Romulan War - What stories to tell

[Renny]

Hi all

I've been thinking of running a Romulan War era campaign and have been thinking if there's going to be enough stories to keep my players interested.
I'll probably amalgamate elements from FASA and Enterprise when setting it up because i'd like to run a more action focused campaign. Use the concept of MACO's and the ship at war feel etc. The big problem is that the players can never see their enemy which to my way of thinking is going to limit things a bit. So i'd like to ask if anyone has run games during this period or can offer suggestions as to how I can keep things interesting.

Renny

[Pericles]

Well technically they could see them, but they won't be able to survive the encounter. One of those "be careful what you wish for" kind of moments.

[Sea Tyger]

Well, the Babel One trilogy may have been intended as a harbinger of the types of ships the Romulans employed during the war. It wouldn't be unreasonable for a single command ship (a couple LY's from the fighting, far enough to avoid unwanted trouble from reaching them quickly enough) to have a remote command section within, where a dozen chambers control drone ships that actually see combat.

That way, the "never saw them" theme is preserved while allowing Earth and Romulus to prosecute a proper space war.

Of course, "never saw them" also likely means the war was fought entirely in space, with no strategic populated worlds changing hands (or, at least, being occupied by the Romulans).

If the Romulans just wanted breathing room for their internal interests, then they may not have had a need to occupy territory, and just cripple the Earth fleet enough to make them stay "closer to home."

[C5]

Of course, you could always try to play on the possible meanings of "never saw them" (and ignore the more explicit comment about a war fought in deep space).

For instance, if the players see a TNG-looking Romulan, but that he doesn't introduce himself as such (maybe because he's busy fighting them to the death), that could not be counted as having seen one.

Alternatively, they could deal with Romulans who used prosthetics to look like another race (Humans, Klingons, Andorians, whatever). If they don't get the opportunity to scan their DNA, or scan it very superficially, they could just gather that they're not what they appear to be but be unable to guess what they're really like.
After all, Romulans seem to love secrecy very much, and disguising whole crews into members of another race to deceive the ennemy should they be captured doesn't seem that far-fetched for them...

[Yuber Okami]

Well, most people envision the romulan war as some kind of "submarine battles": the players never get to see the enemy, they only hear the blip appearing in the scans, launch missiles and use counter measures while most of the crew pray for not being hit. It could be some kind of "high tension" games. Aside from this, if you want a more "direct approach", the players could get involved in a lot of different things: maybe they are sent as envoys to a friendly planet (Andor, Vulcan, whatever) to try to convince them to share some vital technology (advanced counter measures, shields) which previous games have demonstrated that could give Earth an edge against their misterious enemies. Or maybe the romulans have contactedsome orion pirates to hijack a human top scientist who was on the brink of discovering that kind of technology. But also, you could get more battles, but against different enemies: with most of Earth fleet concentrated in the romulan border, the player´s ship alone has to assume the task of protecting the colonies which are further away from the conflict. Seeing their vulnerability, other species/pirates/whatever try to prey upon those colonies. Maybe even some crazy orion wants to rebuild the Orion Empire and he things it would be a good start to unite his people for conquest, and what would be better for atracting them to the cause than to begin seizing non-orion planets?

[Meteo]

Pretty cool concepts, there.

[Renny]

Hi

Thanks for the input, there's some great ideas there.

I particularly like the notion of the Romulans using disguise and third parties to act on their behalf. Plenty of scope for some ground based action there.

Renny

[tvsbruce]

You could have the Romulans use their Reman slaves as ground forces. Starfleet may make the mistake of thinking the Remans are the Romulans, a error the Romulans would be sure to take advantage of.

[Meteo]

This wasn't implied in Balance of Terror. I think it was implied that just a bunch of bloody ship-to-ship skirmishes, that allowed for no quarter, no capture.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

I'd suggest you map out the war in general–know what happens, when, why, etc, and then stick the crew in anywhere where a single ship or a small group of people could make a significant difference–securing alliances, discovering sabotage, scouting missions, or a kamikaze volunteer-only strike on a shipyard or something.

[Hugh Casey]

Also, remember that if they were to "see" a Romulan, unless someone were pointing and saying "Hey, look! There's a Romulan!", the human would probably think that they were a Vulcan.

I'm sure the Roms use THAT to their advantage as well...

[spshu]

Also, remember that if they were to "see" a Romulan, unless someone were pointing and saying "Hey, look! There's a Romulan!", the human would probably think that they were a Vulcan.

I'm sure the Roms use THAT to their advantage as well...

That is probably the reason that Romulans never use visuals when communicating. I alway used to chalked it up to it to space communication having its own property versus terestrial base communication thus having to "redesign".