Re: [HOE] Movie/Adventure Idea

[Theo McGuckin <tsm@jlab.org>]

> This most likely has been mentioned before but today I watched Dawn of the 
> Dead and it seemed like a damn good idea for an adventure.  You have 4 
> heroes trapped in a mall full of walkin' dead and all kinds of other 
> beasties. The posse has to search through the different stores to find all 
> the stuff they need to make it out alive.  Another interesting fact is that 
> the mall Dawn of the Dead was filmed in is only a few miles from my house 
> so it shouldn't be to hard for me to find a map of the place for all those 
> who want an adventure that closely resembles the movie.

Spoiler space for my posse (Bob go away!)
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I'm working up something like this for my posse, except with 'borgs
instead of zombies. They find a mall with a bunch of (friendly) muties
camped outside it. They find out that all the scouts they've sent into the
mall have not returned. What's worse a friendly Toxic Shaman offered to go
and now he hasn't come back either. They offer the posse a LOT of salvage
if they'll go in and find out what's happening and save their friends.

The posse enters the mall which was obviously state of the art before the
big boom. There are moving conveyer belts and holo-displays welcoming them
and everything. Even weirder they seem to all be working, sporadically.
And at times they seem to activate only when the posse is around.
They find some dead bodies (some old, some new) and a lot of loot
(although a lot was taken a long time ago).

Then they start getting attacked by odd little robots. Some look like real
security-bots (floaters with tasers and blinking warning lights) but some
are just weird refurbished high-tech toys with make shift guns (RC cars
with handguns wired into them, Poochie the Dog v5.0 with sharpened steel
teeth, etc.)

Then they get the big surprise, they spot a heavy can walking around in
full combat armor (but he doesn't see them, early on he's used to keep
them moving and further the plot).

Then the little drones start intermittently helping the posse and pushing
them to one end of the mall. There they find a running arcade and the
toxic shaman hiding. He tell's them that the bots forced him in there and
have been supplying him with food and water for several days (???) The
hevay can can't come in for some reason and hasn't found him. Every time
he's tried to escape the drones have stopped him though.

Here's the story:
A heavy can went nuts (surprise) and found the mall. Now it (he's not
really a he anymore) thinks that it is the mall's security. Problem: it
didn't have a command and control unit to control all the drones and bots.
It found another 'borg (light can) that did. Tricked it and cut off it's
arms and legs. Now it forces the light can to run the drones for it and
maintain security.

So the light can is looking for a way to be rescued. When the heavy isn't
watching hse uses the drones to protect the shaman and lead the posse to
them. She stuffed the shaman in arcade 'cause she didn't think he could
help alone and was "storing" him until she could find others. The lights
and sounds confuse the heavy's sensors and he can't go in because he's to
big to fit and his programming won't allow him to damage mall property, he
also isn't smart enough to get out of his power armor anymore, he thinks
it is a part of him, his uniform.

So now the posse has to puzzle it out (there will be clues, like the
drones tend to become nice and steer them off just before the heavy shows
up) and go save the light before escaping. If they can kill the heavy,
then they get lots of stuff (to make up for the pain they will no doubt
suffer in the final fight) and the thanks of the muties as well as a toxic
shaman allie that might help them out down the road. I was also going to
add that the heavy included a fail safe setting on the drones where they
just attack movement in case anything ever happened to the light can. A
smart posse could actually turn that to their advantage. Too bad my bunch
ain't the sharpest sticks in the pit trap (they're more the ones that are
covered in feces to cause nasty infections and really be generally
troublesome and annoying).

Theo McGuckin - SysAdmin, JLab


	"Powerful like a gorilla, yet soft and yielding like a nerf-ball." 
	  						- Homer Simpson