Our first session went extremely well (I thought), and I believe most of the players greatly enjoyed it. The player running the Captain was a bit disappointed, I think, as he ended up staying with the ship for a number of scenes (an away mission while the ship was in jeopardy from a subspace rift).
The game system worked fabulously, thanks much to my experience with CODA (from Lord of the Rings), as well as a great deal of help from many here.
Some things that I noticed might be problematic:
- As mentioned above, the Captain was somewhat hamstrung in his ability to have something to do. During space combat the ship’s Doctor was likewise not really needed (though I gave the player something to do during that time). I’m considering getting secondary PCs for those two players, so that they’ll have more to do during times when their characters aren’t involved.
- My character tested out the Double Fire Key Trait. To say he was crazy good in combat would be an understatement. One round he easily dropped three Romulans, hitting each of them twice (just in case they shrugged off the first stunning phaser fire). I can see this being abused, and sure wouldn’t want an NPC doing this back at a PC. Might have to tone this ability down, as I don’t recall a lot of this happening on any of the TV series.
- After a few rounds of space combat, our Operations Officer hacked into the enemy vessel and modulated their shields, effectively making it as if they had no shields (and thus phaser fire hit directly on the system it was targeting). This is another thing that I can see would be abusive, if done every battle (and could be frustrating if the enemy does it to the PCs).
As always, I welcome your input and suggestions. I liked the way things flowed, and the adventure was a lot of fun. I think I might end up tweaking a few things, though, to prevent future abuse.
