Critique my game setup...

[pathstrider]

The following is an e-mail I’m sending out to my players for a Star Trek game I’ll be running in October. I’d appreciate any comments or thoughts anyone here has….

The following is a collection of my ideas for the Star Trek game. Any thoughts, questions, or anything you think I’ve forgotten. In stating all this, I’ve got to mention my main influences in this are InSpectres, and InSpace.

The Main Theme - Exploration

The main theme of the game is dangerous exploration (or; to boldly go). It’s the idea that exploration is vital to the interests of the Federation and humanity in general – not only in terms of knowledge and technology, but in terms about what it means to the society at home.

I want to link you to this theme via the crew beneath you. You’ll be playing the senior crew of the ship (mainly because it’s more interesting, but also to match the format we have) and thus be responsible for the safety and well being for the whole crew. They benefit from your success, but also suffer from your failures. This also allows me to get around the whole death issue – generally speaking (Departing Actresses non withstanding) characters in Star Trek don’t die, and I don’t like killing PCs in games. On the other hand, I do want failure to mean something – using the crew as both a replacement for the senior crew and an analogy for the civilians back home. So yes, I actually do mean for the red shirts to die – and for that to mean something.

The Setting

The setting is going to be deliberately vague. This is done both to avoid penalising the players who are not as knowledgeable about Star Trek (Something that is probably to their credit) and to mean that I can mould the setting to fit the demands of an RPG better. The basics are that you’ll be on a Starship that is exploring an area of space. The basics of Star Trek will be there (Transporters, Warp Drive, the Federation, etc…) which are what you can divine from watching the latest film. Any other details will be filled in only as and when they are appropriate to the plot, and can be brought in both by the GM or by the players (I’ll explain how later).

The Structure of the game

The default game setup is to have fit the structure of one long session every month (or bi-month). In order to do this, I’m hoping to get in one phenomena/issue done by session – be it a Solar flare, new planet, Dyson Sphere, whatever. At the same time, probably past the first one or two games, I’d like to colour the game through the lens of an individual character – so there is the main plot, but also a personal plot running through it.

A typical game will look something like this:

Captain’s Log – Personal Log – Investigation/Resolution – Personal Log – Captain’s Log.

Captain’s Log – this is really my way of introducing the plot of the day. My intention is to circulate this a week in advance of a game at the latest. I should note that I’m not 100% sold on my playing the Captain. If this isn’t the case, then it’ll be a log from the local Admiral detailing the mission.

Personal Log – This will probably take place in the form of circulation by e-mail in the week leading up to the . In this, the player who has the spotlight talks about their thoughts on the upcoming mission, and basically anything they like. Ideally, they’ll take the

Investigation/Resolution – this is the meat of the session. Players will use their skills (see below) to investigate and resolve the problems that have come up. I haven’t nailed down the nuts and bolts of the system yet, but my current idea is to have a split between “finding things out” and “resolving things”. In the former, successes will net information while in the latter results in a player getting to describe the resolution of a situation. A braver idea I’m toying with is to collapse them into the same thing, and information rolls mean the player gets to determine what the phenomena/issue is (or rather, details of the initial problem) – but this might be a bit far (after all, I have all month to come up with the details of the problem, while a player would be on the spot).

Running throughout this will be the element of risk – the players will be able to take on “risk” in order to get better results, but with worse downsides. For example, using the ship’s sensors to investigate stellar object will be relatively low risk. Actually going down to the

Personal/Captain’s Log – this is a chance to sum up the game from the spotlight player’s & GM’s point of view.

Skill Sets

I’ve been thinking about this, and I think there are basically the following things to do in Star Trek

• Fight things
• Talk to things
• Fix things

There is a further category, which is “Find things out”. I’ve a little uncomfortable with putting this as it’s own category give the overall theme of the game is exploration – ideally I’d prefer that this skill is broken up amongst all the players so that no one player gets too much skill time.

You’ll note that there is only 3 skills here (plus one). My intention is that everyone has a skill of their own (Though there will be some crossover) so one task is to figure out how to split that over five people. “Fix things” has an obvious split between machines (Engineer) and people (Doctor)

It should be noted that these “skills” don’t necessarily match the on-ship positions, and whoever does do that colours the flavour of how that is executed. For example, ship combat can be quite easily covered by the Captain rather then Tactical officer. In this case, ship-to-ship combat is flavoured by the captain giving out orders and tactical manoeuvring, rather then the individual skill of the Helm/Tactical positions.

Authority

I haven’t decided if the Captain should be a PC or NPC, though at this moment I’m leaning to having a PC Captain, with some oversight from the Admiralty at a distance. No matter what is the case, I’m intending for each player to have their own source of authority on the ship to diffuse the responsibility. The most obvious example is the first officer, who has direct responsibility to contradict the Captain on occasion, but it can be argued that the Chief Medical Officer has similar ability. From there, it’s not much of a stretch to say the Chief Engineer and Chief Security officer have similar responsibilities and sources of authority.

Aliens

The traditional role of the Alien onboard in Star Trek is to play the “outsider”, whose purpose is to mirror the human condition, and that’s what I’m using as the default position. In this case, I’d expect that the person in question’s “class skill” is replaced with a “Alien Skill” that allows him to do a job – for example Spock would have had “Vulcan” that allowed him to do science, and Worf had “Klingon” that allowed him to be the tactical officer. This skill will also bring additional benefits, but also additional downsides – which will most likely turn up during a “lens” setting.

Alternatively, if everyone wants to play an alien then I’m open to changing the theme to one of a cosmopolitan society (A concept that doesn’t bring many viewers to a TV show, but could work in an RPG).

[toadmage]

It looks good to me . I would suggest having the captain be NPC .

[mechascorpio]

This is really wonderful stuff. My first question is whether or not you intend to run it like InSpectres; that is, a more player-centric storytelling game? Or are you (as GM) going to run and define the setting in a more traditional style? I know you touch upon this, but it's not really clear to me how you're letting the players define the story. Not that you have to, I'm just wondering why you're building from InSpectres if not.

I'm not clear on what happens when a character fails on Investigation / Resolution... misinformation and complication?

Regarding the "Find things out" skillset: perhaps since the theme is so focused on Exploration, everyone should have FTO as a basic skill, but each of them have to define in advance a "flavor" of investigation at which they excel, AND a flaw associated with it. "My character is excellent at reading body language (but it's easy to misintepret aliens)." "My character is very perceptive at spotting hidden clues (but she is somewhat conspiracy minded)." "My character is very intuitive (but his emotions cloud his judgment at times)". Any or all can use these in any given situation (perhaps as limited hooks), you secretly make the roll, and based on their skill/flaw, point them in a direction accordingly.

Personally, I would let the players decide on whether or not there is a captain. If they can handle the more storytelling aspect of the game, they should be able to handle authority and even work with conflict should it arise.

Please keep us updated! This is... fascinating!

[pathstrider]

My first question is whether or not you intend to run it like InSpectres; that is, a more player-centric storytelling game? Or are you (as GM) going to run and define the setting in a more traditional style? I know you touch upon this, but it's not really clear to me how you're letting the players define the story. Not that you have to, I'm just wondering why you're building from InSpectres if not.

My starting point for inspiration was InSpectres, although it occurs I’ve drifted further then I thought I had. To be honest, the extent to which I’m going to be using concepts from InSpectres is really a question of how brave we’re feeling.

In InSpectres, if the player succeeds on a dice roll then they get to define what's happening, and to a certain extent move toward to the resolution of plot. If they fail, then the GM gets to say what happens.

I like the idea what the player says goes, particularly for Star Trek. Let's face it, there's very little that is objective in Trek. For example, in the opening of Trek VI, there is no obvious logical reason why turning the ship into the wake is any better then, say, activating the Warp Drive.

So rule number 1: Only the dice roll should determine the effectiveness, assuming the described action isn't totally crazy....

Furthermore, the crews in Star Trek are competent. On screen, they usually get done what they intend - when things fail, it's generally because it was the wrong thing to do, rather then because they screwed up the implementation.

So rule number 2: No matter what the dice roll says, what the player says happens. If they succeed, then what they do also advances the plot. If they fail, not only do they fail to advance the plot, but there is also the chance of damage to the ship and crew (Linking in with my "Dangerous Exploration theme").

Regarding the "Find things out" skillset: perhaps since the theme is so focused on Exploration, everyone should have FTO as a basic skill

Agreed, it's probably what I'm going to do.

each of them have to define in advance a "flavor" of investigation at which they excel, AND a flaw associated with it. "My character is excellent at reading body language (but it's easy to misintepret aliens)." "My character is very perceptive at spotting hidden clues (but she is somewhat conspiracy minded)." "My character is very intuitive (but his emotions cloud his judgment at times)". Any or all can use these in any given situation (perhaps as limited hooks), you secretly make the roll, and based on their skill/flaw, point them in a direction accordingly.

It's an interesting idea, but I think I'll have to give it some more thought before implementing it.

Personally, I would let the players decide on whether or not there is a captain. If they can handle the more storytelling aspect of the game, they should be able to handle authority and even work with conflict should it arise.

It's a very new group, and we don't know each other too well. I think I'm going to start with an NPC Captain and then if all goes well they can be promoted/meet a grisly end very quickly. It's probably easier that way then if a PC Captain didn't work out...

Please keep us updated! This is... fascinating!

Will do, and thanks for the input!

Mark