Modifying "Decision at Midnight" Module

[LtCdr Kagan]

This adventure module has been one of my favorites. Considering that it is made for a group fresh out of the academy, it makes a great beginning episode.

The problem is: How would you modify this for an ongoing group? Feel free to be creative because I'm not looking at any specific parameters.

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

Well it really depends what sort of ongoing group you have. If the Captain is a PC, for instance, it would be quite easy to have him or her replaced by a Changling/Shapeshifter, etc, or perhaps taken over by some sort of alien or mind control. Not very original, I'll grant you, but certainly viable.

If the Captain isn't a PC, you could have quite a lot of fun foreshadowing the Captain's mental breakdown as part of an ongoing campaign. Indeed, I think this is actually a more satisfying adventure when it is played as part of an ongoing campaign. The players have a lot more invested in the situation. They will likely have friends, and may even count the captain as a friend.

You would also have the opportunity to show the degenerating situation along the border, and expand those events further. Which again, would give the characters a much deeper emotional tie to what's going on. Imagine if just a fw episodes ago, the players had been involved in extracting a Federation Diplomatic team from Asparax, and suffered casualties. Or perhaps one of them has a sweetheart on one of those worlds.

You could do a lot with it.

[Identity Crisis]

The lazy option - wait until the PCs' ship has taken a beating (it's a PC ship, it will) and whilst it's being repaired and refitted have them temporarily assigned to another ship. Run scenario as written.

[tonyg]

One way to run the adventure with an on going group is to have a higher ranking officer (a Commodore) come aboard the ship for some reason (inspection, heading to some diplomatic function or crisis, etc.). As the events unfold the Commodore, as a higher ranking officer, takes command of the ship "for the duration of the crisis".

This is what the GM did to me when he ran this adventure for our gaming group. He even gave the Commodore a very loyal attache who was willing to help cover for the Commodore's illness.

[Imagus]

I was going to run it as a flashback episode.

About half of the PCs would have been on the ship prior to the campaign, the other half, join at the beginning.

Set up a scenario that puts them into a superficially similar situation, or takes them near the Abraxis(?) worlds. Cut to the Decision scenario as a disjointed series of individual scenes with the relevant players playing their characters as they would have been then - this reflects the experienced crew members retelling the events to the newbies. The other players can play NPC roles and long-gone crew members. The final result of the Decision scenario (as decided by the players now) then affects the current situation.

There should also be opportunities to explain various elements of some of the character's personalities and mutual histories (first encounters, unlikely alliances and so on).

With players that are prepared to make an effort, you can get a good session (or more) out of this kind of scenario. I ran something similar (with a memory-draining spaceborne organism) with my LUG crew a few years ago, and it went down a storm. It really felt like an actual character development episode of one of the series!

[Capt. K. Vaughn]

I have used this module a number of times, once as suggested I had the crew transferred in after their vessel took quite the beating. They were junior officers, there was no point in them sticking around for the months it would take to repair their ship.

Another it was a one-off used to introduce the players to the game with characters straight out of the Academy, once it was complete and the Board of Inquiry completed we advanced the characters a number of years in their career, only to find themselves reunited to serve aboard the current vessel as its senior officers. It was a fun but short lived campaign with the PCs having some rather bitter rivalries based around events from the Decision module.

I had plans to update it for TNG/DS9 to use in a PBEM as a flashback. Each player would run two versions of the same character, one a younger version from his or her experiences at that time and an older one for the current mission. Then as each scene/chapter ended flip back to the other scenario. I still may do this one as it has always had a high appeal for me.

Regards,
CKV.

[jkp1187]

For the good of the order.... someone is selling "Decision at Midnight" on eBay for $6.00 shipped.