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Dark Matter |
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There are times when I think I'm insane and this is probably one
of those times.
When I first found and started watching Dark Matter on Amazon Prime it didn't take long for the thought to occur to me that this would make an excellent RPG scenario (even if it does fall into a classic RPG Trope - take a set of characters and erase all their memories of the past life prior to point X in time, in this case when they wake from cryo sleep. Throw in a ship dead in space with lfie support rapidly failing and off you go).
The problem with this sort of thinking is that I'm prone to act on it.
Having found the Fandom Wiki, and the Gallery, my next step was to try and put together a 'model' of the Razza in Empyrion Galactic Survival - Reforged Eden 2, primarily to try and put together a set of workable deck plans - the characters waking from their cryopods with no memory need a ship to explore..
If you're thinking surely the first step would have been to work out which system to use then you'd have been right if I hadn't already had an adapation of the Palladium System that would work without Classes - I'd built this previously when I ran Spides (under the title of Prophet).
After about 80hours of work I had a model of the Razza that both looked correct, at least within the parameters of the blocks I could use in EGS (Its a voxel system - sort of Minecraft in Space), and had (not sure if it was luck or judgement) pretty much the same dimensions as those in the original concept art.
The next step was to convert these into a set of deck plans, which are on the 'Deck Plans' page below.
The most complicated deck was the 'Bridge Deck' for several reasons
1) It's the 'Heart' of the ship
2) It's the largest deck, at least in terms of area
3) I pretty much had to create all the 2m x 2m deck tiles as I went (although I subsequenty added to the set as I went).
It probably took about 24 hours of work to get the deck plan of the Bridge deck done (I'm using AutoRealm as my drawing tool for this) although I've tweaked it a couple of times since when trying to get all the rest of the ship parts to fit (primarily the 'drive' mechanism for the Nacells, given the front pair have a full 360deg rotation and the rear pair about 270deg - not they only rotate in the Z plain, providing forward/reverse and up/down directional thrust. Staffing or lateral thrust is provided by auxillary vectored directional thrusters on the rear of the Nacells and by fixed auxillary thrusters on the main body of the ship). Note also that the Nacells are not small, approx 36m long, 12m wide, and 20m high, and house the ships primary thrusters, so they have to both rotate and be coupled to the ship!
I should probably also note that I have no idea how things are actually going to pan out.. I have notes from all the Season One episodes, but I actually have no idea what the players are actually going to do. Notionally the 'first' scenario should go more or less to plan, as they don't really have much choice in what they do. Things will get interesting beyond that.
I plan to update the site on a regular basis with both Session Logs, much in the same way I do for my Amber campaign, but also at appropriate points with a set of GM notes for those of you who might also be insane enough to attempt to run this.
Once the characters have a handle on what their own abilities are and what the other character backgrounds are I will also publish both their Initial Character sheets and their Full Character sheets which you can use if you wish.
There is a caveat of course, I'm running a very modified version of the Palladium Rules, incorporating a whole raft of tweaks and skills that don't exist in the Palladium Rules. If you want to run this using the Palladium ruleset you're going to need at least an original copy of Rifts ( I don't have a copy of any of the 2nd edition books), copies of several of the Rifter (Palladium's house magazine), and a copy of the original Psyscape. You may also want to refer to my Rifts pages, at least for the MDC/SDC/HP replacement system and some of the combat tweaks I'm using.
One other thing before I forget.. I have an additional 'character' in the crew, Seven, just to ensure sufficient choice for the Group I play with. You can choose to include him or not (or make him a her, but you'll need to find a suitable picture).
The 'Character Creation' rules I developed for Spides/Prophet are also on their own page below.
One element that is very much different in Dark Matter is how the 'Stunners' work. The Palladium rules are somewhat deficienet in this area. Additional rules and modification to what do exist are also set out below.
When I first found and started watching Dark Matter on Amazon Prime it didn't take long for the thought to occur to me that this would make an excellent RPG scenario (even if it does fall into a classic RPG Trope - take a set of characters and erase all their memories of the past life prior to point X in time, in this case when they wake from cryo sleep. Throw in a ship dead in space with lfie support rapidly failing and off you go).
The problem with this sort of thinking is that I'm prone to act on it.
Having found the Fandom Wiki, and the Gallery, my next step was to try and put together a 'model' of the Razza in Empyrion Galactic Survival - Reforged Eden 2, primarily to try and put together a set of workable deck plans - the characters waking from their cryopods with no memory need a ship to explore..
If you're thinking surely the first step would have been to work out which system to use then you'd have been right if I hadn't already had an adapation of the Palladium System that would work without Classes - I'd built this previously when I ran Spides (under the title of Prophet).
After about 80hours of work I had a model of the Razza that both looked correct, at least within the parameters of the blocks I could use in EGS (Its a voxel system - sort of Minecraft in Space), and had (not sure if it was luck or judgement) pretty much the same dimensions as those in the original concept art.
The next step was to convert these into a set of deck plans, which are on the 'Deck Plans' page below.
The most complicated deck was the 'Bridge Deck' for several reasons
1) It's the 'Heart' of the ship
2) It's the largest deck, at least in terms of area
3) I pretty much had to create all the 2m x 2m deck tiles as I went (although I subsequenty added to the set as I went).
It probably took about 24 hours of work to get the deck plan of the Bridge deck done (I'm using AutoRealm as my drawing tool for this) although I've tweaked it a couple of times since when trying to get all the rest of the ship parts to fit (primarily the 'drive' mechanism for the Nacells, given the front pair have a full 360deg rotation and the rear pair about 270deg - not they only rotate in the Z plain, providing forward/reverse and up/down directional thrust. Staffing or lateral thrust is provided by auxillary vectored directional thrusters on the rear of the Nacells and by fixed auxillary thrusters on the main body of the ship). Note also that the Nacells are not small, approx 36m long, 12m wide, and 20m high, and house the ships primary thrusters, so they have to both rotate and be coupled to the ship!
I should probably also note that I have no idea how things are actually going to pan out.. I have notes from all the Season One episodes, but I actually have no idea what the players are actually going to do. Notionally the 'first' scenario should go more or less to plan, as they don't really have much choice in what they do. Things will get interesting beyond that.
I plan to update the site on a regular basis with both Session Logs, much in the same way I do for my Amber campaign, but also at appropriate points with a set of GM notes for those of you who might also be insane enough to attempt to run this.
Once the characters have a handle on what their own abilities are and what the other character backgrounds are I will also publish both their Initial Character sheets and their Full Character sheets which you can use if you wish.
There is a caveat of course, I'm running a very modified version of the Palladium Rules, incorporating a whole raft of tweaks and skills that don't exist in the Palladium Rules. If you want to run this using the Palladium ruleset you're going to need at least an original copy of Rifts ( I don't have a copy of any of the 2nd edition books), copies of several of the Rifter (Palladium's house magazine), and a copy of the original Psyscape. You may also want to refer to my Rifts pages, at least for the MDC/SDC/HP replacement system and some of the combat tweaks I'm using.
One other thing before I forget.. I have an additional 'character' in the crew, Seven, just to ensure sufficient choice for the Group I play with. You can choose to include him or not (or make him a her, but you'll need to find a suitable picture).
The 'Character Creation' rules I developed for Spides/Prophet are also on their own page below.
One element that is very much different in Dark Matter is how the 'Stunners' work. The Palladium rules are somewhat deficienet in this area. Additional rules and modification to what do exist are also set out below.
The Legal Bit
Dark Matter original Graphic Novels by Joseph Mallozzi
and Paul Mullie published by Dark Horse Publications
Adapted for Television by Sci-Fi Channel in conjunction with Joseph
Mallozzi
and Paul Mullie.
Rifts® and Rifts Books® are registered
trademarks owned and licensed by Kevin Siembieda and rifts Books, Inc.
© 2002 Kevin Siembieda; © 2002 Palladium Books®, All
rights reserved world wide.
No part of this work may be reproduced in part or whole, in any form or
by any means, without permission from the publisher.
All incidents, situations, institutions, governments and people are
fictional and any similarity to characters or persons living or dead is
strictly coincidental.