that our GM still threw the same number of bugs at us per character for a good challenge, but he did an excellent job at letting us feel like our strategy totally saved our lives. The set dressing bugs were _everywhere_ and we were able to kill a lot of them with that lure/bomb. So it really made us feel clever and victorious even though the actual number of bugs we had to fight directly wasn't actually impacted. I'll have to compliment him on this later!
After Death Station we did have a crack at a prequel adventure of how we got on the low berths in the first place, but we ended up deciding to mutually story tell rather than "play" through it, because it was really hard not to feel railroaded when we the players all knew our actions were leading to us being captured. We kind of felt like we were railroading _ourselves_ with every decision we made, because we couldn't help but try and guess at how the GM was going to wind up having us all fail and be captured in the end. Maybe another group of players that wasn't so obsessed with identifying narrative patterns would be able to relax and enjoy the prequel idea more, even though they already knew how it would end!
Ah, correction, GM says he reduced Wave 3's severity to reflect that we set off the bomb on Wave 2. Still though, the set dressing bugs really made us feel way more excited about our successful explosion than it technically warranted challenge-wise, and I commend our GM for that!
Great to see some new Traveller content from your channel Seth. You sold me on the system, and I gotta say I love it, so thanks for introducing it. These videos are great easy listening.
I know it's a mammoth campaign and you only review adventures you've completed, but you ought to consider doing something with Pirates of Drinnax. Even just an evaluation of the structure would be interesting, and if you ran it for your players it could make a great successor to the Two Headed Serpent and BTSHT-365 series (some of your best stuff imo)
Anyway, thanks again for the Traveller vid!
late to the party, starting out a new game (played classic back in the 80's and finally have come back around to it)...thanks Seth, this was a great way to get going again!
Old school vets may get some flashbacks to the Chamax Plague/Horde double adventure from GW due to the xeno-bugs in the back half. In fact, you could probably mash this adventure into those two - let's see:
PCs run through Chamax Plague as normal so they've had contact with the chamax bugs. A few adventures later on they're hauling weapons when they get betrayed by a colleague/contact and wind up being skilljacked per Flatlined, but with events taking place on Rashev (plenty of room for a minimg camp and skilljacker ring on planet). Instead of the bomb, the short hauler and local electronics get fried by one of the Horde ships having a terminal glitch in its systems as it comes down nearby. Flatlined plays out as normal until the bugs arrive, where they're replaced by invading chamax from the semi-crashed lander ship. The eventual rescuers can be local law enforcement who were tracking the short hauler as part of an investigation into skilljacking rings.
Assuming the PCs survive, they go on to reclaim their ship and cargo from the folks who betrayed them with the help of the local law enforcement. The ship's drive gets damaged during the firefight with the criminals (the NPC ones, that is - you average PC is pretty dodgy too) leaving them stranded with a hold full of guns just as the events in Horde start to unfold. You even have an excuse for the government being happy to work with the PCs - they just helped bust the skilljackers (even if it was just for revenge) and they've had experience with the chamax already, and without a reliable drive until parts arrive they're in the same danger as the locals from the invasion.
If you wanted to flip one of the conceits of Horde, you could have the locals mostly armed with higher-tech energy weapons while the guns in the PC's hold are slugthrowers, then play up the Horde ships generating EMP-like effects due to their stasis fields or somesuch and making zap guns unreliable at best. That way the PCs wind up with the most useful guns on the planet anyway and can still play their role in the scenario, but they aren't going to be swimming in lasers at the end of things, something I recall being an issue when I played it way back when.
I thought of making these bugs resemble the Chamax but toned down with a low reproductive rate and easier to kill. Then the PCs run into the real thing and can't believe how much tougher they are. Use the images from the Chamax adventures for the bugs.
Nice review. I'm not a real Traveller Fan but I love listening to your reviews. Who knows, I might drag my PCs into a Low Berth Party!
Great video. One of the coolest scenarios. Inspired me to become a referee and play with my friends. We never heard about Traveller before.
Long time viewer, I love your content Seth, keep up the awesome!
Lets go! Im so ready for more traveller
Shotgun Solution: identify with the players their ammo is buckshot, which might be devastating to something fleshy up close; but to something with chitinus armour they're less effective.
You could even offer dearshot ammo later on to change the dynamic of their attacks/damage.
So.............the Plott starts with "Dark Matter" und goes on with "Pitch Black"
Ah, yes. Analysis paralysis. Funny that we came up with the same term a while back. Fortunately, each of the groups that I run have at least one decisive person in the group now. I've run Flatlined once already and intend to run it again with an entirely new group, so your tips were helpful, giving me some things to consider before my little Flatlined redux. Great review! Thanks, Seth.
This is a great review and it gave me a great idea for how to start my own Traveller game, going with your idea of starting the campaign with this adventure and using the Connections as reawakening memories. Then when the PCs finally get to the planetary starport, they'll regain all of their memories and we'll do the prequel adventure, which I'm thinking of using The Hunt for Sabre IV for, ending with them either being kidnapped or put into cold storage and thinking that more answers to their kidnapping lie back on Arcturus with Urshakaan (and potentially giving them motive to kill him), which leads us nicely to Murder on Arcturus Station when the PCs finally get their stuff and ship back andgo find Urshakaan. It'll take some geographical rejiggering, but I've been designing my own sector to use in my home campaign anyway so it won't be too much of a problem to include Neon, Arcturus, etc. for my homebrew.
Great review and thanks for all of the great ideas, Seth! You really have made my GMing much better with your advice.
So just dropping by, making notes, as I now start to develop that campaign I mentioned in my other comment here in earnest.
And as you say, exploing the ship will take its sweet time - well I anticipate one whole evening for that. I am also pretty sure, that my players will take longer than your suggested 10 hours. But that allows me to establish some facts about the characters.
Using my own rule set and background instead of the Traveller Rules, I have to approach character building and especially the connection skills a bit differently. At the moment I plan to let my players setup a very basic character and give me a very rough outline in which direction they should go (and especially what they absolutely don't want to deal with - like being a convict or having an addiction or something) With this information I finish the character with some skills and backround elements on note-cards, I hand out whenever the players stumble upon certain details about their character...
Thinkers are as smart as a very smart dog... Have you seen wild dogs hunt in Africa, they use complicated tactics and maneuvers that makes you think they communicate telepathically. So with one thinker these bugs can be quite scary smart.
I agree with Jack's idea of a campaign running act 2, act 1 then act 3. So very Tarentino!
As if Tarantino invented flashbacks
I have just started running a Call of Cthulhu campaign and videos like this are really helpful in working out what I am going to dabble in next. Keep up the great work! Also...side note...your books are awesome!
Anyway to get a clip of the ships automated voice? Would like to add that effect too
If I saw the creepers attacking the power cables, I'd turn off all the electricity. Job done.
Sounds like the "Getting out of the ship" part of the adventure needs a timer. Maybe once the ship is 30% full, the ship system indicates that the engine will explode due to the engine room and primary systems being flooded.
Also, making a simple file that displayed the title of the ship would be kool too.
I think a nice addition for encountering the creepers during the day is a classic Graboid tactic. Since its a mine, maybe there are some small tunnels under the camp, and occasionally as creeper pops out of the ground and grabs somebody to pull them underground...
Waking up with strangers in a crashed low-berth array seems a far cooler opening to a campaign than meeting in a starport bar.
No jury-rigged flamethrowers? I would also have a added a box or two of slug ammunition for the shotguns.
Hm.... Maybe I go on and start a little campaign with my players, beginning with this one (as it's a pretty good introduction adventure) then the Death Station - and then some adventures of my own, with them hunting down the organisation that kidnapped them in the first place.
So since Seth never uses his channel to talk about his writing I'll take it upon myself to do it. Please read Mountain of Daggers written by Mr. Skorkowsky. If you like Conan or pulp heroes in general you'll like this book
Also I like the review, definitely going to check this out.
He's done a fair number of vids about his writing in the past, it's just been awhile. He's even got a playlist for them: ruclips.net/p/PL25p5gPY6qKWXyXTrd0Ao0CQuGt3xaRdS
@@richmcgee434 True but as you said he hasn't said anything about it in a while and he rarely says anything in his vids if they aren't specifically dedicated to the topic of his writing.
Yep. Had my players stick around on the ship for a seriously long time until I started to increase the water levels.
GM, "The water level is slowly rising..."
Players, "No rush, we can stay here for a bit longer."
GM, "Something underwater slithers past your groin..."
Players, "Where's the Air Lock?! We're out of here!"
Analysis paralysis. I like that. The main issue with scifi games
I'm going to use this in my current campaign
I wanted to run the Traveller Adventure but my players instantly decided to get rid of all my prep, sell their ship, and leave the imperium to become space pirates somewhere else.
The thing is because they're carrying around a subsidized merchants worth of money as cash on hand as well as a huge amount of high tech equipment they have painted a huge target on their back without realizing it.
At some point to get to the next system they'll board a kinda sketchy far trader, when they all go to sleep in their beds knockout gas is going to be pumped into their rooms. They'll wake up at the start of Flatlined.
...So don't be afraid to kill off some of the npcs for dramatic reasons.
Jack the npc: Hey what?!
Thanks for your excellent review Seth. I felt that this was much too similar to Marooned on Marduk (crashed ship, no equipment but that which you salvage under time pressure, survive a night from dangerous indigenous life form). And the EMP is also from another MJD adventure. Granted this has the sinking ship at the start, but that’s just a small addition to the same idea.
I think it needs calling out that the value and quality of ideas from current traveller output is poor, repetitive and not gm friendly.
Looking forward to receiving your adventure Seth, I have pre ordered a hard copy.
Please consider writing more!
The similarity to Marooned on Marduk I can easily see with you pointing it out, but I personally didn't get that feeling from it. Mostly because Marooned was more of a chase and the NPCs were suspicious but not enemies. And the monsters were extremely different. The EMP thing I instantly had the, "This gag again?" feeling.
As far as not GM friendly, one other criticism I have about Flatlined that I forgot to bring attention to in the video is the Vacc Suits. It mentions the 3 vacc suits in the crew cabins in the Airlock section (which I showed the text for that). I forgot to bring up that the vacc suits being in the cabins was not mentioned at all in the descriptions of the cabins themselves. That makes it very hard for a GM to use during the session as the PCs are exploring the ship and say "What do I find in the crew cabin?" That's not good.
Some adventures are laid out well for "Couch Reading," meaning they are presented in a way that's easy to read when you're sitting there reading the adventure like a book. You read them and go, "Man I can't wait to run this adventure." Others are laid out for "In-Game" reading, which isn't as smooth to read like a book, but is perfect for use while running. There you get more bullet points and information is laid out so that a GM can quickly reference it with as little page-searching as possible. They aren't as exciting to read on the couch, but are solid gold to have when players say, "I open the door. What do I see?" MJD adventures are more couch reading. The ideas are good, reading the scenario before a session is great, but finding information while trying to keep the game moving smooth is much harder than it needs to be.
@@SSkorkowsky thanks Seth, Interesting about couch/in game reading. When I read a scenario - it grabs me if 1) the atmosphere is strong 2) the situation is interesting and has some ambiguity. 3) the internal consistency must be rock solid and everything is purposeful and has a reason. 4) It’s full of interesting plot elements, a sense of story.
MJD seems to think an adventure consists of a situation with very little plot depth or progression but lots of NPCs or and one quite complex uncertain situation on a primitive planet. It’s too easy. He churns them out very quickly. These could be set in any game, they are mostly survival horror. Adventures like this are ok occasionally but where is the sci fi? Where’s that feeling of ice cold inevitability? Where is the sense of vastness? Where is the sense of discovery? Where is the technology?
I liked Marc Millers idea of the EPIC format. A way of getting plot in with a reduced feeling of railroad. A kind of mixture of sandbox and railroad.
I really want a clip the the Berth's audio.
Sounds like Chamax/Horde crossed with the Dark Matter TV show.
Man, I wish I would have seen this review before starting my own space ttrpg. Seems like a great way to start a campaign.
Sounds nearly the same as the sci fi series Dark Matter
This could be used as a campaign soft reset. If the game has become stale due to far to much equipment, do this to them. Just pass a few years and have them wake up a sector away.
this adventure soudns really cool, and could be adapted to other campaigns/games/systems as well! thanks for reviewing it and giving your advice :)
Would you consider doing a review of Beyond the Mountains of madness?
Only after I've played it. And I don't see us venturing down to Antarctica any time in the near future.
@@SSkorkowsky No one expects to go to Antarctica in CoC, it just kind of happens. One minute you're slumming around Arkham U investigating the new fraternity on campus, the next you're waking up from being drugged, kidnapped, and dragged off to the South Pole as potential shoggoth chow.
I ran this and the one thing I did was make it that the ship was in a low power mode keeping only the main computer alive for advice on fixing the ship and the condition of the ship and location on the planet.
Edit: The condition and location along with how to fix the ship is the ONLY accessible data to the players.
Hey Seth. What is your opinion on the Chronicles of Riddick since you love Pitch Black?
Though this might be a shot in the dark, could you review "Warth & Glory" or any of the published adventures for it? I'm just getting into the game myself and am thinking of running the game, but I would like some "Professional advice" for running it from an experienced GM.
5:44 Or just make it that their ship crashed due to conflicting evils something they figure out very early on.
"Mynocs chewing on the power cables"
I love the idea of having a flashback adventure after this one (or maybe after Death Station, if running that as a followup?) but I'm stumped as to what the right flashback prequel would be. Did you end up doing this, and if so, which one did you use? If it's mining related, you can still possibly use the corporate intrigue intrigue angle mentioned in the module, and later on can involve Death Station and its two prequels...
I meant Murder on Arcturus Station and it's two prequels...
Idea: if you want to keep the emp make Hambley be the one who set it. Why he did it could be any reason, he might have been a undercover agent from the beginning or he might have just have received an offer from the other company to betray his group but I think it would make it more of a plot point.
The real problem with the analysis paralysis sounds like it was because the game was online. Much harder to start with-holding snacks and chairs (or flicking the light switch on and off) to force a decision.
About gear - so around 28:00 or so...
I think ammo-tokens, if you are willing to take the time to print and cut them, would be neat. So you not only have numbers on a sheet, but little physical objects, that show your dwindling resources.
Man, this sounds like quite a way to start an adventure. As this takes place in The Great Rift, is this the campaign you ran "The Rule of Man Commemorative" mini-adventure? And if so, was the Aslan character you talked about in that one part of this adventure? Get some Lion/Giant Ant claw-to-claw combat going?
Hey seth! Love your videos! But quick question, have you ever thought of running a game of vampire the masquerade 5e?
man I would love to see a session of your games. just to see how you really play.
Great video, great tips. Thank you again!
Seth, you should let Jack write the novels.
Are the emergency voice sound files available for use?
Would love a video about your online play setting and recommendations...
Online play is one of those areas I fully admit I'm not an authority on. I feel many casual gamers are far more experienced and proficient in it than I am.
But... here's our setup: I use Roll20. Why? Because that's what some people used when I played some Podcast games with them. I've heard Fantasy Grounds is pretty awesome, but I already have my Roll20 setup the way I like it and we all have figured out how to work it.
We don't bother with all the ingrained character sheets, grid movement, and fancy features. It is the most basic tabletop setup. We roll our own dice (online dice rollers are just 1-step away from SkyNet taking over and killing us all. Those who support online dice rollers are complicit accomplices in the coming robot uprising). I'll use Fog of War to black areas out, either to be reveled as they explore, or to just house an army of badguy icons I plan to use (sort of the readyroom). The interactive Fog of war where it moves around according to their line-of-sight is neat and all, but a pain to setup and there's always 1 player who has it glitch out on them, so I don't use it. Every time we've tried at least one player has technical issues with it, so I gave up on it.
I've found that when players have the Virtual Tabletop do everything for them, such as inventories, calculating rolls, tracking Hit Points, and all the details, they don't' learn the game. They get used to the computer doing it, that their own mastery of how it works is lessened. Maybe that's just me. I see it like how we all used to remember phone numbers back before our phones did it for us. Many players seen to have trouble learning or remembering the rules when the game does it. This frequently reduces their own strategies when playing because they don't know the nuts and bolts of the game mechanics and how to use those to their advantage.
Now I use tons of map screens. Any map I expect to use in a session has it's own dedicated page. We also have a general page. For Traveller, that's often the ship's deckplan. When we did our Islands in the Rift campaign, which was entirely online, anytime the game started or during the frequent flying period, I just had the screen on the ship's deckplan and the PCs all moved their little icons around as far as where they were on the ship. If combat happened, we flipped to the space combat page which had a big series of concentric rings denoting ranges. I also have a huge library of images I use for badguys or what places look like. Such as we were recently playing Kult in an adventure set in Milan. As they were going though the city, I was dropping photos of places they were seeing. It was very handy.
Audio on Roll20 sucks. We use Discord for chat.
Our stamina during online games is far less than when we're all sitting in the room together. We've had to adapt shorter sessions. Instead of our 8-10 hour in-person sessions, online games last about 6 hours.
We also have to formally announce more breaks. In a normal game, Todd can get up and walk to the kitchen and grab a Coke and come back. We all know what he's doing. We can hear each other. He doesn't even need to announce it. But in an online game where we're plugged into screens, he can't just get up and walk away for 30 seconds without announcing it. I have no idea if he can hear me. I probably can't hear him when he walks away. So the casual getting up and stepping away for a couple seconds isn't there the way it is in an in-person game. So call a short break every hour or so. They're also useful for giving us all a second to look away from the screen. I cannot ever stress the importance of regular breaks enough.
That's about it.
Hey Seth, I love your reviews, and I was wondering if you'd ever played the original Deadlands. I've been getting into it with my group recently and it's a blast, and I was just thinking that it'd be really awesome to see a review of one of their pre-made adventures in your style. I particularly have to recommend the adventure "The Mission" from the Fire and Brimstone expansion book, which is actually a big part of what got me into TTRPGs to begin with. That said, I know you have a policy of not reviewing modules you haven't played with your own group, so if that prevents such a review, well, I can hardly blame ya. Thanks anyway for all the amazing content!
Another Great review and good suggestions.
Why does the picture of this cargo hauler look like a futuristic tombstone with an inscription in technobabble? Suspicious...
I am Going to use this for a Horror One Shot game!
If you remove the EMP blast as the cause of the ship going down, why are the Creepers mad and why is the mining camp out of power?
I removed the faulty EMP bomb and all the mystery around that, as there was no way within the scope of the module for the PCs to learn of the sabotage/ Instead, I changed the cause of the EMP blast to a freak accident when the ship was landing at the site and accidently contacted the radio tower, the resulting short blew some equipment being carried in the ship's hold and the EMP hit the camp as the pilot managed to steer the crashing ship to the lake. The PCs can learn the cause of the EMP when they make it to camp and the survivors say what happened, which aligns with any investigation the PCs might have done in the ship's hold of the exploded crates.
@@SSkorkowsky
I would have changed it more drastically,
The characters are in low births, the ship they are on had a misfire on the hyper jump,
the engine explodes causing an EMP that also wipes the characters memories,
the ships computer tries to make a crash landing on the most closest viable world,
going for the soft landing of water, it lands near the coast, then the ship starts sinking....
Think Pandorum meets The Poseidon adventure,
make the ship bigger,
@@Tony-dh7mz The ship they were on isn’t jump capable.
does anyone else say 'hello internet i'm seth skorkowsky' with him?
I say, "Howdy there, Internet People"; but that is just because Beau of the 5th Column releases more videos than Seth, so I hear his intro more often :D
Yes, definitely, every time.