Time travel scenarios

[ffutures]

Here are a couple of the scenario ideas I'm putting into the FF IX time travel thingy. These are ideally used before players become aware of all of the risks of time travel. Any suggestions on ways to improve them?


Scenario Idea: If it's Tuesday It Must Be Bosworth
The TS Corinthic represents the expensive end of the travel market. The TS Sapphire does not. She's just big enough to mount a temporal displacer, and has accommodation for about 200, equivalent to third class cabins. She's used to take tours back to some of the major events of British history, rarely venturing far from the British coast or jumping more than a hundred years or so between stops. A high proportion of her passengers are school parties, typically a teacher or two with fifteen or twenty students, many of whom are away from home for the first time. A proportion of these students and teachers are impressionable young women, some of whom are well below the age of consent, and all of her officers and men have learned by bitter experience that it's essential to avoid any suggestion of intimate contact with them. The inevitable result is lawsuits, angry parents, and possible criminal charges.

For reasons that are left to the referee the adventurers are forced to hide out aboard the ship; maybe they're on the run from the police or their bookies, maybe there's some suspicion that some of the crew are involved in smuggling (they aren't) and the adventurers are there to investigate. Whatever the reason, the adventurers have been forced to stow away, and must somehow stay out of sight aboard a crowded ship for two weeks. And of course the girls find them first...

Play this one as light relief, along the lines of a Carry On or St. Trinian's film or Some Like it Hot, with the adventurers forced to duck and weave to avoid discovery and the romantic attentions of the schoolgirls. If they seem to want to take advantage of the schoolgirls, remind them that only a cad and a rotter would do so. Then arrange a series of silly accidents to add maximum embarassment and prevent anything untoward from taking place.

Note: If there are any female characters there should be some reason why they have been forced to disguise themselves as men, and stay in disguise despite the current situation. They should receive even more female attention than genuinely male characters...




Scenario Idea: Mediterranean Cruise
About five million years ago the rising Atlantic began to fill a desert depression; the Mediterranean. It took only a few hundred years to spill over a colossal waterfall that is now the Strait of Gibraltar, wiping out an area of several million square miles and thousands of native species. Now the Zoological Society, the Natural History Museum, and America's Audobon Society and National Geographic magazine have decided to pool their resources to document this event, obtaining photographs and cinematographs of the process, capturing plants and animals before they are swept away by the flood, etc. The plan is to charter a suitable ship and travel back in the Atlantic to just before flooding began, send expeditions overland to the desert to collect plants and animals and document the area, then move forward in leaps of a hundred years or so to document the process from the shore, from balloons, etc. Once the Mediterranean is full the ship will cruise it, taking water samples and observing its colonisation by fish etc., again making multiple stops over several hundred years. With so many stops and expeditions the voyage will take about three to four months. To do all this and accommodate several dozen scientists for several months a big ship (such as the Corinthic or a similar vessel) will be needed, but there simply isn't enough money available to charter it for such an extended period. Unless someone can find a few wealthy sponsors, or attract some wealthy passengers who like the idea of a really long scientific vacation, of course. Or perhaps the adventurers are idle rich scientific dilletantes, and will be invited to book passage for the cruise of a lifetime.

Less wealthy adventurers who are not scientists might instead join the expedition as ship's officers and crew, or have some unusual skill that's useful for the expedition; for example, if the campaign takes in powered flight it would obviously be very useful to bring along a small æronef or some form of dirigible, and pilots etc. to man it. In a campaign based taking in elements from The Queens Own Aerial Hussars soldiers and an æronef might be assigned to the expedition.

Comments

[doctor-toc.livejournal.com]

The "Bosworth" idea is interesting. Of course, with a shipful of giggly schoolgirls, at least one is going to develop a mad crush on some helpless "native" who will get smuggled on board to stow away. As the girls rally 'round to stop anyone from finding out about their "darling boy", hilarity should ensue. Alternatively, one of the young ladies may find uprooting her beau too much to ask, and decide to stay with him in the past, forcing the characters to go on a hunt and retrieve her without the rest of the passengers finding out. When her friends start running interference for her ("because "it's so romantic"), thew players should have their hands full. A wailing girl being carried off over the shoulder of some stranger should provoke some interesting reactions from the locals too.

The Mediterranean cruise presents some intriguing possibilities. Since the flora and fauna of the area was wiped out, it's likely that plenty of previously unknown species flourished in the basin. What if one of more of these species is more than anyone was ready for? Is the basin home to a narcotic lotus plant? Triffids? Burrowing acid spitting death worms? Ice weasels? Brain beetles? Or just really nasty fungal infections and bacteria.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

The girls running off idea sounds like fun, I shall add it forthwith. I've already added an optional plot to the mediterranean thing - the multi-generation descendents of a lost ship who have become part of the past - which given the way everyone thinks time travel works poses a big moral dilemma; they can't be evacuated because they will still be there, and in a couple of hundred years the deluge begins. I can certainly add some nasty diseases for them to pass on to visitors; in fact I need to add something about quarantine in general.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Oh, forgot to say I've added a few twiddles to the diagram of possible consequences of the cruise of the Corinthic. Some minor text changes to explain the additions, but it ought to be reasonably obvious without it.