New Approach

I'm getting ready to start my first Star Trek campaign. That may sound like I'm a novice GM, which is not anywhere near true. I've been a regular GM, running hundreds and hundreds of games for nearly 30 years. I'm even pretty familiar with CODA, having run and played in many Lord of the Rings campaigns over the years. But this is my first foray into Trek, and I'm considering - at least for my first adventure - taking a unique approach.

It struck me, as I've been preparing - that a number (many) of the Professional Abilities are ones that would hardly EVER come up in actual gameplay. Let's say a character has the Systems Technician PA as an Ops Officer, which gives an affinity bonus (equal to half the character's Computer Use skill level, rounded up) when reconfiguring his console, recalibrating equipment, or making minor repairs during emergency situations. In the course of a normal story, I think it's going to be pretty rare that there will be much recalibrating or reconfiguring. And even if the Ops console needs to be repaired (which certainly can and could occur), this ability only works when doing so for minor repairs, and then only during emergency situations.

So anyway, as I considered things like this, I decided to construct my first adventure a little differently than I ordinarily do. Usually I follow the "Three-Act Model", fashioning an overall storyarc that has mutliple layers. I also work hard on the setting and the adversaries, making sure the plot is solid, the opponents have plausible motivations, and the adventure is exciting overall for all participants.

This time, I think I'm going to work backwards, to a degree. I've got the basic outline of a plot, but instead of fitting the characters to the story, I think I'm going top attempt to fit the story to the characters. In other words, I'm going to look at their various Skills, Edges, and Professional Abilities, and see if I can't have a few scenes where each character gets a chance to "do his or her thing", shining in the specific areas that their character is really good at.

As an example (and it's just one I picked at random - our Ops Officer doesn't actually have that PA), with the PA listed above (Systems Technician), I would craft a situation/scene where the Ops Officer would be forced to recalibrate his work station or have to fix it under duress during an emergency. If the character also had the PA of Level-Headed (as our Ops Officer does), I could also have him doing some of his professional skill rolls (System Operation, most likely) on the bridge in the middle of a bunch of distractions, just to be able to allow him to shine and "show off" with his cool abilities.

It's an approach I haven't done before, and I'm wondering if anyone else has done anything similar with CODA before.