(CODA) Please help me with my series design

[Jerod]

For almost a year now I have had this Star Trek RPG concept on my mind. One of the things I liked about the Enterprise series was seeing some of the Earth-Romulan War. I don’t think anything has been establish cannon-wise how the war started, so my RPG fills in this gap with my players participating in the events that lead up to the war.

The series is still being “panned” out, but this is what I have come up with so far. My series has a Enterprise/Voyager hybrid concept for the CODA system. I will not run this game until April or May because of graduate school commitments. Below is an outline provided by the core books. I also printed out today the Enterprise Sourbook offered by this site:

Star Trek: Endeavor
Series Profile

SETTING:
Era: Enterprise Era; 2155–??
Region: Beta Quadrant
Traveling: Starships and Shuttles

CREW
Organization: Starfleet
Mission: Exploration; trying to get home
Composition: Multispecies ( available speciesHuman, Vulcan, Denobulan, Andorian, Tellerite)

BASE OF OPERATIONS
Base Type: Mobile; NX-Class starship Challenger (NX-03)

TECHNOLOGY
Era Technology: 22nd Century
Available Technology: Starfleet

ADVERSITY
Threat and Opposition: Varied
Crisis and Disaster: Varied

FEEL:
Lewis and Clark Expedition
Stressful



Star Trek Endeavor
Base Profile

Base Name: Challenger
Base Type: NX-Class Explorer
Technical Data: Standard NX-Class Complement
Base Environment: Beta Quadrant; unexplored space
Base Command/Personnel: Starfleet
Captain (NPC–Narrator)
Engineer
Science
Doctor
Security
Navigation
Communication
Resources: Standard Starfleet Issue
Agenda: Survival and getting home

Season Prologue
Star Trek Endeavor is set in 2155 (roughly during the midway point of Enterprise’s fourth and final season). The Vulcan High Command has finally backed off its interventionist policies, allowing Starfleet the freedom to handle situations as it sees fit. On the diplomatic from, tensions have eased between Vulcan and Andoria with peace talks underway. On the home front, Earth is still recovering from the Xindi attack. Xenophobic groups are beginning to crop up on Earth and all throughout Earth’s solar system.


My abbreviated (and jumbled) notes on the Series Concept

* Chose the name Challenger in memory of the Challenger crew who died in the 1980s, and it seemed to fit since the Enterprise series named the NX-02 after Columbia.

* there will be no more than 4 players over all. 2 will play different characters. I have seen games that go over 4 get ridiculous.

* The crew of the NX-03 Challenger find themselves in a situation never before experienced by anyone in Starfleet. While investigating the mysterious disappearance of a Vulcan/Andorian diplomatic delegation on its way to Earth, Challenger is swept some 500 light years from home into the Beta Quadrant’s unexplored depths. With the ship severely damaged and supplies dangerously low, the crew must transverse this great distance, while facing attacks from an unknown threat.

* I am a fan of the tv show LOST and the idea (at least in my opinion) that the island itself is a character on the show. I want the area of space my players arrive in in the Beta Quadrant to be something similar. One of my current ideas is that the area has a drag effect (at impulse and warp, the ship does not move at the desired speed, but slower because there is a drag . Also, the drag consumes the ship’s fuel. This allows me to have a violent arena to play with because the species that lives there are always in need of fuel/supplies and prey on passing vessels.( Would really like your comments on this idea!)

*Something I have been tinkering with is have Challenger equipped with “Intercepts.” I have always been intrigued with submarine warfare, and thought it might be neat to tryout. Basically, when an enemy ship fires on Challenger, the ship will have intercept torpedoes to either collide with the incoming torpedo or divert it off course. I don't have the skills necessary to design something like this, so you professionals out there, if you are interested in helping me create this I would appreciate it.

* I also want to keep track of the number of torpedoes and phaser (on the ship and hand held devices) fired and subtract that total from the existing supply, to simulate that they have a limited supply of items available to trade with, fight with, and survive with.

* I am also a fan of the VOY episodes Year of Hell part 1 and 2. Probably during season 2 of the RPG the crew will have to pass through Romulan space to get home. The Rommies won’t be too happy with an Earth crew violating their territory. I thought this might be a good catalyst to the war. The RPG “episodes” will play out like Day 6; the next episode with Day 13.

Lastly, I am relatively new to the RPG world, so any comments are much appreciated. Please tell me what you think of my series concept, good or bad. Thank you for your help.

[toadmage]

Here is one idea is the vulcan and androan ships are badly damaged as well . The earth ship is in the best ship . The three ships together travel back home . The interaction of the three races fighting along side each other and working together could lead to interesting plots .

The vulcans would to study the new area of space . The human wants contact new races . The andoans want the chance to prove that they are better then vulcans .

[Jem'hadar]

The only thing I can recall about the Earth-Romulan War is that neither side actually saw each other in the flesh during the entire war & even the peace treaty was concluded via radio. Humans supposedly had no idea what Romulans actually look like until the TOS era. Now, I don't know if that's actually canon or a commonly accepted statement.

[Doug Burke]

The only thing I can recall about the Earth-Romulan War is that neither side actually saw each other in the flesh during the entire war & even the peace treaty was concluded via radio. Humans supposedly had no idea what Romulans actually look like until the TOS era. Now, I don't know if that's actually canon or a commonly accepted statement.

It was unequivocally stated in the TOS Episode "Balance of Terror".

[Shoshuro]

1986. If your going to honor them do it right.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

1986. If your going to honor them do it right.

Sure he was alive then? :P

[LUGTrekGM]

Well, I like it a lot.

Having been a torpedo mechanic in the US Navy for some years, I'd say you don't have torpedo intercepts.. too hard to hit, too fast.

Have instead a distractor / noisemaker type deal, where these things are launched, and it is a difficult test for the helm to get the thing to be hit by the incoming torpedo. If it hits, have it detonate, and your defenses guy gets to protect your ship from the blast, with a difficulty related to how much the countermeasures guy made the roll by.

Ie if the guy tossing out "Noisemakers" made it buy say 3 or 4 pts, then make it that much easier, since he more or less intercepted this torpedo at a longer range. If he just barely made it, give it the effect of a close blast to the ship, not a full hit, but close.. something like say a half or a third of it's regular damage.

Give the ship perhaps 10 of these total noisemaker things.

OR

Maybe give em a +1 or +2 to the defense roll per noisemaker launched, perhaps a max of 2 (one port, one starboard, naturally) able to be launched per combat round, making the ship that much harder to hit, in the same way that speed and maneuvers give. After the combat round, the thing is used up. i.e. you can't launch 2 and 2 that would then give +8 to defense. Don't set it up that way, it is a one-time, one round bonus, max of say +4 for launching a pair of the things.

Really, that might be the best option, because they don't always work, and enemy torpedoes can be programmed to detect and ignore them, or "Go around" to hit the real target.

That plus it is easier to have "Noisemaker/false target/etc. away!" (+2) and move on with the scenario, in the spirit of Trek, and CODA, more or less.

If the enemy misses, it misses. if it misses within 2, it hit the distractor thing. if it hits the ship, oh well.

Perhaps also make it that you have to be doing an open range maneuver (or something close to it), while launching the things. A frontal attack, dropping these off is gonna be a next to useless tactic.

[Nene_Richards]

It was unequivocally stated in the TOS Episode "Balance of Terror".

One of TOS's best episodes ever to boot. Sorry, not commenting on the series idea. I was not a fan of the timeline you are using.

[JALU3]

Another idea that might work with the intercepts maybe something like having an AEGIS or CIWS system aboard. There are several threads regarding rules to these ideas if you search for them on the boards.

However, both of these tend to consume ordanance at a high rate. Which may be interesting to game play. Imagine if the characters had to decide, do we use this system with X amount of uses left . . . or do we save it during a more dire situation? Or to increase our odds do we use this in conjunction with a 'noisemaker'

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Would the noisemakers even have to be physical?