All the party members are teenagers in a public school in the suburbs of Norfolk, VA. None of the characters know that they are psis, let alone what psionic power(s) they have. None of them has received any training of course. Being teenagers they have very few skills, but will still roll for skill points. The characters will be able to gain skills by spending skill points very quickly during the game.
None of the players will know what psi power they have. Nor will they know what their psi power rating is at first. They will be informed of their ratings and powers after their characters' have attended a training session with Psi Corp. Players must decide what kind of skills they would like to aim for, especially job skills and an occupation, before the adventure starts. This will permit the recruiting company to offer "appropriate" jobs.
The characters will have undergone some testing for aptitude and interest in various occupational fields. This is normal for all students at this age. This aptitude testing is represented by the skill roll, and the character's choice of skills they would like to learn during the next few adventures.
The goal of this adventure is to join Psi Corp and get a variety of training. There will be a simple adventure that is actually a setup to be a training mission.
The adventure consists of the players being recruited into Psi Corp. Their school nurse and one of their teachers / guidance counselors will recruit the player characters while in high school. The characters will have the choice not to join Psi Corp by ignoring the guidance counselor's invitation to a special job and educational fair. Their parents will not know about Psi Corp, nor that the job fair and educational fair offers Psi Corp a means of recruiting new psis. The parents will insist the players attend the job fair.
The guidance counselor will call each of the students into his office for a chat about their summer plans and future career options. At this point the players will make a roll for educational points. The guidance counselor will discuss the possible futures for the students based upon this roll. The players will not know what the roll means, or exactly how many skills they can get. It will have to be roll played out with the GM.
The parents will insist that the kids attend the job fair and the parents will detail what kind of programs or jobs they can apply for. In part this will depend upon what kind of background the parents have. Powerful parents might not care. Parents that have had to work to achieve success will insist upon a good internship.
Assuming the party members attend the job and educational fair they will each receive an offer of summer employment and training. Their parents will welcome such an offer. While not every student will get a summer internship, a lot of non-psis will so that the party's offer will not be unusual. The best offering company is Hansen Industries.
They may receive other intern offerings or sign up for various summer training and adventure programs. Some of the other groups doing interviews are IBM, Microsoft, General Electric, Loft Heavy Lift Industries (a space company) and various local retail stores. There will also be various summer programs such Outward Bound, Earth Watch. Various social activist groups will also be recruiting for people to do volunteer work such as PETA, Green Peace and such.
Hansen Industries is of course a cover company for Psi Corp. Hansen was started 15 years ago as an investment firm. They have expanded into government contracts involving space exploration. Through the use of telepaths and such, they have won many contracts and are now a major company. Hansen is heavily involved in colonization research for the Moon, Mars and the Belt. They also have subsidiaries that are involved in almost every other industry imaginable. They are a very desirable company to intern with. Interns will not get space going jobs, but could get a ground internship doing design work and such.
The parents will insist the kids take either a summer internship or some sort of schooling. Getting a good job later in life starts earlier than the present day. It is easy to get a job if you have minimal qualifications, but to have any chance of advancement beyond basic entry level requires something special to be noticed. Internships offer a chance to become somebody's protégé and to meet upper level people. An internship is a plum position on the road to the good life.
The school nurse will also administer a physical to the party and to various other students that have internship offers with various companies. If the students get accepted by any other company that requires a physical the Psi Corp nurse at the school will "screw up" and either lose it, or make incorrect notations to ensure the kids are not acceptable. The guidance counselor will withhold recommendations also. Neither one will do anything that will cause them to be fired or officially noticed, but there are a lot of other things they can do to blow the chances of kids.
The guidance counselor will review the teenagers' choices and assist them in making a decision. He will also assist them in filling out acceptance letters and such. He will also be the contact for arranging travel.
Hansen Industries will arrange for travel via Amtrak. Need to create some encounters to confuse the players.
See Dolist Advneture 1 Alternate for details. The party will meet a person (Empath) on the train who turns out to be a representative of The Boston Thieves Guild, a rival psionic secret society. He will try and recruit them for the Guild. This will mean dumping the Hansen Industries assignment and running away from home. The Boston Thieves Guild tends to be casual about laws. They have no qualms about teaching members how to get the good life through psionic crime. The rep will only recruit if given a decent opening. The Boston Thieves Guild is much fussier about who gets to become a member since they skirt the law so much.
The party, along with a bunch of other teenage interns, will be met at the train station and brought to Hansen Industries dormitories. The dormitories are fairly large and comfortable and situated in the Hansen Industries campus in Waltham. The party will be housed all in a single room. The dormitories are normally used for housing trainees for various Hansen Industries positions, especially for those people going to Mars or the asteroid belt. Need to create some other NPCs that are non-psionic.
The next day the party, along with all the other interns will have a tour of the Hansen Industries campus. They will also be given their assignments and meet their supervisors.
Psi Corp, like any secret society, will provide them a secure means of contact. At the very local level it will be the school nurse and their guidance counselor. The party members will also receive a means of secure Internet access. Psi Corp will of course get them a passport, and fly the party to a couple of places if there are any Teleports in the party.
The biggest part about interning with Hanson Industries is the Psi Corp training. Obviously the party can not be assigned directly to Psi Corp, nor can they be assigned to any secret project. Instead the party will be assigned to the Space Psychology Research Group. The SPR officially investigates how settlers, miners, astronauts and such will adapt psychologically to long outer space assignments. It makes for an excellent cover for psychological testing of psis and various other experiments involving lots of different subjects of all ages. The testing of young subjects is covered by the need to test how the children of settlers will handle outer space and off-Earth colonies.
The SPR manager will put the students through a series of tests that have no apparent meaning to the kids. It is part of the background testing for all psis. The tests will result in more tests that are geared for each specific specialty. The students will also see psis at work to prove that the powers are real. The party will also meet a couple of other psis, especially a couple of cute teenaged girls who are psis.
The party will have to work, or at least appear to work while doing their internship. Part of the day will be regular Hansen Industries work, and part of the day will be Psi Corp training. They must do the regular work to provide a cover story. The cover story will be for both their parents and for the other teens in the dorms.
Typically interns will be assigned to various work projects. They will tend to work on a wide variety of projects, often doing the basic setup under supervision, help with data collection and similar. In the two-month long internship some of the jobs the party will be involved in are: running psychological stress tests on the next batch of 100 Mars settlers, going through some of the same tests as the settlers, and helping analyze the data. They will get a chance to meet some of the settlers, especially some of the kids from poor families. They will not have any real interaction with the settlers, and definitely none outside of the testing center.
Interaction with other interns in the dorms will be up to the characters to initiate. The other interns will invite the party to various nights out in Boston.
Psi Corp will mostly be training. Players will be told about their powers. It will be up to the player to test and expand upon what the book says.
Hansen Industries will arrange tours of Boston and other local historical sites. This will provide the characters a chance to use their powers. They will have a number of encounters similar to Adventures in Babysitting. The party will go out to see the nightlife and miss the last train back to Waltham. While Hansen Industries does not have a curfew, they also do not provide transportation. After the trains stop running, the night gets dangerous, especially if they take the wrong train to a bad section of town.
See also Dolist Adventure #2 for the Donkegin adventure.
The party has to return to Virginia the same way they went to Boston. They will not have any encounters of note.
If the party members do not attend the special intern job fair, Psi Corp will eventually put a tail on them. Once they show actual ability, Psi Corp will make contact again, but with agents who have the same abilities as the members. The Psi Corp agents will first try and impress the party members by showing them the potential powers they have. Second, they will maintain contact to ensure that the party does not go rogue and endanger psis in the area.
All but the members of the party will receive psionic training, job opportunities and equipment from Psi Corp. This adventure will be the chance to learn about their abilities and meet other psis. They will be in debt to Psi Corp that they will have to repay via doing missions. They will usually receive money also for some of these assignments.
Formal Psi Corp training is very efficient. It doubles the chances of gaining psi points and doubles the number of points gained (still to a max of 10). Also, psi points spent during formal training count double towards the character's next roll for more points. Initial training is needed to use powers both quickly and reliably. People without training are likely to not know they are using their powers, often with disastrous results.