Campaign Name?

[AslanC]

Okay so I have decided that my next Star Trek game will be on a space station. I think the RP oportunities are excellent.

Not sure where it will be or what the premise of the campaign will be, but it will be set right after the Dominion War.

I need a name...

Deep Space 9 was a great name (as was Babylon 5 )

The only other one syllable number after 9 is 12 and then 20.

Deep Space 12 sounds okay, but I don't know.

I was also kicking around the idea of paying homage to lame ass 80s horror monster underwater film and calling the station Deep Star 6. It maybe bein a former commercial station acquired by Starfleet.

Any ideas?

Ideas for campaign settiing are welcome as well

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

Well you could always forget the standard naming protocols and go with the less common format such as *insert name here* Station?

I always liked the idea of an old, rarely visited station, on a distant but 'safe' frontier. A posting that's considered dull and almost a punishment. Somewhere that is months (or more) from the Federation's core. A posting that suddenly becomes very important when something (a new threat, a new technology, a new resource - a la the wormhole) suddenly rears its head.

OK, so that's not very original, but it can lead to the development of a very rich setting (I'm currently doing something similar with a colony set up for Intrepid) and depth of setting is absolutely crucial, IMHO

A station campaign is always fun, and as you say, the RP opportunities are almost endless.

[Ronin84]

Star Trek: Frontier Station

Just a thought!

Ronin84

[Ineti]

My co-GM and I started a station-based campaign after our ship-based one ended. It was set on a little planet (Euridia) in a relatively unexplored sector of space not too far from the Romulan NZ. The campaign was set after DS9.

The planet was nothing remarkable at first (other than interesting climates and indigenous creatures), but in the pilot it was revealed that the planet housed a major Iconian artifact and gateway nexus, suddenly making the place very important.

We had Starfleet set up a station on the planet, and they called it Outpost Euridia.

We never got past the third episode (a meltdown among the players ended it) but we had a lot planned. The planet had unusual season changes, and terrible weather half the time, and there were a lot of strange and interesting creatures on the planet that would have provided a lot of RP moments. Also, one of the characters was a xeno-archaeologist (exoarchaeologist?) so we knew his hands would be full with the Iconian stuff.

Now that I write this...I may make this my first Coda campaign...

[toadkiller]

I'm working towards this (slowly) as well. I have dispatched the PC ships - three cruisers and two small surveyors- to explore the totally made up "Purlieu Cluster" a fairly large group of stars located a couple of months beyond the frontier that is suspected to contain a number of inhabited worlds.

The ships are carrying components to begin construction on a space station - with additional modules to come in a planned follow up mission. Basically they are going to be building the space station that I intend them (or later PC's) to use.

I've not really worked out everything they are going to find - but I'm basically setting this up as the first "real" deep space mission post-war. The UFP hopes that they will find resources and worlds to help boost the economy, morale etc. while being fairly low-cost in terms of resources.

Anyhow - I'm going to name the station "Space Station Purlieu One". I've decided that (for my game) the types of space stations are Stardocks/Shipyards, Starbases, Deep Space #, and Space Stations - with Space Station being the smallest. That is, of course, something I made up.

For what its worth I use the term "Outpost" for ground based "stations".

I figure that SS-P-1 will be 1/3 to 1/2 the size of DS9, look more like the small station from ST II (Regula stations??), be able to host a couple of runabouts, resupply the larger ships to some extent via an industrial replicator and fuel generation facility (where there is a star there is power for the taking) and generally serve as a base of operations. If I really end up basing the game from there I'll likely assign them a Nova class (or something)- much as the Defiant was given to DS9 (i.e. without a regular crew).

Oh - Purlieu: an outlaying or adjacent district. I just thought it sounded neat.

[spyone]

My own thoughts on this matter:

My campaign will likely be set on a station of the edge of the Federation but also on some major shipping lanes, so that much of the traffic to Bajor comes through for instance. This station would be near the border between Romulan and Breen space.

Due to the end of the Dominion War, the Breen turned over to Starfleet navigational data that revealed a previously unknown passage to the areas coreward and left of this border. This station is now the major jumping-off point for voyages of discovery and colonization into a new area. The Breen never settled any of the worlds there because they were not hospitable environments (for the Breen).
To spice it up, the Romulans got the same data, and are colonizing there too.

The point of all this is:
The station is called Saint Louis Station, after the city that was the jumping-off point for the exploration and colonization of the American west, and also because of the path of the new passage.
See, coreward from Earth is also called Galactic North, and if you're facing North your left is West, so this is the Northwest Passage.



It is humanity's nature to name new places after old ones.

[CmdrBluejeans]

Originally posted by toadkiller
I've not really worked out everything they are going to find - but I'm basically setting this up as the first "real" deep space mission post-war. The UFP hopes that they will find resources and worlds to help boost the economy, morale etc. while being fairly low-cost in terms of resources.

This is where theme and background become really important to naming a series.

If you really harp on the economic and political situation for the post-war UFP, then you can simply call it "Star Trek: Federation", which was what I was going to name, for instance, a tail-end-of-Dominion-War-game set on a Steamrunner-class ship in Andoria Sector, a ship that would have gotten heavily involved in Federation politics as all the jackals come out of hiding to poke at the UFP's wounded body.

Similar ideas:
"Star Trek: Dominion" for a post-war Gamma Quadrant exploration game.
"Star Trek: Red Shift" for a game involving long-term deep space exploration (from the physics term for the way light wavelengths shift as an object moves away from the observer)
"Star Trek: Resurrection" for a game set in a war-damaged sector (like, say, Bajor sector) after the war, in which the PCs are some of the primary agents of the sector's rebuilding and economic recovery.
"Star Trek: the Wine Dark Sea" for another deep space exploration game set in less dense Rimward space (which is the name, for instance, of my forthcoming c.2305 CODA game)
"Star Trek: Lines of Engagement" for a game set along the Neutral Zone, or a DMZ.

And so forth.

As you can see, I take naming seriously (part of the fun in my current 'Star Trek: the High Frontier' chronicle is figuring out where the hell I get the name for each episode) and my best advice is to figure out what you want the game to be, then choose a symbolic name. From what you've described now, a default "Star Trek: Federation" (or, if you plan the game to deal with the symbolic rebirth of the Federation's economy and social structure after it was hammered by the war, then "Star Trek: Resurrection") seems best, IMNSHO.


BJ,
Namer

[Ronin84]

For my mother Bea and my father Jay, one of my favorite running lines from MASH. Don't know if it was intended, but it made me laugh this morning.

Ronin84

[Uruz]

How is the word 'twenty' a one-syllable word?

[AslanC]

Originally posted by Uruz
How is the word 'twenty' a one-syllable word?

Whoops... that's what I get for posting at 5am or so

But if you say it real fast!

Interesting ideas everyone, except for that MASH coment, have no idea on that one.

Still haven't locked it down yet... Keep it coming, the juices are fermenting

[Ronin84]

Had to do with the handle on the one post, sorry it was early for me at work and very funny when I read it.

Ronin84

[AslanC]

Originally posted by Ronin84
Had to do with the handle on the one post, sorry it was early for me at work and very funny when I read it.

No worries

Star Trek; Frontier is a good name, BTW, but may be a little vague as well.

But it is in the running now

[Ronin84]

Ok...


Frontier Station formerly called DS-6 is on the border "fill in the blank" and was originally a Federation space station that was a bit outdated and sold to a fledling federation member to help them enter the starfaring community. (Also the price paid helped the Federation during the post dominion war.) I was thinking maybe some rights to survey certain sections of the sytem/sector as well as deal with the "baddies" whatever that may be.

The station commander is someone who resents the outsiders being called in to handle things that his people can handle but has to go along with the government's wishes.

Now however our fledling race is having troubles with "fill in the blank" and asked for help. The station stays in control of the race but the PC's are being sent for their technical, tacitcal, trouble-shooting expertise.

We have some nice opportunity for people to play a non-starfleet race and also play SF characters.


Just a thought.

Ronin84

[Capt Daniel Hunter]

Originally posted by AslanC


Star Trek; Frontier is a good name, BTW, but may be a little vague as well.

Funnily enough, this is what our campaign used to be called

[Sho-sa Kurita]

Don't forget the possibility of an unofficial name being the commonly known one. For instance Deep Space 15 could be known as Sisko's Landing.

As a personal preference, I'm not much for naming campaigns after the ship/station their on. I'm really in CmdrBluejeans corner with the symbolic naming convention ("Red Shift" was very nice BTW, CBJ). In this vein, given that this is just post-DW, perhaps something like "ST: Resurgence."