How would one go about running a game with player characters who are not "bridge crew", i.e. command officers? How would you make it so that they end up in the away teams, do the important engineering in a crisis, be at tactical when the adventure happens? I'm just not sure how to approach it. In the shows, rarely to non-command crew end up doing something important. Usually they are only included in Away Teams to get killed. Any ideas?
------------------ Tony Fanchi Scotty "Laddy, don't you think you should rephrase that?" Korax "You're right. I didn't mean to say the Enterprise should be hauling garbage, I meant to say it should be hauled away as garbage!"
[The Trouble With Tribbles/Trials and Tribbilations]
Well, I just started a JAG campaign and the PCs are a Special Investigation Team, not bridge crew. So, I think is more plausible for them to be running around without the rank and seniority thing getting in the way.
The problem I see with running a non-bridge crew campaign is that when things are getting good, logic dictates that the problem be taken to senior officers, thus ending the adventure.
So, maybe you could create some kind of activity cell, like a JAG team of my campaign, or a Rapid Response Team with a broader range of activities.
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"As long as you can laugh, you are not
defeated."
Hi Admiral,
I know your problem too well.
I am running now for 1 year a campaign named Star Trek Alpha Squad. The series is setted in the beginning of Next Generation, so they can meet Picard, battle at Wolf 359 and so on. They all started as ensigns and three of them are already Leutenant and we are now in the third TNG season. My problem was also the chain of command. I solved the problem this way: The senior officer were some kind of mentor for the squad. They took the Squad with them on the away missions and after a few episodes the Squad was on his own. It is very interesting to see how the characters act when they are Ensign. If you have more questions or if you want some adventure ideas mail me.
[This message has been edited by Tarbas (edited 12-11-2000).]
Well, not having yet run my campaign, I'm probably talking thru my hat, here, but...(still waiting for my players to get together so we can find a weekend where nobody is busy!!!)
I'm planning a "Lower Decks" campaign aboard the USS Bellerophon (Intrepid-class) beginning about a month - 6 weeks after the end of the Dominion War. It will be set around the old Federation/Cardassian border, and will involve the Bellerophon patrolling this area, securing it against Jem'Hadar renegades, Empire-building Vorta, Cardassians who refuse to accept their empire is dead, Breen who refuse to accept the war is over, pirates who are picking over the spoils, Maquis survivors bent on revenge against the Cardies and Klingons who think they should keep fighting despite the cease-fire (ah...and I said that all in one breath!! )
I have 3 permanent and 1 occasional player, and they will be playing one each from Command, Medical, Security and Engineering. All are Ensigns, fresh-out of the Academy.
Episode 1, "Last Known Orders" actually begins in media res with the foursome en-route to their new posting: the Bellerophon. On the way, they will recieve a distress signal from a Federation colony which they answer to find an ex-Maquis Peregrine fighter attacking the colony from orbit. Naturally (hopefully), they will engage the fighter, only to discover it has a Jem'Hadar crew, blah, blah, blah.
I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say the metagenic weapons, the Vorta, Alpha-bred Jem'Hadar and the Tal Shiar are all involved, one way or another!
Anyway, the idea is that thru this series, my players will form the core of a permanent Away Team: I've never liked the idea of all a ship's senior officers beaming down into danger all the time - that's what grunts are for! With 6 pads to a transporter, I decided that there should be permanent, 6-person Away Teams (Say, one for each shift), consisting of (guess what!): a command officer, a medical officer, an engineering / operations officer, and a security officer with two additional "Redshirt" (Goldshirt?) security personnel (NPCs - to show how the trap/monster/phenomenon/weapon/etc works ).
So my players, therefore, will form one of these Away Teams - and there'll be plenty for them to do! They will beam/fly down, investigate, report to the senior officers, be involved in the "round-table" discussions in the briefing room (they're the eyes-and-ears on the scene - therefore they should be involved both before and after missions, IMO); they will use their skills aboard the ship, working with the senior officers, to solve problems and figure out mysteries; they will occasionally actually be on the bridge during battles (depending on the situation and the shift), but if not, the players will have the relevent stats for whoever is on the bridge, and will make all the rolls for them.
Then there's shore leave...
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"May I find you with peace, and leave you with hope."
I started out the characters as Delta shift on the ship (they're 5 ensigns and 3 Lt JGs, 4 shifts on the ship). At that time of night there's a Lt JG in charge. Also, the Captain is very hands off and expects people to solve problems without calling in the senior officers constantly. And third, the Captain knows that part of the job is to give junior officers a chance to lead and get experience, so the PCs get sent on a lot of away missions.
This way the characters start out low and can participate in every LUG episode without any special considerations for the most part. It'd be harder to run a Lower Decks campaign using the published episodes (which I rely on in my campaign).
It's always fun when Alpha shift comes on and there's fresh battle damage on the ship. Captain: (looking around at the smoking consoles) "Anything to report Lieutenant?" PC: (deadpan) "Just another uneventful shift, Sir".
I have had good luck with the mentoring idea listed above. The captian of the ship acts similarly towards ensigns on her ship in the way that Picard does towards Wesley, in giving them assignments/responsibilites that they might not normally get otherwise.
Whenever the Captian is needed in the capacity of Captian, and it would be horribly boring
(both for me and for them) to have me be the captian and do the dialogue between the captian and the Romulan, they roll a D20 and whoever gets highest plays the Captain for that scene. It's worked well, and it's allowed situations that wouldn't have been able to be played out with the captian being a regular NPC to still involve players.
The reason this works for me is because I have two steady players, and then a bunch who swap in and out of games depending on their schedules. It's hard to have a bridge crew when half your players can't be there on a regular basis. It's been working out well to have a pool of lower level ensigns and luietenants.
My first game began that way. As Narrator, I thought it would work well, but I found that, for me and my group at least, it tended to make the players feel a bit less important. My second LUG campaign had the characters as the main decision makers, albeit on a much smaller ship (the Defiant-class H.G. Wells) -- they had similar ranks and abilities, but it worked much better with them in charge.
If I were to start up a new game from scratch, I suspect I would make the characters depeartment heads on an Oberth, Nova, Defiant, or similar small ship.
That said, I personally like the non-bridge crew idea. I think it probably appeals to "veterean gamers" more than to "Trekkies" -- my group has people who were brought into my Star Trek game by their love of Star Trek and I think making them "away team" members took away from their vision of Star Trek.
[This message has been edited by Dan Stack (edited 12-13-2000).]
I agree that this approach works better with experienced gamers. I've run a multi-year game now with none of the primary PC's being bridge crew. Granted it has been a much more role playing group than combat (we gave up on dice about a year ago for the most part) but it has worked well.
I also put them on a dedicated away team - gave them the chance to be first on the ground. The players generally came up with excuses to stay involved after that.
My advice keep the Captain a distant figure for quite awhile, they would mostly interact with their deparment heads and the XO. Basically my PC's didn't see the CAPT except when they were in trouble for the first year. Come to think of it they did see quite a bit of her....
Running a Game for Non-Bridge Crew
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