>>193792>>193786On a very basic, very fundamental level, you're not getting it. You are not understanding it. To understand the
what try to understand the
why.
You've DMed games, right? You've DMed several games and are currently DMing at least one. And then you've played other games. You've played other TTRPGs, you've played video game RPGs, you've played non-RPG video games, and you've watched movies. At least I'm pretty sure you have. Please please
please to look at this from the perspective of a GM. Or from a game design perspective. Just try to think about
why.
Ask yourself,
why would I try to get the party to go to the boiler room? Why would I try to get the party to eliminate the Petrushkas? It's because I want the party to explore the ship. Let me repeat that, because it's very important and I don't know what gets through.
I'm trying to get the party to go through the ship.
Think about it. The boiler room is located on the lowest deck in the middle of the ship. In order to get to it, you'd have to walk through the crew deck, which is the biggest area of the ship, and thus by many locations of interest. Then you'd have to walk past the supply level and into the boiler room itself. That's several of the most interesting areas of the ship. And then if after that, you wanted to find someone who is ambiguously located on the Bridge deck, well, then you'd have to go upwards past all of those things, then past the boat deck, then up to the bridge deck. On all of these levels are multiple areas that at least to me are interesting or have opportunities. These include the galley, kitchen, and crew quarters on the crew deck, the boiler room itself, then the officers' quarters, the Captains' room, the navigation room, the radio room, and the actual bridge of the ship. Even if these two tasks alone didn't necessarily make the players go through these individual areas it would at least get them near them.
Just seriously. The purpose of the lights flickering and going out is to give the players an in universe reason to want to go to the boiler room. The purpose of saying that the traveler is propped up by his followers is to give the players a reason to go through the ship to kill, knock unconscious, disconnect, or otherwise remove the followers of the traveller.
The purpose is to use the location.
As I said in a previous post, the first half of the twentieth century is an age of machines. Among these are automobiles, planes, trains, and ships. I think ships are cool. A big cargo ship like the Kostroma has its own kitchens, many crew quarters, a hierarchy and class system within it, a bridge, big cool engines, and massive cargo holds. This is probably the only time I can actually use that kind of environment anywhere.
And then it's so much more than that, because this is also the only time that the party is likely to face an enemy that can just materialize things. Think about it. It's a derelict cargo freighter where you fight an eldrich abomination. How many times has this been used in media? How many different works have used this? How many things could you do with it? So far the party has fought mind controlled enemies, aberrations, and summoned outsiders. But there's many more kinds of enemies and problems that could be faced.
There have been many, many encounters I have wanted to do that I have not gotten to. I wanted to have the party fight undead at the medieval village, but wasn't able to do it. I wanted the Traveller to make an appearance of viking griffins to fight, or make an illusion of going back in time. that didn't happen. By far and away the biggest miss of the whole questline has been that not once has there been a pitched battle with the stalliongrad forces. I really wanted to use a full squad of soliders with their own special weapons. A combat magician, a light machine gun that you'd want to neutralize before it got deployed, elite soldiers within the group that would be armed with more powerful weapons, and more than anything else, a bard that would sing or play classic soviet songs that I love.
I was going to have a squad of soldiers attack the party at the airship. They would walk through the mist and shoot at the airship, and the party could take cover in teh wreckage or around the rocks. Instead Kira found it by mistake as it was moving towards them, then lost all of her HP in a single round, then Cavaliere said "I can 1v10 them in the open" for reasons beyond me, then you decided you were going to dispose of your dreads by suiciding them against this group. The battle didn't happen. Then I thought I could make a battle at the lighthouse, which could be cool because you have a gunner in the lighthouse and monsters to make it a 3 way battle. That didn't happen, it was toss grenades and leave. Then I thought I could make a battle happen on the way to the village. That didn't happen, the party snuck around them. Okay, well I thought that leaving the village I could have the party find the last airpony in a supply shed just outside of the village, then they get shot out by the GRU and a 3 way battle commences with monsters. I could not, no matter what I did, get the party to step forward, so that battle was scrapped and the last airpony was placed elsewhere. So at no point anywhere was there a battle with the spetsnaz.
There are so many things you can do with the Kostroma. There's environmental storytelling about how the mutiny went down. There's the mystery of the missing pirates. There's potentially survivors taken from the snow pony village, or ponies killed or otherwise made causalities of by the traveler before the main mutiny. There's a captain of the ship and an officer class. There was supposed to be a whole third villain of a Griffin from Skynavia to accompany Lightwater. There's the other cargo the ship was carrying. Then there's many unique types of enemies and challenges. I want to say more, but I'm out of characters.