Adventure! RPG - Aaagh! They Bought a Dirigible!

[Arcanum_V]

Much to my surprise, my Adventure!rs decided that the very best way to travel across Siberia would be to buy their very own slightly used ex-Soviet dirigible. They've already begun their plans to turn it into a mobile headquarters, which means that we need to go beyond the few abstract statistics about passenger capacity in the Adventure! core book. I need floorplans, measurements, and cross-sections of the gondola, passenger areas, and cargo areas of what the book calls a "small dirigible" (like the Hindenburg) so we can figure out how they can remodel their new toy. Can anybody point me towards Web sites or books that have what I need?

[ezekiel]

floorplans:

http://www.aht.ndirect.co.uk/airships/inte...100Interior.htm

Btw, while I was searching I found this:

http://www.heliograph.com/trmgs/trmgs3/qvzp.shtml

perfect adventure for Adventure!

[ProfPotts]

The Hindenburg (at 245 meters long, 41 meters across & with a capacity of 198,240 cubic meters) was the largest flying machine ever made - it was not a 'small dirigible'!

The R101, the largest ever British airship was 237 meters long (after an extra bay was added - she started at 223 meters), & had a capacity of 155,760 cubic meters.

A 'small dirigible' would be more like the 63 meter long C Star Class (with a capacity of a mere 5950 cubic meters).

Airship principles:

Air weighs around 34 kg per 28 cubic meters, hydrogen weighs only 2 kg for the same volume, granting 32 kg of lift. Helium weighs 4 kg for the same volume, granting only 30 kg of lift per 28 cubic meters.

Gross lift is based on the volume of the gas in the airbags, useful lift is gross lift minus the weight of the dirigible's structure. 907 cubic meters of hydrogen grant about a ton of gross lift, whilst it takes 977 cubic meters of helium to do the same.

Because the airship's surface area increases less rapidly than it's volume when you increase it's size, the larger the airship, the more lift you're going to get for your reduction in speed due to drag (e.g. an airship 3x as long has 9x the surface area & drag, but 27x the lift).

Rigid airships (dirigibles) can have engines bolted on all over the place, unlike non-rigid, thanks to the superstructure running throughout the ship, & overall size is only really limited by your resources.

Airships rise by releasing ballast (usually water) & lower by releasing gas. They steer via rudders & elevators (horizontal rudders), & can also do things like release ballast in a specific section to move the centre of gravity or lift. The shape of the airship also acts like an aeroplane's wing, giving a certain amount of dynamic lift as well (as opposed to the static lift of the gas).

No airship has yet exceeded (or even reached) 160 kph.

[Thanks to "Airships" by Patrick Abbott, ISBN 0 7478 0084 7]

[ezekiel]

Btw, here's an interesting article on the ion engine for airship propulsion

http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0505/5909170a.html

[Arcanum_V]

The Hindenburg (at 245 meters long, 41 meters across & with a capacity of 198,240 cubic meters) was the largest flying machine ever made - it was not a 'small dirigible'!

A 'small dirigible' would be more like the 63 meter long C Star Class (with a capacity of a mere 5950 cubic meters).

The Adventure! core book gives 50 as the passenger capacity of a "small dirigible" and 500-1000 as the capacity of a large one. The passenger of capacity of the Hindenburg was between 50 and 72 with a crew of 50 (there were 97 people on board when she burned), so in Adventure! terms, the Hindenburg is a small dirigible. I'm not quite sure what they imagine a "large dirigible" to be, but I picture it as the 1920s equivalent of a SHIELD helicarrier, only with lighter-than-air bags.

The C Star airships are non-rigid and have crews of 4, which makes them closer to "small blimps" in Adventure!'s rules.

Thanks for the links, ezekiel. That's exactly what I need: you've saved me a couple hours in the library!

[ProfPotts]

Ah, but the Hindenburg was the height of luxury - she didn't have rows of seats like a modern aircraft. Some of that 500+ passenger space is taken up by stuff like the grand piano & the ballroom, not to mention cargo space. Add 'settling-in' to that 500 passengers & you get a more reasonable 334 people who can live on board (111 crew & 223 passengers at a 1:2 crew:passenger ratio) - still a lot, but a bit closer (& still no room for cargo).

A small dirigible, plus settling-in, could manage 34 people (11 crew & 23 passengers) maximum, which isn't enough for a ship like the Hindenburg.

At a quarter of a kilometer long, I'm thinking she could have seated more than 97 people if needed...

[Arcanum_V]

Fine. Whatever. In your game, the Hindenburg can be a large dirigible. In mine, the Hindenburg is a small one. In your game, the characters would still be trying to figure out how to get from St. Petersburg to Magadan as quickly as possible. In mine, they've already bought their dirigible, crossed the Pole, circled and surveyed Gora Pobeda, landed to look at the exhaust of the underground technotopia, and are in the midst of a cliffhanger as they're about to be attacked by armored cybernetic polar bears on snowmobiles.

[ProfPotts]

What? ::confused

[moving_target]

::blink yes, I would like a little more info about the armored cybernetic polar bears on snowmobiles ::blink

[phoenix]

yes, I would like a little more info about the armored cybernetic polar bears on snowmobiles

I've been pimping out Glacier. ::satisfied

[Arcanum_V]

The short answer is that the polar bears are basically Ro-Man from Robot Monster, only instead of gorilla bodies with robot heads, they're polar bears with robot heads.

The longer answer is rather complicated, but (I hope) full of Adventure! potential.

Begin with the premise that my Adventure! game is set in 1999 and makes no attempt at all to connect with Aberrant continuity. The characters are modern-day action-adventure heroes in a mostly modern world, only with some Adventure!-like changes (like more common dirigibles). I accept the flavor text in the Adventure! core book as canonical, and the player characters are allowed access to nearly all of it. Some of the characters have not died, including the Tao-ch'u Lung and the Machinatrix.

Around 1910, explorers found gold near the Kolyma range in northeastern Siberia. In 1929, Joseph Stalin assumed control of the USSR. In the 1930s, Stalin set up the gulag system and used forced labor to mine those gold fields. Over the next 30 years or so, millions of Russians sentenced to the gulags died in forced labor and unsurvivable living conditions.

In my storyline, the Machinatrix made an arrangement with Nikita Khrushchev and the later Russian leaders to operate a gulag called "Victory Collective" at the base of Gora Pobeda. In exchange for a steady supply of inmates and a certain amount of freedom from scrutiny, she would supply the USSR with technological advancements and a regular quota of manufactured goods and refined materials. Of course, she's only doing this so she can continue her work on the perfect society, at least as she defines it. This relationship has lasted until the present day (1999).

1956 — Victory Collective is “shut down” under Nikita Khrushchev, but remains a secret gulag used by the KGB.

1960s — The Machinatrix rents the gulag from the KGB and begins to build her technotopia. In exchange for raw materials and finished goods, she’s allowed to do pretty much whatever she wants. The KGB continues to send her “disappeared” dissidents and criminals, and even begins filling requests for specific ratios and specific descriptions of men and women.

1965 — By the mid-1960s, work on hollowing out Gora Pobeda is well underway. Within a year, she has a hollow mountain capable of housing nearly 5000 people.

1971 — Russian and Chinese agents recover a crashed UFO in North Vietnam. The UFO is a Kath-Yal corvette. They ask the Machinatrix to examine it.

1975 — A lab accident severely injures the Machinatrix. Her nanite metachinery saves her life, but only at the cost of shooting her skin through with visible silver lines, converting her nails and teeth into metal, and leaving her badly scarred. She doesn’t really care; in fact, she’s more machine than human now. She begins using the Baba Yaga mythology to disguise test flights of the reconstructed corvette, which witnesses assume is her flying mortar. The few witnesses that see the Machinatrix mistake her cybernetic modifications for iron teeth and claws.

1984 — The Machinatrix stages an avalanche and erects the shield that makes the camp and mining operation invisible. While the rest of the USSR is struggling with the transition between Andropov and Chernenko, her technotopia is assumed destroyed.

1991 — Soviet Union falls. The Machinatrix continues her work uninterrupted.

You should picture this operation as Fritz Lang's Metropolis with "Baba Yaga" overseeing the whole thing, all set inside Mount Nevermind. The Machinatrix has legions of semi-catatonic workers enslaved to her, and she regulates every aspect of their lives. Her robot guards insure discipline, although since she started implanting everyone with remotely-activated internal tasers, there hasn't been any resistance. It's futile.

The Machinatrix has several robotic or cybernetic allies:

Domovoi: The Domovoi (Russian dwarves) look like Twiki from Buck Rogers in the 25th Century. She has dozens of these little servant robots. They are not particularly dangerous, although there are a lot of them and they do carry tasers.

RoBears: RoBears are polar or brown bears with metal helmets connected to their neural systems through cybernetic interfaces. The helmets contain receiving equipment and transmitters, which allow the Machinatrix to control them from a distance and see and hear everything the RoBears do. Most RoBears are also equipped with Kath-Yal force suits.

Daughters: Baba Yaga has two or three "daughters" that are more or less exactly like Rotwang's Maria robot from Metropolis. They appear human, and they are the Machinatrix's agents in the human world.

The Machinatrix also has a recovered UFO from which she's stolen much of her more recent technology. It's one sphere of a Kath-Yal corvette, but it has the most of the really interesting technology:

* An anti-grav engine.

* A pulse detonation engine.

* A plasma pulse battery (the main offensive weapon).

* Several exterior-mounted plasma repeaters (minor offensive weapons).

* A holographic shield that uses cameras to capture images from all around the ship and routes the images through projectors to generate “invisibility” of a sort.

* Stealth shields that render the ship invisible to radar and UnInspired tracking.

The Kath-Yal are one of the Saurian species from the Conspiracy X RPG.

[Heritage]

Well, that certainly clears up a few points ::biggrin

You are one twisted dude, Arcanum - very cool stuff.

BTW, did you see that Ro-Man had a cameo in Looney Tunes: Back in Action? Robby the Robot and two Daleks also make an appearance.

[Arcanum_V]

BTW, did you see that Ro-Man had a cameo in Looney Tunes: Back in Action? Robby the Robot and two Daleks also make an appearance.

I'd heard that, but the presence of some fun cameos doesn't really overcome my lack of interest in seeing a Looney Tunes movie. Maybe one of my friends will bring it over on DVD some night and I can see it for free and for no effort whatsoever. ::biggrin

I keep trying to figure out how to put some Daleks into my game. One of the players is a big Doctor Who fan, and his character is a science-fiction themed mad scientist that often dresses like the Doctor. As I'm thinking about this, I'm coming to really like the idea of a chase on ATV four-wheelers through the TARDIS. . . ::laugh

[Ayre el KaBeer]

I keep trying to figure out how to put some Daleks into my game. One of the players is a big Doctor Who fan, and his character is a science-fiction themed mad scientist that often dresses like the Doctor. As I'm thinking about this, I'm coming to really like the idea of a chase on ATV four-wheelers through the TARDIS. . . 

Oh dear god NOOOOO!!!! ::tongue "Exterminate! Exterminate! Exterminate!" *CLUNK* falls down and can't get up.

[ProfPotts]

Ah, good ol' Daleks - meant to be made out of nigh-indestructable 'dalekium', but often blow-up when their eye-stalk is covered, or they're spun around a bit too fast... Gotta' love enemies like that... ::biggrin

On the other hand, absolutely perfect for Adventure! mechanical menaces. As on-going villains you could even show their 'evolution' (from only being able to move over smooth metal floors, to being able to move over any pretty smooth surface, to being able to fly up stairs via internal rockets - which was a classic scene for fans - the look on the guy's face when the ol' 'run up the stairs to get away from the Daleks' trick didn't work was priceless!).

Also, what Adventure! ST could resist putting on a pseudo-electronic voice that got more excited & high-pitched as it went on, shouting, "Ex-ter-min-ate! You must o-bey the Da-leks! Find the Doc-tor!". ::thumbsup

And, let's not forget the classic,

"Bring out the hea-vy wea-pons Da-lek!"

(If I recall correctly, the 'heavy weapons Dalek' got off a total of one shot before being blown sky-high).

Cue psychodelic theme music... Da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-dum, da-da-da-da-da-da... ::wacko

[Arcanum_V]

I keep threatening to introduce later-era Daleks that have reinvented their cybernetic parts and made themselves into bipeds. They have the same mechanical voices and the single eye, only now they look humanoid and they chase around the Galactica. I'm also fond of the idea that at some point a Cylon ship crashed on Earth and was recovered by the Foundation for Law and Government, who then installed the computer brain and sweeping red eye into an experimental Trans Am.

The Borg, by the way, are merely Cybermen that have overcome their gold allergy. ::wacko

[ProfPotts]

The Borg, by the way, are merely Cybermen that have overcome their gold allergy.

That's actually pretty close to the truth - since the original Cybermen infected people with 'black veins' that spread up their arms & turned them into Cybermen. The Borg are just a cheap (well, ok, really expensive) rip-off (with a lack of imagination when it comes to vehicle shapes). ::wink

[Ayre el KaBeer]

ding-da-ding da-ding-da-ding ::biggrin

[Ayre el KaBeer]

::offtopic sorry way offtopic but... A show that used to be on just before Doctor Who and it stars something like this...

"Burk! FEED ME!!!"

[ProfPotts]

Trap Door?

[Ayre el KaBeer]

Yep ::biggrin

"Burk,

'Allo ::smiley5 ::cheesy

Overworked servant of the Thing upstares."

"Oh Globbits".

[Sprocket]

::offtopic As long as we've hijacked the forum to talk about British Sci-Fi TV shows... Has anyone tried to use elements of Red Dwarf (setting, characters, whatever) in any of their Aeoniverse games? My old gaming group talked about having an Aberrant campaign where the player characters were a group of losers, drifters, and madmen (a.k.a. excellent potential characters for the Red Dwarf TV show or RPG) who all erupt and become novas... ::devilangel

Just think what Lister or Rimmer would be like as novas! ::crazy ::hehe

[Winteredge]

This has been a very interesting discussion.

Arcanum, I was very interested to see that you too had set an Adventure! game in the present with no attempts to tie it to Aberrant.

I have done something similar, completely re-writing aberrant's history for my own desires, and making the modern setting the home for a pulp game as opposed to a super hero game.

I threw in a bit of lovecraftian horror and Hellboyesque monsterhunting for fun.

What themes have you esperimented with in your modern setting?

A.P.

[Arcanum_V]

What themes have you esperimented with in your modern setting?

In Adventure! gaming, my only consistent theme is that action-adventure is better than realism. I work to create scenarios in which the characters can be heroic in grandiose ways. My players and I approach the game with the attitude that "1! 2! 3! Go!" is a good plan and that if you have the choice between taking a plane and buying a dirigible, buying the dirigible is better and modifying it with super-science is better than that.

Still, every now and then, I'll throw in a moral choice that's a little more complex than your average right vs. wrong dichotomy. In our current game, I'm curious to see what the group does with Machinatrix and her technotopia. The main story is that they should rescue a scientist and get back a piece of machinery, and they are likely to accomplish that with a little diplomacy. The more difficult problem is that now they know about the Machinatrix's soul-crushing underground gulag. What should they do? Liberate the workers? They already know that she can kill any (or all) of the workers with a computer command. They've also realized that since the workers have lived under intense brainwashing and total dominance for three or four generations, none of them would have any idea what to do with freedom. The utopia's also not really that bad in terms of physical existence: all of the workers are healthy, they receive excellent medical care, there's no crime, and there doesn't seem to be any unhappiness or unrest. There's also no joy, no creativity, and no freedom, so now the players (and their characters) have to decide whether disrupting the society will actually be better or worse than the status quo.

In a previous story set on an island with a population of sentient apes on one end and human natives on the other, I tossed them a similar moral quandry. The first group they ran into was the natives, who described the apes as violent savages that attacked the natives whenever they could. Through the first session or two, the players assumed that their adversary would be the apes. Later, they figured out that the natives were really the aggressors, and any violence from the apes was actually defensive.

All in all, my main theme is probably that players and characters have the opportunity to make a difference and to choose between right and wrong, even in a world that isn't exactly black or white. Humanity is in the precarious position of having marvelous powers of creativity and reason, and how we use them is up to us. That's actually a constant theme in my gaming, and in my personal philosophy as well.

I threw in a bit of lovecraftian horror and Hellboyesque monsterhunting for fun.

This gets into setting and atmosphere rather than theme, and I love to switch between settings. Our first story (The Memphite Crocodile) saw our characters submerged in the murky world of high fashion, underworld art trafficking, and the Egyptian afterlife. The story started with some Sam Spade detective-type atmosphere, and then moved into lost world exploration territory. In pursuit of the mysterious Memphite Crocodile statue, they ended up in a vast cavern beneath Egypt where they found a bronze Age civilization living in the manner of the pharaohs, a connection to a saurian alien race, and the monstrous Children of Setekh. The Adventure!rs had to re-establish an ecological balance in the underworld to save its human inhabitants.

In our second story (Chasing the Dragon), we traveled from San Francisco's Chinatown to Hong Kong's harbor and into a hidden temple near Fengdu. This story drew heavily on Sax Rohmer's Fu Manchu character (whom White Wolf "borrowed" as the Ubiquitous Dragon), but also included anime, John Woo, Tsui Hark, and Shaw Brothers elements. In a lot of ways, it resembled Kill Bill, only we did it first.

Our third story (Terra Primate) drew heavily from Plato's Republic, Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes, and other intelligent ape fiction with just a hint of Lovecraft (the savage natives were Tcho-Tcho tribesmen).

Our current story (Russian Around) has some mafioski NPCs, but otherwise takes most of its atmosphere from UFO mythology, Fritz Lang's Metropolis, and Russian folklore.

All of our stories have at least a little of that James Bond high stakes casino action or some other white tie social setting. Most of the characters are at home in high society, and one of the recurrent nemeses is always found there.

I'm not sure where we're going after this. One of the players has expressed interest in the tunnels under Moscow, so there's a strong possibility that the story will take place there. I'm still in the brainstorming phase of creation here, but I think we might be due for something Lovecraftian, or maybe some C.H.U.D.s. Rasputin or some other connection to the Romanovs will probably figure prominently in whatever I decide to do, and all good urban sewers have great big alligators in them.

[Edit] Fixed "Moscow."

[Winteredge]

Very interesting.

I like.

A.P.

[SkyLion]

The Zeppelin is Back!