Good player roles on a starship?

Ok... I have a problem.

I'm about to start up my third Trek Campaign (all three taking place in the ENT-era) and I realise that in every campaign the players plays almost the same roles.

Captain
XO
Security Chief
CMO


I find it hard for them to play any other major roles on the ship.

The roles of communications officer, engineer or science officer are way more suited for npcs since treir main role is to use their instruments to inform the crew on what is going on.

Sometimes my players tells me that they would like to try on different roles but they understand as well as I do that it's not much fun to play a engineer or science officer and just repeat to the other players what I tell them they know...

Do you have any ideas for other characters that could work as senior crew or at least work along the senior crew (like for example Neelix did for some vauge reason)?

You could pull a page from the Elite Force games and have them play a Hazard Team. Of course, that only works if you're familiar with those games...

OK. I see what you are getting at... And you are indeed correct that the most common roles aboard ship are as you indicated. In many cases the mission specialist and redshirt as NPC's are equally important, because the specialist knowledge required in one plot may relegate the character to insignificance in another.

One option is to allow 'guest stars' for non-regular players, or troop play which allows your players to take a secondary character to use when the plot is less suitavble for their main one (the GM nod that the secondary characer is in play might give them a clue as to whats ahead...)

But there are other ways for a character to shine. Starfleet Officers are supposed to be renaicence men, masters of multiple disciplines. So that Engineer might also be a top notch pilot who authored a thesis on temporal relativity. The Civilian El Aurian councellor might actually be a former Starfleet science officer, The Ops Officer might be the ships second officer...

Soetimes al it takes is to think a little bit outside the box.

Well, there is also the Chief Engineer. Possibly the players can play supporting roles such as a visiting scientist.

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Originally Posted by Chabit Rane

Well, there is also the Chief Engineer. Possibly the players can play supporting roles such as a visiting scientist.

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See this is (I think) one of the problems the OP is alluding too. The Technical and Scientific roles in Trek often require a lot of (canon) knowledge and the ability to make up technobabble... And a lot of people shy away from this...

But then the same (I feel) is tre of the Captain role. I would expect a player for a captain to really be in charge, to lead the crew through the plot, and to inspire the group. Not everyone can manage this...

Have your players expressed these concerns, or is this something that you are worried about them feeling trapped in these roles?

If the players bring some good history with the character there should be no problem, in fact if it was my players I would ask them why they are playing a Ranger - AGAIN - in another game - for example.

You could really address the theme of the game, this campaign will focus on Diplomacy in the Eviction Sector... so your capt has the task of representing the entire Federation.

Or, you could put a real focus on the campaign, you are attached to a diplomatic team - then go from there.

I like the Elite Force/MACO option as well...should work out pretty good.

Sorta stasis thread, but I find myself cruising the forums after some months...

The Hazard team idea is a good start, one thing we've tried before, with mixed but overall ok success was a Troubleshooting/Away team, sort of operated under the Hazard team creation principles, a team specifically created to expand the general options when it comes to away teams, close knit group of relative experts, perhaps not the best in their field, but excellent nevertheless. The second goal as noted, was to hope to improve overall performance of the team by developing connections rather than the random away team practice of 'Grab whoever might be qualified, and maybe a couple senior officers'.

In all my Trek games, I've always had a PC as department heads in Sciences and Engineering in addition to Captain, XO, Security, and Medical. My co-GM and I made sure to create episodes that had scientific and technical stuff in them to make sure the science officer and engineer had stuff to do.

If any of your players are interested, encourage them in those directions.

Consider picking up a copy of the technical manuals for the engineer, and/or a copy of Star Trek Science Logs for the science officer.

How about a change of pace and playing non starfleet personal? Civilians? Probably not even with access to a ship. At least not from the star? Sounds like fun to me. We had this once for a short campaign of Star Wars. And that was damn good! And very interesting to see how the players always handled the "transport problem"...

I make the assumption that large ships and specialized ships are prone to having sub-departments. As an example, a science vessel will have a science department chief but there might be life sciences sub-department, a space sciences sub-department, or a cultural sciences sub-department. Further, there may be sub-departments of sub-departments.

In addition, just about any function that requires more than three people would need a lead in charge of it. The yeomen service probably has a Chief Administration Officer. This idea could be extrapolated as far as you want to go.

I have usually played a navigator/helms man sort of character. That position enables a PC to get his hands into a lot of the ship's action (piloting) and might be used in a variety of other missions as a back-up specialist.

On the other hand I have never had a PC captain...

A campaign idea I never got off the ground was inspired by the events of TNG’s “Force of Nature”; the Hekaras Corridor was being affected by ‘unleaded warp nacelles’, making travel in the region very risky…

The Cast would have been part of a Federation evacuation fleet, called in to render technical and medical support for the Hekarens (sp?) before conditions worsen to the point where the 10 light-year stretch of the Corridor can’t be used at all.

We’d roughed out some ideas before the group broke up:
1. A civilian MD with a speciality in tropical diseases – coastal cities on Hekeras IV being flooded by climate shifts;
2. A warrant officer sensors chief on an Oberth-class ‘flying scanner’;
3. The fleet’s commander, a (very) young Admiral;
4. A couple of Merchant Marines;
5. Some SCE personnel to help with ‘climate control grids’.

It would have been maybe 10 to 12 sessions long, with a suitably dramatic finale… ships struggling to flee along the Corridor, their warp engines adding to the instability as they travel. Ah well.:(