I'm afraid at how smart Jack is now compared to Seth, the personalities are starting to diverge. Within a couple months it's gonna be like the movie Split I'm telling ya...
I like to think Jack the NPC is dumb as cheese and is lazier than most Game Masters, but is an omni-glot who can decipher most languages as well as the anthropological meanings behind them.
21:00 Don't get us wrong, it's a good dog. But if we can't pet the dog in this adventure, it's a waste of dog art. Either give us a dog, or include different art.
17:06 You can actually take a bunch of features of real-life squid that a lot of people don't know they can do and incorporate those. In fact, you mention bioluminescence and bioluminescent ink? Those are both things that certain species of real life squid (in particular the firefly squid) can do. Here are a few others: - Rapid color cycling. Squids have color changing cells in their skin called chromatophores that adjust the color of their skin on the fly. While many species of cephalopod use this for camouflage, squid primarily use it as a means of communication, threat display, and even helping them hunt by disorienting prey by rapidly cycling between colors like a strobe light. - Tooth-studded tentacles. Unlike octopus, which mainly use suction power for their sucker cups, squid--being much more active and aggressive predators--make use of hooked teeth that dig into the flesh of prey. Like fishing hooks, they're designed to sink in deeper the more potential prey struggles, making them difficult to escape from. In colossal squid, these hooks are almost as large as an average human finger. - Speed. The jets of a squid can propel them through the water at speeds of up to 25 mph. They are also quite agile, capable of quick stops and changes of direction. Combined with the above-mentioned color cycling, this makes them very difficult to track visually in the water. -Aggression. Squids are aggressive, active predators. They charge and envelop prey with their tentacles and will try to rapidly bring them towards their beaks in order to deliver a killing bite. Squids are also known to be aggressive towards each other. In large congregations, squid have been known to attack, kill and eat each other while feeding. All in all, if you want inspiration on the squid attack, or any other use of cephalopods, I'd say go on youtube and look up "Humboldt Squid Feeding Frenzy". Big disclaimer though: be prepared for overwrought sensationalist hooey. Most squid are too small to attack humans and even those as big as humboldt squid can't kill you outright and the odds of running into one in open water are astronomical. You're more likely to get hit by a boat than dragged to the depths by a humboldt while going for a swim.
I don't play Traveller - but I use the adventures in my own SciFi system, my pals and me developed over the last 12 years or so (that was started in that odd time, when the original Traveller wasn't published anymore, Mongoose's wasn't out yet, and the only sci-fi system was crappy Star Wars and Metabarons.... So the universes are close enough to easily convert the adventures. Rules are different - but so what...
@@DEADSHANKSPEARE oh yeah I forgot about that, pretty neat little book that one. I think the first edition of thieves world also did that but I can't exactly remember.
@@Lazysupermutant haven't heard of thieves world. I found Hyperborea recently and have introduced my group to it. So far I love it. I think he's coming out with a third edition next year.
These Traveller reviews are great, but they're killing me. I *just* started running a Pulp Cthulhu campaign, I feel like I'm cheating on it just by watching these...
Easy fix: run this module as part of your Pulp Cthulhu campaign, and make the colossal squids a colony of degenerate deep ones (who killed the Old Ones who built the city aeons ago) who are enraged that humans have desecrated the monument to their people's greatest triumph.
@@dirktermagant5629 Yep, you could even put a Capt Nemo spin on it. The investigators are on an ocean liner that is attacked in the dead of night, they are save by a super advanced submarine taking them to a secret base; but the capt & crew are acting very strange, was it really giant squid monsters that destroyed the ship, or the mysterious submarine instead!?
I'm preparing for our group's first Traveller campaign, and I am definitely putting in some Cthulhu horrors in it. Gotta mash-up all my favorite things.
@@daveleonard3280 The best Cthulhu horror is, if the players don't notice they play one, somebody said to me. I personal am in favor of a little heads up, that an adventure might contain supernatural elements in a otherwise sci fi or realistic game - but I'm not against it.
Quick thought I had about the hook: earlier in the video you said that rather than the big fancy proper generator the tower is supposed to have, the local government bought some outmoded starship generators to provide power. With that in consideration, the crew of an active starship should reasonably contain at least one person knowledgeable and capable of properly turning on a starship engine, so they probably actually *are* fully qualified for the task.
@@robertbogan225 It could also be as simple as the generators are already installed, they just need to actually be switched on and regulated to make sure they'll be self-running, which is probably a fairly standard skillset for a sci-fi starship engineer.
I watched series of videos with an interesting real world equivalent to the hook, back in the 1970s a university carried out a big data collection project on plant fossils. They lacked the computing power to do much with the data. In the 2000s other researchers found the mass of printouts the project generated. While trying to work out how to scan the printouts so the data could be digitized they stumbled across boxes of 8inch floppy disks (The earliest form of floppy disk...) which they suspected contained the data in its original digital form. They then had to track down an 8inch floppy drive, verify it worked, find people who had created the means to interface that drive with a modern (2000s) computer and then determine the data format used on the disks. Thankfully they got lucky and were able to meet all of those conditions, as for that data format, it turned out to be a digital emulation of punch cards. You can only imagine the issues if they'd been dealing with real punch cards... For anyone who is interested the first video in the series which is on the CuriousMarc channel is linked... th-cam.com/video/MPOYHQTMnf8/w-d-xo.html
You could also explain the need for the PCs by having whoever was supposed to be doing the job (presumably some off-planet engineer on a contract job) having met with a sudden an unexpected demise. FTL is slow enough in Traveller that taking the time to find a replacement might not be viable, and as said, even a small starship has a fusion plant, possibly the same or similar model as the city is using.
@@robertbogan225 Maybe they talk to the tarvellers becuase their ships engine is the same as the power generator? If they have a ship When I saw the tower I thought what if it isn't a undersea city but a landed colony ship of the original people? If it can be made to fly it could be used to ship large amounts of colonists off world. 😇 😇 😇
As a grossly multilingual person and someone who subconciously says "Skorkovski" any time I want to mention any of Seth's content, Jack telling Seth how to say it was exceedingly funny. Well done.
Jack as Seth's player: these people are weirdly friendly. They MUST be inhumanely tortured! Me: Have you ever worked in the service industry? Crank that up to twelve and that's basically what you're getting here. In addition, the beginning-which I'm far from the first to comment on-shows a real big increase in these reviews being pieces of entertainment in themselves along with more practical use as module reviews and packets of advice for said scenario. And not like this needs a third point, but I wholeheartedly agree with your point of official Traveller art being more like file photos than something that is intended to assist a shared narrative. Especially NPCs, who have these pointedly neutral expressions that show little character if any.
In a call centre right now: can confirm it's torture, I'd quite if I had the money and most people you find in them talk about depression and suicide from the job. It's great
26CLT Used to work a call center too. Customer Support deparment for AT&T and they kept pushing us to make sales. Always made me wonder what the point of their sales department was. Glad I got out of there when I did. I was losing sleep and constantly feeling sick.
Seth! I'm pretty sure you were referring to "Kowloon Walled City", which was located in Hong Kong until it was demolished in the 80s. It was never a part of China or referred to as such. It is a super interesting place. Many of the inhabitants were refugees from mainland China. Thanks for the video!
Lasted a little longer than that. They didn't start forced evacuation until late '87, and demolition took from '93 to '94. Fascinating place while it lasted, and a great setting for crime, espionage, and Hong Kong action theater style adventures. Also urban supernatural stuff and (assuming an alt-reality where it doesn't get torn down) cyberpunk I suppose. The Feng Shui RPG and HKAT were both in love with Kowloon. Sure as hell would not have wanted to live there though, and would have visited only with extreme caution.
@@pstrap1311 I think for me it was one of those wretched "men's adventure" spy thrillers - Remo Williams or something. Did a paper on the place's history back in college, about two years before they really started talking about clearing the place and tearing it down. Kind of wish I'd had a chance to see it, dangerous a hive as it was.
Great going Seth. Your channel is what got me into H.P. Lovecraft and Roleplaying. When I found your channel, I had just started learning about Roleplaying, and was curious on what game I should run. I now GM a CoC and Pulp Cthulhu game, as well as a Cyberpunk 2020 game and some 5e games. I’ll probably pick up the Traveler books in the future, since from what I’ve seen it sounds just up my alley.
i was gonna make a joke but then i remembered it was the mayans that cut their tongues not the aztecs, so instead of being a good funny joke it would have just been incorrect and maybe a little racist.
@@ishill85 iffn I'm remembering correctly Aztec priestesses ran magui thorns through their tongues, I believe in veneration of Tlaoc. Then again I'm just a highly trained house cat so don't quote me.
@@Lazysupermutant well in that case, since as a cat i trust your expertise in this matter; "Nahuatl can be quite the tongue *splitting* language as well! que rimshot.
Wow. Sounds like they missed a golden opportunity for a randomized dungeon. Roll to determine how many levels you can go down via a stairwell before being stopped by debris, then roll on a table for obstacles & encounters while crossing that level to another stairwell. Rinse & repeat.
I'm enjoying your Traveller reviews for scenarios and was wondering out of all scenarios you have reviewed which ones were the best fit for you and your group?
High and Dry is a solid one. And while the scenario has many, many issues and requires a lot of GM help, we had a lot of fun with Mystery of BT-SHT 365.
High and Dry got my players their ship - and Murder on Arcturus station is a pretty interesting adventure / toolkit to create murder-mystery type adventures :D
Argh, I am playing subnautica these days, and I thought this would be very interesting ... Ocean depths can be dark and intimidating ! However, this adventure seems little bit bland. I think this needed somekind of mythos to the colossal squids, and some extra mission(s). Like maybe these squids are sentient, and some remnants of the precursor race which built the cities. And after recovering the power plant and saving the submarine, the group recovers some plot info which leads them to a final mission to deal with the squids master plan to destroy the city. Maybe they are summoning some kind of shub niggurath or trying to activate an ancient weapon, or self destruct mechanism etc.
Cool idea. I personally would change the squids entirely, mostly because I feel that giant squids are best used moderately. At the start, alongside the overpopulation problem I would add that some chemical pollution in the oceans is leading to a super bloom in these Jellyfish/reef creatures that are being harmed but regenerating and splitting causing more problems. The big monsters attacking the sub and city would be gigantic goliath sized mother creatures attracted to the makeshift reactor that is resonating a less dangerous form of the same thing feeding the smaller jelly's alongside huge swarms that latch onto VacSuits and use acidic tentacles to try and reach the radiation or the power supply. Personally I wouldn't have them be sentient just to have them more alien an intimidating. They truly are vast uncaring beings that plain don't care about the people who die, they simply want more radiation to feed themselves and spawn all over the ocean as they once did, before they grew to numerous and drove nearly all other sea life on the planet to extinction and drove the original civilization on tje planet to flee global famine. Make it feel lile a cycle: they find radiation, it feeds them, they grow, the kill everything, the radiation goes away, they die down, new people come and it starts all over. It's unavoidable like the inevitable victory and awakening of the Old Ones.
Just finished a 10 hour study session. Boy did this come at a right time. Love watching your videos, regardless of the system(I mostly play D&D). I think you perfected the balance between adventure/system specific info, general DMing and RPG advice, humor and entertainment. And of course, Jack has impeccable timing. I think I speak for everyone when I say that I'd love to see you run a quick one-session adventure. It would be great to see you in your element, and I think a ~45 minute edited down version of the session would even be better than the full thing.
Hmmm, maybe .... the squid are drawn to the reactor because the radiation does something for them ? Or that when the ancients' city was uninhabited it was their breeding ground, and now they've returned to spawn ...
I've been a big fan of this channel for a long time. This series in particular influenced me to pick up the Traveller Core Book, Highguard, and the Central Supply Catalogue to possibly run for my group one day. Cheers, Seth. Keep em coming.
You could also have the first ship of expert engineers being hired by the mob boss, and the PC's are just hired to carry extra "diagnostic equipment". Then the ship of engineering experts is attacked and destroyed by a rival, someone who wants to supplant the mob boss.
Great video as always. I'm going back through all of your Traveller videos because you've convinced me and my group to give it a try. Also, I just want to say that I watched this last night, and I'm really coming back here to comment because you piqued my interest with your comment about the guilty pleasure Deep Rising movie. I went out and rented it and watched it last night afterwards, and I have to say, I can't believe I missed that movie growing up in the 90s. It was a blast. Peek 90s monster flick. Thank you for leading your audience to such great content all the time.
I was considering putting together a CoC session with themes centred around something akin to "The Abyss". Many parts of this Traveller Module, I could easily adapt to fit what I'm going for. Soon as I saw the squids, my eyes and ears perked up. Thanks very much Seth! I think a PC Investigator with a high ranking Brother/Sister/Uncle/whatever, stationed in an deep underwater trial complex (current era) that has requested aid from our resourceful team, could get us down there for a plausible reason. The threat(s) can even come from more than one source but ya can bet Deep Ones will be one of them, heh.
I feel like a through line common to your Traveller reviews (and from my own experience looking through these adventures) is that there aren't enough maps in these adventures. I really hope Mongoose is paying attention there, because I absolutely *love* everything else about this system. Travellermap.com is absolutely ridiculous and beautiful, the hexadecimal planetary codes, the sheer abundance of 3rd party/previous edition/"official" tools to help make adventures is staggering. But, I'm just starting out on running Traveller games, and more area maps would be a godsend.
You Fukin' RAWK, Seth Skorkowsky. I played 'Tunnels & Trolls' before D&D came out. Still have the original 3 Traveller Core Books - been rollin' since the early 80's. I'm a serious fan of the Lovecraft/Cthulu genre, epic fantasy & hard-care sci-fi. Table topped D&D, Star Frontiers, Gamma-World, Top Secret, all the Traveller editions & played around w/many others+home-brews (had a pretty good unpublished 1700-1800 Pirate rpg) - Hey; Thanks for all you do, amigo. I really enjoyed your recent live-stream and all your great vids on YT. Cheers! PS: I also have a difficult last name - its very German. Has half the alphabet. Includes imlauts. I learned the alphabet at an early age. And got called silly names. Sempre Fi.
Great review as always! I like that you ad tips & small tweaks that might help other running this or that adventure. I should rewatch your videos to try to internalize the types of changes you do, which would help me write some scenarios of my own to get a game going and feel like it's going to be interesting for the players.
Oh man, I love Sphere. Didn’t even realize Michael Creighton was the Jurassic Park guy when I first read it, but it left such a huge impression on me. Now that I think about it, a lot of his sci-fi could be used for inspiration. That one with the nano-bot swarm would make for good campaign fodder.
Re: the squid. One of the things that I've found can really scare players is when something they thought was a dumb beast actually has some intelligence. Given the alien races in the Traveller universe, they shouldn't take anything for granted. Another thing that give players a fright is when they learn what they thought were malevolent beasts were acting out of self-preservation or -defense. Since the squid are apparently sensitive to loud noises, maybe some of the crappy equipment is creating some kind of non-human-perceptible sound or effect that is affecting the squid.
I do make an effort to include old characters and the actors who portrayed them in my games when I need NPCs. Whether or not I reveal their names from their past work depends on the group.
For the setup, you could also have the characters visiting the place on a rando mission, such as a bag drop/pickup for the aforementioned off-world crime boss. Then have the only engineer on duty at the station who is capable of fixing the power plant get killed in an accidental collapse when the sub is attacked and strikes the wall near the plant in which he was located at the time. Mad scramble for a ship engineer (character) and could also lend an opportunity to warn the character about the malfunctioning bot that was in the same location. Perhaps have the bot be the cause of the original engineer getting killed, thus adding that as further reason for having the space cowboys go in.
Another Great review, I just started a campaign running High and Dry, and I have to say your review and suggestions helped, especially as rusty at GMing as I am, it went Great, we all had a Blast.
Expanding the scenario: If PCs save the city, a looter should try interest PCs in a treasure hunt for a old armory in a flooded part of the city. Local government will need assistance with hull breaches and other TL10+ repairs. Throw in a double cross, old security AI, unstable munitions, etc to complicate the salvage
Me: "I saw that cover art. What Lovecraftian horror awaits us in this module?" Seth: "Literal squids." Me: "Things with tentacles where they're supposed to?" Seth: "Yep." Me: "Spooky!"
So that's the problem I have with Traveller art. It's not the quality or quantity, it's the lack of inspiring scenes. While it's not a deal breaker, I find it harder to get into the game because of it. Thanks for putting words on this issue! And thanks for the review of course.
I often watch Seth's Traveller videos to get ideas for Star Trek Adventures, which doesn't always work out. But regarding 5:49, it seems like a planet calling in some Starfleet engineers would actually make a lot more sense.
He clearly didn't play enough of the Mecha! minis game from Flagship Games...or Scale Creep, or whoever has it these days. The Spirit Warrior Empire setting was just plain nifty, and you got to learn some basic Aztec pronunciation to boot. :)
Something I would add after watching this is an encounter with large alien crabs. The reason the squid near the city have been getting more aggressive is the crabs (which are the squids food source.) has been using the city with its anti-squid torps as a haven for years now. when the incident happens some of the local crab population flee from the squids attacking the city by squeezing through breaches or creating their own. the travelers are attacked either after a breach happens nearby or as they get closer to the bottom they run into a colony that snuck into a unused area and created a nest there. the travelers can use defeated crabs as lures for the squid near the downed sub. But that is just my two cents and its probably stupid.
How about a video about lack of leadership? It's something what I have in my current group. Everyone has extremly high issue with making decision, it's something which slows entire sessions so strong that they aren't able to achive any goals.
Are you familiar with Penny Arcade: Aquisitions Incorporated "The C Team"? Each player/character has different roles they do, like one is in charge of taking notes of all items/treasure, one being "Decisionist" who, when it comes to making a decision, has their vote/say weigh more and can break a tie/indecision. In the D&D game the guy who is that role rarely uses that "power" (maybe once every 12-ish sessions), and it could lead to someone abusing it... so people maybe should vote on who gets the power.
When I ran the module I used this whole topic of hiding the planet's overpopulation as a hook for my group: they worked for a noble overlord of Pax Rulin, who was an ally to Chalchitlicue's government, and were sent by him to do the job secretly.
Is that Free League’s Alien RPG in the background? Have you had a chance to run it? I have the starter set on preorder and I’d like to know your thoughts. Great review as always, Seth. Looking forward to your next video.
6:15 it actually does make a lot of sense if you consider how primitive, isolated people behave in general. If a plane crashed on some island with little to know contact, you can bet your bottom dollar that the natives would expect a helicopter crew to be able to fix it. Travellers must seem incredibly worldly and knowledgable and advanced. If we found an advanced deep-sea city on earth we would probably expect visiting aliens of an advanced civilization to fix it. Kinda like how old people expect the minimum wage workers at Best Buy or Auto Plus to be full fledged engineers
Hi Seth, have you ever thought about making TH-cam videos on creative writing or more specifically on writing RPG scenarios? I think you could grow your channel quite a bit and your current audience should love some how-to's and guides on the subject if they're into running home-brews and writing fiction. I know I am :)
I had an idea for the hook: Perhaps it could be an escort mission. The travellers have been chartered to take two or three specialist engineers/technicians to fix the reactors, and potentially a marine biologist along for the ride to investigate the changing squid behaviour and make a risk assessment on them. Escorting them to the reactors could be part of the job (due to dangers of looters and squid) or it could be added on when the accident happens and the danger has increased. Otherwise a hostage situation? Some looters caught the tech team that was sent down there and was trying to ransom them to the central government. The government can’t pay and desperately wants to keep it under wraps to they make a deal with these shady travellers who just pulled in. For the squid instead of saying they are squid I guess you could just say they’re ‘squid-like’ but have twelve arms or spines instead of suckers or something. Or electric shocks.
I wonder a series of cold fusion power reactors piping in water to help supply the means to produce power however they haven't been careful and sea life also being sucked in has been clogging up the pipes and subsequent faults mean every attempt to perform routine maintenance has led to the teams disappearing because they didn't know the lower levels were flooded. In addition to that rogue drone and the squid and sharks accessing the lower section.
So, I had a couple thoughts while watching this review. 1.) This would be a great framework for running an RPG Session/ game based on Subnautica. Just copy paste some of the leviathan class lifeforms from Sub and Below Zero as enemies, And take the Prawn Suit, Seamoth, and Cyclops and use them as skins for the mini-sub, dive suit, and Submarines. You could even change the company/ gov't that's handling the job as "Alternate Earths" or something. 2.) As far as obstacles and what not, perhaps you could have one of the NPC guides be an acting foreman or supervisor for the job, and have them mention something like "oh, there's been some problems with collapsing walls and broken stairs and stuff, but thankfully, this is a work zone, so we have blowtorches and hacksaws and stuff laying around that might be useful." Could give your PC's a chance to find some creative uses for like, Arc welders and stuff. I've been binge-watching all your CoC and Traveller stuff lately, now if only I could find a group to play in.
Total. Random. Dog. This is an example of where I think companies should take a cue from Chaosium. There is almost always action art in Chaosium products. It gives a bit of a framework for visualization. It is both good to look at AND inspiring. Description is so important to being an effective GM and art can be functional as well as beautiful. That said, you HAVE gotten me into Mongoose Traveller and I'm patiently waiting on my copy of Behind The Claw to arrive. :)
Sometimes (although probably not in this case) random images are a joke by the designers. The guys at ICE were unduly fond of putting pictures of larch trees in their MERP and Rolemaster books, which is baffling if you haven't seen that one episode of Monty Python.
Gotta admit, that would be an almost perfect mission for a Stargate RPG. Put the gate in the tower, the locals think its art or something, the SG team gates in. Throw in a twist that their secondary reactors are generating a frequency that is harmful to the squids, and the procured starship reactor will amplify the problem without proper tuning. Have the local workers be honest about the population problem, they have nothing to lose, and they have a reason to think the strangers could help as they would have stepped out of the same kond of ancient tech as the city itself. On that note for the hook on the Traveller side, perhaps the PCs arrive in a ship at the same tech level as the city.
Many , many years ago I played the proto adventure for this book with the arthur as we were both really keen on the disaster movie pulp feel. I think as seth says really go to town on the pulp like nature of a disaster movie. Also consider a villian , as all good movies need a villian. In this case perhaps the manager who has ignored the scientists about the squid and now needs to get rid of the evidence about his incompetence.
My initial reaction is that whilst they just arrived a port official comes over for an inspection and goes over the various details taking great care to ask if they need to perform any maintenance on their ship whilst they're here and if they can get the ship's engineer talking lead them into chatting about the power systems. If convinced they'd offer to cover the maintenance if they could spare their engineer to look at =a ship they recently got sold to get their opinion on it. Of course if they accept they later learn their engineer was taken to the underwater city and the other PCs naturally get worried (unless they all accompanied the engineer cue underwater montage ala Disney's Captain Nemo or the other 1950's series Voyage to the bottom of the sea!) and then they go looking for him/her.
The remnants of the old Sindalin Empire has a lot (a *LOT!*) of worlds with sentient giant squid/Kraken type creatures, many with psionic, or psionic-like abilities. Want to "Alien-up" the squids, give them some psionic abilities. (And the little mouths at tentacle's end as well!👍)
11:18 Oh, yeah. The Cassandra effect. Why is a planet so densely populated that is so far from the core of the Imperium... I mean, you can't even say that it is a frontier world colony because that planet's system is outside the borders of the Imperium.
Hey Seth! Another great video. To Seth & all: I'm hosting a game night with three players who have zero to minimal tabletop RPG experience. I'd like to run them through a modern horror game. Any suggestions? I own nearly every modern module available on DriveThruRPG. One player has already been through Forget Me Not (my absolute favorite) and Ladybug. The others are a bit esoteric or, in the case of Fear's Sharp Little Needles, incomplete. I could run Disassociation but that one wasn't really popular with my normal gaming group. Any advice would be appreciated.
Jack must have increased his Int recently. Did he level up? Option 3 for a plot hook: The technician team has said they will come in two years, and everybody knows that means five, and even then they'll only calculate an estimate of cost and schedule the real appointment for whenever (and that will most likely be delayed again and again as well). And since that will be a bit too long to wait, space plumbers will have to suffice.
Hm. The adventure might be underwhelming - but the core idea sounds promising... One thing I'd do for the diving/climbing down the flooded area would be a modification of the Cthulhu chase-rules. Under normal circumstances I love detailed maps - but for hundred floors, it's not only not feasable, it would simply bog down to a boring grind. I used this concept onces mapping out a fairly big dungeon/cellar/cave system in a CoC adventure. * Ignore the chasing itself and focus just on the locations and ways/obstacles (the dots and lines). * Draw some kind of web of locations and ways reaching from one initial point down to one or two endpoints. * You can have multiple ways to go from each location, you can include shorter (i.e. less locations) routes with more challenging obstacles or different kinds of obstacles (do you want to deal with a jammed hatch or an angry group of scavengers?) And as usual: To reach the next location you need to overcome some kind of test - mechanical engineering, explosives, athletics, swimming/diving - what have you. Locations may contain useful or dangerous encounters or simply tools / stuff to loot or a place to rest and heal up for a moment. If you want to have it fancy (As I did in that above mentioned CoC adventure) draw (or find) some cross-section image - it can be BIG (posterize might be your friend if you play offline). Just import your flooded arcology image in your painting program of choice, put a layer on top and put your location/way web above. I chose a design that looked a bit like the "Eldritch Horror" boardgame - with nice big image icons for the locations so the players already got a hint of what awaits them... Why do those monsters need to be squids at all? You can have a bunch of glowing orbs forming a squid-like hive creature, connected by a visible energy bands. The monsters still can suffer from damage like normal enemies - so damage weakens the energy bands rather than the individual bulbs - or you can have them be real hive-creatures. Which won't be affected by punctual damage at all, but still be susceptible to explosions and shock waves... This way you could have smaller hives or individual bubbles attack inside the structure... The potential of this adventure is absolutely stunning :D
Of all the Traveller adventures, I find the Reach and Drinax adventures to be the most lacking. I was going to run this, and was like, way too much work. Sadly, this is kinda normal for Traveler adventures, basic scenarios that require the GM to flesh things out. Since I use Fantasy Grounds, that artwork, maps, etc are extremely useful, and it is heavily lacking. Of course, there is also a huge part of me that just hates the Reaches and Sindal areas :)
@@SSkorkowsky I love the Marches :) Its where I got started with Traveller. I also liked Gateway during the T20 version. TBH , I would probably make my own subsector, and run things there, keep it small, and I have total control. :)
Marches for me, too. I suspect we may be showing our age - almost everyone who started in the LBB days spent time there, or maybe down near Solomani territory and the Aslan space border. Took fifteen years to play in a campaign out near Hiver/K'Kree space, and that was partly due to a disastrous misjump. :)
On the art thing mentioned at the end... While I don't work in the industry, I am an artist who does the odd commusdion piece here and there - so I feel I xan speak with at least a tiny bit of authority on the issue. Scenes take a lot longer to create than individual things, and will naturally be more expensive. This is a compound issue of both time and finances that some might not be willing to pay/wait for. There's also the possibility of the artist just not being asked for a scene, and/or not given the necessary details to make one. If you're just told "we need artwork for this module. You need to include a giant squid, a robodiver, x amount of tech gadgets and some scavengers among the artwork" and you're being paid to make f ex. 10 pieces of artwork at a set price? No-one professional is going to spend 20 hours on something you can do in 5 (which is part of the reason I'm not a professional)
You do a great job on your videos, Seth. Might a suggest an NPC a bit more saltier for this one based maybe on Robert Shaw? Ref: Jaws, the Deep, etc... Ok, enough from the peanut gallery.
Huh so the ship with their engineer didn't crash accidentally it was literally dragged underwater by a pissed off KRAKEN! Its just that when it comes to the surface it causes an immense storm that covers up its presence with any sensors picking it up assumed malfunctioning well afterward they're destroyed so yes there were kind of malfunctioning. Think Leviathan from Mass Effect 3 sort of threat!
A third way to start the plot and have a reason for the characters to be hired is that 1 of the party members may be famous for being a good engineer or whatever job they need
I enjoyed this! I enjoy all of your videos. A bit disappointed that the campaign itself didn't give more Lovecraftian vibes.. it really felt like it was set up for it. Maybe that's something I'd try to reach for, if I ever ran it...
Hence why I only called it Waterworld. If I can't say 'stuck door' without getting tongue-tied, I have zero chance of not screwing up 'Chalchiuhtlicue'
Since time was of the essence, I am surprised the pc's didn't insist they get straight to work. Also, once the damage has been done by the crashed sub, you could and a time clock to add extra pressure to the pc's.
In a Pirates of Drinax campaign, it's easy to slot the scenario in as the players being experts because they've been flying around with a TL15 reactor built along Sindalian lines; exactly the kind of thing you'd have in the city. And the scholar's tower on Drinax is exactly the kind of place you'd contact if you were a government who knew they'd need to find someone with that skillset. It's a pity I'm already running Gods of Marduk and I don't want to have the whole campaign be about waterworlds, submarines, and giant squids. At some point the players are going to have to do some piracy.
Seth I hear you on the static Art on the Traveller adventures. It seems like with some of Mongoose’s newer stuff we are starting to see some action art. The Drinaxian Companion comes to mind. But there are some where it literally is a head above some stats and some label for a corporation not very inspiring sometimes.
I'm afraid at how smart Jack is now compared to Seth, the personalities are starting to diverge. Within a couple months it's gonna be like the movie Split I'm telling ya...
I like to think Jack the NPC is dumb as cheese and is lazier than most Game Masters, but is an omni-glot who can decipher most languages as well as the anthropological meanings behind them.
Jack just better traveled. Space, 1920s, and fantasy villages
If they saw this they might take the light away from Seth.
Jack is slowly breaking free from the pc world into the keeper world.
6:21
"They asked me if I had a degree in theoretical physics, I told them I had a theoretical degree, and they hired me on the spot."
"This dog doesn't even appear in the scenario"
It damn sure will if I'm running it, that is a quality dog.
And the dog will always live. No matter what.
21:00 Don't get us wrong, it's a good dog. But if we can't pet the dog in this adventure, it's a waste of dog art. Either give us a dog, or include different art.
Had a D&D party that adopted and obsessed over a wolf that was supposed to die when they encountered it. Everyone loves the dogs
@Bluecho4 Hey, who's your avatar of? I think I saw that exact image somewhere before but I can't place it.
How about a genetically altered local species of amphibous dogs
@@jamesmilton8308 so, a sea otter?
@@jamesmilton8308 dogfish?
yes, I went there.
The first minute was a Pronunciation and mythological ride.
17:06
You can actually take a bunch of features of real-life squid that a lot of people don't know they can do and incorporate those. In fact, you mention bioluminescence and bioluminescent ink? Those are both things that certain species of real life squid (in particular the firefly squid) can do. Here are a few others:
- Rapid color cycling. Squids have color changing cells in their skin called chromatophores that adjust the color of their skin on the fly. While many species of cephalopod use this for camouflage, squid primarily use it as a means of communication, threat display, and even helping them hunt by disorienting prey by rapidly cycling between colors like a strobe light.
- Tooth-studded tentacles. Unlike octopus, which mainly use suction power for their sucker cups, squid--being much more active and aggressive predators--make use of hooked teeth that dig into the flesh of prey. Like fishing hooks, they're designed to sink in deeper the more potential prey struggles, making them difficult to escape from. In colossal squid, these hooks are almost as large as an average human finger.
- Speed. The jets of a squid can propel them through the water at speeds of up to 25 mph. They are also quite agile, capable of quick stops and changes of direction. Combined with the above-mentioned color cycling, this makes them very difficult to track visually in the water.
-Aggression. Squids are aggressive, active predators. They charge and envelop prey with their tentacles and will try to rapidly bring them towards their beaks in order to deliver a killing bite. Squids are also known to be aggressive towards each other. In large congregations, squid have been known to attack, kill and eat each other while feeding.
All in all, if you want inspiration on the squid attack, or any other use of cephalopods, I'd say go on youtube and look up "Humboldt Squid Feeding Frenzy". Big disclaimer though: be prepared for overwrought sensationalist hooey. Most squid are too small to attack humans and even those as big as humboldt squid can't kill you outright and the odds of running into one in open water are astronomical. You're more likely to get hit by a boat than dragged to the depths by a humboldt while going for a swim.
Nice, thanks!
google vampire squid
Its has some of the most alien skills you could hope to have in a water creature
Never played Traveller but can't miss a Seth's video.
@@richmcgee434 thanks for explaining what is listening to a channel that I listened for years. LOL
I don't play Traveller - but I use the adventures in my own SciFi system, my pals and me developed over the last 12 years or so (that was started in that odd time, when the original Traveller wasn't published anymore, Mongoose's wasn't out yet, and the only sci-fi system was crappy Star Wars and Metabarons....
So the universes are close enough to easily convert the adventures. Rules are different - but so what...
Come for Seth, stay for Jack.
Who am I kidding... I come for Jack.
Come for the jokes, stay for the tips
Coming for Jack? Phrasing.
That's what she said.
We all came for Jack
Ask your doctor about that. He can prescribe a little blue pill that'll fix the issue.
Look. Every game should include pronoucation guide.
Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea does this with many names and locales. Check it out!
@@DEADSHANKSPEARE oh yeah I forgot about that, pretty neat little book that one. I think the first edition of thieves world also did that but I can't exactly remember.
@@Lazysupermutant haven't heard of thieves world. I found Hyperborea recently and have introduced my group to it. So far I love it. I think he's coming out with a third edition next year.
7th Sea 2e's core book is fairly good on this front.
Which is a great mercy when it comes to the nordic and eastern Europe inspired areas.
You mean "pronunciation".
Very clever of you to show, not tell.
These Traveller reviews are great, but they're killing me. I *just* started running a Pulp Cthulhu campaign, I feel like I'm cheating on it just by watching these...
Easy fix: run this module as part of your Pulp Cthulhu campaign, and make the colossal squids a colony of degenerate deep ones (who killed the Old Ones who built the city aeons ago) who are enraged that humans have desecrated the monument to their people's greatest triumph.
@@dirktermagant5629 Yep, you could even put a Capt Nemo spin on it. The investigators are on an ocean liner that is attacked in the dead of night, they are save by a super advanced submarine taking them to a secret base; but the capt & crew are acting very strange, was it really giant squid monsters that destroyed the ship, or the mysterious submarine instead!?
I'm preparing for our group's first Traveller campaign, and I am definitely putting in some Cthulhu horrors in it. Gotta mash-up all my favorite things.
@@daveleonard3280 The best Cthulhu horror is, if the players don't notice they play one, somebody said to me. I personal am in favor of a little heads up, that an adventure might contain supernatural elements in a otherwise sci fi or realistic game - but I'm not against it.
There will be spoilers? You overestimate my memory!
I watched one about a year before I played it and had no memory of it at all.
Plot twist, dog is the last member of the precursors which built Calixcuel :)
Or
Or another experiment of grandfather
The dog is the contact delivering documents to them.
Don't think the uptick in video and audio quality goes unnoticed!
Quick thought I had about the hook: earlier in the video you said that rather than the big fancy proper generator the tower is supposed to have, the local government bought some outmoded starship generators to provide power. With that in consideration, the crew of an active starship should reasonably contain at least one person knowledgeable and capable of properly turning on a starship engine, so they probably actually *are* fully qualified for the task.
Maybe they talk to the tarvellers becuase their ships engine is the same as the power generator? If they have a ship
@@robertbogan225 It could also be as simple as the generators are already installed, they just need to actually be switched on and regulated to make sure they'll be self-running, which is probably a fairly standard skillset for a sci-fi starship engineer.
I watched series of videos with an interesting real world equivalent to the hook, back in the 1970s a university carried out a big data collection project on plant fossils. They lacked the computing power to do much with the data. In the 2000s other researchers found the mass of printouts the project generated. While trying to work out how to scan the printouts so the data could be digitized they stumbled across boxes of 8inch floppy disks (The earliest form of floppy disk...) which they suspected contained the data in its original digital form. They then had to track down an 8inch floppy drive, verify it worked, find people who had created the means to interface that drive with a modern (2000s) computer and then determine the data format used on the disks. Thankfully they got lucky and were able to meet all of those conditions, as for that data format, it turned out to be a digital emulation of punch cards. You can only imagine the issues if they'd been dealing with real punch cards... For anyone who is interested the first video in the series which is on the CuriousMarc channel is linked... th-cam.com/video/MPOYHQTMnf8/w-d-xo.html
You could also explain the need for the PCs by having whoever was supposed to be doing the job (presumably some off-planet engineer on a contract job) having met with a sudden an unexpected demise. FTL is slow enough in Traveller that taking the time to find a replacement might not be viable, and as said, even a small starship has a fusion plant, possibly the same or similar model as the city is using.
@@robertbogan225 Maybe they talk to the tarvellers becuase their ships engine is the same as the power generator? If they have a ship
When I saw the tower I thought what if it isn't a undersea city but a landed colony ship of the original people? If it can be made to fly it could be used to ship large amounts of colonists off world.
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As a grossly multilingual person and someone who subconciously says "Skorkovski" any time I want to mention any of Seth's content, Jack telling Seth how to say it was exceedingly funny. Well done.
Jack as Seth's player: these people are weirdly friendly. They MUST be inhumanely tortured!
Me: Have you ever worked in the service industry? Crank that up to twelve and that's basically what you're getting here.
In addition, the beginning-which I'm far from the first to comment on-shows a real big increase in these reviews being pieces of entertainment in themselves along with more practical use as module reviews and packets of advice for said scenario.
And not like this needs a third point, but I wholeheartedly agree with your point of official Traveller art being more like file photos than something that is intended to assist a shared narrative. Especially NPCs, who have these pointedly neutral expressions that show little character if any.
inhumanely tortured/service industry...there's a difference?
In a call centre right now: can confirm it's torture, I'd quite if I had the money and most people you find in them talk about depression and suicide from the job. It's great
26CLT Used to work a call center too. Customer Support deparment for AT&T and they kept pushing us to make sales. Always made me wonder what the point of their sales department was. Glad I got out of there when I did. I was losing sleep and constantly feeling sick.
Loved the pronunciation joke, especially that I'm Polish and always thought you are pronouncing your name in weird way ;)
Seth! I'm pretty sure you were referring to "Kowloon Walled City", which was located in Hong Kong until it was demolished in the 80s. It was never a part of China or referred to as such. It is a super interesting place. Many of the inhabitants were refugees from mainland China. Thanks for the video!
Lasted a little longer than that. They didn't start forced evacuation until late '87, and demolition took from '93 to '94. Fascinating place while it lasted, and a great setting for crime, espionage, and Hong Kong action theater style adventures. Also urban supernatural stuff and (assuming an alt-reality where it doesn't get torn down) cyberpunk I suppose. The Feng Shui RPG and HKAT were both in love with Kowloon.
Sure as hell would not have wanted to live there though, and would have visited only with extreme caution.
@@richmcgee434 I learned about it first from William Gibson novels.
@@pstrap1311 I think for me it was one of those wretched "men's adventure" spy thrillers - Remo Williams or something. Did a paper on the place's history back in college, about two years before they really started talking about clearing the place and tearing it down. Kind of wish I'd had a chance to see it, dangerous a hive as it was.
@@richmcgee434 the destroyer was excellent pulp fiction, got me in trouble in school many times
Great going Seth. Your channel is what got me into H.P. Lovecraft and Roleplaying. When I found your channel, I had just started learning about Roleplaying, and was curious on what game I should run. I now GM a CoC and Pulp Cthulhu game, as well as a Cyberpunk 2020 game and some 5e games. I’ll probably pick up the Traveler books in the future, since from what I’ve seen it sounds just up my alley.
Nahuatl is a tongue twisting language.
i was gonna make a joke but then i remembered it was the mayans that cut their tongues not the aztecs, so instead of being a good funny joke it would have just been incorrect and maybe a little racist.
@@ishill85 iffn I'm remembering correctly Aztec priestesses ran magui thorns through their tongues, I believe in veneration of Tlaoc. Then again I'm just a highly trained house cat so don't quote me.
@@Lazysupermutant well in that case, since as a cat i trust your expertise in this matter; "Nahuatl can be quite the tongue *splitting* language as well! que rimshot.
Wow. Sounds like they missed a golden opportunity for a randomized dungeon. Roll to determine how many levels you can go down via a stairwell before being stopped by debris, then roll on a table for obstacles & encounters while crossing that level to another stairwell. Rinse & repeat.
Seth, thanks for all you do. Love your vids and books!
I'm enjoying your Traveller reviews for scenarios and was wondering out of all scenarios you have reviewed which ones were the best fit for you and your group?
High and Dry is a solid one. And while the scenario has many, many issues and requires a lot of GM help, we had a lot of fun with Mystery of BT-SHT 365.
I can not recommend The Pirates of Drinax highly enough. It’s pure awesome sauce.
High and Dry got my players their ship - and Murder on Arcturus station is a pretty interesting adventure / toolkit to create murder-mystery type adventures :D
I already know from that cover and the title that this is going to be the "Call of Cthulhu crossover" one.
Argh, I am playing subnautica these days, and I thought this would be very interesting ... Ocean depths can be dark and intimidating !
However, this adventure seems little bit bland. I think this needed somekind of mythos to the colossal squids, and some extra mission(s). Like maybe these squids are sentient, and some remnants of the precursor race which built the cities. And after recovering the power plant and saving the submarine, the group recovers some plot info which leads them to a final mission to deal with the squids master plan to destroy the city. Maybe they are summoning some kind of shub niggurath or trying to activate an ancient weapon, or self destruct mechanism etc.
Cool idea. I personally would change the squids entirely, mostly because I feel that giant squids are best used moderately. At the start, alongside the overpopulation problem I would add that some chemical pollution in the oceans is leading to a super bloom in these Jellyfish/reef creatures that are being harmed but regenerating and splitting causing more problems. The big monsters attacking the sub and city would be gigantic goliath sized mother creatures attracted to the makeshift reactor that is resonating a less dangerous form of the same thing feeding the smaller jelly's alongside huge swarms that latch onto VacSuits and use acidic tentacles to try and reach the radiation or the power supply. Personally I wouldn't have them be sentient just to have them more alien an intimidating. They truly are vast uncaring beings that plain don't care about the people who die, they simply want more radiation to feed themselves and spawn all over the ocean as they once did, before they grew to numerous and drove nearly all other sea life on the planet to extinction and drove the original civilization on tje planet to flee global famine. Make it feel lile a cycle: they find radiation, it feeds them, they grow, the kill everything, the radiation goes away, they die down, new people come and it starts all over. It's unavoidable like the inevitable victory and awakening of the Old Ones.
Just finished a 10 hour study session. Boy did this come at a right time. Love watching your videos, regardless of the system(I mostly play D&D). I think you perfected the balance between adventure/system specific info, general DMing and RPG advice, humor and entertainment. And of course, Jack has impeccable timing. I think I speak for everyone when I say that I'd love to see you run a quick one-session adventure. It would be great to see you in your element, and I think a ~45 minute edited down version of the session would even be better than the full thing.
Hmmm, maybe .... the squid are drawn to the reactor because the radiation does something for them ? Or that when the ancients' city was uninhabited it was their breeding ground, and now they've returned to spawn ...
These just keep getting better and better, thanks Jack... err... I mean Seth
I've been a big fan of this channel for a long time. This series in particular influenced me to pick up the Traveller Core Book, Highguard, and the Central Supply Catalogue to possibly run for my group one day. Cheers, Seth. Keep em coming.
You could also have the first ship of expert engineers being hired by the mob boss, and the PC's are just hired to carry extra "diagnostic equipment". Then the ship of engineering experts is attacked and destroyed by a rival, someone who wants to supplant the mob boss.
Great video as always. I'm going back through all of your Traveller videos because you've convinced me and my group to give it a try. Also, I just want to say that I watched this last night, and I'm really coming back here to comment because you piqued my interest with your comment about the guilty pleasure Deep Rising movie. I went out and rented it and watched it last night afterwards, and I have to say, I can't believe I missed that movie growing up in the 90s. It was a blast. Peek 90s monster flick. Thank you for leading your audience to such great content all the time.
Loving the pre warning use of Jack. Great work Seth
That slow clap to the pun...
Couldn't the players also escort an engineer(s) to work on the plant and the players are his protection team and/or assistants?
Good idea!
I was considering putting together a CoC session with themes centred around something akin to "The Abyss". Many parts of this Traveller Module, I could easily adapt to fit what I'm going for. Soon as I saw the squids, my eyes and ears perked up. Thanks very much Seth!
I think a PC Investigator with a high ranking Brother/Sister/Uncle/whatever, stationed in an deep underwater trial complex (current era) that has requested aid from our resourceful team, could get us down there for a plausible reason. The threat(s) can even come from more than one source but ya can bet Deep Ones will be one of them, heh.
Hey Seth, Just wanted to say that your videos are great, consistently informative and very entertaining. Thank you for all your hard work!
The advice to provide options between various obstacle is a hidden gem here.
I feel like a through line common to your Traveller reviews (and from my own experience looking through these adventures) is that there aren't enough maps in these adventures. I really hope Mongoose is paying attention there, because I absolutely *love* everything else about this system. Travellermap.com is absolutely ridiculous and beautiful, the hexadecimal planetary codes, the sheer abundance of 3rd party/previous edition/"official" tools to help make adventures is staggering. But, I'm just starting out on running Traveller games, and more area maps would be a godsend.
You Fukin' RAWK, Seth Skorkowsky. I played 'Tunnels & Trolls' before D&D came out. Still have the original 3 Traveller Core Books - been rollin' since the early 80's. I'm a serious fan of the Lovecraft/Cthulu genre, epic fantasy & hard-care sci-fi. Table topped D&D, Star Frontiers, Gamma-World, Top Secret, all the Traveller editions & played around w/many others+home-brews (had a pretty good unpublished 1700-1800 Pirate rpg) - Hey; Thanks for all you do, amigo. I really enjoyed your recent live-stream and all your great vids on YT. Cheers!
PS: I also have a difficult last name - its very German. Has half the alphabet. Includes imlauts. I learned the alphabet at an early age. And got called silly names. Sempre Fi.
But Tunnels & Trolls came out after D&D
It makes me so happy you are also a Deep Rising fan!
Great review as always! I like that you ad tips & small tweaks that might help other running this or that adventure. I should rewatch your videos to try to internalize the types of changes you do, which would help me write some scenarios of my own to get a game going and feel like it's going to be interesting for the players.
The Home Depot comparison had me on the floor XD Brilliant. And yet, so many modules over the years have had this exact issue.
Sounds like a campaign in this world could take some inspiration from the movie (or book by Crichton) called: Sphere.
Oh man, I love Sphere. Didn’t even realize Michael Creighton was the Jurassic Park guy when I first read it, but it left such a huge impression on me.
Now that I think about it, a lot of his sci-fi could be used for inspiration. That one with the nano-bot swarm would make for good campaign fodder.
@@SorryBones I read that one ages ago. Was it called Next? His logical, scientific style is refreshing.
He also wrote the Andromeda Strain
J Hall I just looked it up, it’s called “Prey.” Total classic.
Sweet! Another awesome Skorkowsky video!
Re: the squid. One of the things that I've found can really scare players is when something they thought was a dumb beast actually has some intelligence. Given the alien races in the Traveller universe, they shouldn't take anything for granted. Another thing that give players a fright is when they learn what they thought were malevolent beasts were acting out of self-preservation or -defense. Since the squid are apparently sensitive to loud noises, maybe some of the crappy equipment is creating some kind of non-human-perceptible sound or effect that is affecting the squid.
I do make an effort to include old characters and the actors who portrayed them in my games when I need NPCs. Whether or not I reveal their names from their past work depends on the group.
For the setup, you could also have the characters visiting the place on a rando mission, such as a bag drop/pickup for the aforementioned off-world crime boss. Then have the only engineer on duty at the station who is capable of fixing the power plant get killed in an accidental collapse when the sub is attacked and strikes the wall near the plant in which he was located at the time. Mad scramble for a ship engineer (character) and could also lend an opportunity to warn the character about the malfunctioning bot that was in the same location. Perhaps have the bot be the cause of the original engineer getting killed, thus adding that as further reason for having the space cowboys go in.
I could imagine my players getting to the reactor and realizing at that moment they lied to get the job and have no clue how to fix it.
Another Great review, I just started a campaign running High and Dry, and I have to say your review and suggestions helped, especially as rusty at GMing as I am, it went Great, we all had a Blast.
Maybe in the previous adventure the travelers screwed over a group of engineers and left them stranded on a nearby planet
Expanding the scenario: If PCs save the city, a looter should try interest PCs in a treasure hunt for a old armory in a flooded part of the city. Local government will need assistance with hull breaches and other TL10+ repairs. Throw in a double cross, old security AI, unstable munitions, etc to complicate the salvage
Just made my week, please keep doing what you do man.
There's some sort of visual glitch at 14:40. Anyone else got this?
Same here. Just four vertical bands of colored static?
Me: "I saw that cover art. What Lovecraftian horror awaits us in this module?"
Seth: "Literal squids."
Me: "Things with tentacles where they're supposed to?"
Seth: "Yep."
Me: "Spooky!"
So that's the problem I have with Traveller art. It's not the quality or quantity, it's the lack of inspiring scenes. While it's not a deal breaker, I find it harder to get into the game because of it. Thanks for putting words on this issue! And thanks for the review of course.
Based on the cover art I was a little disappointed that the scenario wasn't space squids.
I often watch Seth's Traveller videos to get ideas for Star Trek Adventures, which doesn't always work out. But regarding 5:49, it seems like a planet calling in some Starfleet engineers would actually make a lot more sense.
Excuse me while I go watch 3h of videos on the walled city! xD
Thanks for another great vid! :D
20:54 *TOTAL. RANDOM. DOG.*
I really like Jack giving Seth grief over not knowing Aztec mythology.
He clearly didn't play enough of the Mecha! minis game from Flagship Games...or Scale Creep, or whoever has it these days. The Spirit Warrior Empire setting was just plain nifty, and you got to learn some basic Aztec pronunciation to boot. :)
Something I would add after watching this is an encounter with large alien crabs. The reason the squid near the city have been getting more aggressive is the crabs (which are the squids food source.) has been using the city with its anti-squid torps as a haven for years now. when the incident happens some of the local crab population flee from the squids attacking the city by squeezing through breaches or creating their own. the travelers are attacked either after a breach happens nearby or as they get closer to the bottom they run into a colony that snuck into a unused area and created a nest there. the travelers can use defeated crabs as lures for the squid near the downed sub. But that is just my two cents and its probably stupid.
Attack their weak points for massive damage.
Good review and thank you for helping making this year less horrific :)
How about a video about lack of leadership? It's something what I have in my current group. Everyone has extremly high issue with making decision, it's something which slows entire sessions so strong that they aren't able to achive any goals.
Are you familiar with Penny Arcade: Aquisitions Incorporated "The C Team"? Each player/character has different roles they do, like one is in charge of taking notes of all items/treasure, one being "Decisionist" who, when it comes to making a decision, has their vote/say weigh more and can break a tie/indecision. In the D&D game the guy who is that role rarely uses that "power" (maybe once every 12-ish sessions), and it could lead to someone abusing it... so people maybe should vote on who gets the power.
When I ran the module I used this whole topic of hiding the planet's overpopulation as a hook for my group: they worked for a noble overlord of Pax Rulin, who was an ally to Chalchitlicue's government, and were sent by him to do the job secretly.
Is that Free League’s Alien RPG in the background? Have you had a chance to run it? I have the starter set on preorder and I’d like to know your thoughts. Great review as always, Seth. Looking forward to your next video.
6:15 it actually does make a lot of sense if you consider how primitive, isolated people behave in general. If a plane crashed on some island with little to know contact, you can bet your bottom dollar that the natives would expect a helicopter crew to be able to fix it.
Travellers must seem incredibly worldly and knowledgable and advanced. If we found an advanced deep-sea city on earth we would probably expect visiting aliens of an advanced civilization to fix it.
Kinda like how old people expect the minimum wage workers at Best Buy or Auto Plus to be full fledged engineers
Fantastic production as always Seth! Please do more Pulp Cthulhu or Gaslight too :)
Nice balanced critique and suggestions for improvement!
Seth, you are wonderful! Great work :D
Hi Seth, have you ever thought about making TH-cam videos on creative writing or more specifically on writing RPG scenarios? I think you could grow your channel quite a bit and your current audience should love some how-to's and guides on the subject if they're into running home-brews and writing fiction. I know I am :)
I had an idea for the hook: Perhaps it could be an escort mission. The travellers have been chartered to take two or three specialist engineers/technicians to fix the reactors, and potentially a marine biologist along for the ride to investigate the changing squid behaviour and make a risk assessment on them. Escorting them to the reactors could be part of the job (due to dangers of looters and squid) or it could be added on when the accident happens and the danger has increased. Otherwise a hostage situation? Some looters caught the tech team that was sent down there and was trying to ransom them to the central government. The government can’t pay and desperately wants to keep it under wraps to they make a deal with these shady travellers who just pulled in.
For the squid instead of saying they are squid I guess you could just say they’re ‘squid-like’ but have twelve arms or spines instead of suckers or something. Or electric shocks.
I wonder a series of cold fusion power reactors piping in water to help supply the means to produce power however they haven't been careful and sea life also being sucked in has been clogging up the pipes and subsequent faults mean every attempt to perform routine maintenance has led to the teams disappearing because they didn't know the lower levels were flooded.
In addition to that rogue drone and the squid and sharks accessing the lower section.
I love these Traveller videos. I'm totally stealing these ideas for my SWN game.
So, I had a couple thoughts while watching this review. 1.) This would be a great framework for running an RPG Session/ game based on Subnautica. Just copy paste some of the leviathan class lifeforms from Sub and Below Zero as enemies, And take the Prawn Suit, Seamoth, and Cyclops and use them as skins for the mini-sub, dive suit, and Submarines. You could even change the company/ gov't that's handling the job as "Alternate Earths" or something. 2.) As far as obstacles and what not, perhaps you could have one of the NPC guides be an acting foreman or supervisor for the job, and have them mention something like "oh, there's been some problems with collapsing walls and broken stairs and stuff, but thankfully, this is a work zone, so we have blowtorches and hacksaws and stuff laying around that might be useful." Could give your PC's a chance to find some creative uses for like, Arc welders and stuff. I've been binge-watching all your CoC and Traveller stuff lately, now if only I could find a group to play in.
Total. Random. Dog. This is an example of where I think companies should take a cue from Chaosium. There is almost always action art in Chaosium products. It gives a bit of a framework for visualization. It is both good to look at AND inspiring. Description is so important to being an effective GM and art can be functional as well as beautiful. That said, you HAVE gotten me into Mongoose Traveller and I'm patiently waiting on my copy of Behind The Claw to arrive. :)
Sometimes (although probably not in this case) random images are a joke by the designers. The guys at ICE were unduly fond of putting pictures of larch trees in their MERP and Rolemaster books, which is baffling if you haven't seen that one episode of Monty Python.
Gotta admit, that would be an almost perfect mission for a Stargate RPG. Put the gate in the tower, the locals think its art or something, the SG team gates in. Throw in a twist that their secondary reactors are generating a frequency that is harmful to the squids, and the procured starship reactor will amplify the problem without proper tuning. Have the local workers be honest about the population problem, they have nothing to lose, and they have a reason to think the strangers could help as they would have stepped out of the same kond of ancient tech as the city itself. On that note for the hook on the Traveller side, perhaps the PCs arrive in a ship at the same tech level as the city.
Many , many years ago I played the proto adventure for this book with the arthur as we were both really keen on the disaster movie pulp feel.
I think as seth says really go to town on the pulp like nature of a disaster movie.
Also consider a villian , as all good movies need a villian. In this case perhaps the manager who has ignored the scientists about the squid and now needs to get rid of the evidence about his incompetence.
My initial reaction is that whilst they just arrived a port official comes over for an inspection and goes over the various details taking great care to ask if they need to perform any maintenance on their ship whilst they're here and if they can get the ship's engineer talking lead them into chatting about the power systems.
If convinced they'd offer to cover the maintenance if they could spare their engineer to look at =a ship they recently got sold to get their opinion on it.
Of course if they accept they later learn their engineer was taken to the underwater city and the other PCs naturally get worried (unless they all accompanied the engineer cue underwater montage ala Disney's Captain Nemo or the other 1950's series Voyage to the bottom of the sea!) and then they go looking for him/her.
The remnants of the old Sindalin Empire has a lot (a *LOT!*) of worlds with sentient giant squid/Kraken type creatures, many with psionic, or psionic-like abilities. Want to "Alien-up" the squids, give them some psionic abilities. (And the little mouths at tentacle's end as well!👍)
11:18 Oh, yeah. The Cassandra effect.
Why is a planet so densely populated that is so far from the core of the Imperium... I mean, you can't even say that it is a frontier world colony because that planet's system is outside the borders of the Imperium.
It's because they're so removed from everything. They're on a giant, romantic ocean with nothing else to do but make babies.
Hey Seth! Another great video. To Seth & all: I'm hosting a game night with three players who have zero to minimal tabletop RPG experience. I'd like to run them through a modern horror game. Any suggestions? I own nearly every modern module available on DriveThruRPG. One player has already been through Forget Me Not (my absolute favorite) and Ladybug. The others are a bit esoteric or, in the case of Fear's Sharp Little Needles, incomplete. I could run Disassociation but that one wasn't really popular with my normal gaming group. Any advice would be appreciated.
Jack must have increased his Int recently. Did he level up?
Option 3 for a plot hook: The technician team has said they will come in two years, and everybody knows that means five, and even then they'll only calculate an estimate of cost and schedule the real appointment for whenever (and that will most likely be delayed again and again as well). And since that will be a bit too long to wait, space plumbers will have to suffice.
It’s like the Bizarro Towering Inferno.
Hm. The adventure might be underwhelming - but the core idea sounds promising...
One thing I'd do for the diving/climbing down the flooded area would be a modification of the Cthulhu chase-rules.
Under normal circumstances I love detailed maps - but for hundred floors, it's not only not feasable, it would simply bog down to a boring grind.
I used this concept onces mapping out a fairly big dungeon/cellar/cave system in a CoC adventure.
* Ignore the chasing itself and focus just on the locations and ways/obstacles (the dots and lines).
* Draw some kind of web of locations and ways reaching from one initial point down to one or two endpoints.
* You can have multiple ways to go from each location, you can include shorter (i.e. less locations) routes with more challenging obstacles or different kinds of obstacles (do you want to deal with a jammed hatch or an angry group of scavengers?)
And as usual: To reach the next location you need to overcome some kind of test - mechanical engineering, explosives, athletics, swimming/diving - what have you.
Locations may contain useful or dangerous encounters or simply tools / stuff to loot or a place to rest and heal up for a moment.
If you want to have it fancy (As I did in that above mentioned CoC adventure) draw (or find) some cross-section image - it can be BIG (posterize might be your friend if you play offline). Just import your flooded arcology image in your painting program of choice, put a layer on top and put your location/way web above. I chose a design that looked a bit like the "Eldritch Horror" boardgame - with nice big image icons for the locations so the players already got a hint of what awaits them...
Why do those monsters need to be squids at all? You can have a bunch of glowing orbs forming a squid-like hive creature, connected by a visible energy bands. The monsters still can suffer from damage like normal enemies - so damage weakens the energy bands rather than the individual bulbs - or you can have them be real hive-creatures. Which won't be affected by punctual damage at all, but still be susceptible to explosions and shock waves...
This way you could have smaller hives or individual bubbles attack inside the structure...
The potential of this adventure is absolutely stunning :D
Please keep being awesome
I think the cast Jack describes right at the end there might be setting things up for a slightly different kind of movie disaster.
Of all the Traveller adventures, I find the Reach and Drinax adventures to be the most lacking. I was going to run this, and was like, way too much work. Sadly, this is kinda normal for Traveler adventures, basic scenarios that require the GM to flesh things out. Since I use Fantasy Grounds, that artwork, maps, etc are extremely useful, and it is heavily lacking. Of course, there is also a huge part of me that just hates the Reaches and Sindal areas :)
I'm a bigger fan of the Spinward Marches and Great Rift settings, myself.
@@SSkorkowsky I love the Marches :) Its where I got started with Traveller. I also liked Gateway during the T20 version. TBH , I would probably make my own subsector, and run things there, keep it small, and I have total control. :)
Marches for me, too. I suspect we may be showing our age - almost everyone who started in the LBB days spent time there, or maybe down near Solomani territory and the Aslan space border. Took fifteen years to play in a campaign out near Hiver/K'Kree space, and that was partly due to a disastrous misjump. :)
Seth are you or have you thought of reviewing the wildmount campaign designed by matthew mercer?
On the art thing mentioned at the end...
While I don't work in the industry, I am an artist who does the odd commusdion piece here and there - so I feel I xan speak with at least a tiny bit of authority on the issue.
Scenes take a lot longer to create than individual things, and will naturally be more expensive.
This is a compound issue of both time and finances that some might not be willing to pay/wait for.
There's also the possibility of the artist just not being asked for a scene, and/or not given the necessary details to make one.
If you're just told "we need artwork for this module. You need to include a giant squid, a robodiver, x amount of tech gadgets and some scavengers among the artwork" and you're being paid to make f ex. 10 pieces of artwork at a set price?
No-one professional is going to spend 20 hours on something you can do in 5 (which is part of the reason I'm not a professional)
You do a great job on your videos, Seth. Might a suggest an NPC a bit more saltier for this one based maybe on Robert Shaw? Ref: Jaws, the Deep, etc... Ok, enough from the peanut gallery.
your description of this adventure reminds me of the movie Deep Rising.
Huh so the ship with their engineer didn't crash accidentally it was literally dragged underwater by a pissed off KRAKEN!
Its just that when it comes to the surface it causes an immense storm that covers up its presence with any sensors picking it up assumed malfunctioning well afterward they're destroyed so yes there were kind of malfunctioning.
Think Leviathan from Mass Effect 3 sort of threat!
So this "reactor" in your aquatic tower city - did you refer to it as a "Zed Pee Em" or a "Zee Pee Em"?
Damn Goaulds and Wraiths all over
A third way to start the plot and have a reason for the characters to be hired is that 1 of the party members may be famous for being a good engineer or whatever job they need
I enjoyed this! I enjoy all of your videos. A bit disappointed that the campaign itself didn't give more Lovecraftian vibes.. it really felt like it was set up for it. Maybe that's something I'd try to reach for, if I ever ran it...
Deep rising and ghost ship. Man, I need to watch those films again.
15:18: A "stucked" door? ;-)
Hence why I only called it Waterworld. If I can't say 'stuck door' without getting tongue-tied, I have zero chance of not screwing up 'Chalchiuhtlicue'
Love this one. Good job Seth!
Since time was of the essence, I am surprised the pc's didn't insist they get straight to work. Also, once the damage has been done by the crashed sub, you could and a time clock to add extra pressure to the pc's.
In a Pirates of Drinax campaign, it's easy to slot the scenario in as the players being experts because they've been flying around with a TL15 reactor built along Sindalian lines; exactly the kind of thing you'd have in the city. And the scholar's tower on Drinax is exactly the kind of place you'd contact if you were a government who knew they'd need to find someone with that skillset.
It's a pity I'm already running Gods of Marduk and I don't want to have the whole campaign be about waterworlds, submarines, and giant squids. At some point the players are going to have to do some piracy.
Seth I hear you on the static Art on the Traveller adventures. It seems like with some of Mongoose’s newer stuff we are starting to see some action art. The Drinaxian Companion comes to mind. But there are some where it literally is a head above some stats and some label for a corporation not very inspiring sometimes.