Hot Zone - A Gritty, Sci-Fi One-Shot in the Spirit of Alien, Blade Runner, and Pitch Black -- Beginners Welcome!

About the adventure

“What’s the story, computer?” The USCS Outlander TWV-106024 is a commercial towing vehicle owned and operated by the ICO, the government spaceflight agency. It is currently landed at the small colony outpost on Orontes, circling Beta Ceti. The ship and crew are on a three-month deployment on the Frontier working on the expansion of the colony. The Outlander serves as a powerful ‘flying crane’. The Outlander’s crew receives a coded ICO message through their FTHR computer tasking them with a new, emergency mission. The Outlander is to leave the Beta Ceti system and make a 2½ week hyperspace journey to Gliese 9028 – five parsecs away. On the uninhabited desert world designated LS809 they are to retrieve a crashed hyperspace probe. The coded ICO message urges the crew to expedite their lift-off within 2 hours. ORDERS  Travel to Gliese 9028 system  Orbit LS809 to locate the probe’s location  Land on LS809 close to the probe’s location  Recover the probe’s IBN MATT 1 computer hard-drive.  Return to Liberty Station, in orbit around Earth Hot Zone will be played using the Hostile Rules - a derivative of the Cepheus Engine / Traveller RPG. This game is an excellent introduction to playing games using Traveller compatible rules.

Additional Details

How to prepare

Please have a Roll20 account and Discord. I prefer headsets to cut down on echoes and background noise. No real need to know any game rules, but watching a video or two on how Traveller is played (since it is based on those rules..) can't hurt.

What I provide

I have maps, tokens and illustrations.

Content warnings

(none)

Safety tools used

Breaks
Debriefing
Session 0

How will character creation work

I'll probably go with pre-made characters so that we can jump in to the game more quickly given that it is a one-shot. If players want to we can create characters before the game, but I will do that over Discord to cut down pre-game delays.

Players can expect

• Find a game to join solo or search for a professional game master for you and your friends/coworkers/family.
• Book your session and wait for the Game Master to approve you.
• If you don't have a blast with your first game, your next game is on us.