Lower Decks Games

[Dan Stack]

I know some people are, or have in the past, run games where the PCs are not the top officers aboard their vessel.

How did those games go? How did you set them up? What sort of adventures did you run? Problems?

My first LUG-Trek game involved a dedicated away team, consisting of the ship's chief engineer, paired with a science officer and medical officer. They usually made use of a Runabout to give them a sense of autonomy from their main ship.

Similarly, how have games for others worked when the players run the department heads, but the captain is not run by a player?

[Sarge]

In the campaign I'm running, all four PCs started out as ensigns (Security, Science, Engineer, and Medical). After the first adventure, I came up with an excuse to give a brevet promotion to the character who had done the best job of living up to Starfleet ideals.

They're all assigned to an Ambassador-class exploring a large, unmapped nebula. Sometimes I keep them on board, give them orders, and just watch to see how imaginatively they can obey. More often, I send them on away missions by themselves or give them a shuttle and let them make their own decisions. Just as Starfleet lets junior officers have some independence from time to time so that they can gain experience in leadership roles, I let the new characters have occasional independence so that they can go out and make a few mistakes. But they're on a relatively short leash; if they screw up, they know their captain is going to ream them. (God, I love playing the captain when they've done bad. Those are some real role-playing moments. )

That campaign got put on hold last year when I went to Saudi for three months. We've been playing other games since then, but sometimes the players ask me when we're going to get back to it. So I'm sure the players enjoyed the game.

[ghosty]

For a time, each player had two characters. One senior staff, one a junior officer usually from a different department or specialty.

The CO forms the PC junior officers into a special away team to perform minor missions which the senior officers are 'over-qualified' to perform. The missions are simpler and less convoluted to reflect the lower skill levels the PCs have. They are usually assigned a light ship like a runabout. They are dropped off when the ship is enroute to its next mission and picked up or rendevous with the ship later. THis way they are allowed to operate independently and aren't tempted to call down heavy support from the ship.

[Ramage]

None of my players are top officers in the ship. Instead everyone is a junior officer, in many cases the lowest person in their branch of the department. This ship is given orders, the orders are carried out, and the junior officers get duty like "landing party " ( we never beam down senior officers), "watch navigator" (there is a rotation) and the like. Yes, several of the adventures happen on their watches, but not all.

Through my own fascination, however, we have also started a REAL "lower decks" side to the game -- everyone is creating a secondary character who is NOT an officer. Gives colour to ths ship and allows for a "view from the bottom" (my bro-in-law refers to this as "Star Trek: Peon")

[Michael Barratt]

I started my now-haitus Perseus ship story with ensigns. My character was a Lt. Cmdr (the CMO), but as I was narrating, and no one wanted to play a medical officer, it worked out fine.

They were: A pilot, a science officer, a security officer, an engineer and an ops officer and most of them worked the night shift.

Over the course of the story, the Perseus took a major hit, but was able to be repaired. However, the ship lost their Ops officer, their XO, the pilot turned out to be a Cardassian deep cover agent and killed the Chief Science Officer on the way out, and the Chief Engineer - and half of engineering - died in a plasma explosion...

So, pretty soon those ensigns were rising through the ladder of responsibilities, one or two were the second-in-command of those departments. As time went by, most have since reached Lt. JG or full Lt, and are now mostly the heads of their departments. It was a long, slow, climb, but they loved it.

The Doc

[Owen E Oulton]

My Relic game, now coming back off hiatus (with my old Excalibur gaming cronies from years ago back in town!) is technically a Lower Decks campaign. The PCs are all junior officers crewing one of 4 runabouts exploring the Dyson Sphere.

[Ineti]

I've never tried a lower decks type game. All my players preferred to play department heads and be in a position to make decisions, in the spirit of TNG. The captain has always been a PC as well; there are just too many good plot ideas to throw at a captain PC and see how he or she reacts.