"Family" Type Adventures

[I've tried to post this three times now, each time hitting "ctrl-W' instead of "shift-W" to capitalize a "W", which has the effect of killing this window. I wonder if I should take that as a sign...]

The TNG episode "Family" had no temporal anomalies, alien invaders, violations of the Prime Directive, nano-viruses, etc. Instead it dealt with Captain Picard visitiing his family, Wesley getting an old message from his father, and Worf's parents visiting Enterprise. Other episodes have done similar things, like Voyager's "Someone to Watch Over Me".

I've realized I've never tried an adventure like that, one relying almost soley on interaction, without a real "threat" and I'm wondering if that would work in a roleplaying game. Obviously the answer is "it depends on the group" but I find myself curious if others have attempted such adventures.

Well Dan ... it works ... depends on the group of course.

I have started a second season of my campaign on 1st of September, and my group plays once a week for about 4-5 hours (and is composed of 4 players and GM ... well its 5 players and GM now).

For seven sessions in the row we have role played a shake down cruise of a new ship, so there was no aliens, no borg, no threats as such...

Fair enough we have had one red alert training (which was clearly announced as training), some EPS conduits problems, some light sexual harrasment case and ... plenty of role playing. Best parts incuded senior staff diners (organized by order of the captain) which had plenty of lively and good discussion and character development... with people actually going as far as stating what food and drinks they were having...

As you can imagine that was pretty much about 30-35 hours of gaming without a single phaser fired or a single life in danger...

However it can only go so far, as players were getting used to it ... and things were getting inactive, until of course that alien entity showed up to break the shake down cruise :)

Currently I am looking forward to role playing christmas. The captain is from a traditional family (well she is a half orphan) but her and her mother celebrated christmas as a family occasion when she was young and I would imagine she will want to do something special on such ocassion...

Kind Regards

Episodes like "Family" work best with a group of players who've invested some time and effort into their characters' backstories. An external source of story tension may seem more compelling, but it offers comparatively little in the way of character development. Internal sources of story tension are where the real juicy roleplaying is to be found. A character should not exist in a social vacuum, any more than we do in real life.

A character's friends and family add depth to the character, and provide a narrator with many ready-made hooks and complications. Imagine Wrath of Khan without Kirk's former romance with Carol Marcus. Bereft of the relationship, there wouldn't be much impetus for Kirk to become involved in the story... Carol Marcus would never have called him personally. Anyone might have put down Khan, to be honest.

One of the greatest strengths of Trek, what makes it stand out as good speculative fiction, is that it focusses on the people who do the jobs and have the adventures, and not just on the jobs and adventures alone. At the very end of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Gene Roddenberry reminds us of the single most important facet of his creation: "The Human Adventure is just beginning."

I have had wonderous success applying this notion to campaigns I have run, and not just Trek. Exploring the human condition is the purpose of literature, and roleplaying at its best can be an interactive means to reach the literary ideal. In my experience, the best campaigns are those in which the characters' development at least equals the importance of the progress of the storyline.

I run something like that every couple of advnetures just to give them some character time.

Such elements can work in a game, and can be just as fulfilling and exciting as stopping warp core breaches while fleeing from the Dominion. I don't know if you could sustain an entire campaign on nothing else, but it is one of the best ways to develop the characters as characters rather than as performers of skill tests.

Examples that I've participated in: I was once in a long-running Shadowrun game where we were quite content to spend entire gaming sessions on such things as throwing a Thanksgiving dinner, or shopping for one of the character's adopted daughters' prom night. Occasionally these mundane events would be interrupted by more standard Shadowrun fare, but we enjoyed developing the relationships and outside interests of our characters. It was one of the best games I've ever played in.

Back in the ICON days, I participated in a Starfleet Academy game. We had a blast charting the academic courses of our characters, aiming for different roles in Starfleet after graduation. I once joked that we must be pretty lame, a group of college students sitting around pretending to be college students, selecting and attending classes as a diversion from selecting and attending classes. We had friendly and not so friendly competition with other cadets and each other. We had vacations where the characters would pursue outside interests (like my character's goal to summit the tallest mountain on each continent before graduation), extracurricular activities (such as sports and trying to make Nova Squadron look stupid), and the occasional moral dillema, which was especially fun when presented to the two characters with the greatest...moral flexibility. No strange diseases, no alien invasions, but we had a ball.

-Chris Landmark

I did recently have a session, where the PCs returned from being away from freinds, family and the main story for months.

Now plot or drama required, just breifings, romantic interludes and the like.

Chris Landmark's mention of Shadowrun brings to mind a session of Shadowrun spent entirely in a nightclub. On of the PCs was a shapechanging spirit who turned into a beautiful woman to chat up another PC. An embarassing morning after followed :).

Quote:

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Originally posted by Dan Stack
I've realized I've never tried an adventure like that, one relying almost soley on interaction, without a real "threat" and I'm wondering if that would work in a roleplaying game. Obviously the answer is "it depends on the group" but I find myself curious if others have attempted such adventures.

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When I ran my campaign, we usually played an episode/session once a week or once every other week. During the downtime between episodes, if the group could get together on a weeknight or whatever, me or my co-GM would run what we called a subplot session. It was basically "day in the life of" stuff, where the characters would decompress from the last show and interact with the PCs and NPCs they didn't get a chance to.

All the PCs were pretty well fleshed out with histories and such, so it was easy for the players to drop right into character. These sessions were a great chance for us to flesh out the key NPCs too.

Sometimes, if we planned ahead a little, the subplot sessions would drop hints or foreshadow the upcoming episode.