Preparing for the Sarna HPG

The Sarna HPG plotline that I've developed was entirely based off fairly old (pre-Catalyst) BattleTech source material.  I was somewhat bemused to discover that the recently released Jihad: Final Reckoning sourcebook contained a number of HPG-based weapon systems that added a lot of rules, or at least guidelines, for what the Word is working on at the HPG station in California.  On Sunday I hope to explore that with the party.

I still want to develop some out-system minigame for them to solve as the first part of the session; a puzzle in which they can all participate.  I've discussed this in prior entries, but I'm still not terribly happy with any of the games I came up with.  Exactly how that will look, I'm still not sure.  Something to break the mold, make each of the players use their skills in a seriously helpful way, and contribute toward a goal that advances a party goal.  More and more, I'm convinced that I need some kind of puzzle that the character make skill checks to solve.  Something with five components, one for each character.  Maybe a logic puzzle of some description.

When I was young we used to do logic grids, in which you had two sets of data (people and rooms, for instance), and a list of hints you were supposed to use to determine which datapoints were associated with each other.  I really enjoyed them, and a few years ago I built a D&D campaign, one of the core plot points of which basically boiled down to solving one of these.  I'm thinking I might build a smaller one for Sunday if I can think of reasonable datasets to have the party correlate.