Powering the Nautilus Spiral - Star Master Log: Save the Rope!

Star Master Log

Mar 10

Hello, World!

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Jeff breaks down the fourth episode of the Sibylen arc, where the crew tackled two of the greatest challenges in TTRPGs: a puzzle, and a short climb down a shaft. He digs into his philosophy on puzzle design and reveals the grim purpose behind the Nautilus room.

He covers:

(00:00) - Introduction: "Powering the Nautilus Spiral"
(00:39) - The Crew Logs: Encrypted reports from the players
(06:26) - Fog of War: The goo shaft debate and Haleyy's hairbrained rope scheme
(11:01) - Engine Room: Puzzle design philosophy; why the best puzzles were never meant to be puzzles
(15:01) - Deep Dive: The Nautilus room's true purpose; alien medicine, experimentation, and desperation
(17:02) - Subspace Signals: Does Thalia genuinely want to make things right with Thorn?
(20:07) - Star Master Spec: Quern - a puzzle game for people who loved Riven

New Star Master's Logs drop every other Tuesday, bridging the gap between our main adventure episodes.

[00:00:00] Speaker: Hey everyone, star Master Jeff here and welcome back to the Star Master Log. Today we're discussing the fourth part of the Sybil and Arc powering the Nautilus Spiral. In this episode, the crew faces off against two of the greatest challenges a party can possibly face in a tabletop role playing game, a puzzle, and a short climb down a shaft.
[00:00:27] We're gonna be breaking down this episode in just a moment, but first, let's check in with the crew and hear their latest encrypted reports. I'll see you on the other side.
[00:00:39] Speaker 2: Update. Since the last log, I do not have any desire for self-replicating sparring partner. And I know punching through a VAT, because it seems too complicated for what it is, is a bit OneNote, but I've been on many missions that been helped by, um, using physicality to make an impact on structural obstacles [00:01:00] like apertures.
[00:01:01] Honestly, this is starting to feel more like a classic Robert and Haley mission repelling down into the unknown finding and making our own exits. Thankfully, Felix and Voss seem to have the more alien aspects of the mission figured out, and if I can speed that up with what I do best. Everyone will see it as a win-win, right?
[00:01:22] I am gonna wait to answer that though, until I can write up a full mission report once we're all out of here.
[00:01:31] Speaker 3: You know, I thought I knew pretty much everything there was to know about computers, programming, science machines, but. Boy, this alien facility shore has proved me wrong, kind of into it, you know, it's been a long time since I've been stumped by anything like this where I've just been completely in the dark and it's exciting.
[00:01:53] Like the possibilities are exciting because, yeah, I've been down here. Controlling these things, moving them [00:02:00] around, interfacing with them. But I don't know how it's working. Like I don't know how I'm moving these walls around. Is it some kind of electrical signal between the nano fluid and the walls? Is it some kind of wireless interface?
[00:02:11] Is there maybe a physical interaction happening? The walls are also made of this nano fluid. I, I don't know. I don't know, but I'm excited. The possibilities are, are, are endless and especially thinking about cracking this, figuring out how it's working and applying it. Applying it to our technology.
[00:02:30] Unleashing something. I mean, oh, thorn might not like that word. Bringing something like this to the galaxy. The technology, the advances we can make are, it's beyond imagination and I have a pretty wild imagination. Okay, calm down Felix. 'cause first things first, we have to get out of here. Alright, we're almost there.
[00:02:52] We're getting close. Feel it, but we've gotta push through to the end. Get outta here, get to the goat, and [00:03:00] sit down and do some real nice science.
[00:03:07] Speaker 4: Oh, this place is ridiculous. There's so much crazy unexplainable nonsense in every room that I'm starting to get desensitized to all of it. I just hope that when all this is through, we have enough to turn a significant profit on this little adventure of ours. Poor Froggy's losing it. When we first came in, it felt like him and Vera were keeping us calm.
[00:03:29] But now that we're delving deeper and deeper, he's starting to crack. We gotta keep everyone together, keep everyone sane, keep everyone in check. Sure, it's pretty dangerous down here, but I get the feeling. We'll find a way out soon. We just have to survive all these crazy security spider droids or whatever the hell they are.
[00:03:48] Beer of Felix and Voss can hardly contain themselves. I mean, I get it. This place is like a once in a lifetime discovery. After once in a lifetime discovery in every single room we explore, but [00:04:00] something's nagging at me. That fork we found. I can tell it's eating at Haley. Robert makes it clear that the damn thing creeps him out.
[00:04:07] I mean, me too, but with Hailey I feel something more. It's almost like there's something that she's not telling us.
[00:04:17] Speaker 5: I'm getting real tired of froggy, freezing up. I mean, we all get scared. You don't think I'm scared? I am always scared. That's baseline letting fear run point. That's what gets people killed. One bad decision, one hesitation. This whole ops blown could have gone sideways. Whole team could have been dead. And the team comes first, always.
[00:04:46] And you know, I wasn't touching them. Punt cakes wasn't going towards them. Go pools either. Mm-hmm. Or repelling down a hole into the unknown. Oh, yes sir. Hoorah. [00:05:00] That said, Froggy's lucky I didn't turn him into Haley's landing pad. At least then he would've been useful. Haley, Felix swimming in the goof sludge.
[00:05:12] Thorn and I, we kept our boots clean. Now, wouldn't you know it? There's another kullu tu fork Latin up like it's alive. Mm. Oh hell no. Funny how that works. But from here on out, I'm keeping a real close eye on Haley. I know what to do.
[00:05:33] Now we got some Whirly gig. Chainsaw Med bot. Slicing and ding away. Well, time to lock and load, brother. No chance this was ever A medical facility feels more like into the penal calling than me. Get ready boys. Buckle up. Giddy up.[00:06:00]
[00:06:04] Speaker: So that was the crew's take on this episode. But let's take a step back and talk about what happened behind the screen. This is Star Master Jeff, and you are listening to the Star Master log. Let's talk about how that session went for me, your good old local star master. We'll talk about what was planned, what I found surprising, and how much I'm improvising what you hear.
[00:06:26] If you're into GM ing world building, or just curious about how that story takes shape, this segment is for you. So right off the bat, I'd like to address the elephant in the room. My players are not at all immune to the common, let's call them foibles of every other gaming group since the existence of TT RPGs.
[00:06:51] What I mean by that is, of course, the go shaft. I think that whether a group is crossing a 10 foot gap, [00:07:00] trying to get across a river, climbing up or down a wall or goose shaft players cannot help but deliberate endlessly on how to best approach an environmental reversal. I expected them to talk through the best way to proceed down this 30 foot shaft, which I made slippery because it used to have goo in it.
[00:07:22] I thought this will be a a slight challenge. In all honesty, this could be quite dangerous. A 30 foot drop is quite deadly, especially considering how slippery it is. I was also prepared to ask for all manner of exert based checks. However, I wasn't prepared for, but probably should have been the endless dickering.
[00:07:43] How best to approach this relatively short climb down a slippery wall. I mean, my God, I've been playing TT RPGs for 30 years. When I was 10 years old, people were doing the same thing, and now that we're all 40 or approaching 40, it's still happening. [00:08:00] If you're a player out there, I employ you just tie a rope to something and climb down the wall.
[00:08:05] It doesn't have to be a big deal. This group routinely faces down death. Most recently Felix SW in a Nan night pool. I mean, outside of trying to figure out their 10 tug system that went pretty smoothly. And then this is what gives them pause. They just kill a self replicating squid crap, and this is what stops them in their tracks.
[00:08:25] First of all, I think it's important for everyone at home to know that I always aggressively edit these podcasts. I want a tight story. I want everything to be narratively important. I keep only in the relevant, most interesting or hilarious bits. This may have been the most aggressive yet. In this segment alone, I must have cut at least 15 minutes out of players debating who should go first, how they should climb down rope structures, knots rule looks ups, figuring out how his exertion works.
[00:08:56] And then when we finally figured it out and they were starting to climb down, [00:09:00] Stephanie says, oh, I want to jump. Why? Why do you want to jump Stephanie? Oh, I wanna save the rope. She wants to be able to untie the rope and keep it so that she has the rope for later. I mean, I admire her frugalness, but come on folks.
[00:09:18] It's 30 feet. She's gonna take massive damage, jumping down there all to save some fiber. So enters phase two of the deliberations. How do we make that work? Rules as written. You're gonna get hurt even with the lower gravity of sibling. You gotta take some damage, Steph. So then we start thinking, exert rolls, saving throws, styles of landing, slowing down your descent like a monk by pressing against the two walls and sl all the way down to the bottom.
[00:09:45] In all seriousness, I cut at least half of that. It went on and on and on, and it was kind of fun at the time, but listening back on it, I was like, just get on with it. It's 30 feet tire rope and slide down. Leave the rope behind. My God. What? Alas, in [00:10:00] the end, she untied the rope, stowed it in her pack, and jumped.
[00:10:04] She went into free fall, failed her saving throw role, which by the grace of me as a gm, I gave to her. And then she took damage. She tried to walk it off, put on a brave face, but she failed her perform role as well. So not only did she get completely wrecked, uh, if memory serves, she took five points of damage, which is not nothing when you're only second level, but.
[00:10:31] She also didn't stick the landing and everyone saw how badly she failed. But you know what? We love Haley and this is what she's all about. She's not a planner, but she is a schemer. And if it's not Robert doing something dumb, it's Haley, right? They are the heart and soul of this team. Not by way of their brain, but by way of their heart.
[00:10:54] And she wanted to keep that rope and she was willing to lose hit points to do it. And. [00:11:00] I don't know if I would call that admirable, but it's certainly entertaining. So Haley's made it down, along with the rest of the crew and from here on out, the episode revolves around an intricate puzzle room, which was really my first exploration into that genre.
[00:11:17] In this game, man, I love puzzle games. More specifically, I love puzzle games where you solve in universe puzzles that were never meant to really be puzzles in the story of the game. For instance, take Rive, one of the best puzzle games ever created in my humble opinion. There are precious few puzzles in that game that were created by, in universe characters that are actually meant to be puzzles Instead, most of the puzzles you are solving as the stranger, the main character of the game are cultural.
[00:11:57] You are dropped into a strange place [00:12:00] where your ignorance is the only barrier to free movement. A simple elevator is unfathomable to you. 'cause you do not understand the rive numbering system. Children's books inform you of local wildlife, which later unlocks your ability to understand scientific notes and so on and so forth.
[00:12:18] There are puzzles because you are a stranger in a strange land, not because those that live in that space we're trying to make you think. Any child of R could easily navigate that world, but yet you an adult are at a standstill because you are not from here. Those are the type of puzzles that I grew up on, and those are the type of puzzles that I like to run puzzles as a cultural enigma to be unraveled.
[00:12:45] And after solving the intricacies of that puzzle, you are left with a greater sense of the world you are exploring. Historically, my games contain a lot of puzzles, but in the podcast, I've shied away from them. [00:13:00] 'cause it's very difficult to describe a puzzle without visuals. In a lot of cases. Usually I would have a full map, reference photos, and I can really dig into what makes that puzzle tick without worrying about time.
[00:13:13] But in a podcast, we're strapped for time and we have audio only. And so I've really struggled to figure out the best way to present the types of puzzles that I like to have in the podcast. So this was my first attempt and honestly, I do think I have a long way to go here. A few things I would change about my puzzle presentation in the future.
[00:13:35] One, I would give less detail upfront. I sort of gave a lot of information about the puzzle right away, and I think that I would rather that they explore the area and I reveal one piece at a time. Two, I would strip out anything unnecessary from the area. Or at least not mention it until the puzzle is solved.
[00:13:56] So in this particular case, they would explore the [00:14:00] room and as they explore it, I would give them the different pieces of the puzzle. You have the track on top, you have the vats and the alien fork, and on and on. But I might even make it so that the bunt cake was in the same room and the surgery room opens up after the fact.
[00:14:18] That way, they don't need to actually explore that room, which three quarters of it is not important to the puzzle, and I could just move the 25% that is important out to the main room. And number three, I just reduced the number of moving parts in the puzzle. Just for time, I had the track, the vat, the Nautilus spiral grooves and the tuning fork and the bunt cake.
[00:14:39] And then there was all their knowledge about the nano fluid and how mechanisms upstairs worked. And I think it was just probably a little too much, especially with the Alien Fork, having a depression for Dr. Voss sit into, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, it's too much at once. So I think just with these three changes I can make puzzling a bit more fun to interact with and listen [00:15:00] to in the pod.
[00:15:01] And I'm already planning my next attempt. I seriously love crafting puzzles and can't wait to get to another one. So, puzzling aside, what is this room and what was it used for? The strange Nautilus room lays directly beneath the goo at one floor up. Each go VAT on the upper floor has an aperture in the ceiling here that connects it to this floor.
[00:15:27] A network of tracks allows a container hung from the ceiling to slide under any of the apertures, open it and receive the contents of the vat from the upper floor. At that point, the now full container can travel the tracks to the next room where a larger VAT is positioned between two surgical spider robots.
[00:15:47] The hanging container can dump its contents into the larger vat and assumably the spider like medical bots could get to work. A drain in the vat would then allow for the contents to be flushed outta the vat. So here's the sort of it. [00:16:00] The facility on the first floor houses vats, each of which contained an infected aliens submerged in their own nano fluid, connecting them to their virtual reality exo net as they slowly died to the plague.
[00:16:11] Now, it would seem that it would sometimes be necessary to take one of these beings. Transport them to the lower floor and operate on them. This could have been to run experiments, perhaps, uh, in, in an attempt to cure the plague or to give the patients routine care or even to, to autopsy a deceased being perhaps in service of studying the infection.
[00:16:38] Honestly, in all likelihood, it's probably all three. It's becoming clear that this disease was a major issue in this alien society, and the desperation of the alien race probably led them to perform all manner of what we would consider inhumane procedures in the attempt to stop it. So moving on from the horrifying Spider Bot medical [00:17:00] procedure portion of the podcast.
[00:17:02] I'd like to take a question from a listener in a segment I like to call the subspace signals. This week's question comes from Killian who sent it along via email, our first one via email. Thank you Killian. He asks, do you think that Talia genuinely wants to make things right with Thorn or is she still playing an angle?
[00:17:29] Great question. Uh, lovely question. So this is in direct reference to Thorn's focus episode Nexus of Betrayal. Talia for those playing along at home is Thorn's mother and the former CEO of Drax Access Goods. Because of thorn's, inexperience, and innocence, he, I guess you could say accidentally destroyed their company's credibility.
[00:17:53] Leaving it open for cheap purchase by Raddy subsidiary Nexus. Trading the deal that Thorn got himself [00:18:00] involved in was worse than anyone could have imagined, and actually included multiple illegal sales that landed Thorn in jail for a decade. For years, thorn believed he was framed by William Sist, his business partner, and that belief has driven pretty much every decision he is made since getting outta prison.
[00:18:18] But in his focus episode Nexus of betrayal, we learned the truth. It was actually his mother Talia, who planted the evidence that landed him in jail. She expected both thorn and salaries to go to jail, removing them both from the equation. She was protecting her company, and instead watched her one and only son take the full sentence while William salaries walked away.
[00:18:40] Scott free and bought Axxis goods for next to nothing. So in his focus episode, when she finally appears and she tells Thorn that she wants to help. She spent 10 years trying to undo what she did. The question is, do you believe her? She clearly has resources, she [00:19:00] has information, and she did engineer this whole meeting with Thorn and Mara to bring Thorn closer to the truth.
[00:19:08] But she also lied to him for a decade, and she's the reason that he was in prison. That's a very high cost for a lie. Thorn losing 10 years of his life. Personally, I think she means it, and I think that she wants to make things right with Thorn, but meaning it and being trustworthy aren't really the same thing.
[00:19:28] Now, are they? She's proven that she'll make huge, important, unilateral decisions as she thinks are for the greater good, even if they cripple the life of her son. And that's exactly the type of person who I think would burn you twice. If it comes down to Thorn and Talia regaining control of Drax access goods, what do you think she's gonna choose?
[00:19:54] I think you already know the answer, and there's your answer for this week. If you'd like to send in a [00:20:00] signal for the next log, head on over to patreon.com/darkstar Venture Cast. Our patrons always have priority in the queue, but I do also pay close attention to our socials. So drop us a line on Blue Sky.
[00:20:11] Or just send us an email and your question might just be the next one we intercept. So that wraps up our subspace signals for the week. But before we close out the log, I wanna leave you with a star, master spec, a book, movie, or other piece of media that helped to inspire this week's episode. So I know I just spent a lot of time talking about rive, how the best puzzles aren't really puzzles at all.
[00:20:36] Just a, a world that doesn't explain itself to you. And if that philosophy resonates with you the way that it does with me, qrn, Q-U-E-R-N is the next game that you should play. It's a first person puzzle adventure. In the tradition of Miston Riven, you wake up in a strange, abandoned world with no instructions, no handholding.
[00:20:59] What's left [00:21:00] behind are the remnants of a civilization, machinery, journals, architecture, and from there you piece together how things work. Not because someone designed a puzzle for you, but because you are a stranger in a strange place that was built for someone else. The production is remarkable for an indie game.
[00:21:20] The environments are dense and full of atmosphere. The the logic is internally consistent, which honestly, I'm pretty unforgiving on. If I start a puzzle game up and the logic doesn't follow from one puzzle to the next, I'm out. And in corn, when things click into place, it feels so earned in a way that most puzzle games don't manage.
[00:21:42] You're not shuffling from abstract puzzle to abstract puzzle. Instead, you're connecting a larger picture together where each puzzle builds on the previous one. It's the kind of game that I have found myself thinking about long after I put it down, which is for me, the highest compliment that I can give to [00:22:00] anything.
[00:22:00] I cannot wait to play it again, but I can't until I've forgotten about it. It's been years now and I'm almost at the point where I've forgotten enough about the puzzle structure that I can go back and play it again. And if I do, I'll make sure I let you know how it goes. So if you liked what the crew found on SI at Zeno site 34 B, a dead civilizations infrastructure built for mines that aren't theirs, just waiting to be understood.
[00:22:28] Then corn is for you. It captures that feeling better than almost anything else that I've played highly, highly recommended. Oh, and the soundtrack is Pretty Baller too. Check it out on Spotify. On the next episode of the Dark Star Adventure Cast, the alien fork comes to life. A window opens and through the dark between the stars.
[00:22:50] Something looks back at the crew, a scream from Hailey, followed by silence. And finally Robert starts telling a story that people [00:23:00] actually want to hear all this and more on the next episode of The Dark Star Adventure Cast. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll catch you on the next one.