Defiant Class Campaign's

[IceGiant]

Ok so after much speed-wobblling on my part I decided on the defiant as the ship for my campaign. Now anyone who's run a campaign with a defiant give me any pointers or tips or things they noticed on this type of ship? Doug or Dan?

Thanks

[Doug Burke]

My campaign was a little unusal. Sure, at first we had some adventures during the "Klingons as Badguys Again" period of DS9, but for the most part, the campaign involved bouncing through alternate timelines trying to get home...

[strict31]

Originally posted by Doug Burke
My campaign was a little unusal. Sure, at first we had some adventures during the "Klingons as Badguys Again" period of DS9, but for the most part, the campaign involved bouncing through alternate timelines trying to get home...

Same here...Except for the Klingons as bad guys part. The Borg were the Big Bad in mine. And some mirror universe dudes. And the Federation of the future. Okay, there were a lot of big bads. But no Klingons.

The adventure started off on a homemade ship and then moved to a specialized Defiant class. I don't know that my experiences would provide much value since it was a solo campaign. Plus it was LUG.

Strictly Speaking

[IceGiant]

Originally posted by Doug Burke
My campaign was a little unusal. Sure, at first we had some adventures during the "Klingons as Badguys Again" period of DS9, but for the most part, the campaign involved bouncing through alternate timelines trying to get home...

Were you playing in Dan's game? Sounds alot like his game

[IceGiant]

So, with the end of the dominion war. Do you guys think starfleet would mount cloaking devices in any other defiant classses?
Or is it too weird to give my players the defiant and have a different ship assigned to DS9?

[First of Two]

Originally posted by Doug Burke
My campaign was a little unusal. Sure, at first we had some adventures during the "Klingons as Badguys Again" period of DS9, but for the most part, the campaign involved bouncing through alternate timelines trying to get home...

Since I'm planning on tormenting my players in just this manner, I'd be interested in hearing a great deal more about this adventure. Don't suppose you wrote it down...?

[Pericles]

I doubt if Starfleet would be able to mount any additional cloaking devices. The treaty limiting them is still in effect and even during the height of the Dominion War, the Romulans only gave permission for the Defiant to use her cloak in the Gamma quadrant.
Now that the war is over, an argument could be made that the Romulans would want their cloak removed from the Defiant and returned.

[Dan Stack]

I'll probably comment more, but for us the small size was something we emphasized quite a bit. Every fatality was a major deal and the characters had to think long about whether to risk beaming down their only doctor to a planet. It also created a "family" atmosphere despite some very different groups being aboard.

Also, despite the firepower, the ship does have very limited resources - not much room for cargo, extra passengers, etc. They had to improvise to keep prisoners long term (for example).

[Diamond]

The players in my campaign certainly found that to be the case as well. They had a Defiant-class ship (no cloaking device), and definetly had to improvise and use ingenuety and be chary of risk to crewmembers. Prisoners were particularly tricky - at one point they defeated a Cardassian warship and beamed aboard the survivors to save their lives. Good, humanitarian starfleet merciful thing to do. The defiant's crew was outnumbered by the prisoners, but they improvised a brig in the cargo bays no problem. Unfortunately for their characters, the next plot twist took place before they made it back to starbase: the rider-virus which had been taking over the crew slowly made their move, and we ended up with an exciting 3-way battle for the ship, between the uninfected Starfleet crew, the rider-posessed crew (and later, rider-posessed Cardassean prisoners), and the uninfected Cardassians.

[Diamond]

I forgot that I eventually had a cloaking device on board, turns out only for one adventure. One of the players wanted to play a Romulan, and since it was the height of the Dominion war with the Romulans now part of the Alpha-quadrant alliance, I allowed it. He was a Romulan liason officer like that character on DS9 whose chief duty was to keep track of the cloaking device and make sure the Federatiion didn't steal it.

The reason the Romulans loaned the cloaking device was for a very dangerous undercover mission. The big plot twist was that espionage had reveealed to the Dominion what "frequency" this particular cloaking device worked on, so properly-prepared Dominion warships with their sesors properly calibrated could see it - the PCs were headed into a trap. Now, the opposition was calibrated such that they could fight their way out of the trap with the legendary Defiant-class toughness, but the PC captain, who had been great all campaign at using good and brave tactics, made a critical error which resulted in the destruction of the ship and very nearly a total party kill. That is to say, most of the PCs survived, but it could have been total casualties very easily.

Basically, the PC captain didn't credit that the cloaking device wasn't working. You can't have shields up under cloak, and the Jem Hadar were pounding the unshielded Defiant-class for two extra turns beyond the first suprise round. By the time the PCs started fighting back, the ship was too damaged to do anything. But this led to some exciting character choices.

When the dice said the ship was destroyed, I told the PC engineer, "you can eject the core and save the ship from exploding (with a moderately easy Systems Engineering roll which I knew he was skillful enough to make) *OR* you can not eject the core, keep the ship going and fighting, but then you must make a (rather difficult) systems engineering roll or else the ship blows up and everyone's killed instantly. Your character has an instant to make this life-or-death choice.

So the engineer ejected the core, and the ship doesn;t blow up but it is disabled, dead in space and slowly breaking up, subsidiary explosions, eps fires, etc. Transport or escape pod out time. This led to a very exciting confrontation between the Security Chief and the Romulan caracter. The Security chief wanted to try to beam out with the cloaking device, so he could claim it was destroyed but keep it hidden so Starfleet could study it. The Engineer character disagreed, didn't want to stab their Romulan allies in the back like that. While they had their contest of wills, this gave the Romulan character a chance to do his duty, and he vaporized the cloaking device with his phaser. He had to be brave, he was on the bridge and when the call to abandon ship came, he headed for the cloak instead of going straight to escape.

[IceGiant]

Cool, thanks for the input guys.