Bacchus' Irresistible Call Assistance

Has anyone run this adventure in their campaign? What changes/updates did you make. I find myself re-writing most of it to render it useful. Any help/suggestions welcome!

There’s this thread on the forums with some comments on the adventure.

Didn’t run it myself, yet.

My group are about 2/3rds of the way through it at the moment. Its a little on rails, but most pre-written adventures are. Other than that though, I’ve had to do very few rewrites. I don’t know if you can be more specific about the parts you are struggling with?

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Spoilers ahead if you plan to be a player for this.

I did a version of The Naked Time episode from TOS caused by the first orange beam. It was quite fun having a starfleet officer in the canteen waving his batleth about and, of course, someone had taken over engineering.

I had the possessed already inside the structure and it was them who caused the orange beams. I did this because otherwise the effects of the orange beams would have had no initial cause and would be too coincidental.

I also only had just possessed humans and Klingons, no romulans or trill possessed to make it easier. The PCs escaped in one of the possessed’s ships along with the Klingons rather than beam to the Klingon ship. And, just as things were going to get nasty between the Klingons and the PCs, the Lexington beamed them out.

Thank you! I searched for it, but the thread didn’t turn up. Do you know which pages they are referring to? Was the adventure reprinted somewhere? Perhaps, one of the adventure books, or Shackelton expanse?

That is BRILLIANT!! My players are looking for something zany. I would really like to hear more about what you did. I don’t do “zany” well, at all…

The descriptions of the aliens machines purpose is vague to the point of non-existence. It just seems very random, disconnected. I really like Shadowblaydes idea of a Naked Now scenario…

The adventure was re-printed in the Shackleton Expanse Campaign Setting. I don’t know whether it was revised/updated (some of the Living Campaign Adventures were, or returned in the forms of Mission Briefs), though.

The page numbers people are using in that thread are usually referring to the Shackleton Expanse Campaign Setting.

Some explanations as to why the alien machine/beam is there include a measure of defense against intruders or even offense to get more potential victims of possession.

Its true, it isnt overly defined, but i think thats for a couple of reasons. First is that it leaves you some room as GM - we see this across the whole saga, that the writers leave you gaps to fill as needed.

Second, and more specific for this episode, i think it isnt well defined because there is no way (as written) for the players to find out. They get beamed down by suprised with no equipment, theres no way to revisit the planet once theyve freed the ship, and the dialogue suggests that any access to the tech results in the program responding the way its written. That of course doesnt stop you from ruling otherwise, but it does put any information outside the intended confines of the module.

I think you can definitely draw some ideas from the later modules in the saga if you wanted to though. The machines in “Signals” and “Decision Point” come to mind at first. Also theres “Tug of War” (i think thats the name of the module) which use the same plot device.

The other purpose, which can’t be understated, is the narrative purpose of adding a ticking clock. That’s super important for how this module flows.

Personally I’m running this with the intention of digging down on the small prompts given about locations etc (theyll mean more to the tng era officers who are reading the reports, since thats the framing device ive used for these episodes), while also allowing the wild speculation of my players.

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Thanks! I did not realize the adventure had been reprinted in Shackelton Expanse. I will look into that for clarity. Thank y’all for your kind assistance!