RiP, gaming group.

Hi all,

I've been kept away from the boards despite the promise I made to myself to return regularly, mainly because of work and also, I guess, from an ongoing "bad vibe" in our gaming group eroding my Trek motivation.

I offered today a peaceful discussion to solve our differences, if there were some. I guess I opened the hornet's nest, because soon after that, some players decided they were fed up with the game and that we should decidedly end it all now without any proper conclusion.

I keep the tiny hope that over time, people will calm down and we'll be able to resume gaming on good terms.

However, for the moment, five years of gaming have found an abrupt and sad end. I deeply hope this will not impact on our personal friendships. Maybe it was better we end the game, I don't know. Maybe as GM I should have ended the game before. Time will tell.

I just wanted to apologize for leaving the boards suddenly again for a while. There are many people I like a lot here (you know who you are) but I went through times when seeing the color scheme of an LCARS system was enough to send me running off.

I've still tried to keep lurking and wanted to send big thumbs up to all the projects going on here, there's awesome talent. And thank you for all the positive and constructive feedback you all gave me about ESO, this kept me up, Trek-wise, at some times.

I hope I'll be able to stick more to the boards in the future. I still like Trek, I had the most awesome gaming moments of my life with my group, and these are the memories I'll keep of it!

Keep gaming! And remember, when things get to a head, that IT'S JUST A GAME.

Depressing rant ended!

Peace :)

Such things happen, sorry to hear it tho. those sorta things always suck

Having dealt with this sort of situation before, it is often better to end the campaign than to allow lingering resentments poison the personal relationships. Hopefully things have not yet progressed that far. If they have, remember the best times and try to forget the worst. Above all, forgive people their faults; we're all human.

Hey KillerWhate, nice to hear from you. Sorry about your gaming group but sometimes things happen for a reason, possibly a good one i'd like to think.

Drop me a line man, if you want to talk or just be silly.

Sorry to hear things are going south right now :(

Sorry to hear about that.

If it isn't too sensitive a subject, how did this happen? The only reason I ask, and maybe it was because I had a really good group, is that in over 16yrs with the same group nothing like that has ever occured to me. Sure we had many disagreements and one or two major rows, but nothing that completely fractured the group dynamic.

And the idea of a game interferring in future continued friendships is also totally foreign to me. :(

Gaming is becoming a hard hobby... nowadays it is so much easier to be entertained by videogames and movies that RPGs, wargaming or even playing plain ol' board games that they are becoming increasingly uncommon. And even then when you find other gamers it seems you have a 50% chance to encounter someone you won't want to play with in the 1st place (ie munchkins, rule lawyers, bad losers/winners, etc). A couple of years ago I moved to a new town for a job and I looked at the local gaming scene. I had the choice between the Games Workshop crowd (mainly 11-yr old kids) and the local gaming "clique" that felt that their membership of 8 was large enough already. Then you have the just weird people; like the time I placed an ad at the FLGS and some guy calls up. He had a really whiny voice and I remember I had a hard time restraining myself from laughing. Now for some reason he suddenly started a long diatribe out of the blue against Battletech, saying it was this and that, yaddya, etc. The funny thing was, the ad was for bloody Warhammer (!).

Geez, the two last RPGs have played were 2-3 years ago; a few ICON games and some Call of Cthulu. I do play the occasional wargame in solo mode like Starmada. Sorry for the digression.

Edit: Ha! I just remembered; lets not forget the effects of on-line video gaming. Apparently it is THE hot new trend. Why have to go to the trouble of GMing a game of Dungeons&Dragons, call the players up, having to make it to the game, etc when all you can do is turn your Playstation and join an onile game sitting on your couch.

"Ha! I just remembered; lets not forget the effects of on-line video gaming. Apparently it is THE hot new trend. Why have to go to the trouble of GMing a game of Dungeons&Dragons, call the players up, having to make it to the game, etc when all you can do is turn your Playstation and join an onile game sitting on your couch. "

Hoboy! Don't get me started on this. Ah, too late the pin has been pulled. I hate these games more then I do CCGs. You want to talk about the ultimate for munchkins!!! Cripes, with the stupidity that goes on in these games I don't know how they have got on.

Yeah, they are really great games. Why go out to meet up with some friends and actually, dare I say it, socialize ::GASP:: What an outdated concept. :rolleyes: Introverts of the world unite...in your dark little playrooms all alone....Hope you and your Vorpal Sword have a real good time.:eek: I have a friend that has since dropped off the face the of the world since he bought that colossal wallet raper known as "City of Heros." Talk about pulling fish hooks out of peoples mouths. $70 for the frickin' game to begin with! Then you have to pay $30 bucks a month to play, get real!

You know I actually wish I thought about this. Talk about that old proverd "a **** and his money..."

I apologize for the subject hi jack, it just had to be said.

And I should probably apologize in advance to those sensitive few that I have now very likely insulted with my opinion. But, hey...

Sorry to hear about your problem KW. My gaming group doesn't meet as much as before either, but that's more a problem of conflicting timetables.

Oh and BTW, just so you know, Phantom... all of my RPGaming friends and I play City of Heroes. And our real-life RPG has not dropped either.
Also, my GF's sister's boyfriend is a fervent Magic player and as eager to discover what RPG is like.

So, playing CCG or MMORPG doesn't mean one consider real life RPG obsolete ;)

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Originally posted by C5

Oh and BTW, just so you know, Phantom... all of my RPGaming friends and I play City of Heroes. And our real-life RPG has not dropped either.
Also, my GF's sister's boyfriend is a fervent Magic player and as eager to discover what RPG is like.

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Glad to hear it. I know there are gamers out there like you and your friends that don't fall into the category I described. However, people like you and I(as well as your friends/and more then likely most around here) are the exception to the rule. I have always thought of RPGing as a social event, and AFAIC games like CoH are the bane to socialization.

As to CCGs, I just never found them fun...though they can be a good investment option, if you are lucky enough to find the rare ones.;)

I still find it hard to see how a group could fly apart so violently, figuratively speaking. I know that it can be hard to find a good group in the first place, but it sounds like you and your group have been together for a while (a yr wasn't it?) everyones likes and dislikes should have been known at that point. Did they just not like Trek RPing?

Sorry to hear it, KW. When my regular gaming group fractured, it was due to real-world considerations & not the other way around. (Romantic breakups, mainly. One couple in particular had a teraton yield split. :eek: )

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Originally posted by Cybrludite
... One couple in particular had a teraton yield split. :eek: )

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How many zeros is that?:eek: :D

"Tera" is the SI prefix for one trillion. "Ton" is of course 2000 pounds ("tonne" is 1000 kilogrammes, about 10% greater), so one teraton is 2,000,000,000,000 tons. That's a helluva yield (this sort of notation is generally reserved for energy release, the unit being the energy put out by an equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene, or TNT).

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Originally posted by Owen E Oulton
"Tera" is the SI prefix for one trillion. "Ton" is of course 2000 pounds ("tonne" is 1000 kilogrammes, about 10% greater), so one teraton is 2,000,000,000,000 tons. That's a helluva yield (this sort of notation is generally reserved for energy release, the unit being the energy put out by an equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene, or TNT).

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Thanks for the defintion of teraton. I did already know what "yield" meant.;)

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Originally posted by Snake_Plissken
Gaming is becoming a hard hobby... nowadays it is so much easier to be entertained by videogames and movies that RPGs, wargaming or even playing plain ol' board games that they are becoming increasingly uncommon.

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At a friend's birthday on Friday night, my brother advanced the theory that this is pretty much why comic books - which he and I (much more him) have worked on in the past - have gone South so badly over the last few years. He feels it's easier to create a character and play out your own adventure - a la Knights of the Old Republic - than to look at a story that's already been put together, where you have only vicarious involvement and no real stake in what happens to the protagonists.

With regard to teraton: Owen, where do you find out about this stuff? And why aren't you on Jeopardy! making the rest of Canada proud (and yourself a few hundred thousand bucks) with your array of knowledge? :)

I'm just a trivia sponge, I guess. I find most game shows tedious, I'm afraid. I also try to check out my info before posting, either by physically looking it up in a book or using Google, which they don't let you do on game shows... Bastidges!

I wasn't implying you didn't know what a yield was, just pedantically noting that the SI prefixes aren't normally used for mass measurements - a million tons of cargo is usually just called a million tons rather than a megaton.

Back on topic, it can be very difficult to hold a gaming group together. I regard myself as being very luckily with my current group, who have been together for over 15 years, with a break of about 4 years a while back when a couple of players moved away.

I'm not the biggest fan of the on-line video RPG whachamacallits, but at the same time, I can understand their lure and their value. I had a gaming group. We stuck together for several years doing the WW thang, going from Mage to Aberrant to Vampire...all the way around the WW product line. It became increasingly harder and harder to get together. One of the players was a cassanova of sorts and began dating another player (with ill results...most ill), but he was also (and still is) a member of a band and his commitments to his craft often butted heads with his commitment to gaming. And the f*cked up part is, he was my most solid player.

Another solid player self-destructed for reasons I still don't know even years after the fact. He gave a very lame excuse about going back to school to finish his degree. It was only lame because we knew he made time for other things outside of school...just not gaming anymore. Maybe he found other social things to occupy his mind.

That left the married couple whose apartment we gamed at...they're divorced now after the wife (a full metal honey) had an affair with her boss, and her husband decided to date other guys once more. After the group disintegrated, we tried to maintain our friendships, but we didn't really have much in the way of common interests outside of the game. Of course, I'm still friends with the band dude, but I've been friends with him since Kindergarten; thick and thin style.

A year and a week ago, my mother died after a long bout with cancer. My father died less than a year before that, also from cancer. I returned home to take care of them both when they got sick. Dropped everything and did that. Only two friends didn't completely abandon me, one of whom was the band dude. The other was a high school friend and former gaming buddy (he can't game now because he's got two small children and a job that demands more overtime than you can shake a Rod of Lordly Might at). And I certainly couldn't go off each week to game anymore. I'd have brief spaces of time when all I could manage to do was prop myself up in front of the computer. Found a gaming group online, and we played Aberrant on IRC sporadically. Folks from different countries and time zones. It wasn't much, but it was all any of us could really manage. And when my mom finally passed...man, that was filled with more heavy shit than I intend to share...suffice to say it really f*cked me up....I lost my motivation to play. To be frivolous. haven't got it back either. I don't think it will return. I still get gaming products, but not so much with the actual intent to play.

But even if it returns, I don't have the time for it anymore. I try to balance time for writing and time for my girlfriend and time for everything else. And the time I would have normally devoted freely to gaming is eaten up by one or more of the above. And mind you, that is for IRC gaming!

My case is an extreme example, since I don't even do on-line gaming anymore. But for me, it is easy to see why online RPing has a valid lure. There's something to be said for making time for social events...but then, to a degree, online gaming allows a compromise. For some, it is as social as their lives and schedules will allow. It might not be face to face contact, but it is contact.

So, Phantom, I don't take offense; I'm just trying to explain things from the other side, y'know? It sucks when a gaming group dies. But all things do. And those with groups that have managed to stick together through the years? Despite the arguments and the hardships and the varied, wonderful pressures of real life?

Consider yourselves lucky, lads. Very lucky indeed.


Strictly Speaking

Pedantic; Owen; you? Surelly not! :D

Well my gaming group has been together for a number of years and for the moment it's fairly static, but we usually have just enough players to run 2 sessions at once - we meet up in a community centre :D

While some of the others are interested, I'm the only one who's been motivated to actually buy or run Startrek products, and for the most part we run quite a mix bag of the flavour of the moment - err I think we're doing D&D 3rd; D20 Modern; Stargate; All flesh must be eaten (:)); Vampire Dark Ages; Agone; D&D 3rd Ebberon; Starwars (both versions?!); Witchcraft... and the ocasional one off (some of our members are... colectors :D)

As for fallings out: Yes, we do all the time, we are always arguing backstabbing and moaning about other peoples unsocial social habits :D and I have to definatelly agree - we are WIERD with a capital W :) I have to agree that we can be a little cliquey and we have scared off some newbies (and there are those who we just can't scare off! :D) - and we have our fair share of Munchkins, Rules lawyers and BAAAAD Roleplayers, but by and large I think it all ballances out - and as of yet we haven't had a thermonuclear meltdown :)

Hope you find the will to get back into Gaming again and I can understand your frustration at trying t run Trek - many of the people at my group just don't like Trek so it's a pain to run it sometimes.. but then with all of the Cloned Andorians with phase shifting nanites running around, everyone's a little curous to see what happens next :)

Strict31, I have no problem with a table top RPG being played over the internet (forum, IRC, etc.) as there is still the social aspect, ie players still talk and joke back and forth...just not face-to-face.

I have to agree there. There is far more of a dynamic within the context of the social gathering than can be gained from an online experience.

I can see the whole concept of the online version being open to abuse to munchkinism.. the GM can't neccessarily see that the players haven't cheated to high heaven using some scripts, and vice versa the GM can't easilly fudge the dice for that critical roll that could be life or death for the players.

I also have a general problem with the way a roleplaying game would translate into a computer simulated environment. While on the one hand you have the advantage of having an avatar character and a 'name' always on display :) (how often do people drop out of character!) and you have the advantage that you can easilly have secret chats between players and between the GM and players (and or groups) there are a number of downsides...

The Games are primarily going to be limited to a set number of universes.. and they are going to be limited by whatever graphics the games designers build in... You are probably (initially) going to be limited to a generic D&D style scenario.. what happens if you want to play D20 Modern or Dark ages Vampire ? You're stuck! Equally it would be hard to put in new rules sets for alternative games.. or how do you impliment house rules ?

Not just the Graphics part.. most of what you will do will be real time 'dungeon' layouts.. the GM will select a location or design one and you will walk round.. what about Epic Quests, where you walk half way accross the land? In most games the GM will intersperse a handful (or none) cutscenes with random encounters etc.. but usually the end of the last scene will simply be precied by "Ok, you leave the house and head down to the railway station. The train journey is uneventful, and 3 hours later you arrive" - so that took all of 10 seconds to read out? How do you jump cut like that easilly? There is also the whole problem with the old red herring.. How often in games have your players spent hours off on a tangient, on a red herring, going into odd locations to follow tracks and into buildings you just have to make up off the top of your head... In an RPG you are not bound by the map - in a computer game the GM would have to sit down for a few hours and go to his 'dungeon builder' and create a few warehouses and NPC's to populate it with! - On the flip side of that if you are playing in a CITY that is pre-established... they could end up trailing round for hours and hours trying to find what they wanted... in much the same way in an RPG you would say "make a research / spot roll" and then after their result you'd say "Ok after a 4 hour search you track down the Old Oak Tannery in the old quarter" - how many times in computer games have you just had to end up traling for hours and hours round some confusing, not particularly detailed, samey looking graphics, boring city with only 3 storeys high, to find that one building that... also looks the same but with a small sign on it :D

I also don't think my computer has the hardware requirements for my imagination :D

Dear all,

Wow. The subject sure gave a lot of you people things to think about :) Thank you very much for the support, and the sharing of experiences; I appreciate it a lot. :) I'm sorry also for you guys who had similar, of tougher experiences. :(

I'd prefer not to debate the details in public, as some of my ex-players do lurk on the boards from time to time and I wouldn't want to meddle things further by offering my only point of view.

I've had lunch with two of them today, and I'm hugely relieved to announce that our personal friendships apparently haven't suffered. Honestly, this was what mattered most to me. I don't give a damn about the game if ditching it allows us to retain our friendships.

Apparently the break-up was due to player frustation. I don't fully go with the theory, as the harshness of some reactions must go deeper than that. Anyway, we'll talk this out, and this is good.

In any case, this didn't happen because of online RPGs or CCGs... At least we're safe on this side :)

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I've had lunch with two of them today, and I'm hugely relieved to announce that our personal friendships apparently haven't suffered. Honestly, this was what mattered most to me. I don't give a damn about the game if ditching it allows us to retain our friendships.

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My last group died because of our frustrations too. In our case it was the GM constantly screwing us over and constructing elaborate traps for us to get suckered into - and then promptly giving up the game when we fell into the trap deeper than expected.

Finally we all gave up the group and the GM took it personally. It got worse when one of our former group members reformed the group and made a point not to invite him (cause unfortunately he is as disruptive a player has he is a GM). He hasn't talked to us since, which is a shame since he is a nice guy.

Its great that you can salvage your friendships due to events in a game. We all should be able to separate gaming preference with real-life friendship but in practise hard feelings often migrate. I wish you luck in trying to smooth things over.

As an aside I am now groupless too. My group lost its GM last week because he got a job across the Province. None of us wanted to take up the mantle of GM (cause some members of our group is notoriously hard to handle) so we just decided to break up. I'm still debating what I am going to do but I may just take a break for awhile...

I'd offer Killer Whale and Prophetsteve a hug, but aside from the manly concerns of this sort of contact, touching me's not a good idea since that accident with the radioisotopes in my lab last week. Luckily, the Gold Bond powder seems to be taking care of the itching/burning. Being a power-mad, global despot-to-be ain't easy, folks.

Tobian, in IRC and AIM, dicebots are easy to find and use. And there are some sites that make use of a dice roller program, so fudging and cheating rolls are impossible.

Additionally, though I've never tried it, Neverwinter Nights offers the ability to gather a group and a GM to run adventures. You have a visual reference for your character and for what's going on. Problem I see with that game is that, while the engine easily allows modders to make their own modules and adventures, modders are not GMs and vice versa. I'm a good GM, but have no skill at modding, so I'd have to rely on the (admittedly numerous but inconsistent) community-made modules out there. Seems impractical to me. But if I'm not mistaken, there are also chat programs that allow for OoC interaction that can be used in concert with the game itself. Like I said, to me, it seems impractical with current technology, but there are entire online communities who manage. And there are many folks who swear by it.

More power to them...


Strictly Speaking

I'm inclined to agree with you, KW. Mainly, my interest in gaming fell through the toilet mainly due to my gaming tastes not coinciding with those of my gamer buddies. Where everyone wants to play some kind of D&D iteration, I'd like to expand my horizons. (Plus, I despise the medieval fantasy genre, but I digress.)

Not to mention I'm tired of every time I suggest a new game to play, the response is always "could you GM?" And being that I'm less than confident about my GMing abilities, the discussion usually dies there.

And sadly, one of such discussions pertained to Star Trek. :(

I've found that if the group memebers suggest that you DM, then they are confident in you abilities in that role.

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Originally posted by Phantom
I've found that if the group memebers suggest that you DM, then they are confident in you abilities in that role.

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It's badly-placed confidence. :) I've never GMed a game that didn't go down the crapper after a couple hours. I've never been able to do the whole thinking-on-the-fly thing running a game.

I would SUCK at improv comedy. :D

Well, that is what I thought. AFAIC my early attempts at GMing weren't that great. As with all things practice makes perfect. In the end my remaining group memebers were always asking me to continue my L5R campaign.

Keep trying, I think you will find the rewards pleasant.

Yeah, practice does help, and so does asking for help on the forums. I'm sure there are lots of folks here who would be willing to give some pointers.


Strictly Speaking

Much appreciation for all the encouragement. :)

I do have to say though that confidence in my GMing abilities isn't the sole source of my problem with trying to intro new games to my crowd.

For one, I have been specifically told by a couple people the reason they ask me to GM these games is because I'm the only one who has the books.

Second, in the case of Star Trek, it took the opening interrogatives of two prospective players to convince me against it...

"Can I be a non-Starfleet Klingon?"

"Can I be a machine?"

Ergh... :rolleyes:

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Originally posted by Mac417


Ergh... :rolleyes:

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Yes?!? :D

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Originally posted by Mac417

Second, in the case of Star Trek, it took the opening interrogatives of two prospective players to convince me against it...

"Can I be a non-Starfleet Klingon?"

"Can I be a machine?"

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:rolleyes: You are not the only one who had to answer those questions. In my current group we have NO human player characters.

Don't be so hard on yourself! Everyone has to start somewhere...

Just have a set of answers for everything, it's not hard! :D

Ok first off - no customisations. If you aunderconfident DO NOT allow them to be anything which is not in the book.

Do not allow them to be aliens, machines or anything which says "It is not recomended you allow player characters to play this race"

It is easy to stick to the standard "standard set of officers on a ship or station" but then look at DS9 - a remote setting in which the Starfleet was in technical dominance, and not far from home for backup, but there were also a number of non Starfleet main characters who involved themselves and powerful aliens.

Ok the first thing you should start off on is - find out what they want to play. If they don't want to play a squeaky clean TNG adventure, suggest either TOS or DS9 Style - the past has penalties because they don't have UBER technology. A DS9 style setting is a ballance problem.. how would you have Quark in EVERY episode! :D

Well I actually braved out that scenario and it worked out as one of my best and most successful campaigns. The Crew are stationed on a requisitioned vessel (form some pirates who attacked them!) and it consists of a mix of Starfleet and non starfleet... Ok how on earth did this wierdness happen?

Ok, well when I began not eveyrone wanted to play Starfleet so I thought how can I? The setting is post dominion War, and the players are located on a very remote Starbase on the Edge of the Federation. The Choice was simple - if you were a Non Starfleet officer you worked FOR starfleet - you could be a smuggler a thief a Warrior or a Mystic - anything you could envisage, but you worked at the Starfleet outpost.. why ? Starfleet has a serious staffing problem post dominion war, so they often take on 'crew' to get things done. You could be a scientist and work in the science department, if you were a warrior - you worked in security.. The upside for such players is they have FAR more personal freedom, and can technically have 'night jobs' You get good pay and accomodation, and everyhting is FREE! The Down side - you can only access what the Fleet officers say (Computer information, controll panels and rooms) - You can only replicate what you are allowed (So no phaser bombs or home made explosives) and you do what the Starfleet officers say: SO yes you are technically not bound by the Prime directive - but THEY are, and if neccessary, just like everyone else you can get vapourised if you treat it flagrantly ! :D

So long as the boundaries are clear, they can probably play the character they like from the shows, and it makes them less unrully because they aren't playing something they don't want too.

I've just survived a death of a gaming group. We had players come and go but several months ago it became obvious we were losing our critical mass - people moving, babies, marriages, etc. I decided to do two things - the first was to wrap up my favorite game, our Star Wars game. I wanted it to end - an actual ending to a campaign, something I am always loathe to do. But the characters had become real and I didn't want them to wind up in gaming limbo. It was a good experience ending a game on my own terms before it could die. And the adventure was enjoyable, with the characters sabotaging the second Death Star during the Battle of Endor (preventing a backup shield from protecting the Death Star core). All sorts of old enemies and friends showed up.

Secondly I went on a major recruitment drive. Though I've been hesitant to invite strangers, I decided I really wanted to at least try to keep gaming. In effect a new group was formed, with two "old-timers" from the old group and three new people. We will be having our third bi-weekly session next week - so far, so good - it's been a lot of fun and the infusion of new blood has re-energized the grizzled gamemaster. We'll see how it goes long-term, but I'm having a lot of fun. We're playing a D&D Eberron game - a switch from my usual Star Trek/Star Wars games.

So don't give up hope. I hope things to work out well for you.

Oh on the non-Starfleet Klingon and artificial lifeform front... All gamemasters have different styles, but as long as the players don't want total wacko characters (a Klingon berserker who kills everyone she meets) I'd suggest being open to some oddball characters. Most people I know love Star Trek for the Spocks, Datas, Worfs, Odos, and Seven of Nines... Something about those characters that a lot of people identify with. So when they want to escape from reality it is not surprising that is their first choice. Your mileage (or kilometer-age) will of course vary.

Thanks for the tips, guys, I really appreciate 'em. :)

I just think I need to get some players who're less combat-driven he-who-has-the-most-toys types. Said person who asked if he could be a machine is bloody infamous for blowing up half of an SG-1 party because he insisted on trying to a) throw grenades with impunity and b) insisted on trying to stuff one down a Jaffa's mouth.

Needless to say, he's not allowed grenades anymore. :D

And to be honest, I'm REALLY against having ANY Klingons inmy Trek games. Prior attempts have never been good. I remember too well the guy who'd insisted he'd be a "diplomatic" Klingon beam down with a bat'leth and two phaser rifles as his weapon loadout...

Ok well some tips for that.

1) Don't let said Klingon be Security chief for the below reasons..

2) the Security Cheif (Or cheif of operations or above) sets the default phaser setting to stun. On a mission the mission leader can authorise this to go higher BUT remember even a phaser has a lockout and a subspace transponder so the section leader can lock this back down, at any time, remotelly! They would have to bypass the security chief's code (between TN 15 -25 in computer use) - and then if they did - err hello COURT MARTIAL dissobeying orders!

3)Don't allow non regulation equiptment to go on away missions or to be carried about ship.. I.e. No Klingons with a Battleth wander round the ship without being thrown in the brig for insubordination..

Remember that weapons are NOT toys and they are kept locked up just like they are today!

Good ideas, all. And said Klingon PC was worse than Security Chief.

He was the ship's XO.

God, I'm too accommodating sometimes...

Oh dear, yes that's worse ! :D

Well In that case.. don't let the PC's be in command of the ship, start them off, as it is according to the rules, as bog standard Ensigns! Part of the point about Roleplaying is you should earn your Experience, not just get a big pile of it for free, especially if you think the players will let it go to their heads! At the very least it means they don't controll eveyrhing and you can steer the ship away from potential doom if neccessary.

To give them a shot at command, let them command small missions (ok one of them) on a shuttle or plot device ship, so they can still hae a feel for it without being completell on a lose tether.

Ok So hang on here.. You have a klingon XO on a Starfleet vessel, who's not in Starfleet ? WHAAAAT ? Ok Yes there is one example of a Klingon as the XO of the USS Enterprise D; in that case he was an exchange officer, but even though he was a FULL blooded Klingon, wanting to smack people in the face for disagreeing with him he FULLY respected the laws and traditions of the Federation - why? Because despire all their caveats Klingons are VERY honourable, and they stick to their word and act with honour. While many things people said were 'dishonourable' in a Klingon sense, he abided by the Rules of the Federation becuse he was both acting in the best interests of the treaty between the klingons and the Federation (and without it he couldn't be there!) and because, just like Riker, His commanding officer told him too!

So if your player thinks he can be a non Starfleet Klingon serving aboard the ship as an XO exchange officer, and still weild his Bat'leth round the room like an idiot every time someone challenges his personal honour, he will have another thing coming!

In terms of game mechanics he will be spending allot of his courage points to stop flying into a Klingon rage all the time, and bottom line is he will be out on his ear if he disobeys direct orders.. because he will be shiped back to Qo'nos before a diplomatic incident occurs.

Always remember that Startrek is about the ethics and morals of the 24th century and Starfleet is a military organisation. The players have to abide by the rules and morals of the game, and if they don't they will be court martialed and kicked out of Starfleet - Being Court Martialed is virtually the same as being 'dead' because the Character can't easilly come back; remind your players of this!

It's easy to munchkinise the rules and become a whirling cavalcade of death *See the other thread :D* - but roleplaying according to the Genre is the challenge!

Actually, just to clarify, this game with the Klingon XO was ran several years ago, the character was in Starfleet, when the only Trek gaming product out was the TNG Core Book from LUG. :D

This was basically a milk run on running the game, using the pre-written adventure in the book. Plus it was my first time GMing *anything.* :)

Well, I had a long chat with the players and I'm glad to announce we'll, at least, finish the season... and then there's some possibility that we continue Trek but with a new premise. I hope it'll work! I'll post the series seed at the FBR.

Thank you all for your support: it helped a lot.

Mac417: don't worry, GMing Trek is difficult, it has its own mechanics, different from classical RPGs. Maybe you should impose a campaign type, depending on what atmosphere your players and you would like... Starfleet would be easier IMO if your players already know the series.