I'd love to run a scenario around the lines of the movie, but I am unsure how to handle this. In the movie, the crew fall apart as some are posessed by some "demon" and try to kill themselves/each other and take the ship back to "the warp".

How to handle this in game terms? Have the team bring some "red shirts", experts and friends? Possess some players and watch the fun as the players try to kill each other?

Ideas?

I would actually have it as a side adventure when they are in route to another mission. Have the transport ship that they are passengers on act as the ship from the film.

Of course in Event Horizon it was supposed to come as a surprise that they were taking a short cut through hell. In 40K that's part of the course (PC's may not know that though).

Face Eater said:

Yep, Event Horizon is pretty much just a ship re-appearing from the Warp after it's Gellar Field has failed...

Watched it again yesterday, and took a look at the extras on the disc. Interestingly enough they purposefully went for a gothic look, and wanted the ship to look like the Notre Dame Cathedral.

*spoilers for my game. Munchkins stay out *

I won't be locating the scenario on a ship though, but on a space station where experiments have gone wrong. On the one hand I want them to discover an empty, abandoned space station, with no power. Discovering a few mutilated corpses and some clues that something has gone wrong, they won't be able to access cogitators and logs until they've restored power somehow. Of course, this will also activate the gateway that they mad scientists/cultists were experimenting with ...

On the other hand, I'd like them to face some horrific stuff, but if there are no one alive on the station when they arrive, then the only victims for posession would be themselves. So perhaps having some nasty monstrosities emerge from the portal would be a better solution.

This won't be a subtle or investigative scenario, it is a little action/horror sideshow in a larger investigation they are on (and which has led them to this space station). My players like to shoot things every now and then, and I'm happy to oblige

Why not keep to the plot as close as possable with one guy npc as Sam Neil

miss dee said:

Because, generally, players know that, as soon as NPCs start coming with them on missions, they're either going to die, be corrupted, or have planned to kill them from the start.

Another idea would be that the PCs get to the station on their own, no NPCs help, station is powered down and abandoned. When they get the ship powered back up again the experiment starts up and the station could slip in and out of the warp, back in time, one min the station is run down with signs of battle the next it's in pristine condition with the crew a live and well.

That's not a bad idea, Khalual.

I was considering having a shockwave of sorts damage their vessel upon the gateways activation, as per the movie, and then during the required repair period have them face illusions, nightmares and halucinations on their own. Perhaps have the less-than-puritan amongst them tempted by Dark Pacts, before unleashing some sort of demon or warp-creature from beyond for them to fight.

As I said, not a subtle scenario, but with some tension, paranoia and nightmares before a ultraviolent showdown at the end.

Another idea I'm toying with is having the station divided into sections which are separated by huge bulkheads which can't easily be opened while the power is off. Interior doors can be rigged by the tech-priests potentia coil, but for the bulk heads they'll need something else. Hooking up a portable generator, or wiring the doors to the ships reactor or something equally far fetched, I imagine. The point of this tedious exercise is that if the players decide to shut down the power again (a good idea) it won't be easy to escape back to their ship.

As they arrive on the station and make their way to the central core, they will find a dead man there. Suicide. So basically when the **** hit the fan, many of the mad scientist fled (and are hiding on the surface on the planet below, this being the fella they are looking for in the grander plot), while one poor shcmock had to stay behind to execute the poweroff while preventing backup sources from kicking in. Having achieved this, he was now stuck in the central part of the station with all the nasties from beyond. So he killed himself, and after weeks with no power and the portal offline, the warp-beasties suffered from instability and went back to wherever they came from.

Until some poor fool reactivates the gateway, of course ....

I want to present them with some hard choices. Shut down power? Well, who will stay behind and make the ultimate sacrifice? Blow the plant? That will burn the leads to their investigation, as well as pose immediate survival problems in trying to get home. Fight the monsters? What if there just keep coming more? Enter the gateway to destroy it from the other side? Heroic, but probably a bad idea...

I dunno, mostly ideas at this point, and I appreciate all sorts of ideas and suggestions from you, my collective evil demons of the interwarp

Darth Smeg said:

If using the possession angle, the trick is to get the PC;s to break the classical haunted house rule: "Thou Shall Not Separate The Company". Make it so that restoring/fixing some necessary gadgets requires the characters to be on separate rooms/sections of the station. Something innocent and plausible like that two or more switches need to be activated simultaniously ( they just happen to be on different levels of the station ).

Once the PC;s are separated, the GM can have a private moment with each PC at a time. If one or more of them runs afoul of some nastiness, the rest of the party remains blissfully unaware. This is always an excellent way to foster paranoia between player.

Liberate tutemet ex inferis!

Yes, I've been thinking of ways to have them separate. They tend to go off and research different things all the time, so it shouldn't be too hard.

And as the repair-period will be quite long, there will be nights with dream-interactions as well.

Good suggestion. Save yourself from hell... if you are able... Muhahahahahhaaa

suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/5077906/

Here's an archived thread form /tg/ that should prove a handy source of ideas for your Event Horizon scenario.

I am about to launch a similar campaign next month. I used an Imperial Black Ship (the ones that hunt for Psykers) as my back drop. The players actually come across the vessel by mistake traveling along with full power and no crew. I used a psychic null (small boy) as an antagonist/friend on the ship. He is afraid of the party because he was captured by the ship and he was being transported back to imperial port when all "hell" broke loose. He survives because the he is a null. I am making my ship alive. It has become the demon and all of the stuff they encounter is a hybrid dark mech daemon stuff. It is like a Dark Adeptus Mechanicus adventure. The ship wants to them off and it is a constant struggle to overcome the ships attempts to kill them while at the same time avoid/overcome a second team of accolytes from a radical inquisitor who want the ship as a weapon. The first section involves survival and attempting to control the ship and the second part which I am currently outlining involves the ship coming into orbit around a dead world (home?) This is of course if the group survives the first part.