Trash Compactor

I had this idea for a post and while I was thinking about how best to turn my thoughts into words on a screen, I started thinking about all those great times I spent running the Star Wars RPG by West End Games. There were a lot. A lot of a lot.

Then I started thinking about the Trash Compactor.

This is the result...

Anytime I run a puzzle, deathtrap, or simply an encounter with perilous terrain, I look to the lessons I learned from the Trash Compactor scene in Star Wars: Episode IV, A New Hope.

As physical traps that provide a mental challenge go you really can't beat the deadly elegance of the Trash Compactor. Here is an enclosed space you fall into (as a way of avoiding a different dangerous situation), you can't blast your way out of (magnetically sealed, the rooms walls, ceiling and door deflect blaster fire), which comes with it's own hidden monster (the Dianoga or Garbage Squid), and if all that fails to kill you the walls close in to crush you flatter than a pancake.

This is my kind of physical trap; not because it's simple, brutal, and sets up an interesting environment (oh who am I kidding, that's definitely a big part of the charm) but because of how you get out.

You can't fight your way out, zap your way out, or really avoid it. While I suppose you could do the last option, you often don't know you're in hot water until you've tumbled in and started boiling.

This trap is awesome because it will physically kill the characters but it takes brains to get out of it.

 "Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level!"

 

In the film, Luke Skywalker remembers that his robot companions, C-3PO and R2-D2, are in a control room and that he has a communicator to reach them. Thinking fast and knowing their capabilities, or at least R2's, Luke has the two droids shut down the Garbage Compactors on the Detention Level from which he and his companions attempted to rescue Princess Leia.

Good thinking and a great example of making 'Split the Party' work. I can't tell you how influential this scene was in the development of my personal gaming style and technique. I created my motto of 'DO Split the Party' from Star Wars, Star Trek, and Comic Books. Have the people good at X do X, while the people good at Y do Y. Have them plan to meet at Z.

This isn't the only thing I learned. I also learned that there is almost always more than one way out of a trap. Having watched the film dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times now, I realize there are several ways out of this trap. Most of them much more challenging than the approach Luke took. He totally lucked out by having his allies in the right place at the right time. No doubt The Force was with him. Always.

"No, shut them all down. Hurry!"
 

In order to understand how I think of and use traps and similar challenges, let's look at the scene from a GM point of view. You've decided that if the players can't figure a way out of the detention center, they may try to escape through a vent or some similar shaft. A maintenance shaft maybe. Possible. What else could logically be there. A bathroom/head? A laundry room? Maybe. A laundry chute? Wait! A garbage chute. Cool. Mention a chute or hatch and have them tumble into a Trash Compactor.

Now what do we know about the Trash Compactor?

The walls close in at regular intervals, maybe once or twice a day, to compress any garbage or debris tossed into one of the connecting chutes.

The room is magnetically shielded to protect it in case some of the materials thrown into the Compactor were hazardous or explosive. Also, this could cause small bits of metal to stay where they are instead of clogging the drainage system. What drainage system? Give me a sec...

The chamber is inhabited by a squid like alien that probably feeds off bits of organic garbage and any vermin that get on the station. Maybe it was put in there on purpose to get rid of space rats, Mynocks, and similar pests.

How does this beastie not die each time the Compactor compacts? Simple. It has made a nest of select debris in the mouth of a drainage pipe. The nest prevents the liquid in the room from draining away completely, which also gives the creature a medium to move around in. When the walls close in, the creature ducks down into this man-made, underwater alcove and waits for the walls to pass back overhead and away from each other once more.

Speaking of the walls, how high are they? The PCs (say, a Farm Boy/Jedi Apprentice, a Smuggler, his Wookiee Companion, and a Princess) slid down a chute into the room from above through a wall compartment. Is it possible there is space above the walls? Could you climb above them to avoid being crushed? For that matter, could someone with a grappling hook get back out by climbing up to the hatch they came in after waiting out the crushing process?

Finally, I always noticed that there is a door to the Trash Compactor. Maintenance personnel or droids may need to go inside once in a while to remove the flattened refuse and scrap metal. If the door was de-magnetized, that is if the magnetic shielding is eliminated, you could probably jury rig the door or just blast it open. It also means you could open it from outside the trap (there's that 'Split the Party' thing again). 

By understanding the trap, you understand how to defeat it.

Using this method, I am not waiting for my PCs to guess the right course of action but rather any course of action that solves one of the traps' conundrums.

I can, right now, think of about seven ways to escape the Trash Compactor other than the way they did it in the movie. That means that if my players came up with, "Hey! Can we see if R2 can plug into the station's computer again? If so, we can just tell the droids to shut the system done. Don't worry about which one we're in yet, just shut down all the Trash Compactors on the detention level", I would blink, think a moment, and say, "Well what do you know? I hadn't thought of that. Sure, that'll work. R2 just has to make a computer roll. Sharp thinking there".

How else could they have escaped? Well, here's some ways I've seen PCs escape a Trash Compactor over the past 35+ years...

• Climbing and a Grapnel Gun used to get back up to another chute above the compactor.
• Demolitions and a charge blow out the Nest/Drain cover. Fall down the drainage pipe.
• Use a Jawa Ionization Rifle to de-magnetize the room's shielding. Open the door by splicing.

That's it in a nutshell. The Play on Target podcast talked a bit about this in their How To Be A Better GM episode, saying that when they were younger a few of them would stop a game cold if the players couldn't come up with the one, true answer to the riddle or puzzle/trap. As an alternative, it is suggested that if the players suggest an answer, you simply make one of their suggestions the right one.

My way is in between and hopefully the best of both worlds. It's not that there is only one thing that works or that anything will work. It's coming up with something, whatever it is, that takes the trap's parameters into account.

Thanks for reading...and I don't care what you smell.

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Barking Alien

Annual Crossover

Whenever an old year fades into the beginning of a new one, we gamers, often inadvertently, begin contemplating new game ideas. We can't help it. It's in our nature.

I tried very hard not to do that this time out, instead hoping to focus my creative juices on the two major RPG campaigns I am currently and quite happily running, classic Traveller and FASA Star Trek.

At the same time, it is nearly impossible to resist the lure of the 'new year, new game' syndrome and for someone as Gamer ADD addled as I, doubly so. Better make that quadruply.

In order to quench my deep down body thirst* for something a little different, on January 1st of 2014, I grabbed myself a Gatorade* of alternative Superhero gaming in the form of Base Raiders by Slang Design, written and created by Ross Payton.

I ran a one-shot with three of my regular players and a very special fourth - a special guest appearance by my good friend Dave. Barking Alien fans and long time readers may remember him as Night Knight and Silver Sun from our past Champions campaign.

If you wish to check out a review of the game and some audio and video of people actually playing it, look no further than the ever awesome Age of Ravens blog.

***

This was/is an odd one for me. The concept is very interesting and what got me to check this game out. It is essentially D&D style dungeon crawls in a modern day, Superhero setting. PCs explore the Batcaves and Castle Dooms of a world that no longer has such major heroes and villains. Although gone, their secret hideouts and undersea bases remain, ripe for the plundering by modern adventurers.

Now it's a bit more involved than that and indeed it comes with a well thought out setting all its all that makes the concept really jive.

Of course, me being me, the idea for this game was both really intriguing and really frustrating.

First, I don't like dungeon crawls. At least not traditional ones. I have some nostalgic fondness for a few of the great TSR modules of my youth but for the most part I modified those heavily to add stories to them and make them work for my groups and I. For the last 25+ years, I have dungeon crawl at pretty much the bottom of my list when it comes to scenarios and settings for the games I run.

Could I revive, heck, instill an interest in the concept if it was mixed with Supers?

Second, like it or not, I am Adam Dickstein. That means unless we're talking about certain long established IPs, I don't want your world setting. If it's good (and this one isn't bad at all) I will steal some ideas from it but I will design my own world thank you very much.

***

 

I decided to create a world for this setting based on one of my idea obsessions for Superheroes that I haven't been able to effectively use elsewhere.

Basically, this was a world once populated by all those public domain superheroes I'm so fond of, who were never seen or heard from again after the Golden Age. In this universe, an event connected with the appearance of an extraterrestrial object (called 'The Ragnarok Star' in my version), eliminated all major superhuman powers in 1964. There was never a Silver Age.

Ever since, the governments of the world, evil organizations, former heroes and villains and adventurers looking for a score like no other, have been searching for the hidden fortresses and secret labs of the great costumed crusaders and criminals of yesteryear.

Our adventure found the PCs in the employ of Taylor Peddy, grandson of the original Red Panther. After many years of searching, Peddy had discovered the lair of The Laughing Skull, a former enemy of Red Panther and a member of the villainous Death Battalion. Peddy's family never recovered the mantle (costume) of the original Red Panther, said to be made from the hide of a mythical African animal of the same name.

Peddy would fund the expedition to raid Laughing Skull's base, located behind Niagara Falls (and based on a real life abandoned power station there), if the PCs would return the Red Panther's uniform to him if they found it there. Oh, and a cut of the loot from any notable finds to repay his expenditures.

The PCs agreed, each having their own (awesome) reasons for wanting to raid the base.

The game ran well if a bit short. We really only got to one encounter with a group of robot skeletons guarding the tunnels that lead to the base proper. The PCs then descended into the base and we had to call it quits (work the next day for most of us).

Dave echoed my thoughts on the game exactly when he said, "I can see its potential".

I couldn't agree more, but would I have the patience to wait for its potential to be fulfilled when I could be GMing Champions or M&M. Maybe. I'm not sure.

***

Another annual event that seems to occur with our group (and strongly related to the 'new year, new game' dynamic mentioned above) is my taking the role of a player in a campaign run by my friend Ray.

Since my medieval fantasy campaigns haven't been hitting the mark with the group or myself lately, Ray declared his interest in running Pathfinder.

Pathfinder. With me as a player.

Let that sink in.

I'll be honest, I am intrigued if not overly excited. I tend to not like to play as I've mentioned and Pathfinder is simply version 3.x of a game I am not found of. I am certainly not enamored of the genre it focuses on.

On the plus side, it's Ray and Ray tends to run a good game. He knows and likes the setting and system a lot which is key and I have faith in him to make it a step above when I imagine it would be like. If anyone can make Pathfinder more than the sum of its perceived parts it's Ray.

Stay tuned friends. If nothing else, reading my descriptions of ripping my own hair out should be entertaining.

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Barking Alien

*Don't forget gang - Gatorade is thirst aid, for that deep down body thirst.

Unfulfilled Promises

I am purposely not making any resolutions this year.

I always feel bad when I don't meet the resolution goals I set and even worse when I forget what they were all together. This holds true for gaming and this blog as well.

Last year (and in years prior as well) I promised to continue and/or complete a number of projects I simply haven't gotten around to. Muppet Mondays, Supervillain Sundays and completing the A-to-Z Challenge, completing the NaGaDeMon Challenge and Unfinished Business and mini-projects like The Storyteller, The Twilight Zone and probably a half dozen others.

That Sid and Marty Kroft game ain't making itself...

For this year, I intend to do a few things that I really want to do but I am making no promises. Consider these 'Low Resolutions'.

Here is what I hope to achieve with this blog in 2014:

1) Muppet March Madness Month II. I really want to update the games mechanics a little now that I've actually gotten the chance to playtest it with a large number of different people. Some things works, some things can be improved a little and there are still a lot of ideas I haven't gotten to explore. It is here that I will complete The StoryTeller RPG and add some additional concepts I've been considering. I've got a lot in store, not to mention the fact that the new Muppets motion picture, Muppets Most Wanted, will be out that month.

2) I want to Complete The A-to-Z Challenge in April this year very, very badly. I did it only once and after that drop the ball each time. Last year I only did 16 entries. The year before I didn't even bother. I'm not sure how to do it without getting bored or getting overwhelmed with other stuff, which is what usually happens to me around April. Hmmm. Maybe make it a Star Trek theme. We'll see.

3) Do the NaGaDeMon, National Game Design Month Challenge, next November. While it would be awesome if I could finally finish Unfinished Business, I am making no guarantees. I will do something. Just...something.

4) Posting More Often is a simple but major goal for 2014. I was really happy when Charles Akins, of the increasingly intriguing blog site Dyvers, included Barking Alien on his Great Blog Roll Call list, complete with a short but positive review, but bummed to see he listed it as being updated "About ten times a month". When I looked back at my average over the year and realized how accurate that was, I felt kind of ashamed. I can do better than that. I have a lot more to say and I will find a way to say it.

5) I Will Try Not To Start What I Can't Finish. I don't want another post of this nature next year. Expect fewer new projects this year in favor of going into depth on those subjects I love: Star Trek, Superheroes, Muppets, Traveller, Comedy, Star Wars, Mecha/Giant Robots, general Science Fiction gaming and Medieval Folklore will provide the core content.

That brings me to a few minor "sub-resolutions":

A. Talk more about Star Trek RPGs since I am running a new campaign.

B. Talk about Star Wars gaming. I can't believe I've done so little of that and played it so often.

C. Comprehend Pathfinder. One of my players is going to run it and I am switching to the role of player for that campaign. Will I survive? Will he?

D. Podcasts. Listen to more and if at all possible, do one. This is high on the 'I want to!' list.

E. I am thinking of going back to an old hobby of mine that actually made me some money. I have a hankering to build Japanese Mecha plastic model kits once more. I used to build them, kitbash and customize them, paint them up and sell them. I always kept a few around to inspire ideas for Mekton, so don't be surprised if that happens this time around as well.

Well, that's all for now.

I have a numbers of ideas for posts in the pipeline so maybe come back tonight and see if there are any updates.

Laters,

AD
Barking Alien

Great Expectations...No Relation - Part II

Let's end the 2013 on a high note, by talking about how utterly fantastic I am.

In case you missed my last post and haven't been informed, I am a Great GM.

Possibly the greatest.

***

DISCLAIMER: The idea that Adam may be the greatest, living GM on the planet is completely conjectural. There is no direct evidence to support this claim. Indirect evidence, in the form of his players returning week after week or travelling great distances to be in one of his games is noted, but not held as definitive proof of the aforementioned concept.

This is, for all intent and purpose, an opinion. Note that the opinions of the writer of this post are not necessarily those of Barking Alien, the blog, or its staff and/or owner.

Even though it's all the same guy.

***

Now then, all of this started thanks to the Play on Target podcast and their most recent episode at the time of this post, How to be a Better GM.

In the first part of this two part analysis of what makes me so cool as a referee and storyteller, I took a close look as the failings and weaknesses of my esteemed peers and showed off my superiority by explaining how I easily and effortlessly avoid or remedy such issues myself.

Mostly. Ahem.

I could continue with those same efforts here, but why bother really? I considered doing so, especially discussing Pacing* and Sharing the Spotlight* and a few of the other subjects they touch upon. I may at some later date. It seems to me though that focusing on my vast and unparalleled superiority is not necessarily the best way to give all of you less knowledgeable, more, hmmm, peon-ish GMs, advice that will elevate you to a higher state of the craft (not as high as myself of course but you can dream). Instead...

Barkley...what are you doing with that strange blue rock? It looks a lot like the red one I found not too long ago. Very similar in fact...

That's what I'm hoping.

*BOING*

 

What...who...where?! What the heck is going on? Where am I? Wait...hmmm...Great Expectations...Awesome...weaknesses of my peers...Holy H-E-Double Hockey Sticks! Did I write this. Barkley, what happened.

 

Red Kryptonite. You found a piece over the holidays I guess and it made you go all evil like. Luckily I keep a piece of Blue Kryptonite around for just such an emergency.

 

 

Whoah. Thanks old friend. I can't believe...I want to apologize to everyone. I am not normally this much of a jerk.

 

Yeah. He keeps his jerk very much under control. Usually it's just a well honed sense of snarkiness.

 

Um...yes...thanks Barkley.

Sorry again everyone. The truth of the matter though is that many of the issues brought up during the podcast are not ones I have. Generally speaking I'm pretty darn good at the elements mentioned. I do have my weaknesses and drawbacks of course, just like everyone else. Susceptibility to Kryptonite not withstanding.

 


In an upcoming post I will go into greater detail on my own weak points in hopes of soliciting some advice and help in those areas. I also want to go over some honest recommendations for a few of the remaining areas mentioned in the 'How to Be a Better GM' podcast that I think I really can help with (or at the very least, tell you what helped me).

Happy New Year Everybody and I wish you Great Gaming in 2014!

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Barking Alien

*I actually would like to discuss Pacing and Sharing The Spotlight in more detail as these are areas I think I have made great strides in over the course of my experience with this hobby. At the same time, doing so may take an entire post each so I'm leaving my thoughts on these off this post to be examined more closely another day.



 

High Resolution

To me 2013 was equal parts good and rough. Last night I was looking forward to going to bed and getting to 2014 as soon as possible.

Financial and related woes were many and major at times but I feel I made some strong personal growth and accomplishments that I hope to continue with this year. Sorry to get all 'feels' on you guys.

The gaming in 2013 was both absolutely awesome (Traveller, Star Trek) and depressingly dismal (Pendragon). There was a lot more good than bad though and I feeling very positive about gaming going into the future.

My only Resolution this year is to make it better than the last one in every way possible.

Happy New Year to everyone and here's to your health, happiness and fortune in 2014.

Cheers!

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Barking Alien