[Space] Emergency Drills
 

I'm working on a space campaign where there is going to be various emergency drills on board a Starship in transit. This is to build teamwork and add flavour to the adventure.

The players are characters on their first mission for a very large corporation. Since it's their first mission they're given simple tasks and not in control of their own ship but as crew of said ship. The captain is well decorated in the company and is understanding for the most part.

Also this ship is new off the line and is doing it's first transport mission after the initial series of shakedown cruises in which the characters were not part of the crew.

So what I'm asking all you wonderful forumites is if you can assist me in creating a emergency drill table of give me sample emergencies that I should toss on the crew.

So far I have Pressure leaks, fires, and external door malfunctions. All of which are to be simulated via holographic's but stressful none the less.

Most tasks will be defaulted to Spacer and ranging from -4 to +2 in difficulty. I want it to be exciting but not life threatening yet. Might toss some REAL emergencies in later on as well as other life threatening situations.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

Power plant/drive malfunction, air contamination, life support breakdown, computer collapse, 'electrical' failure, hijacker, contagious illness, shuttle crash, 'man overboard'.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

Cargo or passenger vessel?

Anyway a few others. Fuel leak (get a patch on that before we loose too much fuel to make any port, fun EVA practice). Control run break (you can practice using pretty much any ship system in local control). Vermin control (vacuum will finish the rats, it won't necessarily do for insects). Hazardous cargo problem (depending on how you load just getting [to] it could be difficult).

If you are carrying passengers there are lots of possibilites, passengers can be very stupid. Lifeboat and/or suit drill - there's getting the crew into them, and then there's the much harder problem of passengers. Flipped out/drugged/drunken passenger (akin to hijacker, but with legal complications if you hurt him, and you don't want to rile up the rest of the passengers either). A passenger arrest is easier, more like the straight up hijacker scenario. Lost child (of course one or both parents panic). Medical emergency (what, you expected them to tell the truth about pre-existing conditions? Premature childbirth is another good one). Forbidden or hazardous stuff snuck aboard (particularly fun, it's little Jenny's extremely expensive purebred pet Wirechewing Rodent, and its gotten into the ventilation)

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

If artificial gravity exists, gravity failure either on it's own or in combination with the others. Or gravity malfunction: fix the problem while operating at 5Gs.

Providing emergency assistance/rescue to another craft. Emergency takeoff and landing.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

Awesome everyone. That'll help nicely, thanks. Anyone else have some examples that I could use? maybe with skill modifiers.

I figure if it's a Power Plant failure it would require Mechanic (Power Plant) -2 (due to unfamiliarity) or Mechanic (Starship) -4 including the unfamiliarity.

I'm also lazy and use reactionless engines and artificial gravity. though gravity failure could be fun. Oh ya and mainly cargo not passenger.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

Remember to have a wide variety of tasks for each of the problems. Tailored, as needed, for the skills of the PCs.

For example, in the power plant failure case:
1) A sudden failure, leading to problems with equipment: Piloting to maintain control with reduced instrumentation, Mechanic or other skills to control the drive without active controls.
2) Activating emergency power: Navigating the ship (in the dark), Mechanic and/or Electronics operation.
3) Diagnosing the problem: Mechanic and/or Engineering.
4) Finding/improvising spare parts: Mechanic/Engineering/Scrounging.
etc...

Failures at any step need not be a failed operation, but additional difficulties. A failed roll in finding or installing parts might require cannibalizing other systems, which leads to more challenges (Piloting at a penalty if flight instrumentation is cannibalized, etc).

And any or all of these tasks can have a time constraint.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

Very good topics. Here some more:

Abandon Ship Simulation: "All chosen ship personnel wearing the violet tag, please abandon ship, abandon ship. This is a drill. I repeat..." (Spacer).

Communication Problems: Radio Parasites, Loss of Communication Feeds, IFF Systems Malfunction, Language and Cultural Barriers, FTL Communication Oddities: "Johnny, this is yourself speaking to yourself from... 2 minutes into the future man! That's awesome!" (Electronic Operations - Communications).

Computer Systems Crash: "Hope you did your backup yesterday cadet!". (Computer Operations, Programming, or Electronics (Computers)).

Emergency Impact Procedures: "How many times should I tell you cadet! Your head under the table. You're decapitated now!" (Spacer).

Escape Pods Malfunction or Operation: (Spacer)

Sensors Systems Problems: Visual artefact, sensors-computer software crash, (Electronic Operations - Sensors, or Computer Operations).

Logistics Simulation: Who forgot the toilet paper? (Administration (Starship)).

Skills Modifiers:
- Very Well-Prepared: +6-7
- Well-Prepared: +4-5
- On Schedule Drill: +0, -1
- Surprise Drill: -2, -3
- Surprise Drill with lot of Unexpected Turns/Problems: -4,-5

Spaceship Drill Critical Failure Table:
3 – You screw up real bad! You damaged or destroyed a piece of equipment, place yourself or other into a real dangerous situation.*
4 – You manage to injured yourself during the drill. Takes one or several dices of appropriate damage type.*
5 – You were unable to end the drill, either you had an accident or because of medical reasons.
6 – At some point, you loose 1d-2 points of Fatigue because of the stress (can be after the drill).
7 – Minor screw up. You did something wrong and had to take more time to finish your exercice (+3dx10%).
8 – Minor blunder! You stuck your sleeve into the escape pod door hatch or something like that.
9, 10, 11 – Besides humiliating yourself in front of the crew, no harm was done.
12 – Minor blunder! You spill coffee on the Captain's shirt or something like that. Hope that won't go on your record.
13, 14 – Slowpoke. You did okay but you took too much time! (+3dx10%)
15 - You lost a tool, a piece of equipment or something during the drill. Can't find it anymore.
16 – Frightening Experience! At some point during the drill, you must roll a Fright Check.
17 - You manage to injured yourself during the drill. Takes one or several dices of appropriate damage type.*
18 – Epic fail! You are responsible for a catastrophe and now everyone unboard is now in danger thanks to you.*

*This may count as a critically missed Job Roll.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

Evacuation drills
Random inspection
Quizzes ("What would you do, right now, if {X} happened?")
Repel boarders

And the classic "How fast can you get where you're supposed to be and into your vacc-suit when the lights are out and you don't know what the hell's going on?"

Dad was Navy. Will ask him tomorrow for more ideas.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

One thing the forces love is interrupting one drill with another ... merchant navy might be the same, particularly if the captain is ex fleet.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

Is there any benefit to performing these drills? If no, why are they performed?

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

Probably for the same reasons that you do emergency drills in any other workplace - not only is it likely to be a legal requirement, but it helps give people some idea what to do if the emergency happens for real, may reveal any problems with the emergency plans and, hopefully, allows people to get their panicking done during the simulation rather than the real thing.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

Sorry haven't checked the forums in a couple days. (Computer games and power supply failure)

You guys are awesome. thanks Nolinquisitor for that detailed reply. Thanks everyone else as well, so many idea's flowing now.

Peter Knutsen: The drills are pretty much for character building and readiness so the players (and myself) have everything ready to go if it actually turns into a REAL emergency. Reduces rule foraging and increases fun especially if you're dealing with a relatively long trip.

The Colonel: I love the interrupting one drill with another idea. I'll probably do that down the line

RyanW: Lights going out. Emergency lights are good but don't offer as much illumination as the standard lights on board sot aht'd be a good -1 to -2 penalty.

gjc8: Chain reactions. I really didn't think about that (smacks forehead). Awesome.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

Shooting drills, terrorist attack drill, depressurization of cabin, sos from another ship (a shuttle can simulate a vessel that sent an sos signal). various medical drills, gas leakage (different gases may require different procedures), Anoxia - Shortage of Oxygen.

In spaceships, under reactors, engines etc., each entry has a skill required for maintenance of that module.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

Thanks all once more, and thanks congo for those additional idea's. Sunday is coming up pretty fast. Our first RP of the year.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

How is this benefit expressed in the game-mechanics?

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

I have no idea. Fewer fright checks at the immenence of death? Some kind of removal of an unfamiliarity penalty for those that do well in the drills? Easter eggs? Give the PCs a chance to spot a serious flaw in the existing drill ("But you can't deal with a fire in that compartment by decompressing! You'd expose the oxygen regenerators to hard vacuum and shut down life support for the whole ship!"), which may stand them in good stead later. Or maybe it gives you a chance to tell your players "you remember X from the drill, which might be of use in this context". Use them to foreshadow things you plan to happen :"isn't the result of this torpedo hit a lot like that debris collision scenario we worked through?" ... that sort of thing.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

there's always things you can learn from emergency drills. Unfamiliarity would be removed after they drill a few times. And giving them benefits from doing drills. of course the reduced fright checks and maybe a slight bonus since they've already encountered the situation before.

Without the drilling. there would be the unfamiliarity penalty (-2) additional penalties because they're stressed (probably another -2) and a possible fright check penalty.

At least under drilling pressure there not total losses since it's controlled and not chaotic and life threatening. So we have after the drills base will for fright and they wouldn't be under the unfamiliarity penalty and probably not as stressed if at all.

It makes sense.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

I'd give them better TDM's for tasks that they have drilled on.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

hehe had to look up TDM (Thank you Forum mods for that wonderful sticky thread).

Ya I'd be giving them better TDM's (Task Difficulty Modifier's) for successfull drills on the subject.

So it's beneficial to do drills well and often of course not too often since it'll get dull and too easy. Toss a couple wrenches in and a variation. Eventually they'll learn and get a CP in particular skills. I'm planning on using the Learning over time rules.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

One solution is to start with a Perk that gives a +1 bonus based on the most recent drill, only for that specific ship (not for other ships, not even of the same model), so if the most recent drill was fire-fighting Damage Control, then the character with the Perk gets a +1 bonus on fire-fighting.

Upgrading with more CPs can either be more Perks, so that with two Perks the bonus applies bot to the most recent drill and the drill before that, and with three Perks the three most recent drills count, or it can be changed into more of a modular ability, still only affecting that one ship (spaceships are complex enough that there will always be differences even between ships of the same model, and still with the drill-master, not the character, deciding on what drills to carry out.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

It seems to me the obvious game mechanical benefit of drills is it lets you spend character points on stuff related to the drills, and counts as study time toward acquiring more points in the skills drilled.

Admittedly many players would insist they were using the entire flight time to study some skill or other, so those 200 hours of drills that got them a point of Spacer are 200 hours they could have spent on their favorite skill instead, but most normal people are not that fanatically studeous.

Re: [Space] Emergency Drills
 

This is true, but I think part of the problem is that GURPS makes self-study insufficiently inefficient compared to studying under a competent teacher, and also doesn't take into account the quality of the fixed facilities and the quality and quantity of the ressources consumed during training (an example of the later being huge amount of ammunition fired off during elite military training).

I don't yet know how inefficient I want self-study to be compared to studying under a teacher in a classroom situation (studying under a teacher being his sole pupil is obviously even more efficient), in Sagatafl, but it'll be much less than 50%.