(1) I have six players, so I created a sixth PC ... a kid nicknamed Push-Pull.
(2) I'm going to start the group out in a Daihotai, no comms, as they push to do their fantasy football draft. Push-Pull is a stowaway, in line with his/her character.
(3) As they finish up and start the drive in, the announcements from the adventure start coming in.
So, things that I need to do:
(4) Write up those announcements more formally.
(5) Write up some starting banter. I did this for CotG, and it was very popular.
(6) There are no extra NPCs meant to be played by players-whose-PC-died, so I'm doing four things to give those players something to do. (This is a true one-shot, so I think this will serve to entertain the unfortunate players.)
(a) Let them play any encountered xenomorphs. So write up that stat-block for them.
(b) Create a known religious (read, like Morris) crazy, who will turn rapidly on his/her rescuers. Write up that stat-block.
(c) I love the atmospherics of Bioshock, so I'm going to write up crazed, apocalyptic, and scary announcements and sounds that come over the colony PA, and let the player choose when to interject those. (Like maybe once every 15 minutes or so.)
Any comments and suggestions are welcome.