Hi guys. Complete newb here but we’ve been doing world and character burning and are going to start playing in the Infiltration phase soon. I’m the GM and playing the Vaylen. The world’s a merchant league/corporate-controlled mining planet, providing important radioactives and ores (particularly Coltane Hammer fuel) to nearby noble factions in the Karsan League. My FoN for the phase is a “Carter Burk” (her name is Certra Bruk, in a not-so-subtle nod to her origins) executive of a third-tier mining company. She wants desperately to buy a bigger stake of the mining consortium so she can be the Director of the Board. To do this she needs to increase revenue or cut costs. The first step is going to be to engineer a cave-in at her own mines to kill off enough work force that importing immigrant labor is necessary (this is a tightly regulated item in our world). She’s planning to use semi-sentient Vaylen creations offered at bargain rates by “some guy” she knows. Part of the deal, of course, is that she has to have an on-site handler/trainer…and of course a vat or two of genetic material and a few hundred-thousand naiven. She’ll eventually become aware of the nature of the deal she’s agreed to but, by then it’ll be too late.
This set-up automatically draws in our player’s characters; in particular the PC head of the Independent Miners’ Guild, who is going to be opposed to importing slave labor, and the PC head of an influential organized crime ‘family’, who unwittingly arranged the cave-in. The FoN is also going to try other things such as pushing a cheap, addictive drug that makes miners work like crazy (with some side-effects…remember Outland?)
As I said, we’re newbs…so we might be doing something wrong. Even so, this looks like it’s going to work out for us and draw most of the FoNs, PCs, and NPCs into the web of the story early in the Infiltration phase. Any suggestions appreciated, of course.
M
Good ideas, I might steal those! I think that’s one of the things that is great about BE, you can throw lots of SciFi ideas in and they all work to make it even better.
And yes, I think you’re doing it right. Just make sure you’re implementing your plans step-by-step in play (i.e. using the scene economy, making rolls in Building scenes, etc) and expect the PCs to interfere. Plans are necessary, but they aren’t plots. You don’t get to have plots - that’s not something the GM can do in this game. Now if some of this is stuff your players agreed to (or maybe came up with) during World Burning then it’s prologue and it’s cool because they already told you they want it.
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, these are just my concepts. We’ve already agreed to the cavein as the opening situation. The rest are just ideas for things to do to keep things moving along.
One minor change. After reading Bloodstained Stars I now get the idea that Hammer use hydrogen, not Coltane as suggested in Fires over Olmac. Not a big change, though. It’ll be ore for ship hulls instead of fuel.
M
Remember that Burning Empires doesn’t call for an opening situation. Instead, play that initial scene out as one of your interstitial scenes in the first maneuver and play the cave-in as a building (or color!) scene. That said, what you’ve got outlined above would make for a good tension-building maneuver, either Flak as your first maneuver or as a second maneuver Take Action or Gambit (assuming your first action is a successful Assess against their disposition).
Thanks for that, scottdunphy. I was scared for a minute. Whew. This is all really just a “live hand grenade” thrown into the PCs lap so they get involved in figuring out that something’s up. Otherwise the PCs would, I think, be at a bit of a loss for what to do. I figure they need something to react to (the GM FoN’s screwball schemes that are going to get them all hulled one day) to get the ball rolling. I definitely appreciate the feedback!
M
Oh, way to actually check the book instead of my hasty “posted this at work while waiting for a job to finish.”
Plan B, do that, don’t ask for buy in, just do it. Drop the bomb and be like “so, mine shaft just caved in and I’m replacing workers with bioengineered killing machines, what are you going to do about it?” Dare the players to stop your terrible plan.
