I'm thinking about making a scenario as mention in the topic text.

4 - 6 man scenario. Requires 1 Tech-priest in the group.

The situation: The players comes to life again after 1 year and some weeks of life sustaning coma, after an accident that caused this station (a station sized like Port Wander, Watch station ect.. that size more or less….). The one who stops this status for the few people, is a medic with some major medical skills, only survived with a handful other men and women .. a generator has kept everything running for a short room of ~150m^2. Only a lesser sector of the station has been cleansed for gear and stuff to survive.. They are too scared of walking around of the area, cause of disturbances and loss of men since the event.

The theme of the scenario: The PC's with the little help of the NPC's have to make contact with life outside of the station and survive as long as possible. Trying to get the station up and running as best as possible.

In case of PC deaths: There will be other NPC scattered across the station.. Survived for unknown period of time since the event (some of them might have been in the same situation as the PC's). The NPC's might be a way to let a Player take control over one of them (which most likely will be after 20+ hours of gaming and stuff…)

The PC's: I have 3 ways of dealing with the PC's can be created.

1: The players themselves creates their own characters with atleast ½ - 1 page of background to reason why they were on the station + ½ page of quirks/keywords/ect to how the character acts, explained as good as possible on the paper, so the players have to change personalities ect through RP.

2: I have made all the starting characters and the players choose one by random. Everything written down with backgrounds ect, explained in the same ways as nr *1

3: The Players meet together with me, coming up with different keywords, Like the players come up with keywords like: Noble, Traveller, Rogue Trader, Ecclessiarchy, Hope, Inspire… But also bad personalities ect.. I will then, create the characters with different keywords only by using the keywords once. This will end up with characters the players have influenced in a less /- middle degree.

Any suggestions about anything ?

Grimze said:

Wait wait wait, you are making then start on a Space Station, and forcing them to write why they are on the station. As a fellow GM, you should of thought of this aspect. Forcing the players to do it is flat out wrong IMHO. If they want to do it, great. If not, I would of already had a simple concept as to why they are there. Sleeper agents waiting to be activated, they were kidnapped, they work on the ship (like a security guard/techpriest), they live on the ship (like a retired guardsman/pilot,etc), this was a lay way point to another destination, etc etc. Other than this minute issue, I like your idea.

The reason to why i want my players to make up a history, is quite simple here. My players normally tells about how they act in normal situations, being it in DH, DW or RT.. But they always stick to something different ½ hour later, totally forgetting how their characters act.. Only DW it have worked better for people to remember, cause the character systems helps far more to remember - with this i mean Chapter demeanour and normal demeanour.. Everything is more or less described how to "act like they were meant to"…

But in DH and RT, you are really asked how much you believe in the Emperor ect, but none do actually care about the questions then we play..

To let them know, that they will wake up on a space station, will only help them to make their earlier life's "chapter" end, and starting a new life as survivors. Of Course the players will act differently from 2 hours from scenario start to 20+ hours of the game, but we need to see the difference as clear as possible - on the paper.

Anyway, i have more or less thought about all this how to create, and now came up with a 4th point how to make PC's backgrounds ect.

I gather together the players, letting them tell least 8 keywords themselves to a pull of keywords.. With 4 players it would be 32+ words, and 6 players 48+. When we are done with writing all the words on a board, every player will now be able to save 4 words themselves, and the rest of the pool of words will now be given to the different characters, which I will make.. This will make it possible for the player to have "touched" his/her character to the point, where the fate of their characters is in my hand.

It will work out this way, to have 4 categories, where they pick on in each to save something they want.

The 4 groups of words could be: Job, Status, Homeworld, ??? (i need to figure out the last, might be the group of everything else)

How about that?

My take on it: this sounds like a fun single-player one-shot scenario for a mid-to-high-Rank Techpriest, but without any adversaries, what is there for any of the other players to do? Besides carry equipment for the hero Techpriest?

I would make the station's problems caused by xenos raiders trying to take it over; the PCs goal would be to repair the damage to the station's communications array and summon help, while dodging wandering xeno patrols sweeping up the station's survivors to use as slaves. That would give everyone a chance to shine, not just the Techpriest…

Adeptus-B said:

You almost had the true idea.. Think like the station is "look'a'like" Port Wander, where people comes and goes (and a few xenos). The idea behind this scenario is not to make one player be the most important player. The idea of me "creating" characters by hand-out ideas of the players, makes it possible for me to make characters who would be able to work together and all of them important for the scenario. One players fx would wish to work for Inquisition, which makes me look at Daemon Hunter (Dark heresy book vers.) for careers and backgrounds ect. This person would be like an agent, to figure out what have happened and investigate the whole thing. Another player might wish to be a guardsman like, which could turn to being a senior sergeant of ??? company, a classic leader to make people calm when everything turns bad, a good adviser … if you get my point.

The Techpriest is just to make sure they can deal with codes and locks to get en different areas of the station, make security of their hiding places ect. This person will feel "more important", but ain't. This character just have to deal with things normal people wouldn't be able to work out themselves cause the lack of skills in technology understandment.

A thing that could happen in the scenario, could be that one of the players remembers that he worked in the hangar bay, retrieving new stuff (like food and weapon supplies). He remember this, when it turns out the PCs and NPCs is out of food supplies and just had a "gang war" between them and another surviving group of people. The reason he had forgot this, is caused by a hit to the head when the whole station turned down and since he were kept in coma had an amnesia..

I hope you get where i head at.

No one should feel like "meh, i just kill myself and hope for a better PC"..