As stated in my previous post, I’m still working on developing the intended seasonal plan for my second run of Verge. Based on various feedback, I think I’ve narrowed down a couple of things for the first actual adventure, but I’m still juggling ideas for the rest.
I’ve officially decided to go ahead with the time-skip so all characters roll an additional Term on various career paths; since this is a GM-mandated time jump, I’m not making anyone deal with ageing rolls. And, with that in mind, 2×01 is going to be a revised version of the 1st adventure from Abzu’s Bounty, the mini-campaign for the Expanse RPG. In that adventure, the PCs are expected to be members of an ice-hauler’s crew exactly like the future crew of the Roci, which is a common thing these kinds of media tie-ins always do; interestingly, the adventure also sort of begins in media res, with a sample of the protomolecule having already been discovered, but since I have to reincorporate a character who disappeared through a wormhole at the end of the previous “season,” I’m going to turn that into the open scene, where the PCs end up retrieving him and the MacGuffin(s) that replace the protomolecule. From there, the bulk of the adventure as written will probably play out as written, but will end up with the PCs in possession of their own craft. After a great deal of thinking, I decided to use the Exeter as the future hero-ship for a number of reasons, not the least of which being a callback to a previous game I ran for Star Wars that used it (and was intended to be “Firefly in the SW universe.)
From that adventure, we’ll be going into a quick “take this Person to this Place” bit that’ll let the PCs do a little freight stuffs and will allow me to setup some other future elements. I’m currently thinking of leading into the first adventure (heavily revised, of course) from the Ashen Stars: Dead Rock Seven supplement, which is ultimately a ‘PCs are hired to search for a missing executive who disappeared on a pleasure “planet” and find whacky hijinks’ … but this is going to require some fairly extensive rewrites to the conclusion … which is honestly why I’m sort of tracking down some CyberPunk adventures to see if I can strip-mine them instead.
After that, I’m not sure what happens. I’m still kind of leaning toward maybe having them enter a revised (obviously) version of the Traveller Adventure since it isn’t a “accomplish this or the entire galaxy will suffer!” or “save this star system!” kind of thing, but rather a more simple war waged between companies (again: see above-mentioned CyberPunk adventures comment.) Ultimately, though, I want to have the Players do a lot more of the directing.
More as I get further detail…