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Author Topic: Pulp setting: you’re on a journey in a luxurious Zeppelin, what happens?  (Read 5513 times)

Trond

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And no, it doesn't necessarily explode :) although maybe a psycho or revolutionary on board is threatening something like that? Maybe there's a murder on board, but how do you avoid the cliches?

Images are from the Graf Zeppelin, which went around the world in 1929

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VisionStorm

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Quote from: Trond;1123261
And no, it doesn't necessarily explode :)


Damn it! That's what I was gonna say happened! :(

Ok...what if the ship gets captured by Nazis who are looking for an escaped scientist they had working on something, and now the scientist is hiding among the passengers. So the scientist sets off this sleeping gas device in a desperate attempt to get away from one of the groups of Nazis, but the gas reached the pilot compartment so the pilots feel asleep as well. And you come out of the bathroom to find the zeppelin unmanned and heading strait for a large mountain, with everyone at the front of the ship asleep. Meanwhile another group of Nazis that were on the back of the ship are heading up front to check out what's going on and you have to avoid the Nazis, find the scientist and try to redirect the Zeppelin somehow before it crashes. *bigthink emoji*

insubordinate polyhedral

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Well, short of explosions (phooey)... secret Nazis? Or is that too cliche too?

Monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday zeppelin? :D

The somewhat unique elements about it are the isolation/self-containment. It's kind of like a cruise ship or an airplane in that way. Though I guess you could possibly more viably escape from a zeppelin since it's fairly low speed -- but maybe too low to the ground to parachute?

The more unique elements are the flammability and volatility, I guess. And that it's a relatively slow moving form of air transport. I guess that might be what I'd leverage -- the PCs are in a zeppelin and some kind of hell breaks loose down on the ground. Unlike, say, ships of that era, the zeppelin can easily maintain active, detailed radio contact with the ground, so bits and pieces of information can come in. Maybe delay landing for a while, then inevitably have to deal with it. Now what?

Or snakes. Snakes are always an option. :D

Trond

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Quote from: VisionStorm;1123262
Damn it! That's what I was gonna say happened! :(

Ok...what if the ship gets captured by Nazis who are looking for an escaped scientist they had working on something, and now the scientist is hiding among the passengers. So the scientist sets off this sleeping gas device in a desperate attempt to get away from one of the groups of Nazis, but the gas reached the pilot compartment so the pilots feel asleep as well. And you come out of the bathroom to find the zeppelin unmanned and heading strait for a large mountain, with everyone at the front of the ship asleep. Meanwhile another group of Nazis that were on the back of the ship are heading up front to check out what's going on and you have to avoid the Nazis, find the scientist and try to redirect the Zeppelin somehow before it crashes. *bigthink emoji*


Hey, that's actually pretty cool! I imagine that in good weather the zeppelins could keep going for quite some time with the pilots knocked out.

Some more interesting info that could be used (that I did not know until recently): the crew were able to reach virtually every part of the zeppelin. There was a passage within the hull that went back to the fins in the rear, and from there there were ladder to the engines that you can see on the outside (and there were almost always people on watch near the engine making sure it ran properly). They could also climb on top of the whole thing during flight for repairs etc. It's excellent for some action sequences :)


Trond

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Quote from: insubordinate polyhedral;1123263
Well, short of explosions (phooey)... secret Nazis? Or is that too cliche too?

Monkey-fighting snakes on this Monday-to-Friday zeppelin? :D

The somewhat unique elements about it are the isolation/self-containment. It's kind of like a cruise ship or an airplane in that way. Though I guess you could possibly more viably escape from a zeppelin since it's fairly low speed -- but maybe too low to the ground to parachute?

The more unique elements are the flammability and volatility, I guess. And that it's a relatively slow moving form of air transport. I guess that might be what I'd leverage -- the PCs are in a zeppelin and some kind of hell breaks loose down on the ground. Unlike, say, ships of that era, the zeppelin can easily maintain active, detailed radio contact with the ground, so bits and pieces of information can come in. Maybe delay landing for a while, then inevitably have to deal with it. Now what?

Or snakes. Snakes are always an option. :D

New German blockbuster movie: Schlangen auf einem Luftschiff

insubordinate polyhedral

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Quote from: Trond;1123265
New German blockbuster movie: Schlangen auf einem Luftschiff

Tamino saves the day, and Papageno takes the credit. :D

Itachi

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Quote from: Trond
you're on a journey in a luxurious Zeppelin, what happens?

It gets lost. With no visible ground or references like the stars, sun or moon, the passengers begin to question if they're even on Earth anymore.

Stephen Tannhauser

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The Zeppelin is the last flight out from a country going through serious internal upheaval, as a successfully-executed coup is clamping down on the people. (For a simple morally straightforward game, they're Nazis or the equivalent; for an ambiguous intrigue game, maybe neither old government nor new usurpers are any great shakes, though they both have points.) The crew have gone to great pains to verify none of the passengers are particular political persons of interest, and have just been granted permission to leave....

... except one of the crew turns up a stowaway: a young woman, pregnant and dying in labour. She doesn't survive; her baby does. And it doesn't take much covert inquiring before it's realized this newborn infant is the last heir to the throne of the toppled government. To make matters worse, the craft is a good distance away from its home realm and has to pass through several nations of varying political alignment; the only way to get protection from their pursuers is to call for help, but anybody they call for help is going to have their own distinct ideas about what to do with this heir, some of which your people may not agree with.

What Do You Do?!
Better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. -- Mark Twain

STR 8 DEX 10 CON 10 INT 11 WIS 6 CHA 3

GameDaddy
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Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser;1123273

What Do You Do?!

Fly it toward the North Pole and then into the Hollow Earth.
Blackmoor grew from a single Castle to include, first, several adjacent Castles (with the forces of Evil lying just off the edge of the world to an entire Northern Province of the Castle and Crusade Society's Great Kingdom.

~ Dave Arneson

Omega

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Could go the weird west approach like in Gunbus. An obscure movie about a pair of cowboys who end up in a ragtag airforce battling a super fortress zepplin. Pretty weird and well done movie.
Or a page from histories mysteries. An airship ascended and far as any one knows... never came down.
There are one or two old stories along those lines too. One dont recall the name of involved some balloonists or aeronauts who ascend really high and encouter some sort of high altitude predator.

Mishihari

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Pulp setting: you’re on a journey in a luxurious Zeppelin, what happens?
« Reply #10 on: March 02, 2020, 02:57:24 AM »
Air pirates attack!    After the zeppelin is taken, the party clandestinely (because they are massively outgunned) must take back the airship and disable the escorting zeppelins.

or...

The zep is hijacked by extremists who want to take refugee passengers to a country they deem safe.  No real bad guys in this one.  The hijackers just want to keep their people safe.  The crew wants to retake the airship.  They players are sympathetic to the hijackers goals but not their methods, but they have a clandestine mission that will be ruined if the zeppelin is diverted.

Trond

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Pulp setting: you’re on a journey in a luxurious Zeppelin, what happens?
« Reply #11 on: March 04, 2020, 10:04:33 PM »
Quote from: GameDaddy;1123277
Fly it toward the North Pole and then into the Hollow Earth.


Some airships did go on polar expeditions. The crew of the Graf Zeppelin discovered that some islands had previously been mapped incorrectly (or maybe the islands had changed....duh duh duh!). You could potentially have all sorts of weird situations.
I love how this huge thing is hovering right at the water surface in the arctic in this photo.  


Omega

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Pulp setting: you’re on a journey in a luxurious Zeppelin, what happens?
« Reply #12 on: March 05, 2020, 06:42:32 AM »
Quote from: Trond;1123438
Some airships did go on polar expeditions. The crew of the Graf Zeppelin discovered that some islands had previously been mapped incorrectly (or maybe the islands had changed....duh duh duh!). You could potentially have all sorts of weird situations.
I love how this huge thing is hovering right at the water surface in the arctic in this photo.  

There is an old novel called Circumpolar which has Red Baron, his brother Lothar and the Princess Irina Lvova racing against Howard Hughes, Charles Lindbergh and Amelia Earhart to be the first to fly through the hole in the center of the doughnut shaped Earth to see ehats on the other side.
« Last Edit: March 05, 2020, 02:01:19 PM by Omega »

Ghostmaker

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Pulp setting: you’re on a journey in a luxurious Zeppelin, what happens?
« Reply #13 on: March 05, 2020, 11:44:02 AM »
Nobody made a reference to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Wow :)

OK, in seriousness, I'd want to do this with a -super-sized- zeppelin -- think one of those ginormous flying malls from L. Neil Smith's Probability Broach. And have some kind of scenario to send people racing through it. Die Hard, eat your heart out.

Omega

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Pulp setting: you’re on a journey in a luxurious Zeppelin, what happens?
« Reply #14 on: March 05, 2020, 01:56:25 PM »
Quote from: Ghostmaker;1123466
Nobody made a reference to Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Wow :)

OK, in seriousness, I'd want to do this with a -super-sized- zeppelin -- think one of those ginormous flying malls from L. Neil Smith's Probability Broach. And have some kind of scenario to send people racing through it. Die Hard, eat your heart out.

Check out the big battle with the fortress airship in Gunbus.