Preliminary Series Ideas

[Jerod]

Last Saturday night, the group of people who are interested in playing in the Star Trek game finally got together. It is 5 people total, which is a good number. We discussed the concepts I had in mind and if they had any ideas to throw out before the group. They did not. My concepts are both set in the NX Era. The first idea was a FireFly-style game set aboard a mercenary vessel. The other idea is your traditional Star Trek set aboard a NX-Class vessel after the events depicted in Enterprise (not TATV). The group said that they did not care which one. I was kind of hoping they would present ideas (so it would not appear I was forcing them to play in “my” game), but since they did not suggest anything, I asked for one more week to make up my mind on which game to run. Next week they will create their characters and then I will sit down to start making an adventure.

I finally decided last night to run the NX-Class game. I feel more comfortable designing “episode” in this setting. Plus, I have some ideas that might be interesting (more on that later: I need time to organize my thoughts on paper these are preliminary ideas written below. I wanted to share my thoughts and ask for input because there are probably things I am forgetting or not considering).

Reference Books:
1. Star Trek RPG Narrator’s Guide
2. Star Trek RPG Player’s Guide
3. Star Trek RPG Starfleet Operations Manuel
4. Star Trek RPG Star Ships
5. Star Trek RPG Enterprise Sourcebook (from the internet)
6. Star Trek Star Charts: The Complete Atlas of Star Trek
7. Star Trek Encyclopedia (1997 edition).

A few notes:

1. I have decided that instead of having one of the players be the captain. I will take on that role as “Captain”/Narrator. That way I can have some control on how thing run in the game. Is this a good idea or should a player be the captain? Also, I am thinking of making out a character sheet for the “captain.” Should this also be done?

2. BRIEF SERIES IDEA: The major idea I am running for this game is that the crew of the NX-03, Challenger, are swept into the Beta Quadrant beyond Romulan Space. The first “season” deals with their trying to survive in a dangerous area of space. The second “season” the ship enters Romulan Space. Since an Earth vessel has “invaded” their space, this is a stepping stone to the Earth-Romulan War. My question to you is---- What aspects of the NX-Era should I take into consideration. I watched all the episodes of Enterprise, and while I may not agree with some of the shows methods, I want to try to honor the cannon established for all of Star Trek history.

* Since the ship will enter Romulan space, it has been established that no human had seen a Romulan until Kirk’s time. I am going to honor this. I will probably use the Remans as the Romulans “stormtroopers.”

* I do have issues with the “photonic torpedoes” since the Earth-Romulan War was fought with atomic devices. Also, I felt it was too soon to introduce photon torpedoes into Enterprise. I much preferred the missiles they had in season 1 and 2.


* What are other “cannon” events am I forgetting or other ideas about the NX-Era.

3. I am limiting the character choices to the following
Human
Vulcan
Andorian
Tellerite
Denobulan

4. The Player Character choices are (standard Starfleet positions). Since there are only 5 players, one of these positions will not be filled. The one not chosen will be a NPC. I am hoping the vacant spot will be Communications–I can excuse it with the universal translator.
Captain (90% sure it will be NPC)
Science
Engineer
Security
Doctor
Helm
Communications

[LUGTrekGM]

I finally decided last night to run the NX-Class game.

As good a period as any. I'd prefer it as a referee over a mercenary ship or trader/merchant game. I've got some suggestions below.

I have decided that instead of having one of the players be the captain, I will take on that role as “Captain”/Narrator.

The general thought on this seems to be divided.

Some refs say:

NEVER to use a PC Captain (because of power/effectiveness of each player in the scenario differentials, and potential for control freaks/martinets to abuse their social position in the group). This also allows a referee more control, as any one player can be overruled, and the Captain / Ref says "Okay, we will do this." Watch out, so that you as referee are not totally railroading the group/scenario.

Give them choices "Within" the scenario. As Captain/ Ref give them a goal, a mission, and let the PCs carry it out, and hold them accountable for their actions, but unless what they do is totally off base, don't sweat the exact method that they use.

I.e. if the mission is to find a missing officer on an inhabited, technological societies' planet's surface, don't be picky if they use Ship's Sensors, hand-held Tricorders, a search party, or somehow involve the starfaring locals.

As Captain, give general orders, and don't micromanage them, or their decisions, is what I am trying to say. Stardate magazine issue # 3/4 (as I recall) had an excellent article "Gaming the Captain" which discussed all of this.

Conversely, some referess believe it is best to

ALWAYS To use a PC Captain. I personally fall into this faction, most of the time, but I do not feel that this is or should be true for every group.

If the person selected to portray the Captain is a good player, a real natural leader, concerned about the mission and the group, it brings much more to the game, as a whole. It frees the ref up to portray NPCs freely. One problem I always had was if I am portrayting the Captain, and also the Romulans and Klingons, I always felt like I was splitting myself, especially in combat.

All kinds of doublethink along the lines of, "If the Romulans do this, then the Captain will order that, but then how will the Romulans counter, etc."

It gave me a headache, or felt like I was always giving the crew a soft ride, since as Captain, the CO would make the "correct decision" for the scenario...with the players always winning. Hard to describe what I mean, here.

In the role of threat NPC races (and very low-ranked crew), I felt more free to "Play the Bad Guys" freely.

When "My side" inflicted a hit on the ship, it was more like a low-level battle of wits / tactics / decisions as NPC vs the players, with the players usually, but not always, coming out on top, with the scenario goal / plot as a guide as to how difficult the challenges should be. Without that kind of setup (long ago, I used an NPC Captain) it seemed like I was rolling dice, and moving ships for both sides, while the players watched. Having a real player in the role, for me personally is always a lot easier.

But again, there is the danger of someone who is a micromanager, taking over the whole thing, trying to do every bridge crew member's job him/herself... I have seen Captain PCs who came up from Helm branch try to "Grab the controls" off of a Helm Officer, when flying through an asteroid field or other space anomaly, metagaming, that "They have a higher Helm skill, than the LT." This was just nonsense, but with a real player, you will get stuff like that, sometimes.


I haver also seen a Captain's Player cutting players out of the scenario by "ordering" them to stay aboard ship, while the landing party gets all the fun.

Even though the crew is subject to orders, it is still supposed to ber a challenging scenario for everyone, so both of those situations are a real danger to the group. With your Captain as NPC that won't happen.

Also, when the enemy would contact the ship, It felt weird to be the romulan NPC and the Captain, talking to each other, while the crew watches, usually bored.

Also, I am thinking of making out a character sheet for the “captain.” Should this also be done?

Of course it should. It's a character in the setting, limited by skills, experience, and history. Otherwise you will either be making it up as you go, or you won't have a good handle on the role or it will be inconsistent. I'd never "Not make up a sheet," except for the most casual of encounters, like a waiter, or someone they will meet once, and never see again. A captain is central to the whole story.

I'd suggest do it, and make them complex, with flaws, hopes and dreams. Maybe they are young and brash, like Kirk, maybe nearing (or past) retirement age. They might have led a full life and want to "Earn their star," bucking for Admiral. Maybe they want to "Do this last mission" and retire. The captain will color the whole story. Choose one carefully.

The major idea I am running for this game is that the crew of the NX-03, Challenger, are swept into the Beta Quadrant beyond Romulan Space.

One thing here as a caution. In this Voyager-like scenario, you are saying basically you are on your own, with no help, other than any friendly aliens you might meet.

You must then carefully select the challenges for the crew, as they will not typically be able to reapir after some heavy combat, unless you give them a base, or something, teamed up with an alien culture of ship engineers, or something.

I'd think about how I was going to solve this, or provide for it, unless you plan on no heavy combat whatsoever, or if you want the crew to be toally self-reliant in repairs, forcing them to sneak off to some place to retreat, like a planet inside a nebula, out of sight of any enemy forces, or something.

The first “season” deals with their trying to survive in a dangerous area of space.

I like that you have laid out your seasons already. This is far and away the best part of the narrator's guide advice from the Decipher system as a whole.

The second “season” the ship enters Romulan Space.

Consider, what if the crew pushes/urges the Captain to fly around? They might. And as Ref, I'd let them.

Since an Earth vessel has “invaded” their space, this is a stepping stone to the Earth-Romulan War.

If this happens for season two, okay consider the implications. You see it as a stepping stone to the war. If they are spotted, In fact it will be the first skirmish of the war, and it will last one engagement, the romulans hitting them, and them hitting a planet, after being scarred by nuclear-tipped romulan missiles, since they have one ship and the romulans have a small fleet.

That is, unless you have the player ship flee at first contact, or they set up some kind of mini-romulan treaty wit hthe local romulan sector commander, or something. Or a scenario where, unknowingly they enter romulan space on accident and are roughly escorted to the border, thus forced to "Fly around", as above.

Will the romulans let them fly around? Maybe. Maybe they might do a kind of zig-zag pass thorugh romulan space, running silent (or as silent as warp travel will allow) most of the time, with the attendant hazards.

This is not to say that you won't be able to have scenarios where they get boarded, andf fight off the romulans, or perhaps they make peace with a few of them, but I'd really think about the whole thing. If they enter Rom space for any length of time, it is not only alone, it will be alone, outnumbered, and behind enemy lines.

As the captain, assuming the crew is "Trying to get home" (maybe not, maybe they will explore the frontier for posterity), would the captain, after scanning an area of space with some ships, or meeting some, and finding them hostile, really try to enter their space? If the time saved is worth the risk, he might. But if they can take time, and go around, why not?

If, instead,something happens where the crew is low on dilithium crystals or some other plot complication forcing them to try to cross through, well there it is.

What aspects of the NX-Era should I take into consideration. I watched all the episodes of Enterprise, and while I may not agree with some of the shows methods, I want to try to honor the cannon established for all of Star Trek history.

All contacts will be by Radio, if you follow the early Canon, as laid out in "Balance of Terror". Since the players know what and who Romulans are, I suggest you make up a Romulan name for them. A black screen, and radio contact. "We are the Av'stallam. Leave our space, or be destroyed." Don't clue in that these are the Romulans, cousins of the Vulcans.

I do not think that they had cloaked ships yet, in the time period you are running, but they might have some kind of stealth technology, making them harder to find/spot with sensors.

I do have issues with the “photonic torpedoes” since the Earth-Romulan War was fought with atomic devices. Also, I felt it was too soon to introduce photon torpedoes into Enterprise. I much preferred the missiles they had in season 1 and 2.

Same here. Lasers and accelerator cannons, and nuclear bombs are the order of the day. Shields will be crappy, if they exist at all. But I 'm an old FASA Trek referee, so that's just my take on it.

Combats will likely feel like a modern era naval or sub battle. somewhat medium range missiles, coming in for what seems like forever, until it kills you, and no way, really to fight it , except by trying to break lock / escape. Whoever fires first, puts the enemy on the defensive.

Hard core, success only. The losers become a puff of smoke.

The Player Character choices are (standard Starfleet positions). Since there are only 5 players, one of these positions will not be filled...

Be aware that since the crew is alone, they might meet a race that joins up with them, as an advisor / visitor / exchange race. I'd personally be open to this idea, so create your NPC races carefully, if you intend to allow this. Or not. I would definitely not have a romulan come aboard, in any case. But just suggesting, it might be interesting and part of the open arms to the galaxy idea, if it comes up in your game.

List of positions

Conspicuosly missing from your list was Navigator, and / or First Officer. In the TOS era, at least, what would later become Next Gen's Bridge Ops was always split between helm/weapons (Sulu) and nav/shields (Chekov and that guy we see a few times in his chair).

Comms was also in charge of damage control reports, in addition to engineering crews also doing it.

I'd highly agreee with, and recommend leaving Comms as an NPC also. I used to allow players to do it, but in the end, it was them repeating my damage reports messages to the crew. And perhaps Navigator might be your first officer.

Spock was the first in star fleet to hold the XO and science officer positions both.

I've often had the Helm/Weapons guy as XO/First Officer, or the Navigator as XO.

I have never allowed a Science Officer/XO, because of Spock's special case. I'm not a slave to Canon, but I'm not going to shred some basic principles of it, either...most of the time.

Sounds liek you have a good setup. I'm interested to hear what ultimately comes of your efforts.

Best of luck with it.

[Sho-sa Kurita]

If your players are experienced, I would opt for troupe style play, where each player can have 2 PCs, one as a decision maker/bridge crew, and one who's a junior officer or crewman. This makes it easier to include all the players (w/o including all the characters) in each missions. It also allows for all that lower-decks fun we all like , and makes the ship seem even more of a family and home.

I can't say I'm thrilled with the whole crossing Romulan space thing for any number of Trekverse reasons, but... If you're going to use Reman shocktroops (which we actually saw in Enterprise!), you could set up a scenario like one we saw in Voyager as they cross Romulan space. I forget the episode name, but Voyager was crossing the space of the species who hunted down telepaths, so they had to agree to periodic inspections and were forced to hide the telepaths. In this case, the Challenger would be forced to travel from point to point, and submit to inspections, carried out by Remans, looking for you name it... yeah, I don't think it's great either.

This is one of the issues with the NX-era. You can't easily use so many of the established species as major ongoing antagonists.

How about they don't really need to cross all of Romulan space, just reach a certain point within their space? Because there's some wormhole/anomaly that could get them much closer to home, or take them back in time so it never happened. My friends would love the RP of that - going back to where they were a year before. And remember, there's no prime directive or temporal prime directive as of yet

If players really wanted to play non-humans in Starfleet, they'd really have to justify it to me, with a little more slack for Vulcans. That's me. Obviously, if they're not in Starfleet, but are on board for some other reason, it becomes easier.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

I'd suggest something like putting them on the other side of Klingon space, simply for the convenience of being able to actually interact with the enemy. An alternative would be to give them a political reason to avoid revealing the Romulan's appearance–perhaps the Vulcan observer would prefer to avoid giving Earth the impression that Vulcans are Romulan a vanguard or something, or simply shame on the Vulcan's part that so many of their number are still illogical fascist crazypeople.

Anyway, yes, at that point in time the romulans had cloaking devices (click link) and are probably technologically far ahead of Earth starfleet ships of the era. This makes stealth on the part of the crew essential... giving them the option of specific routes through the space might be a good idea, and a neelix-esque-but-less-annoying guide to local space–perhaps someone from a conquered race, or a dissident Romulan–would provide information that the crew could use to, uh, not die.

Or, you could blow up their ship, have them captured by Romulans or Nausicaans or some culture you made up and make them crawl back to Earth in a firefly-esque mercenary ship (*cough...*)

[tonyg]

It seems to me that putting a NX era ship deep into Romulan territory is a bit much. There are just too many obstacles for a NX crew to overcome. The Romulans hav better tech, more ships, home turf advantage, clear suply lines, etc.


How about rather than going deep into romulan territory the ship only goes a short distance into Rom space, but could have warp engine problems that need to be repaired before the ship can hi-tail it out of there. You could use the Vulcan Romulan wormhole idea to get the PC ship "behind the lines", but it causes warp drive problems. The crew could encounter a friendly species (Andorian? maybe Orion merchants or even some new species) in Romulan space that helps them fix thier ship so they could head home.

Some sort of allies would be cruical for the PC. Perhaps a species that fights against the Romulans during the Earth-Romulan war. You might be able to get away with using the Remans.