Re: Campaigns and Stealing a Nuclear Reactor

["Robert J. Hansen" <rjhansen@xxxxxxxx>]

> > In point of fact, I once built a fast-breeder nuclear reactor on a dare.
> > Needed to raid the Physics department, but I was able to get one built
out
> > of a shoebox, a few sheets of metal foil, carbon paper and a sample of
> > Pu-238.
>
> Um, did you have a troubled childhood?  :-)

Let's just call it `interesting'.  :)

> Did you run the reactor in your dorm room?

I ran the sequel out of my dorm, yeah.  Couldn't use Pu-238 from the Physics
department (they wouldn't let it out of the radioisotope lab), but turns out
Americium-241 from a smoke detector works, too.  Realistically, all you have
to have in order for a fast-breeder reactor is a source of neutrons, some
way to direct the neutrons at a target, some way to capture stray neutrons,
and a target.  Left a quarter in the reactor to bake for a while, and at the
end of a couple hours the quarter would set off a Geiger counter--I'd
transmuted some of the metals in the quarter into radioactive forms, which
is the foundation of breeder reactors.

> In other words, why doesn't the case get handed to the DOE, state police,
> FBI, etc.?

One possibility is it already has, but the client doesn't trust the
government to conduct a good investigation.  Of course, this trades one
problem for another--it makes it plausible for BE to be called in, but it
doesn't explain where BE is going to get the technical experts required to
handle a case of that sort.

> As a GM, I'm not really big on 'save the world scenarios'.  We played a
game
> (not ME) for about a year (~40 - 50 sessions) in which every time we
turned

My favorite trick was, during one campaign, to have the cell working to stop
both munitions and drug shipments from coming into Florida.  They amassed a
good track record, up until US Customs Service arrested them on charges of
capital murder.  Turns out that whoops, in their zeal to meet the client's
objectives, they never picked up on the clues dropped during the campaign
that they were actually working for the narcosyndicates.

As one player said, "When did we become the bad guys again?"  :)