Zenith-47
A downloadable Adventure
Zenith-47 is a sci-fi horror one-shot adventure for 1-6 players and a game master, designed for use with any sci-fi or horror system. The module was created by Sam Bell for the Sci-Fi One-Shot Jam 2024, following the theme ‘Stellar Phenomena’ and sub-theme ‘Mystery’.
There’s something evil lurking on Zenith-47
Much like many space stations, this adventure is structured partially modularly, letting a GM either choose the parts they want to use, or to randomly roll to create a unique experience each time. Because of this, feel free to take, hack and steal components for your own story—particularly if the default story doesn’t make sense for your campaign! If you decide to run the module as a one shot, it will probably work best with the default plot hook, which can be tailored where desired.
The universe of Zenith-47 is a vast, infinitely varied one. The tone of the game is primarily down to the GM, but this decision can be handed over to the players if preferable. By default, the universe is a standard sci-fi / space fantasy setting. Faster than light travel is possible and relatively ubiquitous, ships have artificial gravity, other technology is relatively advanced but not otherwise physics-breaking, galaxies are run as their own self-serving entities, and the majority of citizens are relatively comfortable. Feel free to tweak as required.
Icon from Game-icons.net, licensed under the CC BY 3.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
By Lorc
https://game-icons.net/1x1/lorc/eclipse.html
Cover image by NASA.
https://unsplash.com/photos/view-of-earth-and-satellite-yZygONrUBe8
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Comments
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The relentless modularity and generally system agnostic (tho action resolution oriented) nature of this adventure is truly amazing, a master class in making something with many ways to use it or run it. Very impressive.
It looks great! I love the multiple options for a threat, and the many tables to roll on.
I would say that I think some of the paragraphs could use a little more white space, but that might just be a personal preference.
I want to run it with the undead version, so if I do I'll let you know how it goes!
I ran it the other day, so here's some feedback from running it.
- I ran the undead version using Mothership, it worked well and we all had fun.
- I didn't have the time to do much prep, but there wasn't anything needed further than the conversion and statting things up for Mothership. It has all the details needed to pretty much just pick up and run.
- The players managed to figure out pretty quickly what was the threat and why it was happening, and suited up in the space suits to avoid exposure. They also managed to successfully eject most of the undead out of the window in the medbay, leaving just one for them to attempt to fight and then run away from.
- The players rolled less than suggested due to how Mothership, but they gained a decent amount of stress regardless.
- Everyone was nice and easy to stat out from their descriptions.
- The pacing was very good in play, it was very satisfying that the final room had the enemies in it.
- The way the document was laid out was also nice and easy to read while playing, it's very nice.
- Personally I would have liked the room descriptions to be even shorter and bullet pointed the important parts, but I think that's just my style of GMing.
- The layout of the ship was also pretty good, it was a little hard to figure out from the way it was written. I did manage to draw it up after rereading it, as I was using a vtt, and like having a simple map
- Personally I would have found it useful to have a list of the crew with names and pronouns to reference when the players asked - I had to figure it out from the names mentioned throughout.
Overall, we had a lot of fun.
I'm so glad you played it and had fun! This is some great feedback, thank you so much. It's always lovely to have people playtest your stuff, so I really appreciate it. I'll look at revising this some day and implementing what you've suggested!
Awesome design!