Okay, this forum's a bit quiet today. Too quiet. :)
Let's say you're going to ignore normal Star Trek continuity. What are the crazy things you've always wanted to try with your story lines that you couldn't get away with if you played by the rules?
Me, I've always wanted to do a massive-scale Borg invasion of the Federation during the TOS era, if only to see what happens when you pit them against Kirk's ability to annihilate any sentient computer with ease.
Next. :)
"But perfection is... a process! You only destroy their parts of perfection... by assimilating them!"
And then he makes out with the Borg Queen.
Pfft. As if he'd have to. He'd just start behaving irrationally, give them a logic puzzle and laugh as they all blue-screened and shut down.
But he would still make out with the Borg Queen.
Kirk always goes for the desperate, lonely chicks.
OK, one of my super plots covered this...
Post Dominion war. The crews ship is being used for an experiment on Bio-Neural gel Packs, the department of Temporal investigations is looking into ways to protect computer files (notably history files) against temporal incursions, trouble is the field generated only affects Biological matter, hence Bio-neural gel packs.
As the experiment is activated, or afterwards the timeline changes... Only everybody on the ship is affected and remembers how the timeline should be.
Trouble is they are spread far and wide across the rag tag fleet, all the remains after Starfleet lost the Dominion war. Now all they have to do is work out how to get back together, convince their 'new' crewmates that they are not mad, and then they get to work out what happened.
What Happened; maddened by the Dominion defeat, a Vorta scientist went rgue and studying the history files narrowed the moment of defeat to a key point in time. namely when Odo saved Rom and Kira during their sabotage and enabling the Defiant to enter the wormhole and for Sisko to contact the prophets. All he needs to do is to Kill one of his gods to save the rest.
He is quite insane.
He then stumbles across the captured intelligence about the guardian of Forever, and assembling a crack squad of Jem'Hadar he travels to the guardian, slaughters the science base there and travels in time to DS9 to kill Odo and change the course of history.
Now all the players need to do is assemble their small fleet, find all this out (the Temporal investigations guys who were conducting the original experiment might be helpful here), travel to the guardian (kill the Jem Hadar guards left there) and then somehow infiltrate DS9 under dominion rule and save Odo from the assassin without changing the timeline... At which point events should reset just as soon as they step back through the Guardian.
The experiment; Oh that failed, while the generated field works, the problem is that the timeline changes altered the creation of the computer memory, and when such alterations are not in a fixed location, the changes in the timeline 'delete' the creation of the secure memory... Although the field does work, and this by-product will be a key starting block of the 29th century Timefleet...
You have to admit that its a hell of a DS9/ToS crossover, and i feel nearly worthy of Troubles with Tribbles... I just never managed to run it...
I also have some thoughts about the mirror universe.
The one that keeps coming up is effectively a Star Wars ripoff, with Dukat (under the Pah Wraith influence), assuming an Emporer role in the Alliance and Smiley O'Brien's rag-tag rebel fleet looking for a savior.
The players ship gets dragged across in a dimensional rift and collides with the undiscovered SS Botany Bay.
Khan in this universe is a benevolent dictator, who chose voluntary exile from Earth rather than get involved in the wars, his supermen all followed him. Upon revival he see's that the human empire has fallen but that humanity is clinging on and sees it as his personal mission to save them.
He will of course want to take over O'Briens rebellion, and as he is on a nice, shiny, powerful Starfleet vessel, believes that he should also take command as his flagship. He might not understand why the crew are less than willing to follow him/want to go home...
Perhaps they cannot go home?
I would play in this campaign in a heartbeat. Reminds me of the sort of cross-series writing that started to show up in season 4 Enterprise. Great stuff.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Gurden
I think there's a ton of Mirror Universe stuff that hasn't begun to be explored. Playing the years immediately after TOS in the MU would be pretty great.
I tossed an idea out somewhere on here about a war between the cannon established MU, and the one that appears in some books, where the Empire didn't fall, but continues into NG era. In order to get your characters involved, maybe this fight is spilling over into the 'regular' SF universe, and you can either try and stop the war (or at least incurrsions into their universe), or join one side and blow up the other one!
I had another idea, influenced by both Marvel's orginal "Secret War" (where good and evil superhumans were gathered by a cosmic entity to see which is better), and the TOS episode where the Excalibans did the same thing. In it, some force gathers characters from various eras, timelines and maybe even universes. They are united against some uber-threat that threatens (as they are want to do) the whole of reality. Or, go bigger scale, having not just persons, but ships.
I thought it would be fun for, say and ENT era captain to see where Earth stands in the future, or a DS-9 era captain to see Vorta, Borg or even Founders as SF officers!
An idea I toyed with (and posted a few times on these boards) was that the Mirror Universe as seen in DS9 was not the "regular" MU, and that another MU, where the Terran Empire didn't fall and where the situation mirrored more closely the normal timeline, still existed somewhere. And that the DS9 MU was actually the mirror of another Trek timeline, where the Federation had indeed fallen to the hands of the Klingon-Cardassian alliance, but where things were less grim (and where, for instance, Intendant Kira was indeed trying to help the resistance).
Another pet idea I had was an alternate universe where the pagh'wraith were the ones in the wormhole, and the Prophets imprisoned in the Fire Caves. Bajor would be a ruthless empire, led by the Kaï and Vedeks to whom the pagh'wraith would have granted dark and dangerous powers....
(and I must be able to prove, after some search on these boards, that I suggested this idea some time before the Oris appeared in SG-1 ;))
Otherwise, a very crazy idea I had once would involve the crew dropping in another dimension, on 21th century Earth, where they discover a TV show called Star Trek.... One spin-off of that show (which doesn't exist in our timeline) happens to bear stricking similarities with their own adventures, up to the last aired episode... and the current one ends with a cliffhanger. :D
Which brings up several possibilities for your cast: That the writers are somehow psychicly aware of their existance; that the writers have access to their logs (which would mean someone from the future has given them to the writers; probably to break the strike!); or the very unlikely (and uncomfortable) realization that the cast are infact fictional characters at the whim of a group of TV writers! (and maybe the hot head of your group will blame certain people for their misfortunes/sweeps week episodes!)Quote:
Originally Posted by C5
That would take the 'fourth wall' and break it right down!
One of my upcoming adventures has the PCs encountering a dimensional rift from which emerges a warp starfighter in bad shape. It is piloted by one Kara Thrace, a lieutenant from the USS Galactica. Thrace comes from a universe where the Borg destroyed the Federation and the Galactica leads a rag tag fleet of survivors in search of a legendary wormhole that will lead them to another part of the galaxy, free from the Borg. Thrace asks for the PCs help. Hijinks ensue.
Tchau!
While its true that the USS Galactica/Borg Treat makes a good alternative trek plot, the dates involved point at another more likely crossover between alternate Earth timelines...
Perhaps Commander James T Kirk of the Earth Ship Enterprise manages to hop dimensions (thanks to his Science officer the Minbari Spock), during the Shadow war... Hijinks ensue, but he will want to recruit allies to run to the rescue to the Babylon 5 Space Station(it is the last, best hope for peace)
;P
LOL. I'm guessing Kirk would be a-okay in Babylon 5. The potential for wooden acting and asskickery would be far too much.
Fred's idea reminded me of a campaign idea I had a ways back for a post-apocalyptic Trek campaign. Basically, the setup was that some sort of civilization destroying event had torn the core systems out of the Klingon Empire, forcing them to invade the Federation to find habitable systems and resources and causing a power struggle that eventually results in a partial meltdown of civilization in that quadrant. The campaign is set a couple generations later, after everything had finished melting down into a Balkanized set of petty baronies.
I figured it'd wind up like Asimov's Foundation series with a dash of wild west. The fun part would be figuring out how to make it feel like Trek but keeping it different enough to keep everyone on their toes. I'm guessing it would have wound up heavy on the diplomacy fronts with a continuing theme of rebuilding ancient glories.
You could do some amusing things like making the two key players in the quadrant the Gorns and the Tholians with the remants of the Romulans, Klingons and Humans trying to maintain their positions on the fringes of the struggle.
I think my choice here is a bit more subtle: I've always thought that the Klingon Empire being threatened by a moon blowing up (ST6:TUC) was, well, lame. It's an interstellar empire, fer chrissakes.
So I've wanted to run a campaign that uses John M. Ford's view of Klingons in The Final Reflection, and keep them as the on-going bad guys, and drop the Cardassians altogether (and probably all of that Delta Quadrant stuff, too). I'm also partial to the Rihannsu view of Romulans, from Diane Duane. Between Ford's Klingons and Duane's Romulans, the Federation has more than enough to worry about.
Put another way, keep the background structure of TOS but move it ahead into the future. (Sorry, DS9 and Voyager fans)
HEAR! HEAR! [background applause]Quote:
Originally Posted by badger2305
I think that is a great idea.
Well, I'd always planned on introducing the Guardian of Forever, having it recruit my crew (or alternatively, a bunch of new players from various Trek Eras/Timelines into one group, and then basically "force" them to flip from timeline to timeline, alternate world to alternate world, carrying out strange missions on its behalf, putting things right that once went wrong, and hoping each time that the next leap would be the leap home...
And I wish I could edit videos like on YouTube, because I've had a trailer for another adventure brewing in my head for months...
"When the greatest Evils in the galaxies unite..."
*clip of shadow vessel encountering a borg cube*
*clip of a SSD passing by the Evil Planet from 5th Element*
*clip of a borg/shadow hybrid*
*clip of planets exploding, a la MIB2, and SW:ANH, and planetary bombardment, ALA B5:Lost Tales etc.)*
*clip of audio of B5 attack from "War Without End" mixed with video clip of "Leeloo discovers War" from the 5th Element*
"Universal Armageddon can only be stopped..."
"...By the Greatest Heroes..."
"...of ALL worlds..."
*series of short "reveal" clips cribbed from various episodes and movies, each showing someone different emerging from shadow or turning towards the camera* :
Audio/video of someone, maybe Sheridan saying "We/I need your help" or Picard saying (in one episode, he says it to Q) "I NEED you!!"
*G'Kar (In Garibaldi's hat)*
*Spock (Unification) "Indeed..."
*Luke (reveal in RotJ, audio from another scene) "I'm with you, too."
*Leeloo (spaceport scene) "Leeloo Dallas Multipass!"*
*etc, as you like it*
And then some action scenes spliced in, and a snazzy title which I haven't come up with... maybe "Crossroads of Infinity" or "The Hunt Across Worlds" or "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny :D"
But then, I'm insane.
Didn't they do something like that on Andromeda? And didn't that kill the series? Jumping from alternative universe, to alternative universe, trying to make them into better places?
Where There Are Monsters In Dreams...Quote:
Originally Posted by JALU3
1st of Two: Interesting Idea; Marvel's Exiles, but with a Sci-fi twist.
I thought of a similar idea as a mega crossover between all the Trek Eras. it borrowed heavily from Generations; over the centuries, some sort of cosmic phenomena (a temporal rift, or something a little weirder, like the Edo 'god') has come into contact with various ships, crews and persons. This phenomena leaves a "temporal fingerprint" on the things it comes into contact with. At some point in the future, this thing becomes a great threat, so the FED (or whatever is there in the future) uses the fingerprint to pull these contacts to them, in an effort to defeat/stop/repair it.
Thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Tomcat
I've never really cottoned to the portrayal of the Klingons that we see in later TNG or DS9. They seem...primitive, to me. What I liked about Ford's description of the Klingons was that these were a REAL challenge to the Federation. And the idea that they join uneasily with the Federation seemed completely off to me, from what we saw up until that point. Let me take a moment to explain that:
- The UFP is based on the idea of equality amongst a great number of alien races, right?
- Ford's Klingons were clearly not based on any idea of equality - you were either of the true race of leaders, or you were kuve (subject race).
...so the tension is centered on the idea of equality versus domination and subjugation. So with that in mind, the idea that the Klingons would (in a sense) "give up" seemed just completely weird to me. I know there are lots and lots of explanations and handwaving as to why they did that - but it still rings false to me.
As for the Romulans, it's hard not to like the history, background, and current events portrayed in the Rihannsu series by Duane. I mean, ending up with a rejuvenated Romulan Empire - even one that might be friendly to the Federation, would give anyone pause. And I like A'el - a lot. :D
Except that's just some ideological justification for the Empire's political stance. Whether their economic reality can follow it through is another matter.Quote:
Originally Posted by badger2305
Well, that's an additional assumption - or part of the handwaving to explain what happened in ST:VI. I'm not going to fight that fight, except to say that I prefer Ford's view of the Klingons. Your mileage apparently does vary - that's okay. (I will point out that this thread was about "crazy alternate timelines" and what I outlined certainly matches that. :p)Quote:
Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King
The RDM Klingons are not particularly different from Ford's Klingons–they're both hypocrites with frakked-up medieval justifications for what they do, they're both republics of competing aristocratic lineages, they're both economically dependant on slaves to run their empire.Quote:
Originally Posted by badger2305
Trying to save this before it spirals. . .
How about Khan, once getting Genisis and thinking the Enterprise is out of the fight and Kirk is forever trapped hightails it to Earth. He uses the travel time back to Earth to figure out how to enter the system without raising alarms, and once close enough launches the weapon and Earth is laid waste in favor of it's new matrix.
As the whole premis of the design was unstable the newly formed matrix last a short time before blowing itself apart a'la the planet formed in the movie. Humans, scattered among the stars find themselves without a homeworld and the majority of the Federations greatest leaders were lost in the initial detonation.
Does the Federation shatter? Does humanity abandon the noble ideals of the Federation and become a scurge? What happens with Khan? Dead when the new Earth matrix is destroyed, or does he and his little band of augments flee in the Reliant and find a nice little spot to settle down and try and produce new agments?
Interesting; humanity becoming the 'trash' of the galaxy, as i think someone in UDC called Klingons if they fled their empire.
What if Earth wasn't destroyed, but he actually got it to work...a lil better. Maybe Khan gets it to remake the earth as a paradise, maybe with Augments taking humanities place. So, now you have two species that claim earth as their own; the natural humans and the Neo-Augments created by the genesis device.
Of course, I can't remember if the GD makes high level lifeforms or not....:p
What if the scientists who created the augments had been just a little more skilled and/or far-sighted, and managed to create more mentally stable beings?
What if the Augments hadn't been consumed by megalomania, but managed instead to cooperate towards shared "greater good" goals? Maybe still overthrowing inferior "normal" governments, but not generally warring with one another once their reigns were established? What if they were generally benevolent, or benign?
Would regular, "throwback" humans even exist after a couple of generations? The cooperation of "superior intellects" working on the world's problems could accelerate development of technology and society beyond anything Vulcan interference could do - and once they DID get ahold of alien engineering, look out!
By the 23rd or 24th centuries, what new improvements to the genome could augment scientists have come up with? The best traits from all the species Human/Augments encountered? Telepathic Telekinetic Multisensory minds with redundant organs? (Thank you, Klingons!) Even more exotic abilities?
"Grade-A Superbeings?"
And then, there's always the Universe where I become Dictator of the US in 2008. I'll let you know how that one turns out. ;)
"Earth history had its rough patches, but never that rough."
California is placed under martial law after the fallout from the bloody 2024 San Francisco Massacre. The military governor, Philip Green institutes newly-developed biochemical loyalty drugs to maintain discipline in his army, forming a cult of personality around himself as the new saviour of America. Increasingly paranoid, ambitious and violent, Green's actions–including using death squads to eliminate political opponents both in and outside the US–lead President Baldwin to use nuclear force to break his hold on the western states. Green retaliates, along with the Russian new right, to cripple the planet's satellite telecommunications network, before sleeper cells take control of the remainder of the US's nuclear arsenal to devastate the eastern coastline and many of Baldwin's allies around the world. With long-range communication virtually impossible and large amounts of the Earth's surface now wasteland, Green and his former allies face off with what conventional military forces they have left to control the remaining resources.
When the Romulans find the planet in 2192, the fallout and toxins have created a hellish landscape with only a few million inhabitants. The Romulans shipped the strongest and healthiest to Proxima II to mine, leaving the rest to die slowly.
Allow me to expand on that idea... Let's suppose that the eugenic technology took a longer time to develop... The first augments were only marginally better than normal humans, but also marginally crazier.Quote:
Originally Posted by First of Two
The technology evolved very slowly, but was never banned as no one found it dangerous. When the UFP was formed, it became an accepted way of curing diseases, enhancing people abilities, and so on.
Fast forward to 24th century. People like Bashir are the norm, at least in the UFP core world. People who have access to technology don't hesitate to ask for DNA resequencing for their children. Not only do humans terraform planets, but they also alter the inhabitants' DNA to fit their new environment. The concept of being human is now slowly disappearing. And maybe the other UFP races are also using augment technology, blending their traits together.
Now races in the UFP become different : there are the "Insiders", inhabitants of the core worlds, who have easy access to the augment technology, and who have blended the various advantages of the races into one template. A special brand of Insiders, the Starfleeters, are an elite corps, with the very best augments available (and usually combining most assets from the UFP species). Then on the outer colonies, the "Adaptees", whose DNA has been tampered with to be perfectly at home on their new home world. And, in some very remote colonies, the "Templates" - original humans, vulcans, klingons...
Basically, this is the UFP with no qualms about tampering with the sacred human nature.
It could also be extended to use cybernetics augments. Kinda Cybertrekpunk, actually.
Now, either one could take the grim view of this universe, which can become torn apart as various prejudices and tensions appear, or one could simply imagine that the UFP kept its core directives, but with an extended definition of technology.
For instance, I wonder what the Borg would do were they to assimilate a few augments, then the technology...
I've always thought that the SF personel we've seen ARE the results of genetic engineering: They are all mostly very attractive, very fit, very, very smart.
Barcley was the first 'normal' guy I've ever seen in ST, and even he seems to be a holoprograming genius!
The down side to all of these SF members being 'upgraded' would be a whole high school class of Wesleys!
The Biogaea Sphere, a thinking organ the size of a planet is the only government the Federation knows now. Biological resources, DNA as thought patterns are stored in it's vast, neural libraries (both on Earth and in the asteroid ganglion known as Memory Alpha) and psionically imprinted on the blank templates of protoplasm stored in their ships. These ships are crewed by extensions of the Biogaea's will, mindless thrall-forms birthed according to the needs of the hive mind.Quote:
Originally Posted by C5
"We are the Federation. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your cultural and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your biology will adapt to service us.
"Resistance... is futile."
Dont swear. It makes you look like a little kid pretending to be an adult.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King
Please remember that this is a FAMILY freindly place, if you must curse, nothing worse than has been seen on-screen in Trek (as appropriate).
But in this case. Not appropriate, not neccesay, and certainly not welcome.
Grow up TTK.
I had something like that in mind, too. Maybe it could be a possible evolution for the Borg, too, after assimilating a species with this knowledge.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King
But anyway... a race who would be able to alter its member's DNA as easily as Starfleet gives phasers and tricorders to an away team could be a quite interesting protagonist. Either as a villain (able to gain any ability or race trait needed overnight) or a new possible Federation ally or member, who might suffer prejudice from the allegedly tolerant Federation ("Hey, this planet is freezing! Don't you want your away team members to have their DNA altered so they can withstand such temperatures ? Why are you looking at me like that ?").
Ok, that's not an alternate universe...
Hey, this is starting to sound a lil bit familar to me...:rolleyes:
http://forum.trek-rpg.net/showthread.php?t=14544
Well, we know it could be cool.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tricky
Actually, the idea I had then was that if a race who would not hesitate to alter it's member's DNA, but through gene resequencing, instead of a built-in mechanism. More like the Dark Angel series.Quote:
Originally Posted by Tricky
I've held off on replying to this post, for a bunch of the usual reasons, including that I simply disagree about your conclusion.Quote:
Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King
That having been said, there was one thing I thought worth sharing about this: in my discussions with Mike Ford about The Final Reflection, he made it very clear to me that he had a very different view of the Klingon Empire and the Klingons as a species, from what they evolved into in ST:TNG and DS9, etc. And Reflection was Mike's attempt to explain the Klingons on their own terms. I think he succeeded quite well.
It's worth keeping in mind that Reflection was published in 1984, quite some time before much of what is considered "canon" Klingon characterization was developed, so similarities between the Klingons of Reflection, and the later view arise from those later writers making a connection (of sorts) with Mike's depiction of Klingons and not the other way around. From things Mike mentioned to me, he didn't see much of a resemblance.
As always, your mileage may vary.
Can you give me some examples?Quote:
Originally Posted by badger2305
I'll try. Keep in mind I'm remembering this from conversations late at night about a whole bunch of topics, and Trek was only one. (Mike liked having the Weather Channel on - he was asked once by a mutual friend why, and his reply was, "I like the plot" - and if not watching that, he preferred Deutsche Welle).Quote:
Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King
Generally, Mike thought that the depiction of Klingons that came later was dumb, or so it seemed to me. He'd probably have agreed with your assessment, and was irritated by it. But being the creative writer that he was, he recognized that he was playing in somebody else's sandbox, and if they wanted to muck it up....well, there was always other work to do.
Mike's view of Klingons started with the idea that there had to be some internal consistency and some idea of why they were successful. If they were dumb, they weren't the sort of enemy that had the Federation thinking twice about war. They had to be smart, and ruthless, and different. So he came up with an internal logic based on inequality (this is my gloss on what he said), and a finely honed strategic sense that basically made "diplomacy" and "politics" into forms of carefully constrained limited war (the Komerex Zha, if I recall correctly). It was important to Mike that Klingons make sense on their own terms - and if you've read any of his other stuff, you could see what he meant by that.
A couple of specific comments - Mike also said to me that he found the later portrayal of Klingons as a kind of Viking/Samurai culture to be fairly bad cardboard cutouts. Mike's Klingons would have read Clauswitz and Sun Tsu and said, "these humans actually understand how the universe works - why have they been ignored?" The personal battles for "honor" without a larger political context seemed pretty silly to him. I suspect Cmdr. Krenn would have cut through much of what passed for Klingon "leadership" in the movies and TV shows like a buzzsaw, carefully holstered his disruptor, and then would've gone on to found a new Imperial dynasty (but this is my own take on it, not Mike's).
Mike also had an objection to Okrand's language in that it had no semiotics - there wasn't any connection between words and what they symbolized (if I understood him correctly). There are a few places in The Final Reflection where he tried to provide that (pre-Okrand, remember) - the explanation for the literal meaning of "disruptor" - the "shake-it-until-it-falls-apart-tool" was definitely my favorite.
I haven't looked at in in an age, but the FASA Klingons supplement has a lot of Mike's thinking in it (though again, it was a group effort, so I'm wary of saying a lot more about that). And Eric Burns' commentary also does a decent job of explaining this stuff further.
I appreciate having the chance to write about this, but it also reminds me how much I miss Mike. (sigh)
While I do have a lot of affection for The Final Reflection, I think part of the difference comes from a television series requiring things painted in vast, broad strokes. Some things, like the inferred modernity of Klingon thought, are definitively different (RDM Klingons are explicitly a feudal culture, while Ford Klingons might have actually invented warp drive themselves). But the basic resemblance of two culture of people who see everything through the rubric of conflict and personal conquest, and justify themselves through that lens, along with the trappings of feudal nepotism, is hard to deny. The explicit philosophy is lost, but unless it's a plot point, when is it going to come up in a weekly TV series? Could TFR work as a televised bildungsroman? I don't know. ST6 shows us the closest things to Ford's Klingons–no talk of honour there, just the need to conquer or die–and even then the subtleties get lost.
And while I do like TFR a lot, something about Ford Klingons bother me. They're kind of... nihilistic. Almost Sovietically so : P RDM Klingons know how to party, and are a gut-level archetypal counterpoint to the Vulcans, as gothic romantic expressions of medieval joie de vivre. Ford Klingons vivisect people to learn their language and play miniature wargames. RDM Klingons just gesture more vigourously and sing opera while drunk.