Captain?

[Eryx_uk]

Only recently learnt that this edition of a Star Trek RPG existed (own both FASA and LUG versions before this) and recently managed to track down the Player's, Narraters, Star Fleet and Ships books cheaply on EBay.

I've been reading through them and preparing for a Star Fleet game set post Dominion War around 2380 (a year after the events of Nemesis).

One thing that I am not sure on however is captaincy and rank. It seems that a character can never start in the rank of Captain as the rules stand. You would have to play a very experienced crew. Is this right or am I missing something (other than just saying that character X can be captain)?

Thanks.

[Tomcat]

Different rules of thought (that I have seen) in this regard:

1) Some GM's do not let players play as captain so that there is no game table squabbling. The captain is ALWAYS an NPC controlled by the GM.

2) Some do, but they allow the PC's to have starting advancements that will allow them to purchase the promotion trait.

3) Because it is a story-element, some GM's do not worry about the fact that a starting PC has not accrued the advancements necessary to purchase the ranks, they just give them.

What I did when our game first began, I gave all of my PC's 4 starting advancements and 6 to the 'captain' player. This allowed them all to buy up to Lt. Commander/Commander ranks so that they would be in department head positions. But, I only gave them a Miranda-class cruiser to command - larger capital ships would require higher advanced characters. Also, as part of our story, Starfleet wanted the officers to be a little underqualified, as they were going on a top secret mission, and Starfleet wanted plausible deniability (blame it on a young captain who made bad decisions), if something went wrong.

Anyway, in the book (don't remember which) it says that the 'captain' of a ship doesn't necessarily need to be a Captain - it is just the highest-ranking officer given authority over that vessel.

I hope this helps, and good luck with your game. CODA Trek is a lot of fun, IMO.

[Eryx_uk]

I figure that it will be option 3 for my games as I like to have the main bridge crew played by players. That's fine. I just wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing something. Thanks.

[K.G. Carlson]

What I usually do is have the players stat up a normal "starting" character and then give them two advancements worth of picks. Those who desire command will spend those advancement picks all (or almost all) on rank and adjust their characters' age accordingly (sorry, no flagship captains age 21 need apply in this universe!).

After the characters have chosen their rank and adjusted their age, those players who chose a lower rank get to spend their remaining "start-up" picks as normal.

Sure, this might mean that, at least initially, the commanding officers are less skilled than the lower crew, but ask any ex-military board members and they'll tell it can happen in real life, so its fair game for an RPG

[Fugazi Grrl]

K. G. Carlson, that's how it is in our game too, and on canon Trek.

Our Captain characters are 50 & 51 respectively. And the CO of the Legacy (our flagship) has lower skills in most of the bridge specialty areas (ops, science, flight control, etc.). His strong points are his command skills and some tactical skills (his previous posting before command).

A great example of a CO with fewer skills than the people serving under him is Stargate's Jack O'Neill - he'd be lost in most scientific situations, or situations requiring engineering skills without Carter.

[spazboy1979]

In the game I run, I gave my players 3 advancements at character generation. They had the option of taking Lt Jr Grd if they wanted at that time, otherwise I assigned a minimum number of advancements before they could take the promotion edge again:

Lt Jr Grd - 5 Advancements
Lt - 10 Advancements
Lt Cmdr-20
Cmdr - 30
Captain-40

Characters advance very quickly as mentioned in many other posts and this method seems to maintain a sense of realism and co-incide with the tv series pre-gens in the back of the narrators guide. As low ranking officers, they were second in command to the department heads. Eventually they were assigned their own small ship to conduct "sector patrols" until they earned enough rank to be senior officers on a capital ship. Everyone at our table seems to like this method.

[Eryx_uk]

I'm thinking now of taking a leaf from Star Trek Online, where enough crews have been serously injured or killed (in my game during the Dominion war) that Star Fleet can't afford to be too picky. Giving a young crew something like an Intrepid class on a not too dangerous assignment (at least to start with) would work.

I'll have to decide then, how to handle promotion. There are a couple options in the books. I'll reread them and see what I think.

[Nuclear Fridge]

A great example of a CO with fewer skills than the people serving under him is Stargate's Jack O'Neill - he'd be lost in most scientific situations, or situations requiring engineering skills without Carter.

Good point there. A CO has to depend on his people to know their jobs. As opposed to a certain former Science Officer turned CO stranded way out in the back end of nowhere.

A former Science Officer who happened to know 'facts' about the engines, piloting, tactical & exobiology that her senior staff didn't, mainly to reinforce the writers' concept of Incredible Awesomeness...

Sorry. Not terribly helpful there.

[spshu]

<snip>
One thing that I am not sure on however is captaincy and rank. It seems that a character can never start in the rank of Captain as the rules stand. You would have to play a very experienced crew. Is this right or am I missing something (other than just saying that character X can be captain)?

Thanks.

<snip>
This allowed them all to buy up to Lt. Commander/Commander ranks so that they would be in department head positions. But, I only gave them a Miranda-class cruiser to command - larger capital ships would require higher advanced characters. Also, as part of our story, Starfleet wanted the officers to be a little underqualified, as they were going on a top secret mission, and Starfleet wanted plausible deniability (blame it on a young captain who made bad decisions), if something went wrong.

Anyway, in the book (don't remember which) it says that the 'captain' of a ship doesn't necessarily need to be a Captain - it is just the highest-ranking officer given authority over that vessel.

I hope this helps, and good luck with your game. CODA Trek is a lot of fun, IMO.

Captain is a position, a rank and a range of ranks. As a position it is the person in command of a ship. So even when Admiral Kirk commands the Enterprise is correct to call him the captain. Captain is a rank between rear admiral or commodore (when a rank) and commander. The range of ranks is commodore (when a rank), captain and commander. So commander are able to be a captain of smaller ships. Commodore in Starfleet (TOS) has been show to be the commanders of starbases. Commodore as a position is a captain named to command a group of ships like Picard during the Klingon Civil War.

I suppose another 'trick' to have a lt. grade (most likely a Lt. Commander) character command (temporarily) a ship is to have them assign as the Executive Officer with out an assigned captain (yet) or one where it will take a while to have the captain get to the ship. Particularily post DS9 after all the wars (Klingon-Cardasian, Dommion) the captain 'corp' would have been depleted some what.

[Eryx_uk]

I thought of two ways of dealing with it when the time comes:

1: Allow a commander rank character take the big chair and be given command of a starship. My game is going to be set 18 months to a year after the destruction of Romulas but I can still still Star Fleet being down on fully fledged captains due to the war.

2. Accept that the captain (I prefer a PC captain) be more experienced than the bridge officiers. They will increase in skills and such faster than the captain until they just about catch up. Depends what the players think about this idea.

[selek]

The episode Valiant shows the dangers of allowing children- no matter how brilliant- to command a starship.

That particular dope-head sacrificed an entire crew because he was out joy-riding in the shiniest hot-rod he could lay hands on, and was more concerned about playing "captain" and making a name for himself than in safeguarding ship and crew.

Watter's lack of maturity, judgement, and discretion were the direct, proximate cause of the loss of that ship and her crew.

IIRC, Nog was already a commissioned officer when he boarded the Valiant- not a cadet out playing "grown-up".

Upon rescue, Nog should have been court-martialed for dereliction of duty, negligent homicide, and then casheired from the service. He had a duty to Starfleet and to those kids to assume command and do the right thing. Instead, he got suckered in by a pretty face and a couple of "rah-rah" speeches.

A commissioned officer of any grade automatically outranks a cadet, no matter how senior. Watter's appointment and de facto promotion were temporary- lasting only until a competent officer arrived to assume command.

With no commissioned officers left aboard, even O'Brien (an enlisted man) would have been justified in taking over the Valiant and returning her to base. Captain Ramirez's promotion of Watters was both temporary and an act of desperation. Had Nog been aboard in the battle which killed Ramirez, he would have been promoted, not some snotty kid with delusions that he's the next James T. Kirk.

That particular episode was one of the worst written and worst acted of any of the DS9's- and compares poorly even to some of Voyagers shoddy product.

Starfleet has existed for two hundred years and has survived because they are NOT in the habit of entrusting children with starships.

Seven officers and thirty-five cadets on a six month cruise? Give me a break. And get the writers off whatever they were smoking when they came up with THAT one.

Your captain should automagically have more general experience than any one of his officers.
Otherwise, he wouldn't be the captain.

Kirk, Picard, Walker Keel, and Tryla Scott were the youngest captains in Starfleet- and they all had at least ten years of experience and were proven in a trial by fire.

They were given the "center seat" because of their proven experience and judgement.

Yes, departmental officers might have more specialized knowledge in a particular field, but the captain is in charge because of his overall record of service and of capable judgement.

Yes- "young" wardrooms (where most of the officers are from the junior grades) do happen- and many captains prefer "young" wardrooms- but they are ALWAYS matched up with a strong complement of veteran enlisted men and an experienced commander.


You should also keep in mind that the differences between your junior and senior characters are generally incremental rather than exponential. That's one of the nice things about the CODA system in particular.

[Nuclear Fridge]

I could only bring myself to watch part of Valiant, because the ending wasn't so much sign-posted, it was jumping up & down screaming at the viewers...

...When Jake Sisko sticks up his hand & points out that Sisko, Dax & O'Brien - a seasoned crew - wouldn't try taking on a 'behemoth' Jem'hadar carrier ship without back-up, Watters has a hissy fit.
But, hey, Jake's a civilian. He's one of Trek's "unspeakables", almost on a par with renegade Borg. What does he know about anything?

[selek]

I could only bring myself to watch part of Valiant, because the ending wasn't so much sign-posted, it was jumping up & down screaming at the viewers...

I felt it was more of "brandishing a large club and demanding your lunch money", but to each his own....

...When Jake Sisko sticks up his hand & points out that Sisko, Dax & O'Brien - a seasoned crew - wouldn't try taking on a 'behemoth' Jem'hadar carrier ship without back-up, Watters has a hissy fit.

Which says more about Watters than it does about Starfleet.....

But, hey, Jake's a civilian. He's one of Trek's "unspeakables", almost on a par with renegade Borg. What does he know about anything?

Technically, so is Guinan- yet Picard repeatedly risked his ship (and indeed, sacrificed the entire crew of the Enterprise-C) solely on her say-so.

Sarek was also a civilian.....


....as were Sloane, Wesley Crusher, Doctor Roger Corby, Nilz Baris, Joseph Sisko, Robert Fox, and several others.

A mixed bag, at best.

The dividing line between asset, moron, and menace seems to lie less between who wears the uniform and who doesn't and more between who's an insufferable, egocentric ass with delusions of godhood and who isn't.

Some of the biggest screw-ups and morons in the show's history either wore the uniform or cloaked themselves in the mantle of patriotism.....

Decker (the elder), Ben Finney, Kosczinski, Ben Maxwell, Ron Tracy, Eddington, Bashir, Colonel West, Admiral Haftel, Admiral Ross, Admiral Hansen, Admiral Leyton.....the list goes on.

[Nuclear Fridge]

I didn't make myself clear there...

Watters viewed Jake as a danger to his 'brilliant command'. Jake wasn't sucked in by the Red Squad BS like Nog was, because Jake was a civilian - and thus, outside of Watters' coercion.

But yeah, there have been plenty of uniformed types in Trek who are fools. Watters is a text-book example of having his head so far up his own butt he could eat his own lungs.

[Cdre Bob Wesley]

1: Allow a commander rank character take the big chair and be given command of a starship. My game is going to be set 18 months to a year after the destruction of Romulas but I can still still Star Fleet being down on fully fledged captains due to the war.

Yeah! That's what we did. This one works for us, because our campaign is more of a "rapid-response/cleanup/troubleshooting" theme. Their ship is the only one in the SOL system when Enterprise is gone.

We dubbed her the USS Bretagne, but by all rights it should be called the USS Gofer. And it really does make for an original angle on a well-established campaign world. When everyone's out exploring strange new worlds, who puts out the fires on the ones that are no longer strangers at all?

We do. The crew of the USS Bretagne.

Added to that is the fact that the Commander is a total Mary-Sue to begin with. No one would really trust him with a full-blown command, so we balanced it out with Starfleet always breathing down his neck whenever he needs to borrow the keys to the ship. Loads of command conflict and fun roleplay fodder there!