Noob about to start campaign seeking advice

[go1dfish]

Me and some friends of mine have been considering doing a star trek rpg campaign probably set shortly after the dominion wars. We chose this timeline because we just got done watching all of DS9 nonstop for a few weeks. All of us have moderate to above average trek knoledge (At least as it applies to tng/ds9) none of us have much knowledge of tos/enterprise and none of us really got into voyager too much. We have all done some DnD and or Whitewolf (VtM) roleplay.

We have decided that I would probably be the best choice to Narrate the game since I have the most knowledge of the trek universe (Admittedly not as much as id like). I have never DM'd any rpg type game, nor have I played any Trek rpg's. I need some advice and some questions answered.

I want to keep the ship size fairly small since we are all sort of new to this, I can always go to a bigger ship if necessary. After reading these forums and some of the spacedock sourcebooks Im thinking about choosing a Nova class ship. But am worried that I may not be able to find enough material about the ship to keep things interesting. Does anyone have any other ship suggestions?

Because of all of our somewhat limited trek knowledge, id like to keep the player races to some of the more common and talked about races in the later series. So far Im thinking: Human, Bajoran, Vulcan, Romulan, Trill, Betazoid, Cardassian, Ferengi, And Kligon. Does anyone forsee any problems with these? Or have any suggestions for others.

We have not yet decided what game system we would like to use. Ive heard good things about the decipher system and I am currently leaning towards using it, does anyone have any suggestions on other systems, or good info on this one?

Since the series is going to be largely based around the adventures of a single starship, Ship operations, and possibly combat will likely play a large part in the gameplay. Because of this I have been looking into the Spacedock ruleset for ship design/combat. Id like to know how well that works with the Decipher system, and if it would make things prohibitively difficult for new players?

Im still trying to think of some good ideas for some starting adventures (Ill probably startoff with a shakedown cruise since I want this to be a new or just unmothballed ship, and it will help to familiarize me and the crew). Any ideas for some good starting adventures or happenings would be appreciated (Im currently working on an overall plot for the series probably involving a war with the romulans)

Since we have a small number of people, our characters will probably comprise the 'bridge crew' similar to the main characters of the series, but one of my friends suggested I keep one bridge position open for a fulltime NPC to help influence the plot. I am currently considering making the first officer an NPC, but im worried this may make the series feel too Linear and locked down to the players. Any comments on this?

Ive got what I think is plenty of time to plan this, we wouldent be starting until August and I want to make this pretty good. Does anyone have any suggested reading? Id like to find some good timelines centered around the end of the dominion war and the period after it to develop the setting for my series.

Well that was certainly a long post, thank you in advance for any help you can provide.

[Rayaru]

Starships has a lengthy entry on the Nova class, as does the Internet in general:
http://techspecs.acalltoduty.com/nova.html

If you're going to be running a Starfleet campaign, the only races there may be problems integrating are the Romulans, Cardassians and to a lesser degree, the Klingons and Ferengi. This is because they are not member worlds of the Federation, and any officers in Starfleet from those races (i.e. Worf, Nog) would be special cases. Not the biggest problem in the galaxy to work around, though.

I would recommend the series/adventure seeds threads on this message boards.... tons of good ideas there.

Having an NPC CO and/or XO might be good for new players, until they get used to the game mechanics and universe. You can use the NPC Captain to give orders, and then let the crew deal with those orders. You can also use the Captain as someone for them to go to when they're stuck, although you'll want to be inventive about not letting them abuse that.

Aside from the core books (Player's Guide, Narrator's Gude), I would recommend the Aliens and Starships sourcebooks the most. The Star Trek Encyclopedia is a good buy, as is Star Trek Starcharts.

[go1dfish]

Yeah as far as player characters go I was going to require very good backgrounds for anyone who chose to do a cardassian klingon ferengi etc... player character in starfleet. But I mentioned those races more because im planning having them involved in the series as allies/adversaries etc... That nova links seems to have a wealth of information, almost exactly what I was looking for in that respect. Thanks for the tips.

[Owen E Oulton]

Klingons aren't too difficult to justify, since they are Federation allies and there is an officer exchange programme in place. A Klingon officer could easily be spending a tour of duty on a Federation ship.

As roleplaying challenges, Klingons and Vulcans can be particularly difficult, as some Klingon players overdo the "space barbarian" aspect and forget that they are an intelligent spacegoing race rather than a bunch of Orcs with blasters; and many Vulcan players find it difficult to stay withing the emotionally repressed logical mindset. Once they and the GM both get a handle on them, though they can be very rewarding roleplaying experiences.

[Tobian]

There are quite a few other 'common' species that would be far more appropriate - Ferengi and klingon are possible just not likelly! Worf and Nog are the only two ever mentioned and indeed mentioned as being such! But again both have their own respective navies, and an officer exchange would be allot of fun!

Other races you might want to consider are Bolians, Tellarites, Andorians, Axanari, or indeed non earth based humans (or human-alikes ) - humans not from earth can be allot of fun because they are human, but they might hav radically different moral or social values!

For beginners the Decipher Trek starship combat is nice and simple and easy to handle, and yes a Nova Class ship would be allot of fun but you might want to consider uprating it's warp drive to above warp 8 or you're not going anywhere fast!

[Sundowner]

Im still trying to think of some good ideas for some starting adventures

If you want, check out this thread:

http://forum.trek-rpg.net/showthread.php?threadid=10020

It's a list of adventure ideas on the narrators forum here. There's pdf file you can download that has most, if not all the ideas on it, as well as those from the Series seeds thread. It also has a complete adventure as a pdf near the end. 'Ghosts of the Past, by fortunae'

Have a read, there should be enough ideas to keep you running for a while.

Also, i think the Nova is a good ship to use, i'm just introducing one myself, best part about it is there are complete deckplans available.

Sundowner

[Owen E Oulton]

"Worf and Nog are the only two ever mentioned and indeed mentioned as being such!"

Well, that was said of Worf over 15 years ago. Since then things have changes - at least two Klingon cadets have gone through the Academy: B'Elanna Torres (OK, half Klingon, there) and an unnammed female cadet in Wesley's class (who can be seen in some of the inquiry sequences). There is a distinct possiblilty that more may have gone through since that statement was made.

As for combat in a Nova class being fun, well, it's an underarmed underpowered exploratory vessel without enough speed to run away. Avoid combat at all costs in such a ship, unless you enjoy rolling up new characters.

[IceGiant]

Owen,
In CODA the Nova has the same firepower as the Refit Constitution! The thing has 11 type 10 phaser arrays ans 2 torpedo launchers.

[Tobian]

Yeah and? So long as you are only facing off against TOS baddies you will be ok!

it is however allot smaller too so you can't take nearly as many hits!

[Owen E Oulton]

"In CODA the Nova has the same firepower as the Refit Constitution! The thing has 11 type 10 phaser arrays ans 2 torpedo launchers."

Then there's something seriously wrong with the CODA stats, as that conflicts with direct on-screen statements... Someone needs their Monty-Haul circuits pulled.

I'm going to be absolutely blunt about that - if the game contradicts the show, the game is wrong.

[IceGiant]

I don't remember any dialogue specifying the combat cpabilities of the Nova. You can clearly see the sheer volume of arrays on the model though.

And Don mentioned that Paramount wanted "Starship SPotter" used as the "official reference" for all ship stats used for the Starships supplement.

[go1dfish]

Sundowner, you mentioned that there are complete deckplans available for the nova available, does anyone know where I can find these (I know they exist for the enterprise-d, I even used to have the large cutaway poster)

Also, I was kind of worried about the weapons capability, of the nova, Ive found conflicting stories about it some saying it has alot of weapons for its type of vessel, others calling it extremely underpowered in that department. What im currently leaning toward, is starting out the campaign with very little if any combat, with a break out of hostilities after a few sessions to get things going. At that time, I was considering having the party's nova refitted to handle the more hostile environment (Since it was originally based off a scrapped defiant design, I was thinking something along the lines of putting torpedo launchers back where sensors replaced them). But im not sure how well this would work with the various rulesets.

All of us involved are pretty big tech geeks and the technology is part of what gets us into trek so much, this is why I was considering using the spacedock system to get a good detailed representation of the ship since it will be where 90% of the action takes place. How easy is it to use the spacedock system with the coda system, and how difficult is the spacedock system in general?

If the calculations are hard, I will write some python scripts to handle the more aggrivating portions, since at least half of the people that would be playing (including myself) have laptops.

[redwood973]

I don't remember any dialogue specifying the combat cpabilities of the Nova. You can clearly see the sheer volume of arrays on the model though.

--IceGiant

It was in the ep. that the Nova appeared. The captian (I belive) told the crew of Voyager they were a never intened to be so far from support. . .were only to be short-term mission durrations. . .or something like that, and were never intended to be in combat (thus, they were getting there butts kicked) or some such.

And Don mentioned that Paramount wanted "Starship SPotter" used as the "official reference" for all ship stats used for the Starships supplement.

--IceGiant

And thus, the problem?

[Tobian]

hehe I think I will bow out of the debate simply saying build the ship how you like within the rules - anything is possible and I am sure you can make a super fast lightly armed or impulse only gunboat if you so wish... as for the decks


http://digitalindalo.com/rpg/trek/trekindex.html

On Publis' excelent site...

[Publius]

Thank you very much,

I have also just uploaded (to this site, not my own yet) alternate versions of Deck 2 and Deck 4 which take the whole "no holodecks" view and restore the Sickbay to the far end of the ship where it is according to the MSD (which I personally don't like but hey, it is technically closer to canon as the MSD was seen on screen), check it out in the "what size ship to use" thread.