Seed Generator

[Silverback]

I've often found myself struggling to come up with ideas for creating Star Trek scenarios and have often wondered about creating/contributing a random seed/plot generator based upon the act system specified in the LUG narrators guides.

This idea was also inspired by Adamant Entertainments pulp sourcebook which has a fairly comprehensive plot generator included within its pages.

Does this idea float anyones boat or has it been done before?

[The Tatterdemalion King]

I've been thinking about a random generator based off of the card game. If you have a lot of cards, you could do this just by shuffling each card type and drawing one, but the internet is readily availible...

The idea goes something like this: You start with one or two mission cards, either as a location, an objective, or both. Looking at the list of missions in the base set, we see that there's 60 cards to choose from. There's a bunch of different ways you could roll the dice, but I just used (1d6-1)x1d10–and rolled a 19. Looking down the list, I note it's Feldomite Rush.

For this example, I'll assume a Starfleet Crew in the 24th century. TNG styles.

Alright, let's keep the location–Parsion III, a mining planet–and roll another mission for the objective. I get a 54, Sensitive Search: "Track the movements of an 'information broker' who failed to arrive at a scheduled rendezvous."

Alright–the mission, so far, is to track a contact with information on Parsion III. Your crew, contacted by Starfleet Intelligence, is put on temporarily detached duty to head to Parsion III under assumed identities and meet with the contact. That's the hook.

Now for the rest of the episode. Instead of going through each act in a linear fashion, let's gather some elements to put together later. This means plots, problems, and NPCs.

One of the cool things about the Trek RPGs is the 'dilemma' card type. For those of you who didn't play, these were things that happened during mission-solving attempts to get in the way, much like in an episode of Trek. As such, they're well-suited for what we're doing here. I'm going to roll one–60 dilemmas, so same dice–and see how it can apply to the episode as we've seen it so far.

The result: Personal Duty. Someone in the Crew has something they have to accomplish themselves. Alright, as that's something kind of singular, I'm going to roll one more.

Stellar Core Fragment. Okay, that's a little more general. We'll come back to that after the next step: NPCs.

There's 172 Personnel cards in the base set. Three NPCs sounds good (we can decide how important they each are later) so we'll roll ((1d6x1d3)-1)x10+1d10. That's multiply 1d6 by a 1d3 roll, subtracting one from the result, giving you a range of 0-17, times ten, plus 1d10 for the 1s digit. Simple. Really. An easy way to find results is to take the card number the category starts with–in this case, 207–and add your result.

The first result will be the contact that's gone missing–Altovar. Heh. I just watched that epsiode. So instead of using Altovar himself (which, I guess we could, if we wanted to) we'll use him as an archetype for what we're going for. So, a 'vindictive criminal,' a Lethean, who wants to sell some information. Perhaps he's a former member of the Syndicate or some Ferengi weapons cartel, who extracted something the Federation could use in a case against their boss, and is exchanging this information for a more leniant sentance or something.

So, next–Shakaar Edon. Hmm. I'm not sure what to do with this. Oh, wait, I think I got it. The Maquis, Bajoran underground, or Anti-Dominion forces on an occupied planet–some resistance movement the characters should be sympathetic to–is getting illegal weaponry from the criminal's boss. This is what the criminal was informing on, and the resistance fighter wants to prevent it. It wasn't Syndicate or Ferengi thugs who killed/captured him, it was the resistance fighter. Like Shakaar, this resistance fighter is an old friend/confidante/lover/mentor/otherwise important figure in one of the Crew's past, someone who's trust and respect is meaningful. Their species, cause and name will depend on who the Crewmember is...

So the third NPC result is Geordi La Forge. A friendly engineer, an ally of the crew. Someone necessary in stopping the stellar core fragment? Perhaps the star Parsion III orbits ejects stellar fragments in a fairly regular pattern, necessitating a planetary deflection grid the engineer helps maintain.

Now that we have all these elements, let's put them together into a three-act structure.

HOOK - while waiting in a bar on Parsion III for their Lethean informant, the Crew are distracted by a barfight. When they extricate
ACT ONE - investigation in the dirty back alleys of Parsion III. local colour encounters, etc. the old friend/resistance cell member is revealed and warns the Crew off.
ACT TWO - The transporter beam that took the letheans and his captors is traced to one of the deflection satellites orbiting Parsion III. the resistance members holed up there, awaiting extraction by either the arms dealers or their fellow resistance fighters. If (when) the crew confront them, the resistance members take the satellite engineers, and by extension, the entire planet, hostage.
ACT THREE - the crew has to resolve the hostage crisis before the stellar core fragment devastates the planet or destroys the satellite. The crew member must confront their old friend personally.

[Silverback]

I'd also been musing about whether to use the CCG's for this. It's a good starting point but I fancied something a little more 'comprehensive'. Still, until I've sat down and created something, it'll do the job nicely!

[The Tatterdemalion King]

I'd also been musing about whether to use the CCG's for this. It's a good starting point but I fancied something a little more 'comprehensive'. Still, until I've sat down and created something, it'll do the job nicely!

What, you want it to write each scene for you? : P

[Silverback]

What, you want it to write each scene for you? : P

What a damn fine idea!

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Hey, it could work–but you'd have to get really, uh, interpretive with each of the elements. A Star Trek Tarot, anyone? : P

[Silverback]

Hey, it could work–but you'd have to get really, uh, interpretive with each of the elements. A Star Trek Tarot, anyone? : P

Like this list: http://members.fortunecity.com/rowan...trektarot.html?

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Okay, the next example: creating an episode for a series set on a Klingon battlecruiser in the 23rd century.

For this, we'll try to select cards from more than one set–there's not many TOS cards in the base set. I guess it would be easier to stick to the base set, but it'll be fun. C'mon!

So using the following chart, we'll select mission cards. Roll 1d10...

1-2 Second Edition base set
3 Energize
4-5 Call to Arms
6 Necessary Evil
7 Strange New Worlds
8 To Boldy Go
9 Captain's Log
10 These Are The Voyages

I rolled a 4–looking up the Call to Arms card list, I see there's 30 missions–1d3-1 and 1d10. The result, I see, is Salvage Dominion Ship. That's something we can work with.

Onto the dilemmas. Same drill. I got Gomtuu Shock Wave–again, it works. It's a little impersonal, though, so I'm going to roll again and hope for something more people-y. Aaand I got–Outclassed. Hmm. Let's start putting this together

The Crew is sent to recover an enemy–a Starfleet cruiser–which crashed on a remote planet. The reason for the crash, unknown to the Klingons, is a spaceborn life-form. As for Outclassed–let's do NPCs first.

By the way–this rolling for set every card is a little tedious after a while. Maybe you could roll for which set to use once and stick with it, or alternate between the base set and one other. Whatever works for you.

So I've rolled up three. Tadaa: Lenaris Holem, Bold Veteran. So this guy's a hardass–but is he a Klingon hardass, or someone else? We could have a famous Klingon show up and start overshadowing the Crew characters. Making them look bad, stuff like that, until the Crew gets the better of them. Or learns that Self Esteem... er, Honour Comes From Within.

Sounds terrible, doesn't it?

Okay, forget that high school drama crap. The veteran will be a Starfleet officer, famous even in the Empire for his tactical acumen. Believing the lifeform's attacks to be a new Klingon weapon, he's set up an ambush in the wreckage to take out the Klingon bastards when they come looking.

Two: Borg Queen, The One Who Is Many. Uhh. Hm. This one's kind of... out there. I mean, I don't really want to have the Borg be randomly cruising around this planet. Alright, let's try this–the space-dwelling life forms attacked the federation ship because it had inadvertantly stolen part of the life form's, uh, form. They're hive-minded, so each of the little blobby polyp-bodies are but one part of a greater whole–one which doesn't really want to see the tiny egg-parts the Starfleet vessel stole get brought back to a laboratory.

Three: Mordoc, who has no subtitle, but if he did it would be something along the lines of 'The Goofiest Ferengi.' I wonder what the TV guide listing for that episode was like: "On a very special Star Trek, the crew of the Enterprise is menaced by the cast of CATS!" Anyway, I think it's coming together, now–the Klingons are outclassed by the veteran, and this guy is outclassed by the Klingons. Give them someone to push around so they feel better. Some lame Orion or rogue Tellarite scavenger, used as a dupe by the veteran, and fodder for the alien creatures to demonstrate their destructive potential. Thinking over it, I like the idea of it being a rogue Klingon smuggler, of no house or honourable stature–but a Klingon nonetheless. Perhaps, reversing an earlier idea, an opportunity for the dweeby Klingon to act more impressively or help the crew may come up.

Lets do this one more time.

HOOK - The crew track a signal from a Starfleet vessel to small planetoid in an uninhabited system. A boarding party is sent over to investigate lifeform readings, and encounter a Klingon scavenger
ACT ONE - Exploring the ship, the Crew encounters more traps, and evidence that more of the crew survived than previously thought. In the laboratory, they find a large, cocooned shape that begins emitting telepathic signals.
ACT TWO - The aliens attack! cutting the boarding party off from the ship. onboard, a running battle with the veteran who makes a break for it with the Klingon scavenger's ship when the cocooned shape starts devouring people. in space, the alien creatures try to tear the ship apart while it dodges through the asteroid field.
ACT THREE - At this point, the crew should become proactive and put the pieces together. The telepathic signals could bleed into nearby people (possibly possessing an NPC soldier or the dweeby scavenger), providing clues as to the alien's motivations. The crew could then lead the aliens into a trap using the egg (the cunning solution) or negotiate release of the eggs for free passage (the non-Klingon but probably smarter solution). Aaand then the veteran escapes and there's a running battle or something.

Now get playing!