Prime Directive Violations

[ghosty]

The PCs in my game can and will be counted on to break the Prime Directive everytime I throw one at them. While things usually turn up well in the end so Starfleet won't chuck the book at 'em I was thinking of setting up a scenario where the violation not only doesn't turn up well but goes the opposite way completely and only makes matters worst than before the PCs intervene.

I was thinking along the lines of them helping a rebel leader overthrow the cruel dictator only to find that the rebel leader is a bigger SOB than the dictator.

The fecal matter promptly hits the rotary air impeller and the CO finds herself in up to her eyeballs in trouble. But what happens then, should she be court martialled and if found guilty what kind of punishment will be meted out, demotion? imprisonment followed by a dishonourable discharge? what? suggests will be most appreciated. Flames will not.

[Highway Hoss]

I would definitely pursue a court-martial in this case. As Commander Riker noted in the New Frontiers book, the Prime Directive was designed to prevent Starfleet officers from acting as would-be gods to less developed cultures. The situation you described definitely sounds like an example of hubris by the CO. If nothing else, I wouldn't be suprised if Starfleet severely punished the hapless CO as a warning to other Starfleet officers of the consequences of violating the Prime Directive.
As for punishment... I would think a lengthy stay in a penal colony followed by a dishonorable discharge would serve as a deterrent to others.

[TomMarg]

If these ppl are indeed violating the prime directive on a regular basis, i believe starfleet would just ensure the crew does not have the oppurtunity to try it again. By this I mean the ship in question bieng assigned to lengthy patrol duties, or sent to deal with problems on member worlds instead.

This way the risk is minimized and still allows for adventure possibilities, without forcing players attached to their characters from having to roll up new characters.

[Publius]

As for what to do about Prime Directive violations, I think that each game has its own standards: TOS had hardly any (Kirk's general response to the prime Directive was to blow up the closest Computer and sleep with attractive aliens), TNG stayed preachy about it but violated when they thought it was a good idea and Voyager, well... they were in a part of the Galaxy Far Far Away...

I have a Prime Directive situation that seems relevant to this thread, may even present some ideas of how to give the players an opportunity to argue over whether a situation is or is not covered by the Prime Directive. Comments please

There is a nebula in a corner of this sector which is a navigation hazard similar to the Badlands or the Briar Patch, laced with Teryon-irradiated particles and thus not only a disruption of subspace (preventing warp transit) but also dangerous in and of itself for vessels (thus preventing even slow travel through the clouds). It is not unknown for pockets of normal space to open up into the nebula, but most of these tend to shift and move over time. A team of Federation researchers however has discovered a "stable" corridor into the center of the nebula, where they have discovered a pocket of real space and hints at an M-class planet beyond.

Starfleet sends a newly designed scout vessel into the corridor (my latest Deckplan, a Size 3 vessel somewhere between a Scout and a Runabout, larger vessels could not safely make it through the corridor) but this vessel became "lost", presumably on the other side but no one knows. The Crew is ordered to take in a Danube, using some heavy metaphasic shielding to take a look, arriving 2 days after the Scout is lost.

The Crew comes out of the corridor (the end of which had been disturbed which made for some roleplaying choices and skill rolls) only to find that there are Slightly-Faster-Than-Light (SFTL) civilizations inside of the nebula! These races have no idea that the galaxy exists outside of their little pocket of realspace, for them the universe is only comprised of 3 systems and it was death to attempt to leave that area.

The Question: These are a Warp Capable people (actually they use a slightly different means of SFTL travel than Warp but are technically "Warp Capable"), but are they still covered by the Prime Directive? You might say that technically they are not covered by the Prime Directive because they are a Warp capable society, but they are also ignorant of the wider universe outside of their pocket so any contact could alter the natural evolution of their culture.

The Wrinkle (well at least the one relevent to the PD): The Scout was attacked and taken (I rule Metaphasic shields as extremely effective against natural phenomenon but easily bypassed by offensive energy weapons and thus impractical as 'standard' shields, the Scout never had a chance), so the players already have a 'contamination' problem to rectify (i.e. turning around and going home is not an option).

If this is a Prime Directive situation, contamination has occurred and must be dealt with. If this is not a Prime Directive situation it falls into First Contact involving a potentially hostile civilization which has taken some Federation Technology. Either way the Scout vessel and all of the crew must be 'rescued' but how should the players interact with this culture if at all?

[Robbert Raets]

I'd hardly call being attacked contamination.

[Publius]

I wouldn't either Robbert. The contamination is the fact that a Federation ship and crew have been taken intact by this culture. From this Pocket Civilization's perspective, this would potentially be evidence that there is something 'outside' of the end of the Universe.

BTW, another wrinkle to the plot in regards to your 'contamination' comment was something I stole from a TNG episode: the crew of the scout were given a selective memory wipe (using bioelectric fields or some other device like a Psionic weapon of some sort, I was ad-libbing by this point and never had to explain it precisely but I could have gone either way and been on solid ground both Treknologically and internally with relation to this culture). As with the TNG ep, the Scout crew's sense of identity and affiliation were gone but their technical skills remained (although at a significantly diminished rate, but the PCs did not know this). As a result, several of the Scout Crewmembers were providing technical information to the civilization inside of this pocket. This was an effort on my part to provoke action from the Crew and make time an issue in the adventure. I didn't mention this above because it was already a longish post, there were some other wrinkles too btw (an internal conflict between the 'Renegades' and the 'Centrality', with the Renegades requesting "asylum" from the Players when they revealed themselves... but I don't want to get too deep into that without a relevent question because I'd hate to hijack Ghosty's thread).

So the players had to get the Scout crew back, some of whom could have fought against the Player Crew thinking them hostiles, get the Scout vessel back AND wipe the records as best as possible.

Here I kind of helped out by having the somewhat paranoid culture move the ship and crew to a "secret base" which the players discovered and relatively simple (by their standards) communication and computers -- the players basically set off an EMP blast that wiped the secret base's memory storage and cleaned up what they could otherwise (very little information could have been sent as well as the secret base was on the dark side of the local moon and the communication systems were largely laser-based).

In the end of my adventure, this event could become a kind of "Roswell Incident" for this culture (but this is not necessarily going to be the case). In any case, the Prime Directive issues raised in this adventure are still relevent to the present discussion.

[Kronok]

Originally posted by Robbert Raets
I'd hardly call being attacked contamination.

(Little harsh there?)
No, I would call a lost shuttle being in the hands of a technologically inferior species contamination.

That being the case, I would say that the Prime Directive is of utmost importance in the above scenario. My thoughts are “get in and get out” by any means possible, as quick as possible, and with the least amount of contact with the “inferior” species.

[Ergi]

Originally posted by Publius


The Wrinkle (well at least the one relevent to the PD): The Scout was attacked and taken (I rule Metaphasic shields as extremely effective against natural phenomenon but easily bypassed by offensive energy weapons and thus impractical as 'standard' shields, the Scout never had a chance), so the players already have a 'contamination' problem to rectify (i.e. turning around and going home is not an option).

I think if the planet´s inhabitants equip their spaceships with weapons they probalby already know or at least suppose that there is someone elso out there.

Is the similarity to "The Hitchhiker´s Guide to the Galaxy" intended or coincidence?
If you haven´t read it, the protagonists enemies in the books come from a planet surrounded by a dark matter cloud. Since they were unable to see any stars except their own sun they regarded themselves as the only sentient species in the universe.
As one day a space probe or something like that crashed on their planet they decided to send a ship if there was anybody out there.
Of course they saw the other stars after leaving the dark matter cloud and since their observations were incompatible with their picture of the world their main goal became to destroy all other worlds.

[ghosty]

Originally posted by TomMarg
If these ppl are indeed violating the prime directive on a regular basis, i believe starfleet would just ensure the crew does not have the oppurtunity to try it again. By this I mean the ship in question bieng assigned to lengthy patrol duties, or sent to deal with problems on member worlds instead.

This way the risk is minimized and still allows for adventure possibilities, without forcing players attached to their characters from having to roll up new characters.

I just think its time I taught them a lesson about violating the Prime Directive. I know most of time Prime Directive scenarios are a "set-up" as the solution is to break the Prime Directive. So I sense some complacency setting in so its time I shook 'em up a bit.

I do I'm not sure I want to do it just yet, I'm just thinking through the options. I might save it for a season finale so that we can set up a next season premiere where through an amazing coincidence (ie. the Klingon with a plot hook) the CO is needed for some critical mission (see what I mean about a plot hook) and is granted a conditional pardon to complete the mission...well she manages to save the Federation and is given a complete pardon and reinstated.

All this is still strictly in development.

[ghosty]

I hardly call it a Prime Directive situation Publius.

The Prime Directive prevents active intervention not only in inferior cultures but in the socio-political development of any society (ie. the Federation cannot actively try to overthrow the Klingon Chancellor for example even if he is completely cracked).

In the situation you describe, the pocket civilization has insituted an act of war against the Federation and while the answer should be of course to crush them like a bug, it is not the Federation way. There is no violation because no one took an active decision to intervene or interfer, they were attacked by a power capable to take down a starship (hardly inferior IMHO) and have gained warp technology and modern phasers and other goodies. This is more a question of diplomacy than anything else. The PCs will have to talk the pocket civilization into letting the ship and crew go or face the "wrath" of the Federation.

In any event no matter what the PCs do, its a bit too late, my situation calls for the PCs having to actually decide to say "screw the Prime Directive" and intervene in a situation which is clearly a violation and end up with a situation worst than they begun. It must be clear, the problem Publius proposes is pretty borderline and while excellent, not sufficient to get the PCs into a shitload of trouble. This is a teaching experience (see earlier post).

[ghosty]

Thinking about the idea again it could be a bit too harsh to teach PCs the dangers of violating the Prime Directive. In a way shitcanning their careers deliberately is not the best idea.

I was thinking of a variant. An NPC CO is being court martialled for violations of the Prime Directive. The CO is placed on the court martial board and well as the trial unfolds, one of the violations bears a striking similarity to something that the CO had done during a previous scenario but in the PC's case, the situation actually turned out well but in this case the situation turned out badly and the NPC may actually be responsible for a genocidal war of ethnic cleansing after believing that he had acted altruistically. The board is hotly divided and the CO would hold the swing vote...a sort of 12 Angry Men scenario...excellent for solo play...may save it for one of those days when everyone doesn't attend.

[Lt.Khrys Antos]

My players rountinely come upon situations in which the Prime Directive could be violated. I've been thinking about running somehting similar to what you propose.

Instead of having a formal punishment, if of course things still turn out well, how about a informal punishment by the captain? A sort of verbal reprimand with a little extra color. You could have it on the holodeck out at sea on a ship, and in your best pirate voice:

"You'll walk the plank for this matey! Ar Ar Ar"

[ghosty]

Won't work. They have to learn how serious it can really get otherwise the impact of the lesson will be lost.

[LizardQueen]

Originally posted by ghosty
...the CO is needed for some critical mission (see what I mean about a plot hook) and is granted a conditional pardon to complete the mission...

I like this idea actually. This way their careers aren't actually destroyed, but they know that they COULD be.

[ghosty]

I adapted it from the ending of STIV. Before Kirk saved Earth by travelling back in time I'm sure they would have kicked him and the rest of the Enterprise crew out of Starfleet after spending a couple of years in jail but obviously he proved too useful for them to do that.

The whole idea is to show the PCs how close to the brink they can go and then pull them back but this would of course be the last time.