Help with an Enterprise Era Campaign

[Grayson81]

Hello everyone,

I am in the thought process about trying an AU Enterprise (NX) era campaign.

These are a few notes I have jotted down on a piece of paper:

1. The setting I have in mind is not too much different from the tv show, excpet the Temporal Cold War or the Xindi attack never took place.

2. The Enterprise (NX-01) has been on a mission of exploration and has been working to improve relations with the Andorians and Vulcans.

3. Columbia (NX-02) had also joined the exploration effort and working to improve relations in the region.

4. The Romulans are working behind the scenes to distabilize the work of Starfleet.

5. The relationship between Vulcan and Earth has improved to the point that the Vulcans are more willing to share their technology, which has allowed Starfleet to increase production and complete construction of its NX class vessels alot faster.

The Setting: My story would take place aboard the newly constructed NX-04, Endeavour, which has been rushed into service to investigate the disappearance of several starships in a region of space (think Burmuda Triangle). In the process of investigating the region, the Endeavor is swept into the Beta Quadrant on the far side of Romulan Space, about 2 years from Earth. In the process of their return home, the NX-04 must cross through Romulan Space. which leads to numerous confrontations and helps lead to the Earth-Romulan War.

I am stealing some ideas from Star Trek: Voyager and Battlestar Galactica with some of these ideas:

1. during the trip home, the NX-04 will encounter Earth, Vulcan, and other Alpha Quadrant species ships. They will form a "wagon train" on the journey back to their home planets with Endeavor as their bodyguard. Along the trail home, the ship will encounter the NX-03, Challenger, which will join the caravan.

2. As the vessels travel through Romulan space, which will be a vast area to go through, I am thinking of a Year of Hell type setting.

The one area I will change in this alternate universe is the technology the NX vessels will have. They will be equipped with the weapons we saw in season 1 and 2 (ie no "photonic torpedoes"). The ships will have phase cannons and missiles and hull plating. I haven't decided on transporters.

I could really use some suggestions on how to get the Endeavor into the Beta Quadrant . I have played a few RPGs but I have never tried to develop and run my own campaign so any and all comments are VERY MUCH WELCOMED. I am hoping to use this tread as a brain storming session to flesh out ideas. Thanks for your help and comments!

[Sarge]

These forums don't get a lot of traffic lately, but those of us who still come here are a friendly bunch. And we like helping GMs out with questions like yours.

I like your campaign premise. The TCW and Xindi were my least favorite parts of Enterprise. Thanks for leaving them out.

As for your problem of getting ships to the far side of Romulus, my first thought was unstable wormhole. The problem with that is, a truly unstable wormhole wouldn't shift a whole rag-tag fleet over an extended period of time.

Here's a thought: Romulus is working on a device that creates controlled wormholes, which will give their fleet a huge strategic mobility advantage. They have not yet realized that their experiments are creating unstable wormholes as a side effect, and those wormholes are shifting "pre-Federation" ships to the far side of Romulan space.

Have you decided how advanced Romulan warp drive will be in your campaign? In TOS, when Kirk et al first encountered a Romulan bird of prey, Scotty described their propulsion system as "Simple impulse, sir. We can outrun 'em." Lots of fans have scratched their heads and tried to figure out how you build a star empire without FTL drive, and there have been some interesting speculations about single-use warp systems and anti-matter powered starship catapults. Your Romulans could use their greed for warp drive as a powerful motivation to capture your players, as well as explaining their dangerous experiments with wormholes.

That's my .02 credits. Anybody else have suggestions for the new guy?

[Pericles]

Considering by the TNG Era the Romulans were using miniature singularities to power their ships, perhaps in the ENT Era early experiments with this type of power source had horrific failures where they lost control of the event horizon? This would cause the destruction of the Romulan ship, but could conceivably create a miniature black hole that only lasted a few milliseconds or just long enough to drag a nearby ship across a few thousand parsecs.

[Doug Taylor]

Welcome, Grayson!

Your campaign does sound intriguing, and I think you'll likely have a lot of fun with it. Hard to improve upon the suggestions already given. You could have lots of fun with Romulan ships that are slower than the Endeavour, but that perhaps pack greater firepower (like an earlier version of the plasma torpedo). Doing something like this could really heighten the drama, forcing the crew to always be looking over their shoulder, fearing a confrontation with the Romulans.

Perhaps they even have a singluarity-powered weapon? One that - sometimes (perhaps randomly) - sends the target ship through an unstable wormhole across the galaxy! They could even awaken (at the start of the campaign) in that far away part of the Beta Quadrant, not knowing how they got there! Such a mystery would be really perplexing, and the more they learned the tougher the choices would be: flee every Romulan they come across? Or stay and try to figure out more of the mystery?

[Cut]

Welcome

I like the set up of your campaign very much and a lot of my first ideas have been nicely put down by Sarge's great post.

The idea of having a romulan experiment go haywire could result in another VOY moment: The experiment might have pulled numerous ships over to the beta quadrant like the Caretaker did in the beginning of VOY. So, you could then start your campaign with a few sessions of exploration, then the journey to the far side of the galaxy, then let your player's struggle a bit with the new situation, maybe even have a morality crisis on board, when they discover, that there are others straded and that they will depend on them. Maybe you don't find very powerful ships, more along the lines of the space boomers freighters, so that the slowest ship of the wagon trek also is the top speed of the convoy.

Anyhow, I'm sure you'll come up with some nice moments, some will come up during gameplay and we're always here to listen, comment and maybe offer advice!

Enjoy your adventure beyond the final frontier

BTW: What are your player characters?

[Sarge]

Sarge's great post.

Nicely said, Cut.

[Grayson81]

Thank you for all of your comments and suggestions. I spoke last night with my friends about an NX era game and four agreed to give it a try. We are going to try playing in mid-May when work is not so rough. I REALLY like the ideas you all have suggested and I am starting to think about the first "episode" with your comments. I'll post some more in a few more days on what I have come up with. Thanks again!

[Cut]

Have a good start for your coming campaign.

If you need any further input or just some faces to bounce off some ideas you might have, you know where to find us

And please keep us in the loop how things progress.