Rip Van Winkle

[This thread has spoilers for the New Frontier/Gateways series, along with the Trek novel Ship of the Line. Players in my game should probably keep out as well.]



I have an upcoming time travel adventure in my game which may end up stranding the characters some hundred years later in time, like Bozeman in "Cause and Effect". Iin brief the players like the post-DS9 era 24th century but one player issn't a DS9 fan and is uncomfortable making a character who would need to be familiar with the Dominion War. Similarly, while most players are most familiar with the "look and feel" of the 24th century, they rebel against its "stuffiness".

Random comments like that caused me to come up with my masterplan of starting characters in the 23rd century to establish them and then bumping them forward a century. I wasn't originally sure I'd go through with it, but from monitoring my game and players I think it would work well.

Anyways, Star Trek has lots of examples of characters transitioning from the 23rd century to the 24th...

Crew of Bozeman - we know that in the 24th century Captain Bateson is in command of a Bozeman - the very familiar voice of Kelsey Grammer can be heard in "First Contact".

Scotty - Appeared in "Relics". Indicated he was too old to remain an engineer. Some novels have had him getting involved in the Starfleet Corp of Engineers.

M'Ress and Arex - Characters from the animated Trek, now part of the "New Frontier" novels after slipping in time.

So fellow board-members, what do y'all think is involved in making the transition from one era to the next? I'm guessing that Starfleet would keep such characters active, should they wish to remain so. I'd imagine there would be a one to two year period of retraining, but other than that a Starfleet officer is still a Starfleet officer. I'm also debating whether the crew would stay together on their old ship (to be refitted - a Miranda class) or be broken up.

Well, narratively speaking, one easy way to answer all these questions would be to use the Dominion War.
If during this war a new Starfleet ship suddenly shows up, I don't think anyone in SF HQ will complain.
They could assign this ship (after a quick refit, maybe), to a sector inside UFP territory, but far from the front, freeing other ships in doing so to let them fight the war. The sector could be rather important (for instance, a strategic position along the Gorn border), but not needing a too much advanced ship to guard it.

After the war is over, the ship and crew could undergo some update, and remain in StarFleet (some of them could even be welcome as 23th century problem experts).

Just my 0.02 €

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Originally posted by C5
Well, narratively speaking, one easy way to answer all these questions would be to use the Dominion War.
If during this war a new Starfleet ship suddenly shows up, I don't think anyone in SF HQ will complain.

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For heaven's sake man, don't do this! They are on a Miranda! :D

For what it's worth I don't think Starfleet would leave the crew completely together. Breaking up the crew (in small groups) and assigning them to ships/stations with 24th Century crews would make familiarising them with there "new world" more easy and could cut down the retraining period.

A proposal

If it's not begun, it could be an Excelsior instead of a Miranda, another class known for longevity, and with a crew of somewhere between 5 and 8 hundreds, it could leave room for a 24th century team to fill them in while sending them to active duty. Both classes had production runs during approximately similar years...

I'm sure they'd love to stay on a Miranda, the redshirt of 24th century starships.

A little more background - this was originally going to be a 24th century game from the start (my back to basics posts from a month or two ago). But there were some problems about when to set it - pre-Dominion War was attractive but there were some problems about the feel of the "Stepford crew" personality of the early TNG era. Late-TNG/early DS9 was problematic because of the political upheaval (which I'm trying to avoid). Which led us to post-DS9, which caused trouble with creating background for characters who had been through the war-era. Which led me to say "don't worry, we'll set it during the classic movies" which caused I'll eyebrows to raise, since I'd never once mentioned it.

But by them I'd developed me plan. (Well my second one. My first hadn't worked out - "She was part of me plan. I never got round to telling her, but she was going to come with me to Fiji. She was going to wear a white dress and ride the horses and I was going to take care of everything else. It was me plan. I planned it." (two points for the first non-Brit who recognizes the quote))

Fortunately my players swallowed their disbelief and went along with it, scratching their heads wondering why I'd spent all that time talking about TNG. (They should have been wondering why I kept watching "Cause and Effect" and "First Contact" :D) To be honest, I was curious is the movie period would work out - it has been working ok for the adventures we've played, but my group is really a group of people who became Trekkies due to TNG - every time they want to contact someone, the players keep hitting their imaginary combadge. :D

Anyways, I'm going to plop them just after the Dominion War. The idea is since they are unfamilair with the political situation, they'll be briefed by Starfleet during their retraining but be put on a starship in unexplored space, away from the big political events of the era. The characters will therefore have knowledge approximate to the players.

I'm leaning towards breaking up the crew into groups of about a dozen - enough people for emotional support (including the PCs and a few favorite NPCs) but small enough so that if they do lack some knowledge it won't be a liability. I might still keep the characters on their old starship though! Starships are at a premium post-Dominion War. :D

[Edit - fixed minor typo]

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"She was part of me plan. I never got round to telling her, but she was going to come with me to Fiji. She was going to wear a white dress and ride the horses and I was going to take care of everything else. It was me plan. I planned it."

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Look here Listy, I told you earlier - Fiji is underwater, and putting water wings on the livestock isn't going to cut it.

In my Dominion-war campaign I've got a use for a starship which has come over from the 23rd century. I've got two gaming groups, and the first gaming group found a movie-era destroyer in a subspace pocket. It was a spooky episode about ahab-like obsession: the captain, still alive after 70+ years through the judicous use of stais, was STILL hunting the klingon ship he had chased into the subspace pocket all those years ago. The spookiest part was that because the captain wasn't a doctor, he had made a slight error setting the stasis controls on his crew... horrifically, they were still alive but had spent the whole time consious, immobile in stasis! Anyway, the Klingon ship was of course dead and cold by this time, but the crew used it to break free of the subspace pocket, rescuing the mad captain and the movie-era destroyer.

Tomorrow, the other gaming group is going to be issued the obsolete movie-era destoyer to refit as a fire-ship! They're going to pack it full of explosives and try to use it to break a strong Dominon static defence.

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Originally posted by Dan Stack


M'Ress and Arex - Characters from the animated Trek, now part of the "New Frontier" novels after slipping in time.

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Well, if your going to use that, then you also have to remember that the Novel's selection also includes Kirk, reanimated by Romulan/Borg means...

And in a similar connectoin, I recall a scene in a novel based around a gathering of these 'Temporal Refugees', with history recording their absence they are not allowed to return thanks to the Temporal Prime Directive, and so they remain in Starfleet update their skills and form an unofficial 'club' of like-minded individuals...

I am sure that Scotty and Kirk managed to wrangle membership for Spock and McCoy considering the amount of Time Travel they all endured...

My response would be that it depends on how they got to the future.

A. Ship runs into a spatial anomily and is held frozen in time for a century.

B. Q-type person grabs them for play and drops them a century later.

C. Crew is checking a rift and falls thru due to mishap.

a - characters are recorded to have aged. beyond the date of forced retirement.

b & c - crew listed as lost, and would still be on the record.

many ways of doing this.

My favorite. The ship is sent thru a dense field of energy to reach a planet that is not a part of the federation. The crew feel the energy run over the hull. The planet is pre-star travel, so they record the info on the planet. They head back to deliver their report and on the second pass thru the energy they find that the world has changed. It is now a Century later. They are listed as missing in action. The dominion war is going on. and they are needed.

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Originally posted by Dan Stack
but there were some problems about the feel of the "Stepford crew" personality of the early TNG era

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Seems I am not familiar with the "Stepford crew" reference. Somebody care to explain this to me?

Basically, there is a movie called "The Stepford Wives" about a group of men who turn their women into "perfect" wives, dedicated soley to domestic duty. Kind of a creepy movie, with some dark humor thrown in. "

As for the "Stepford Crew"... One of my players (actually more than one) has a huge problem with Starfleet crews of TNG - they are far too perfect. That is another issue I was faced with - players most familiar with the 24th century look and feel (especially TNG and Voyager, to a lesser extent DS9) but most comfortable running TOS-style characters. I agonized how to resolve the conundrum. I announced it would be a TOS film-era game and knew I'd do at least the first adventure or two or three in that period. With the option to keep it there if I want to, but I do think the players would be more comfortable in the TNG-era, but having the characters be from the TOS-era will, I am hoping, allow them to feel a bit more flexible in how they portray their characters. I don't agree 100% with the "Stepford Crew" analysis, but I see the point and I need to adapt things to best serve my players.

I've also been real hush about this plan (hence the warning for my players to avoid this thread).

As for how the time travel is to be accomplished - an assymetrical temporal anomaly. Enroute to a conference the characters are sent to go looking for the lost Bozeman and discover a Klingon Bird of Prey in the Typhon Expanse (2279). The Klingon ship disappears. They investigate, get pulled into anaomaly (all of this happens in the "captain's log" part of the adventure). Going through the anomaly sends the engines into imbalance, sending them all the way to Earth via an unstable wormhole. (Temporal anaomaly sends them back in time, engine imbalance sends them away in space.) Klingon ship goes the exact same route, both end up on Earth - though they were only minutes apart entering the anomaly, the Klingon ship has been on Earth for a day, crashing in rural Indiana of the 1950's (want to use some "Christmas Story" references). They need to recover dilithium from the Bird of Prey as their supply has been exhausted and collect the Klingons, some of whom have found their way to a hospital... And they need to get rid of the Bird of Prey before it can be dragged to Area 51. ;)

Making their way back to the anomaly will take some time - the anomaly is assymetric and by the time they reach it it is about to disperse - and it connects to the 2370's.

To make the journey one-way, the crew is carrying...

• The Betazoid Ambassador to the Federation (and mother of one of the characters). A plot hook is that this ambassador is from one of the Betazed Noble Houses which is later wiped out in the Dominion War.
• Members of the Keth of an Andorian character, also en-route to this conference.

The loss of the ship will be a well-documented historical fact, making Starfleet unwilling to risk a return trip. I know carrying the ambassadors through a high-risk area isn't 100% realistic, but ambassadors got put into danger on TOS from time to time...

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Originally posted by Diamond
Look here Listy, I told you earlier - Fiji is underwater, and putting water wings on the livestock isn't going to cut it.

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2-points. :D

Hey Diamond, have you been researching the British WW2 raid on St Nazaire? The Royal Navy and a force of Commandoes rammed a drydock with an obsolete destroyer, HMS Campbelltown, demolished harbour facilities, and tried to escape in motor launches. If you're looking for a historical battle to base your adventure on, St Nazaire could provide inspiration.

Actually, this is almost exactly what I've done in my game.

My original crew (2 crews, actually, but that's a longer story) started out in the very late 23rd century, just after ST:TUC.

Through both spatial-temporal anomalies and the intervention of a Q-or-higher-level being (but not Q), the crew ended up smack in the middle of the Dominion War, shortly before "In the Pale Moonlight." Their ship was crippled (and as bad as an ablative Miranda, anyway,) and they managed to board an abandoned Defiant-Class ship (think "Omega Glory" virus).

Of course, being gung-ho crewmembers (and not a little bit insane), they determined to carry out the ship's last mission, giving themselves a crash course in 24th century technology.

This they managed to do by:

#1 Being very smart and skilled to begin with, and rolling well.

#2 Downloading their old ship's once-experimental AI into the new ship - he was very pleased with the "upgrade."

Once Starfleet caught up with them -- after they had managed to convince the Kzin Patriarchy to join the Alliance -- the Admirals in charge of that particular arena decided that they weren't suited for combat situations, but that they might be perfect for the many jobs that were going undone by other ships while the war was being fought - courier, diplomatic, peacekeeping, etc.

Right now, they're supposed to be returning the Orb of Truth to Bajor...

Hey Sarge, thanks for the reminder! I have read about that raid, but it was a while back and I didn't happen to have it in mind for tonight (except perhaps subconsiously, but who knows about that). I remember that from the history book because I particularly remember a certain areal photo showing the destroyer hull wedged in place flooding the drydock. That was an indicator of how dramatic it must have been on the actual raid!

My original plans were different (a horde of refugees wild with fear of the oncoming Dominion attempt to hijack the destroyer to use as an escape vessle... and the PCs have to thwart the hijacking while distracted by Dominion interference. Plus they have a moral dillemna... after all, they have a duty to get the civilians to safety. Which is more important, that or the potential damage the destroyer "fire ship" could do to the enemy? But now that you've reminded me, I'll do a quick web search and see if I can employ some of those historical elements as well.

British attack (raid) on the strategically important port of St.Nazaire. Through the pressure of Stalin to start a second front against Germany from Britain in the west, Churchill ordered an attempt to land at St. Nazaire at the mouth of the Loire with the aim of putting the German U-boat base out of action. In addition to high casualties of the British, a destroyer, 9 motor-boats and 4 torpedo boats were destroyed. The U-boat base suffered no damage'.

NO DAMAGE? What was that picture I remember? I must have been confused. I guess I was remembering something else.

http://www.combinedops.com/St%20Nazaire.htm Ok, here's an excellent account. This WAS indeed the raid I had read about. The dock gates WERE destroyed. This was the picture I remembered. Good adventure ideas there.

Yeah, the U-boot pens weren't damaged, but they weren't the target anyway. The drydock was out of action until after the war, and since it had been the only Axis-held drydock on the Atlantic seaboard big enough for Tirpitz the German admirals didn't dare send their last battleship into combat.

If your local bookstores carry the Osprey series of campaign books, they have a good one about St Nazaire. It has lots of photos, diagrams, and maps depicting both the plan and the actuality of the raid.

So, I added a definite historical parrallel to the episode I ran last friday. I didn't play down the other stuff, I just added so there was a LOT going on. It worked great!

The defiant-class USS steadfast was to use the obsolte destroyer as a "fire ship", with a few other small vessles flying cover, scouting and recovery. They also had technical problems restoring the Fire Ship to something that could be brought into combat. This was made more complicated because of the terrible ledgends and stories about the gristly fate of the origninal crew on the Fire Ship. The psychic imprint of the original crew's horrors, combined with an inoportune discover of gristly remains, made things more complicated for the psychically sensitive.

Meanwhile, the space station they were basing the raid on had a problem: being swamped with refugees. There was a moral (and morale) dillemna since the fire ship could have been used to ferry the refugees to safety. In fact, a group of principled but misguided n'er-do-wells attempted to hijack the Fire Ship for just that purpose! A daring counter-attack led to the bloodless recapture of the Fire Ship.

And it all ended up with a climactic space battle as the doomed destroyer was rammed into the Dominion spacedock.

Sounds like it was an interesting game. I may have to use that one if my campaign ever gets to the Dominion War.

So what happened to the refugees?

Nothing happened to the refugees yet. They were not overrun by the dominion and slaughtered. They were not led to safety deeper into the Federation. Yet.

A number of things were set up as foreshadowing for the NEXT episode. For example, I mentioned among the possible dominion defenders an "ace" Hibiki-class fighter, which did not appear. Next episode they'll have to deal with the refugee situation while being hunted by the ace killer fighter.