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I've gotten a lot of ideas together and would like to detail some of them thoroughly as adventures, but I don't have much experience with non-conflict-driven RPGs so I don't really know how to present my adventures. It would be most helpful if someone could provide a list of links to adventures (for any system) that shows Star Trek adventures I could browse.
Any particular era you have in mind?
Old Trek site then click on Tactical in the menu on left.
I focus on TOS era, but it doesn't matter to me what time frame an adventure is written for. As long as it is Star Trek, because Trek has a distinctive style/flavor that not many other sci-fi settings have.
spshu: that's sort of what I was looking for. Any more formal writeups out there on the net? That collection uses a single style and seems to be almost all the same author. Is that pretty much the standard writeup format or can we find other styles?
I've got all four of Decipher's adventure PDF files sitting on my hard drive; I'll upload them to my web site and post a link to them shortly.
Make me use my Google Fu will you:
Found by search on forum: Pre-Made Adventures (some on one of the sites' adventures are zip conpressed.)
Adventure / Series Seeds PDF File
In consulting my database of content I have found:
Decipher Adventures - of course half of them are by Dave Biggins.
A Hungry Season
Resistance is not futile
No need, PGoodman13. I have found the link to the Decipher adventure dispite the Decipher.fanhq.com saying that there archives are down for maintanence.Quote:
Originally Posted by PGoodman13
Your Google Fu is indeed strong. Mine is usually pretty strong, but I'm lazy.... ;)
Well, I can't say any of the stuff I've put together would be classified as "non-conflict driven," but I can humbly offer several scenarios from my own website. They are FASA and TOS based, but all are adaptable to other systems and eras.
You have stats on the "Demon Possesed" ships - Dude, I love you :o
Glad to be able to help. If you want the Kinshaya Construction Tables, shoot me a PM and I'll be glad to send you the Excel file.Quote:
You have stats on the "Demon Possesed" ships - Dude, I love you
Thank you all for helping with your awesome Google-foo! Now I've got plenty to look at to help with structuring my adventures.
Well, from what I have seen, ST adventures are very different from D&D adventures. All the adventures I saw were 1-8 pages long and entirely descriptive. They set up a scenario and left all the contingencies to the GM to figure out on his own. TThere were few game statistics involved, usually only NPC stats. This is in contrast to my D&D experience where adventures are usually about 32 pages long, are loaded with stats (and not just the monsters, but what rolls to make and the TNs), and usually detail all kinds of what-ifs the players might try.
Do you guys usually run adventures from such skeletal notes? Even when I ran my own games in other systems I usually had a pile of notes. If I were to release some adventures here or on my web site, do you really prefer that they be minimal or would more be better?
Well first off, if you write down every one of the contingencies you'd have a full book on you hands per adventure. For the most part I, the GM, add my own flesh to the bones of an adventure (and man does it really hurt some days). Now as far as DnD goes, very different. Your more likely to use diplomacy rather than brute force to resolve conflict, and most of the challenges given to players are not of a combat nature.
I'll draft upa few of the things I've put my players through. May take a bit of time
Here's an Enterprise-era adventure (ICON stats) that probably could be adapted to other eras/stats:
Three-Sided Coin
http://www.rpgarchive.com/index.php?page=adv1&advid=821
One critical thing to note about adventures written for systems other than the D&D variants are D&D scenarios are frequently very linear in nature. True, other systems can be just as linear, but in most cases, they are the open format types such as you have seen. Simply put, give a frame work, a few contingences, some stats for the major NPCs and let the players go nuts. Open format works much better than linear mainly because it is a gaming given that players will find a way to not follow the linear plot no matter how well the GM lays things out for them. Open scenarios require more work for the GM, but in my opinion, they result in a far better gaming experience.Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex
My adventure is sadly not yet completelly written up -> http://comby.star-fleet.org/Social-Minefield.zip but it's very non linear in nature.
How I tend to run adventures is to write myself a number of key events which will happen, regardless of the PC's interaction, a number of events that could happen, depending on what they do and write them into a rough timeline.
Because Starfleet is not a dungeon bash you often need to find ways to keep the players on track without having the captain go "Do this because I say so even though it sounds completelly irational" because you want them to go there for encounter a12. One solution is to have the wandering encounter.. something that can happen at any place or time, or think of clever ways to motivate your characters in a certain direction.
One trap to not fall into is to have the "This mystery can only be solved with X" scenario.. This often hapens in fantasy games too: None of the players has track ability; none of the players has a certain magic spell; none of the playerts can read Draconic etc. Always be thinking on the fly on alternative ways to solve a problem, without being ovious (they find a scroll of tracking, magic spell, read draconic nearby etc :D).
If you're brave (which i am largelly not! :D) You can have the characters write background, and then use those backgrounds in story elements PURELLY as your story.. this saves you writing allot of details, and can create a great amount of character focus 'Their old flame is trapped on planet X and needs rescuing', is much more motivating than ' an ugly alien is trapped on planet x and needs rescuing' - clearly the latter is a morality play about not judging things on their first appearance, but it's harder work to make players go in that direction (24th century humans are enlightened, 21st century roleplayers go "Ewww.. shoot it shoot it..")
If you're interested in my adventure it has a thread round here you can ask questions on.. somewhere :D
I too find Star Trek adventures less linear than D&D or fantasy RPG adventures. Maybe that's just the nature of Star Trek. Of course, it' is entirely possible to have a more linear adventure that has the Crew exploring a space station or ship & that is nothing but a dungeon crawl in space. But I would not do that more than once in a blue moon.
I find the open-ended adventures much more enjoyable although that does require a lot of work for the Narrator to ad lib when the Crew come up w/ an unexpected plan or simply fail to follow the clues. It isn't always easy to keep players on track or stop them from going off on a deep tangent or spending hours chasing a red herring.
Another alternative to think about is pro-active gaming which is a term I read about online last year. If I can find the link I'll post it, but pro-active gaming is very different from your average scenario. Basically. pro-active gaming involves giving the players a setting & world (or galaxy) to have adventures in & then letting them to decide what to do. In the usual scenario, there's an event or series of events & players react to those events, usu. to restore the status quo.
In a pro-active scenario, the players decide entirely what to do. Usually the players are trying to upset the status quo, like topple a govt or engage in piracy or invade a world. The GM just presents the world/universe & asks the players what they'd like to do this session.
This isn't easy b/c it's hard to know what the players will want to do, but you could ask them in advance of the gaming day. You also have to be able to think quickly & improvise. It's also not suitable for players who serve in Starfleet b/c they usu. don't get to decide what mission they want to do. Starfleet officers are usually ordered to do something & are trying to restore the status quo. But it might work for a pirate Crew or Klingons looking for someone to fight, or rebels seeking to overthrow a regime.
I personally have never tried a pro-active scenario b/c my Crew are all Starfleet officers. But it's another alternative that might be enjoyable to play.
This is not something I would normally do, but do to circumstances beyond my control, I've had to change the URL for my website. It is now located here.
long detailed adventures
for god sake it has never been done yet for coda.
FASA was the only company to do this and there adventures blow away anything coda has got.
Current industry wisdom is that adventures often don't sell. An Orpheus-style quasi-metaplot book might be nice at some point, and their web adventure solicitation was a good idea, i just don't think much was contributed.
Still drafting one of my old adventures....might takea bit
I have some posted on my site, if you'd like to peruse them. They're a little on the linear side, but perhaps you can get some inspiration from them. The ship's logs (on the same web page as the adventures) are how the adventures actually played out, so you might wanna look at those, too. Bear in mind, I'm no Hemingway...Quote:
Originally Posted by Alex
:)