Nanites
If some of you venture over to the Narrator's Ready Room, you may have seen some of this post before, as I posted there originally to get ideas for using nanites. In fact, one person there made the excellent idea to check an episode of the show, and based on that I found TNG 3x01 "Evolution", which should help.
For my next adventure, when a little stuck for ideas, I reviewed some recent notes and found that one of my players (our devious and clever Cardassian Ops Officer) has been studying the use of nanites, as a means of defense against the Borg (who we recently ran into). Here's what he wrote:
Veroz is going to start working on a set of Anti-Borg Nanites. He will also look at other applications for Nanites.
1. Ship communication and manipulation of systems away from a station
2. Enhanced mental abilities
3. Healing
4. Weapon use locked to genetic pattern of owner
5. Systems invasion, electronic lock picking, computer hacking, image manipulation of security systems
6. Systems self repair
7. Protection from other nanite invasion or invasion of microscopic entities
8. Note this will be a ongoing side project not taking up all of his free time. He will start a computer search on existing information
As the saying goes "sometimes this stuff just writes itself!"
I think I'll do a story about these nanites getting out of control, which should give a serious challenge to the group.
Feel free to pitch ideas and input on what kind of nastiness these nanites could inflict upon our ship and her crew!
Also (and the reason I'm reposting this here in the CODA section), I'd love to have some ideas for HOW to make things challenging. What skill tests (besides System Operation, which I imagine will be severely disabled or completely inoperable) should the crew have to make? How about penalties or negative modifiers?
Doug Taylor
Member of Decipher's Hall of Fame
Currently running The One Ring RPG. I also occasionally run Villains & Vigilantes (our campaign is in year 25) and WEG d6 Star Wars (both games are mostly on hiatus) and an annual game based on The X-Files (using Conspiracy X).