The Planet Mercenary RPG -- "Schlock Mercenary, The Roleplaying Game"

[Max_Killjoy]

Schlock Mercenary.

One of the longest-running, and IMO one of the best, webcomics out there. "Medium hard" science fiction space opera. Laugh-out-loud funny.

Now, there's an RPG based on the setting and stories featured therein.

The Planet Mercenary RPG is set in the Schlock Mercenary universe. Howard Tayler has been publishing Schlock Mercenary to the web since June of 2000. This science fiction setting is tooled up for those with a sense of humor and a sense of wonder, and the comic has been capturing reader imaginations for fifteen years now. The Planet Mercenary RPG is designed to let readers and non-readers alike exploit that depth as they role play stories of their own creation.


The Planet Mercenary book is an in-world artifact. The R&D team at the galaxy's largest independent reseller and distributor of weapons and materiel created this "old-timey" role playing book as a sneaky way to educate their clients' grunts, who are often unwilling to read briefing materials, let alone actual reference manuals. With this book those grunts will "accidentally" learn about their weapons, their enemies, and the places where they may draw their last breath.

The body of the book is written from the point of view of writers in the Planet Mercenary corporate office, and the margins are sprinkled with comments from the CEO, who was assured that the book absolutely would NOT go to print until the comments had been stripped.

I am eagerly awaiting my copy with a sort of enthusiasm I find rare in my life, and as an eager fan, I've taken up the banner to make sure people know this is out there.

The game's text and material thoroughly capture the wit and intelligence of Howard Taylor's writing, and the choatic, unpredictable nature of the daily lives of intrepid (or not so intrepid) space mercenaries. The system is wide-open and works well with the intended feel, and is also straightfoward enough to be picked up easily by those new to RPGs... and tinkered with mercilessly in the same manner that mercenary engineers upgrade and customize the company's materiel.


Places you can still pre-order the Planet Mercenary RPG core book -- note that the actual book ended up at about about 350 pages, not the 240 originally intended and indicated in some of the descriptions.
* There's an option to add the RPG core book onto our Handbrain campaign pledge as a pre-order.
* I believe it can still be pre-ordered on their Backerkit page.


Planet Mercenary RPG Kickstarter page. - Campaign is well over, but still some good updates on the project status and schedule happening here.
"Handbrain" GM Screen Kickstarter page. - As of posting, they have 9 days left, and have just passed their first stretch goal. Check it out

Planet Mercenary RPG on Backerkit.

Planet Mercenary RPG Discussion on Reddit.

Schlock Mercenary comic discussion on GitP Forums.
Schlock Mercenary comic discussion on Reddit.


I'll be posting more here shortly, actually discussing the game itself in a way that looks less like a promotional package -- at least to the level of detail that we can right now. I know it's hard to discuss a game that most people haven't seen yet, but frankly my enthusiasm is getting the better of me right now.

From what I've read, the book and other pre-ordered materials are going out later in July. The Planet Mercenary team will have a booth at Gencon, and they'll be running a few games. I expect they'll fill up quickly.

[LoneStarNorth]

I managed to rope some friends into playing this last weekend. Overall I think it went well and we all had fun, despite a few hiccups, some of which were due to the system but most of which were due to outside factors, like being pressed for time, me being the only one who knew the game at all, and me not actually having time to pre-read the sample adventure we ran. Going purely on things that can be traced back to the game and not player incompetence, here's how I'd rate some of the features.

GOOD STUFF
-Lots of variety in character creation and a generous fistful of skill points to customize with.
-Combat actually went fairly quickly. The game system definitely encourages this with the speak-first-act-first format.
-The mayhem cards (which cause a random thing to happen when a particular die out of your 3d6 skill check comes up highest) pretty much always improved the experience when they came up. We only cancelled out one card out of about a dozen, because I didn't want to permanently reduce a character's health for successfully checking Space Twitter. At least not in the first fifteen minutes of the game.
-Even as the only one at the table familiar with Schlock Mercenary, all the players got into the setting and picked up quickly on the lore and tone of the game. The book has a huge amount of fluff included and it's all interesting (and often hilarious).
-Ablative Meat (having a playable NPC take bullets for you) is both useful and entertaining.

NOT SO GOOD STUFF
-Equipping characters took us twice as long as all other facets of character/company creation combined. This may partly be due sharing a PDF for most of the game, and partly due to one player needing to read every single expanded description of every single piece of gear.
-The sample adventure could use some more page references or sidebars with rules reprinted to help first-time GMs who are still learning the system. Again, I was running without pre-reading which is always a bad idea, but it still would've been nice.

I would've liked to be able to spend more time running the adventure, and maybe having an extra player or two, but it was still a good time. Here's a point-form session log if anyone's interested (spoilered in case someone wants to play the sample adventure themselves):

Spoiler: GAME LOG

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-The players successfully got wind of the bounty they were going to go after ahead of almost all their NPC competitors.
-They made it to the planet's surface first by virtue to blowing up a competitor's ship without warning or provocation. Everyone else hung back and let the PCs land first.
-Shot up some goons with extreme prejudice. Due to Mayhem, the quartermaster who did most of the shooting barfed and fled the scene immediately.
-Noticed the NPC mercenaries were fleeing the city, didn't figure out why. Hey, less competition for us!
-Instead of fighting through their target's fortifications, or sneaking in the back door, they took option three and made their own entrance with explosives.
-Three grunts took bullets for PCs. None of them survived.
-Armoured space monkey doctor jumped over the entire firefight and bit their target's face off. Through her helmet. Quartermaster got a free Athletics skill rank from the sheer spectacle.
-Mayhem draw: the engineer is now afraid her gun will explode if fired.
-Mayhem draw: everybody else's guns may now ACTUALLY explode if fired.
-PCs didn't pay enough attention to the bomb.
-PCs ended adventure as heads in jars with no functional weapons... and a giant hole in their spaceship. One of the retreating NPC mercs decided to get them back for earlier.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm a touch jealous... not sure if I'll ever be able to scrape together enough of a group, with everyone busy or scattered.

[keybounce]

Yea, if only there was some way for people in distant locations to talk to each other in real-time, with a shared white-board to draw the map, and some sort of "placement marker" that could be used instead of figures.

...

Seriously: Has anyone had a good, successful online RPG campaign?
What did you have to do / what tools did you use?

[Grod_The_Giant]

Yea, if only there was some way for people in distant locations to talk to each other in real-time, with a shared white-board to draw the map, and some sort of "placement marker" that could be used instead of figures.

...

Seriously: Has anyone had a good, successful online RPG campaign?
What did you have to do / what tools did you use?

I've had quite a few, with friends from college. (Mostly M&M; I've also done my homebrew system, Exalted 3e, and Fate). We just use Skype or Google Hangouts or something and theater of the mind, with the odd hastily scribbled MS paint screen-share. It's always a bit slower than real life, but otherwise they work pretty normally.

[Destro_Yersul]

I'm eagerly awaiting my copy, though a lot of what I play is PbP and I'm not sure how well this system would work in that format. I've done a bit of looking into it, but not gone through the PDF since I'm waiting to see the final release. Very excited, in any case.

[Max_Killjoy]

Finding functional online RPGing opportunities is probably a discussion for another thread. If I'd known my wistful aside was going to immediately derail things, I'd have foregone making it.

---

Regarding Planet Merc, there are a lot of corners and nooks and crannies and sideroads in the Schlock setting I'd love to explore.

A story featuring the Kss’thrata; see the other side of the Tause conflict, and what's happened with them since they fled the system en masse.

What's going on in the Plenipotent Dominion, not with Petey, but with all those other sophonts building lives there?

And then there are all the AI questions. I'm still trying to get them into actual playable adventure seeds / concepts. Sometimes these are given serious treatment, and sometimes they're secondary elements serving as a punchline, or as a complication for non-AI characters.

Spoiler

Show

• How much agency and free will to AI's actually have? Does this changed based on how they're built, how much processing power they have?
  
• What sort of control do AIs have over their own programming?
  
• What can and can't be hacked in an AI? We see AIs have their loyalty suborned and their memories rewritten, but then... we see the some of the same happen to biological characters as well.
  
• What's it like for an AI who has multiple nodes? With secure hypernet, it's possible for an AI to literally be in two places at once, to be the ship's AI and have a mobile body of some sort for example, or multiple bodies (see Chinook's physical avatar at Kaff Tagon's "rebirthday", Petey's physical body/bodies playing off his holographic projections in conversation, Ennesby when he was the ship's AI, etc).
  
• How often do AIs actively seek upgrades on their own?
  
• How common is it for AIs to "go rogue" as we've seen happen wth Petey and TAGII?
  
• Would an AI ever been accepted as the head of a corporation, or even of a mercenary company?
  
• Where did Lunesby go? ;-)

[Max_Killjoy]

I'm eagerly awaiting my copy, though a lot of what I play is PbP and I'm not sure how well this system would work in that format. I've done a bit of looking into it, but not gone through the PDF since I'm waiting to see the final release. Very excited, in any case.

The PDF that was more recently sent out / linked is pretty much what the book is going to be -- if you're worried about something changing, the only thing new that will come out now is the errata/FAQ.

However, if you're pining for that experience of cracking open the physical book and taking it all in as brand new on the pages before you, I can't blame you one bit.

[Destro_Yersul]

However, if you're pining for that experience of cracking open the physical book and taking it all in as brand new on the pages before you, I can't blame you one bit.

Pretty much this. I'm one of those people who vastly prefer hard copy to PDF, partly because I enjoy flipping through a physical book. New book smell is much better than new car smell.

[LoneStarNorth]

Hey, the latest backer update linked to this thread. Everyone look busy, the writers are watching!

The same update mentioned that PDF copies of the game will be available for sale on DriveThru RPG next week, so anyone who didn't back the game will be able to give it a shot soon. In regards to running Planet Mercenary over Skype or PbP, it would be a little harder than some games due to the specific mechanics involved (speak first, Mayhem deck, etc), but should still be possible. The GM can take control of all Mayhem draws. When I played, all I had was the PDF of the cards and a random number generator which I set to roll 1 to 102. It's not exactly the same as using real cards, but it works. Speak first initiative can still work over Skype, and you COULD use post first in PbP. Though that would mean some players would always go first or always go last based on their personal schedules. It might be better to substitute some kind of initiative roll.

[Max_Killjoy]

Hey, the latest backer update linked to this thread. Everyone look busy, the writers are watching!

The same update mentioned that PDF copies of the game will be available for sale on DriveThru RPG next week, so anyone who didn't back the game will be able to give it a shot soon. In regards to running Planet Mercenary over Skype or PbP, it would be a little harder than some games due to the specific mechanics involved (speak first, Mayhem deck, etc), but should still be possible. The GM can take control of all Mayhem draws. When I played, all I had was the PDF of the cards and a random number generator which I set to roll 1 to 102. It's not exactly the same as using real cards, but it works. Speak first initiative can still work over Skype, and you COULD use post first in PbP. Though that would mean some players would always go first or always go last based on their personal schedules. It might be better to substitute some kind of initiative roll.

Regarding initiative in an online game:

They made a very clear statement that the most important things are to have fun and to open up the game to as many players as possible, and they offered up some alternative options for order of actions when Speak First! wasn't working out well. So, I don't think they'd have any objections to people thinking up alternative systems for use in PbEM, PbP, PbChat, and similar formats.

It could be something as simple as round robin, or serpentine order (1 to 4 go in order, then 4 to 1, then 1 to 4, etc) to avoid the same player always going last, or 3d6+Perception each round and go in descending order.

[Destro_Yersul]

My usual policy in PbP games that have initiative is that everyone just posts and I sort out the order afterwards. Maybe if the same person was always going first I'd have to institute some sort of initiative, but it could be that post first = speak first would work. Depends on timezones of players, I suppose.

[Max_Killjoy]

In the latest update on the RPG Kickstarter page, Team PM announced that the game is going on sale next week on RPG Drive Thru.

I expect this will be the PDF now, and maybe pre-order for the physical book, since IIRC it's not back from the printer until July.

My thoughts on this are first, anyone who wasn't a backer, go buy it, and second, once it's officially for sale I'll feel pretty comfortable talking about system details openly.

[Natediggadoggit]

I've been reading through the pdf, and it looks like it will be a blast, I'm interested in joining a group as soon as enough people have a copy. I'm in the army, and will be deployed to Honduras by the time it ships, but apparently the place I'm going should give us lots of free time.

Would this thread be the right place to start looking for a group? Or should that be it's own thread?
And I have one solution for playing RPG's online, but maybe I should look for the right thread to put that.

I really like the "failure is fun" system they've come up with, it allows you to quickly promote a grunt and take over that character as a PC, with extra skill points if they've taken hits for the officers before.

I've been playing a DnD 4th edition with some friends, and it's been fun, but too slow for some people in our group, especially when we're paranoid about losing our characters if we mess up.

[Max_Killjoy]

I've been reading through the pdf, and it looks like it will be a blast, I'm interested in joining a group as soon as enough people have a copy. I'm in the army, and will be deployed to Honduras by the time it ships, but apparently the place I'm going should give us lots of free time.

Would this thread be the right place to start looking for a group? Or should that be it's own thread?
And I have one solution for playing RPG's online, but maybe I should look for the right thread to put that.

I really like the "failure is fun" system they've come up with, it allows you to quickly promote a grunt and take over that character as a PC, with extra skill points if they've taken hits for the officers before.

I've been playing a DnD 4th edition with some friends, and it's been fun, but too slow for some people in our group, especially when we're paranoid about losing our characters if we mess up.

A little LFG inside this thread is probably fine, I don't think there's a dedicated LFG subforum (just looked again, sorry if I'm just missing it).

If you do post about your online RPG solution in a different thread or forum, please link to that post here.

[Brance_a_Lot]

I'd be up for a Pbp game or something like that, I have my own pdf files so no need to share or wait til they come on sale.

[LoneStarNorth]

So the one-shot adventure I ran previously was, unbeknownst to me, upgraded to a regular campaign. Not one to disappoint I quickly cobbled together a new adventure out of a pre-generated plothook and a bunch of unrelated NPC stats while three new players rolled up their mercenaries. Character creation went a lot smoother this time since I had a better idea what to expect. Point-form game log is spoilered below.

Spoiler: GAME LOG

Show

-After regenerating their surviving crew from heads in jars and hiring some new blood to replace the 30+ dead guys, the company cannot afford to fix the hole in their ship, stranding them on the desert death-world.
-They get a job from a panicked frellenti; a stable wreck site has collapsed and the survivors need help evacuating personnel and supplies, defense from pirates/monsters.
-Can't fly their ship to the wreck because the esspee engineer built a tank node for their ship AI instead of doing repairs.
-Pack the entire company into a delivery fan and fly it at ludicrously unsafe speeds in an attempt to reach the wreck same-day.
-Intercept a group of pirates. Captain opens the van's door and shoots from the hip. Through a grunt's hip. Pirate skiff explodes.
-Reach the wreck, find out the person in charge has put out a public, planet-wide notification that they are isolated, vulnerable, and need help securing their valuables. Everyone facepalms.
-Esspee engineer gets an idea to make perimeter sensors to warn them of incoming threats. She builds the sensors out of every single comm the company AND their employers have.
-The lawyer goes around to every single frellenti at the wreck to see if anyone is acting funny. One of them is deliberately sending out public messages notifying everyone of their vulnerable position.
-Crazy frellenti wants to make this a disaster worthy of galaxy-wide news coverage so their home planet's government is pressured into finally rescuing them after two years. Thinks pretending to blow up the PC's ship would help. PCs disagree... until they are offered more money.
-After dark, perimeter sensors pick up five skiffs approaching from different directions. One of them has a ship-to-ship plasma lance. Things start melting.
-Their AI's tank-node asks for permission to "fly really fast," captain agrees.
-Esspee engineer starts shredding pirates with shurikannon. Against all odds, gun neither explodes nor runs out of ammo.
-Lawyer and Captain set off across the sand, in the dark, to disable plasma lance.
-Lawyer runs off by himself to draw their fire. It works. Employers are saved. Lawyer is vaporized.
-Players start eating bullets. Grunts die. Perimeter sensors pick up more approaching skiffs.
-AI's tank-node is destroyed. Last words: "Close air support."
-Company's warship, after flying through atmosphere with a giant chunk missing from the hull, swoops in. Destroys all remaining pirates. Destroys plasma lance. Peels self halfway open.
-Captain yells at her own ship until blue in the face.
-Crazy frellenti asks if this is a good time to plant the fake bomb on the warship. Captain punches him out.
-Situation is explained to the person signing their cheques. Crazy frellenti is duct-taped. Frellenti are evacuated on warship (flying at low speed to avoid breaking in half).
-Company gets paid. Captures two hover-skiffs. Partially repairs their "crazy bomber" reputation. Fully repairs their warship. Gets their deposit back for the rental van.
-Lawyer's epitaph etched into a glass crater in the middle of the desert. "Hereabouts lies Cassio."

[Natediggadoggit]

Here's the thread I started: Playing long distance, but real time: a solution

There are more options than I realized there were, and since I can post links now, Maptool, Game Table, Roll20, and Discord are the tools discussed there.

And I did go looking for a recruitment forum, but that's all in the play by post area, Here. and I'm not sure if it would help me find a group to play with live. I won't really be able to find a group until I'm actually in country, and know my schedule though. I also hope that the Planet Mercenary website has it's own forum or comment section by then (as Howard mentioned they'd like to do, if possible) and then that place would be the best place to look.

As far as gameplay goes, the one big hiccup I see for long distance play is the mayhem cards. LoneStarNorth mentioned using a random number generator, which is probably good for most situations, but what about when you have high numbers of mayhem draws? like if you have a ship full of Esspererins with unlucky weapons, and potentially drawing mayhem cards every other turn? Keeping track of the ones you've taken out of the deck becomes a thing you need to worry about. Which math system could I use to help keep track of that?


Edit: LoneStarNorth, your game logs are epic, and I love reading them. Keep posting them if you keep running the campaign, please?

[Destro_Yersul]

Agreed, the game logs are great fun. Bringing the hype there, LoneStar.

RE: Mayhem deck draws, and without knowing exactly how the mechanic works, one potential solution is to have just the GM drawing the mayhem cards from the physical deck, and reporting which one came up to the players. Bit fiddly, but that's what I had planned to do.

[LoneStarNorth]

As far as gameplay goes, the one big hiccup I see for long distance play is the mayhem cards. LoneStarNorth mentioned using a random number generator, which is probably good for most situations, but what about when you have high numbers of mayhem draws? like if you have a ship full of Esspererins with unlucky weapons, and potentially drawing mayhem cards every other turn? Keeping track of the ones you've taken out of the deck becomes a thing you need to worry about. Which math system could I use to help keep track of that?

I haven't been worrying about discarding used cards. With 102 in the deck, we've yet to have any repeats. I guess if you had a whole party optimized around drawing lots of cards, it might be more of an issue, but I don't think it would really have a negative impact.

LoneStarNorth, your game logs are epic, and I love reading them. Keep posting them if you keep running the campaign, please?

Sure thing!

[king korath]

Having fun with this game. I am DMing for 2 who both decided to run lawyer PCs for an 80's buddy cop vibe. So I changed stopping poachers to delivering divorce papers.

Highlight was the mayhem card that turns the next conflict into a series of skill checks. This lead to them convincing an uplifted(smarter then the players) TREX to spit out their target and join their law firm.

Also one of them Polyforian with a pair of shuricannons on his chair. I expect him to go boom soon.

[Max_Killjoy]

My first chance to play will probably come at GenCon, which I am attending for the very first time.

I've been on the fence about going for a while, I don't like crowds (at all), but it's only a few hours away and I've always thought I should go once.

This game tipped me over into the "Go at least the one time" decision.

[Max_Killjoy]

A few of updates related to the game:

1) The PDF version of the Planet Mercenary RPG is slated to start selling on RPG Drive Thru this week, according to the Planet Merc team.

2) The Kickstarter campaign for the Handbrains is in the final stretch, ending this Friday.

3) If you missed the original Planet Mercenary Kickstarter and want to preorder the hardcopy, you can still do so via the Handbrain kickstarter as an add-on.

[Max_Killjoy]

****

Down to 24 hours.

****

---

Found something in the Planet Merc RPG that made me smile.


On page 180, there's a section "Descriptive Effects of Ammunitions".


Different damage types being set apart at least as much by description and by situational effects, as they are by mechanics, is something this very quick and crazy, very narrative-inspired game system has in common with one of the classic older crunchy and detailed, deeply setting/character-modelling and game-balance-driven systems.


As a long-time user of the HERO system (4th and 5th, at least), it was good to see this concept come up again in a new system that is in other ways of a very different focus.


There are a lot of good ideas in HERO, and even though it has its limits and quirks, it's been disappointing for me to see it fade out of the general RPG discussion. So whether this element appearing in Planet Merc was inspired (even third or fourth hand) by that old classic, or simply an example of great minds thinking alike... it's nice.

[Natediggadoggit]

I agree, the different ammo types sound fun and give me more motive to choose a type of ammo type for narrative alone. Like Ion weapons are very dangerous to both the firer, and the one being fired upon, narratively, but then their description sounds so cool that you really want one.

Weapons just sounding cool is possibly why we've seen the Shurricannon used a couple times in this short thread alone. It just sounds cool when you think of it, despite its being highly dangerous and likely to explode on you.

That section was also very useful for defining words I'd never quite gotten the meaning of, like gunfoam. The word doesn't sound threatening at all, and that section helpfully defined it as a projectile with it's own propellant built in, with no need for a casing.

I'm also loving the mini story built into the sidebar conversations by the CEO, editor, writers, etc. I'm only halfway through the manual, and quite a lot has happened. ;)

[Max_Killjoy]

I agree, the different ammo types sound fun and give me more motive to choose a type of ammo type for narrative alone. Like Ion weapons are very dangerous to both the firer, and the one being fired upon, narratively, but then their description sounds so cool that you really want one.

Weapons just sounding cool is possibly why we've seen the Shurricannon used a couple times in this short thread alone. It just sounds cool when you think of it, despite its being highly dangerous and likely to explode on you.

That section was also very useful for defining words I'd never quite gotten the meaning of, like gunfoam. The word doesn't sound threatening at all, and that section helpfully defined it as a projectile with it's own propellant built in, with no need for a casing.

There are a couple of weapons that have listed ammo types that don't seem to match the description, such as the Strohl rotary mag-rail being listed as a "gunfoam" weapon (mag-rail, seems to imply PEA), but because it's largely descriptive, that's very easy to change.

I'm also loving the mini story built into the sidebar conversations by the CEO, editor, writers, etc. I'm only halfway through the manual, and quite a lot has happened. ;)

I laughed out loud a couple of times.

[king korath]

It helps that the Shuricannon is the only heavy weapon a starting character can really afford. I love how it is just high dmg with huge downsides to show how it can be acquired so easily. The only real surprise I have with it is that it is legal (in system)

[mangosta71]

Typically your mercenaries would be deployed into areas in which there isn't much rule of law to speak of. It's not like it would be considered legal to start shooting any weapon in the middle of town.

[LoneStarNorth]

Well, after playing our regular Warrior, Rogue, & Mage game over Skype, my group kidnapped me to run another Planet Mercenary adventure (which itself probably constitutes a Planet Mercenary adventure). We only had three players this time, the fobott'r captain, the esspee engineer, and the rilla medic. I picked out another pre-written plot hook and improvised may way through session number three, as recorded below.

Spoiler: GAME LOG

Show

-The company is back in their home system, Sol, with a repaired ship and nearly-empty pockets. They lock in a casual orbit around Jupiter and start browsing the hypernet for work.
-Suddenly, there is an impact on the hull. Another, larger ship has teraported adjacent to them (VERY adjacent) and starts cutting through their hull.
-The medic and engineer take cover in the medbay. The captain takes cover behind the neophant on her fireteam.
-A dozen enemy combatants in full Odin suits rounds the corner with gun drones for backup. They take up a firing position and demand immediate surrender. Captain accepts, lacking other options.
-Enemy leader steps forward, presses a concealed button on his armour. Armour explodes off of him revealing a game-show-host-looking human, who announces "You just got boarded!"
-Gun drones fire confetti.
-The host, Charlie Smiles, announces that the entire crew has won a week's vacation to the Juab Jurrasica wildlife preserve, all expenses paid. Their experience will be aired live and later used as commercial footage for the park. Captain is dubious but the rilla medic really wants to be on the hypernet.
-Players take their fireteams and six extra grunts into the park. Rilla medic confidently explains that following established game trails will keep them away from predators, who try to avoid sophonts. Mayhem draw. Ankylosaur stampedes through the party. Captain loses a grunt to ablative meat. Park ranger drones sedate ankylosaur and comment "That didn't take very long, did it?"
-Cam-bot named 5OYEUR joins the party and starts getting reaction interviews from the players.
-Company marches all day before setting up camp in a cliffside cave near a waterfall. Officers debate what to do tomorrow, since their contract stipulates they need to "have a good time". Espee engineer suggests hang-gliding. Captain asks where they would get a hang-glider.
-Smash-cut to captain dangling from the claws of a queztalcoatlus while fireteam runs along behind. Captain falls off and gets injured.
-Players decide to take things a little easier and focus on the lovely tropical plants instead of the dinosaurs.
-Smash-cut to esspee being lured in by the scent of a giant, prehistoric venus flytrap. Esspee's nephew (grunt) pushes her to safety but gets eaten in her place.
-Captain suggests they stay near the basecamp and do some swimming or something.
-Smash-cut to the entire company fighting a plesiosaur in their skivvies.
-Players figure out my game and stop suggesting things. Medic sets up a field hospital in their cave.
-Day 5 of 7-day expedition, officers are feeding woolly mammoths when the captain gets a call from their ship. The grunts watching the show report the feed has gone down. Then all their comms go down. Then a tyrannosaurus barrels up the side of the hill towards them, kills a mammoth,
and throws it away before attacking the party.
-Company starts trying to fight the t-rex, not confident in their ability to outrun it. Captain loses the rest of her fireteam.
-Captain climbs on dinosaur's back to try and wrangle it. After getting an improvised bit in its mouth, she notices a patch of metal beneath the dinosaur's hide. She orders the esspee engineer to "hack the dinosaur". Engineer is delighted.
-Engineer finds a backdoor into the dinosaur's implant, but due to jamming needs to get closer to do any good. T-rex eats engineer, providing direct access to the implant. T-rex spits up engineer. Captain poses on the back of her new remote-controlled t-rex.
-Comms come back online. Shipboard grunts cheer for their beloved captain the dino-wrangler.
-Back at the cave, engineer reveals that she found out the cam-bot was the one controlling the t-rex's implant. After some "persuasion" they discover the cam-bot is NOT a part of the contract they signed, and has been broadcasting on the illegal Reality-Wildsnuff network. All footage their grunts are watching is coming from the park's own hidden cameras. Plans are made.
-Company spends their last day in the park playing with their new toy dinosaur. The park gets tons of commercial footage that their legal department will never let them use.
-After surviving the week (mostly), the company gets paid by the reality network that sponsored them.
-After pointing out the cybernetically modified t-rex, the party offers to remove it from the park in the interest of public safety. For a very reasonable fee.
-Party blackmails the hell out of Reality-Wildsnuff.
-Party keeps the remote-controlled t-rex.

[Brance_a_Lot]

I loved it LoneStarNorth. That adventure had a great premise that I could see happening to Schlock and friends(At least when they were a little more resource-lite) and a great twist. Thanks for sharing!