When the PCs are lower ranked crew...

I started a campaign featuring recent academy graduates, and it is not working well. They always "kick problems upstairs" for their superiors to solve unless I contrive ways to isolate them from such help, which involves temporarily stranding them somewhere, or incapacitating the senior staff, or forcing the senior staff to fail in various ways.

Has anyone tried this sort of campaign? Can you offer any tips? At this point I'm seriously considering trashing it and starting again with advanced officers as most campaigns I've seen discussed here seem to do.

You may encounter the same problem, as the ship's captain may keep the local starbase admiral on speed-dial to deal with any problems.

I ran a mini-Academy campaign to teach the rules "risk-free" and then started a campaign as regular crew. (Granted, I did hit several fast-forward zones where we skipped a couple of years so they're properly seasoned to command their own starship - currently the command officer has the rank of Commander and is captaining a Larson-class destroyer).

I never had a problem with the players taking on the tasks as detailed in the adventure, they always stepped up. For instance, during the initial mission, the Crew had to rescue some colonists from a damaged transport adrift in an ion storm cluster. The NPC captain assigned the PCs to the task, and they only called over when they needed equipment or to make progress reports; they handled their assignment to the best of their abilities.

Perhaps the NPC superior officers could indicate that they expect a little more initiative from Starfleet's finest; if that doesn't work, you may need an out-of-character chat with the players.

I played in a game of cadets/grads. The GM officially started the game with our class of cadets graduating to Ensign. The players were then assigned to a ship (don't remember the name, but it was a Voyager-class) that was purely for low-rank training.

We were assigned to real missions, that did not have terrible results for Starfleet if we failed, and with each, one Ensign was given command over the team. While our PC's trained, there was still a fully seasoned crew aboard the vessel to pull us out of trouble if it came to it. But as an example, a PC was given command of the ship to perform a task, while the captain observed; also, my PC was given command of tactical teams (he was a Tac Officer) to sweep up some small troubles from post-Dominion War holdouts. After each mission, the 'captain' graded our performance.

What that meant out of game was we were awarded Certs, based on mission performance judged by the GM, that we could gather to buy Promotions. The game table would also vote on who RP'ed best in each encounter, and that awarded an additional Cert. Bottom line is, when you accrued enough XP for an Advancement, you could then trade in your Certs for the Promotion Edge and move up from Ensign to Lieutenant (j.g.), etc. It was really fun, and players worked really hard to both show initiative and achieve successful results in the encounter to win Certs for promos.

My GM's table looked something like:

3 Certs to Lt. (j.g.)
5 Certs to Lt.
etc.

Now this might not work for your current game situation (not being a training vessel), but you still can assign lower risk missions to junior ranking officers, or NCO's and apply the same idea for promos. This will get your PC's RP'ing and wanting to work through the tedium so that, if successful, your players will know they are moving up the chain of command, or at least have the opportunity to watch their growth. And who says a simple mission isn't fraught with danger... example of a shuttle mission to transfer supplies:

- maybe there is a ship malfuction.
- a supply contamination.
- a rogue pirate wanting the wares.
- terrorists that want to destroy the incoming supplies to make a statement.
- etc.

There are a ton of ideas for low-rank missions:

- the above mentioned supply transfer.
- courier service and protection of an important person.
- snooping missions along the frontier or neutral zones.
- weeding out a group of Jem'hadar, hopefully through peaceful negotiations, but firepower if necessary.
- generator repairs on a small starbase that is watching a planet who has not yet come to the technological state allowed for Starfleet to make contact; but if the generator fails the station will lose its ability to maintain stealth or orbit, and could be revealed to the population.
- etc.

Finally, I will add... a low-rank group of PC's don't need to have to be in charge of a starship to have fun at command. In most of the examples above, you can put the team of players in command of a warp-capable shuttle, or even a small scout vessel. 'Captain of the Ship' is just the ranking officer, it doesn't necessarily mean the character has attained that rank.

I hope this helps.

One last point I want to make, and I go back to the game I played in...

As players, we (well at least I) want to raise our PC's rank and maybe someday be given command of a ship. The Cert system worked really well. So our PC's were given orders to attain a result, and we had to do that making our own command decisions, and once done the PC went through a mission review. What was cool is, Chris (our GM) made us report in character as to how our character's thought the mission went, and sometimes we had to defend our choices. This made me (as a player) go to the SOM and read through Starfleet directives, protocols and general orders to cover my PC's decisions.

It was very fun!

Bottom line is, Chris made judgement of mission success not only on the results of our actions, but also the 'whys'. This made it possible that, even though he had a different success result in mind for a particular mission, the PC could still succeed and earn Certs if his decisions could be justified.

Again, it was very fun!

I ran a game where the players were at most Lt's.They were assigned to a Nova Class (The Einstein);& they would take a runabout scouting out ahead of the Einstein.I ran it for my goddaughter & a couple of her friends.The game was going good but R/L ended the game.They were only between 13 & 15 but they did better that most players I played w/for 20+ yrs.;) Was actually the most fun I had in years running Star Trek. I tryed something similier w/my regular group & I was ready to beat my head against the wall.

I'd modify the premise a little bit so they are put in charge of distinct missions. For example, on DS9 I'd have the characters assigned to runabout missions to explore the Gamma Quadrant/scout Dominion positions/etc. On a starship one could put them in charge of a survey of one continent while the ship is orbiting over another one. Also you could have the captain get annoyed at problems being kicked upstairs. "You're academy graduates, supposed to be leaders capable of some initiative". Maybe give them some rivals who don't call home a lot.

A little taste of reality. If they keep kicking the problems up the ladder they'll get the reputation of not being able to accomplish tasks independently. This is a real world workforce problem. Junior people who can't do things without help never get promotions. In highly competitive companies the least performing workers get fired periodically. Its how my company is. I bet it's how Starfleet is, given how tough they are on their applicants (based on TNG episodes)!

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Originally Posted by Alex

A little taste of reality. If they keep kicking the problems up the ladder they'll get the reputation of not being able to accomplish tasks independently. This is a real world workforce problem. Junior people who can't do things without help never get promotions. In highly competitive companies the least performing workers get fired periodically. Its how my company is. I bet it's how Starfleet is, given how tough they are on their applicants (based on TNG episodes)!

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Why fire them when you can stick them on a relay station for six months? : P

I expect crewmen who keep asking their superiors for advice usually end up affected to cargo loading or freighter piloting...

I had a similar problem when my players (back when I had players...), who were are department heads, kept asking the NPC Captain and First Officer about their course of action. In the end, I decided to have the Captain simply ask them for their opinion, and decide accordingly. That allowed the players to debate on the course of action, while I kept the option of correcting it if they were too far of course.

In your case, you could have your PC's superiors answer them that they are the one in action, and therefore the best suited to decide what to do, or to suggest a course of action.
Of course, there are also the "one-shot" alternatives (those you can't pull off at every mission without being repetitive), like having the communications being disrupted, the mission requiring no transmissions to avoid detection, the main crew being incapacited, and so on...

In a sense, this particular issue has plagued DM/GMs for decades. The: Why are we the only ones able to do this? We're in a city of demi-god kings, and THEY can't be bothered to stop the orc invasion? etc etc

In this sense tho, if you're in a military like crew (Starfleet, arguably), not pulling your weight can get you into trouble, heck on a Klingon vessel it'll probably get you killed for incompetence. There are several ways you can approach it:

You can tailor situations so for whatever reason they're largely cut off from higher resources, best way I've found is kinda like things I see in work, My supervisor is caught up with her supervisor prepping for the agency review, so I'm stuck having to double check my own resources in regards to my court cases, etc etc. In trek, one can presume that unless you're on down time (scheduled), you're busy, so unless you're a logistics master, chances are any other teams or higher ups are stuck doing their own stuff.

In DnD it becomes a little easier, as you're able to match player levels with encounter or challenge levels, in the various trek systems its less so, consequently you need to use a little more judgement in setting up tasks.

Some tasks _should_ (my opinion) be senior officer range. One does not send the jr crew to negotiate diplomatic treaties, or develop tactical battlenet defense systems against pending Dominion shocktrooper attack. within those areas though, ARE things that jr types can do. Jr types won't be the senior diplomats, but they may be the runners, the investigators, the instigators that run a support option while the main diplomacy is being handled. For that dominion attack, they might be responsible for shoring up specific areas of the existing plan, or troubleshooting the practical/ground level applications by running simulations, etc.

TBH. The solution here is simple.

Hold back on XP.

If they wonder why their characters take ages to improve and can never afford their promotions... Then point out that they are simply doing this themselves... After all, the experience and kudos is constantly going to the senior officers who do the work.

Have an NPC come on board and overtake them due to his can-do attitude...

I could at least make up some situations that seem perfectly well for Cadets to earn there spikes without having the option of "outside" help. Just think about this observation outpost mentioned earlier in this thread.
What if it's an automated platform hanging in geostationary orbit above the mentioned planet. Cadets are send there on a regular basis to get the memory banks copied and wiped and the data brought back to memory alpha. A fairly easy routine job well suited for a bunch of nosy cadets or ensigns.
Upon their arrival they quickly realize that the station was damaged by an ion storm...or will be damaged VERY soon. Now go from there. That place is way out in the black. To far from the next Fed Colony to get help in time. But calling for it is definitely not a bad idea. But what to do until it arrives? Holy shit...we are in BIG trouble!!!!

Constructing situations like that is quite easy and I think it's still logical. Just create missions were it seems obvious to send the recruits and then - BANG - something goes wrong! And time, distance oder equipment force it that the players HAVE to deal with the problem or sth disastrous will happen.

I did play my second ST campaign like that starting all players as cadets on the Academy and growing from there. It went for 2 years which was my longest Trek game so far and since. One of my best experiences in gaming ever. But as most of the time...RL was against this group.
But at least they managed to shake down a new courier ship class. the Hugin Class. Great vessel. Lot of fun. Interesting missions!