The Prison Transport Scenario

[apeiron]

This is what i have so far:

- A futuristic, perhaps dystopian setting like Firefly (i was reading the RPG when this came to mind)
- PCs are prisoners on a transport ship. Some recently convicted, some about to be released, some about to face execution
- Each player receives a character
- The GM shuffles and blindly hands out a secret to each player
- The story is either a breakout on the transport, or the transport crashes, or criminals come to get their friends en route.
- In addition to the PCs, there will be NPC prisoners, guards and flight crew (who might not be willing to fight the criminals).

The Characters:
- The Brute
- The Conman
- The Hacker
- The Looney Toon Serial Killer
- The Wheelman
- The White Collar Crook (150 pounds of CEO)
- Whatever you make up.

The secrets:
- Undercover cop posing as prisoner
- Dirty secret of the Alliance/Empire ala River.  They know something they shouldn't.  The system is hiding the character in prison... or perhaps it's a form of witness protection
- Wrongly convicted.  You didn't do it.
- Rightly Convicted.  Guilty as sin.
- Whatever you make up

Each secret comes with a few options, perhaps flavored as cynical/dark or idealistic.

The undercover cop might be there to kill the guy who killed his partner, or they might be there trying to nail a bigger fish.

The Wrongly Convicted might be innocent of the crime for which they are charged, but you're guilty of something else, or maybe you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Rightly convicted.  You're on your way to the gallows/firing squad/30 years in cryo/Rura Penthe.  Either you're a hardened monster bent on escape, or you've somewhat resigned to your fate or see the crisis as a chance to do some good. 

The idea here is that the GM doesn't know who has which secret at the outset.  Through their actions the secrets will come to light, then it will be up to the player to twist that secret into something dark or something better.  The players as a group will have to make choices about where to go, what to do and how to go about it.  If someone wants to serve their time (rather than be a fugitive) and the rest want to run, things could get tricky.  What about the guards?  Are they honest men doing a job or are they part of a corrupt system (and therefore fair game)?  Are the prisoners lovable crooks or hardened bad-ass mo-fos? As part of the set up, the players should/could decide what mood they want, what MPAA rating they want. Maybe even make some choices of what the end might be.  Die in a blaze of gunfire?  Escape into the rimworlds?  Captured?  Do they kill each other off?

i think you could run this in many systems and settings.