Starship combat which doesn't bore PCs other than the Captain!

[Jem'hadar]

kridenow,

It seems that your experience w/ adventures are somewhat different from mine, but then again, I've only been using published adventures from ICON & Decipher so far. However, I should add that Star Trek scenarios generally do seem to have more social encounters than other RPG genres. It's just been my experience that most of the published Star Trek scenarios call for more non-social tests than social tests.

My personal preference as a GM as always been to roleplay social encounters rather than rollplay them. So if the PCs want to bluff the Cardassian guard, negotiate a ceasefire w/ the Dominion, or uncover rumors on DS9, I look to see how well the player can do it first b/f rolling dice, if at all. However, I've found that some players just aren't very good at that sort of thing. Some just can't bluff well or come up w/ an persuasive argument quickly. So for those players I let them roll the dice & just say "I try to bluff the guard," or "I try to Influence the ambassador," or "I look for rumors about the recent heist." It's not my preference to do it that way, but allow it when the player can't do it him/herself.

Even though a Starfleet vessel has more non-military positions than today's Navy, I'm sure every Starfleet officer would receive basic training in emergency procedures & combat situations. I can't imagine that Starfleet would not expect all officers & crew on a ship to have some sort of function in an emergency (combat or otherwise), whether it be damage control or tending to casualties or even auxiliary security.

So for those PCs who don't have a lot of "military" or engineering skills, give them a duty to do in an emergency situation. You can work w/ the player to find out what job their character would best suited for whenever the ship goes to red alert.

[Jem'hadar]

Out of curiosity, I took a look at the 4 free Coda Star Trek adventures offered on Decipher's website to see what kinds of skill tests were called for in each of these scenarios.

Coda has 4 different types of skills: academic, physical, social & psychic. For the moment, I excluded psychic sklls from my analysis.

"Crusoe Effect" (a Coda conversion of an original LUG adventure) called for 15 academic skills tests, 11 physical skills tests, and zero social tests.

"Perditions Flames" required 20 academic skills tests, 12 physical skills tests, and zero social tests.

"Ordeal on Gamma Elster IV" had 9 academic tests, 11 physical tests and 3 social tests.

"Pieces of You" had 10 academic tests, 7 physical tests and 3 social tests.

Most of the academic tests involved Engineering, Computer Use, or Science skills. Most of the physical tests involved Systems Ops or Repair skills, and the social tests usually involved Influence or Persuade skills.

I was surprised that Crusoe Effect did not specifically call for any social tests since it claims to be geared towards challenging PCs w/ the Prime Directive. Meanwhile, Gamma Elster IV, which involved fighting the Dominion, had 3 social tests.

It should be noted that all 4 scenarios had potential combat scenes, which are physical tests, but the text never explicitly calls for combat tests. Such tests are a given when PCs are attacked or combat is initiated by the PCs. Also, for every combat situation, it's theoretically possible to use social tests to try & Persuade combatants to cease fighting or to Negotiate a peaceful resolution.

But it is interesting to see how many times the situation calls for either academic or physical skills tests. It would be nearly impossible to successfully complete any of these 4 adventures w/o some member of the Crew possessing the necessary academic and physical skills. But a Crew could get through these scenarios w/o having any social skills (no pun intended).

[kridenow]

I supposing calling a roll for social tests depend of the GM style and players. There is no "right" way to play social interactions (or other tests).

Personnaly, I am mixing interactions and rolls so I adjust difficulty based on what the player said, if he was inventive etc...

But it is interesting to see how many times the situation calls for either academic or physical skills tests

Interesting data, yes. Official adventures seem to consider social interaction should/must be truly played. Guidelines could have been given, however.

Pierre

[Mazza]

Wow, there's been some really useful advice and some great ideas in this thread, thank you all of you! I'll float the idea of lower decks characters to my PCs - I'm not sure I'm that big on giving them combat-related bridge crew characters during combat though as I have found that (at least with these players) the players don't like to have someone whose only job it is to roll a test. I'm definitely going to do that trapped on a depressurising deck idea, and I think if anything, the common piece of advice has been to put more effort into playing out other places on the ship than the bridge.

If anybody else has any great ideas, please keep 'em coming!