The mini-debate over the inclusion of non-Starfleet characters in the Coda forum got my brain churning a bit.
Owen Oulton's Relics website is designed to solve the following problem
His solution was a game set within a Dyson Sphere.One of the difficulties of running a Star Trek game has always been that the PCs have access to a massive amount of resources - there are hundreds of NPCs available on a starship, the resources of hundreds of worlds at the fingertips of the ship's crew, technology and weapons which make any adventure of less than galaxy-shaking proportions a cake-walk! OK, maybe I'm laying it on a little thick, but it does make it difficult to present a challenge to the PCs without stretching the bounds of reason.
I myself find that something of a problem as well - partially because my players tend not to enjoy being in Starfleet and partially because I find the resources of a typical Starfleet vessel to be too much. Star Trek episodes tend to rely on the crew not using all the resources at their disposal - not maintaining constant communications with an Away Team, not beaming out of danger, etc.
I've done a few games to circumvent this problem. I've set a game aboard a Klingon Bird of Prey during the Dominion War. This, I felt, worked very well - Klingons tend to have a lot more flexibility in how they operate, the Bird of Prey is cozy, yet they are still subject to orders. (With a crew of about a dozen, hence the title of this thread...)
My Bridgetown game has worked pretty well - effectively it centers around limited Iconian gateways which plops an away team far away.
My Star Wars game works very well using this - the players crew a rundown Mon Calamari freighter - minus a pair of droids, they makeup the whole crew. It is nice not to be able to call upon Ensigns Smith and Wesson to save the day or take the alien darts meant for the captain.
So as an intellectual exercise I'm trying to think up a game which will take the best elements of all this stuff. I'm actually planning on playing Star Wars this summer (some sort of a movie coming out I hear...) but my Bridgetown game floated in my head for ages before actually playing it, so you never know... I can't imagine my group is the only group with issues like this.
So let us start out with a few assumptions. We'd like the players to be able to choose to be from any species but as a hunch, most will be human. Humans of the 24th century seem a little too civilized to me and space travel of the 22nd century seems a little too complicated. So setting this game in the 23rd century seems a valid solution. It also matches with some of what we saw on the original Star Trek show - we saw rogues like Harry Mudd and we also saw all sorts of civilian scientists and explorers - from "The Man Trap" (where a scientist is replaced by a shapechaning salt vampire) to "The Way to Eden" (a bunch of hippie explorers searching for Eden). The [i]Enterprise always seemed to be rescuing civilian ships.
So we have the idea of a 23rd century ship. Owen's site gives us a Chameleon class vessel - something like that of FASA's Mission class vessel would be perfect for such a game.
So we've got our ship. The crew and why they are out there?These are adventureres. I think of the crew of games like Space:1889, Traveller, or Star Frontiers - mainly civilian explorers, maybe a few ex-Starfleet types. Why not be in Starfleet? Probably because it is a little restricting, even in the 23rd century.
So what motivates us? That would be up to the players. But a few possibilities come to mind. You could have an Indiana Jones type character (heck, this was the basis for my Virginia Jones holodeck program). An explorer trying to find all sorts of interesting things - lost alien temples, strange civilizations, etc. So what if the world is in Romulan or Klingon space? You could also have someone looking for money. This could be the person responsible for financing the expedition - "look, I understand this is fascinating to you, but we need to get back to the Federation and claim mining rights for this world, it'll keep us in operation for another year". A Vulcan scientist would fit right in, especially with their anti-Starfleet attitudes in the 23rd century. Maybe an ex-Starfleet enlisted man as the engineer - found constantly maintaining plasma conduits boring but lacked the discipline to pass the officer's exam. A Klingon or Andorian as a tactical officer perhaps - there for the adventure! Maybe an Orion as the financial officer.
So what type of game are we talking? Probably something on the frontier - think about the TOS episode "Arena" where a lone outpost was attacked by the Gorn. Maybe there's a single Starfleet vessel that patrols this and eight adjacent sectors, but it is months between visits from Starfleet vessels. I see worlds that are perhaps settled by the Federation, but with only a single settlement. Plenty of room for ancient ruins, lost civilizations, etc. And there could be entire worlds never before visisted by the Federation.
To keep the action high, the area needs to be near Klingon space - indeed, placing it in neutral space is even better - plenty of room for Klingon raiders, Orion pirates and merchants, etc. Throw in a few Nausicaan mercenaries and a few "pocket empires" ruling perhaps one or two systems and that is it.
Our games are high on action - hired to do strange tasks, visit strange worlds in hopes of finding some artifact. Interplanetary Expeditions, a group of archeologists on Babylon 5 is a good model to use. Maybe one week we are contracted to kidnap the Princess Buttercup, the next week we have to rescue her from the six-fingered man.
Just a few ideas. More as they come to me. Comments welcome. I'm not sure if or when I'll use this, so this is just an intellectual exercise for me for now, though I'd be glad if it is of use to others.
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