I need campaign advice

[BraidsMamma]

Ok....
I'm in the third season of my enterprise era Series Star Trek: Frontier

Everything is non canon (It all began with the suliban blowing up the Enterprise Nx-01)

The series is about the adventures of the crew of DS1 and it's (defiant like) ship "UES Frontier-A"

The PCs are.

*Captain Elizabeth Gardner (Former Captain of Frontier Nx-02 but she made a few to many mistakes in seasons 1 and 2 and got moved to DS1).
*Centaurian Ambassador Nautan Kavic (former Doctor of Frontier NX-02, now Ambassador to DS1)
*Chief of Security Beatrice Freeman (A new character who is quite hostile to Gardner and she is getting more and more controlled by Commander Gery)
*Yeoman Michail Carpenter (Everybody, including himself believes that he is Gardners younger cousin but he is actually a VERY advanced android from far into the future who is masqueading as a 22-century human for unknown reasons)


Important NPCs are include

*Commander T'Lara (A close friend to Gardner and the vulcan representative on DS1)
*Commander Grey (The new first officer of DS1, no one knows anything about him but Gardner has orders to report everything to him. He never shows up to meetings. He is tryiing to get Freeman to join his anti-Gardner movement and if everything works out the two of them are going to end up as the founders of Section 31)

In the remaining episodes of season 3 am I going to deal with Carpenters true identity, a quick visit to the mirror universe (Where Commander Gery actually is the good guy) and resolve the story around the creation of Section 31 and the story about the orion pirates that has been the main villains of season 3 so far.

My problem now is the season 4 stuff.

Season 3 takes place in 2154 so my original idea was to have the Romulans declare war in the season 3 finale and then have a whole season with the romulan war as the main theme.

However.. I'm having other ideas now....

In my series the conclusion of the Andor-Vulcan war gave birth to something called the alliance (between Andor, Earth and Vulcan).
Alpha Centauri however decided to stay out of it.

Now during season 3 Ambassador Kavic has been given hints about that the alliance (or more precisly Starfleet) is planning an attack on Centauri to force them to assist the alliance. I also hinted that an attack on Centauri could cause civil war in the alliance.

Kavic's player really liked to sneak around on the station in search for more information about this conspiracy so I'm thinking about extendig the plot to a major arc of season 4.

The stations andorian representative also hinted that starfleet wasn't very popular on Andor.

The question is.... how do I get a Romulan attack, an alliance civil war and a starfleet Attack on Centauri to fit into the major story arc of season 4?

Ideas?

Thanks in advance....

[Grimace]

Boy oh boy, you don't want much, do you?

Just looking at what you have, I'd make the following suggestions:

Decide on one thing to be the major emphasis of your Season 4. Which has a larger scope in your overall story, and use that as the basis for everything to revolve around.

Your civil war/attack on Centauri are basically linked, as the latter would basically cause the former to occur. Though I must say that there is probably more to the whole civil war scheme than simple abhorrence to the attack on Centauri, otherwise they wouldn't jump so readily to civil war.

So you may want to have some of the Ambassador's station rovings turn up more tidbits on things that may be going down in the heirarchy, which could lead to certain elements in certain races essentially making a power play to try to get the "upper hand" over the humans. Perhaps Andor or Vulcan doesn't want to necessarily take a back seat to the humans as far as running Starfleet and getting all of the choice assignments, so they're stirring the pot and creating rifts where some shouldn't be. You could have the Ambassador discover some of these dealings, and the greater problems of potential civil war, and then see if the players can do anything to avert it.

The Romulan war, while interesting, may not directly affect the station, so this might be something that you can use as the occasional "side jaunt", where it gives the players something definite and "simple" to resolve, where they know who the enemy is and what needs to be done to defeat them.

So, my main suggestion is to use the civil war/attack on Centauri as the main focal point of your Season 4, integrating elements of the Romulan war in to liven things up and provide clear and present threats to the PCs. The main focus could be on finding the problems brewing, figuring out why those problems are there, and solving the problems.

I can only assume from your post that you allow things to change from the television show, but I'm not sure if you're going allow drastic "history" changes as well, where maybe the Federation won't grow to what it is later. If that's the case, then you could easily let the fate of the Federation/Starfleet rest in the hands of the PCs and how well they discover things and act on them. If that's not the case, then you may want to consider letting them discover things that are vitally and obviously important, so that they simply KNOW they have to act, and in doing so will put things to right. You could, of course, always shake things up a little, to provide better tension in your overall campaign, such as the PCs averting the attack on Centauri, and thus averting the immediate threat of civil war, but still keeping the ringleaders of dissention out on the field of play, to further cause problems for both the PCs (because they foiled the plans) and for the Federation.

A note of comment on your idea to have some be the founders of Section 31. While interesting, I would certainly put this as a distant tertiary thread line, as with a pivotal season with possible civil war and a looming Romulan war, you don't want them also bickering with themselves. Perhaps during the whole Romulan war debacle, the Commander will get a couple of "eggs in the basket" where certain supplies or technologies go "missing" or whatnot, only to be stockpiled by the Commander at some undisclosed location to be used in the future. Maybe include a single episdoe where the Security Chief is put in a situation where the Commander is present and offers a "common thread" for them to form a bond in future episodes. It could be the Commander saves the Chief from something, or the Commander offers something of value that the Chief was desperately needing, or the Commander says something that makes the Chief realize they they aren't so different in viewpoints, and that maybe the Commander could actually do something to "fix the woes of the Federation". Whatever it is, you don't want it to be something that will cause dissention in the ranks during Season 4...in my opinion. That would simply be too much going on for the Captain to deal with.

Anyway, hopefully some of these ideas will help out.

[Pericles]

You could always go with the bulk of your season being the run up to the civil war/attack on Centauri, but then have the Romulans, sensing weakness in your alliance, attack and the resulting threat to the other powers preempt the civil war as the various faction come together to repel the greater threat posed by the Romulan menace.

[Poolshark]

Errr.....how about the VERY obvious.

The Romulans are engineering the civil war on Alpha Centauri. The fledgling alliance, not wanting to show a combined weakness to this threat use a small incident to declare war on the Romulans (The destruction of the USS Patton, a Marshall Class destroyer from my old Spaceflight Chronology book would be a convenient tie in for any fans of that book ).
Section 31 are manipulating the manipulators, who are in turn being manipulated etc. It all depends on just how Machiavellian you want to get, I guess!

All I have time for at the mo'.... I'll come back to you as and when my brain recharges and I finish my curry

Cheers

Tas