Metahuman Traffic

This is a concept for a one-off game.

In a hard SF setting, refugees from terraformed colony planets are being smuggled to Earth. The game takes place in the cargo hold of a spacecraft. The refugees are different offworlder races, who’ve been bred to cope with conditions on partially terraformed planets. For example a group from terraformed Mars who breath low-oxygen air could have pale skin, visible blue veins, and small air filters over their mouths or tubes runnning into their noses.

Any fairly large windowless room(s) could work for a venue, something like a storage room or bunker would probably be ideal. Dressed with lots of crates and barrels to divide up the space and give the feel of a cargo hold. Heavy sound effects of engine thrum. An intercom to the ship’s captain, who keeps them updated with their progress.

Most of the game would be personal interaction between the refugees.

It sounds great!

Anyone interested in running this please let me know - I’d be keen to let you in on a few secrets and help out with some environmental assets.

I like the idea of this. I even have a charactr idea already, and a costuming is forming right now. Count me in, but only as a player.

R

Mmmm, okay, I can see this going one of two ways…

Either, all the aliens sit around talking to each other.

– or –

Alien vs Predator II breaks out in the hold!

(Image broken)

When you think about the vast majority of people here who would like to play in a game in that setting, I would think it most likely that the second would happen. 'twould be so much more fun, anyway.

:smiley: Great fun either way! Count me in!

Sounds like a great idea, id def be up to giving it a go. :slight_smile:

I was picturing more of a social/characterisation-oriented scenario. I’ve been keen to try something in that Nordic LARP style for a while. Something with human interest built in, and even gasp modern political relevance.

Which is not to say that violence would be completely out of the question. Just not the focus.

How about this: Mars is in the process of being terraformed. At the moment the only way standard humans can live there is in dome cities, where the atmosphere is kept Earth-normal. But there’s a lot of work that needs doing outside the domes. A subspecies of humans has been engineered to work outside the dome. They can breath the very low-oxygen atmosphere.

Conditions on Mars are rough and basic, especially outside the domes. The low-oxygen breathers have become a kind of lower caste on the planet so their living conditons are miserable, but even the dome dwellers would prefer to go back the Earth. But Earth wants them all to stay there and finish the terraforming job. This cargo ship has two groups on it - people escaping from inside the domes and people from outside, both seeking a better life back on Earth, a planet they have never visited.

Sounds a bit like Total Recall. Well, OK, the problems with low air supply and a secondary caste bit does. No aliens or deformities from what you’re saying, though.

You could maybe set up two parts of the hold, as well, one of which has a low oxygen content, so only the bio-engineered people can go there without breathing apparatus. … I wonder if you could fix it so that the two groups of players don’t realise that the other ones are there until they find out in the middle of the game, a la Carolus Rex. Or even have the option of the Captain of the ship depressurising the hold if there’s too much trouble, which would kill some people and not others. What happens to the low-O2 group when they’re in oxygen rich air? Do they act like they’re drunk or do they take it in their stride?

Does the Captain and crew know that the refugees are on the ship, or are they stowaways?

Steph

The captain is smuggling them, so he knows. It’s literally human traffic, just in the distant future. I think the obvious part of the game would be based around the two groups interacting, so they would start out in the same place. Any surprises would be things I haven’t mentioned here, because potential players are reading. I have a couple of thoughts on that.

The low-oxygen breathers would wear filters so they could breath the normal air. See the suggestion in the first post. But I suppose if they lost the filters… well, they’d be briefed on what would happen.

The idea of a low-oxygen game area is interesting. The standard humans would have to wear oxygen tanks to go there. We could make them wear real diving tanks for that. :wink:

hey all,

scarily enough, this sounds kinda similar to a game that I’ve been co-writing for America’s big convention Battlecry next february! don’t worry, it’s still pretty different, but we had also come up with the terraforming other planets and human traffic element… if you want to find out where we’ve gone from there come and play next year :slight_smile:

Danielle

Ooh, can’t wait! Is there a date set for Battlecry yet?

Cool, sounds like parallel evolution. I’d be interested in how you approach this too.

My idea came around from thinking “how can I make a normal venue seem totally otherworldly?” I’d thought in the past about building a cramped spaceship control room with just a few players, but the problem with that is the complexity of building something interactive. It would work best with a computer system that provides a sense of actual space navigation: star fields on monitors, maybe video comms with other ships/planets, etc. All terribly complex and would take far longer to build than play.

This time I was wondering how you could get an otherworldly feel on a shoestring and without all that development. The idea of a game set in a cargo hold, where you need far fewer signs of being in space, came out of that. Also, I’ve moved from thinking about a problem-solving type game to a social character-based one. So, a social game in a cargo hold? Human traffic follows naturally.

I’m picturing minimal rules - hostile interaction is not the focus, but the threat of it may add interest. One hit from a weapon and you’re down and able to be finished off at will. No skills or abilities, or at least none that would be relevant to a game in a cargo hold. Just atmospheric, immersive character play.

It’s in the works for an ongoing space opera larp!

I’m up for any and all Sci-Fi or space opera LARPs.

This could be moved into Game Ideas.