Review - Lorac One
You Can't Go Wrong With a Creepy Derelict
Lorac One is an 8-page scenario for Death in Space by HereticZed. Like any good sci-fi horror scenario, it pits unwitting salvagers against a creepy derelict ship. What could go wrong?
What's It About?
Players learn from a source, a man called Grozo, about a derelict ship that recently appeared. Once they get there, they'll find it's overrun with plants and the former crew mutated by exposure to a Void Core and bent on killing anything that comes aboard. This paired with a truly creepy table of void hallucinations sets you up for a nice horror scenario.
I've got to say, I just love this kind of scenario. Perfect for sci-fi horror, and the kind of things I've written a few of myself, in addition to reading plenty in fiction.
Let's Talk About the Ideas!
Nothing mind-blowingly original here, but the ideas combined together are solid nonetheless. I personally don't care how many times I see a mysterious ship that you know will have trouble on it. I love this shit each time. Crew mutated? Perfect! Crazy plants? Give me more! Minds corrupted by exposure to the void? Let's do it! We'll get to it more in the Execution section below, but the tropes put together here all work well, both on their own and in combination, and I think it's really well done.
What About the Execution?
It's like 90% golden. The writing is good, and gives you a lot to play with as a Referee. Gorzo is a well fleshed out NPC with motivations I could see causing tension in play. The ship layout is pretty linear, but complicated by the effects of the mutated plants to keep navigation interesting. The mutated crew are creepy--although they're one thing I feel like could have used a bit more detail to give the Referee things to describe--the ship locations also fall into this category, not providing much beyond what you might assume is in these types of ship sections.
The Void Dreams table is where this thing really shines. These, in effect, serve as the random encounter table, and do a lot of the heavy lifting for where there's little detail in the locations and "monsters" in this thing. The Void Dreams start 500 m away from the ship and continue throughout the adventure anyplace the players aren't encountering mutated crew. Let's look at a few of the entries:
Door shuts, hissing, crew member in EVA suit appears & removes helmet, so relieved to see help. “I fixed the air supply”. Remove helmet = see DiS p47 Oxy/Vac. Manifestation ends.
The lights are out & wont turn on. Words smeared on the walls in blood “Liar! Liar!
” & “not who they say they are”
Pipes burst expelling flames blocking exits. After 10 mins or if someone jumps through (1D6 damage) manifestation ends.
There's some really good stuff in there, mixing just creepy hallucinations with things that will really mess up the players. I love it.
To quibble a bit, I think it could still use some more dynamism with the crew and possibly parts of the plants moving around the ship. As is, the crew are confined to particular rooms and only cause a problem when players enter there. But, that would be easy enough to fix if you want it, and the Void Dreams are still giving you a lot to work with beside that.
Art?
It's good. Seems to be a mix of original drawings and some photobashing, and they work really well and illustrate what's going on to good effect. And the maps are good too!
Summary!
It's a solid little sci-fi horror one shot. Having written and run plenty of things like this myself, I'm sure it would be a lot of fun to play through.
This is part of my new and improved series of reviews where I'll be focusing each week on something that was recently released for free on Itch.io. I'll be making a point to pay the creators for what I review (when they accept payments), and you can help support that by chipping in a few bucks on Ko-Fi. Thanks for reading!