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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Evo's Mars Base
Posted by: Muskie Jul 24 2006, 04:02 AM
Given the fact that Evo has a Mars base, i've been wanting to get my party up there for a bit of a DooM-style Horrors run (not to mention the return of a certain dragon, but I digress), but Having a Mage and an Adept in my party provides a small problem..
I know that the Mars base has a sufficient Biopshere now to support Mages (or in any case, I'll flub the bases' stats so it has a Low Background rating), But there's the small problem of forcing my mages onto a space shuttle for 2 months without the ability to use magic.
According to one of the mages in the party, a mage is allowed to go into space as long qas he uses no magical abilities whatsoever, as spellcasting would induce the magical equivalent of explosive decompression. how do I get around this? or do our mages have to act mundane for a couple months, bored out of their minds?
Posted by: GrinderTheTroll Jul 24 2006, 04:45 AM
| QUOTE (Muskie) |
| Given the fact that Evo has a Mars base, i've been wanting to get my party up there for a bit of a DooM-style Horrors run (not to mention the return of a certain dragon, but I digress), but Having a Mage and an Adept in my party provides a small problem.. I know that the Mars base has a sufficient Biopshere now to support Mages (or in any case, I'll flub the bases' stats so it has a Low Background rating), But there's the small problem of forcing my mages onto a space shuttle for 2 months without the ability to use magic. According to one of the mages in the party, a mage is allowed to go into space as long qas he uses no magical abilities whatsoever, as spellcasting would induce the magical equivalent of explosive decompression. how do I get around this? or do our mages have to act mundane for a couple months, bored out of their minds? |
Suspended Animation type sleep? If you ever saw the movie "2010" they did this to scientist who had no part in maintaining the ship during its voyage.
Otherwise, unless they had an addiction like "Must use Astral Perception/Projection", they'd need to do something else. The addiction to me would be the tough part, otherwise it's just one long car ride.
Posted by: booklord Jul 24 2006, 05:29 AM
Actually the more likely scenario is that the magicians will simply bow out and do there own thing while the non-magic characters are in space. And really what awakened character would go in space? Half their skills are useless. They're affectively reduced to pedestrian status.
Possible ways to bring them into space..
1) Abduct them
Easily the worst option since it involves major railroading. Worse if the character is severely injured or killed while rendered powerless the resentment can cause many a player to go sour.
2) Their employer insists their skills will be needed and his willing to pay handsomely.
Why would you need a magician on Mars? Perhaps the employer knows something the characters don't? As for why his skills may be needed..... Perhaps the monsters on Mars are capable of using magic. Perhaps they have access to technology that allows them to create mana-fields even in the desolate deserts of Mars.
3) The employer loans the magician a magical artifact that allows him to use magic outside of the manasphere.
Cool! Though it will make the players wonder which great dragon/immortal elf 's payroll they're on.
As for the trip itself........
1) Hibernatiion --
If the players don't mind being out of touch with the world for a few months.
2) Best of Corporate Tech plus a little alien extra
Operating at a tenth of the speed of light will get you anywhere in the star system mighty fast. Just don't tell Einstien what you're doing.
3) Gateway between worlds....
Nice, easy shadowrun and walk under this strange looking arch and whammo! The characters are on Mars. The nice thing about aliens is there are no rules. The GM can do whatever he wants.
Posted by: GrinderTheTroll Jul 24 2006, 05:47 AM
| QUOTE (booklord) |
| 3) Gateway between worlds.... Nice, easy shadowrun and walk under this strange looking arch and whammo! The characters are on Mars. The nice thing about aliens is there are no rules. The GM can do whatever he wants. |
Nice.
Posted by: hyzmarca Jul 24 2006, 07:51 AM
In the moniter you see a giant circle made out of an unknown mineral. The circle is composed of two rings. The exterior ring contains 9 glowing chevrons. The interior ring contains 36 Egyption hiroglyphs. For some reason there is a giant glowing pool of light in the circle. Your target, who looks remarkably like Richard Dean Anderson can be seen walking into the pool of light but you can do nothing from your vantage point due to the blast shield.
Also, space is just a rating 10 background count. That's reduced to 8 in a permenant habitat like a space station. One way to reduce it is to have a large spaceliner with enough people and plant like to hold its own mini-manasphere. That'll cut the BC down to 8.
There are no SR4 rules for BC yet but it is easy enough to adapt the SR3 rules. Subtract the BC from all magic related dice pools and add it to drain. This would render casting suicide for any mage and make everything else very difficult. There is also fluff about mages going insane or dying when trying to percieve or project in such powerful background counts but there were no rules for it.
But, in SR3 there were ways to cast in space without surely dying. The filtering metamagic could compensate for background count to a degree. Centering could help resist the enhanced drain. Virtuoso could replace the sterile BC of space with one aspected toward the magician which actually provides bonues instead of penalties. Sacrificing could eleminate the extra drain altogether.
Except for Centering these don't exist in SR4 yet so a ride through space would be difficult for any SR4 magician.
Posted by: Clyde Jul 24 2006, 02:25 PM
As I recall from Magic in the Shadows, space (beyond Earth's atmosphere) is a Mana Warp - as or more badly fried than the nuclear blast sites at Hirsohima and Nagasaki. A mana warp has effects on astral objects such as spirits, astrally projecting magicians, active foci, and dual natured stuff like astrally projecting magicians. There's no harm to the mage unless he or she chooses to: cast a spell (the drain will fry you), summon a spirit (it won't work, and the drain will fry you), turn on a focus (it will die), or astrally perceive/project (you will die). The mages would be basically pedestrians. The adept's abilities wouldn't really work, either, I'd imagine.
I think by far the best approach is for you to skip the months of spaceflight by having the characters dropped into suspended animation for most of the trip. Plus, I can give you two words: dream sequence! Were all those monsters just a bad reaction to the freaky drugs needed to put you under? How's that simsense feed that was supposed to keep you occupeid? Actually, you could have the mage's body dumped in a vat and the mage interacting with the awake crews and passengers through AR, too, I suppose.
Finally, you could consider the magical/alien artifcate route. Something that protects the whole ship from the nasty effects of the mana warp (like a ward on steroids). Such might be useful in getting away from the Doom style horrors, too.
Posted by: hyzmarca Jul 24 2006, 02:47 PM
| QUOTE (Clyde) |
| As I recall from Magic in the Shadows, space (beyond Earth's atmosphere) is a Mana Warp - as or more badly fried than the nuclear blast sites at Hirsohima and Nagasaki. A mana warp has effects on astral objects such as spirits, astrally projecting magicians, active foci, and dual natured stuff like astrally projecting magicians. There's no harm to the mage unless he or she chooses to: cast a spell (the drain will fry you), summon a spirit (it won't work, and the drain will fry you), turn on a focus (it will die), or astrally perceive/project (you will die). The mages would be basically pedestrians. The adept's abilities wouldn't really work, either, I'd imagine. |
Historically, adepts powers have been unaaltered by manawarps. The exception is boosted reflexes since it is the only adept power that causes drain.
Posted by: Cynic project Jul 24 2006, 03:17 PM
I think that the mana warp in space is a radiation thing. THink about it, the back ground count is higher the farhter away form earth you are..Also nukes make big back ground counts.
So could mars just not be a man warp.It could just not be as friendly to mana as earth is.
Posted by: Rotbart van Dainig Jul 24 2006, 03:25 PM
| QUOTE (hyzmarca) |
| Historically, adepts powers have been unaaltered by manawarps. The exception is boosted reflexes since it is the only adept power that causes drain. |
Get more sleep - that's both wrong.
Manawraps reduce the magic attribute, thus reducing the powers of adepts.
And the power causing drain isn't boosted reflexes, but attribute boost.
Posted by: Jaid Jul 24 2006, 03:34 PM
you could always have a force bajillion free spirit use and sustain a movement power on the spacecraft. iirc, manawarps simply reduced the force of effects that passed through them, so anything above force 10 should have an effect of getting the shuttle to mars faster.
as far as the rest goes, just declare that for some weird reason, magic works normally on mars.
Posted by: hyzmarca Jul 24 2006, 03:56 PM
| QUOTE (Rotbart van Dainig) | ||
Get more sleep - that's both wrong. Manawraps reduce the magic attribute, thus reducing the powers of adepts. And the power causing drain isn't boosted reflexes, but attribute boost. |
Damn, I do need more sleep.
Background counts of 5 or less don't harm an adept.
BCs of 6 or more do.
At 8 the mana warp causes -6 to magic, 8S damage per turn to any astrally active character, +8 TN to all magical actions, and a +4 (+2DL) drain modifier. Translated to SR4 that would be -6 to magic, -8 to all dice pools for magic related activities (on top of the -6), 6 boxes of physical damage per turn for the astrally active, and +5 boxes of drain for every spell and every conjuring.
At 10 the penalties are -12 magic, 14D damage, +10 TN, +5(+3DL) drain.
In SR4 this would be about -12 magic, 14 boxes of damage per turn, -10 dice pool stacked on top of the -12 magic, and +8 damage to all drain.
Posted by: emo samurai Jul 24 2006, 03:58 PM
Dude, Martian Chronicle it. Pull weird, surreal shit that involves the nature of mankind's folly and stuff. After that, magic working on Mars will be the least of the disbelief that needs to be suspended.
Posted by: Grinder Jul 24 2006, 05:21 PM
What he means: aks emo samurai to write down some ideas 
Posted by: Crusher Bob Jul 24 2006, 07:23 PM
Hmm, if you are having trouble bringing the characters to Mars bring Mars to them. Their employer sacrifices many a cute kitten and causes the mars base to be temporarily co-located with a remote site in the desert of... All the PCs need to do is steal the McGuffiin, go back to the co-location circle, and wait ~6 hours for the spell to end.
Even better you can add whatever silly stuff you want to have on mars with the PCS.
It's to bad the might mojo also co-located them in time, about 65 Million years, in fact. That must be how all those man eating dinosaurs got here, but why are some of them wearing eye-patches and why do they keep saying things like, "Shiver me timbers!"
The co-location magic also opens a portal to hell, unleashing demons. Can the PCs make it back to the warded co-location circle through the city of Dis? Maybe they'll have to make a metaphorical deal with the devil, and by metaphorical, I mean grab your coat...
Or maybe you can even throw in the un-expected: no dinosaur pirates or all singing, all dancing legions of darkness, show them a better world, a kinder world, a gentler world, where they see what their lives could have been. And if they are each given an ever-blooming rose as pledge they visited that world, and awaken, back in the desert, with those flowers in their hands -- Aye, and what then?
Posted by: Demon_Bob Jul 24 2006, 10:50 PM
You could always twist things around a bit.
Say that Evo did go to Mars, but there were a few problems that the PR guys did not want to disclose. So Most of what everyone saw of mars was filmed in a studio. It is the mars studio where the Johnson wants them to go.
Or Start one run off with, After a run gone bad you were captured. Today you wake up in a small room on a smaller bunk. A strange feeling rises in you gut as you attempt to remove yourself from the sleeping bag.
Something is definitely wrong here. Either your being "Punked" or your weightless meat puppet body is in space.
After making your way to what appears to be a main crew area, you notice a message from your new "employer" playing on the triadio.
"Greetings, my new employees." "For the next two weeks..."
Posted by: Omer Joel Jul 25 2006, 07:17 AM
| QUOTE (booklord) |
| 2) Best of Corporate Tech plus a little alien extra Operating at a tenth of the speed of light will get you anywhere in the star system mighty fast. Just don't tell Einstien what you're doing. |
Since Shadowrun has fusion reactors small enough to put into a submarine (see Rigger 3), it'll probably have fusion reactors small enough to put into an interplanetary ship; and thus a fusion-torch (or fusion-plasma) drive becomes possible, as it works by moving the propellant (usually water) through the fusion reactor to generate thrust. This would generate major thrust, far greater than anything used in RL; it will allow a ship to get from Earth to Mars in a very few weeks at most, if not in a single week. The only disadvantage would be that the engine would have to be used only out of Earth's atmosphere (as the exsuast is ultra-hot, that is, as hot as the sun's corona for the very least); but Shadowrun has effective spaceplanes so the surface-to-orbit travel would not be a problem.
As for the trip, if cryogenics are safe enough, they will be used even for week-long flights; they save life-support costs and shipboard space.
Posted by: MacMoney Jul 25 2006, 09:30 AM
Just try an imagine a mage accustomed to his magical abilities, checking the astral every now and then for hostiles or just for kicks. For him it would be like using one of your senses could make you lose your mind. An analogy that doesn't really work that well would be keeping your eyes closed for two months just because someone told you that there you will go insane/die if you open them.
The mental stress on the mage will be pretty damn huge.
Posted by: Rotbart van Dainig Jul 25 2006, 10:01 AM
Once I send a team to Mars, to raid and extract a person from a secret Proteus base.
(Located near the icecap of the pole and now completely destroyed in a fusion reactor 'accident')
Ares was hiring them for an 'Extraction of an unwilling subject from a remote compoud in a hostile environment, operatives have to remain on-call-on-site for about two months in suspended animation'.
Effectively, a refitted drone-suborital was used, equipped with SCRAM jets for leaving atmosphere on the way back, using a fusion reactor driven ion drive for interplanetary travel.
Any mission information was fed to them with a PAB while they were traveling in their vats. (If the programming of the memories isn't done properly, it fades away after some days... more than enough for them to complete their job.)
Posted by: Cray74 Jul 25 2006, 02:13 PM
| QUOTE (Cynic project) |
| I think that the mana warp in space is a radiation thing. THink about it, the back ground count is higher the farhter away form earth you are..Also nukes make big back ground counts. |
No, it's not radiation. The background count of space is a flat 10 whether you're in low Earth orbit (which has quite low radiation levels), in Earth's Van Allen radiation belts (quite high radiation), or in orbit about the radiation belts (somewhat higher radiation levels than low orbit.)
The moon, which has identical radiation levels to high Earth orbit, has a base background count of 8 - substantially different background count for identical radiation levels.
Orbital space stations vary from 10 to 8, apparently related to their populations. Bigger populations = lower BC. The largest SR stations have a population of around 1000 and have a BC of 8, according to Target: Wastelands.
The rule of thumb I use is that the BC is related to the order of magnitude of the station's population size (1 to 10 people = BC 10; about 100 people is BC 9; about 1000 people is BC 8, etc). It's easy to extrapolate to larger stations. A big O'Neill Colony with a population of about 1 million would have a BC of 5. I don't know if big garden/farm areas would help reduce the BC. I suspect so, but there's no canon examples to produce some estimates.
Presumably, this population-related BC reduction would apply to the moon, too, so a lunar base with a population of 1000 would have a BC of 6. Push the lunar base population to 10,000, and you'd have a background count of 5 - safe for adepts to work.
| QUOTE |
| So could mars just not be a man warp.It could just not be as friendly to mana as earth is. |
Mars' radiation environment isn't much better than the moon. Its very thin atmosphere can shield against most solar flare events, but it can't do much against cosmic rays. Its radiation environment is about the same as the moon's, in other words.
However, potential Martian life (if just microbes and slime near volanic vents) will help kick start a gaiasphere. Mars' special place in humanity's mind is also probably significant in creating a gaiasphere - a random guess, but it's how I explain the moon's BC of 8. So, a BC of 6 or 7 would be reasonable for Mars.
Add a base with a couple hundred people and you could see a BC of 5 or 6.
Posted by: Ravor Jul 25 2006, 05:51 PM
| QUOTE (Crusher Bob) |
| Hmm, if you are having trouble bringing the characters to Mars bring Mars to them. Their employer sacrifices many a cute kitten and causes the mars base to be temporarily co-located with a remote site in the desert of... All the PCs need to do is steal the McGuffiin, go back to the co-location circle, and wait ~6 hours for the spell to end. Even better you can add whatever silly stuff you want to have on mars with the PCS. It's to bad the might mojo also co-located them in time, about 65 Million years, in fact. That must be how all those man eating dinosaurs got here, but why are some of them wearing eye-patches and why do they keep saying things like, "Shiver me timbers!" The co-location magic also opens a portal to hell, unleashing demons. Can the PCs make it back to the warded co-location circle through the city of Dis? Maybe they'll have to make a metaphorical deal with the devil, and by metaphorical, I mean grab your coat... |
Hmm, have they finally discovered how to affect Time/Space with magic? As of Magic in the Shadows that was still impossible, although many, many people were working on it....
Posted by: booklord Jul 25 2006, 06:09 PM
| QUOTE |
| Hmm, have they finally discovered how to affect Time/Space with magic? As of Magic in the Shadows that was still impossible, although many, many people were working on it.... |
Impossible for mere players....
But we're GMs here! The SR universe bends at our will! Time travel? No problem. Aliens? Cool. A spirit becomes trapped in the matrix, gets stuck on a kid's entertainment node, and emerges from the matrix back into the real world as a possessed cartoon rabbit? Hey, you're the boss. Instant teleportation or gateways between worlds? Why not?
Posted by: Kyoto Kid Jul 25 2006, 08:25 PM
...I would have them sign onto the Aeon-Marathon Utopia Project....
...oh crap...
bad GM....no spoilers, no spoilers.
Posted by: hyzmarca Jul 25 2006, 11:56 PM
| QUOTE (booklord @ Jul 25 2006, 01:09 PM) | ||
Impossible for mere players.... But we're GMs here! The SR universe bends at our will! Time travel? No problem. Aliens? Cool. A spirit becomes trapped in the matrix, gets stuck on a kid's entertainment node, and emerges from the matrix back into the real world as a possessed cartoon rabbit? Hey, you're the boss. Instant teleportation or gateways between worlds? Why not? |
SR level magic can't bend space or time. That's SR canon. However, nothing says that SR technology can't.
Likewise, there are ways around the bending space prohibition. Harlequin and Ehran are seen to (apparently) teleport during Harlequin. Most assume that they had used an Earthdawn power called Netherwalk, which allows one to shift physical mass to the Astral Plane and/or the metaplanes.
You can instantly travel to the metaplanes from any point in the world and you can instantly travel to any point in the world from the metaplanes. Spirits can use this fact to instantly appear at their summoners' locations. People who can physically enter the metaplanes can use the same method of fast travel. It is just as good as teleportation.
A version of Netherwalking is canon in SR, the Fading critter power.
At Earthdawn mana levels some bizzare things can happen. There was, for example, a spell called Other Place. Other Place is an Illusion spell that makes it appear as if two distant doorways are linked together. However, if you fail to resist the spell walking into one doorway will cause you to walk out of the other.
One could have a very old and very powerful Other Place enchantment connecting Mars and Earth. As long as no one disbelieves the illusion they can go through both ways. As soon as someone figures out that it is impossible the enchantment will fail they'll all be stranded.
Posted by: Crusher Bob Jul 26 2006, 05:21 AM
My personal favorite illusion has always be from WFRP. There was an illusion spell you could cast even if you had already been killed, that made the last few seconds not have happened, they were just an illusion.
Posted by: Edward Jul 26 2006, 02:05 PM
I am the party Sharman with the initial posters game.
Making the character want to go isn’t that hard. Once he gets there he will be able to use his magic and it will be an adventure, good money and it was sujested that a contact might need help up there.
But I know I am a shadow runner. A deniable and expendable asset, every megacorp has solders including mages that are probably better trained and defiantly better disaiplened than me, they hire me because they don’t want to risk the lives or exposure of using there official force. I am a dragon slayer shaman that loves dunkulzan (ok I was 4 when he died but still) and hates megacorps, he annoys megacorp security for fun.
What is going to make him believe that there will be a return shuttle waiting on the pad when the job is done?
Edward
Posted by: Ravor Jul 26 2006, 02:58 PM
Well, if I were the Keeper of Fate, then I'd sell the mission as a retrieval, that way the shuttle is slightly more likely to be on the pad, not for you but for the MacGuffin, but you'll still have to worry about whether or not the corp provided enough Oxygen for the return trip.... *winks*
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